Thread: An Empirical View of Science Dogma

Originally Posted by StephL

Come on - do you really claim, you have elucidated your views on "spirit" and "soul" with these two passages?

Yes.

Originally Posted by StephL

Why take on this terminology, if you are on about functional faculties?

Because it makes sense to me, and because it has already been used by others for centuries.

Originally Posted by StephL

Indeed everybody can agree on humans having higher and lower mental faculties - absolutely everybody from atheist to fanatic Muslim - so you have said exactly nothing about your personal stance and beliefs.

But you were not evading me?
I could feel offended right back - but it's more exasperation.

I'm rather convinced that your exasperation stems from so far not being able to put me into the category "tree-hugging new age hippies". But if you really want me there, you will have to ask other questions than about soul and spirit, because these I have given my truthful engineering answer to.

Originally Posted by StephL

And I'm tired hunting down your terminology for essence - like asking, who or what survives physical death in your 60% version - spirit and soul together? Or only one of them?
If together - why the separation of terms in the first place - on which grounds?

In all fairness: why do you take an interest in my view on this at all? All I did was back up OP's post (#177) up with a definition of dogma taken from an online dictionary; my views on souls, spirits, and the here-after are not relevant in any way!

But, to answer specifically your latest questions: in the 60% version the answer would probably be "both soul and spirit survive physical death". But this is not something, that I have contemplated a lot, so maybe my confidence in this is lower than 60%. Please note: I do not have a clear grip on what a soul and a spirit is (from a physics point of view) - only on what they do!

Why the separation in terms - I am an engineer, and a physicist, and I like to break things down into their components - and preferably in a sensible way. Using lower and higher mental faculties seems to fit with my experience of human behaviour. Plus, as mentioned, it's traditional (and, in that tradition souls survive bodies, but spirits survive souls).

Originally Posted by StephL

If you would hold a purely materialistic view on human nature -then I could not accuse you of being dogmatic in your reduced definition.
Since you would then be basing your views on established facts only.

See, that's where you loose me: how does someone with a materialistic view on human nature necessarily base this view on established facts only?

A materialist would for example claim boldly, that there is no afterlife. But this is not an established fact - it is merely an assumption.

Originally Posted by StephL

Oh - do by all means!
Looking forward to an example in physics, where the scientific method is inadequate!

Okay, since you ask for it: bound electrons from time to time get "excited" and move into a more highly energized state. But they remain there for only so long, after which they fall back into their old energy state. The time required before falling back seems random to those who have studied it. No matter how many times they do the experiment, the result comes out different every time.

The official doctrine (which is highly dogmatic, by the way) is that this is inherent randomness in nature, and no theory can ever be proposed that would succesfully predict the time required for the decay back into the low energy state.

Well - the whole "are you absolutely convinced" business was directed at you, OP and Dthoughts - and I did it, to make at least some of the people reading this here aware of the fact, that many, many people - and some readers, too, surely - are at least extremely reluctant to admit, that the world could indeed be purely materialistic. And that holding such a view does not exactly qualify one to accuse others of dogma.
It took an inordinate time to determine, that you are indeed an agnostic - so long, that I wonder, if this was even clear to yourself.

Originally Posted by Voldmer

Okay, since you ask for it: bound electrons from time to time get "excited" and move into a more highly energized state. But they remain there for only so long, after which they fall back into their old energy state. The time required before falling back seems random to those who have studied it. No matter how many times they do the experiment, the result comes out different every time.

The official doctrine (which is highly dogmatic, by the way) is that this is inherent randomness in nature, and no theory can ever be proposed that would succesfully predict the time required for the decay back into the low energy state.

What this shows, is that we don't live in a completely deterministic universe - there are here and there cases, where we don't find a clear-cut answer - in this case to predict, when a certain electron will fall back to the lower energy state.
This conundrum was discovered by Science - and do tell me, with what other method you think, one should go about analysing it.
Despite this uncertainty - what you can always do is measure a lot of examples - determine the range - the shortest and longest time it needs for this in etwa, and then throw up a mathematical analysis on the probabilities for the times needed.

If it is as you say - that's not showing that the scientific method is inadequate - just that we can't predict this, at least not at the moment.

