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Post by unkleE on Jan 5, 2012 21:44:20 GMT
Now, like you, I do tend towards dualism, though I make a distinction between knowledge and belief, and for me dualism falls firmly outside of the "knowledge" category. I think the main issue I'm raising is not dualism but physicalism. They may come to the same thing, but I note that John Polkinghorne supports the idea of "dual aspect monism". He wants to preserve the idea of a non-physically based aspect of the mind but avoid the disembodied soul idea. I tend to think it is dualism under another name, but it helps make the point that (in my mind) Coyne's and others' blind spot is their unstated assumption of physicalism. If we take it that science measures the physical, then how can the non-physical be experienced and measured? Believers in the non-physical will tell you many ways - intuition, visions & dreams, communication from God, etc - but these would be rejected by physicalists because they are not testable in the scientific way. This isn't entirely logical, because we have just said that these things are beyond the methods of science, so if we won't look for other means to experience them, we will be blind to them (if they exist). Physicalists are therefore left (if they are even interested in testing or experiencing) with looking for places where the non-physical impinges on the physical and measuring that. This is the approach taken by the Intelligent Design movement (which I don't support), but their statements of irreducible complexity seem to me to be impossible to prove. Investigating miraculous healings seems to me to be more promising - if we could document people's medical conditions before and after prayer for healing, and show statistically that too many are healed to be explained by spontaneous remissions, we would have a plausible case for the supernatural impinging on the natural. The medical documentation has been done in some cases, but probably not enough yet, and I've never seen anyone attempt the statistics. But I suspect physicalists would dismiss anything that is done in that area - their assumptions would drive them to say that the success of prayer for healing was not evidence for the supernatural, but of an as yet undiscovered natural effect - a sort of physics of the gaps (but they would call my conclusion God of the gaps!). Which demonstrates how much assumptions drive us - and how little the physicalist camp recognises this. NDEs may be another area where the non-physical might be seen to impinge on the physical. It isn't important for the main topic, but I think I disagree. 1 + 1 always = 2 regardless of definitions. If, in the appropriate stage of the big bang, a sun forms and then a second sun forms, there will be two suns, whether we know it or not, and whether we call it one and two suns or blitts and fronkas suns.
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Post by technomage on Jan 5, 2012 23:09:27 GMT
I think the main issue I'm raising is not dualism but physicalism. I would still call that a form of monism, but we may be having a "potAYto, potAHto" moment. I'm somewhat of the opinion the metaphysical cannot be measured--indeed, it is not experienced in an empirical manner at all. If it exists at all (something I believe, but refuse to claim actual knowledge of), it is to some extent the "ghost in the machine"--unquantifiable, undetectable, and most important to the scientist, unfalsifiable, therefore beyond his purview. Of course, I may be wrong in this--someone could tomorrow come up with a way to detect or measure "mind" separate from physical state. It would certainly not be the first time I was wrong, nor even the most spectacular! Precisely. To do otherwise is to use science for an area in which it lacks competence. Side note: the specific examples used to argue for irreducible complexity have been refuted--the three most commonly used of Behe's examples (blood clotting, immune system, flagellum) have all been demonstrated to have either evolved from less complex systems, or to be still capable of functioning with components missing. More on topic: I would like to mention that these arguments are not arguments FOR Intelligent Design--they are, specifically, arguments AGAINST evolution. There is, and can be, no positive argument for intelligent design in science as it is currently defined: Behe freely acknowledged that point at Dover v Kitzmiller. This has been done, but only smaller studies. So far, the data looks quite disappointing: if I remember correctly, there is either no noted statistical difference, or (believe it or not) the "prayed for" group does worse! I can do some digging to look up the specifics if you wish, but I don't have the info immediately to hand. Eh ... I don't know that I can agree with that, but I have to come to my disagreement from a rather indirect argument. In low-pressure sodium lamps, most of the light is visibly yellow, with a wavelength right below 600 nm. Now imagine said light in a universe with no intelligent beings. Of course "600 nm" means nothing in this universe--there would have been no metric system. "Yellow" would, of course, also be meaningless. These terms were defined by the intelligent mind, but are not intrinsic to the universe. In the scenario you give above, yes, there are "two" stars ... as they would be counted by an imaginary observer. The problem is, I'm not certain that the "mathematical object" of the number is meaningful, or even existent, without an observer. However, not only am I straying from the topic at hand, I'm straying into an area that even the "professional" philosophers have not settled--or if they have, I don't understand the conclusions. I'm not the dimmest bulb in the chandelier, but there is a heck of a lot that is still beyond my grasp.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2012 23:58:01 GMT
It happens to have been raised. I have read some more expert writings, though my capacity to understand is probably limited. Do you have a suggestion? A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will by Robert Kane is probably the best beginners introduction to free will. He also edited Free Will from the Blackwell Readings in Philosophy series - a collection of articles which excellently supplements the book. There are numerous books and articles to mention, but this is a good start and necessary to master for any further exploration of the field.
