You know, I really, really hate the way quacks abuse molecular biology. I know, I know. I've said it before, but certain quacks have a way of willfully misunderstanding the latest advances in genomics, molecular biology, and biology in general. Of course, this isn't limited to just medicine, unfortunately. After all, we have Deepak Chopra and his quantum woo, which abuses physics and quantum theory in the name of "proving" mind-body dualism, a bastardized version of "intelligent design" creationism that is based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christianity, and, of course, a "conscious universe."
If there's one thing that the quack world is all about, it's control. It's not just control, though, in the sense of taking control of your health in a rational way. Rather, all too often it's a fantasy world, an infantile wish-fulfillment, in which wishing, if we are to believe some quacks, literally makes it so. What is The Secret, after all, but the very embodiment of this concept, in which, if you think the right thoughts and want something bad enough, somehow the universe will magically grant you what you want? This mindset is embodied in the teachings of various quacks who either imply or state outright that if you just eat the right foods and take the right supplements you will be not just healthy but virtually impervious to disease. This is not a straw man argument. How many times have I shown examples of, for example, antivaccinationists like Bill Maher claiming that disease is not due so much to microbes but to the "terrain" of the body. The not-so-subtle implication is that the reason one gets sick is because of one's habits. Of course, there are a lot of lifestyle diseases, but the implications goes beyond the sensible, science-based observation that obesity and lack of exercise increase the risk of certain diseases, into the realm of stating that if you just eat the right foods and do the right exercises you'll never get sick.
Utter nonsense, of course.
There's also a dark side to this sort of thinking, and that's the flip side of the argument. If you can nearly completely control the state of your health by what you eat and do, the not-so-subtle implication is that if you get sick it must be your fault. After all, if we have complete control over our health through our lifestyle, then it follows that if you're sick, you must be doing something wrong.
The latest way that quacks are trying to push the idea that you have near total control over your health is by abusing new findings in epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or phenotype that are not caused by changes in the underlying gene sequence. Mechanisms by which epigenetics can influence gene expression include chemically modifying DNA in a reversible fashion, such as through methylation, which usually silences gene expression. Modifications of histones, which are the proteins around which DNA is wrapped, can also alter gene expression. It's a fascinating area of research, because it suggests that gene expression can be altered longer than transiently by environmental influences. Of course, given that organisms and biology are affected by environmental influences, this is almost a trivial observation; the power of epigenetics is that it can explain how such changes in gene expression can come about.
You can probably see why quacks have seized on epigenetics so eagerly. If there's one thing quacks hate, it's genetics. The reason, of course, is that they view genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion, constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics in which genes are destiny. Epigenetics frees them from that, because they can now use it as a near-magical talisman to invoke as an alleged mechanism by which one's activities can permanently alter one's gene expression. I just saw a doozy of an example yesterday on--where else?--Joe Mercola's website. It's an article entitled Falling for This Myth Could Give You Cancer. In a sidebar, Mercola gleefully exclaims:
Science has shattered the Central Dogma of molecular biology, proving that determinism--the belief that your genes control your health--is false. You actually have a tremendous amount of control over how your genetic traits are expressed, by changing your thoughts and altering your diet and your environment.
Uh, no. The Central Dogma hasn't been "shattered." It's simply been modified and clarified, just as Newtonian physics was expanded by Einstein's Theory of Relativity, such that, at speeds much less than the speed of light, relativistic calculations and Newtonian calculations produces answers that are so close as to be indistinguishable. In any case, the Central Dogma, as you might recall, is the concept that DNA encodes RNA, which encodes proteins, which then lead to biological activity and control of phenotype. In essence, it's about the flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein, with part of the dogma being that information does not flow backwards in that progression. Not surprisingly, I've never liked that name ("Central Dogma"), as I don't like the idea of calling anything in science a "dogma," but that's the name it got, and somehow it stuck. Never mind that there have been multiple modifications over the years. for instance, it turns out that it is possible to go back to DNA from RNA and that RNA can make copies of itself.
Then there came epigenetics. Of course, to hear quacks like Mercola talk, you'd think that DNA no longer encodes RNA, which no longer encodes protein. That's nonsense, of course. that part of the central dogma never changed. Be that as it may, much of the abuse of epigenetics is very much Secret-like wish fulfillment. For example, take a look at this excerpt from Mercola's article:
The ramification of buying into the central dogma is that it leads to belief in absolute determinism, which leaves you utterly powerless to do anything about the health of your body; it's all driven by your genetic code, which you were born with.
However, scientists have completely shattered this dogma and proven it false. You actually have a tremendous amount of control over how your genetic traits are expressed--from how you think to what you eat and the environment you live in.
You may recall the Human Genome Project, which was launched in 1990 and completed in 2003. The mission was to map out all human genes and their interactions, which would than serve as the basis for curing virtually any disease. Alas, not only did they realize the human body consists of far fewer genes than previously believed, they also discovered that these genes do not operate as previously predicted.
Yes, this is pure Secret-like wish fulfillment. Mercola totally buys into the idea that emotions can change epigenetics to the point where your emotional makeup can alter your gene expression. In a way, this is a rather trivial observation. Of course, if you'll probably change gene expression in parts of your brain because becoming angry or upset for example, raises blood pressure and produces a host of other physiological effects. Where Mercola and his fellow woo-meisters go off the rails on this crazy train is when they imply that you can control epigenetic processes with your thoughts and emotions. This is where Mercola's attacking the Central Dogma as a "myth" that can "give you cancer."
He begins by first completely misunderstanding the difference between quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics. A passage like this could have been penned by the master of quantum woo himself, Deepak Chopra:
Science has indeed taken us far beyond Newtonian physics, which says you live in a mechanical universe. According to this belief, your body is just a biological machine, so by modifying the parts of the machine, you can modify your health. Also, as a biological machine, your body is thought to respond to physical "things" like the active chemicals in drugs, and by adjusting the drugs that modify your machinery, doctors can modify and control health. However, with the advent of quantum physics, scientists have realized the flaws in Newtonian physics, as quantum physics shows us that the invisible, immaterial realm is actually far more important than the material realm. In fact, your thoughts may shape your environment far more than physical matter!
Uh, no. Not quite. No, not by a long shot. I'd like to see Mercola shape his environment with his thoughts. Of course, he could be talking about the trivial idea that how your thoughts are you and how you act, which of course will affect your environment. But the quantum woo that Mercola is talking about goes far beyond that:
The major problem with believing the myth that your genes control your life is that you become a victim of your heredity. Since you can't change your genes, it essentially means that your life is predetermined, and therefore you have very little control over your health. With any luck, modern medicine will find the gene responsible and be able to alter it, or devise some other form of drug to modify your body's chemistry, but aside from that, you're out of luck... The new science, however, reveals that your perceptions control your biology, and this places you in the driver's seat, because if you can change your perceptions, you can shape and direct your own genetic readout.
If this isn't magical thinking, I don't know what is. First of all, it's a straw man to claim that genes are destiny. Genes affect probabilities, but it's been known for many decades that other factors are important. Ever hear of the word "penetrance"? It's a very old word in genetics. It's simply a measure of what proportion of a population carrying a given allele of a gene will show the phenotype (trait) associated with that allele. It's been known for a very long time that not all genes have 100% penetrance. In fact, most don't. Epigenetics is nothing more than a new mechanism that can modulate a gene's penetrance.
In any case, Mercola seems to think that we can somehow magically change our DNA through epigenetic mechanisms just by thinking about it:
So the good news is that you are in control of your genes ... You can alter them on a regular basis, depending on the foods you eat, the air you breathe, and the thoughts you think. It's your environment and lifestyle that dictates your tendency to express disease, and this new realization is set to make major waves in the future of disease prevention -- including one day educating people on how to fight disease at the epigenetic level. When a disease occurs, the solution, according to epigenetic therapy, is simply to "remind" your affected cells (change its environmental instructions) of its healthy function, so they can go back to being normal cells instead of diseased cells.
And:
You can also turn your genes off and on with your emotions too. Many, if not most people carry emotional scars; traumas that can adversely affect health. Using techniques like energy psychology, you can go in and correct the trauma and help regulate your genetic expression. My favorite technique for this is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), but there are many others. Choose whichever one appeals to you, and if you don't sense any benefits, try another, until you find what works best for you.
Please, remember that 'You CAN Take Control of Your Health.'
Of course you can take control of your health, but you don't need to believe in The Secret (which, let's face it, is all that this sort of stuff is) to do so. You also have to realize that there are limits. If you have, for instance, familial hypercholesterolemia, you are still highly likely to develop heart disease at a young age no matter what you do, but you can make it as late as possible by living a healthy lifestyle, eating a healthy diet, and exercising. If you're a woman who carries a cancer-predisposing BRCA1 mutation, you're still going to have an incredibly high chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer no matter what you do. In that case, taking control of your health would likely involve a combination prophylactic surgery to remove your breasts and ovaries, taking an antiestrogen drug like Tamoxifen to decrease your risk of breast cancer, or following a very close screening program so that you can intervene as soon as there is an abnormality worrisome for cancer. You cannot magically exercise, eat, or think your way out of the risk, no matter how hard you wish for it.
Mercola's article is yet another supreme confirmation that magical thinking is at the heart of so much alternative medicine. No one argues that it's not a good thing to improve one's diet, to exercise, to avoid harmful substances. That's a no-brainer, and science can give us the parameters for what is harmful and what is not. Even if it is true that emotions change gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, it does not follow from that that we can actually control our gene expression in a way meaningful enough to make a difference in health. As someone once said about Deepak Chopra when he made similar claims, I'd like to see Mercola or Lipton alter their gene methylation just by thinking about it.
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Narad, every time a new atheist says that to me all I can think of is, "If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centreâpreferably to Iceland."
http://www.huxley.net/bnw/six.html
Aldous was the best of the Huxley family.
Some people voluntarily stop being in the perpetual jr. high that blog atheists seem to like to inhabit. You're 12.
I've got huge amounts of material on these topics from researching blog posts over the years, lots of it from print sources. Unfortunately I don't usually use things that are unavailable online in blog brawls as even the most well known scholarly sources are dismissed by the callow boys of the blogs.
RB, the two limericks on you I've come up with so far would probably be caught up in moderation so I won't bother.
The fungibility of the components seems to be essential to the performance. Sort of like The Banana Man.
Denise, as I am responding to about a dozen different atheists (assuming some aren't sock puppets) I've let go quite a few of the side tracks they brought up. I don't think you'd like what I could say about the status of psychology so I will try to avoid going there. I pretty much agree with what Feynman pointed out in his famous "Cargo Cult Science" speech.
"It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination."
Aldous Huxley was a genius, anticipating the blog culture of the new atheism by about seven decades.
The Banana Man
No idea what that is and what it has to do with the topic but it makes me wonder, "In comparison with that model of new atheist logic? That member in good standing of the sci-ranger community, Raging Bee"? Well, s/he's your problem, not mine.
Narad, you're also being infantile enough for your ideology. In case there was any question.
You still don't understand that was a parody of your arguments intended to make their incoherence obvious even to you? Good grief.
