Physical evidence for any sort of religious belief

[Kyrisch]

Jan 13, 2010 0:48:15 GMT tar said:

Kyrisch,

I suppose my definition of me could best be defined by example.
If you and I were standing in a room, facing each other, the person "you" saw looking at "you" would be "me", and the person "I" saw looking at "me" would be "you".

correction, emphasis added

Because the words quoted and bolded are all highly semantical and due to the construction of the statement, the self-reference of the "definition" causes it to be utterly circular. At best it's tautology, at worst it's meaningless.

And I suppose the dead skin that falls off my person would no longer be part of me, as soon as it fell off. And the food would be part of me as soon as I swallowed, and the breath, as soon as I took it. Whatever I throw up, or breath out, or pee or poop away is no longer a part of me.

But why? Your choices are patently arbitrary. It's no more sensical than the Christian view of life beginning at conception, or the Jewish view of life beginning at birth. In fact, both are equally arbitrary. Life, like your perceived 'self' is not a discrete quality or entity. Your body has a continuous and seamless relationship with its environment, just as "life" (where conception/birth is concerned) is essentially perennial, changing 'seasons' between somatic cells and gametes.

And that is, in fact, a perfect example of my own to expound the futility of your attempts to define the concept of self. While two points, one inside your body and one outside, are obviously living/nonliving, there is no natural delineation between the two. So, just as it is possible to isolate two points in the course of a pregnancy and make a sound judgment of viable versus nonviable, the question of when the fetus becomes an unborn child is unanswerable, if not purely semantical.

And this all of course is not even mentioning the fact that you hardly mean your body when you say your 'self'; if your brain was removed, you would not refer to your body as your self. You would not have any means to generate any such representation. You would be dead. When you say yourself, you mean that self-representation that your mind (an emergent property of the physical structure of your brain) has generated. At the risk of sounding cliché, it is the ghost in the machine. Unfortunately, no such thing actually exists. It has no physical form, nor attributes. It is a representation of a thing, nothing more.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

"Because the words quoted and bolded are all highly semantical, and due to the construction of the statement, the self-reference of the "definition" causes it to be utterly circular. At best it's tautology, at worst it's meaningless."

I disagree with you. We have only one perspective, from which we manufacture all the others we can take. The perceptions we have, are made by, are happening at, our persons.
Far from meaningless, it is the one solid starting point, the ONLY starting point, and for that matter, the only perspective any human can have. That we can take other perspectives is obvious, but it is still "us" taking them.

You say it is circular and meaningless. I say it is the basis of our existence. If you maintain that we cannot use our personage as our perspective, as our definition of I, then first person singular, has no meaning. And first person singular does have a meaning. We all know what we mean when we say I. When two people are standing in a room each knows who is I, and who is the other.

That we are connected to each other in a million ways is obvious, but each of us has their own body, their own brain, their own heart, their own memories, their own history, their own perceptions, their own will, their own thoughts, their own perspective of existence, that centers on their person. Their body/heart/mind combo is with them all the time, and the combination from which everything they are is experienced.

Not meaningless. Obvious is a better word.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I show you a picture of the jungle with all sorts of flora and fauna and tell you "you are looking at the capybara." Does that tell you what a capybara is? Of course not. Because you're relying on my own previous knowledge of what a capybara is to be able to identify it among the noise.

In the same way, your 'definition' relied heavily on preconceived notions. Primarily that your body is where you are, and that "looking at" means, roughly, the direction in which your eyes are pointed. But since you were trying to demonstrate precisely that, the definition becomes circular. I don't know what a capybara looks like, so I can't find one. You are, right now, describing a capybara as "that thing that looks like a capybara". Sure it's obvious, but it's unhelpful because it's tautology.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

I am having difficultly grasping your point. Perhaps I should do you a service and read back around a bit on other posts you have made to try and get a better idea of your worldview.

From our brief exchange, my guess is that either I am lacking some insights you have had, or you are lacking some insights I have had, or perhaps you are trying to bring me to an insight that I have already had, or vice-a-versa.

In any case, the "me"(tar) among the noise, that I am asking you to look at, is the one that is having or not having insights, that are different, and have come in a different order, than the insights that "you" Kyrisch, have had.

The you I refer to, has many similarities to the me I refer to. We are both born of a human mother, with a human father. That gives us both a history, that links us back to Lucy in Africa how ever many generations ago. A link that makes me a closer relative to you, than you are to your own cat, or dog or fish or bird, if you have a pet, or to the chimp in the local zoo.

