Scientific Argument for God's existence
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Yep .. and I'm saying the 'something else' is perception we act on by forming description using language, which is what I call 'the model'.
Yep .. understood. And everything you referred to there: 'pattern, some elements, some substrate or their interactions or stuff' are all models formed by your mind visibly at work in that paragraph alone .. with no evidence for any of that existing independently from it.FrumiousBandersnatch said:
.. and in describing the perception so that it actually becomes an observation, which is sometimes a testable one. The separation of objects from the observer was always an artificial selection .. which we need to keep track of too (ie: not forget that).FrumiousBandersnatch said:
It's a neat experiment, and philosophically significant, but the way it was reported in the media releases was hugely inaccurate, considering the claims that quantum mechanics predicts 'conflicting' or 'irreconcilable' realities, and its just outright wrong to claim this experiment produces that (any more then Relativity experiments do). No experimental outcoms can ever contradict each other (hence the Lorentz transformation of relativity).FrumiousBandersnatch said:
What it calls for is getting away from using language that says a state either obeys 'it is collapsed' or 'it is not collapsed'. The more appropriate description would be: 'observer A will treat the state as collapsed, observer B will treat the state as uncollapsed, and then there is no contradiction in the slightest.
The key is the role of the person doing the physics. 'Objective reality', then, is a result of an analysis, not a thing separate from that analysis. 'Objectivity' means what it does in science: two observers put in the same situation (in the same mindset) will get the same result. I mean the exact same issue arises in Relativity: Is the ruler length contracted, or isn't it? Isn't that also 'conflicting realities'?
No way! It just calls for a more accurate understanding what 'objectivity' actually means in science.
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Happy to start again, but you'll need to stop calling your proposition MDR since that's not what you are arguing. Your position seems to be based on MDR but is divergent since you claim that, at least in part, reality is not mind dependent.
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The test is to see; When we talk about objects 'outside' of our minds, and we call that 'physical reality', is there evidence or not that it might actually be our minds assigning those objects as being physically real(?)
This is how MDR is defined, but the difference is that I'm not just claiming that's the way it is .. I'm using the semantic evidence to see whether or not that is the case.
The Berkeley MDR approach is to assert that that only minds and mental contents exist, (merely by way of a true posit .. like: 'God truly exists'), and then go on using that mere assertion to actually deny (or exclude) the existence of other things (eg: as in material things do not exist). I'm not doing that at all .. I'm not claiming material things do not physically exist. I'm merely going where the evidence produced by the test, takes me.
My approach is scientific .. Berkeley's is not. Berkeley is espousing a purely philosophical viewpoint which relies on positing the 'truth' of that view. It is crucial to recognise this difference .. mine is testable science, his is not testable. There is no such 'truth' in science (that's not how science works).
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You must have a wrong concept of "testable"; in fact an hypothesis is testable if it is possible to identify a possible outcome of an experiment or observation that conflicts with predictions deduced from the hypothesis; otherwise, the hypothesis cannot be meaningfully tested.
In a previous post, you wrote :
Actually, as I have already explained to you, you cannot test for the existence of other minds, because you cannot perform any experiment to rule out the hypothesis that what you consider "the other minds" are not just imaginary characters unconsciously created by your own mind. (the fact that I said "my meaning" is not a valid test because it doesn't rule out the possibilty that I am an uncoscious creation of your mind, such as a dream)
Hence, your approach is not scientific, as you claim, because it is based on the arbitrary ASSUMPTION that other minds exist.
Apparently you are not aware of making such an assumption.
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The MDR hypothesis is a scientifically testable hypothesis, (in the Popperian sense), that does make risky predictions that test out well.
The predictions made by the claim that: "the reality concept in science means the mind-dependent sense we make of our perceptions, and neither refers to, nor is intended to refer to, anything mind independent" ... are indeed 'risky', in the sense that if the realist stance was a good scientific model, then we should not expect the mental choices made by the physicist to appear in the way physics theories describe reality.
Consider, for example, this realist claim by the realist philosopher Moore:
The MDR hypothesis makes the prediction that this version of what 'blue' means, cannot hold true, but instead experiments should be possible that clearly distinguish 'the experience of blue' from 'independent real things'. This is because the MDR hypothesis claims that the 'experience of blue' is mind dependent, and should be able to be demonstrated as something different for different minds.
This prediction tests out well, because we can easily distinguish the 'experience of blue' from the 'experience of reading a spectral analyzer that peaks in the blue part of the spectrum'. Both of those are mind-dependent capabilities of humans, but what matters for this argument is they are clearly different, putting the lie to Moore's realist claim.