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Post by unkleE on Jan 6, 2012 3:41:17 GMT
This has been done, but only smaller studies. So far, the data looks quite disappointing: if I remember correctly, there is either no noted statistical difference, or (believe it or not) the "prayed for" group does worse! I can do some digging to look up the specifics if you wish, but I don't have the info immediately to hand. I have looked into this myself, and I think there are some common misunderstandings. I was referring to two quite different approaches to assessing healing. 1. One approach is to set up controlled experiments where people pray for one group and not for another, and the results are statistically compared. It is a supposedly scientific approach, but quite a poor one because: - We don't know who else might be praying for the non-prayed for group, and cannot control for this.
- The experimental design assumes this is a statistical thing, when God's actions (if they occur at all) will not necessarily be statistical, but may appear to us to be random or arbitrary.
- The study is looking at small gains, and these could be made for all sorts of unmeasured and even unknown psychological, personal or random reasons.
Further, everyone quotes a study done for the Templeton Foundation (which found slightly negative effects of prayer), and ignores other studies that have been done. The Templeton study was undoubtedly the most comprehensive, and possibly therefore the most reliable, but there are many others. I researched this and found 20 studies (including the Templeton study) and 4 reviews. A majority of these found discernible improvements with prayer, but a fair number found none. You can see a summary of the studies at intercessory prayer and healing and read my assessment of the results in Can prayer assist healing?
So the picture on that score is far from clear, but everyone thinks it is resolved. 2. But what I had more in mind was medical studies of apparent miraculous healings, with full medical information available for before and after. These have been done in a few cases, and the results are quite interesting. (Again, I have a summary at Healing miracles and God. Then one needs to do some statistics to examine rates of spontaneous remission vs healing after prayer. I'm not aware of this being done. Without that we are simply left with the medical assessments that many of the healings could not have been spontaneous remissions, or if they were, they are the first of their kind.
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Post by technomage on Jan 6, 2012 20:46:14 GMT
Thanks for giving me a wider picture on the "prayer and healing" question--I can see I've got some reading to do!
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Post by unkleE on Jan 9, 2012 21:20:46 GMT
It happens to have been raised. I have read some more expert writings, though my capacity to understand is probably limited. Do you have a suggestion? A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will by Robert Kane is probably the best beginners introduction to free will. He also edited Free Will from the Blackwell Readings in Philosophy series - a collection of articles which excellently supplements the book. There are numerous books and articles to mention, but this is a good start and necessary to master for any further exploration of the field. Thanks. I looked it up on Amazon and it gets very good reviews (including yours!).
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Post by himself on Jan 10, 2012 2:04:12 GMT
1. Prayer and healing. Such "experiments" are framed within the worldview of the Modern Age: that of power and control. It assumes that God is a vending machine and will drop the candy out the slot if only a sufficient quantity of prayer-coins are inserted. IOW, it is a belief in Magick. 2. Coyne. He goes beyond denying his version of free will. He denies will and even says: "we" are simply constructs of our brain. That's right. Jerry Coyne denied his own existence. What was it A.N.Whitehead said about people who devote their minds to proving that they don't have one? It is not clear to what the term "our" refers in this claim. It cannot refer to the same thing as "we," because that would be circular. How can a brain belonging to X then go on to construct X? Ex nihilo nihil fit, and all that. Inquiring minds want to know. His version of free will is what he calls When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. Which is not what we mathematical types call "well-defined." Coyne has told us that Free will is defined as our "ability to freely... choose." Say what? But then his brain atoms propose: A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently. No, really. He wrote that. If this is his brain atoms' notion of a practical test, one wonders what would constitute an impractical one. But this sort of thing seems to be the norm among those whose brains practice philosophy without a license. (Gould, of course, famously declared that if the tape were rerun, we would expect entirely different species to evolve. But then the physical world does seem to be less deterministic than Coyne's psyche.)
