Front Runner for Most Inane Statement of 2018

_{Barry Arrington

December 27, 2018

Intelligent Design}

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“I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. ” So says
Peter Carruthers, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park in this article in Scientific American. Proving once again, that some ideas are so gobsmackingly stupid, it takes a lot of education to believe them. He might as well have said, “I have a conscious thought that there is no conscious thought.” There is really no need to argue against self-refuting piffle like this. There is only one thing to say:

Comments

Besides Peter Carruthers I know of at least a couple other “philosophers” who try to defend the view that consciousness is just an illusion. I have already mentioned Daniel Dennett who is a professor at Tuft’s University (see my comment #25.) Alex Rosenberg is another professor (Duke) who makes basically the same claim. Here is a blog by a self-identified atheist, Gregg Henriques, who takes exception to the title of Rosenberg’s book, The Atheist's Guide to Reality, because he “found Rosenberg’s vision to be a deeply misguided, misleading, and blatantly self-contradictory approach to both atheism and scientific knowledge.” “The major argument that Rosenberg makes,” he writes, “is that physics is the ultimate arbiter of truth, that the physical reality is the only reality, that nihilism is unfortunately true, and that everything that doesn’t easily and immediately fit into a physical property framework—things like thoughts, consciousness, the self, purpose, and morality—are all illusions. If Rosenberg’s work is not about atheism, then what is it about? In short, the book advocates for a narrow, reductionistic philosophy of science called physicalism.” He then goes on to point out how physicalism is self-refuting.
Consciousness, thoughts, the self, purpose and morality can’t exist for the physicalist because physicalists don’t know how to translate bouncing fermions and bosons into these entities. So they point to some evidence that commonsensical views of these concepts are wrong and go on to conclude that, because the commonsense view is wrong, these entities don’t really exist. And yet all while claiming that such entities as the self, thoughts and propositions don’t really exist, Rosenberg is authoring these claims with propositions designed to change belief-desire systems of his readers. It doesn’t take a philosopher to see why this is self-contradictory.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/experts/gregg-henriques-phd In other words, you don’t need to be an ID’ist or a theist to see the logical flaws with the view that consciousness is an illusion. Of course, you have to know something about logic to understand whether or not someone is making a logically valid claim. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in logic then there is no reason for you to even consider any kind of logical claim. One has to wonder if Rosenberg, Dennett or Carruthers disbelief extends to logic and reason itself. After all, to think at all don’t you at least have to be conscious?john_a_designer_{December 28, 2018
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Ed George@46- Just leave, Ed. You clearly don't have anything of substance to offer.ET_{December 28, 2018
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ET@43, thank you for providing an example as to why an ignore button would be a good idea.Ed George_{December 28, 2018
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Ed's idea about a thread for just feedback on the new site is good,. But until then, a button at the top of the thread to jump to the last post would save a lot of scrolling through posts one has already seen.hazel_{December 28, 2018
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First, I love the new look. Nice and clean. I am a little bit bothered, however, by the front page with the centered text. Left alignment always looks better and is easier on the eyes. Second, Peter Carruthers is just promoting the tired materialist propaganda that humans are just meat machines with no immaterial souls. It is easy to prove that we do have a soul, however. Consider beauty. It is not a physical property of the universe and yet we sense it. How? Since the brain is physical, it cannot sense beauty either. It follows that beauty is a property of something order than the brain. The beauty that we see in nature is not in nature. It's the beauty of our own souls. Nature just awakens it. Don't let any brain-dead materialist tell you you are just a meat machine with no soul. Resist the propaganda. Peter Carruthers is a fake philosopher, in my opinion. It takes courage to to be a seeker of truth. Happy new year.FourFaces_{December 28, 2018
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Thank you for the comment numbering. If anyone wants an ignore button they can just go to some other site. Willful ignorance is a problem with our opponents (and even those who say they are with us, but post contrary to that- hi Ed) and there is no need to be more enabling of it.ET_{December 28, 2018
