How to break cause and effect?

[Img_9999]

If my arguments are faulty, then kindly show how so.

Do you read scientific literature? If you did, you'd know that the current model of the brain (very simplistically) is that it is a collection of cells, which react in physical and chemical ways to produce signals, which then downstream result in some consequence, such as mechanical movement. Our understanding of the brain is incomplete at best, because polymer chemistry and physics is a complicated subject, but there is no indication that there is more to it.

Your argument is faulty, as I have already pointed out in my last few posts, because the fact that we can describe the brain and learn how it works doesn't mean that human behaviour is deterministic. That's no verifiable, it's a logical claim, and as such it's refutal or support must be argumentative, and not material. You are not providing arguments for your claims, only asking for sources.

Science uses logical induction literally all the time, and it doesn't mean that science is faulty. We have 500 years of history of the scientific method to know that it does have results. But we also know that science very often makes concessions between abstraction and reality, one of those being, for example, numbers! Do numbers exist in nature? Yet all of science's objectivityobjectivity" relies on quantification.

Ps: Of course I read the scientific literature, I'm a biochemist. But do you read epistemology? Check out some Popper, it would do you good.

 

[belligerent drunk]

Your argument is faulty, as I have already pointed out in my last few posts, because the fact that we can describe the brain and learn how it works doesn't mean that human behaviour is deterministic. That's no verifiable, it's a logical claim, and as such it's refutal or support must be argumentative, and not material. You are not providing arguments for your claims, only asking for sources.

Do I really need to link you to articles supporting my viewpoint and then wait for you being unable to support your claims in the same way? Since you're a biochemist, I expect that you know your way around scientific literature and can find the basic information I'm talking about. After all, do I really need to spell it out for you that carbon typically at ambient temperature and pressure exists in graphite form? Surely you know that, and can find confirmations yourself. The premises of my argument are based on as simple principles as that, and I expect you to know them.

Science uses logical induction literally all the time, and it doesn't mean that science is faulty. We have 500 years of history of the scientific method to know that it does have results. But we also know that science very often makes concessions between abstraction and reality, one of those being, for example, numbers! Do numbers exist in nature? Yet all of science's objectivityobjectivity" relies on quantification.

Numbers do not exist, it is just our way of describing multiple objects. How mathematics relate to this is beyond me.

Ps: Of course I read the scientific literature, I'm a biochemist. But do you read epistemology? Check out some Popper, it would do you good.

I'm familiar with Popper's ideas, thank you. I generally agree with his interpretation of the scientific method, with perhaps certain exceptions.

 

[Img_9999]

Do I really need to link you to articles supporting my viewpoint and then wait for you being unable to support your claims in the same way?

No you don't. And that's exaclty what I'm saying. You are the one that keeps trying to turn a logical argument into an empirical problem, a point I've already made, but you seem to miss each time.

 

[Foreigner]

I understand that you are looking for consistency, and I respect that.

Some observations:

1) What qualifies as evidence, in terms of first person observation? (i.e. inductive and deductive reasonings both have their places)

2) Why is reproducibility important in these areas? Individual people have a vast array of experiences, not all of which are reproducible, yet they happened. In other words, why should I have to validate what happened to me to group-think for my observation to be "real"? Is that not a moral evaluation, rather than a scientific one? And since morals are subjective, this is not a concrete assertion?

3) The nature of what happened (i.e. how we ascribe qualities and characteristics) may be accurate or inaccurate, regardless if we use a scientific model or not. People can agree on what happened or the nature of thing, without the scientific method. The scientific method is your world view, and the way you have chosen to investigate reality. Not everyone operates that way. There's not ONE method.

4) You're assuming that people can't come to accurate conclusions about the basis of reality without the qualification of science. This is patently false.

The things that science can prove, it should go about proving. The things that it can't (yet), it has no place critiquing. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. As a scientist, we can say, based on extrapolation of current knowledge, that something is implausible, but we cannot call it impossible. Those determinations come with real observations.

I had a very similar argument with my brother today, and the intellectual dishonesty was incredible. I'm trying to advocate modesty in thinking, and reliance on evidence. All I'm saying is that one's beliefs should be based on reproducible evidence supporting the idea (according to logic), and not swayed by feelings. What you find so offensive about it is beyond me.