I know, that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is about there being a limit to the precision, with which you can measure two complementary characteristics of a particle - like position and momentum - simultaneously.
That is quantum mechanics - and your electron should also be on that playground.
Is there a connection, maybe?
And as far as I know - Heisenberg could show mathematically, that this is really a limit, and so the uncertainty concerning these measurements is doctrine (aka - "as best as we know at the moment" - so that is, what is being taught).

Such a thing - same as not (yet) being able to grasp a phenomenon with hypotheses and experiments at all - shows us the limits of the procedure for the time being - maybe forever in certain cases. Oh - and our cognitive limits of course.
It does not show, that the scientific method is invalid.

What would show that, would be if experiments, which have been giving reliable results in the past, which make sense in our current understanding, would suddenly produce random and nonsensical results.
And actually - one scientist - or a group of them - getting such results would first of all always have to check extensively for flaws in their procedure - it would only then be significant, if this happened all over the world for various scientists.

If it was only about one topic - say the measure of the speed of light - I would first of all loose confidence in the constancy of the speed of light, and that it affects the universe, as it is believed it does.
Not yet the whole method.
But as I said - if this happened all over the world and with diverse topics - then it would follow, that we better cease relying on it, and try to figure out how that can be.


A shot in the dark - does observational/experimental science being something other than historical science ring a bell?
Not as in trying to reconstruct human history - like how a battle unfolded.
I mean it as in - we can measure something here and now - but that tells us nothing about how it was in the past, or how it is somewhere, where we can't directly measure?

Consciousness seems pretty random at times. Just look at this random comment.

Originally Posted by Voldmer

I hope we can wrap this up soon; this takes time away from more interesting stuff ...

Well yeah - so be it.
Finally we agree on something!

Yeah - you are right, Dthoughts - guilty of getting carried away as pointed out.
I'll look into that video - I rather enjoy listening to McKenna on his own sometimes.
smile.gif

And I found something with electron and probabilities, which I posted before in my little collection thread, because I find it beautiful:

The below animation shows the quantum mechanical probability distribution of an electron as it passes through two narrow slits.
The electron itself is much smaller than its probability distribution cloud, which is dispersed over a large area, creating an interference pattern. However, as soon as the electron binds itself to an atom, then its probability distribution cloud will become small again:

No arguments from me Dthoughts, the only thing that I was fixated on discussing about after a bit was that a Scientific materialist paradigm wouldn't necessarily have a decent model, or set of models to make presumptions of what consciousness is (excluding what it may be at a functional level). At best, a materialist may declare that consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon, which is why an impasse is set up for this particular view, and encroaching dualism in some way is inevitable. Combined with other perspectives such as reductionism, monism, objectivism, and even physicalism, it's understandable that they're merely ideologies if individuals were to subscribe to their set of paradigms being the proper, or pragmatic study of science (e.g. a Scientist who may harbor materialistic views may consider consciousness irrelevant because of the presumption of the totality of chemical reactions in the brain).

If they don't consider it being the example mentioned for instance, then it may present the probability of panpsychism (i.e. neurons that would be considered non-experiential matter to them could suddenly turn into experiential matter, and presumably have some "consciousness," or "sentience," which is why having a Scientific materialistic view has its limits before metaphysical breaking points in logic), or something else encroaching a bit of subjectivity there.

It's not so much as aiming to attack a person's personal set of dispositions of what reality is, rather the concepts, and it's just when there are some aspects that can't reconcile with themselves metaphysically, the Scientific materialistic interpretation of consciousness is a bit shaky. Not stating you're harboring only Scientific materialism, since I'm presuming that from before, you're open-minded to concepts that would be considered immaterial and such. Of course, dualism can be just as vague at times, and people can easily go with a monism implication alone while introducing other metaphysics and all that for their presumptive models of reality.


In short, explaining "I" with just a materialistic view can be very difficult, which is why I personally don't hold such strict attachments to it. I'm more of just being in the middle with metaphysical realism when it comes to circumstances like this, but not something I subscribe to militantly. Of course, there's no denying that there's skepticism, criticism, and even dogma against realists, anti-realists, direct realists (i.e. common sense realism), and such.

