Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Atheists Unveil Their Monument to Atheism

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

A month or so ago, I alerted UD readers that atheists in Florida were about to place their stone monument of the Ten “commandments” of atheism.  Well, today they have unveiled their monument to atheism in front of the Bradford County, Florida, courthouse, right near a monument listing the traditional Ten Commandments from the Old Testament scriptures.  Personally, I have no problem with the monument itself being placed in a public square.  We’re a pluralistic society, all ideas are welcome and open for debate.  That is what freedom of speech is all about.  (As a side note, contrast that with Nick Matzke, the suppressor!)

“When you look at this monument, the first thing you will notice is that it has a function. Atheists are about the real and the physical, so we selected to place this monument in the form of a bench,” said David Silverman, president of American Atheists.”

So, now we know that atheists define the real as what is physical.  I guess there’s no real surprise there.  But it would be interesting to see what scientific evidence they have to show that real and physical amount to the same thing. I guess numbers aren’t real?  How about love?

On the different sides of the monument, we now have, literally carved in stone, what atheists actually believe.  For example, on one side is this quote:

“An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.”
– American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair
One wonders that if everything is the the result of materialistic processes, as an atheist must believe, then on what basis does an atheist want “disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated”?  No doubt most atheists do think the elimination of those things is a good thing.  But, what isn’t clear is why they think it is good in the first place.  Good compared to what standard?  There is an inherent major contradiction here, and now they’ve made it official by having it carved in stone.  So much for logic and reason!
Apparently the monument also includes some of the Old Testament punishments for certain sins.  Besides the selective editing involved in picking out what offenses and punishments should be carved in stone for all time, it is interesting to note that they haven’t quoted anything from the Koran about, say, what ought to happen to infidels.  One has to wonder why.

 

 