But we have also a different gene history, so that a different combination of individuals in the past got together to make your ancestor list than the combination that made up my ancestor list. This gives you some different characteristics than me. Shorter, taller, smarter, better eyesight, worse teeth, prettier hair, uglier feet, a propensity toward heart disease, an allergy to strawberries or what ever. But these differences help define the difference between you and me. Your person is distinct in these ways, and my person is distinct in these ways and my definition of you and me, as the two people looking at each other in a room holds.

Add to that, the cultural history that was passed onto you through the cultural background of your parents and the cultural underpinnings of the areas of the planet where you have spent your life, as opposed to the cultural underpinnings of the areas of the planet where I spent my life, and you will find that again, you are defined by a different set of beliefs, rules, promises, understandings, than I am. You may be a Red Sox fan, and I may be a Yankee fan.

Add to that the difference between all the people that have touched your life, as opposed to all the people that have touched mine. We had different families growing up, met different childhood friends, read different books, had different teachers, had different "first loves", exerience different arguments, different life challenges, different jobs, and different bosses, watched different tv shows and so on, because you are a different person, than I am. Where your body/heart/mind combo was, what it did, and what it experienced, was different from my experiences because I have a separate body/heart/mind combo, that followed a separate and distinct path.

So your will, your purposes, your thoughts, your pains, your emotions, your joys, your capabilies, your insights, that belong to you, help define, and are different than, the body/brain/heart combo that is standing there infront of you, which is me.

My definition is simple and true. I don't see your problem with it.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

Your definition is as simple and true as x equals x. It tells you nothing, and relies on preconceived notions (in my example, what x equals) to be able to extract any information at all therefrom. First of all, you are blurring the boundary between your physical form (your body), and the emergent property (your mind) which is the entity that is referring to itself as self. These must be treated separately, because while your body certainly exists, your mind doesn't. And the problem with your body is that it cannot be distinguished from the noise in any significant way.

From the way I see it, living things are no different than landforms. We are equivalent to mountain ranges or glaciers or valleys. We are a detail of the Earth's crust. What you refer to as our own bodies are simply a formation of matter that is unique to Earth's topography. There are no individual bodies, just as there are no individual oceans. Each generation of life, without preconceived specification, flows into the other just like the oceans as components of the giant landform of LIFE, which of course has no real distinguishing factors from the other landforms. When does the mountain stop and the valley begin? Where does the river become the reservoir or the bay become the sea? And then, even, where are the boundaries of the Earth itself? There is a continuous gradient of matter from the core to 'empty' space. Even empty space is not really empty. So there is no actual ultimate boundary for the atmosphere. This is how everything exists. As I said much earlier in this thread, the boundaries of your 'self' are the boundaries of the physical universe. The only reason such delineations are estimated is because it is useful, not because it is an accurate reflection of reality.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

"First of all, you are blurring the boundary between your physical form (your body), and the emergent property (your mind) which is the entity that is referring to itself as self. These must be treated separately, because while your body certainly exists, your mind doesn't. And the problem with your body is that it cannot be distinguished from the noise in any significant way."

Wait a minute here. Who is doing the blurring of the distinquished, or the distinquishing of the blurred here? I am calling the whole TAR package me. I separated out no separate soul, no emergent mind, that calls itself itself. There is no "mind of TAR" distinquishable from the whole body/brain/heart combo. Any thought I have is a chemical and physical reality. Some combination and arrangement of the synaptical analogies of internalized signals that have entered TAR through my senses into my brain. Residing inside my head is a detailed model of the room I am sitting in, as well as a general model of the areas of the world that I have witnessed. There is a one to one correspondence between the model in my head, and the world outside my body, that I have verified numerous times. And amoungst the items and entities which I have verified indeed do exist as my models tell me they do, is this entity TAR which has the same general attributes as the other humans I have encountered and verified exist in reality. But I do not consider this little model of TAR that is in my head, as TAR. I consider that the whole body/brain/heart combo that is doing the sensing and considering is TAR, that the whole thing is me. There is no "Ghost in the machine", it is the real stuff, that is put together in a TAR configuration, that IS TAR, that IS me.