Krebiozen, if I had a dollar for every disingenuous pretense that a blog atheist made of parody to cover their saying something stupid I'd be able to buy a really nice computer. You don't know your parody from your pancreas.
Not only is RB not "my" problem, I have no "problem" at all in that quarter. I'm afraid your personal irritation is not a transcendent, objectively real lump of immaterial "belongingness" that must "go somewhere."
Tell me what "my ideology" is, Anthony. I'm dying to finally know.
If a true statement encourages immoral behavior, that doesn't change its truth value.
So far, I've seen no epistemological reason to reject monism/materialism. I've seen no successfully, scientifically tested god hypothesis, therefore I default to atheism as a lack of belief.
Of course, my change to those positions has had no impact on my moral reasoning, or at least none that I can discern. That's because, like many here, my morality is pretty much independent of the circumstance of monism versus dualism or theism versus atheism.
I find it difficult to believe you really think that when I inadvertently write something stupid I follow it with, "That's nonsense, isn't it?"
Oh, Anthony, I am trying so hard to like you. I really am.
So here goes:
Why don't you -briefly- set down your belief system regarding the existence of g-d, your political/ philosophical stance and how science plugs into the equation. I think that I could do this about my own beliefs in about 200- 300 words.
You seem to like literature! That's something we have in common. You didn't answer my query about Waugh, though. Neither here nor there.
At any rate, don't you at least feel a grain of sympathy for us- miserably lost creatures as we drift ever aimlessly and most likely, g-dlessly through the cold, dark and unfeeling cosmos: like that unfortunate bird in the Anglo-Saxon poem- flying from the dark, freezing night storm and all-too-briefly experiencing the respite of fireside warmth, light and lively converse of humans as it flies thorough the inn before it returns to dark, cold endlessness again?
Says what to you? That you comport yourself as a blazing narcissist? If it's that, the opinion doesn't seem to be limited to your chosen label-in-substitute-of-personhood.
I'm surprised you're not concerned about this warning sign of turning into a clockwork.
How did Island treat you?
I see that your talents at insult are commensurate with all of the others that you have decided, for what remains an entirely unexplained (although hardly indiscernible) reason, to charmlessly put on display here in the fashion of an aggressive panhandler pretending to sell poetry.
I find it difficult to believe you really think that when I inadvertently write something stupid I follow it with, "That's nonsense, isn't it?"
What was nonsense is thinking I'd come up with such a stupid instance of double incoherence, as I pointed out to you. Your comment was so incompetently framed that it couldn't even have been wrong. If you thought you were parodying me you must have mixed me up with Raging Bee or Rev. blah, blah. Though there are several others here who might have come up with something as stupid as you did.
Evelyn Waugh. I don't know how anyone could possibly think a gay, socialist, leveler would find anything of value in Evelyn Waugh. If I was still a Catholic I'd agree with one of my friends who told me a few months ago that he'd never take the sacraments except from one of the illicitly ordained women priests or from a male priest who recognized their ordination. But I haven't been a Catholic since I was a teenager. I know that dear, departed, John Mortimer, somehow, could take writing a screenplay out of him but I really don't know how he could stand it.
Narad, ... No, forget it. You don't want to know.
@ Anthony:
But didn't Waugh assert that life without g-d is meaningless and intolerable?
He also wasn't exactly thrilled with the moderns.
There you have it: AMC Gremlin loves his stereotyping so much, he gets angry when we don't jump to conclusions based on the stereotype he's announced he belongs to.
Oh, Anthony. You still fail to comprehend, among the other direct falsifications of your assignations, that indifference precludes desire. Simple, repeated incompetence when the script is deviated from speaks for itself.
Denice, lots of people have said things about life without God. Waugh's life was pretty meaningless and intollerable with God. Try Marilynne Robinson, the best writer in the English language of the past century.
All I pointed out is that materialism hadn't come up with a real framework that could sustain free will, inherent rights, justice, morality and any number of other essential prerequisites for democracy and a tolerable politics. Any materialist who wants to try should, though they'd better be prepared for their work to get rejected by atheists who would use their usual methods of rejecting them. I've had arguments with atheist who rejected several of those for no better reason than that they implied the existence of a God. Several of whom believed themselves to be liberals. Liberals who don't believe in free will, etc. are just liberalish libertarians.
Antaeus Feldpar, count the number of citations by commentator on this blog and show someone who has provided more than I have. Many of those from atheists, I'll point out. I could have provided two for every sentence I wrote and the new atheist claim would have been that it was inadequate.
Yet you persist in claiming that materialism is faulty because, you claim, it leads to immoral behavior. To me that seems just as nonsensical and illogical a non sequitur as my "stupid instance of double incoherence". That was my point.
1. In my experience, "free will" as many people describe it, ends up contradicting itself or contradicting everyday experience. Materialism is a red herring in that issue, as far as I'm concerned. Why is it necessary to even bring up materialism on the issue of free will?
2. Materialism has nothing to do with rights, justice, or morality. Materialist epistemology is about fact. Moral philosophy is about ought. It's a huge category error on your part. You might as well be complaining that induction or mathematics don't provide moral principles. Morality is about goals, and science only informs morality about effective strategy and means towards those goals. How would your straw skepticism "debunk" the notion that we should help each other?
3. The alleged consequences have nothing to do with the truth value of materialism. Truth isn't governed by Anthony McCarthy's wishful thinking. It's a fallacious appeal to the consequences of belief.
Yet you persist in claiming that materialism is faulty because, you claim, it leads to immoral behavior.
Kreibiozen, materialism is faulty because it can't produce any moral positions, it can't produce any metaphysical positions. Of course materialists hold scads of metaphysical positions, they just don't admit to them but that's a different matter.
I'm wondering why you're not worked up over Dawkins, Coyne and other materialists who either claim morality is purely imaginary or that it has no real existence. Atheists, just about all of whom are materialists, have said things in that direction that from the earliest records of materialism.
Why is it necessary to even bring up materialism on the issue of free will? Bronze Dog
Why don't you ask Jerry Coyne who was the one who forced the issue for me. Though just about everyone on the usual list of atheist heroes could stand in for him. But anyone with any ability to analyze the ideas would know that materialism comes with an enormous problem for free will because materialism is inevitably reductive and deterministic.
I'm always interested in just how unaware atheists are about their ideology and what the results of those ideas are.
The silence is over on those issues. The real left owes nothing to an ideology that is incompatible with the metaphysical bases of liberalism and democracy.
@ Anthony:
I brought up Waugh because of his religiosity - so it's entirely possible that while you might agree with him on g-d's existence, you'd heartily disagree with him on many other issues AND
while you might disagree with my atheism, you might simultaneously not look askance at my politics (liberal/ socialism) and positions on women's and gay rights.
Now, this might sound absolutely preposterous to you, but psychology is a means toward egalitarian goals by assisting people via education and therapy- so they have a more level playing field and more choices in how they live their lives.
"Produce"? Now the hydraulic metaphor has been extended to an assembly line? This is nothing but a restatement of the assertion that morality requires metaphysics with the failure to define the relata or understand that wailing about free will undermines your position.
This, like all the pretentious drivel you post, is 100%, no-money-back, spun-glass bullshit. Your flaming strawman of "determinism" that's creating the smokescreen you think you're hiding behind? Yeah, that is an ex-hypothesis, it has joined the choir invisible...I'm sure the regulars can fill in the rest. Since you are too blindly, bone-headedly ignorant to know that, and since you absolutely refuse to answer my question as to where in the hell you've been for the last 85 years (bwak, bwak, bwak!), I'll simply talk to the bystanders.
The "Radical Determinism" that has Anthony quivering in his boots is the Newtonian Clockwork Universe so in vogue 200 and 300 years ago. Laplace hypothesized that if a sufficiently powerful mind (such as Anthony's "god") could determine the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe at any one time, it could determine everything else that would happen in the future.
This was always recognized to be impractical. Gibbs and Boltzmann proved that it could never be practical. What they didn't realize, was that that powerful mind couldn't know the exact positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe because those two quantities, in particular, do not commuteâif you know the position exactly, then you know just exactly nothing about the velocity, and vice-versa.
Many people, such as Einstein, wanted to continue thinking that these Uncertainty Relations were just technological limitations, that even though you couldn't determine the momentum, say, of a particle, it had a definite momentum at any given moment in time. It turns out that is not true. These quantities have no definite value until we measure them. Von Neumann's 1934 "proof" of this, that there can be no "hidden variables", was wrongânot just wrong, but idioticâbut never mind that, John Bell determined in 1964 what we would see if hidden variables existed and what we would see if they didn't. Experiment has shown that Bell's Inequalities hold. Hidden variables do not exist. The universe is not deterministic, it is Radically indeterministic!
Science has proven thisâthe hardest, most "materialistic" science of them all, at that! Suck on that, you insufferable, pretentious, ignorant, lying, asshole!
1. You're talking to someone who thinks most free will concepts have enormous problems with themselves and everyday experience long before materialism has a chance to get involved. Give me a coherent, testable definition of free will, and then I'll be able to tell you if materialism is still relevant. Where I'm standing, you're doing the equivalent of homeopaths claiming that chemistry is wrong because it contradicts homeopathy. But they haven't proven homeopathy even works.
2. What's wrong with reducing things to simpler parts in order to understand them? Just because scientific discoveries about neurology don't agree with your ideas on how you want the universe to run, that doesn't mean the universe is wrong. What viable alternative do we have to reductionism?
3. There's still room for a probabilistic basis at the quantum level from my understanding, but you probably don't like that any more than determinism. What viable alternatives are there?
What metaphysical bases are you asserting? I support liberalism and democracy out of a secular humanist philosophy, not out of your straw idea of materialism. You've jumped is/ought categories, again, by the way.
Denice Walter, I don't see any way for liberalism to avoid the problems of people like Dawkins and Coyne and, indeed, anyone who denies the reality of free will, inherent rights, etc. I've watched liberalism in the United States go from the 1950s and early 1960s when the dominant voices were religious, many of them ordained ministers and, hard to believe it now, priests. I saw that kind of liberalism succeed against enormous odds and resistance to overturn American apartheid and to create the anti-war movement. Then it started giving way to anti-religious figures who were ineffective and, in many cases, actively turned off more people than they attracted to the left. Now I see a hollowed out left, which can't assert power and is reduced to making hollow, self-defeating threats against what passes as the party on the left.
I look at why liberalism is dying in the united states and I see how many alleged liberals have given up on the most basic ideas of liberalism which are metaphysical in favor of a clap trap scientism that isn't that leads to something not that much different from the right. I don't think liberalism will ever be revived until it really believes in those metaphysical beliefs, it will remain an impotent and dying force.
The most liberal places I've been recently are in a United Church of Christ congregation and among other religious groups. No one began by mocking the great masses of people, no one believed that people are merely meat automatons or lumbering robots, they believed that people are endowed with free will, inherent rights and an immortal soul. The difference between being among those people and being on the more prominent blogs of the left couldn't be more marked and it wasn't to the benefit of the blogs of the left which are typically snobbish, classist, mired in anti-religious hate talk, ignorant and uninterested in doing anything. As I've pointed out I could walk into the UCC minister's office with another man and ask to be married and the only question would be if the church was available. I could, conceivably, ask Bishop Gene Robinson to marry us and if he wasn't available I could ask him who married him and his husband. I've attended a wedding at a Quaker meeting. I haven't inquired if I could get a WomanPriest to conduct a gay marriage in the group one state over, there not being enough WomanPriests to go around yet.