If there were to surface evidence suggesting something else, I'd drop my beliefs without giving it a second thought. That is the most liberating feeling I've ever experienced - being able to adjust my beliefs to what the experiment says. If after 50 years of believing that the violent reaction of alkali metals with water is the result of rapid hydrogen gas release, I were to come across evidence describing what actually goes on, I'd lose my shit with excitement and forget my old beliefs.

 

[Foreigner]

Do I really need to link you to articles supporting my viewpoint and then wait for you being unable to support your claims in the same way? Since you're a biochemist, I expect that you know your way around scientific literature and can find the basic information I'm talking about. After all, do I really need to spell it out for you that carbon typically at ambient temperature and pressure exists in graphite form? Surely you know that, and can find confirmations yourself. The premises of my argument are based on as simple principles as that, and I expect you to know them.

Um... you keep referencing other things in order to validate a patently flawed premise.

Yes, we know lots about the brain. It's plausible, I guess, that we are just our brains and nothing else. However...

Please provide a scientific, peer viewed article which claims human lives are deterministic in nature, based on neuro-biology.

Good luck!

 

[belligerent drunk]

1) What qualifies as evidence, in terms of first person observation? (i.e. inductive and deductive reasonings both have their places)

I guess I would say that sensory information (such as what comes from an experiment or other form of observation), to which sound logic is applied to arrive at conclusions.

2) Why is reproducibility important in these areas? Individual people have a vast array of experiences, not all of which are reproducible, yet they happened. In other words, why should I have to validate what happened to me to group-think for my observation to be "real"? Is that not a moral evaluation, rather than a scientific one? And since morals are subjective, this is not a concrete assertion?

Because me saying that I saw UFO yesterday doesn't qualify as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrials. People can say whatever they want, as they do. If you can show, independently and reproducibly, then you leave yourself out of the equation, and other people are able to judge your claims based on what they see, hear or whatever.

3) The nature of what happened (i.e. how we ascribe qualities and characteristics) may be accurate or inaccurate, regardless if we use a scientific model or not. People can agree on what happened or the nature of thing, without the scientific method. The scientific method is your world view, and the way you have chosen to investigate reality. Not everyone operates that way. There's not ONE method.

Because it actually works. It is not without its faults, but as far as our experience goes, it is the one thing that works at describing reality, and it is the one thing responsible for the technology we have right now. I'm not talking about very subjective things, such as emotions - religion, alternative practices etc may be more effective at providing placebo relief, but as far as alteration of our surroundings goes, the scientific method is in its own league.

4) You're assuming that people can't come to accurate conclusions about the basis of reality without the qualification of science. This is patently false.

I'm not saying one has to be a scientist to understand reality, but the scientific method and its applications are universal - anybody can use it, as it is with logic or mathematics - you don't have to be a mathematician to know that 1 + 1 equals 2 not 7. Science is not some cult with strict membership - it's a concept. If you're using the scientific method to describe reality, then you're fine. And I'm not saying that using other methods of describing reality necessarily mean that the person arrives at wrong conclusions, but the likelihood as shown by centuries of history, is significantly lower for the person not using the scientific method. At the end of the day, I'm basing it on statistics and what has been shown to work by history as opposed to what hasn't.

The things that science can prove, it should go about proving. The things that it can't (yet), it has no place critiquing. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. As a scientist, we can say, based on extrapolation of current knowledge, that something is implausible, but we cannot call it impossible. Those determinations come with real observations.

I absolutely agree with this, but why are you assuming that I'm arguing the opposite? I'm not saying that absence of proof is proof of absence (as I have shown time after time in the god question), but absence of proof is also indicative of lack of reason to believe that it does exist. There are many ways to illustrate the point using a belief that is not subject to emotions. Do you believe that there is living tissue floating somewhere in deep space? There is no reason to want to believe that there is, emotionally, because who gives a fuck? But you are unable to disprove that statement using observation - but that doesn't make it fine to believe and argue in favor of it, do you not agree with this?

I've come to believe that when the question is emotional, such as people feeling more comfortable believing one side of the story rather than another, it causes heavy bias. The god question, the free will question. But I believe that one should try their best to separate their feelings from logic and try to be as objective as possible. Yes, having free will sounds great. But if I don't have it, and that is the reality, then I just have to suck it up and stop bitching about it. After all, reality is what it is and it doesn't ask us what we want it to be. If there is electromagnetic force, no matter how much you wish to believe that there isn't, it's still going to be there.