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Thanks for the page numbering. Might I also suggest that a featured feedback thread be posted for a couple weeks. In that way you could compile constructive feedback on the new format without hijacking this or other threads.Ed George_{December 28, 2018
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to JAD: in math, (4) axioms. We make the decision to assume they are true, and follow the logical consequences. This is different than being self-evidently true. For instance, the famous example is the three different axioms about parallel lines which lead to three different geometries. Also, (3) leaves open the obvious problem with ascertaining how "probably true" the premise is. And (2) just moves the situation backwards: if something is provably true (by deduction I assume you mean), then there must have been, at some point, premises which started the chain of proof. And, I'll note, this is really not on the thread topic of mind and consciousness, which doesn't look like it's going anywhere anyway.hazel_{December 28, 2018
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Let’s have some fun with a few self-referential semantic statements. Do self-referential statements or sentences have a truth value? Let’s look at a few. Statement #1: “This sentence has six words.” Count the words. The sentence has five words. Therefore, it’s false. However, that does prove that at least some self-referential statements have truth value-- that we can determine whether they are true or false. However, is this true of all self-referential statements? Let’s consider statement #2: “This sentence is true.” So is it true or false? (It’s certainly true that it is self-referential.) However, it can only be true if we can prove that “All self-referential sentences have truth value.” That is they are provably true or false. How do we do that? Let’s consider statement #3: “This sentence is false.” Is that true or false? This leads a vicious cycle. If we claim that it is false as it says that it is, then it’s true but it claims that it’s false... ???? So logically what have we proven? Is it true or false that “All self-referential sentences have truth value,” or is it undecidable or indeterminate? So then what do we make of the claim “that consciousness is an illusion” ? I don’t see any way logically how such statement could ever be self-evidently true. Even if we give such a claim the benefit of the doubt, I don’t see that we conclude anything better than it is undecidable or indeterminate. That’s hardly a good starting point for an argument. As I have said before “to go anyplace with a deductive argument have to begin with premises that are either (1) self-evidently true, (2) provably true or (3) at least probably true.” That’s logic 101. Thoughts?john_a_designer_{December 28, 2018
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An alternative to reinstating the “more” button would be to add an “ignore” button. This gives all commenters the ability to ignore specific commenters. Once selected, the ignored person’s comments do not appear on the comment thread of the person who has ignored that person. I have seen it on other sites and it appears to work quite well.Ed George_{December 28, 2018
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I also see that ability to re-order the posts has been removed, which was sort of nice. And the option to Subscribe was removed: I liked that a lot. And that threaded comments was removed: I think everyone thought that was not a good idea.hazel_{December 28, 2018
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Perhaps Read More could be reinstated, but show more than the first version did, such as 15-20 lines or so? That would be enough to show the substance of the post without having to scroll through a number of screens to get through a very long post.hazel_{December 28, 2018
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I really liked the “more button”. There are a couple long winded commenters, one of which has a habit of writing serial comments to get around the limit on the number of links that can be included in a comment. On many instances I prefer to scroll past these comments as I have already read everything of substance they have to say. And I know there are others who feel the same.Ed George_{December 28, 2018
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I have mixed feelings about the new look. In a way I like it better because before I felt like I was interrupting a conversation if I wanted to make a point that didn't pertain to the most recent comments. But now it's a little hard to follow a conversation if I want to. Any way to get the best of both worlds?hnorman42_{December 28, 2018
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F/N: Notice C's clear statement: "the whole idea of conscious thought is an error." By injecting an unaccountable subsurface he creates a corrosive dichotomy that opens the door to arbitrary dismissal of rational, responsible thought. One that is infinitely regressive and self-referential. In effect, the underlying programming and hardware are in the driver seat, invisible, inaccessible, beyond reckoning -- yet another ugly gulch notion; it invites -- so then, why should we trust your unaccountable programming that led you and others to such notions? Of course, it seems very hard for many to grasp the import of such regresses and self referentiality. KFkairosfocus_{December 28, 2018