Regards, TAR (really, its me, it really really is me)

[Kyrisch]

Jan 16, 2010 3:52:58 GMT tar said:

I am calling the whole TAR package me. I separated out no separate soul, no emergent mind, that calls itself itself. There is no "mind of TAR" distinquishable from the whole body/brain/heart combo. Any thought I have is a chemical and physical reality. Some combination and arrangement of the synaptical analogies of internalized signals that have entered TAR through my senses into my brain. Residing inside my head is a detailed model of the room I am sitting in, as well as a general model of the areas of the world that I have witnessed. There is a one to one correspondence between the model in my head, and the world outside my body, that I have verified numerous times. And amoungst the items and entities which I have verified indeed do exist as my models tell me they do, is this entity TAR which has the same general attributes as the other humans I have encountered and verified exist in reality. But I do not consider this little model of TAR that is in my head, as TAR. I consider that the whole body/brain/heart combo that is doing the sensing and considering is TAR, that the whole thing is me.

Good, I think you're finally getting somewhere closer to my focus with this. I like how you understand that there is no physical distinction between your mind and your body. I also like the fact that you consider all parts of your body, conscious and unconsciously controlled, a part of you. So why stop there? Why not also include your environment in your delineation of self? Your whole planet? Your solar system? There is no natural delineation for you to depend on; your choice in such a matter is entirely arbitrary. And in this way the idea of identity truly becomes lost.

[tar]

Jan 16, 2010 16:33:29 GMT Kyrisch said:

So why stop there? Why not also include your environment in your delineation of self? Your whole planet? Your solar system? There is no natural delineation for you to depend on; your choice in such a matter is entirely arbitrary. And in this way the idea of identity truly becomes lost.

AH! But there is a natural delineation, and that is the point. When you and I are standing in the room, even though we both belong to the same reality, created by it, and existing in it, you see it from your perspective, and I see it from mine. When I die, you don't. TAR would no longer exist, and Kyrisch and the rest of the universe would.

For an individual, for a person, where the brain(mind)/heart/body combo is, is where that person is, where that mind is, the center of focus. The consciouness that I have is a result of my particular brain/heart/body combo. It moves together through the world, it grows old and dies, or is rendered non-functional when its fragile nature is overcome by events that stop the heart, or debilitate the mind or tear or crush the body. Once the combination is thusly disabled, the whole of TAR is gone from existence. The materials may remain, but the life is gone, the emergent properties are gone, the system is forever down. My eyes would no longer see, my ears no longer hear, my nose and tounge no longer smell and taste, my skin would not feel pressure or heat, my brain woud no longer perceive the world, make models, language, thoughts and goals. No sensing of input. No control of output, nothing TAR like going on inside. Dead. Pile of flesh, to turn to dust or ash. Only memory of me would remain in the people I touched, and evidence of my existence in the works I did while alive.

You on the other hand, would still be Kyrisch. There would only be you looking at a dead TAR, and no TAR looking back. This is the distinction. This is why the definition works.

Feeling of self, and which other entities we align ourself with, is another matter. But to see it right, in a way that can be discussed and mutually understood, you have to start with the understanding that you and I are separate entities to begin with.
That our consciousness is a result of the combo, and although the connections to the rest of the universe are real, we see it all through our own eyes, from our own perspective, and do indeed have an identity that is separate from the rest of the world, for as long as we live.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

But now you're falling prey to the same fallacy of equivocation that you used before in your circular definition of self. All your perspective is happens to be what information you are being given at any particular time. How does that lend to the identification of self? Everything has 'perspective', even individual atoms -- no delineation there.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Not an equivocation, an explained use of a word. There is actual self, and there is feeling of self.

Our topic here, is evidence for religious belief. There are actual ways that we are part of the universe, and there are imagined ways. The literal and the figurative are intertwined.

Very much so in religious discussions. And very much so in discussions and muses about consciousness. That is because we have an interesting predicament that we have been in, since the first human was able to look at his own existence objectively.

What exactly that means, how exactly we do that, has perplexed everybody that has ever noticed it. Talk about circular! Where is the you that knows about the you, that knows about the you.......

So, to stop the circle, we need an objective backstop, that we imagine exists, that we can then put ourselves in the shoes of, and feel the question answered.

Thus, here, we have evidence for religious belief. An authority, an objective viewer, that knows everything, from beginning to end, that we can put ourselves in the shoes of, and feel that we have a handle on the whole operation.

It is my opinion, after 56 years, sunday school, church, college, philosophy courses, reading, an epiphany on a hilltop in Germany in 1980 where I understood the essense and nature of life on this planet, a myriad of philosophical discussions (in person and online), and a whole lot of musing, figuring and logical debate with myself, that life grabbed form and structure from a universe tending toward entropy, found a way to reproduce that form, and has been doing it ever since. Trees, bugs, birds, bacteria, snakes, mammals...all of us, alive for a fleeting instant, in the enormity of space and time. Thusly, I feel kin to the primordial sludge, to the first paramicium, to Lucy in Africa, to my great grandfather, to my mom. I am a continuation of the line. A reproduction of the form. Evolved to have the survival attributes that I possess. My association with them is real. It is no figment of my imagination. It is objectively true.

