So you're comparing an observed electrochemical phenomenon to be similar to a unobservable "will"?
Upvote
0
-
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
-
CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
body-body problem
- Thread starter GrowingSmaller
- Start date
What I am saying is I can "quantify" will, for instance intensity of effort to push. Similarly you can quantify energy acting on a field if I am informed correctly. So there is an analogy. If field equations and mind body interactions bear a resemblance in this way, thet maybe calling one "magical and unscientific" has unwanted side effects, by implication, on the dignity of the other.
Upvote
0
The way I see it, if interaction between physical objects is magical, then interaction between physical and non-physical objects is even more magical.
Upvote
0
If the set of "all laws of nature" are subject to the laws of nature, then are there not laws of nature outside the original set? That would not make sense. So the laws of nature are not subject, and therefore "magical" in their own way. So if the laws are not bound by laws, whats wrong with a little magic? It's not illegal.
Upvote
0
If you're just redefining will into physical motion, you're doing more to eliminate the need for a soul (or even a mind) than any critics of dualism.
But if you mean we can detect will independent of mechanical action, please elaborate. What are the SI units of will and what mechanism can we use to measure them? How are the devices calibrated?
And most importantly, how does your "theory" explain the cases where the effort to push comes before the will to push? That experimental result seems to be a slight problem for your idea of how the brain works.
Upvote
0
+1, with the additional problem that not only are mind-body problems characterized by a lack of explanation, they're also usually hobbled by being internally contradictory.
Sure, we don't know everything about how the universe works. Fair enough. That's far different from an idea we know is wrong because it doesn't even make sense. The argument is basically saying that despite putting people on the moon we don't know absolutely everything so therefore science is just as useless as something which doesn't explain anything and fails when it tries. Despite all of the flowery language, that objection is a non-starter.
Upvote
0
No the meytal impetus behing voluntary bodily motion.
We have (I believe) had aconcept of "will" for millenia, just as we have had a concept of "pleasure" andother folk psychological categories.
I am not sure it does.
Upvote
0
Well there nothing a priori that rules "magic" out, I suppose. Nothing says that one substance can not act without a mechanical cause "magically" on another. It is prima facie no more bizarre that mechanics itself, or matter, or consciousness, or value, or number, or anything else. It may seem stragne whan compared to mechanics which we are familiar with, but that does not really tell us much more than we are more familiar with mechanics. Nowhere does it say "only the familiar can exist".
Upvote
0
That's nice. So what's the SI unit for measuring will again and what devices can we use for the measurement? I don't seem to see an answer to my question here.
Then I guess it isn't "a candidate for a "mechanical" outline of soul-body interaction" since it doesn't explain the evidence we do have.
Upvote
0
Well, it's assumed that the universe with regards to its laws is consistent (which is where our sense familiarity comes from). Else, we couldn't really know anything through induction since everything would be in an unpredictable state of flux. Hume did cover that point you're making with the example of two billiard balls--if you were brought into the world with no notion of motion with regards to cause and effect, there is nothing that would lead you to conclude that one ball hitting another would cause the other to move. Since uniformity is just an assumption then, what leads one to conclude that one ball would keep on causing another ball to move in the future? Interaction between matter in this sense appears to be quite mysterious.
It's like Clarke's 3rd law taken to the nth degree: not only is sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic, but so is the most basic of processes as well.
Common sense tells us otherwise, though. It doesn't seem that Hume seriously believed it either.
Upvote
0
Sorry for the time lag I forgot about this thread after being taught a lesson, expecting no more.
However the fact that induction (i.e. a generalisation) may lead us to predict "magic" does not exist if for me possibly unfalsifiable.
In any case the fact that there is uniformity and mechanical interaction does not logically preclude non-mechanical "magical" action. I do not mean magic that breaches mechanical uniformity, only magic that is non-mechanical. A soul interacting non-mechanically might exist, it is not logically bizarre. Just saying it is a magical notion is not itself a defeater.
We might exclude it on grounds of efficiency/simplicity/parsimony (Occam's Razor) but that is another angle entirely.
Not it is not an assumption it is an observation (of the past and present at least).
I am not sure what you are getting at. I would say the answer to the problem of induction is "induction works".
However the fact that induction (i.e. a generalisation) may lead us to predict "magic" does not exist if for me possibly unfalsifiable.
In any case the fact that there is uniformity and mechanical interaction does not logically preclude non-mechanical "magical" action. I do not mean magic that breaches mechanical uniformity, only magic that is non-mechanical. A soul interacting non-mechanically might exist, it is not logically bizarre. Just saying it is a magical notion is not itself a defeater.
We might exclude it on grounds of efficiency/simplicity/parsimony (Occam's Razor) but that is another angle entirely.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
I believe we should distinguish between contingent (as in, not logically contradictory and hence possible) versus what is actual. Someone walking off the edge of a cliff and remaining standing in air with no special equipment is perfectly contingent. However, a triangle with more than three sides is logically contradictory and hence impossible (unless "triangle" and "three" or "sides" mean different things in that possible world). Magic in itself isn't logically inconsistent, however, it does not mean it exists, only that it is contingently possible.
I still am not convinced with idea that causative skepticism views interaction between matter and matter as some sort of qualitas occulta, and that this is equal to other forms of qualitas occulta as is the one with the unsolved matter of interaction between soul and body. If a suspect was sitting in a restaurant in China, and a murder occurred in the US, then I can't with a straight face appeal to some qualitas occulta in which the suspect directly murdered the person in the US because he wasn't there. There's a difference between the nature of interaction itself (Hume's views on causation and how it is problematic--the knife causing a wound needn't necessarily be so) and the fact that there is some notion of interaction that we hold true (you can't have direct contact with someone being absent from the scene).