Given your performance here, something tells me that a pastor might have a few pertinent questions for the other man.
Give me a coherent, testable definition of free will, Bronze Dog
Free will is the free and so non-determined action of human beings which renders us able to decide things and since it is not the product of determinism it can't be tested. If it could be tested it would not be non-determined and so it would not be free. Tell me what test there is for the proposal that only those things which exist in a network of causality exist. What test is there that demonstrates that all things that really exist are subject to testability? If you want I'm certain I can come up with several other nontestable assumptions your challenge contains. I can also challenge your untestable, reductionist assumptions that way. Not that I expect it will make the slightest dent in your scientism.
I've pointed out the problems of materialism both in theory and as demonstrated in the history of materialist governments over and over in this thread. Thank you for demonstrating the new atheist practice of insisting on an ever and never to be met higher level of evidence for things they don't like. I think it's sometimes called "moving the goalposts", for people who say things like that.
Of course, if the idea that we are lumbering robots and meat automatons is correct your idea and assertions against free will are only the result of your programming and it has nothing to do with the objective universe because your program is for survival and reproduction and not designed to produce objective information about the universe so you are as deluded as I am on every one of these questions. Materialists being able to carve out an exception for their ideology, granting it an unadmitted transcendence that they deny to all other ideas, is a ubiquitous practice. You're not going to get away with that anymore. Materialists are no more willing to submit themselves to their ideology than eugenicists were to sterilize themselves or, in the worst cases, to allow members of their families to die. You might want to read, by the way, about the eugenics of W.D. Hamilton, one of Dawkins' great inspirations, due to his entirely untested and untestable ideas disposing of the idea of altruism. And when I say entirely untestable, I mean as untestable as Dawkins' own famous "first bird in the flock to call out" speculation. Not that I've encountered new atheists who are bothered by such speculations made in line with their ideology by their heroes.
Narad, don't imagine I'm so hard up that I'd consider a proposal from you. Being single is better than being bored. And there is nothing more boring than a conceited materialist.
In other news, radioactive decay cannot be "tested."
(And no, Anthony, you are still wholly unable to demonstrate that I am a "materialist.")
Narad, what evidence do you have that only things which are testable with science exist? Put up.
If it can't be tested, how can anyone know that it exists? If it's inherently unknowable, what impact could free will possibly have on me? To be unknowable and untestable, that would require that it either have no observable effects or that it be inherently random.
I'm not saying the universe is only limited to the things we know. I haven't seen anyone, anywhere assert that. I don't see any pragmatic reason to devise a test for a negative claim that no one is advocating.
1. Straw Man Fallacy. I don't advocate "materialist government," I advocate secular government.
2. What are these "materialist governments?" I fail to see how materialism can even be a basis for a government. Do we talk about gravity-based governments? Do we talk about mathematics-based governments? You're once again making a category error.
3. The governments you pointed out were authoritarian governments, and failed as societies because they were authoritarian. They were immoral because they were authoritarian. Theocracies tend to act similarly because they're authoritarian. Any assertions they may have had of materialism or dualism are utter red herrings. I see no plausible connection between materialism or dualism with the alleged consequences you describe. What's so hard to understand about that?
Or do you mean to imply that authoritarianism is irrelevant to a nation's prosperity and/or morality?
It sounds like you're trying to use logic to undermine the use of logic. If neurology is wrong, you're free to try to falsify it with empirical data. Empiricism is all about testing the predictions of hypotheses and theories against the objective nature of the universe.
There's also a pragmatic value in having an ability to make accurate predictions, which gives it survival value. Or do you mean to suggest that we only succeed in our scientific predictions because of dumb luck?
Are you trying to argue that we can't scientifically test the effectiveness of science?
Are you saying that Dawkins didn't offer an evolutionary explanation of the origin of altruism? Or are you saying that altruism has no evolutionary advantage at all? Or are you saying that it's impossible to measure the results of altruist behaviors? It's really hard to follow when you flail about like that.
I don't know how anyone could possibly think a gay, socialist, leveler would find anything of value in Evelyn Waugh.
That would be like an atheist finding anything of value in the symphonies or paintings or books of a Christian composer or artist or author! Absurd!
If it can't be tested, how can anyone know that it exists? If it's inherently unknowable, what impact could free will possibly have on me? To be unknowable and untestable, that would require that it either have no observable effects or that it be inherently random. Bronze Dog
As I asked, how can you test the idea that only those things which are testable exist? Free will is an aspect of consciousness, consciousness remains "the hard problem" and I will predict that it always will be harder than the ability of science to deal with because I believe it is insusceptible to scientific analysis. You want to be without consciousness, I guess that's for you to decide.
Reality isn't dependent on what we find to be pragmatically advantageous at any time.
The differences between people who assume free will exists and that it has standing as a moral assumption and those who don't is a rather profound difference. That difference is far more real than any ideas about it.
To be continued.
herr doktor, so, what do you find of use in the "End Times" books?
Haven't come across them. Are they well-written? Do you recommend them?
Are you saying that Dawkins didn't offer an evolutionary explanation of the origin of altruism? Bronze Dog
No,he didn't. He skirted the problem of explaining how unselfish behavior could be reconciled with natural selection by turning it into indirect selfishness on behalf of genes, of making unselfishness, selfishness which is what natural selection would have predicted. And not without resorting to evidence free story telling, such as the "first bird to call out" scenario which, practically, could never be tested and which could have far more plausible explanations based in the first bird to call out having been the first to sense danger, differences in eye sight or hearing and a host of other, simpler and more plausible explainations. I doubt he could ever establish that there was more of a chance that the "first bird to call out" would be more likely to be killed. Nevermind there being no demonstrable "first bird in the flock to call out" gene complex to be inherited by the presumed other members of the flock. For all Dawkins knows the first bird in the flock could be the only bird in the flock to carry the relevant genes (if such exist). In real life, in some species such as black birds in North America, different species flock together. Including cowbirds which would be hardly advantageous for other birds to so help.
For all anyone knows natural selection has nothing to do with unselfish behavior and any "explanation" that comes up with a story about it is, actually, a distortion.
Thanks for getting us back to those who "view genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion, constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics in which genes are destiny," and so the first comment I made here at 16.
It might help if you first showed how you came to the conlusion that I made any such assertion.
If it's untestable, what's the impact on my life? If you define it as untestable, you're defining it as having no impact or as being unpredictable, or in other words, random.
Consciousness is steadily being worked on, and new insights keep coming in. We might never get all the tiny nuances, but we're still making progress. Scientists don't give up just because it's hard.
I'm a conscious person. Consciousness is quite real. The evidence so far tells me it's an emergent phenomenon from my material brain. And where the hell did you get the idea that I didn't want consciousness? If I didn't have consciousness, how could I even "want" anything? You're contradicting yourself, there.
So, something with no explanatory power and no predictive value is supposed to change my decision-making process?
Functionally, I don't see how belief in your definition of free will would have any impact on how I make decisions. What's this profound difference you assert?
But Andy, you've demonstrated that your personal opinion is valueless - you have shown that you know nothing about neuroscience, cognition, or really any field of biology. You're offering a worthless opinion informed by nothing except your inability to understand science.
This is shown by your response to Bronze Dog:
This is epistimelogically incoherent dribble. Untestable things have no effect on us by definition - if they did, they would be testable.
I used to think you just liked arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm beginning to see that much of your posting is derived from an inability to think clearly through what are, after all, fairly basic problems of philosophy and science.
Oh, and you're a liar. After all, you claimed I was an atheist. Since I haven't mentioned my religious proclivities (look it up, Andy, I know long words are hard for you), you cannot know one way or the other.
Therefore you lied.
You see how easy it is to demonstrate that you're both a liar and a sloppy thinker?
Just repeating that for emphasis.
Also, what's the difference between something that has no observable effects and something that doesn't exist?
If it has no effects, it might as well not exist. Something with no effects would be filed under the category of "useless trivia" and the question becomes one of why you're obsessed with it.
I would aver that this is "barking up the wrong squirrel," to invoke someone who is starting to look competitive.
"Existence" is undefined in the construction aside from a vague yet inexorable force of obedience.
I seem to have missed a lively discussion while I was away. I skimmed through the new posts but if some of what I write have been dealt with already, my apologies and please just refer to the post in question.
The way I see it, the materialists have offered several different mechanisms for human behavior and how that would lead to atruism and morals. Obviously you don't agree on their ideas or their conclusions, but sofar haven't offered any proof that they wouldn't work, other than your opinion and a few quotations supporting your point of view. One might argue, like you did in a later post about proving free will, that as they are immaterial, they are untestable by science.
However, if they are both untestable positions, which do explain the same phenomena, what other basis than belief can there be to judge between them? Which one - explaining the same observable (if not reductible to numbers and unbreakable scientific laws) phenomena - fits better into our view of the world. As an atheist, I'm naturally drawn towards an explanation that doesn't require me to draw power from and believe in something I don't believe exists. You are more drawn to that conclusion, but why? Because it doesn't require you to believe in basic human decency? Or because it doesn't require you to undermine your belief in a divinity? Because if you believed that it's random, it would mean others could believe the same but not live up to it. Or because of something completely different?
I meant by "mental efforts" is by rational thinking and logic, as well as emotions (which are part of the human consciousness after all).
I'm able to go to another coutry and even if I think they aren't "good" manners, be able to follow their customs and table manners to the letter if needs be. In this case, I can rationally explain to myself why I don't pick up a piece of bread with my left hand, or won't stick my chopsticks to stand in my cup, or why I will loudly spit all the bones, pits and shell pieces wantonly about the table cloth or on the floor. Eventually, with enough repetition and immersing myself in the cultures I can also start to understand why and come to similar conclusions. Why couldn't I do the same with morality? Why couldn't a human come to appreciate universal morals and human rights purely from the position of rationality, emotions and empathy?
So you argue that atheists possess the same concepts, but cannot enforce them properly, or as properly as a god-feathing person could?
So it's matter of dosage? Atheists have it watered down?
Personal convictions are difficult to measure (only way I can think of is how far is one willing to go and in what direction in the name of such convictions. A test to find that extent usually wouldn't pass the ethics board. This measure also seems to fare better with historical atheists than historical religious folk)., and just based on what others have written about the subject it is impossible to measure the personal convictions of another (or even the author, for that matter).
I think you also admitted that there isn't a purely materialistic person out there, at least not en masse enough to justify your pessimistic future expectations for atheist societies.
Okay, a follow up question then. If an atheist can understand another human being's feelings, why can't he/she express that understanding in actions, that is, act morally?
Also, internet forums have a tendency to bring make people express themselves in a more in-your-face attitude, regardless of personal beliefs. I wouldn't make assumptions about any group solely based on what individual posters say about, for or against any subject. And I've also met very (seeminly) friendly and (seemingly) moral and (seemingly) well behaved atheists in the Tubes.