Experiments, such as on that infamous recent 'internet dress', (see image below), that to some people, looked blue .. and to others; a completely different color, do indeed clearly show the difference between the experience of seeing blue, and the experience of reading a spectral analyzer that does not give the result 'blue'.
My evidence for the above conclusion is: all the physics theories that cannot be properly understood until the role of the choices of the mind of the physicist is included in the physics.
In the MDR hypothesis, the mind, itself, is a model and its testable via human meanings conveyed in language, as evidence for what 'mind' means. Its easy to find out whether or not a conversation I had 5 minutes ago, came from another human mind or not, by simply going to that same human person and asking whether or not that conversation occurred with that same person. This can also be formalised objectively.mmarco said:
You need to give up on thinking I'm on about about solipsism .. I'm not .. (As I told you, (and several others), many posts ago, now).
The scientific method neither pre-requires, nor specifies, any such assumptions:mmarco said:
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What you do not understand is that "going to the same human person and asking him" is not a meaninful test because the outcome of this test would be compatible both with the hypothesis "he was another person/mind" and the hypothesis "he was an imaginary character created unconscious by own mind" ;in fact also the imaginary character created by your own mind could conferm that such conversation occured (and by the way, another person could lie and deny that such conversation occurred).
According to your concept of test, also the following hypothesis would be testable and thereofore scientific: "Our perceptions of the external reality are created by God according to a constant regularity that we call natural laws". I can make the following test: I make an experiment today, and then I repeat the same experiment tomorrow and I see if the results are compatible.
Of course this would not be a meaningful test, because its outcome would be compatible also with the hypothesis that the regularity of the natural laws has not been created by God.
A meaningful test must predict different outcomes in case of two competitive hypothesis: for exanple the Bell's inequality experiments are meaninful tests because the local hidden variable theories and QM predicts different outcomes for such experiments.
I am not saying you are on about solipsism, I am saying that you are making an arbitrary assumption (existence of other minds) and that you have no meaninful tests for such assumption.
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That's one interpretation; there are also others where no collapse is said to occur.
I think we may just have differing interpretations of 'objective reality'; for you it seems to be the models (or the data for them) that we construct from our observations. For me, it's somewhat Kantian, being the cause of the perceptions that result in the observations that we use to make models. We may describe it in terms of those models (or the data we used to construct them), but we often discover that new observations falsify our models of it; i.e. those models were less representative of objective reality than we thought.
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Like I said, you don't understand MDR. You're espousing MDR but rejecting its conclusions. Hence my request that you stop using MDR as a basis for your position.
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The MDR hypothesis context acknowledges the evidence for: different minds perceiving things differently, so this is no problem as far as it is concerned. It also generally defers and constrains to healthy (or normal) minds. These variances are objectively testable.
An ‘imaginary character’ would not produce consistent results amongst the population of these other minds. (Beliefs are distinguished and 'neutralised' in science).
Objectivity still operates within the MDR hypothesis I'm referring to .. it relies on like-thinking (scientifically) minds. If this were not so, your problem then arises. It doesn’t in the MDR hypothesis, because that’s what the concept of objectivity applied in testing does. In MDR the concept has to do with consistencies between the senses. So the underpinnings of objectivity has much to do with the concept of consistency, but this is certainly not a simple concept.
I think the bottom line here is, science will always be done by like-minded people, and the consistency they seek will be of a particular kind, but it will never be able to be proven to be a universal or absolute form of consistency. (The belief in the existence of a physical, truly independent universe, such as Realism’s however, is simply untestable in science but its still mind dependent .. so such a belief makes no impact on the outcomes of objective testing).
The bottom line is: if you understand what scientific consistency is, you will be able to be a scientist, and if you do not, you won't, but there's not a whole lot more that can be said without some semblance of basic common ground on this aspect.
I would word the both hypotheses differently by including operationally defined terms. For example, the second one might say: 'The regularity of the natural laws might depend on how like thinking minds work' (thus eliminating the attempt of trying to gather evidence of something which itself, is objectively untestable in the first place .. Ie: the external agency). Your first hypothesis contains nothing but non-operational definitions.mmarco said:
The contrast point you are making with the null hypothesis however, doesn't acknowledge the evidence of the similarities and differences amongst minds we observe from the very outset. The MDR hypothesis explicitly states this, not as some ’true’ assumption, but an objectively testable one .. and this context is clearly missing in your hypothetical comparison. (Contexts are all-important for the minds which create meanings and the context here is consistent .. which makes the meanings useful).