Comments
I'm slightly flattered that you think anything I'm saying here is novel, let alone iconoclastic. I'm just transmitting a small part of a long tradition that goes back to Schelling and Hegel and forward to Peirce, James, Nietzsche, Bergson, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Kauffman, Prigogine, and Deleuze.Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
04:30 PM
4
04
30
PM
PDT
Chris Doyle, Please stop raining on KN's "Third Way" iconoclast parade.William J Murray
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
04:14 PM
4
04
14
PM
PDT
Thanks for your response, Stephen, and I'm pleased to have someone join me on the other horn of Euthyphro's dilemma :) Yes, I agree Craig is wrong.
Say this prayer: God give me the wisdom to see the light and the strength to follow it. If you don’t believe in God, then say it anyway. It is a prayer that is always answered. Follow whatever light you are given and keep following that light all the way to the end.
Yes I can and do do that, atheist though I be. I think it's the way to discern what is right, whether one thinks it comes from God, or from the process of letting oneself start to let go the ego-centred perspective and see the world from something more than a "god's eye" view. But I do not claim that it is anything other than subjective - meaning, between something I alone am party to.
That task entails several challenges: Learn about objective morality (The Natural Moral Law, The Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, The Beatitudes, and the Law of Love [Love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.]) This is impossible without God’s help.
Well, I utterly approve your choice of texts (I still know the sermon on the Mount by heart, having learned all three chapters at school for a prize - the school was called "The Mount"). But in what sense is this an "objective" choice? Why not Leviticus, or some non-Christian text?
Then form your conscience according to those principles and cultivate the virtues of wisdom and prudence so that you will have the good judgment to apply that objective, absolute, and unchanging moral law to the changing and unpredictable circumstances that you face in your daily life.
Well, that sounds good, and I am not attempting to trivialise what you say when I ask: in what sense is this objective? I can see that if you believe, a priori, that the true god will not lead you astray, that this will lead you to Objective Morality - but how do you then distinguish between your Objective Morality and that of a devout Muslim who discerns that his conscience leads him to jihad? That's the core of my question - what objective means do we have of discerning right from wrong? And if all we have are subjective means (and I don't knock subjective), in what sense do we mean that the morality itself is "objective"? It seems to me like saying: this wine is the real, authentic aged yadda yadda wine, the standard by which all wines are compared. But we don't know what it tastes like, so you just have to guess.
Is divorce right or wrong?
Are you talking about divorce only, or about divorce and remarriage?
Which ever you'd like to answer. What I'm interested in is the methodology :) (I'm not divorced myself - just about to celebrate our 39th :))Elizabeth B Liddle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
04:08 PM
4
04
08
PM
PDT
'Are we, as Dr. Alexander seems to say, really forgiven for everything, even if we have not repented? I hope so (!), but that's not Judeo-Christian teaching.' Philip, my impression is that Dr Egnor, like many other people, have misconstrued the import of those words spoken to Eben by the beautiful young woman, who, it turns out, was/is a sister he had never known. Not that there aren't a few fraudsters latching on. Very transparently so. It's not mainly about sin. It's about love, self-giving love, charity, isn't it? I'm sure God would expect, would know, that Eben would be more careful to obey his commandments and teachings, not less. Remember Augustine's dictum? 'Love God and do what you like.' Same principle. A person who loves God and his fellow man won't readily become a bad person.Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
04:06 PM
4
04
06
PM
PDT
One thing worth mentioning: atheists are not a monolithic group. Anyone can decide that they do not believe in god or gods. Some groups right manifestos, but the vast majority of atheists do not belong to atheist groups. I certainly don't. I don't even normally call myself one.Elizabeth B Liddle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:54 PM
3
03
54
PM
PDT
It turns out, besides DNA, that quantum entanglement/information has been confirmed to be deeply embedded in protein structures as well;
Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature – Elisabetta Collini and Gregory Scholes – University of Toronto – Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73 Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state. http://www.scimednet.org/quantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein/ Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That’s a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo’s equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
Moreover, These following studies indicate that quantum information cannot be destroyed (i.e. quantum information is found to be ‘conserved’)
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – March 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html Quantum no-deleting theorem Excerpt: A stronger version of the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem provide permanence to quantum information. To create a copy one must import the information from some part of the universe and to delete a state one needs to export it to another part of the universe where it will continue to exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_no-deleting_theorem#Consequence
related note:
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings – Steve Talbott Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings
clear implications of all this?
Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff – video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068 Quantum Entangled Consciousness (Permanence of Quantum Information)- Life After Death – Stuart Hameroff – video https://vimeo.com/39982578
And if the ’70 standard deviations’ establishment of quantum entanglement is not strong enough for some:
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.” A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it? – 2008 Excerpt: Leggett’s theory was more powerful than Bell’s because it required that light’s polarization be measured not just like the second hand on a clock face, but over an entire sphere. In essence, there were an infinite number of clock faces on which the second hand could point. For the experimenters this meant that they had to account for an infinite number of possible measurement settings. So Zeilinger’s group rederived Leggett’s theory for a finite number of measurements. There were certain directions the polarization would more likely face in quantum mechanics. This test was more stringent. In mid-2007 Fedrizzi found that the new realism model was violated by 80 orders of magnitude; the group was even more assured that quantum mechanics was correct. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/P3/
The clear implication of this is noted here:
“I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications. – quote taken from “Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness – A New Measurement” video lecture
Verse and music:
Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Creed – My Sacrifice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-fyNgHdmLI
