Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2025 4:09 pm However, it seems to me that there is more to a human being than what can be studied with scientific instruments. I mean, maybe consciousness transcends physical laws in ways that we can't imagine. Who knows?
I agree completely.
Let me support your point further this way: who told us that physical sciences, such as physics, chemistry and biology, however wonderful they are, would eventually lead us to all the knowledge in the universe? Where did that belief originate?
It didn’t originate in science, since it’s a believe ABOUT science itself, which means it can only come from a perspective that precedes science. Science can’t be its own guarantor of universal efficacy, anymore than a man can lift himself by his own bootstraps. We would need a pre-scientific certification of what science can achieve; and from where would we get such a thing?
It comes from nothing but a presupposition, actually. Or perhaps we would better say that because physical sciences proved so successful in explaining physical phenomena, credulous men were inclined to guess that it would prove equally efficacious in other areas, such as cognition, explanation of behaviour, morality, faith, identity, rationality, and whatnot. But there was really never a reason to suppose that physical explanations would really go beyond physical phenomena, in their explanatory ability. Biology is great for explaining biology. Chemistry’s great for chemical phenomena. Physics is even better, in a way, and goes beyond both into even things like cosmology. But none of them have proved very good in explaining a whole lot of phenomena that we all know exist, and which we act dependent upon every day of our lives, but which are not partakers of physical structures. What ever certified to us that the whole universe would fall at the feet of physical science?
Nothing. There’s no such guarantee. And there’s no reason at all to suppose it. But people like Mikey do.
Something sounds wrong with the conclusion that brains that believe in free will are "evil". I mean, we all believe in free will. Otherwise, there would be no point whatsoever to being conscious. Literally, we'd be passengers in a car that drives itself. I don't know that that is the case. But I suppose it could be.
At least one thing is wrong with it, and you identify it. But there’s a second: and it’s that the predicate “evil” does not even have any meaning in a purely-physical or Deterministic world. It’s actually impossible for anything at all to be “evil” in such a universe, because morality is one of those realities that pure Determinism is forced simply to deny exists.
It goes back to Kant’s axiom, “ought implies can.” We might also add, “ought-not implies can-not.” It’s utterly incoherent to tell somebody who has no legs to get up and walk. It’s utterly absurd to accuse a rock of malice, simply because it broke your window. It’s utterly senseless to call the LA fires “evil,” because they could not be anything but what they, themselves are.
But Mikey says human beings are exactly like that. Like fires, or rocks, or men with no legs, you cannot expect anything of them but that one thing that physical preconditions assured that they would have to do. They would have no choice. In what sense, then, can we call them “evil”?
Yet another complete incoherency in Mike’s rhetoric. But assuming he’s depending on AI, there’s zero chance that offering those very valid objections is going to make the slightest impact. AI can’t change its mind. It follows programming, no matter what. So at this point, all we can do is walk away. There’s nobody left to convince.