Fair enough. So atheists can be moral and in fact are by "default", unless they are not turned immoral by other ideologies. What there may or may not be in evo-psy or Nietzsche or any other ideology/philosophy/doctrine to degrade a person like that I leave to others.
Well, you did refer to teachings of Jesus Christ especially and Christianity in general earlier (way earlier) in this discussion, as basis for good moral values.
What I wanted to know is do you believe that even if you are religious, there is any basis in religion except as personal interpretations (which can and usually are adjusted by authority figures explaining the parables and other issues) for one's moral values? Because if it is a personal interpretation, it is a mental construct not unlike what an atheist could construct. On only difference then being the sources for said values. Arguably, "bad" values can help people do bad things, like segregate people based on sex or race or beliefs, kill evildoers like witches, infidels or whatever it could be that atheist regimes of the future will kill in the name of atheism.
I do agree with you that Jewish law (at least my moderately lenient interpretation of it, like eye for an eye meaning that punishment shouldn't exceed the crime) has value. Concepts and values it holds are effective and (for the major parts at least) reasonable even to an atheist like me. As an atheist I personally think religious moral systems are human constructs, and seperateble from the human construct of religion, and therefore appliable to atheists as well (with certain changeS and limitations, like the one god and no idolatry-bits).
So unless contradicted by individuals own actions, you assume they are moral beings? Regardless of professed religious or ideological beliefs? Or does belief in (solely) material universe automaticly reduce one's conscience or one's ability to act upon it?
So, there isn't much except personal conviction in oneself being right, there isn't anything that is solely religious? So an atheist could do pretty much the same?
So somehow, without going into details, all atheists somehow fall from grace? Are they more prone to self-rationalizing exceptions to the rule, or is just the lack of absolutely certainty in being right and in the side of all-powerful being enough to make one's convictions falter?
-Anthony McCarhy, post 659
--Ibid.
Then some quick snap quotes from other posts.
Well, that might have been bad form on the part of the atheists in question. Or a misunderstanding. As an atheist, I wouldn't reject a moral system because it implies the existence of a God. I would reject the implication that the moral system requires the existence of a God.
It has been pointed out before, but the belief that humans are meat-automatons while acknowledging human history and the present society in all it's varieties isn't the same as taking away free will. The way I see it, (and the point I think has been pointed out before in this forum) is that the concept of being a meat-automaton contains the human experience within itself. I may be a meat-automaton, but it doesn't change my being human, with human attributes of consciousness, ability to think in symbols and allegories, my views on justice, morality and values, or my ability to choose what to buy from the shop. It really doesn't. Dawkins and others, and especially extremist materialists, aren't arguing that their definition of human would exclude bits of our human society or the world. In fact, they'd be more inclined to make a system that includes everything including religious beliefs, moral values, justice and grocery shops in their models.
In their writings, "Meat-automaton" is synonymous and interchangeable with "human".
Something being imaginary doesn't make it less real, if by real we mean that is has an observable causal effect on the world. I hold a moral value about not taking human life. I don't kill even if I could. THis inaction is by itself a action enforcing the moral value and thus making it real, for that instance. Repeated use makes for repeated instances, which make a individual value a moral system.
science also doesn't generally deny the existence of consciousness. The fact that we can't explain it fully just yet, any maybe never, doesn't disprove it exists. It might be forever beyond our measurements and calculations and other devious tricks science comes up with, but it doesn't mean it isn't there, or that is doesn't have a observable effect on our behavior.
I've got huge amounts of material on these topics from researching blog posts over the years, lots of it from print sources. Unfortunately I don't usually use things that are unavailable online in blog brawls as even the most well known scholarly sources are dismissed by the callow boys of the blogs.
In other words, you pretend you have some vast repository of knowledge that will blow us all away for good, but then you make up a barely-coherent excuse not to share or even cite any of it when you need it.
Or, to put it more succinctly, you're bluffing again.
Rilke's G. First and foremost, my nickname isn't "Andy" it's "Yougoddamnedlittlebastard" but only to my closest friends. You can call me "Anthony McCarthy". If you think that neuro and cog-sci have made a dent into the problem of consciousness you are a dupe for PR over reality. They're eternally on the cusp of making that dent, they haven't and, I predict, they won't make it. Though they've certainly made one in the faith of you true believers.
Consciousness being "The hard problem" isn't something I invented, it's been the ultimate conclusion that many a materialist who has tried to find it with science. Google "consciousness the hard problem" and you'll get 3,700,000 results. I'm not making it up, you know. Or, maybe you don't. Crick and I forget who, made a grand announcement that they were going to make an all out effort to solve "the hard problem" and "put the nail in the coffin of vitalism". Crick's son had to announce at his funeral that they hadn't done it, or so I'm told. So much for "putting the nail in the coffin".
Untestable things have no effect on us by definition - if they did, they would be testable. Bronze Dog
That's not the definition of something being untestable, things are untestable when we can't test them. What we can test about the universe is, actually, relatively limited and in things directly related to us, those involving consciousness are some of the untestable and testable things which couldn't possible effect us as intimately. It's been more than eighty years that the knowledge that there would always be untestable things that are essential to every aspect of science, mathematics and logic attained the reliability of proof. Materialism, though, is eternally bound to the 18th and early 19th centuries, even as the assumptions about the material universe they cling onto are overturned by science.
What you're doing is trying to define things out of existence on the basis of testability, one of the most hubristic practices of scientism. Well, being conscious, I reject your assertion as nonsensical, based not in opinion and ideology, but in the most empirically reliable of all acts, experiencing consciousness. I think that's what the vast majority of people sensibly do to the never ending frustration of your clique.
gaist, I'll respond later.
Narad, maybe you should stop making assertions you don't understand. It would save you having to deny later. Though I'm very familiar with that particular step in the new atheist two-step. ,
Raging Bee, some people don't know their ass from their elbow, you don't seem to know that much. But, as I said, Raging Bee the materialist Pagan is the problem of materialists not of me.
That's not the definition of something being untestable, things are untestable when we can't test them.
First you reject someone else's definition of a term; then you offer a bogus circular definition in its place. Yet another mark of a lying poseur.
Raging Bee, some people don't know their ass from their elbow, you don't seem to know that much.
So why don't you devote some fraction of your vast intellectual resources to addressing my points and actually proving me wrong? That shouldn't be too hard if I'm as dumb as you say I am. So why haven't you done it an any of the hundreds of pantloads you've dumped here? The answer is simple: you know you can't, because you know I'm right. That's why your only response to me is frantic defensiveness and nearly hypersonic hand-waving.
But, as I said, Raging Bee the materialist Pagan is the problem of materialists not of me.
First you condemn "materialists" for rejecting religion, and thus morality; now you're condemning me for having a religion. Once again, you prove yourself to be a cowardly hypocritical bigot.
Orac: Isn't it about time to ban Anthony McCarthy(ist) altogether? I just had a look at his first comment (#16), and guess what: no mention of the original topic of this post at all. His very first comment here was a thread-jack (bashing Dawkins, atheists, "materialists," etc.), and since then, he's had nothing to offer here but the same tired old axe-grinding and long-debunked arguments he's brought to every other thread he's monopolized.
Not only is he a thread-jacker, but he's shown himself to be willfully oblivious to everyone else on this thread. Instead of honestly attempting to engage with others, he simply repeats the same nonsense over and over, no matter how many times his "points" are refuted or disproven. What's the point of allowing someone into a conversation, if he refuses to actually participate?
The least I can say for Larry Fafarman is that: a) he really did show responsiveness to other people's refutations of his nonsensical assertions; and b) he eventually gave up and stopped repeating the same nonsense over and over on the same thread. Anthony, OTOH, does nothing but swamp a thread with sheer quantity of long, repetitive assertions, with the sole (and obvious) intent of burying everyone else's comments under sheer quantity of crap.
And on top of all those ban-worthy offenses, he's uttered some downright defamatory and bigoted accusations that have no place in grownup conversation. Blaming atheist bloggers for the mindless hatred (including death threats, IIRC) directed against Jessica Ahlquist? Seriously? There's no excuse for that sort of bigoted scapegoating -- and he's never even tried to deny or justify it.
Anthony is a threadjacker, a monopolist, a relentless crank, and a classic troll. That alone is reason enough to dump his sorry ass, quite apart from the actual content of his comments, which is nothing but bigotry and lies.
Orac doesn't need to ban me, all he has to do is ask me, politely, to not post on his blog, in private, and I'd simply never post here again. Other bloggers have. He's got my e-mail.
I'd never have mentioned Coyne's petulant e-mail making the same request if it hadn't been so rude and such a revelation of his being, on short notice I can't quite remember which prominent "skeptical" blogger who said it, 12. If it's rude I figure that absolves me from any obligation of confidentiality.
As to what Raging Bee says at 714, see my comment at 486:
Look at comment 22 on that thread RB so dishonestly provided and you'll see I said:
Of course, the display of religion should be removed from a public school. Plenty of religious folks would agree with that.
And, for you fans of "cherry picking" and "quote mining", if you look at more of my comment at 77, that Raging Bee cut off here you will see I said:
It isn't the court case that is responsible for the bigotry, it's the blog blather by obnoxious atheists that does that. For all I know the young woman isn't obnoxious and bigoted. And she was entirely within her rights to object to a part of the state promoting religion. I'm really big on the wall of separation between church and state. I believe I said it also exposed religious fundamentalist bigotry, I certainly don't blame that on Ms. A.
Raging Bee is an habitual liar as well as obnoxious and bigoted. Which is no problem among her fellow new atheists. As you can see from her unwisely choosing to provide the link that proves her lie, she's a bee of little brain.
Anthony, given your own demonstrated dishonesty, and your demonstrated refusal to engage in anything remotely resembling polite conversation, your promise to respond to polite requests lacks credibility.
So as long as you're not going away, when are you going to prove anything I said wrong?
So...when I point out your failure to deny you made a false and bigoted accusation, you respond by repeating the comment that doesn't deny making a false and bigoted accusation. Thanks for proving my point, asshole.
Raging Bee has a point. This thread has been hopelessly jacked, and, quite frankly, I'm getting tired of seeing hundreds of e-mails in my in box notifying me of comments on this thread. In fact, I was thinking of asking people's opinions about whether I should just shut this thread down. I realize it's only two and a half weeks old and I usually don't shut threads down everâor, when I do, I usually only do it after 90 daysâbut this looks to me like a special circumstance.
And just to reiterate how oblivious and mindless Anthony's comments are, notice how he doesn't even bother to edit the "she" out of the comment he re-pastes? This is a guy who really doesn't care what he's saying, as long as he just keeps on saying it.
Orac: For what my opinion is worth (just wire the $0.02 to my Paypal account), I don't think shutting down the thread is the answer. Jason Rosenhouse does that, and Anthony just jacks another thread. This is why I advocate banning Anthony altogether; it's not just the quantity of his comments, it's the content of his character, and his demonstrated willingness to hog one thread after another after another, regardless of what anyone else says in response to his comments. He's an attention-whore with no sense of shame or propriety, and may be mentally ill; and he won't stop trolling unless and until someone who has the power to stop him does do. He refuses to play well with others, and only respects authority.
I'm having a bit of fun, but if you want to ban him or close the thread, go ahead.
