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@mustardness
I was thinking about how you prove 1+4=2+3.
That simplifies to 5=5, which needs the a=a rule to formally know is true.
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If consciousness is an illusion, what is it an an illusion of? Perhaps consciousness is the power to have illusions... I don 't think rocks have illusions.
I don't know how to program a computer to have illusions so I don't see how calling consciousness an illusion is in the least bit helpful!
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The reason for the rule a=a is that it can be replaced by ,'true'. Without that rule you couldn't close off a lot of proofs because you'd get as far as showing a=a but have no rule to say 'qed'.
I can't think of anything that one can prove without relying on a=a -> true at some point.
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@secularmerlin
I accept it's hard to pin down what consciousness is, but until a rock has an identity crisis and starts writing bad poems about life I won't accept consciousness is nothing at all.
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@secularmerlin
Or may be we just find it hard to articulate what consciousness is....
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@secularmerlin
You are experiencing x because some neurones in your brain are registering x. There may or may not be something 'x-like out there' corresponding to (or is the cause of)that neural activity. But the neural activity is faiap guaranteed to be real.
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@secularmerlin
Consciousness exists because it is manifest in me. My consciousness is not an illusion because that prompts one to ask what it is supposed to be an illusion of! There is a process going on in my head that is damn odd. I know it is damn odd because I'm a competent computer programmer and I have no idea how to code consciousness so a computer has the same feelings of selfhood and awareness i do. But i can't deny all that sort of stuff goes on in my head _ that would be dishonest.
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It seems that if one cannot even say something as innocuous as asserting rocks don't have the consciousness of the greatest of French philosophers then neither the number not quality of assertions will be high.
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I would ask if the logic laws are abstractions of aspect of physical reality. If so their justification is empirical.
Does physics dictate logic or vice versa?
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@nagisa3
I don't see a good reason to doubt that I can think and rocks cant. Scepticism is an excellent principle but if you desire certainty at evry step.. You will not make many steps.
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@nagisa3
Descartes may be overrated, but the world is divided into things that can have the thought 'I think therefore I am' and things that can't. I think that is enough to show that consciousness is 'something rather than nothing'. Consciousness is what I have and rocks don't so i can think like descartes. what consciousness is in detail...I dunno.
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@nagisa3
Following on from the cogito, my consciousness is self-confirming. The problem is confirming there is anything else....you can't confirm you're conscious
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@Stephen
You do blow up easily!
My point is that even without explicit scripture Christianity - or Christians - have been violently intolerant towards non-christians and heretical christians. That prompts me to think intollerance is a problem with monotheisms in general.
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@Stephen
you only asked for something 'even resembling'!
So, suddenly proper consideration of context is vital. i'll try to remember.
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@nagisa3
I mean, you can't confirm or deny my subjective experience, nor I yours
I agree we can't know each other's subjetive eperience, but
But I would argue that we don't know we ourselves are conscious.
implied we don't know our own.
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@Stephen
Lk 19:27 "But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’”
But my position is that the monotheism of abrahamic faiths encourages them to be intolerant.
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@nagisa3
I think 'i know i am conscious' is fine!
There is something going on inside my head that produes a 'self' and 'awareness' and 'self-awareness' with that self. Whatever that process is, it doesnt ever happen in rocks nor in any computer i have programmed! It wasn't even happening in my head while I was asleep.
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@nagisa3
Is that because you reject 'i know...' statements in general or do you dispute 'i know i am conscious' specifically?But I would argue that we don't know we ourselves are conscious.
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@secularmerlin
Monotheism has intolerance built-in; if there is one god all others gods and their associated reigions are false.The problem with Islam is the same as for any faith based beliefs.
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@secularmerlin
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@Fallaneze
Are my behaviors the same thing as my consciousness? You have observable evidence of people's behaviors but do you have observable evidence of their consciousness?
I have observed people behave very much as I do myself. i know i am conscious (if anything is!) so it's natural to assume other people are conscious too.
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@SamStevens
I wonder if we will ever go further than the moons of jupiter..with regards to colonizing other celestial bodies.
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@Fallaneze
What is it you want evidence of?..even though there is no observable evidence of meaning?
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@Greyparrot
i'd accept it was misguided or misinformed but i don't think it was cynical.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
I doubt it was the result of a committee of suits kept on hand by the NZ prime minister just in case. i think it was an almost unconscious signifier that she felt empathy with the victims and to simultaneously distance herself from the shooter. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but i think it was a human being making the decision, not a politician.
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@nagisa3
Here's a question: is 'nothing comes of nothing' an empirical or a logical truth?
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@nagisa3
I am often confused by 3rutal's terminology!
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In philosophy 'Phenomenon' is usually almost synonymous with 'perception' and 'noumena' is the underlying reality.a snuck premise (that phenomena are not contingent on perception)
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@Stephen
She is obviously going for Muslim vote - all 45,000 of them, well under 1% of the population.
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@Stephen
you would blame the secondary problem ( me in this case) and never address the fact that Naz Shah posted the vile racist tweet in the first and primary instance.
I can certainly blame you for drawing attention to the re-tweet, which you describe as 'vile and racist'.
