mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (10/02/85)
[Back to net.philosophy, since religion isn't a topic here] In article <1805@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: > The feeling of blueness >is indeed explainable "mechanically": it is the sensation produced by >blue light (light of specific wavelengths). The fact is that in different >people their network of brain connections may produce a different set of >sensations. This has all sorts of problems, and makes all kinds of dubious assumptions. First of all, the use of the word sensation is quite ambiguous. Do you mean the signals sent to the brain? In that case, the definition will not do, since several brain processes produce "blueness" from inside the brain. Or do you mean the brain state itself? This assumes that blue-state is isolable from other sensations which are also evoked by those wavelengths. The emotional content of color is well known, and easily destinguished on a subjective level from the color itself; but there's no guarantee that this division manifiests itself at a lower level. There's also the problem (again) that these sensations can be stimulated without visual input at all, such as in dreams or recollections. It's possible that Rich's definition may be useful, but it must be demonstrated to be true first. >> Rich, I'm surprised you let Charles get away with this, and have dragged >> the argument out so far. Aside from the name dropping (was that Haldane >> the geneticist, or Haldane the revivalist evangelical?), as long as this >> conversation is going on in net.*philosophy*, as opposed to net.religion >> where it belongs, there is a most powerful argument for the rejection >> of souls, resurrection, and blue cars in parking lots. It is called >> ***Occam's Razor***. For the purposes of fruitful discussion, the >> situation is most certainly not symmetrical at all. Rather, the existence >> of a blue car in the parking lot should be rejected (not denied) barring >> evidence that can be more readily explained by positing such existence. >> I certainly won't *deny* the existence of Odin and Asgard, but I reject >> them as unnecessary to the explanation of the world as it is. It seems >> to me that almost all *logical* religious arguments involve ignoring >> Occam's Razor at some point. Well, in fact Occam's Razor denies BOTH of the statements, as I said before. If I had originally posited the non-existence of the blue car, this introduces an unnecessary complication, without evidence; so the situation is in fact exactly symmetrical. Without evidence, the only correct hypothesis is "we know nothing about what's in the parking lot." Only this statement minimizes the entities. However, on to Rich... >Bra-vo! Yes, I avoided mentioning Occam, but only out of being sick of doing >so only to hear "Oh, yeah, that, so what?" every time. If you truly believed in the applicability of Occam's Razor, you would be an agnostic, not an atheist. Positing the non-existence of God at this point explains nothing, and adds an unnecessary entity. >Bravo again, Jim. Charles can step back and claim that he's not arguing >that resurrection takes place (and thus take in a few people), but obviously >he believes this despite the apparent knowlege he has that he cannot defend >that belief. Apparently even to himself. More importantly, the game of >"anything is possible" is played in another way: assume a desired conclusion >(because anything is possible, but...) and rebuild your axiomatic system to >"make" the conclusion "true". Obviously Rich has run out of arguments again, since he is once again speculating on my mental state. Rich, do you think you could try to argue SOMETHING on its merits just once, instead of dragging in all manner of irrelevant and groundless "facts" about my the other side believes what they do? Such arguing is grossly unscientific, and if your points were strong, you wouldn't need to engage it such obvious attempts to get off the subject. Charley Wingate