How Can Molecules Think?

[Hans Blaster]

I meant people who don't have an agenda to push, who aren't biased, who don't base their lives upon philosophical beliefs and propositions, and who wouldn't be devastated if it turned out they were wrong.
When it comes to mind/body dualism, most people seem to take it for granted that their mind is not their brain. Now whether they're right or wrong about this is another thing.

Why would anyone think the mind was separate from the body if not for some sort of philosophical dedication to such?

I have had no experiences that would make me think that my mind and body are somehow 'separate'. 'Both' are very clearly part of "me". Once upon a time, some people did try to convince me that some part of me, some aware part of me, could survive in some unspecified fashion without functioning flesh, but I no longer find the basis for their belief system, well, believable.

 

[Yaaten]

"It"?

Who knows what you are even talking about
after this long

Yes, I was responding to your response to someone else, and the original message got lost somehow. Sorry

 

[Astrid]

The brain isn't purely mechanical, but it certainly is purely physical. The problem with your video analogy is the fact that videos can be examined and analysed using the techniques we have at our disposal when it comes to phenomena (like light and sound) that we all accept can be accounted for via our understanding of nature, and without needing to renounce, or in some way distort, our materialistic metaphysical beliefs.
How does one measure a memory? How is consciousness quantified? Why is our subjective experience of the passage of time in a dream not correlated with the actual passage of time in the "real" world? Why do we even need to dream in the first place?
I'm not claiming here that we'll never find answers to questions like this, but I do seriously question so many people's adherence to the current dogma of atheistic materialism and their embrace of scientism.

"Dogma of atheism / atheistic materialism" makes zero.sense.

Please show us even ONE example of a
person who displays the vice of "scientism"..

Maybe a good start is questioning yourself, not imaginary
flaws in others

 

[Astrid]

Yes, I was responding to your response to someone else, and the original message got lost somehow. Sorry

NP

 

[AV1611VET]

Once upon a time, some people did try to convince me that some part of me, some aware part of me, could survive in some unspecified fashion without functioning flesh, but I no longer find the basis for their belief system, well, believable.

What settled the issue for you?

 

[Yaaten]

Why would anyone think the mind was separate from the body if not for some sort of philosophical dedication to such?

They might consider it a possibility in a purely abstract, theoretical manner for argument's sake.

I have had no experiences that would make me think that my mind and body are somehow 'separate'.

Okay, but that's just you. I have had experiences that have led me to believe that the mind and the body are separate entities. It also makes a great deal of philosophical sense (I'm a dualist, not a monist).

 

[Yaaten]

"Dogma of atheism / atheistic materialism" makes zero.sense.

Please show us even ONE example of a
person who displays the vice of "scientism"..

Maybe a good start is questioning yourself, not imaginary
flaws in others

Point 1: It makes perfect sense, because there are many people (I know, because I've actually met them) who truly believe that there can't possibly be more to reality than what our five senses can reveal to us, because "science says so".
Point 2: Just one? I'll give you more. Stephen Hawking. Lawrence Krauss. Daniel Dennett. Richard Dawkins. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Bill Nye. I could go on (and on, and on, and on).
Point 3: This may come as a shock, but I question my own beliefs all the time. I've never stopped doing this from the time I was four years old.

 

[Astrid]

Point 1: It makes perfect sense, because there are many people (I know, because I've actually met them) who truly believe that there can't possibly be more to reality than what our five senses can reveal to us, because "science says so".
Point 2: Just one? I'll give you more. Stephen Hawking. Lawrence Krauss. Daniel Dennett. Richard Dawkins. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Bill Nye. I could go on (and on, and on, and on).
Point 3: This may come as a shock, but I question my own beliefs all the time. I've never stopped doing this from the time I was four years old.

Hearsay - at best- does not result in it making sense.
Stupid or ignorant people say all kinds of things that don't make sense.
Citing them won't cause there to be a dogma of etc.
Your cLaim remains nonsense.

I asked for one example, you gave me a Gish of names.
Where's the "scientism"?

 

[Yaaten]

Hearsay - at best- does not result in it making sense.
Stupid or ignorant people say all kinds of things that don't make sense.
Citing them won't cause there to be a dogma of etc.
Your cLaim remains nonsense.

I asked for one example, you gave me a Gish of names.
Where's the "scientism"?

Are you seriously trying to tell me here that there are no people on this big, round Earth who believe - truly believe - that a) science can answer every and any possible question that one may consider, b) that if something can't be measured, weighed, or otherwise shown to be purely material in nature it therefore doesn't exist (ex. the mind, the spirit), and c) that when it comes to searching out possible explanations for whatever it is that one has in mind, the scientific method is the only method that one should use for each and every occasion?
That's what "scientism" basically is, and if you've never encountered people who are like this, then I have to wonder where you've been all this time.

 

[Astrid]

Are you seriously trying to tell me here that there are no people on this big, round Earth who believe - truly believe - that a) science can answer every and any possible question that one may consider, b) that if something can't be measured, weighed, or otherwise shown to be purely material in nature it therefore doesn't exist (ex. the mind, the spirit), and c) that when it comes to searching out possible explanations for whatever it is that one has in mind, the scientific method is the only method that one should use for each and every occasion?
That's what "scientism" basically is, and if you've never encountered people who are like this, then I have to wonder where you've been all this time.

So no examples of persons aficted with
this so- common atheistic dogma.

" Seriously questioning" the supposed
beliefs of persons neither present nor identified
seems to me an idle exercise.

Criticizing stupid people for saying stupid things
still does not cause " the dogma of atheistic
materiism" to make SENSE.