Um... you keep referencing other things in order to validate a patently flawed premise.

Yes, we know lots about the brain. It's plausible, I guess, that we are just our brains and nothing else. However...

Please provide a scientific, peer viewed article which claims human lives are deterministic in nature, based on neuro-biology.

Good luck!

I'm not going to be able to provide such an article, because this subject has not been explored to a required extent. My argument is rather based on simple premises.

1) the laws of physics are universal (in our universe), and constant. They do not change with time, nor do they differ in different parts of the world (I can provide peer-reviewed articles to show this if you want to, but for right now I will lay it out like I see it, without any sources to save time, and if you feel that I need to provide some, I will gladly do so).

2) It has been shown that matter on the Earth works according to those laws of physics, and its so-to-speak leveled structure (micro vs. macro world) is actually just our interpretation of it, because we cannot model bigger systems using the most fundamental principles, but there is no evidence suggesting that laws of physics differ on different levels.

3) We're made of matter. Biochemistry is based on chemistry (and physics, but chemistry is a result of physics anyway, so the differentiation is redundant). In cell mechanics, processes are successfully being described using physics/chemistry, and they agree with extrapolation of known (and very well shown) laws of physics. If you go from the most fundamental to macro, then you will find that the chain of reasoning is fairly well defined (maybe except from cell to actual behaviour). Humans are made of quarks and such, which form atoms, which form ions/molecules, collections of which form more complex structures such as cells, cells form the structure and chemical profile of the organism. The problem rises when you consider human behaviour, which currently has not been pinned down to certain chemical processes, but there is also no evidence suggesting that there is more to it - it just hasn't been described well enough. And if you consider the evidence that we have vs. what we do not have, then the case leans towards my interpretation of it more strongly than the opposite.

I hope this illustrates my reasoning well enough, thanks for taking the time to read the walls of text.

@polymath, the coulomb unit is kind of out of proportions IMO. A couloumb is tremendous charge, and the work it can do is pretty much beyond normal comprehension. When you think about other units, for example the metre, the second, the kilogram, then they all fall into the normal side of the spectrum for people. But the couloumb, that's quite a bit.

 

[polymath]

Um... you keep referencing other things in order to validate a patently flawed premise.

Yes, we know lots about the brain. It's plausible, I guess, that we are just our brains and nothing else. However...

Please provide a scientific, peer viewed article which claims human lives are deterministic in nature, based on neuro-biology.

Good luck!

It's very possible that the human brain isn't exactly deterministic, at least in the same classical sense as something like the motions of planets in our solar system are. The brain is physically something that is called a "complex nonlinear system", and that kind of systems can be really sensitive to small disturbances, in a butterfly-effect kind of way. Anyone who has tried to simulate complex systems on a computer knows that even the tiny round-off errors that the computer makes because of its limited floating-point accuracy, can make the simulated system's behavior completely different from what is was expected to be.

If it is the case that the effect some quantum scale events, like whether a sodium ion happens to go through a particular NMDA receptor in your cerebral cortex at a particular moment or not, can be amplified enough to alter your visible behavior significantly, then the human behavior isn't deterministic in the classical sense, and the nature of that indeterminacy is open to interpretations (Copenhagen, Many-worlds, etc...).

EDIT: Here's a link to some pages in the "Oxford Handbook of Free Will" where this theory of amplification of quantum effects in the brain is discussed critically: https://books.google.fi/books?id=4Y...ge&q=amplification of quantum effects&f=false

However, current theories that try to use quantum concepts as "proof" of free will or the special nature of consciousness, like that of Penrose & Hameroff, all seem to be a bit of nut job fringe theories.

@polymath, the coulomb unit is kind of out of proportions IMO. A couloumb is tremendous charge, and the work it can do is pretty much beyond normal comprehension. When you think about other units, for example the metre, the second, the kilogram, then they all fall into the normal side of the spectrum for people. But the couloumb, that's quite a bit.

That's just because the ampere, which is one coulomb/second, is a reasonable unit of electric current. Electric currents are more important in practical applications than static charges, so it's a higher priority for the SI unit of electric current to have a sensible magnitude.