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M62, you do not deserve down-voting for asking a very important but unwelcome question. KFkairosfocus_{December 28, 2018
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PS: I see emphases apparently only come out with read more! (For a longer comment.)kairosfocus_{December 28, 2018
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JAD, excellent one-liner clip: "[Y]ou cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. " Only the conscious can have delusions; rocks have no dreams. However Carruthers is subtler in some regards. He notes the iceberg beneath the surface, i.e. there is a lot of unconscious or subconscious substructure connected to what we are directly aware of. His fatal step is to pour on corrosive hyperskepticism, so that in effect the surface is viewed as illusion as there is the sub-surface (which he seems to think cannot be accessed through metacognition). The subtext -- there we go in a rhetorical yellow submarine again -- is that the conscious is shaped by the effectively unaccountable subconscious. This then becomes infinitely regressive and self-referential thus utterly corrosive. In fact, we routinely reflect on the substructure of our surface thoughts, e.g. when we ponder why we have a strong emotional reaction to something or to an event or even to someone. KFkairosfocus_{December 28, 2018
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Of particular interest to Peter Carruthers self refuting claim of “I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error ” is the fact that his self refuting statement is very similar to the self refuting liar’s paradox that Gödel used to prove his first incompleteness theorem
"in proving the first incompleteness theorem, Gödel used a modified version of the liar paradox, replacing “this sentence is false” with “this sentence is not provable”, called the “Gödel sentence G”. His proof showed that for any theory “T”, “G” is true, but not provable in “T”. The analysis of the truth and provability of “G” is a formalized version of the analysis of the truth of the liar sentence,,," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox#G%C3%B6del's_first_incompleteness_theorem
Thus Carruthers, inadvertently, with his self refuting sentence, ends up proving he very thing he was denying. i.e. proving the reality of the immaterial conscious mind. ,,, The implication of Godel's incompleteness theorem is often stated simply as such, “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”
Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”" Cf., Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)
Godel put the implications of his incompleteness theorem as such:
"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine" Kurt Gödel - The Categorial Analysis of Logic (1979) by Robert Goldblatt, p. 13 “In materialism all elements behave the same. It is mysterious to think of them as spread out and automatically united. For something to be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind. “Matter” refers to one way of perceiving things, and elementary particles are a lower form of mind. Mind is separate from matter.” Kurt Gödel – Hao Wang’s supplemental biography of Gödel, A Logical Journey, MIT Press, 1996.
Of related note: Gödel 's incompleteness theorem has now been extended to physics and refutes reductive materialistic claims that "form" is reducible to materialistic explanations:
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
This includes refuting the reductive materialistic claims of Darwinists for ever rationality explaining 'biological form':
Darwinism vs Biological Form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
bornagain77_{December 28, 2018
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H'mm: Further exchanges that imply more than A and C seem to fully realise:
[A:] Why, then, do we have the impression of direct access to our mind? [C:] The idea that minds are transparent to themselves (that everyone has direct awareness of their own thoughts) is built into the structure of our “mind reading” or “theory of mind” faculty, I suggest. The assumption is a useful heuristic when interpreting the statements of others. If someone says to me, “I want to help you,” I have to interpret whether the person is sincere, whether he is speaking literally or ironically, and so on; that is hard enough. If I also had to interpret whether he is interpreting his own mental state correctly, then that would make my task impossible. It is far simpler to assume that he knows his own mind (as, generally, he does). The illusion of immediacy has the advantage of enabling us to understand others with much greater speed and probably with little or no loss of reliability. If I had to figure out to what extent others are reliable interpreters of themselves, then that would make things much more complicated and slow . . .
