Metaphysics, anyone ?
- Thread starter xortex
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THANK YOU!
This is why I keep going on, in repeated threads here, about the difference between observation, hypothesis, theory and fact. I keep hoping that people will start to realize that when you state that something is a THEORY it is not in any way the same as stating that it is FALSE.
Real science deals in the provable, and (unless the science you're talking about is psychology or one of it's related fields and you're specifically talking about PERCEPTIONS as the area you're studying) OPINION or "concensus" or any such term has ABSOLUTELY NO APPLICABILITY in real science.
You can state that something (say, body/mind duality) is a minority view. You can even state that it is held by ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. But unless (1) it has been disproven in some confirmable, repeatable fashion, or (2) something else has been, BEYOND ANY SCOPE FOR DOUBT WHATSOEVER, been conclusively proven to be true, it cannot be simply discounted.
Particulary it can't be discounted just because some person or persons WANT it to be untrue, or have a personal preference that it "ought to be untrue," no matter if that preference is based upon a misunderstanding of what science is, and what sciences JOB is, or a preference for a particular unproven worldview of their own (something that they accept on faith and as such is really their own "religion").
I said it before and I'll say it again. The majority view, among ALL humans, is that there is SOME form of separation between what the brain is and what the mind is. And this is an OVERWHELMING majority view. It has not ever been DISPROVEN in any fashion whatsoever. Some very basic (and, I'll grant, occasionally somewhat dubious) science has been performed that at least lends a hint of credence to it. That doesn't make it true, but it certainly makes it less easy to simply "dismiss" without sufficient contrarian proof.
I'm talking about things like Kirlian photography showing residual energy from now-absent mass. Cut a leaf in half and take a Kirlian shot, and you get the image of the whole leaf... what's THAT about? Or things like the various studies of psychic phenomenon. Sure, some are bogus... and can be proven to be so. Some are definitely PTBarnum stuff... John Edwards anybody? But SOME have met the basic requirements of "good science" and still stand up well.
And of course, our understanding of the very function of the brain is extraordinarily limited... we know how impulses go from one cell to the next, and we know the general blocks into which the brain seems to be organized. That's like saying that we know how two grains of sand interact, and we know the shape of the coastline, so we know everything there is to know about the planet. I keep saying this, too, and most real scientist types will agree, but those who think that science is the holy writ of their religion tend to argue against it... WE KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT ANY OF THIS. We're barely at the kindergarten level (if even that far) in terms of grasping the basics of how this works. Science is our tool for trying to figure it out... but don't know much right now, and it's very doubtful that we'll ever know "everything"... at least if materialism is true.
It's hard to imagine a biological computer with very specific hardware limitations ever comprehending something even with the (relative to the complexity of the entire universe) "simple" structure of... well, itself.
In other words, unless you believe that the mind is, potentially, much larger than the brain... I think you'd have to accept that we'll never understand the brain anyway.
Well, I'll believe in klingons the day that we get evidence of any existing. Show me a message from space from your klingerons. put up or shut up.
It's not that I don't believe in belief -- but I don't pretend my beliefs are a fact until I can point to some sort of evidence. Until then, it's opinion -- perhaps strongly held opinion but opinion. I might be mistaken about my beliefs, and I would want to know that.
Fiction is not a lie. It's just a story.
I always thought that was a joke... but maybe there really are people who just don't get it...
Beware. The Klingons are coming ! The Klingons are coming !
C'mon, we all know what a Klingon is. He's a highly paid actor in goofy makeup and oh yea, the quintessential bad guy, unless you think bad guys don't exist in real life. You call terrorists freedom fighters too right ? This argument is getting funny.
C'mon, we all know what a Klingon is. He's a highly paid actor in goofy makeup and oh yea, the quintessential bad guy, unless you think bad guys don't exist in real life. You call terrorists freedom fighters too right ? This argument is getting funny.
^Unfortunately, you aren't. Please leave the political potshots for other forums.
You're the one suggesting that fiction is lying. It isn't. Fiction is a beautiful art -- one that can make you see things that you've overlooked or feel for characters that you thought you'd hate.
And as to terrorists, no they aren't "freedom fighters" -- if you target civillians, you are a terrorist, nothing more. but even then, I think the biggest problem we have is that what we're doing might be helping to recruit more jihadists. anyway, I suppose I should leave the politicking for another thread.
Good, now we're making progress.
They still aren't. They're actors, not aliens. They aren't really klingons, just people with rubber glued on their forheads.
No no no. The pixelation is an artifact of how TV images are made. And since the original image was of actors pretending to be klingons, it's really a pixelated image of actors playing klingons.
But hopefully someday we find aliens out there. They're just gonna be a bit weirder than latex-headed humans. Maybe they'll be giant bugs or something.
Yeah, and it's a homebrew SETI project too. Just imagine, all of those leaked broadcast images have left earth and are travelling out into the universe at about the speed of light.
The planet Gilse (I'm not sure of the spelling) is 20ly away, so it's been getting our TV signals up until 1987. It's Earthlike, so there's a somewhat real possibility that something might live there.
Now what said Gilseian aliens would think of our Klingons, Vulcans, and Romulans is kind of up in the air. They can't know anything about our culture, they don't speak our language, and they don't really know what we are like.
They see Klingons, well they could very well think they're some subspecies of human. They could think that we have FTL drives. They could be horribly horribly offended by the Trek aliens they see -- Klingons might fit into some negative stereotype of an alien subculture. WE don't know that. If you'd take a time machine to 1966 and tell people that aliens will watch these klingons and get offended, I think you'd be laughed at.
That's the weird part -- if you show the same thing to 50 people, you'll get 75 perceptions of the same thing. I look at Star Wars, and I see an action movie. Others look at it and see a modern mythology. Somebody else looks and sees Jediism and a model for heroism.
That's art. If you do it right, people see themselves reflected.
The planet Gilse (I'm not sure of the spelling) is 20ly away, so it's been getting our TV signals up until 1987. It's Earthlike, so there's a somewhat real possibility that something might live there.
Now what said Gilseian aliens would think of our Klingons, Vulcans, and Romulans is kind of up in the air. They can't know anything about our culture, they don't speak our language, and they don't really know what we are like.
They see Klingons, well they could very well think they're some subspecies of human. They could think that we have FTL drives. They could be horribly horribly offended by the Trek aliens they see -- Klingons might fit into some negative stereotype of an alien subculture. WE don't know that. If you'd take a time machine to 1966 and tell people that aliens will watch these klingons and get offended, I think you'd be laughed at.
That's the weird part -- if you show the same thing to 50 people, you'll get 75 perceptions of the same thing. I look at Star Wars, and I see an action movie. Others look at it and see a modern mythology. Somebody else looks and sees Jediism and a model for heroism.
That's art. If you do it right, people see themselves reflected.
Art is something that provokes a response in the viewer. It makes you think or feel somehow that you weren't before you saw it. With great art, you can't help but want to somehow respond to it.
