Dear Brent,
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 7:39 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote: You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. [SPK] I disagree strongly! Is the "mad scientist" not constrained by its equivalent to physical laws? AFAIK, the brain-in-vat and universe-as-a-computer-simulation are related thought experiments that allow us to think more deeply about our tacit assumptions about our world and ourselves. Maybe you might help us to better understand your thoughts by explaining what "physical" means to you. You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? [SPK] Who said that the term even applied? I think that any anthropomorphic notions of deity would be subject to a thorough examination. The mere idea that we can adjoin the term "omni" with some other anthropomorphic term seems to be oxymoronic from the start. This gets to John Mikes discomfort with the indiscriminate use to the term "all", a discomfort that I share. The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. [SPK] How so? Is a computational system with sufficient resources unable to generate a simulation of the universe that we experience? We are not talking about the actual construction or specification of such, only the mere possibility that such a system could exist. Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. "No one" is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. [SPK] Hold on just a moment, Brent. The derivation of the Born rules is still not a settled issue in the sense that we don't have a single theory that would explain how the Born rule is even a necessary condition. I would love to be wrong on this latter claim. J I think this argument though is ill defined. "Physicalism" or "naturalism" isn't a particular theory anymore that "supernaturalism" or "everythingism" or "Platonism" is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of "God" sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Brent [SPK] We can judge a metatheory by examination of its logical consequences, the good 'ol GIGO rule still applies. J Onward! Stephen P. King -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