We can only test things that have predictable effects. The only things that are inherently untestable are therefore things that either don't have effects or are inherently unpredictable (completely random without bounds). Stop spouting newage cliches and think your beliefs through.
Says the person who's trapped in the 18th and 19th centuries. You do realize that neurology is being studied successfully right now in the 21st century, right?
You do realize that normal people are able to informally test for consciousness, right? That's because it has observable effects on behavior.
And just because something is unknown or hard doesn't mean Anthony McCarthy gets to declare consciousness untestable by fiat.
Bullshit. You're trying to have your cake and eat it, too, trying to argue for a consciousness has effects on people's behavior, therefore making it testable, and yet simultaneously you're trying to declare it untestable by your divine fiat. Which is it, Anthony, testable or untestable?
You're just trying to deflect that criticism through railing against modern materialism, which effectively defines material as stuff that actually does something. Science tests things that have observable effects.
Also, Orac, if you respond to trolls by shutting down threads, that gives the trolls the power to dictate the direction of your threads: people like Anthony can simply change the subject of any thread they want, until you shut the thread down, in which case they simply jack another thread. Closing a thread doesn't solves the problem, it merely gives the trolls the power to decide which of your threads they allow to continue.
You may be reluctant to ban people, in order to maintain at least the appearance of free speech on your blog; but Anthony is quite unlike all of the other anti-rationalist trolls, in that he simply NEVER shuts up, and his primary tactic is simply to bury all dialogue under a mountain of sheer unceasing nonsense. And he's getting worse, either because of progressing mental illness or because he's found that's the only way he can "win" an argument. The damage done to free exchange of ideas by banning this particular troll is far less than the damage done by allowing him to monopolize any thread he wants.
Another strategy I've used from time to time is to put such prolific thread-jacking trolls into an "automatic moderate" filter, so that their posts don't show up immediately. I ultimately usually do release their comments, but not immediately. At the very least, it slows down the flood, giving my other commenters a break and sending a message that there's only so much flooding of a comment thread that I'll tolerate. It's not a strategy I like to use because it forces me to do a lot more moderating, but I've found it useful on occasion.
Well, I'm still not a doctor, but I'll offer this analogy:
Orac, Anthony's presence is a benign tumor. His babbling presses against the blog's brainstem every time he shows up. Excision is the only rational course of action.
Orac: Nice idea, and thanks. If you use that strategy to filter out comments that are obviously dishonest or bigoted, repetitive of points that have already been addressed, or way off-topic to an uncalled-for degree, then it might work -- but in Anthony's case, that would involve slogging through a LOT of pure crap, which isn't exactly a good use of your time. We don't need you to be a masochist here.
Also, in Anthony's case, we already have a consistently-observed pattern of behavior spanning many months and many threads of many different SciBlogs, including (but not limited to) Jason Rosenhouse, Greg Laden, and now Respectful Insolence. There's no need for half-measures, or for waiting for more evidence; he's already proven himself an attention-hogging threadjacker and crank, whose agenda is nothing but immovable prejudice. Banning is an extreme measure, but for Anthony, it's perfectly appropriate, since he's already proven unresponsive to any other measures.
I usually don't comment on blog policy but this is a special case. I like the slow-the-flow idea.
I also like the slow the flow idea. It makes it easier to see what threads that I might actually be interested have new comments on the "Recent Comments" list. I have been ignoring McCarthy, and only clicked when I saw Orac was involved.
Though, seriously, ignoring trolls does often make them go away.
Ignoring trolls doesn't "make" them do anything. Sometimes they go away, other times they just go on excreting all over the place because they want to monopolize a blog that gets more attention then they could ever get on their own.
Ignoring bullies, bigots and liars doesn't work. We tried that with the loony right, remember?
It depends. Thingy only comes back once in a while. Some that do keep coming back with absolute nonsense, and often name calling and name morphing, have been banned. It is the name morphing, including pretending to be other commentators, that goes over the line.
McCarthy has failed to get a hold on threads here before when he was ignored. Perhaps he is being more persistent now because of lack of engagement elsewhere.
Hey, Orac, so, my original comment @ 16 was right, it's fine with you if it's an atheist who views " genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion, constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics in which genes are destiny," in order to promulgate a materialist ideology.
All you had to do is say so back then and this would have been a much shorter thread.
Chris: the problem with ignoring trolls is that their lies, insults, false accusations, hatefulness and bigotry go unchallenged, and they're still polluting and disgracing a thread that's supposed to be about something else. Some obnoxious dickheads are easier to talk around than others.
Besides, if some troll is spewing crap all over a thread, while others just want to have a painless conversation about the original topic, should it really be their job to wade through the crap (hateful propaganda, personal insults and all) just to find the nuggets they're interested in? Shouldn't the blog host make some effort to keep out the party-crashers who make his place less pleasant for the people he wants to feel welcome in his place?
"Just ignore the troll" is just a way of absolving the troll of responsibility.
Hey, Orac, so, my original comment @ 16 was right...
And once again Anthony proves my point: all he does is repeat his comments, over and over, regardless of what anyone actually said to him.
All you had to do is say so back then and this would have been a much shorter thread.
Really? Did you explicitly make that promise back then? Of course not -- you're just making that up to pretend your obnoxious dishonesty is someone else's fault.
Notice, also, that Anthony is insisting his comment #16 is "right," but the original complaint about that comment is that it was a totally off-topic thread-jack. Yet more proof that he's pathologically dishonest, and unable to respond to criticism without changing the subject, moving goalposts, and ignoring or misrepresenting what others say.
I'm all in favor of Orac wielding the ban hammer on this troll. Why should any blogger have to contend with the thread derailing posts that Anthony has exhibited here and on other blogs? Why should Orac put his posts in the moderation hopper and have to wade through hundreds of Anthony's brain droppings?
If Anthony managed to hijack this thread two weeks ago, which resulted in hundreds of his other inane off-topic comments, why wouldn't he infiltrate other threads on this blog?
Whenever he is put into moderation or banned he posts his *moderated* comments on another site he maintains:
http://thinkingcriminalslair.blogspot.com/
Here is what Anthony states about about abusive comments and comments (that) "promote lies, bigotry and a way to enforce conformity....."
"On Comments
On many blogs comments turn abusive, a way to promote lies, bigotry and become a way to enforce conformity of thought and expression to the agenda of one or several commentators. The Thought Criminal will not nurture that kind of comment thread.
Registration is required to post comments. I reserve the right to delete abusive and dishonest comments."
Too bad Anthony did not address his own abusive, bigoted, thread-jacking trollish behavior.
@ Anthony: Get some help for your personality disorder, get out amongst people in the real world and get a job.
lilady: given how closely his debate tactics dovetail both with Karl Rove's manipulative tactics and those of evengelical demagogues, what makes you think spewing such crap isn't his full-time job?
Seriously, aside from Karl Rove, the Inquisition for the Doctrine of the Faith, and maybe a Salafist media outlet, who else would hire someone like him?
I believe AMc comes here because of the lack of activity on his own blog, though by the looks of it, he may not allow any comments at all anyway.
Lawrence: exactly. He's here because the audience is here; this blog is nothing more to him than a vehicle for his own pet peeves. Not to mention free advertizing when his relentless trolling puts a SciBlog post on the "Most Active" list.
And the latter point is another reason to ban him. What does it do for Orac's standing if a post of his pops up on the Most Active list, and people click to it expecting to find Orac's trademark Insolence, and instead find the thread filled with more off-topic BS from Anthony? I could easily imagine the Most Active list filled with FIVE such threads at once -- the all-Anthony-all-the-time list. (Or maybe four threats plus the latest ERV "Monument" episode.) That would be great for Anthony, and utterly lousy for any SciBlogger who finds his posts used as a free platform for his anti-atheist bigotry.
As Scottynuke said, Anthony's presence is purely parasitic, and permanent excision is the only good remedy.
I confess at the beginning of Anthony's trolling here, I was enjoying the clever repartee for a day or two. As Anthony kept up the word salad and kept philosophizing about different topics and assertions about atheism and materialism...it became apparent he was fulfilling his pathological need for attention and *engagement*.
Let me reiterate my opinion that Orac should wield the ban hammer on this troll. I appreciate the time and the efforts involved when Orac chooses topics to blog about...and I despise it when a troll embarks on thread derailing practices.
I'd say ban McCarthy, at least for a few months. I found it very frustrating to try to get some kind of dialogue going, only to get very strange responses that looked like he had simply skimmed about half of what I wrote, without really reading any of it.
Unless Scienceblogs is considering changing its motto to, "The Electronic Adult Day Care Site! (Your Problem Loved One Will Be Entertained for Hours!)" I can't see that McCarthy is furthering the Scienceblogs agenda.
That's "four threads," not "four threats." The Typodemon is strong with this oen...
@ Raging Bee:
Altho' I agree with you for the most part, do you not think that SB commenters' *reactions* to AM might be instructive as means to 'answer' his many gripes about science-materialism-atheism- which rather resemble the invective usually hurled in *our* general direction? I feel that lurkers and those "new to the game" might benefit in a general-purpose sort of way- altho' I realise that there are *far* easier routes. A few commenters here ( you included)clearly point out obvious deficiencies in his perspective and method. Similarly, while the *Ding an sich* contributed only inanity, her *critics* often provided constructive insights and valuable information that stemmed from her in-abilities.
Still, hijacking is hijacking.
Altho' I agree with you for the most part, do you not think that SB commenters' *reactions* to AM might be instructive as means to 'answer' his many gripes about science-materialism-atheism- which rather resemble the invective usually hurled in *our* general direction?
Yes, they can, up to a point. That's why I didn't advocate banning him until recently, despite having dealt with his bigotry and obscurantism for many months before. Knocking him down two or three times can be instructive, but we're way past the point of diminishing returns with this particular troll and his style of argument. When a commenter keeps on repeating the same arguments, with little or no modification, sooner or later someone has to just wave the fool off and admit he's arguing in bad faith and is no longer worthy of adult attention.
Anthony, the fact you feel the need to constantly attribute to me positions that I have not asserted suggests that it's not I who has the comprehension problem. As I've stated before, you seem to be utterly reliant on the script in your head, which in common parlance is known as an inability to think.
As for the question of banning or autothrottling, I have no coment other than to point out that claiming that one will go away upon receipt of a private communication rendered in a suitably polite tone is the mark of an asshole of almost unbelievable proportions.
Lawrence, I said why I kept answering points made against what I said, to see what you guys have got and it's not much.
Needless to say, the arguments I develop in these arguments aren't for the benefit of the meat automatons and lumbering robots who frequent these blogs.
Name calling is a common troll tactic, and is definitely a mark of low intelligence.
@AMc - so, you are just here to prove how smart you are?
I think you should stick to talking to yourself on your own blog.
Anthony, is the existence of consciousness testable or not?
Anthony, here's a tip: "Ïᾶν Î³á½°Ï á¼ÏÏεÏὸν ÏληγῠνÎμεÏαι" was not a lifestyle suggestion.
Needless to say, the arguments I develop in these arguments aren't for the benefit of the meat automatons and lumbering robots who frequent these blogs.