Sorry I haven't replied in a while, I had to travel for a snowboard race. It was amazing. I'll be sure to read the responses eventually, but in the mean time while I was traveling I remembered a thread that almost perfectly validates my argument, bearing in mind my argument is not against science itself but only to establish that dogmatic thinking is being mislabeled at scientific or empirical by a controlling portion of the scientific community.

http://www.dreamviews.com/inner-sanc...our-brain.html

If you read the responses to this thread about clicking the amygdalae forward, you'll notice dogmatism being paraded as skepticism. The dogmatic belief is that we cannot control our brain, and that this sensation therefore must be a placebo effect. However, the technique is actually kind of tricky, and I felt nothing at first because I was doing it incorrectly. If it were a placebo effect, then doing the technique incorrectly would have generated the same results as it did when I finally succeeded. However, the dogmatists rebutting the OP in that thread presented an unwillingness to entertain the possibility that one could click their amygdalae forward, so this sentiment did not matter. My experience was black or white, if you execute the technique properly you cannot deny its existence, but skeptics that responded to this thread were unwilling to do the the work in order to replicate the experiment. They dismissed it and confused their dismissal as healthy skepticism rather than rigid attachment to their model of reality and how the brain works. Argument validated, your move.

One may be inclined to presume it may be ignorance, or just how they viewed OP in the thread. But if the audience in that thread (at least in the initial stages) are people that probably mostly have menial jobs, or average lives I should say where they're not probing something in a microscope, it's not really a matter of dogmatic individuals in Science anymore, but hey, I'm not bothered by this change in premises for this thread.

However, it's not really individuals stating their views are irrefutable compared to OP in that thread, it was just a curb stomp festival where people figured they could enjoy comedy hour in that thread. Maybe you made a valid argument within the context for that thread, but for here, I don't think individuals in Dream Views in that scenario would be relevant for the set of circumstances in this thread. Of course, I'm aware that when there are phenomenon that we develop experiential truths from that we can't demonstrate through others (except through anecdotal cases and testimonies), it's often best to not really try to portray them anything.

Just like I'm sure there are individuals in this forum that have their own personal metaphysical attributions of what goes on in their natural sleep, and anything beyond that (e.g. spirit guides, alternate realities), wanting others to be open-minded in this circumstance is like persuading them to lose the last remnant of their quotidian lifestyle that may be broken if they ever experience something so gargantuan and abnormal where denying it (especially if it may be of benefit) would be absurd.

I empathize for you, I honestly do, but when it comes to people being skeptical of things that may very well strip their quotidian lifestyle little by little (not necessarily the link you provided mind you), it would be natural for them to be skeptical, and maybe sarcastic.

That was always the premise, your last paragraph has essentially restated my OP commentary. People like their models of reality and cling to them even when faced with evidence that contradicts it, then they have the gall to call their line of thinking scientific and label any evidence countering this line of thinking as pseudoscience, placebo, hallucination, wishful thinking and what have you. This is not a small portion of the population either, the attitude showcased in that thread is pervasive in society.

Here I thought the premise all along was those specifically of materialistic paradigms and scientism that would have their own dispositions on what would be proper applications of Science, and not having a shred of curiosity for something that contradicts their claims. Anything beyond that where society creates their own subjective meanings based on cultural distinctions, upbringing, social conditioning, and such is obvious, but not really an argument though.

Do note that if individuals were so open-minded to be captivated that if a decent number of individuals believed it (and I'm talking about things that aren't observed with common sense and developed through simple theoretical deduction), it would be catering to argumetum ad populum (i.e. if so many believe it to be so, it is so). It's not really about dogma as much now (but it can still be probable of course), but more of how people weigh certain judgements and values towards a popular opinion, or any opinion where the premises seem convincing. Now, if it's something where an opinion declares a conclusion towards a premise as being true (especially irrefutably true), then people would naturally question the person doing so.

Things like herd mentality and other biases may lead to some cultural groups feeling as if a conclusion is irrefutably true, but those would be extremists at best. The difference would be premises vs. conclusions, and if it's the former, weighing personal opinion or not towards the premises is what sustains argumentum ad populum's grip on subjectivity. But if it's something where there's a conclusion on the other hand, it would imply there could be an objective statement. The same logic would apply within scientific fields and what have you, but we know that the method of inquiry is limited based on factors mentioned already, and then some, and how people collectively try to find patterns of reality and such is the what we're limited to in terms of cognitive grasps of reality.

