Pretty sure neurologists can explain it, you or I not knowing that
I am a medical doctor, in fact, an Anaesthetist. Rendering people unconscious and nerves insensate is my livelihood. I can assure you, Neurology doesn't know much here. As I said, check out the Hard problem of Consciousness or the Neural Correlates of Consciousness. In Anaesthesia our monitors of consciousness are woefully inadequate, as are pain monitors versus the reported perception thereof. Popular belief and media greatly overestimates our knowledge in this regard.
does not make your claim of stars having consciousness valid, that's an argument from ignorance.
Never claimed they were, only that you can't exclude Consciousness in stars if you ascribe it to an emergent property of electrochemical activity. Why on earth you think it must be Biological to be conscious escapes me anyway, since as long as you assume Consciousness could arise spontaneously in living things, why not in similar circumstances in a 'dead' thing? There is no real barrier between living and dead on this, if you are only dividing it along lines of Processes arbitrarily categorised by us humans.
If you mean gravity in itself, no, but that's like saying we haven't observed the Big Bang in some basic sense because we can't see it in itself, but only in terms of red shift radiation and such
Thank you, so thus back to my point that your definition of Nature is not purely observational, but includes inferences drawn and the axioms and framework necessary to make them.
What is metaphorical about either accretion as a physical process or a disc, a geometric object we have a pretty easy physical representation of?
Do you fully grasp what an 'accretion disc' is, solely from the terms? Does it not require significant prior knowledge to understand the point you make by calling it thus?
Most language is metaphorical. How do we teach children what a disc is? We show them a plate or a hubcap, and expect them to grasp our abstract 'disc'. Same how we teach a circle or any other shape. We create an abstract property termed a 'shape' and we apply it as a universal to things, saying this or that is a 'disc'. This is a metaphor, as your accretion disc is not really a 'disc', but a vague disc-like thing. Similarly, accretion implies things thrown together, or combining, that again is not directly understandable without thinking of accreta you know. Both are metaphorical constructions, Tenors in linguistic terms, applied to this specific Vehicle of words. So as per my original point, when hypotheses are constructed, or data evaluated, of necessity we apply metaphor - it is not a secondary thing; and primary observation is rapidly transformed into a mental simulacrum of it, that is couched in metaphor and assumed universals that need be accounted for. The great success of the Scientific Revolution over Scholasticism was by getting us to forget this fact.
We observe order, that's not the same as hard determinism, which is what you're fallaciously attributing to materialism metaphysically. Stochastic doesn't equate to chaos in the sense of pure randomness, chaos is variability in the use I'm proposing in context. Otherwise you'd be accurate that I'm simultaneously positing an indetermi
I have explained myself, I don't see you doing anything but claiming you can have your cake and eat it too. Go ahead, enlighten me to what I am missing.
Methinks you're conflating unexpected with miraculous, as if the latter means we have to fundamentally change all assumptions based on an isolated incident because we want some absolute knowledge rather than considering it may not be entirely explainable. When miracles are attributed to a transcendent entity, it becomes far more suspect in nature versus some as of yet unexplored aspect of the universe that would still fit within it rather than be incoherently outside of it and yet somehow cogent as intervening.
Not at all. I just see no reason why the 'unexpected' necessarily must be explicable by naturalistic means. It certainly isn't an 'isolated incident', as humans have been reporting miracles as long as we've been here. To call something a miracle, implies that normally things don't work that way. An unexpected and inexplicable result requires explanation, sure, but I see no reason why a naturalistic explanation (often highly implausible to boot, or basically idiosynchronous) automatically takes precedence. But again, you haven't bothered to read my initial post, as my point was the difficulty that recognising the truly miraculous would be in a framework designed to exclude its possibility by altering the grounds - done mostly by conflating Naturata and Naturans, something our ancestors would not be caught dead doing.
By all means explain how your epistemological standard is reliable apart from unfounded assumptions that aren't remotely basic, like that other minds exist and that reality behaves in a causal manner? Some axioms are basic without being faith based in the slightest, because they're necessary and practical in their uses rather than comforting or otherwise making someone feel certain about something that's subjective and sentimental by nature
Where on earth did I imply that? This is more useless obfuscation. You are speaking to a profound sceptic, in the classical sense, who holds that everything and anything can be doubted (as per the tropes of Agrippa). I choose to draw my line in the sand, in fact have Faith therein, but it irritates me to no end when certain lines are thought more valid on no grounds whatsoever. A pragmatic axiom remains an axiom, and certainly remain faith-based - being mired in the fact that it must be so, because it is so useful. That really is a house of cards. The Romans built magnificent Aquaducts for hundreds of years on incorrect ideas of pressure and flow, and Medicine saved countless lives on outdated and incorrect theories - even empirical ones, like good old discarded Galenic physiology. Utility does not make something more epistemologically valid, no.