What, you actually think a more educated audience will take you seriously? Of course you don't -- if you had a friendlier audience, you wouldn't be here at all. This is just another rewording of your "I'm writing this up for someone else, so your opinions don't matter" bluff.
(And if it's "needless to say," then why did you have to say it?)
@ Raging Bee:
I wasn't aware of his history at the other blogs.
@ hoary puccoon:
some caretakers of those with SMI allow internet time to allow respite for themselves at others' expense. I could tell you many stories ( not work related)-not that I think AM is SMI. Not at all.
@ Bronze Dog:
Consciousness is the enigma we live with everyday; "it loads the dice", said Wm James. I think that cognitive psych-and physio- begin to address its edge-
-selective attention, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, split-brain patients, stream-of-consciousness reports, efforts at retrieval-
please don't get me started...
Happy May Day/ Beltaine to all of the unionists, socialists and pagans. You know who you are.
Bronze Dog, do you need a test to believe that you are conscious?
Is there anyone here who needs a test to believe that they are conscious?
Do you need a test to believe that there are other people who are conscious?
How about you, Orac? How about you address the question of the unreasonableness of believing you conscious?
Name calling is a common troll tactic, and is definitely a mark of low intelligence.
Posted by: Chris
You mean "meat automatons" and "lumbering robots"? Because if you had read this argument you'd find that I was the one arguing that people ARE NOT "meat automatons" and "lumbering robots".
It was Jerry Coyne who called everyone, including the new atheists on this blog thread "meat automatons" and it was Richard Dawkins who called you a "lumbering robot". It was your fellow fans of Coyne and Dawkins who objected to me saying they were wrong. I guess that those are the folks in whom you see "common troll tactics" and "low intelligence".
I have to admit one of the joys of participating in these discussions is being able to point things like that out.
I wasn't aware of his history at the other blogs. D.W.
If you think that Raging Bee is capable of accurately reporting on what was said on another blog thread, I'd suggest you compare comments 485 and 486. Then go back and review the thread to which s/he gave the link. If you still think that R.B. is capable of accurately reporting anything, well, all I can say is that you shouldn't pursue a career that depends on accurate information.
Denice, would you have preferred that I hadn't answered you on this thread?
Is there anyone here who needs a test to believe that they are conscious?
If either an animal or an AI told you it was conscious, would you take its word for it?
Because if you had read this argument you'd find that I was the one arguing that people ARE NOT "meat automatons" and "lumbering robots".
So you deny you were calling us names, and then say it was Dawkins who was calling us names and you were only calling us what Dawkins (allegedly) called us, so that makes it okay. In other words, yet another infantile dodge from an overgrown kid who thinks he's being "cute" and can't stand by even the most innocuous of his own words.
To Paraphrase Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson: GO THE FUCK TO BED!
How Tischreden of you.
Notice how Anthony keeps on hyperventilating about what a liar I am, but he never actually denies what I said about him? In fact, when he re-pasted his flailing defense, he included the damning quote he's trying to run away from.
This bigoted liar takes pathetic to a whole new dimension. If Orac doesn't ban him to protect this blog, he should ban him out of pity.
@ Anthony:
I have no reason *not* to believe him- because I could always look it up. Neither here nor there. I don't believe in bans unless a commenter threatens people, engages in other despicable maneouvrings or has serious problems. Not you. But I can understand why Bee feels as he does- he has a different experience than I do.
And I did enjoy your responses and think that you may have something to contribute- and not just in a negative way- but you might have to try to stay more within the confines of the topic.
-btw- I counsel people toward achieving their (mostly) educational goals and manage ( my own and relatives') money in various markets- and yes, it is a scary world- so far, I haven't led anyone to perdition in either metier. Actually, my clients and consultees rather like my work. Hard to believe as that might be.
Well, Denice, when I've got the ability to believe or not believe something that can be looked up I generally prefer to have my decision informed by looking something up. You might want to look up Raging Bee having to be warned by the owner of Evolution Blog for obscene tirades against yours truly in violation of his stated policies. Or her/his obscene tirades above. As I said, I've had to correct what Bee said about that Alquist thread several times before.
Hey, if Raging Bee is the new atheist idea of a voice of reason, I can't say it would be a shock to me.
If someone doesn't want me to answer a question, a characterization or mis characterization of what I've said, a misunderstanding or request for clarification of what I said, etc. I didn't make them address me. As I said, if Orac wanted to confirm my impression stated at comment 16 above, I'd have left it at that. As I said, I don't ususally make comments on the discussions of his posts I look at. I don't usually look at the comments.
Ragin Bee, a perpetual irony generator. "Hyperventilating." Endlessly ironic.
And, as can be seen of the Bee on my question about requiring a test to believe you are conscious, such astounding insight into my response to Bronze Dog's demand for a test for the existence of consciousness. And on the point that it was Richard Dawkins who called everyone here and every, single other sentient being "lumbering robots".
Yeah, quite the brain trust you got here.
#749
Well I must say, having worked in a few bars through my uni years, I was continually shocked at the dramatic effects that a relatively simple chemical compound such as alcohol could have on the conciousness/cognition/ethics/morals of those under its influence.
But, of course that's because alcohol is the Demon Drink and the Devil resides in every bottle. :p
Perhaps you'd like to break this out into a flowchart.
I don't need a test to prove my own consciousness to myself, since if it didn't exist, it'd be a contradiction: There'd be no me to prove it to.
For evaluating the consciousness of others, the test method is social interaction. Psychologists and neurologists most likely have a variety of more formal tests. Of course, induction suggests that it's highly likely for other humans to be conscious, so I can afford to risk false positives since that'd be less time intensive than testing everyone.
Of course, that's because the common definition of consciousness is testable. That, however, doesn't tell me anything about your definition.
Bronze Dog, so it's everyone else whose consciousness you doubt exists. How very radically solipsistic of you.
How about if I stipulate that anyone who wants to doubt their own consciousness is real can doubt anyone elses without me making fun of them. Well, not too much fun.
For example, Sauceress, if you had trouble using your leg due to falling down and breaking it while drunk would you doubt your leg was real?
Now, imagine your difficulty with doubting the thing you are using to experience your inebriation, your injury and your debilitated state is really there. Not to mention the thing that you use to doubt it exists and especially if you end up believing the thing with which you are pondering this question is really there to be used that way even as you use it.
If your consciousness isn't there I guess no one has to take the answer that the nonexistent entity comes up with, seriously.
And thus General William Booth Enters into Heaven.
"Perhaps you'd like to break this out into a flowchart."
Dear God no! We could be here for another 765 comments.
Has anyone contacted the AMc bot service station?
There is never a bot around when you need it.
Anthony, stop.
You're sounding more and more like the drunk at the bar table who starts ranting and cursing staff and other patrons and even verbally abusing the bar manager when it's closing time.
At this stage, snide remarks, you-said-who-said-tirades or this "well I wouldn't have dunnit if you'd just said so in the first place"-hand waving is definitely not helping.
The image isn't meant to be derogatory, but I'm afraid it seems apt.
Read the posts again. Why this discussion has lasted so long isn't because of you defending yourself against a horde of mindless zombie materialists. It's because people objected to how you argued your position, not the position itself (at least until some became convinced your position was your argument). And kept on objecting. And objecting. And at some point it seemed like Denice Walter and a few others actually made some progress.
Until someone said the B-word and you resorted back to the original stance, which many here found objectionable and misinformed/over-generalizing, and full of logical fallacies (which don't necessarily mean the argument is wrong, only that it's poorly worded). With repeated refusal to address the concerns of others, logical fallacies tend to be signs of, well, logical fallacies. Merry-go-round is only fun up to a point. After that, it just becomes going in circles.
I apologize for my part in keeping this thread off topic. I'm also up for "let's agree to disagree" like adults. Anthony doesn't have to vote for anyone he doesn't like, not abandon his religion because somebody has an objection to it. The rest of us can go our merry ways, some as meat-automatons and some as something else.
gaist, first, I don't drink, for reasons that might be obvious to people who read the entire thread. If you think my tone is getting rather eccentric, it's my attempt to reproduce, in a concentrated way, the thinking necessary to sustain some of the positions the "rational class" folks here are stating. It's not my fault that they don't think out the necessary conclusions that would have to come from those, not to mention the implications. Anyone who can seriously doubt that consciousness exists, testable or not, has to expect their idea to be applied to them and its most basic absurdity pointed out in those terms.
As to being off topic, as I asked Denice, would you have rather I didn't answer your long list of questions? If you will notice what I said to Orac at 732 above, in this long discussion I've brought it back to what he said in his post over and over again.
For example, if you think part of it which was a the long denial by some unreasoning materialist that Richard Dawkins hadn't done exactly what I said he did in my first comment, was about style instead of substance I think you should read it again. I produced evidence from three prominent biologists, all of them atheists, two declared materialists, one of them none other than Richard Dawkins, himself, to support the clear truth of what I said he'd said, and had to spoon feed the meaning of what he had said to a bunch of atheists in his fan club. And I don't doubt that if I pointed it out again we'd have to go through the entire thing again.
Materialists always insist on a transcendent status for their ideas by denying the quality and nature of those ideas, and as can be seen in comments 764 and765, some seem to want to claim a personal transcendence that isn't granted to anyone else, a sort of perpetual "National Reason Day" for one. Sorting out whats wrong with that kind of thing can take a few words, especially when the tactics of the "skeptics"-new atheists have to be dealt with.
Now I'm sure most of you need to go to the pat yourselves on the back daisy circle that is your wider perpetual "National Reason Day" among "Humanists" "skeptics" and atheists, I'll go listen to John Lennox as an alternative celebration.
You might want to look up Raging Bee having to be warned by the owner of Evolution Blog for obscene tirades against yours truly in violation of his stated policies. Or her/his obscene tirades above.
None of which even comes close to disproving the charge that you falsely blamed atheist bloggers for the religious hatred directed against a teenage girl. You know you're a lying bigot, you know you've been exposed as such, and all you can do is fling non-sequiturs in all directions.
If you think my tone is getting rather eccentric, it's my attempt to reproduce, in a concentrated way, the thinking necessary to sustain some of the positions the "rational class" folks here are stating.
Wow, you manage to be both pompous AND incoherent. So is this your way of trying to blame us for a) you falsely blaming atheist bloggers for the religious bigotry directed against Jessica Ahlquist, and b) you refusing to define the term "materialism" while falsely blaming it for just about all the evils of the modern age?
Until someone said the B-word and you resorted back to the original stance...
Actually, Anthony never relented on his "original stance;" and in fact, after I proposed banning him, he paused in his flooding campaign longer than he ever had before. Anthony is a relentless axe-grinding hater with a rigid authoritarian mindset, and the only thing that even slows him down is the threat of punishment by an authority figure. (And now that an actual ban doesn't appear imminent, he's cranking the repetitious hate back up again.)
"Perhaps you'd like to break this out into a flowchart."
Dear God no! We could be here for another 765 comments. Kelly M Bray
Yours is comment 767.
Did no one inform you people whining of the length of this thread that you aren't required to even read it? Never mind add to its length?
What a way to get to celebrate National Reason Day, to be able to point that out to the self-appointed Defenders of Reason. I'd suggest getting Dawkins to point it out but they don't seem to read him. Maybe that paragon of the rational, James Randi, could tell them. He's more their speed.
