151–160 of 184 posts
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Belief that you exist, belief that free will exists, belief that others have consciousness, belief in human rights.
Free will is an illusion
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> First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. Why believe in mainstream science, instead of believing in “creation science”, astrology, crystal woo, whatever? Because there is much stronger evidence for the former than the latter? But what are our standards for judging the strength of evidence? And why should we let those standards have control of our beliefs? Rationality is what gives…
> So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. I partly agree with that. The universe has a specific set of rules humans have observed, on which we base our understanding of it. What…
Part of the problem here, is what exactly does "rational" mean in this context? Gödel never published this argument of his in a paper, only in a letter to his mother–I expect if he had ever decided to publish it, he would have expressed it more precisely. It is difficult to judge the correctness of an argument when it is an open question what exactly key terms in it mean.
> But even if I could concede this rational universe premise, my main objection is the leap of logic to then assert that humans are somehow special, and that our existence wouldn't have a meaning unless we can fulfill some sort of purpose, for which a human lifetime is not sufficient, and therefore, immortality. It's completely absurd.
That "humans are somehow special" seems to be a near-universal belief found in humanity, across time and across cultures; it is only very recently in human history that any significant proportion of people have doubted or denied it, and even today its doubters and deniers are likely a rather small percentage of the total population, especially on a global level. I don't think we should rush to dismiss as "absurd" a belief which is (arguably) a product of human evolution – doing so calls into question the reliability of our evolved belief-forming machinery, but that questioning risks becoming self-refuting, since the belief in evolution is itself a product of that machinery.
> Gödel wraps this in pseudological premises, but it reads to me like he started with the conclusion that God exists, and is trying to arrive to that conclusion with philosophical mumbo jumbo.
Although Gödel did believe in God, I don't think this particular argument of his depends on belief in God in any way. This in itself is just an argument for an afterlife, and it is entirely possible to believe in an afterlife without believing in God–that's the position of many Buddhists, and also the late 19th / early 20th century British philosopher John McTaggart (who is probably most famous for being the mentor of both Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore).
> This is the complete opposite of the scientific method, and is therefore no different than "creation science", and all the other ontological arguments throughout history. I don't see why any _rational_ human being would give it more than the bare minimum of attention it deserves.
The scientific method deals in empirical arguments. This is not an empirical argument, so is outside the scope of the scientific method. There are many questions the scientific method, based on repeatable experiment and observation, cannot answer. For instance, it cannot answer many mathematical questions–Gödel‘s famous incompleteness theorems are not the product of the scientific method, since empirical experiments and observation are incapable of revealing to us the truth of mathematical theorems.
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The most accurate thing we can say is that no one knows what happens to consciousness after death. The evidence we have, like NDEs, doesn't support a continuation of consciousness beyond bodily disintegration.
Is there an amount of concordant eyewitness testimony that should count as evidence? If your answer to that is "no", you're not being reasonable. The courts of most countries would also disagree with you. This even takes into account the fact that "eyewitness testimony is bad"... Like sure, maybe if it's 10, but if it's 100 people all making extremely similar claims? 1000? 10,000? The NDE people often use language li…
To take another example, many people report the experience of waking up with a demon, visible or invisible, sitting on their chest. I've had this experience. Should we accept this eyewitness testimony at face value? Isn't the simpler, more naturalistic explanation of sleep paralysis more fitted to the evidence?
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-you-should-know-abou...
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The most accurate thing we can say is that no one knows what happens to consciousness after death. The evidence we have, like NDEs, doesn't support a continuation of consciousness beyond bodily disintegration.
If this was not actually the case, would you necessarily be able to know? If so, can you describe the novel, literally foolproof epistemic methodology you are using?
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If this was not actually the case, would you necessarily be able to know? If so, can you describe the novel, literally foolproof epistemic methodology you are using?
I'm saying that we don't know and should withhold our belief one way or the other until there is sufficient evidence to help us tell the difference.
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I'm saying that we don't know and should withhold our belief one way or the other until there is sufficient evidence to help us tell the difference.
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Is there an amount of concordant eyewitness testimony that should count as evidence? If your answer to that is "no", you're not being reasonable. The courts of most countries would also disagree with you. This even takes into account the fact that "eyewitness testimony is bad"... Like sure, maybe if it's 10, but if it's 100 people all making extremely similar claims? 1000? 10,000? The NDE people often use language li…
I don't dispute that people have NDEs and that they sincerely believe what they say. The problem is that that kind of evidence cannot in principle support the continuity of consciousness after bodily disintegration because 1) the body is still intact and 2) they don't test the difference between experiences near death and those after death. There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during…
Regarding brain activity or lack thereof during an NDE, here's a perspective:
https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf...
“In cardiac arrest, even neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical basis for coordination of neural activity between widely separated brain regions, are rapidly abolished (Kelly et al., 2007). Moreover, cells in the hippocampus, the region thought to be essential for memory formation, are especially vulnerable to the effects of anoxia (Vriens et al., 1996). In short, it is not credible to suppose that NDEs occurring under conditions of general anesthesia, let alone cardiac arrest, can be accounted for in terms of some hypothetical residual capacity of the brain to process and store complex information under those conditions.”
“Michael Sabom, MD, a cardiologist in Atlanta, Georgia, monitored the brain waves of his patients using an electroencephalograph (EEG) and was able to show that some who had reported NDEs had been clinically dead, meaning they registered no electrical activity in their brain.”
Most NDE's are associated with heart stoppages. And in fact, NDE's started to begin to be reported more after working resuscitation techniques became more fleshed-out.
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I don't dispute that people have NDEs and that they sincerely believe what they say. The problem is that that kind of evidence cannot in principle support the continuity of consciousness after bodily disintegration because 1) the body is still intact and 2) they don't test the difference between experiences near death and those after death. There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during…
I do believe most demon experiences are sleep paralysis. (I can't assert that all of them are, no more than I can assert with certainty without existing in every female body ever that reports of "female ejaculation" are just urine.) Regarding brain activity or lack thereof during an NDE, here's a perspective: https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf... “In cardiac arrest, even neuronal action-pote…
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I'm saying that we don't know and should withhold our belief one way or the other until there is sufficient evidence to help us tell the difference.
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I realize it's not your intent to troll, but that is the effect you've been having, and we have to moderate by effects, not intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....