bornagain77
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:47 PM
3
03
47
PM
PDT
Chris, Axel and KN, To make the case for a transcendent soul, let’s look at the 'saga' of establishing the non-locality of quantum entanglement first: Here is a clip of a talk in which Alain Aspect, along with a bit of the history of the debate between Einstein and Bohr, talks about the failure of ‘local realism’, or the failure of reductive materialism, to explain quantum entanglement with ‘hidden variables’:
The Failure Of Local Realism – Reductive Materialism – Alain Aspect – video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4744145
The falsification for local realism (reductive materialism) as to trying to explain quantum entanglement, was recently greatly strengthened:
Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism – November 2010 Excerpt: The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-physicists-loopholes-violating-local-realism.html Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show – July 2009 Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons – Jun 11, 2013 Excerpt: In the years since, many “Bell tests” have been performed, but critics have identified several conditions (known as loopholes) in which the results could be considered inconclusive. For entangled photons, there have been three major loopholes; two were closed by previous experiments. The remaining problem, known as the “detection-efficiency/fair sampling loophole,” results from the fact that, until now, the detectors employed in experiments have captured an insufficiently large fraction of the photons, and the photon sources have been insufficiently efficient. The validity of such experiments is thus dependent on the assumption that the detected photons are a statistically fair sample of all the photons. That, in turn, leaves open the possibility that, if all the photon data were known, they could be described by local realism. The new research, conducted at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Communication in Austria, closes the fair-sampling loophole by using improved photon sources (spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a Sagnac configuration) and ultra-sensitive detectors provided by the Single Photonics and Quantum Information project in PML’s Quantum Electronics and Photonics Division. That combination, the researchers write, was “crucial for achieving a sufficiently high collection efficiency,” resulting in a high-accuracy data set – requiring no assumptions or correction of count rates – that confirmed quantum entanglement to nearly 70 standard deviations.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-06-bell-test-loophole-photons.html
The following recent article by Sal gives us a small glimpse as to what it truly means for non-local entanglement to be confirmed to an order of ’70 standard deviations’:
SSDD: a 22 sigma event is consistent with the physics of fair coins? – June 23, 2013 Excerpt: So 500 coins heads is (500-250)/11 = 22 standard deviations (22 sigma) from expectation! These numbers are so extreme, it’s probably inappropriate to even use the normal distribution’s approximation of the binomial distribution, and hence “22 sigma” just becomes a figure of speech in this extreme case… https://uncommondescent.com/mathematics/ssdd-a-22-sigma-event-is-consistent-with-the-physics-of-fair-coins/
The following study added to the falsification of local realism from another angle:
Looking Beyond Space and Time to Cope With Quantum Theory – (Oct. 28, 2012) Excerpt: To derive their inequality, which sets up a measurement of entanglement between four particles, the researchers considered what behaviours are possible for four particles that are connected by influences that stay hidden and that travel at some arbitrary finite speed. Mathematically (and mind-bogglingly), these constraints define an 80-dimensional object. The testable hidden influence inequality is the boundary of the shadow this 80-dimensional shape casts in 44 dimensions. The researchers showed that quantum predictions can lie outside this boundary, which means they are going against one of the assumptions. Outside the boundary, either the influences can’t stay hidden, or they must have infinite speed.,,, The remaining option is to accept that (quantum) influences must be infinitely fast,,, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm
Where this ‘outside space and time’ quantum entanglement gains traction within molecular biology as to establishing a transcendent soul for each man is here. Quantum entanglement/information has now been found in molecular biology on a massive scale:
Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA – Elisabeth Rieper – short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/ Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA – Elisabeth Rieper, Janet Anders and Vlatko Vedral – February 2011 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.4053v2.pdf
bornagain77
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:44 PM
3
03
44
PM
PDT
I'm dismissing it as materialism, and rightly so. Free-will is not possible if mind is reducible to brain, or even to the whole body. Atheism rejects the immortal soul therefore all that it is left with is brains that evolved by chance to do whatever best promotes survival, and fully subject to physical laws the whole time.Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:44 PM
3
03
44
PM
PDT
Chris, unlike you and William, I don't dismiss compatibilism as a cheap dodge. (Not that I'm a compatibilist, anyway, but still.) Point is, I don't think that libertarian account of freedom must be presupposed in order for the concept of free will to make any sense. (One may point out that the original conception of free will was bound up with the libertarian account; I refer the reader to my criticism of the very idea of "stolen concepts" above.)Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:37 PM
3
03
37
PM
PDT
"'I' am my body" Kantian Naturalist
KN, holds that nothing is 'transcendent' within man. i.e. That nothing survives the physical death of the material body. Of course holding such a position KN is immediately confronted with evidence of the following sort which he must find a way to explain away (and believe me KN has the philosophical posturing to do it):
Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species (or origin of life), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1065301.html "A recent analysis of several hundred cases showed that 48% of near-death experiencers reported seeing their physical bodies from a different visual perspective. Many of them also reported witnessing events going on in the vicinity of their body, such as the attempts of medical personnel to resuscitate them (Kelly et al., 2007)." Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2007). Unusual experiences near death and related phenomena. In E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso, & B. Greyson, Irreducible mind (pp. 367-421). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Michaela's Amazing NEAR death experience - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLEmETQdMkg&feature=player_detailpage#t=629s
But aside from all KN's philosophical/intellectual posturing, or is that regardless of, physics has now advanced to the point of verifying that there is a transcendent, beyond space and time, component to man that is not reducible to a matter-energy:bornagain77
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:35 PM
3
03
35
PM
PDT
