Behaviour report by the London school of economics

lostinrates

lemonjelly wrote: »

esponse here.

However, from my perspective, the things you are describing are responses to pain (reflax, massaging etc) as opposed to the pain itself. eg you can see a cut, the swelling, inflammation, bleeding, damage to tissues/nerves. I'd argue it is AS YET impossible to quantify (& therefore "see") pain itself directly.

However I'm sure none of us would doubt its existence, in spite of this.

I added something....who knows what the future holds?

ninky_2

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Some issues are beyond the remit of science, and trying to use science to explain them risks reducing science to the status of a religion.

but surely qualia is a scientific concept in itself. i think the advantage of science is that it is open to new evidence and contradiction. as such i don't see it as a religion at all.

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

as someone who has enjoyed posting on the richard dawkins forums i'm enjoying this thread. dawkins threw all his toys out his pram last week and closed the forum (because people had been calling him rude things on other forums...). he threatened to delete the entire forum after 30 days. pretty shocking as it's not just house price rants over there. a lot of serious scientists have had debates, linked to serious scientific research etc. it's literally hours (possibly days) of some people's work.

he's had to take a step back and agree the forum will still stay available in read only format. a new forum is going to start up but all threads will have to be approved before going live.

so we should behave ourselves before martin follows suit.

that doesn't surprise me, he is not a man who contains his superiority complex well. i'm a very staunch atheist. one of the main things i find distasteful about religion is that its followers often try to press their beliefs onto others, or at least publically demonstrate why their beliefs are the best.

when an atheist starts to try to do the same, as dawkins does, they are effectively just another religious nut in my eyes.

lostinrates

ninky wrote: »

but surely qualia is a scientific concept in itself. i think the advantage of science is that it is open to new evidence and contradiction. as such i don't see it as a religion at all.

I think that's how science should be, I think it is far from being so often.

lemonjelly

lostinrates wrote: »

No it doesn't...of course its possible, IMO, to say so,e viewpoints are more likely to be true than others.....its possible to say the evidence is wholy supportive of one currently known ''truth''...doesn't mean another won't come along in the future.

Hmmm!;)
Literally speaking, there are those who would argue that truth is fixed, & not flexible. To this end, previously held truths become false (not less true).

The issue I have with relativism is that so many people will, at some point in an arguement/debate say "well it is all relative, innit" or "everyones opinion is as valid as the other". When in fact it is not! (actually, what I think they are usually trying to badly express, is that CONTEXT is important).

lostinrates wrote: »

I think I am fairly reasonable. I'm not terribly inconclusive: I just believe my conclusions are appropriate to me and not to others.....thus they are mine alone. I also find it possible to believe to seemingly opposed things at different times and circumstances. But thats not inconclusive, thats flexible....:D

Reasonable - agreed
Inconclusive, hmmm, sometimes I think we all are so unsure of what we are all on about that we end up being inconclusive.

lostinrates

ninky wrote: »

what makes someone a "militant atheist"? is it the desire to convert?

Partly.

Perhaps refusal to admit the possibility of fallibility or variance.

Really2

ninky wrote: »

I think the advantage of science is that it is open to new evidence and contradiction. as such i don't see it as a religion at all.

The belief that science is correct until challenged or disproven is virtually identical to religion IMHO.
Unless you do the work or research yourself you are just a follower who believes something someone is telling you.

lemonjelly

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

My actual dislike of militant atheism stems not so much from the fact that I disagree with them, but more that fact that I have always found Daniel Dennett (who I studied as part of my degree) to supercilious as well as misguided. I mean, naming a moverment "brights" implying that people who disagree with you are dim. Breathtakingly arrogant. If they want to call themselves brights, they should come up with more convincing arguments.

Lemonjelly - the "redness" or "greenness" you are grappling with is called "qualia". Realising that science provided no explanation of this (or indeed concepts such as consciousness), Dennett and his ilk prefer to either explain them away, or pretend they do not matter. I have read his arguments, and my perception of colour and consciousness has not disappeared in a puff of logic.

Qualia introduces interesting issues. For example, if you look inside an enclosed box with a light bulb, how do you know that box is a box with a white interior and a red lightbulb, or a red box with a white lightbulb?

Some issues are beyond the remit of science, and trying to use science to explain them risks reducing science to the status of a religion.

Wholly valid.

I found dennett interesting, although a little convoluted sometimes. Definitely thought provoking. Some of his titles were a little over the top though. I mean... Consciousness Explained!

Thing is though, some pursue science as though it were a religion. Indeed, the so called chicago school pursued economics as though it were a science, and were zealous to the extreme!

The growth of science in recent decades has caused many to expect science to answer all questions - adverts had the phrase "here comes the science" as the public automatically believe it is more valid. Look at how mental health has been treated in recent history (sometimes the belief that it is a biological problem which can be fixed by tablets is easier to deal with).

Anyhow, you & I Sir Humph are obviously of a higher intelligence given certain footballing allegiances;)

lemonjelly

Really2 wrote: »

The belief that science is correct until challenged or disproven is virtually identical to religion IMHO.
Unless you do the work or research yourself you are just a follower who believes something someone is telling you.

Git!
I was typing a nice long reposte, & you get in there first with this!:D:)

Sir_Humphrey

ninky wrote: »

but surely qualia is a scientific concept in itself. i think the advantage of science is that it is open to new evidence and contradiction. as such i don't see it as a religion at all.

It certainly is not a religion. However there has been a trend in analytic phliosophy to try use science to support philosophical positions, because science has a superior basis of knowledge (in philosophy-speak, it has a more robust epistemic basis).

This attempts to extrapolate scientific findings to answer questions such as consciousness, free will, determinism/indeterminism, qualia etc etc. This is an abuse of science IMO, as there is no way of determining these things experimentally. There have been attempts to do so, but I have to say that I do not find them convincing.

For example, there was an experiment which determined that the decision-making parts of the brain triggered several seconds before an actual decision was made - the implication being that our decision making is an illusion and we are determined to always make the same decision in the same circumstances. I find this unconvincing for two reasons; firstly this was a decision to be made that could be anticipated in advance due to the experimental conditions. Secondly, it only offers evidence of when the decision was made, not it's outcome.

FWIW, I suspect that most decisions we make are deterministic, but not all. Human understanding is not far enough developed IMO to be making authoritative statements on these sorts of issues.