| Aug 19th, 2005 04:28 PM |
| kellychaos |
An interesting counter-point/op-ed piece to my arguments (second article down by Leonard Susskind):
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Evolution wired us with both hardware and software that would allow us to easily "grock" concepts like force, acceleration, and temperature, but only over the limited range that applies to our daily lives — concepts that are needed for our physical survival. But it simply did not provide us with wiring to intuit the quantum behavior of an electron, or velocities near the speed of light, or the powerful gravitational fields of black holes, or a universe that closes back on itself like the surface of the Earth. A classic example of the limitations of our neural wiring is the inability to picture more than three dimensions. Why, after all, would nature provide us with the capacity to visualize things that no living creature had ever experienced?
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LINK TO FULL ARTICLE
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| Aug 18th, 2005 04:16 PM |
| kellychaos |
What I'm saying is that I have more faith in an empirical scientific method to a point where it becomes too theorectical. When discovery upon discovery is based on, at least, pseudo-empirical scientific observation, proveable mathematics, proveable logic, ect. I am fine with that. However exhaustively tested and proven, the more things become dependent upon or, at best, layered upon theories that are not empirically observeable (or observable under technology which I, as a layman, cannot understand) it becomes just as much as a faith-based belief as does theology. That being said, I would tend to lean toward the scientific.
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| Aug 17th, 2005 07:09 PM |
| Big Papa Goat |
So the empirical scientific method is too theoretical, but Kant's metaphysical notion of some kind of soul isn't?
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| Aug 17th, 2005 04:58 PM |
| kellychaos |
I didn't mean to get too heavy with this.
I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and have probably bitten off more than I can chew here.
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| Aug 17th, 2005 04:54 PM |
| kellychaos |
While having a firm stake in empiricism, I do tend to question whether it is the end all. I do believe in the scientific method and discovery to the point where it becomes a bit too theoretical for my tastes and too heavily reliant on models and technology that we, ourselves, developed the further the investigation goes along. In the way that a tangential angle, while first coming close to the topic, moves farther away as more assumptions based on previous discoveries are made. Who really reads the fine print for the early acceptable margins of error?
I believe, and I'm paraphrasing in a large way here, in Kant's theory that there is sort of a matrix that governs our view of the world and which largely governs most of what we can sense empirically (with a little a priory knowledge like mathematics, morality, ect thrown in). What ultimately controls us that we cannot perceive, and probably won't be able to conceive being, pretty much, a closed system? I don't know. Call it theology. Call it the metaphysical. I believe that there is a force behind life with a direction and a purpose. We are largely beings that move along by sensation but what provides the direction and purpose ... call it "will" or whatever. I refuse to believe that we are static models. At the same time, I refuse to believe in fairy tales half-based on pagan ritual and theological dogma which largely smack of common sense, altruism, humanism and the Golden Rule while giving too much credit to deities based on our own arrogance which we've cleverly managed to hide from ourselves.
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| Aug 16th, 2005 06:05 PM |
| sadie |
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Originally Posted by CaptainBubba
Sadie were you being sarcastic with the previous questions about clones having souls and rights and whatnot?
Like seriously?
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i can't remember who held the reins at that point.
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| Aug 16th, 2005 04:38 PM |
| theapportioner |
Hey no problem - sorry if I've offended you or anything. I just don't see how you could come up with a useful hypothesis for memory formation and storage involving subatomic particles. There's systems neuroscience, cellular neuroscience, and molecular neuroscience, but no subatomic neuroscience.
If you're curious about proposed mechanisms for memory formation, check out the wikipedia article on long term potentiation (LTP), for starters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation
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| Aug 16th, 2005 04:20 PM |
| kellychaos |
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Originally Posted by theapportioner
Look, if you change a few subatomic particles in you you are still human. If you do the same to your neurons it won't make one damn difference to your memories.
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I see a profound difference in saying that sub-atomic models (a human invention) REPRESENT ourselves and that these same representations ARE ourselves and, usually, I have more faith in science than theology. I just have a hard time accepting a scientific model's superiority over that of dynamic life ... and I'll attempt to explain this in my awkward, sub-par, amateur-philosopher type way. I'm working off-the-cuff here, so give me, if not a break, at least constructive crtiticism.
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Hume’s claim is that no one ever perceives his or herself. The self whose existence seems certain is not to be met with in experience. Hume writes:
“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I
always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.” (Hume, Treatise, Book I, Part IV, Section 6.)
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At best, our view of the sub-atomic world is based on scientific models, scientific theories that have been proven exhautively and technology that we developed. Nonetheless, not direct empiric perception. Could we be fooling ourselves with our own pride?
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Hume’s claim must be understood within the context of his strict empiricism. He is claiming that he has no idea of the self. His basis for this claim is that he has no sense impression or perception of the self. Why does it follow that he has no idea of the
self? It follows given Hume’s copy principle: every idea must be derived from a sense impression or perception.1 This principle is characteristic of Hume’s radical empiricism, his belief that all knowledge must ultimately derive from the senses and
our mental operations on sense impressions.