The mysteries of such synergies! Sounds like KN wants ratiocination to be some kind of 'dynamic'(!), but immaterial concept that animals produce and carry around with them. But not by the brain. By the whole animal. Or does 'bearers' have the sense of parturition?Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:32 PM
3
03
32
PM
PDT
Elizabeth:
I’ve answered repeatedly, William, and been repeatedly told that without God there can be no objective morality. William Lane Craig gives an excellent example of what is wrong with thinking that morality is objective and defined as what God commands.
If you will recall, I have dealt with the problem in past discussions. Craig is wrong. Something isn't good because God commands it; God commands it because it is good.
OK, perhaps someone who believes in “objective morality” would answer this question:
OK.
Let’s say that I accept that there is an “objective morality”, God-given, or otherwise. By what method do I discern what is right and what is wrong?
Say this prayer: God give me the wisdom to see the light and the strength to follow it. If you don't believe in God, then say it anyway. It is a prayer that is always answered. Follow whatever light you are given and keep following that light all the way to the end. That task entails several challenges: Learn about objective morality (The Natural Moral Law, The Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, The Beatitudes, and the Law of Love [Love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.]) This is impossible without God's help. Then form your conscience according to those principles and cultivate the virtues of wisdom and prudence so that you will have the good judgment to apply that objective, absolute, and unchanging moral law to the changing and unpredictable circumstances that you face in your daily life.
Is divorce right or wrong?
Are you talking about divorce only, or about divorce and remarriage?StephenB
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:29 PM
3
03
29
PM
PDT
LOL. VL. I'm just too sharp for you, Chris!!!Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:23 PM
3
03
23
PM
PDT
Eureka! We got there in the end, KN. So, it turns out "mental properties" are ultimately reducible to.... sorry, entirely made out of matter and/or energy. That is to say, when mental properties occur, according to KN and indeed Internet Atheists, they are nothing more than brain activity, purely physical occurrences. Therefore, they are subject to the laws of physics, along with all the other matter and energy in the universe. No matter what emerges, it all just boils down to the material world. So much for free-will (remember, you were offering a defence of free-will if atheism was true: you've ended up somewhere else entirely but it is important to remember where you went wrong at the beginning so you don't make that mistake again). Now then, how about atheistic morality? You thought that was possible too at the beginning. If the conversaation here hasn't already made you change your mind, can you help Lizzie out? She ended up discarding reason for emotion. It didn't work and she admitted it. What have you got, KN?Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:22 PM
3
03
22
PM
PDT
‘I regard the living animal as the bearer of mental properties, not some other thing, “the mind”, which is inside the animal or distinct from it. I don’t believe in the ghost or in the machine.’ '... the bearer of mental properties'. What does that mean in this context? It would make a tad more sense if you contended that the 'mental properties', i.e. thoughts, emotions etc, were infused on an ongoing basis, by who knows what, from who knows where.Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:22 PM
3
03
22
PM
PDT
You got me, Axel! Clearly there are a million different things that "ultimately reducible to" can mean, including "not ultimately reducible to" (that's a silent not, it emerges from the sum of its parts!)Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:12 PM
3
03
12
PM
PDT
So, when you take away all the matter and energy from mental properties, what substance are you left with?
None; for there is no underlying thing, substance, "mind" -- the mental properties inhere in the living animal, not in some part or aspect of it. (We can conceive of disembodied minds, yes, and so they are logically possible, but I don't think that there really are any.)Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:11 PM
3
03
11
PM
PDT
Now you're getting contentious and resorting to sophistries, Chris, and introducing tricky concepts, like 'ultimately reducible to'.Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:08 PM
3
03
08
PM
PDT
You are running pell-mell in the direction of a Creator, but, far from acknowledging it, just asserting that 'it's a fact of life', or your philosophy: 'complex systems have properties that cannot be predicted from the properties of their constituents. Like it or lump it'Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:04 PM
3
03
04
PM
PDT
So, when you take away all the matter and energy from mental properties, what substance are you left with?Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
03:00 PM
3
03
00
PM
PDT
For my part, yes.Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:58 PM
2
02
58
PM
PDT
Chris, I don't know what you mean by "ultimately reducible to," but insofar as I attach any meaning to that phrase, I would say "no," since that's just the whole point of emergentism: complex systems have properties that cannot be predicted from the properties of their constituents.Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:58 PM
2
02
58
PM
PDT
I'm simply trying to work out what you mean by mental properties because you're entire appeal to free-will rests on them. Please answer my question in post 115.Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:57 PM
2
02
57
PM
PDT
Wait a minute here . . . are you people trying to argue that since mental properties are distinct from physical properties, there must be some 'immaterial entity' to which those mental properties belong, in which they inhere, etc? Is that the line of thought?Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:55 PM
2
02
55
PM
PDT
KN: a simple yes or no answer: are these mental properties ultimately reducible to matter and/or energy?Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:55 PM
2
02
55
PM
PDT
By mental properties, I mean such things as pains, pleasures, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, imaginings, dreams, fantasies, perceivings, and so on. Many of these we share with non-human animals; some of them are unique to human beings (so far as we know). Asserting that seems mere sanity to me, and nothing controversial.Kantian Naturalist
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:52 PM
2
02
52
PM
PDT
I've never heard of an animal having a mental property, other than unreflective thought. You really have no purchase on the meaning of life itself, do you?Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:47 PM
2
02
47
PM
PDT
'I regard the living animal as the bearer of mental properties, not some other thing, “the mind”, which is inside the animal or distinct from it. I don’t believe in the ghost or in the machine.' That makes no sense. Mental properties? What kind of mental properties? Necessarily immaterial.Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:45 PM
2
02
45
PM
PDT
So, these "mental properties"? Are they reducible to matter and energy? If not, what else are they comprised of?Chris Doyle
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:41 PM
2
02
41
PM
PDT
I didn't realise you were a dualist, KM. I thought you were a materialist, who preferred the term, 'emergentist'. Whither the emergence? Into what?Axel
July 1, 2013
July
07
Jul
1
01
2013
02:41 PM
2
02
41
PM
PDT
1 2 3 4 5 7

Leave a Reply