But my brain/heart/body combo is separate and different from any other brain/heart/body combo. I exist in this place, at this time, unlike any other. TAR is the only one that is TAR. I have been TAR since the egg I came from was fertilized. And I will be TAR till my brain dies.

I see the world through one set of eyes. I hear it through one set of ears. I smell it with one set of nostrils, taste it with one tounge, feel it with one particular nervous system, percieve it with one particular brain that holds all of my memories, and all of my thoughts. I move around the world with one set of legs, and manipulate it with one set of hands. And one heart paces my existence. It is my brain/heart/body combo. You have one too.

And if the two of us are standing in a room, looking at each other, you are looking at me, and I am looking at you. Not a circular definition. Just the simple truth.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I'm sorry, but frankly you are (deliberately or accidentally, I don't know) completely avoiding my question:

But my brain/heart/body combo is separate and different from any other brain/heart/body combo.

How? Why?

I exist in this place, at this time, unlike any other.

You're using the term I, which you have yet to identify definitively.

TAR is the only one that is TAR.

....Obviously circular....

I have been TAR since the egg I came from was fertilized. And I will be TAR till my brain dies.

Why choose that moment in time as the start of your existence? What about the sperm and the egg before they came together? What about your ancestors, and then back when what would become your ancestors was just grains of dust? Your conceived self is boundless in time and in space. There is no natural demarcation at the beginning or end of your existence, nor is there any workable exact demarcation of the beginning or end of your physical existence. What do you mean when your brain dies? When the matter decays? When it ceases functioning? If you were reduced to a vegetable, would you still be 'you'? These questions are not intended to be answered, they are rhetoric hopefully demonstrating the ludicrousness of making such distinctions in the first place.

As a side note, I find it ridiculous that you are pursuing this point in a manner in which it seems that the content of your posts is identical each time. You seem to be content in using circular or otherwise nondescriptive methods of identifying the self in a vain effort to avoid actually answering my questions. After I have been complaining the entire thread of your persistent use of circular logic, you go ahead and post, "TAR is the only one that is TAR". You even go on to use an example of the temporal boundaries of your existence (the idea of conception as the beginning of your alleged self) which I had brought up a mere few posts ago to demonstrate that such temporal distinctions are baseless. I am losing patience with this argument because of your repetition.

Furthermore, you notice that your posts are, on average, twice as long as mine. In addition, I tend to only quote the portions in which you make outright statements. This is in stark contrast to my own posts, which tend to be shorter but more to the point. Your circuitous style is what lends to your tendency to say things that are ambiguous, circular, and/or unhelpful to the discussion. I have made my claims, and you have made yours (which are in direct contradiction to mine). I have backed up my claims simply and clearly, and you have pranced around the topic to such an extent that it seems as though you aren't even defending your point, but merely musing aimlessly. This makes debate extremely frustrating and difficult.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Ok, let me try this.

If you went down to the state motor vehical office, and applied for a drivers license, they would ask you for identification, like a birth certificate, a passport with your photo, address and so on.

They would take a picture of your face, put it on your license. They would not take a picture of the universe, or the bones of Lucy. Your identity is directly associated with your brain/body/heart combination.

Kyrisch is currently in a different place than TAR, on a rather large planet. Your now, and my now are separated by the time it takes light to travel the distance between us. You, in your entire life, have never been elsewhere, than where your brain/heart/body has been.

That you can put yourself in the shoes of another person, or your ancestors or the universe, is a capability of your brain, happening in your brain. You don't objectively travel to and reside in the other persons mind. You are sitting in a different chair than I am, looking at a different computer screen.

By my definition there are 6.9774 billion different selves on the planet Earth today.

By your lack of definition, there is no boundry between a self and the universe, so your count is what? One?

This is not the way it appears to be. Different parts of the universe are separated by time and space. Different entities exist in their own space and time, their own organisation and internal and external relationships to other entities.

It is not one big blur. There is definition, different things going on, different entities that have their own nature, different than the nature of other entities.

Such an entity is sitting in a basement typing on a computer in New Jersey. That is me. The entity reading this, named Kyrisch is a different entity, a different self.

What about that statement of fact is ambiguous?

I don't think you are losing patience with this argument because of my repetition. I think you are frustrated that you lost the argument many posts ago.

If you have a reason to believe that Kyrisch is not a separate person, a separate self from TAR, please do present it.