And here I decided to forego making a very cutting point about Vachel Lindsay. You do know that's who wrote that poem, don't you Narad?
I don't have the whole day to read this thread. Can someone give me the abbreviated version?
I didn't make them address me.
Not only is this a cowardly, victim-bashing, infantile attempt to dodge responsibility for your actions, Anthony -- it's not even true. When you spout obvious lies without provocation -- the kind of lies that are known to cause harm when acted upon -- then decent people are, in a very real sense, forced to challenge the lies, just as we are forced to respond to physical threats (and just as decent people are forced to respond to anti-vax lies and other health-destroying woo). And when you make wildly implausible assertions and wallow in obvious logical fallacies, then sane adults are, in a very real sense, forced to judge your character and credibility based on your past behavior.
YOU, Anthony, are the one who chose to come here and spout bigoted lies. No one provoked you to do so -- Hell, we weren't even talking about any of your pet peeves when you showed up. No one forced you to hijack this thread or keep on repeating the same stupid BS over and over; and when we asked you to define the vague terms and concepts on which your entire worldview is based, no one ever forcibly prevented you from doing so.
Anthony can't even take responsibility for his own actions. That's another good reason to ban him: a person who refuses to take responsibility for his actions cannot be trusted, and cannot be respected as a responsible adult. There's no good reason to allow such a person to "participate" in a grownup conversation.
I don't have the whole day to read this thread. Can someone give me the abbreviated version?
Posted by: Ren
See comment 16 above. Assuming you want to avoid stepping in the Bee scat.
A.M. noted earlier, in an attempt to defend himself, that Jason had asked raging bee to stop posting and spamming his blog. If you've been following posts above it should not be a surprise that A.M. was less than honest in that comment, as he too was told to knock it off. Actually, Jason's first comment to rb concerned a violation of his (Jason's) no profanity policy, where he told rb to knock it off. Then he said:
No, Anthony, I just found it stuck to my shoe. Jesus Christ.
How Anthony responded:
What I actually said:
Emphasis added.
Anthony, why did you choose to interpret my position as the opposite of what I said?
Well, dean, I don't generally use obscene language online, it loses its usefulness if it's overused. So I didn't violate Jason's written policy. What he meant by including me in that comment, you'd have to ask him.
As I said, Raging Bee and the level of discourse s/he brings to the discussion is the property of the new atheists, not of me. You don't reject it, you own it. Just like you self-appointed rationalists own the comment threads at the James Randi "Educational" Foundation.
Bronze Dog, and people think what I say is opaque not to mention inconsistent. I could quibble about "highly likely" as being insufficient for other new atheist purposes and your "test" as being something that would certainly not come up to the typical new atheist standards required for even some massively tested and confirmed ideas. Though I'd be the last one to accuse new atheists of having a single standard. It will take many more comments than the "lumbering robots" section of the entertainment, though, requiring many more citations that won't be read.
Orac, you want this to go well, well over a thousand comments? As I said way up around 587, all you have to do is say you want it ended. If you don't do that, don't complain.
dean: Another thing Anthony omitted is the fact that more than one commenter questioned Jason's pretense that both Anthony and I were equally at fault for the dustup between us.
That's the problem with trying too hard to be "inclusive" and not ban anyone: you have to rationalize such spinelessness by pretending that the person who calls a liar a liar is just as bad as the liar. That's pretty much what Jason did, in more than one thread: ignore Anthony's bigoted lies and instead blame the person who most directly attacked the lies.
And do you know what happened almost immediately after Jason took such a spineless stand? Two more bigoted liars showed up, one of whom was Salvador "Wormtongue" Cordova. That's where misplaced equivocation gets you.
I just travelled back through the mists of time to post # 16 wherein AM quotes Orac about those who " view genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion" and opines that Dawkins fits that description extremely well.
We have something that is related to the subject matter and might be a source of controversy amongst us- is Dawkins like that or not?
For the record, although I am an atheist I do not particularly subscribe to Dawkin's or anyone else's views on the subject and have never actually read anything of his that was more than a few pages long.
@ gaist: I try. I really do.
Orac, you want this to go well, well over a thousand comments? As I said way up around 587, all you have to do is say you want it ended.
Because Anthony has no sense of personal responsibility, and doesn't listen to reason, facts, or even the most basic principles of responsible adult interaction; he only listens to authority. Which is probably why he can't understand any moral principles that doesn't (allegedly) come from an all-powerful Sky-Daddy.
Narad, OK, against the expectations of post-prohibition group think, Vachel Lindsey was, actually, quite anti-alcohol, in theory, at least. You can read his "The Substitute for the Saloon", chapt, 15 of his "The Art of the Moving Picture."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13029/13029-h/13029-h.htm#Page_235
Unfortunately, things didn't work out so well for Vachel Lindsay, not to mention Sara Teasdale. Perhaps if they'd had some invisible means of support they could have coped better.
Booth was insufferably condescending to the poor and entrapped, though, given the choice between being an alcoholic on skid row and being a member of his sect I'd probably stand a better chance in the ranks. As I said, I've seen someone drink himself to death. It's no daring assertion of freedom. I can't imagine what Jesus would have made of the military organization, not to mention his uniformly pacifistic early followers.
As can be seen in the ridicule of the poem, Vachel Lindsay was even more condescending to the great unwashed than Booth was.
I wrote a paper on Teasdale in college. What can I say? I like to do research and have good reading retention.
Denice, as you can see, I've tried to stay on topic. It's not my fault that materialists always freak out when anything could possible be considered to imply something non-material is brought up. Nor when they freak out over the necessary results of their ideology and deny that even as materialists confirm it. Materialism contains its own intolerable conclusions and impossible implications as well as its incompatibility with liberalism and democracy. After Coyne, I'm not ignoring them anymore, no matter how much materialists want to sweep them under the rug.
Well, dean, I don't generally use obscene language online, it loses its usefulness if it's overused. So I didn't violate Jason's written policy.
Yeah, he lied through his teeth (if any) about "materialism," "atheism," etc., but he didn't violate the "written policy," so that makes his behavior perfectly okay. This is the standard excuse of the manipulative suck-up.
@ Anthony:
So perhaps we can go to back to that. That's meaningful and controversial. Is Dawkins like those Orac criticises or not? I have absolutely no idea myself.
Denice, as you can see, I've tried to stay on topic.
That would be funny if the joke wasn't so old. Really, Anthony? Give us the comment numbers where you even mention epigenetics. That was the original topic, and you never had anything relevant to say about it.
I really don't think Jason Rosenhouse would think of me as a "suck up". How about you, Orac? Remeber our brawl over the German and Rwandan bans on hate speech?
Raging Bee, I really think someone should tell you, you are unhinged. You are reaching Lochner levels of irrationality.
Then you're unacquainted with (or you fail to understand) the atheist/skeptical community I've seen.
First, certainty isn't something we're big on. When an atheist says something is certain, there's an understanding that he probably means "highly likely" or something like that, rather than 100% absolute certainty. Science works in terms of probability, and the vast majority of the time, there's a chance, even if it's tiny, that we could be wrong. We're used to living with uncertainties. For me, "highly likely" in a scientific context is strong language. Usually, the only people who don't understand that are people who crave absolute certainty.
Second, skeptics generally don't evaluate mundane claims with extraordinary tests. If I tell one of my skeptic friends that I beat an easy videogame, they generally aren't going to log onto the Playstation Network to see if my account displays the trophy, or demand that I replicate the feat in front of a camera. They're more likely to give a very mild congratulation and recommend a harder game.
It's not an extraordinary claim to assert that an active, conversant human is conscious. The risks involved in making a false positive by assuming the average human I encounter is conscious are generally very low and the costs of a formal test are prohibitively high, and I don't see how the improved accuracy would offset that cost. Human consciousness is a common phenomenon, not an extraordinary claim. I don't conduct physics experiments with electromagnetism to prove that the lights will come on when I flip a switch, either. If we stopped to test every little claim, we'd waste a lot of resources. I don't need that high level of confidence.
Third, the extraordinary claims that involve consciousness typically are the details about how it works. Neurologists have been putting a lot of hard work into the relevant questions under tight ethical restrictions. They publish papers, and those get scrutinized by peer reviewers because the scientific community wants a higher degree of confidence in their hypotheses than I require about my hypothesis that "that guy over there is conscious." I have no reason to doubt the scientific consensus at this point, since flaws would likely be challenged in peer review, and it's consistent with my experience. If I encounter someone who can act intelligently despite lacking a brain, that would challenge my understanding because it'd be quite unexpected.
If you want to posit that consciousness is caused by some never before observed entity made of reishi spiritual particles or whatever, instead of the brain, you'll need high quality evidence to convince me.
If you want to posit that you recently purchased groceries, I'm much more willing to believe you because I've observed grocery stores, I've purchased groceries, I've observed other people purchasing groceries, there's a scientific consensus that human physiology requires a regular intake of food which provides a reason for grocery stores to offer food for sale, economists have researched the decision-making processes of grocery shoppers, and so on and so forth. The bulk of the claims that make grocery purchases possible, plausible, and desirable have been well-demonstrated, so it's not a big risk to my understanding of the world if I simply believe that you went grocery shopping. It's an ordinary claim, not something that would violate my worldview.
This isn't some new concept, it's life. Carl Sagan just happened to provide a quote-friendly slogan about it.
denice, let's go down the checklist with Dawkins.
"they view genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion, constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics in which genes are destiny"
they view genes simplistically (Yes)
in a deterministic fashion (Yes)
constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics (Yes)
in which genes are destiny (Yes)
Richard Dawkins is the embodiment of everything on Orac's list.
Dawkins's vulgarizations of Darwinism speak of nothing in evolution but an inexorable ascendancy of genes that are selectively superior, while the entire body of technical advance in experimental and theoretical evolutionary genetics of the last fifty years has moved in the direction of emphasizing non-selective forces in evolution. Richard Lewontin "Billions and Billions of Demons"
Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution. "Billions and Billions of Demons"
Richard Dawkins would narrow the focus of explanation even one step furtherâto genes struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies (organisms) under the control of genesâa hyper-Darwinian idea that I regard as a logically flawed and basically foolish caricature of Darwinâs genuinely radical intent. Stephn Jay Gould: Darwinian Fundamentalism
You can follow up any of a number of relevant links I gave above, especially the youtube of Lewontin's excellent Hitchock Lecture at 141, in which he doesn't mention Dawkins, as I recall, but just about everything he says is in refutation of Dawkins' genetic ideology.
I'll provide more if it's necessary, though I can't see how anyone who is familiar with Dawkins could need it. Just that "lumbering robots" quote is enough to confirm the entire list.
I really don't think Jason Rosenhouse would think of me as a "suck up".
Your behavior marks you as a suck-up, not your guess about what someone else may or may not think.
Okay, you've quoted all of TWO authors talking about what Dawkins said; but you've provided no actual quotes from Dawkins himself to back it up. At best, you have two people saying Dawkins oversimplified things a bit -- which is neither uncommon nor a horrible atrocity justifying any of your mindless hatred of "materialism" or whatever. After all the blatant lies you've spewed here (none of which you even deny), do you really expect us to take that smattering seriously? You have no credibility, so you'll need more than that to make your "case."