The problem becomes how much you can extrapolate the organic aspect to something that isn't necessarily founded in falsifiable methodology. It can work as a rough method of explaining, but mechanical, while not necessarily accurate if we're referring to a particular meaning, can still work. Or are you apparently denying ID notions of the universe being such that if we adjusted particular aspects it cannot exist? That would seem to fit a mechanical notion of the universe rather than organic (I can survive with one lung, but to them, the universe cannot exist without this supposed fine tuning)
Um what? You are aware modern Medicine mostly uses Evidence-Based Medicine, a system that repudiates Scientific Method and assumes data non-falsifiable? It uses statistical methods and evidence classes and confidence intervals to suggest heuristically what evidence should be given more weight, but its very structure is deductive and non-falsifiable. Any new evidence is just plugged in, not superceding older studies. Personally, EBM is great, though it has some drawbacks to Clinical Medicine (more hypothesis based), but is a necessary corrective.
Anyway, I said nothing now about ID. I merely pointed out all Mechanical metaphors are merely that. They are illustrations, like Schrodinger's Cat. You can't determine real feline biology off it, anymore than calling the heart a pump has any basis in its real physiological functioning. Once more, you introduced this metaphor erroneously, and I still have not seen anything relevant to the discussion at hand arising therefrom.
If you say God is part of Nature, you're reducing God in scale, but if God exists outside of Nature, how can it really be said to exist except in a speculative mystical notion that's as unreliable as experiences on psychedelic drugs? Empiricism is valid insofar as it's reliable and not just fallaciously inferring truth from the experiences themselves, but consistency. By all means, present some compelling alternative to the scientific method that's nearly as reliable and finding accurate representations of reality instead of trying to poke holes in something that's worked fine and improved upon itself over centuries. Where does your god fit into Nature as a concept and how can you consistently verify its supposed intervention rather than it being mistaken association because of unfounded presuppositions?
Where did I mention God, pray tell? You keep obfuscating. Besides, you cannot show Empiricism valid. Nor that it is useful, without assuming Intersubjectivity. You might be psychotic and imagining everything you are seeing. Everyone might be psychotic, expect one poor Schizophrenic for all we know.
If you argue for sense-data, that is only one type of qualia that we know to be illusory - it is mediated by nerves, that prune most of it away. We don't really touch anything, but our brain creates a simulacrum of it that we 'experience'. And of course, alters it - such as with inattentional blindness, wind-up phenomenon in pain, etc. Spiritual perceptions are also a form of qualia, and why the one is assumed more valid than the other is silly indeed, if both are equally merely subjective accidents of consciousness. How on earth are the Empiric thought 'more accurate representations of reality' on any grounds but a priori? That said, I love Science - but we must remember what it is, merely modelling to save the Appearances of our observations. It is not claiming to be reality (or at least didn't historically), but is in fact just an elaborate conjecture.
Naturalistic materialism does not preclude abstract models we use to make sense of the world, you're veering dangerously close to a transcendental argument of God's existence, which fundamentally misses the point of naturalistic materialism not excluding abstracts as a thing, only that they are not things in themselves as you'd mistakenly claim logic or numbers are, when they're descriptive structures, not prescriptive claims
This is tangential to the topic of the thread. However, the point is that if Naturalistic Materialism is true, then Reason cannot be shown valid - for the only reason X thus Y would be because of blind iterations of matter, rather than discerned as such. For I would say Y follows from X, but perhaps this is only an artifact of my material makeup, and perhaps really Z follows. Logical validity cannot be applied, and the only reason to hold such a view would be if we could logically reason toward it. It cuts off the branch it rests upon.
Besides, I made no claim on God. Nor did I say numbers or logic are things in themselves.
Really, I feel like I am trying to serve soup with a sieve. You keep bringing in stuff I can find no relevance to what I said, try to redirect to tangents, or launch into things you state I claim and I can nowhere find evident in what I wrote. Likewise, you misunderstood my initial position, and it does not seem as if you are willing to revisit the initial post to rectify this.
This may be my final response to you in this thread, as I fear I am simply wasting my time. I thank you for the discussion and bid you good day.