Let's ask, why? ANS: Because this imposes an infinite regress due to its reflexivity. Every further conscious thought is an applicable instance for the same question, triggering an endless regression. In praxis, we lose sight and truncate in effect at a convenient point. Once the notion is injected that there is a hard line between the conscious and the unconscious substructure of our interior thought life, with the link subject to radical doubt, we are in endless regress of doubts. Far more prudent would be to hold that our thoughts and intents are like an iceberg, some below the surface of awareness, but organically connected. So, we can probe, evaluate and conclude to sufficient certainty as to whether a particular pattern is credible, not well warranted, an illusion or delusional. With recognition that as finite, fallible, morally and intellectually struggling creatures, our knowledge base is prone to error. Which is where self-evident first truths of reason become crucial for assessing the quality of our thought. Moral tests are also applicable, given how we can resort to undue suspicion, hostility or to a predatory mentality. Notwithstanding various concerns and limitations, we are duty-bound to act reasonably and responsibly on the balance of evidence in hand. KFkairosfocus_{December 27, 2018
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Illusion of what? They never say. Illusions do exist, they falsely represent something that actually exists. For example a mirage may appear as water on the horizon, and is actually thermal processes gyrating the air which refracts light. However, pools of water are real things. When someone says "consciousness is an illusion", I always ask, "an illusion of what?" Crickets. Consciousness is what it is, and it is the primary fact of individual existence. Calling it an illusion is absolutely meaningless.mike1962_{December 27, 2018
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The diving board he tried to jump off cracked before he got near the watermike1962_{December 27, 2018
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So is insanity.mike1962_{December 27, 2018
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I don't exist. Nuff said. (Love the Napoleon clip. One of my fave movies.)mike1962_{December 27, 2018
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No one refutes the silly belief that consciousness is an illusion better than David Bentley Hart who has splendid critique of Daniel Dennett’s thinking in his New Atlantis book review of Dennett’s recent book From Bacteria to Bach and Back… In fact, Hart requires only one sentence to logically refute Dennett:
[Y]ou cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds.
He could, of course, rest his case right there but for those who think it’s not that easy he does have more to say:
The entire notion of consciousness as an illusion is, of course, rather silly. Dennett has been making the argument for most of his career, and it is just abrasively counterintuitive enough to create the strong suspicion in many that it must be more philosophically cogent than it seems, because surely no one would say such a thing if there were not some subtle and penetrating truth hidden behind its apparent absurdity. But there is none. The simple truth of the matter is that Dennett is a fanatic: He believes so fiercely in the unique authority and absolutely comprehensive competency of the third-person scientific perspective that he is willing to deny not only the analytic authority, but also the actual existence, of the first-person vantage. At the very least, though, he is an intellectually consistent fanatic, inasmuch as he correctly grasps (as many other physical reductionists do not) that consciousness really is irreconcilable with a coherent metaphysical naturalism. Since, however, the position he champions is inherently ridiculous, the only way that he can argue on its behalf is by relentlessly, and in as many ways as possible, changing the subject whenever the obvious objections are raised.
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist In other words, Dennett can only sell people on the idea that consciousness is an illusion by creating the illusion that he knows what he is talking about.john_a_designer_{December 27, 2018
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Jack, last time around it led to chaos. I see no reason why this time would be better. Numbers in chronological order would help. In so polarised an environment as UD faces, comment voting is liable to be abused. The "more" feature is a tossup. I forgot: if the quotes are fully italicised that robs us of a level or two of emphasis. KFkairosfocus_{December 27, 2018
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...he thought consciously (?!)es58_{December 27, 2018
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To ba77. I accept the reality of consciousness, and am certainly open to mind being an immaterial aspect of human beings separate from the body. I don't know why you think otherwise about me, but I can see that a reasonable discussion with you is unlikely. As always, one can pick and choose whom one wants to discuss with.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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To Jack Cole: Thanks for your work, but Nooooooo!!!! to threaded comments. No possible way to keep up a coherent discussion.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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I don't like the idea of hierarchical comments for the reason you give and also because of the amount of indentation that will be needed for some of the longer exchanges.steve_h_{December 27, 2018
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