I've gone through months of Shah's output and it's atypical. The tweet appears to have be ironic - perhaps she forgot irony rarely works on the internet!
I am damn sure I could find a post - or part of one - where you mock-praise islam or mohammed. If so, do you mind if i post it widely as showing your true colours?
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@secularmerlin
@nagisa3
The classical theist postion - going back more than a thousand years - is that God created time when he created the universe, that is God created the universe 'with time, not in time'.
on that view God is not 'eternal' in the way of 'having infinite duration' - 'eternal' is just away to approximately render in English that for God time does not exist at all.
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@secularmerlin
If that deity provides an afterlife the difference is very important.
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@Yassine
Would you say conservative interpretations of islam have gained in influence over the last few decades?
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@nagisa3
If you read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy you will get a more subtle view of what the word 'fact' refers to!
What ever the internet says, we often use the word 'fact' for what is true but unproven. Something can be a fact without being proven, but it can't be a fact unless its true.
It was a fact that Australia was the biggest island in the Pacific even before it was discovered - facts exist to be discovered and proven; they do not come into existence by being discovered or proven.
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@nagisa3
I think facts don't need to be proven to be true. They need proof only to be known to be true.
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@nagisa3
Give me any true empirical fact.The planet earth exists.
You can't prove this,
You asked for an empirical fact. The term 'empirical fact' is non-standard and I don't know what you think it means. I do know there is a difference between true and provable, though, and you didn't ask for something that is provable.
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@disgusted
The idea is that something that is proven to be neccessary must exist. The Kalam and similar arguments purport to prove a prime, conscious creator is neccessary through pure logic alone - hence no evidence is required.
My view is that such arguments show the origin of the universe was very strange, but they don't prove that strangeness was due to something that could reasonably be called a god, let alone God.
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@Fallaneze
As long as it understood that no actual metric or specific criteria for 'sufficiency' or 'preponderance' exists.
Anything short of absolute proof leaves room for doubt..
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@Yassine
But even if the origin of the universe is neccessary,singular etc., it does not follow (for example) that it dictated the koran to Mohammed, or chose the Hebrew people, or fathered jesus. Scriptures 'define' their gods to be more being the universes's origin.- Once you demonstrate the origin of the universe is a 'necessary singular transcendent & absolute being', as priorly done, it is safe for a Muslim to assume this is indeed God, for it is thus defined in the Quran
I might concede something is needed to be the origin of the universe - but i'm not so sure the 'first cause' is the sort of things that can hear prayers.
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@Yassine
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@Fallaneze
All we should concern ourselves with is whether it is more rational to believe God does or doesn't exist. That's it.
How do we measure/compare how rational it is?
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@PGA2.0
It is unreasonable to think that blind chance happenstance can produce let alone sustain life. An atheist worldview continues to push the narrative that it can.
I don't think that those scientists working on abiogenesis (there aren't all that many)think of it in terms of the noble task of disproving divine creation!
Anyone familiar with the complexity of even the simplest living thing should agree it does seem very unreasonable and unlikely that blind chance could produce life. But if you don't - for whatever reason - like to just say 'a miracle occurred' the only option is to go into the lab and see how it could have happened. it's not anti-religion that motivates researchers; it's their curiosity and love of having a really difficult problem to solve.
They don't think they aredisproving god - they are just being there crurious.
I don't mind it being said that belief in abiogenesis requires faith - it does. It requires bloody-mindedness that there is a naturalistic,mechanistic explanation of life to not give up on such a hard problem! But I've not met, read or heard of a biologist who was motivated anti-religious fervour, with possible exception of Richard Dawkins but he gave up being a badly-paid biologist and became a rich professional atheist! His early books are so much better than The God Delusion... but I digress!
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@Yassine
ok, given notorious verses such as 2:191
"And kill them wherever you overtake them"
and 5:51
"Do not take the Jews and the Christians friends"
Shouldn't you be out there killing Christians rather than being friendly with them?
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@secularmerlin
@Fallaneze
If causality holds then the universe has a cause, and you can call that cause god if you like(ie I can't stop you!), but you can't logically infert that first-cause-god to the god of any particular religion.
Or causality is a lot more complicated than it appears and we have yet to fathom wtf was going on the origin of the universe but it was nothing like any god
I favour the latter.
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@PGA2.0
I do not see how any other worldview can make sense of those questions.
If you mean atheism can seem nihilistic then I agree with you. I imagine it's something every atheist has to found their own way of dealing with.
Most atheists deal with it by adopting a broadly humanist stance, even if they don't explicitly identify as a humanist(*). But even humanism isn't a logical consequence of atheism. I don't think atheism implies any particular stance, other than denying god any role. Atheism doesn't imply hedonism or humanism, selfishness or altruism. It just denies gods exist.
(*check out what the term means, don't assume!)
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@Stephen
That is what people in those days would have believed, yes.
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@Stephen
I don't think I do respond with a question 'often'. More 'hardly ever'!Then he will respond with a question of his own as you do often
I look forward to Yass's answer to your unexpected question... I think all theists have problems explaining why their god sometimes loses... cf judges 1:19
"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
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@Stephen
I disussed things with Yassine last week.
I'm sure we will have further discussions.
No doubt he will want to answer you highly topical question first.
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