TAR

[tar]

Jan 11, 2010 3:23:16 GMT Kyrisch said:

And as for YOU, as in the entity who calls himself TAR, or Kyrisch, I wrote a short essay about this some time ago. It goes as follows:

You? There is no 'you'. What you perceive as yourself is merely a figment of your own imagination, an emergent property of a large mass of highly specialized cells... And not your body, no -- your mind. Your body exists -- it is a physical entity that can be touched, observed; it has properties that can be measured. Your mind does not. In fact, in many senses your mind does not exist at all; and since your concept of self is merely a complication of your mind, that does not exist either... At least not in any real way. It exists in the same way the number three does, or the words house or table or chair -- a representation of a thing, but nothing of its own accord. YOU do not exist.

Kyrisch,

You protect this essay, as if it is the final word on the subject.

Saying my mind does not exist is silly. I am sitting here using it, and you are sitting there using yours. Both of our minds definitely exist.

Consider a hurricane. Would you say it exists or not? An emergent property of heat, air and water. Yet it is measurable and real. Its organisation gives it characteristics that effect the real world, in the same manner that a mind can effect the real world. You take a bottle full of hurricane home with you to study, and you won't find many hurricane characteristics in the bottle.

That you cannot isolate a bottle full of mind, does not negate its reality.

I think your essay is somewhat wrong and somewhat useless.

You would be the first to agree that the models of reality, which are constructed in our heads are models of something real. If an analog representation of that reality, exists in our minds, and we are aware of it, then we are aware of something real that exists. At least we are aware of certain attributes of reality. Certain frequencies and pressures, certain vibrations in certain timeframes.

If you experience a hot, shiny, circular shape in the sky every day, and I experience the same thing, would you consider this a complication of our minds, and non-existant, or would you consider it objectively real?

If every day you opened the same set of eyes, looked in the mirror and saw the same person, would you not consider yourself objectively real?

The fact that another can look at you and consider you objectively real, and you can experience yourself as objectively real, establishes you as objectively real.

The self part is the fact that others view Kyrisch as the same body/brain/heart combination, as Kyrisch views Kyrisch. And this combination is not the combination that TAR and those that view him, view as TAR.

You are allowed to consider yourself real. And you are allowed to consider your mind real. I give you my permission. And that makes you and your mind, objectively real, because you did not imagine it. I did. And I am real.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I don't deny the existence of what you are trying to refer to as "self". I deny the significance of the word "you" and "self". I think that concept is contrived and ultimately meaningless. As for my essay, I never held it as unassailable; you simply never challenged it when I presented it so I moved on.

So, to defend it I present the following:

Hurricanes exist. They have no discrete boundaries but there is a measurable pressure difference inside and outside. There is an inside and outside, it occupies a volume in space. It has measurable physical characteristics.

In order for something to exist, it must have measurable attributes. The mind has none. It has no volume, no form, and no mass.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

"In order for something to exist, it must have measurable attributes. The mind has none. It has no volume, no form, and no mass."

Ah, but it has a location. How do you handle that? Is that not a describable characteritic, within the parameters of volume, form and mass?

Form is a term that is not so different than shape, or pattern. The mind has characteristics, which can be experienced by other minds, and by the mind itself. You know the entity I refer to when I say "Kyrisch's mind" and you know I am refering to you. And it is not just one area inside your brain its your whole brain, and all your sense organs, your beating heart, and your organs and bones and muscles and systems that generate this "Kyrisch". You can measure all that in volume and weight and temperature and so on, and it therefore exists in a physical sense. Your mind is not on another planet than you are, or another continent or another country, or town or street or house or room or chair than your physical body is. It associates directly with, and only with you. It is a real, though complex, thing.

So my contention is that it is the focus, that is occurring within the Kyrisch organism, that is Kyrisch's consciousness. And Kyrisch's mind consists of all the patterns (of actual measurable synapses and chemicals and structures) that exist, in reality, within the Kyrisch organism.

It's a real thing. It exists.

The fact that the patterns within our brains are analog representations of stuff outside our brains, often complicates definitions of where stuff is really existing. What we have cobbled together within our minds, that does not fit reality, and what does, is found out through discourse and scientific investigation with other like minds.

And often the patterns we cobble together within our minds can be represented and repeated in real ways. We can transfer a pattern to another mind, we can fashion a shape out of clay, we can build a house, form tools, instruments that expand our senses, storage devices for patterns (books and computers), roads, bridges, ships, planes, communities, towns, cities, nations, religions...all from the minds of men and women. How could minds not exist?

Regards, TAR