How did Ian........

[Rillion]

So Dale's determined to attribute patterns and meaning to the universe if it kills him, and BJ's convinced that his experience is somehow inexplicable by science-- the tool humans have for explaining things that can be experienced. 

Okay.

[Rillion]

It's just after 4am, eh?  Sleep-deprived and not thinking coherently?   Time for a good rant.  

The human tendency to perceive patterns around them is called pareidolia.  It's why people see the virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, and also why that stupid chart showing a monkey turning into a man is used as an emblem for evolution, even though it's completely misleading.  People want to see a purpose in things-- a purpose outside of humanity.  They are promiscuous teleologists-- they attribute purpose to literally everything.  The truth of evolution is alien to even many people who claim to believe in it wholeheartedly, because in it agency is utterly absent.  Evolution has no goals, no purpose, because it is not an agent.  Humans are agents-- they have goals and ideals, and ascribe them to everything they possibly can, because it's both comforting and a useful shortcut.  "The computer wants to connect with the printer, but it can't because you haven't selected the right port."  That makes sense, and it's quicker to say than it would be to explain the concept without talking about inanimate objects "wanting" things.  But if we're sane, we take it for what it is-- a shortcut.  Not the truth, because people who believe that the computer actually has intentions are batty.  

People who believe that the universe has intentions are not batty-- they're just misinformed.  And who can blame them, if they have been evolutionarily programmed to think that way?  Designed by evolution to misunderstand evolution?  Yep, it's entirely possible, and I think likely.   Agents, things that make decisions and whose decisions can be affected by our behavior, are the most important things in our world.....so naturally, we make everything into agents in order affect them.  People who do not make things into agents-- people who refuse to or are unable to anthropomorphize-- don't do as well, because historically it has always been worse to mistake a tree stump for a bear than the other way around, and also because it makes it hard to communicate with other humans who anthropomorphize like it's going out of style.  When you don't understand something, or are trying to explain it to someone who doesn't understand it, or you just want to describe it as expediently as possible, what do you do?  Turn it into an agent.   Agency-speak is what humans do, and breaking out of it is as easy and comforting as breaking through a glass window into cold water.  Yet for a lot of people with Aspergers or high-functioning autism it's second nature.  Or maybe, more properly, first nature.  They not only see the universe as a collection of objects, but may even see other people as objects until instructed otherwise.  

Science is counter-intuitive because it says "fuck you" to agency.  It doesn't deny its existence, but doesn't make it paramount either.  Whenever scientists try to explain something by invoking agency when it isn't present, they get slapped down.  Again and again.  The universe does not revolve around an aether, chakras, the four humours, the arrangement of the planets at anyone's birth, sympathetic magic, and certainly not a little guy in your brain which directs your body like a zeppelin pilot, otherwise known as a homunculus.  Science's job is to reveal the machinery behind existence without pretending that things are orchestrated by a grand puppet master whose existence it can't demonstrate....and that's why so many people hate science.  Some people who properly understand science hate it for this reason-- it takes their puppet master away.  It doesn't disprove God, but it explains why rainbows form without telling stories about God apologizing for flooding the world, and that's bad enough.  The freakin' Insane Clown Posse would prefer that we leave such things a mystery, thanks very much, because mysteries involve agency, and that's what makes them fun and exciting unlike explanations involving droplets of water and refraction and all of that boring crap.  AKA, the truth.  As revealed by science.  

That's why all of the wannabe mystics keep embracing quantum mechanics-- it's science, which gives it legitimacy, but also weird and fuzzy, which gives it mystery and hence a pigeonhole for agency.  They think it gives them room to claim that those droplets of water in the rainbow have memories that affect their mood, and we should be concerned about the mood of our water, never mind that water droplets don't even have brains with which to retain memories and that if they did have memory then drinking a glass of water would be akin to genocide, since memory comprises the essence of a person's selfhood, even though in actuality it is ever-changing and more like a mood ring than a hard drive....

...but anyway.  Supernaturalism is best defined, I think, as the view that there is a "someone" behind everything.  Top-down agency, rather than bottom-up.  And the reason it is diametrically opposed to science is not because it doesn't make empirical claims-- it absolutely does-- but because science can't make that assumption.  It shouldn't.  We shouldn't want it to.  But we also shouldn't come up with philosophies that try to compensate for that.  Philosophies that explain it?  That account for things that aren't empirical?  Have at it.  But replacing it?  No fucking way.  You can't add on to science with anything else but more science.  It's just what it is, not an ideology to be celebrated or denigrated.  You have to work with what you're given-- making shit up doesn't take anyone anywhere.  

