kessog

I hope this comment is actually readable, because someone, totally ignoring HN guidelines on flagging, keeps downvoting and flagging my comments seemingly just because they disagree. I'd prefer if they engaged in the debate instead of simply shutting it down so that none of us can learn anything.

I'm not saying it's impossible to know anything about the world, I'm making an internal critique of your worldview. I'm saying that in your worldview, which seems to be pure materialism, it is impossible to justify epistemic claims about the world. To reduce thousands of years of philosophy to "stoned conversations at 3am" is disingenuous and, forgive me, points to a lack of understanding of the history of philosophy on your part.

These aren't just points I'm pulling out of thin air, I'm simply rehashing dialogues and arguments made by the likes of Aristotle and David Hume - arguments which have not been refuted since, at least in the public domain. I urge you to read about Hume's theory of Induction, and the Is/Ought distinction. You could also do well to read Aristotle's dialogue with the sophists.

>While that's great for stoned conversations at 3am, it's not very useful.

What is "useful" in a purely materialist worldview? How can the objective "usefulness" of something be ascertained in a world where nothing objective exists, since universals and objectivity are in the domain of metaphysics?

> If I don't make such assumptions -- if I just conclude that I can never know anything about the world, not even provisionally -- then what's the point in doing anything?

Exactly! You've hit the nail on the head. In a purely material universe, where to know anything is impossible without "pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps" (so to speak) in terms of metaphysics, there is absolutely no reason to do anything. The universe becomes totally without meaning, aka "Disteleological".

But then this creates a paradox - if everything is meaningless, even the claim that everything is meaningless becomes, itself, meaningless. This is an impossible position to hold, and is self refuting.

So the only other position we can hold is that there are metaphysical concepts, and that they do hold ontological status (they exist) and relate to our universe. To suggest that consciousness, which is as invisible and untouchable as logic, yet has a similar effect on the physical world, isn't one among these metaphysical concepts is absurd.

In that case sorry for the accusation.

With this you haven't given me epistemic justification, you're just telling a story. How do you know that the past happened at all on your criteria of what constitutes reasonable evidence? It isn't material. You can't touch the past, you can't pick the past up and move it. You can't actually observe it at all. If the only evidences we are allowed to use are physical evidences, it's impossible to know that the past wasn't just an illusion. The point is that in your criteria for what constitutes reasonable evidence, knowledge of anything becomes impossible - all things could simply be illusory.

> the game of mathematics is to define some axioms

Is an axiom physical? Can I touch a mathematical axiom? Can I kick it down the stairs?

> Boolean algebra is made physical

So what was it before it was "made physical"? This statement necessitates Boolean algebra having had some other, metaphysical form before physical instantiation.

> I didn't make any claim to anything non-physical

Yes you did. And you did again just now. "I" - appeal to the self. Non physical. "Didn't" - appeal to the past. Non physical. "Make any Claim" - appeal to truth or falsehood. Non physical.

Again, these are debates that have already been hashed out millennia ago. I don't want to appear rude or condescending, which is near impossible not to do over written debate, but I would highly suggest putting in the work to learn the history of fundamental philosophical concepts like Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Ethics before engaging in debate over them.

Is mathematics hogwash bullshit? How about logic? Or knowledge? Ethics? Reason?

You've just appealed to a wide array of necessary non-physical concepts while making the claim that non-physical concepts are unprovable - don't you see the contradiction here?

This is Aristotle 101, no need to rehash this debate because it's been settled in this exact form for thousands of years.

Before I can continue this conversation I'm going to have to ask you to please stop downvoting my responses. It rate limits my account and prevents me from responding. On HN we aren't supposed to just downvote things because we disagree with them, this isn't Reddit and it destroys any possibility of debate.

"Because it does" isn't an argument I'm afraid. If you can use "because it does" so can I. In debate this is called begging the question, the question in this case being "how do you know that it does?". This also destroys any possibility of debate. You need to justify your argumentation, otherwise this isn't a debate at all.

So again, how do you know that change happens all the time? This is a question of epistemic certitude.

Excellent. I tried to get at something similar in a comment I made earlier today but was immediately downvoted and thus had my account automatically rate limited. It seems questioning the materialist presuppositions many hold around concepts like life and death can be a sore spot for some on HN. Am I correct in thinking you're circling Christian theology, specifically the Orthodox Christian idea of Theosis?

How do you know that change happens all the time? Are you observing all things and all modes of being?

We don't go looking for evidence for all things in the same way.

When we ask, "is the match still lit?" we can answer that question by observing the match. But that is nothing like the way we go about answering questions about the reality of natural laws, numbers, the room you are in, past events, future possibilities, laws of logic, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty. with each of these, we don't always attempt to use empirical, visible evidence to prove their existence. Only very specific questions about the physical universe can be answered with the scientific method.

By limiting the question of consciousness purely to the observed, physical world, you're making the evidence criteria arbitrarily and impossibly narrow, in a way that you wouldn't for many other types of question.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - this is a fallacy.

Thanks for this. If the modern materialist skeptic did the basest level of research into their own position, perhaps by starting with the likes of David Hume, they would soon realise that their position, and most of their presuppositions, had already been proven impossible several centuries ago (or several millennia ago for some of these presuppositions if we look at Aristotle). The lack of even the most basic philosophical training in even the modern university educated population is frankly appalling.

If there is, in your view, a lack of evidence for either position, then why should you default to the less simple position? The simplest position to take would be that there is no change in state and consciousness continues to exist. The less simple position in this case would be to add an additional assumption that the state of consciousness changes - in that it goes from existing, to ceasing to exist.

Is it the simplest explanation? Already by suggesting consciousness ceases to exist we're suggesting a change in state, and a simpler explanation would be that there is no change in state - consciousness, more simply, continues to exist.

For your second point, there is a way to prove that consciousness exists - by proving the impossibility of the contrary. If consciousness does not exist in a non-physical space, the very possibility of knowledge at all becomes impossible to reckon with. We could not have any interaction with metaphysical ideas like logic, reason, mathematics and so on. Logic is not present in the material world, yet it is universally applicable to all objects. Mathematical prototypes (eg. The number 7) cannot be found in the particles that make up the physical universe, yet they are found in all objects and are present and graspable in all minds. If the mind was purely matter, these fundamental building blocks for knowledge itself would be inaccessible.

For your 3rd point - I think you are correct. We have no way of knowing exactly what an after life might look like.

A computer is not loose, nor is it arbitrarily defined. A computer is extremely precisely and specifically defined, and is fully deterministic. A single bit in the wrong place can destroy an entire system. A human mind is non-deterministic and the analogy of mind and machine is deeply flawed.

There is absolutely zero scientific, empirical basis for the materialist presupposition that nothing happens after we die. So why does seemingly every commenter here assume this to be the case? With the limitations of the scientific method, we can never discover what happens to a human consciousness after death. A human consciousness is undetectable in the brain, it isn't some loose arbitrarily defined amalgamation of chemicals and electrical signals. We will never develop technology sufficient to look into a human brain and see the neuronal pathways or materia that make up Logic, or Reason, or Ethics, or an individual's Sense of Self, and all the concepts that make up a human mind, because these things are immaterial, universal, and exist transcendent of the material human brain or the scientific method.

So why are so many here running on the assumption that what happens after death is that consciousness (which can't be observed anyway) either disappears, or somehow ends up in a worse state than the here and now? This is a baseless assumption. Perhaps instead of chasing after the arbitrary religion of materialist Scientism, Hacker News readers should study a little philosophy and question their presuppositions.