They're not 'arbitrary' assumptions .. they're objectively testable assumptions, (which test out well), with the inclusion of evidence of other objectively thinking scientific minds. Science isn’t pure philosophy .. its purpose is to be useful and its been very successful at doing that. (The computer you’re using is my evidence for that claim).mmarco said:
Your excursion to the hypothetical extremes of solipsism, invokes absolutes in making its points of exclusions and invokes external agencies .. the MDR hypothesis doesn't do any of that because it accepts the evidence of variances of similarities and differences amongst a population of normal healthy, scientifically thinking minds when they perceive, then describe, in-common concepts via language. This is the context of the testable definitions (meanings) we assign to other instances of similar, but varying ’other human minds'.
Science is a subject well distinguished from pure philosophies, as it doesn't invoke untestable, ('believed in'), external agencies in developing usefulness.
Perhaps my version of what science is, doesn’t satisfy those who seek to defeat the belief in a mind independent God .. but that was never my purpose .. nor was it ever part of the scientific method’s. This is why science is available to anyone who holds religious beliefs .. which makes it a terrifically unifying (and not an exclusive) concept, no?
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The point I keep trying to lead you towards, is that the 'MDR' you are referring to, (correct me if I'm wrong .. I have no desires to misrepresent your position), is a pure philosophical viewpoint, which is not necessarily directly linked with science.
Now, I concur that I am creating such a linkage ... but it is a very carefully thought out one, which is constrained by an equally well thought out, and highly consistent context. That context is far removed from Berkeley's (which is completely deliberate). Context changes the meaning of something, so what I mean is not what Berkeley's is intended to mean.
Realism embedded in science also has no place, because it leads to inconsistencies (as I'm pointing out) .. and neither does pure subjective idealism .. nor does any '-ism' (including Atheism).
The MDR concept in what I've said, works well in science because it promotes consistency, which in turn, is a key way science can create usefulness (ie: unlike pure philosophies .. like: Realism).
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Ok .. I'll call it: 'The Philosophy of Science' .. because that's what it is to a philosopher!
However, its just science, to a scientist.
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I think I have clearly proved that you have no evidence of other objectively thinking minds and that this is an abitrary untestable assumption of your philosophy (whatever you like to call it)
I see no reason to continue this conversation since you have raised no valid counter-arguments.
Best regards!
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What a classic! So in other words:
1) You, alone, are the sole arbiter of your objectivity (evidence: the multiple underlined "I" in what you wrote above) and you used your own mind to do that (evidence: 'I think').
2) Your 'science' invokes 'proof', ('proved' in the above), whereas there is no such concept in science, because science never posits the existence of 'truths', (needed in proofs), in the first place (evidence: see the widely taught and published scientific method, which defines science and there is nothing about 'truths' there).
3) You recognise 'objectivity', (evidence: 'objectively thinking minds'), yet you deny objective tests which exhibit a lack of evidence for ‘objects’ existing independently of the minds noticing consistencies.
4) You deny the evidence produced by this objective test in (3) by dismissing objectivity as being an 'arbitrary untestable assumption' in the MDR hypothesis (evidence: from above - 'arbitrary untestable assumption').
5) You default to describing the MDR hypothesis as being my 'philosophy', when in fact, it is a scientifically formed, objectively testable hypothesis. (Apologies to Bungle_Bear for using the term yet again).
If all of this isn't evidence of (an entrenched) 'notion held as being true for any reason' (or 'a belief'), then I don't know what is!
Good luck .. and may your God always be with you (intended in the nicest possible sense here).
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Ophiolite
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Which, as Bungle Bear has pointed out, you either don't understand or are misapplying. This accounts for most, or all of the differences you and I have had in several discussions. You persist in making statements that are superficially sound, yet upon analysis are devoid of meaning. It's very frustrating.
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Meanings are subject to their contexts .. perhaps you might try reviewing your own contexts in order to allay your frustrations? Its all relative.
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It's simply not possible to explain a circumstance one doesn't understand by positing a being one doesn't understand.
For instance, I don't even have the beginning of an idea what has to be "just so" for a God to exist. I know less about it than the universe.
How do we rate by explaining circumstances we barely understand with ones we certainly don't?
This cloth eared unbeliever will point you to the history of your idea of attributing things we don't currently understand to the Gods, it has a bad tract record as it only ever applies to things we don't understand.
When we do understand things, we cease to attribute them to Gods.
That should, of course, be a lesson to the believer, but they will move on to the next thing we don't currently understand, every, single, time.
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Actually, my initial point is exactly the opposite since I attribute to God the creation of the universe on the basis of our scientific knowledges about the universe; in fact, a rational analysis of the laws of physics make me understand that the universe is the realization of abstract mathematical models, and my understanding of the intrinsic conceptual nature of structure of the universe makes me understand that the universe is created by an intelligent conscious God.
Of course you may disagree with my conclusions, but your sentence above is certainlty wrong.
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