As for those names you did cite as perps of the
Vice of scientism, we doubt you can round up any statement
from your list that is a display of scientism.

 

[Hans Blaster]

They might consider it a possibility in a purely abstract, theoretical manner for argument's sake.

Ahh, the silly field of "philosophy" -- arguments devoid of evidence.

Okay, but that's just you. I have had experiences that have led me to believe that the mind and the body are separate entities. It also makes a great deal of philosophical sense.

You're the one claiming that this "separateness" is taken for granted that mind + body are the same if one does not have some sort of pre-existing bias against such. But, I state clearly, it was *not* obvious to me. I don't know what experiences could have convinced me otherwise.

Until I heard of "mind" what ever conscious experience I had was part of me, but so was my "tummy", my fingers, my knees, my nose, etc. It was all (and still feels) inseparably "me". "Mind" or my thoughts didn't seem to be separate from those other parts of me.

Consider this for a moment... People have weird reactions to their severed limbs. If ones cut-off left foot isn't (wasn't?) part of themselves in their own assessment, why would someone freakout about it as if was (still) an integral part of them. Why should anyone consider their "thinker" separate from the rest of the body.

It is only through careful examination that we determine that thinking occurs inside the head, in that complexly wired mass of neurons you seem intent on dismissing as inadequate.

(I'm a dualist, not a monist).

(I'm just not an "ist". Sorry.)

 

[AV1611VET]

So no examples of persons aficted with
this so- common atheistic dogma.

You want names?

QV please:

With respect to the philosophy of science, the term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Mary Midgley, the later Hilary Putnam, and Tzvetan Todorov to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methods and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measured or confirmatory.

SOURCE

 

[Bradskii]

They might consider it a possibility in a purely abstract, theoretical manner for argument's sake.

Okay, but that's just you. I have had experiences that have led me to believe that the mind and the body are separate entities. It also makes a great deal of philosophical sense (I'm a dualist, not a monist).

It's always been an interesting concept - that there is something more than the wet meat between my ears that makes me 'me'. And I've had wierd experiences as well. But simply saying 'I had this odd thing happen once and I can't explain it' doesn't really cut much ice.

They don't call consciousness 'the hard problem' for nothing. It's a slippery concept at the best of times. But...if there is something more than the brain that does the thinking and gives us our sense of self then it shouldn't be that hard to show it. That would be 'the easy problem'. Not to detail exactly what it is. But just to show that it does exist. And again, 'I had this out-of-body experience once' isn't going to cut it.

Look at it this way. If I woke up tomorrow with all your memories then I wouldn't ask myself 'where did these memories come from?' I'd be asking 'how come I'm suddenly in this body?'

 

[Bradskii]

You want names?
SOURCE

You'd think that those people would then admit to what you think it is. But you just skimmed the article and didn't bother reading what some of those people themselves consider to be scientism. As it said: 'Karl Popper defines scientism as "the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science".'

And Dennett says 'that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose, wild-card smear ... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town".

So no, they aren't advocates of 'scientism'. My guess is that you are confusing itwith materialism. You know, a reliance on 'facts and explanations' as Dennett said.

Note the term 'religious critics'....

 

[Yaaten]

So no examples of persons aficted with
this so- common atheistic dogma.

I gave you examples. I'm not going to waste any more time with someone who clearly just doesn't care about the truth.

 

[Yaaten]

Ahh, the silly field of "philosophy" -- arguments devoid of evidence.

"Silly" field of philosophy? Are you actually serious about that comment? Wow. Such a statement clearly tells me you know precisely nothing about the subject. It isn't just about old Greeks (like Plato) in robes dreaming about people in a cave seeing shadows on the wall, or Frenchmen in a Paris cafe going on about how "absurd" life is.

 

[Yaaten]

You'd think that those people would then admit to what you think it is. But you just skimmed the article and didn't bother reading what some of those people themselves consider to be scientism. As it said: 'Karl Popper defines scientism as "the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science".'

And Dennett says 'that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose, wild-card smear ... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town".

So no, they aren't advocates of 'scientism'. My guess is that you are confusing itwith materialism. You know, a reliance on 'facts and explanations' as Dennett said.

Note the term 'religious critics'....

Here's one definition of the term from 'Wikipedia'
Scientism - Wikipedia
"Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists", some scholars (and subsequently many others) also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)".
Here's another from Merriam-Webster if you don't trust Wikipedia
Scientism Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
1: methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist
2: an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)

It's basically understood to mean what it says above in option number two from the 'Merriam-Webster' definition.

 

[Yaaten]

But simply saying 'I had this odd thing happen once and I can't explain it' doesn't really cut much ice.

Where do I say that? Point it out to me, because I'm fairly certain I didn't. I don't resort to supernatural explanations simply because I can't think of a natural one; there's much more to it than just that.

 

[Astrid]

I gave you examples. I'm not going to waste any more time with someone who clearly just doesn't care about the truth.

You gave a sort of definition of scientism, and
a list of names that you pretend are doing
"Scientism".
But no actual examples at all.
Perhaps you should stop wasting time
on yourself since you are, as I noted,
talking nonsense.

 

[Yaaten]

You gave a sort of definition of scientism, and
a list of names that you pretend are doing
"Scientism".
But no actual examples at all.
Perhaps you should stop wasting time
on yourself since you are, as I noted,
talking nonsense.

A "sort of" definition? Here's the definition that comes up when you type in the words "scientism definition" into Microsoft Bing. It's a very simple definition, but it's one that I can accept, one that I agree with.
sci·en·tism
[ˈsʌɪəntɪz(ə)m]
NOUN
rare

1. thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists.
   • excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.