If you want to posit that consciousness is caused by some never before observed entity made of reishi spiritual particles or whatever... Bronze Dog
Well, isn't it inconvenient for you that I haven't posited any of those exotic ideas. Here is what I posited at 115 above
Any idea anyone has about consciousness is only a matter of fashion and ideological preference, it's not based in anything else. Nothing is known about consciousness except that it's the most basic of human experiences, from which everything else is mere inference. That's it.
Raging Bee, Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
@Anthony,
Zzzzzzzzzz, indeedâto you.
You didn't really take the hint yesterday, did you? It's not as if I were the least bit subtle or anything. When I said I was getting annoyed by having to sift through dozens of messages a day on a three week old thread, I wasn't kidding.
Orac, that was a hint? I thought they were insults and snide asides to your fan boys. OK, Raging Bee is all yours. Enjoy. Happy National Day of "Reason".
That sounds like it's skating on solipsism. Or defeatism.
I can perform some self-analysis on my consciousness. I can keep approximate records on my thoughts to compare my short-term memory to my long term memory. I can discuss the way I make decisions and potentially change that decision-making process based on the discussion. I can read an article about a cognitive bias and realize that I've acted on it or I can have someone familiar with my history point out an instance.
To honestly say that we know nothing of consciousness tells me either that you don't think about your consciousness, or that you have a very poor imagination for devising even the most informal tests for yourself and others. One dishonest alternative I've often encountered is a baseless assertion that some things can't be understood because they think key words like "untestable" will shield an idea from critical scrutiny.
I can't know everything with certainty about the world outside my consciousness, but that's life. I have plenty of reason to believe I live in an uncertain world. Science is how I separate the plausible ideas from the implausible.
"So I didn't violate Jason's written policy"
No, he was on you for doing the same thing you're doing here: repeating the same falsehoods and meaningless statements, as well as insulting those who disagree with you. I rather think you realize that and are, again, lying by omission.
Nothing is known about consciousness...
You said exactly the same thing about the origin of life -- on a blog thread where the author had already posted links to dozens of articles discussing what we know about the orgin of life. See the second URL @495 above.
When was the last time you updated your copy-paste spiel?
I have read quite a bit of Dawkins, and AM is wrong to characterize him as viewing "genes simplistically in a deterministic fashion, constructing an elaborate straw man of modern genetics in which genes are destiny". Should anyone doubt this, I suggest they read this article by Dawkins entitled The Myth of Genetic Determinism. Here's a quote from this article:
I'm tempted to steal the phrase "pernicious rubbish on an almost astrological scale". In this article Dawkins also discusses the widespread misinterpretation of his "lumbering robots" quote. He clearly suggested that from the point of view of selfish genes animals could be seen as "lumbering robots", that we could think of them as disposable tools of immortal genes. At the time he suggested this it was a different and useful way of looking at natural selection. Accusing Dawkins of saying that humans are lumbering robots is to profoundly misunderstand his insight. 'The selfish gene' is a useful metaphor, nothing more.
By the way, I just enjoyed watching the BBC Beautiful Minds episode about Richard Dawkins, which I recommend to anyone who has access to BBC iPlayer. It covers much of the same ground as above.
To the farmer, a chicken is a product (meat) and a means of production (eggs).
To a carnivore, a chicken is food source.
To microorganisms, a chicken is a host.
To the chicken, it exists to enjoy life.
To the egg, a chicken is a way of making more eggs.
To (insert gene), a chicken is a way of copying itself.
Acknowledging that our genes have a self-serving "purpose" for producing us does not mean we're controlled exclusively by genes. There are other entities with other purposes that exert influence. There's also happenstance.
@800: Well, I guess that totally debunks the entire basis of Anthony's original thread-jack. Good on ya, mate! (So why didn't ya say something before?! Geez...)
Well, it's more than 20 years since I devoured everything I could get my hands on about evolutionary biology (I even attended a lecture by Gould on spandrels, which was very interesting) so I'm more than a little rusty. I had to refresh my memory over the past few days and only came across that article today. Still, better late than never!
Nasty and boring as he is, AMC isn't totally useless. I was inspired to sit down and reread The Selfish Gene and, not surprisingly, AMC is totally wrong and his interpretation is expressly denied in that very book. But I didn't want to make this thread worse by arguing with him, since he wouldn't argue in good faith and it would just be an added burden on Orac.
Before this thread gets closed and Andy gets banned, I thought I'd touch on this point.
When you begin to behave like a grown-up, I'll call you by a grown-up name, Andy. Until then, my child, you will get treated like a child.
Really, Andy. You're not very good at this. Fafarman was far better. Heck, even Dave Hawkins could actually argue coherently about something. You can't even do that.
And you still haven't addressed the fact that you're a proven liar.
Yes, In this article Dawkins also discusses the widespread misinterpretation of his "lumbering robots" quote. He clearly suggested that from the point of view of selfish genes animals could be seen as "lumbering robots", that we could think of them as disposable tools of immortal genes. At the time he suggested this it was a different and useful way of looking at natural selection. Accusing Dawkins of saying that humans are lumbering robots is to profoundly misunderstand his insight!
I see that Orac isn't upset about this thread continuing in the absence of a critic of materialism. I could have predicted that too.
v-pills, I've read Dawkins' claims that the lumbering robots statement was 'misunderstood' even as he confirmed that the 'misunderstanding' was exactly what he meant to say. I addressed that above, as did Stephen Jay Gould who pointed out that it only made things more extreme.
AMC, if you compare comments #807 and #801, you will see that you are now reduced to arguing with a spam-bot.
Carry on...
Now, that's entertainment.
Hmm. "v-pills" did not give it away, Anthony?
Great thinker, indeed.
An argument with a v14gra spambot struck me as especially amusing in light of AMC's earlier ridicule for the kind of poor observers who could be fooled by the Turing test.
doktor, I don't think you understand how far ahead Anthony's thinking really is:
Since it was my words that were quoted by the erectilely dysfunctional spambot, I will point out to Anthony that the full passage he refers to at #288 was provided by two commenters at #389 and #390.
Note that Dawkins originally wrote, ""Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots... " This makes it crystal clear that he was writing from the point of view of genes, that he was personifying genes. Dawkins was not suggesting that we *should* treat other humans as gigantic lumbering robots. If I point out that from the point of view of a predator a human body is a nourishing meal, hopefully no one will accuse me of promoting cannibalism.
As Dawkins wrote in the preface to the 30th anniversary edition of 'The Selfish Gene':
In the first chapter of the same book Dawkins also addresses some of Anthony's other misconceptions in a passage that I think is also worth quoting.
In the preface he even says of this passage "There is nothing wrong with teaching generosity and altruism, but 'born selfish' is misleading. In partial explanation, it was not until 1978 that I began to think clearly about the distinction between 'vehicles' (usually organisms) and the 'replicators' that ride inside them (in practice genes...)"
I don't think I need to comment further, as Dawkins' words speak for themselves.
Stu, did you watch the YouTube of the great PZ Myers comparing the driftwood accumulating on a shore to the organization of a living cell? There are arguments to be made against creationism but they've got to be coherent and logical before they can refute anything. PZ's has to count as the stupidest one I've ever heard, his celebrity doesn't change that. It is less coherent than some of the stuff that the ID industry comes up with that gets debunked. I mean, the great PZ isn't immune from doing his homework and making a coherent argument.
I've yet to see a pile of driftwood metabolize or reproduce though I'll bet you boys will tell me otherwise.
Kreibiozen, as Dawkins' entire career has been centered around his faith in the genetic determination of behavior, both before and after the criticism of his "lumbering robots" statement. It continues to be now that he's pretty much given up science to push the full agenda of materialist-atheism, which I think was the real motivation of his ideological school from the beginning.
I'm encouraged by his attempts to pull the rug over such a basic idea of that ideology due to most people seeing it for the repulsive and contra-experiential idea that it is. In the post-WWII, post-Stalinist period the necessary conclusions of it couldn't be more clearly and dangerously a contradiction of history, as well.
The 20th century was largely an experiment with that kind of materialist belief, the results are that, as could be expected, it produces an amoral nightmare.
Awesome, Anthony. Your argument from ignorance and incredulity has me completely convinced.
Besides, that's not what the analogy meant. Are you too stupid to follow a simple analogy or are you bearing false witness out of your blind hatred again?
Stu, the simplicity of an analogy doesn't keep it from also being a bad analogy and that one is one anyone with a brain would reject if they read it in the hastily scribbled essay of a eighth grade slacker. P.Z. didn't do his homework, he failed his obligations as a scholar rather spectacularly for an assistant professor at an accredited university. It's shocking that other biologists didn't vigorously criticize him for it.
The idea of an intelligent designer can't be introduced into science because science isn't designed to handle those kinds of ideas. Asserting that ID is science is a violation of the rules of science. Period. It's not really any more complicated that that. If people want to believe that they see design, that's not a scientific holding and that's the big problem with it. People can and do hold that belief in other contexts, most of the people who accept that evolution is a fact do. You're not going to convince them it isn't there with science, face reality.
"are you bearing false witness out of your blind hatred again?"
That is of course a rhetorical question.
For viewers who just tuned in, PZ Myers actually compared a wall of driftwood piled up by storms to a wall of bricks laid by a bricklayer. The point was that something deliberately designed (that would be the brick wall) can be less complex than something that just got thrown together by chance. (That would be the driftwood.) Living cells did not enter into the comparison.
AMC, if you compare comments #807 and #801, you will see that you are now reduced to arguing with a spam-bot.
Did someone say "lumbering robots?"
hoary p. throwing in the brick wall as an example of simplicity that was clearly designed as opposed to the line of driftwood only made the analogy of one "complicated" "thing" to the complicated entity in question, a living cell, more silly.
The "organization" of the driftwood on the shore is far less like the organization of a living cell than the driftwood was to the brick wall, not least in terms of complexity but also in terms of functionality. Any ID proponent could point out that the "functionality" of the driftwood was entirely accidental and limited while the intelligently designed brick wall was an obvious case of functionality by a living being. And I'll bet if someone unwisely forced a choice a la "Miller's Analogies" a large majority of people would see a lot more in common with the functionality of the brick wall and the cell wall. That an associate professor in a science department could have made such a stunningly bad analogy is kind of shocking, that the AP could have been a biologist is scandalous. As one arguing against the ID industry, it was just stupid and lazy. But new atheism is always doing that kind of thing. And blog atheists are always riding shotgun for them, with pop guns.
Ah, Anthony, I see you're going with the "I don't know what an analogy is" defense. Very interesting.
Then why do ID proponents keep doing it? More importantly, why the hell are you whining about it here? Are you still going to pretend to be in any way objective about this?
Then why do ID proponents keep doing it?
Because they are dishonestly trying to impose ideology on science. That's not my fault. As my nearly completed c. 5000 word essay says in detail, I'm against that.
Not that I care to monitor comments on my blog, I don't, but if you want to discuss one of my posts maybe Orac would rather you did it there. You should read my comments policy on the left side of the screen if you do, though.
You are a very clever individual!