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Post by Al Moritz on Jan 11, 2012 21:10:47 GMT
1. Prayer and healing. Such "experiments" are framed within the worldview of the Modern Age: that of power and control. It assumes that God is a vending machine and will drop the candy out the slot if only a sufficient quantity of prayer-coins are inserted. IOW, it is a belief in Magick. Precisely. I wrote on another occasion: Now we come to the thorny issue of prayer studies. When I first heard about them I literally couldn't believe how someone could be so, pardon me, asinine to conduct them. Since when is it reasonable to make God, a person with free will, a scientific object? Let's suppose you were God. Wouldn't you want to say: Silly you, I am not a robot from which you can demand the fulfillment of your whims. You want to play with me, well, then I'll play with you! Perhaps this or similar is exactly what God is thinking. Doesn't God say that you should not tempt Him, and that your intentions should be pure? Well, both of these demands are violated with such prayer studies. I am not discarding the negative results of prayer studies because I am desperate to 'explain things away', but for the just mentioned straightforward logical and theological reasons. For these reasons I would actually be surprised and extremely skeptical if prayer studies would report a firmly positive result.In fact, I believe that, since prayer studies attempt to make God a scientific object, they are flat-out blasphemy. Only the naivete and 'best' intentions of those who conduct them may save them from committing a grave sin (if those who conduct them are actual believers and not skeptics).
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Post by unkleE on Jan 12, 2012 21:06:18 GMT
In fact, I believe that, since prayer studies attempt to make God a scientific object, they are flat-out blasphemy. Only the naivete and 'best' intentions of those who conduct them may save them from committing a grave sin (if those who conduct them are actual believers and not skeptics). G'day Al, nice to hear from you again. I'm not sure I fully agree with you here. I can see that trying to test God's responses in this way may be futile, but I can also see that keeping a record of what he does and doesn't do isn't unreasonable. People who keep prayer diaries are doing just this. But I think the studies are doomed for other reasons. 1. The results. Miraculous healings are not as common as we'd like, so they will rarely get picked up here. So what are the studies measuring? Just the slighter benefits that might be gained by prayer, which may be psychological, natural or intervention by God. Not very precise. 2. The input. People saying prayers are not the same as people praying in faith, which is the kind of prayer Jesus asks us to make. This is an enormous problem for the studies. And we don't know who else is praying for the control group. Despite my misgivings, if the studies were positive (as for example, studies show that faith is associated with good health and general wellbeing), I would consider them slight evidence for God, or at least food for thought.
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Mike D
Master of the Arts
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Post by Mike D on Jan 19, 2012 14:07:15 GMT
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Post by acornuser on Jan 24, 2012 2:38:51 GMT
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Post by unkleE on Jan 24, 2012 23:29:23 GMT
UnklE, have you seen Craig Keener's new book on miracles? No, but from your reference I think I must read it. But 1248 pages is a bit of a stretch - though I have his book on the Jesus of the Gospels, and it is large too, but half of it (literally) is references and footnotes! So perhaps I can manage it. Thanks for the reference.
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Post by shbuff on Jul 2, 2012 23:01:38 GMT
If the neuroscience model is the complete description, then the sense of self is an illusion. More than that, it is an illusion produced by the brain to fool itself (!). If you add in freewill on top of that, you get that freewill is an illusion produced by the brain to fool the sense of self (which is itself an illusion, also produced by the brain) into thinking that it really makes decisions. All of which leaves me wondering if this is really the best explanation of the human mind... There are a number of ways to refute the claim by Dennett, Nueroscientists, etc. that consciousness is an illusion (there are a number of papers online if you wish to find them), but to simplify one can simply ask "if conciousness (or the conscious self) is an illusion, who is being fooled?" If you feel that you are making choices, then you probably are--even though science has yet to discover (or may never discover) how it is you are able to do so.
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