It's understandable that some people will stick to premises, form them into absolute conclusions for their own personal gain, and having something to cling onto. But it's another matter where there are certain situations where people will have their own means of placing judgement, value, belief, and trust towards premises, but not necessarily feeling coerced to make it an absolute conclusion.

Voldmer defined dogma as confusing one's belief for fact. Whether ad populum is also a factor doesn't mean the label of dogma fails to remain apt in describing the discomfort people have of uncertainty and rebellion against it. I wouldn't necessarily say they hold no curiosity but that they are afraid of what that curiosity may lead to. Materialism provides a safe haven to reside one's perspective in an otherwise chaotic and inexplicable reality. So when Sheldrake submits evidence on telepathy, it threatens this haven by showing that maybe we do not yet understand reality.

I'll just go with the general definition of dogma that can be found here. There's a myriad of interpretations of the word, but I'll just take into consideration of something more neutral rather than appealing to one individual's interpretation.

As for Sheldrake submitting evidence, you don't have to be a materialist to realize that if a person makes a claim for something that hasn't been up to the standard of repeatability and experimentation as evidence (within the margin of applying the method of inquiry of such presumptions), then they should be questioned. Even if you're talking about anecdotal evidence and testimonies, ad populum is there with open arms, but for validity, probably not so much. As for materialism being a safe haven, that sounds a bit depressing if a view that may hold consciousness being an epiphenomenon of the totality of neural and chemical activity of the brain gives solace (and avoiding explaining what "I" may be in that similar conceptual framework). At this point, I think it's just crazy to attribute that as a means for comfort for materialists, even to those who may not be so confident of how their consciousness operates.


Doesn't really sound like materialism, just more of nihilists with massive brain damage.

Yes - it's absurd, to propose, that materialism is a solace. Quite the opposite is the case.
I lately came across Wolf Singer, neurophysiologist, proposing that the "self" would be something, which springs not from a brain alone, but emerges by contact/dialogue with other beings. Not sure, what I think of it - but since I got it at hand:

Originally Posted by Wolf Singer

However, there are other aspects of conscious-
ness, such as self-awareness and the experience
of individuality, that seem to require explan-
ations which transcend purely neurobiological
reductionism. It is my perception that the onto-
logical status of these phenomena differs from
that of the qualia of phenomenal awareness, and
that it is these aspects of consciousness which
give rise to the hard problems in the philosophy
of mind and provide the incentive for adopting
dualistic positions. The most challenging phe-
nomenon in this context is that we perceive
ourselves as agents who are endowed with the
freedom to decide, implying that the self is
capable of controlling, by will, processes in the
brain. We experience these aspects of conscious-
ness as immaterial mental entities that are
capable of influencing the neuronal processes
required for execution of actions, and hence we
perceive them as different from the material
processes in the brain.
I propose that these latter connotations of
consciousness are perceived as different because
they require for their development interactions
among brains that are succinctly differentiated
as to have phenomenal awareness and to signal
to one another that they are endowed with this
capacity. Such brains are able to enter dialogues
of the kind ‘‘I know that you know how I feel’’
or ‘‘I know that you know what my intentions
are,’’ and so on. My proposal is that the experi-
ence of the ‘‘self’’ with all its subjective mental
attributes emerges from such dialogues among
human beings, above all from the early inter-
actions between caregivers and babies. The
experience of individuality and responsibility,
and as a consequence the intuition that one is
endowed with intentionality and free will, would
then have to be considered as a product of
social interactions. The subjective attributes of
consciousness would have the ontological status
of social realities, of cultural constructs, and
would therefore, transcend pure neurobiological
description systems that focus on individual
brains.
The mechanisms that enable us to experience
ourselves as endowed with mental capacities do,
of course, reside in individual brains, but the
contents of this experience are derived from
social interactions. But why then should the ex-
perience of the self be so obviously different from
other experiences that we also derive from social
interactions? One explanation could be that the
dialogue that leads to the experience of the self is
initiated during an early developmental stage,
before episodic memory matures and begins to
keep track of what the brain experiences. If so,
there would be no conscious record of the pro-
cesses that led to the experience of the self and
the associated subjective connotations of con-
sciousness. Because of this amnesia these early
experiences would lack causation; they would
appear to be timeless and detached from any real
world context. In consequence, the subjective
connotations of consciousness, although acquired
by learning, would be perceived as having tran-
scendental qualities that resist reductionistic
explanations.