Even if the problem of induction is one that is logically valid, you can't believe it (as opposed to merely accepting it) without bad faith. You don't go outside expecting the laws of nature to not be uniform and walk off a cliff. Even Hume realized this himself in that living a belief and simply believing it is different. I'm sure we can agree that a translatlantic knife stab is pretty far off the scale in believability. Both body-body and mind-body's nature of interaction can only be justified through inductive means, however, the former's interactions are known, while the latter is unknown.
Under dualism, one can make the argument that all our souls reside in a two-foot space above our heads, or all of humanities' souls residing in some sort of "soul-chamber" in the center of the Earth (this interaction between soul and body being unaffected by heat, matter, or pressure). Or, that one can have a body in China and have their soul reside in the US. This is what I mean by their interactions themselves being magical (as opposed to merely the nature of these interactions being so).
We have no reason to assume that the soul resides in the body any more than the soul residing anywhere, yet i've yet to see anyone hold the belief in good faith (as well as the philological use of "soul" throughout history supporting the contrary).
That's tautological. I think you mean that induction makes intuitive sense, and the fact that it works is justifiable. However, this justification is based on the acceptance of the uniformity of nature (which can only be arrived at inductively), and so is circular.
I still am not convinced with idea that causative skepticism views interaction between matter and matter as some sort of qualitas occulta, and that this is equal to other forms of qualitas occulta as is the one with the unsolved matter of interaction between soul and body. If a suspect was sitting in a restaurant in China, and a murder occurred in the US, then I can't with a straight face appeal to some qualitas occulta in which the suspect directly murdered the person in the US because he wasn't there. There's a difference between the nature of interaction itself (Hume's views on causation and how it is problematic--the knife causing a wound needn't necessarily be so) and the fact that there is some notion of interaction that we hold true (you can't have direct contact with someone being absent from the scene).
Even if the problem of induction is one that is logically valid, you can't believe it (as opposed to merely accepting it) without bad faith. You don't go outside expecting the laws of nature to not be uniform and walk off a cliff. Even Hume realized this himself in that living a belief and simply believing it is different. I'm sure we can agree that a translatlantic knife stab is pretty far off the scale in believability. Both body-body and mind-body's nature of interaction can only be justified through inductive means, however, the former's interactions are known, while the latter is unknown.
Under dualism, one can make the argument that all our souls reside in a two-foot space above our heads, or all of humanities' souls residing in some sort of "soul-chamber" in the center of the Earth (this interaction between soul and body being unaffected by heat, matter, or pressure). Or, that one can have a body in China and have their soul reside in the US. This is what I mean by their interactions themselves being magical (as opposed to merely the nature of these interactions being so).
We have no reason to assume that the soul resides in the body any more than the soul residing anywhere, yet i've yet to see anyone hold the belief in good faith (as well as the philological use of "soul" throughout history supporting the contrary).
That's tautological. I think you mean that induction makes intuitive sense, and the fact that it works is justifiable. However, this justification is based on the acceptance of the uniformity of nature (which can only be arrived at inductively), and so is circular.
Upvote
0
J
Jazer
Guest
Unless you do not believe in a universe, if you believe in a multiverse then each individual universe within the multiverse could have their own laws. In general quantum physics goes by a different set of laws then classic physics. That is why they seek for a theory of everything to unity to the different set of laws.
Upvote
0
Agreed.
Agreed.
Yes. but absence of justification does not entail absence. That would be an argument form ignorance.
Ok.
I dont actually believe in a soul, only was wondering is causal interaction is in some sense just as mysterious? Why should a knife pierce and not shatter into dust. Why does nature "behave itself"? Someone once said IIRC it was down to entrophy as a condition of time, or something like that, and that under time we ought to expect a certain orderliness of nature.
No I mean induction is practically useful. It helps us avoud walking off clifs etc.
Upvote
0
There are a lot of ways to answer that, but generally on the human scale of things all interactions between matter are determined by electron configurations and electrical fields generated by those electrons.
Upvote
0
But whty does nature "behave itself"? Why should fields interact in the way they do, if at all? Isn't thast a body-body issue?
Upvote
0
That's definitely a question whose answer lies outside the purview of science, so I'm not qualified to answer. That said, there are entire fields of thought dedicated to questions like that. Why does the universe seem to prefer a mathematically elegant design? Some say that it must be that way, or else nothing would exist at all. The justification for that has something to do with the function of logic:
Let's say you're trying to construct valid logical statements, a mathematical statement for example. In a sense you are taking the set of all mathematical statements and separating them into two sets: those which are 'well-formed', or logically consistent, and those which are not. The statement '2 + 2 = 4' is well-formed, but the statement '2 - 2 = 4' isn't. If you break the rules of logic anywhere along the way, say by including '2 - 2 = 4' as a well-formed statement, then you in effect include all mathematical statements as being well-formed. The order to the system vanishes in an instant and there is no longer any distinction between valid and invalid, no order to the system at all, in fact. Similarly, it is said that the universe operates in a consistent way because if it did not, there would be no system, no order whatsoever, and in that sense no real universe to speak of. Certainly no organisms to perceive it as such.
That's just one explanation, but for me personally I'm less concerned with the 'why' and more interested in the descriptions of 'how.'
Upvote
0
Principle of expolsion, right?
Thanks anyway for pointing that theory out. I am interested in such musings. Does the field have a name I can google or read up on? Or is it just plain old metaphysics?
Upvote
0
Similar threads