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I am not so naive as to accept that microscopes do not supply an enhanced view of sense perception but must admit to a lingering hesistancy in accepting all atomic theory and anything that reaches too far beyond the light of empiricism, yet I do try to keep an open mind and am, to this point, open-minded and willing to indlude the metaphisical as well as science into the fold.
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Hume’s claim must be understood within the context of his strict empiricism. He is claiming that he has no idea of the self. His basis for this claim is that he has no sense impression or perception of the self. Why does it follow that he has no idea of the
self? It follows given Hume’s copy principle: every idea must be derived from a sense impression or perception.1 This principle is characteristic of Hume’s radical empiricism, his belief that all knowledge must ultimately derive from the senses and
our mental operations on sense impressions.
Hume’s ideas influenced later ‘scientific’ thinkers, such as Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799) and Ernst Mach (1838-1916). Georg Lichtenberg is a fairly minor figure inwestern philosophy, but he is famous for his challenge to Descartes’ cogito. His challenge to the cogito may be paraphrased as follows:
‘We should not say ‘I think’, but ‘Thinking is going on now’.
1 For the term ‘copy principle’ and more details on Hume’s epistemology, see Don Garrett, Cognition
and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997).
The justification for this dramatic claim could be Hume’s idea that one never does perceive oneself: one just perceives more and more perceptions.
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Even accepting advances in sub-atomic theory, I still see these as more and more in-depth, perceptions of ourselves, assuming these sub-atomic particles ARE "ourselves". The more in-depth we go, these perceptions are more apt to become perceptions of perceptions ... building theory upon theory but increasingly beyond the realm of empiricism.
More later as I attempt to compose a more coherent thought about what I'm trying to say with more research.
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| Aug 16th, 2005 02:46 AM |
| CaptainBubba |
Sadie were you being sarcastic with the previous questions about clones having souls and rights and whatnot?
Like seriously?
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| Aug 15th, 2005 11:16 PM |
| theapportioner |
Look, if you change a few subatomic particles in you you are still human. If you do the same to your neurons it won't make one damn difference to your memories.
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| Aug 15th, 2005 04:40 PM |
| kellychaos |
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Originally Posted by theapportioner
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Originally Posted by kellychaos
How could you know that? I'm not being a smart-ass. Cite please, if you have it.
I.E. What sub-atomic particles would comprise memory of sense-experience? Not a simple download, I imagine.
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Removing a subatomic particle here or there has no impact on memory, just as it wouldn't make a bookshelf any less of one. It's irrelevant, and you've gone too far with reductionism.
The "records of sensory experience" are encoded by the properties of ion channels, synapses, populations of neurons etc., all of which are "physical". If you copy the former you have copied the latter. |
I predict that there will never be an end to how far (sub-sub-sub atomic particles?) they break down atoms and to what practical point anyway?
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| Aug 15th, 2005 04:08 PM |
| sadie |
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Originally Posted by theapportioner
I don't know what a soul is.
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| Aug 15th, 2005 04:02 PM |
| kellychaos |
I guess that's fair since the abilities to do such was assumed in my question, Mr. Schrödinger. 
Would two such people be of a shared "soul", then?
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| Aug 13th, 2005 02:55 PM |
| theapportioner |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by kellychaos
How could you know that? I'm not being a smart-ass. Cite please, if you have it.
I.E. What sub-atomic particles would comprise memory of sense-experience? Not a simple download, I imagine.
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Removing a subatomic particle here or there has no impact on memory, just as it wouldn't make a bookshelf any less of one. It's irrelevant, and you've gone too far with reductionism.
The "records of sensory experience" are encoded by the properties of ion channels, synapses, populations of neurons etc., all of which are "physical". If you copy the former you have copied the latter.
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| Aug 13th, 2005 11:39 AM |
| kellychaos |
Google ... google ... google ... oh, OK  ... nevermind. :/
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| Aug 13th, 2005 11:37 AM |
| kellychaos |
What's a dendrite?
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| Aug 13th, 2005 08:33 AM |
| sadie |
you wanna kill the little angels? >:
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| Aug 13th, 2005 02:25 AM |
| The One and Only... |
Not enough for me to fulfill my love of slaughter.
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| Aug 12th, 2005 08:36 PM |
| Helm |
because oao
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who knows how many angels can dance on the end of a dendrite?
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| Aug 12th, 2005 04:19 PM |
| kellychaos |
How many googles did it take in your attempt to seem intelligent?
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| Aug 11th, 2005 11:29 PM |
| The One and Only... |
Why the fucking gnostic references?
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| Aug 11th, 2005 08:52 PM |
| Helm |
Traitorous demiurge!
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| Aug 11th, 2005 07:16 PM |
| ziggytrix |
mmm, soul 
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| Aug 11th, 2005 07:06 PM |
| sadie |
the demiurge does.
the demiurge does.
the demiurge does 'cause he sprinkles us with soul
to make the world feel good.
:O
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| Aug 11th, 2005 08:23 AM |
| Helm |
The Demiurge does.
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