From here: Neural Correlates Of Consciousness
Chapter 8

Certainty is the solace, not necessarily the details of materialism but specifically the comfort of knowing something. Even if, in your mind, materialism is depressing, it's far more comfortable to know the depressing truth than be thrust into the unknown.

Initially, materialism makes sense so we grow attached to it. Then when it's challenged, we rise to defend it like we're defending ourselves because we identify with what we believe to be true.

Whether Sheldrake's experiments truly failed to be repeated or were dismissed prejudicially is not my call to make. I don't believe it far-fetched that our minds are extended and connected, it makes more sense than not based on my personal experiences so I'll admit that I favor experiments on telepathy because I'm excited to see if Science can explain what's going on with the mind and how it works. But the premise of this thread is not about the validity of Sheldrake's experiments, it's about the dogma that invalidated them based on bias against what they propose. I was thinking of starting a new thread to talk about morphic resonance and other theories that counter materialism but I haven't learned enough about those theories yet to argue them effectively.

Meh, I believe our perception can expand to cover more elements of the universe, and we do that artificially now, but the problem is that we might not be able at all to translate some elements, thus leaving a chance for false assumptions for advanced laws, exactly because all elements suggest it's likeliness.
So, even if our logic can handle everything we might perceive, our perception might still be limited.

Without reading back now, at all, sorry - I feel like here's an open building ground - and I might - no I do feel compelled to step down on such an out of hand dismissal of the idea of this thread as my memory says, I had presented - in part in opposition to the individual of the video, call that fallacy, surely... Whatever - having it making metaphorical noises in the back of my mind - I would want to take the initiative and acknowledge, Original Poster, that you do indeed have a point!

Why now? Well - because I wondered, if somebody else might be able to turn around on something, actually, and then on top of that suddenly coming across maybe one of the most intelligent youtube - well - don't know, statements!? - in ages. Really - lovely! I am not interested, not a lot, in her topic of passion, the men's right's movement, but wow, what an intellectual joy to listen to and very much on topic, besides her personal focus of attention! This:



Wonderful - a woman, who talks from my heart, I have to say, in terms of my experiences with proclaimed, even radical feminists. I've been thinking like a "coffee-house feminist", when young, like believing it somewhat equivalent to Humanism, but it is not and my personal dogma-fire-alarms went off with them long years back.
There is a coincidence, too - the husband of a good old friend of mine is a German independent movie director, and his new movie will be about the male victim of female sexual abuse. Very taboo, this, but thanks to him, I was prepared for the video mentioning it. He's been at heavy topics before, looking forward to what will come out of it, soon I guess.

One more thing - I just read one of the most fascinating books in a long while. Also on gender, in the middle, by far not enough, though, now I think of it, but it's all about looking at the human body and - not enough of that, too, but a bit - the human mind, even aspects of dreaming, from an evolutionary developmental stance. Like why it's not loud noises, strong haptics and smell so much in dreams, intensity-wise - could be so that we can be warned by these perceptions, if they come in from real life outside the sleeper, analogous with optical illusions/hallucinations... Darwinian Medicine for the laywoman, willing to strain her grey and white and whatnot cells a bit! And not what some might have under their respective smoke-detector, eugenics, Nazis - nope!! Just trying to make the most possible sense of things, some quite daring speculations as well and ideas for research for tons of PhDs and even careers! For example some supposed genetic disorders can be better explained as an actual adaptation, if not necessarily to our present environment. "Why We Get Sick" by Randolph M. Nesse.

Whatever - she grazes upon science-dogma as well at funnily about 22:22 min in, and of course she's right, more in academia than in hard science, but sure it's there and it's abundant, and especially in medicine, more so in psychiatry and psychology. But it's an epi-phenomenon - it's human nature, given to us, selected into us even by evolution, so I believe! Not that Nesse would present an idea on the role of dogma, or even religion in the scope of his treatise, but one comes to think...

So there - cheers Original Poster - steph turns around, with a slight groan, but not a loud one...