[dalebert]

Humans are agents-- they have goals and ideals, and ascribe them to everything they possibly can, because it's both comforting and a useful shortcut.  "The computer wants to connect with the printer, but it can't because you haven't selected the right port."  That makes sense, and it's quicker to say than it would be to explain the concept without talking about inanimate objects "wanting" things.  But if we're sane, we take it for what it is-- a shortcut.  Not the truth, because people who believe that the computer actually has intentions are batty.

Prove the OBJECTIVE difference to me scientifically.  That's purely subjective and not even a very logical conclusion based on the available knowledge we have about the, as far as we know from science, strictly deterministic universe.  The things you are calling your motivations, your agency, are nothing but a really complicated sequence of events happening in your body that resulted from millions of years of reorganizing random molecules into fairly organized patterns through a strictly deterministic process of natural selection.  You were built with certain motivations, just like the computer, and your motivations have been altered by interactions with everyone and everything around you, the events in your life, much like the computer's "motivations" are altered by software and inputs from people using it.

YOU are the one believing in something unprovable, believing in it on faith alone, and you depend on that faith to be dismissive of the patterns I see as consistent with all my experiences of the world around me.  It was only after I stripped myself of all these unscientific arbitrary notions-- a soul in human beings that is separate from, not somehow integrated with our bodies, or something special about the consciousness in humans versus any other particular possible form of consciousness that may exist within other patterns that have evolved the same way we did, i.e. through a process whereby persistent patterns stick around more often than less persistent ones, leading to an ever-increasing (albeit in isolated pockets) complexity in an otherwise chaotic universe.  (I acknowledge that the overall entropy of the universe by all appearances is increasing.)

I absolutely cannot objectively pinpoint the point at which evolution created "agency" as you refer to it.  Therefore, if I insist on relying only on reason for the things I believe in, I must see that as a purely subjective belief.  I cannot pinpoint the separation between myself and my decisions from all the things happening in the universe around me.  Where does my "self" end?  Is it my skin?  Is it my brain?  Is my brain inhabiting my body like a vehicle?  Is my "self" just the electricity firing around in my brain?  Is my "self" the extent of my senses?  Which senses?  The nerve endings of my skin?  My field of vision?  Hearing?  What about when I sense things indirectly like on the TV or the radio?  Is THAT the extent of my senses?  Oh wait!  We are sensing EVERYTHING indirectly!  We see things because light is bouncing off them and back to us.  We feel things with a hand that can be chopped off and then it's not part of the "self" anymore, which leads back to pondering what the self is.

Every decision you ever made, presuming a deterministic universe, was the result of a complex process, the result of your starting state and the various states afterward that were altered by your interactions with the universe around you.  My words are part of your decision-making process right now which will affect what you say next.  If you're angry, I had a part in that as did possibly other people posting or the fact that your roommate just dropped your bathroom towel on the floor making you irritable.  If a shooting star flies by outside your window within your peripheral vision, you will likely reflexively look at it.  An asteroid millions of miles away is part of your decision-making process, part of your consciousness.

The reason why what I'm talking about seems nonsensical to you is actually because you are the one clinging to old ideas that don't make any sense, that are completely unsupported by science or reason.  Your head is full of abstractions, albeit useful ones like the "self", but you have subjectively interpreted that abstraction out to an irrational degree which leads you to incorrect conclusions.  You have notions stuck in your head that are built on nonsense ideas like the soul, like that the "you" abstraction is something that exists within your body which is just an object that "you" are driving, and individual free will, and an "agency" in humans that is fundamentally and objectively different from the rest of the universe, from an ape, or a tiger, or a tree, or a bacterium, or a rock (like the asteroid that was part of your decision to turn and look and maybe make a wish) and that you are a completely cut off and separate entity from the rest of the universe.  You believe in those things because you want to for some reason, because maybe those conclusions are convenient foundations for other things you want to believe in, but it doesn't actually make sense to.

[dalebert]

I'm not going to go back and edit my post but I admit that I posted a response to your first statement before reading the rest of it so I'll address that now.

A computer has a memory.  I look at how the human brain works and I see a similar pattern at a macro level.  Memory exists outside of your brain.  You can write books, record videos, things that other people can take in that have portions of your memories in them.  Data is constantly being transmitted between people, more so now than ever via the Internet.  Ideas are growing and evolving over multiple generations of people via the preservation of prior-obtained knowledge and the transmission to new generations.  Your consciousness, which as far I know is nothing but the experience of changing, evolving, developing patterns will be preserved to some degree after you die.  The death of your body and your brain will represent a significant change in that consciousness but not a fundamental change.  The Earth appears to be a "thinking" thing, and I base that on the physical world and primarily by the highest form of consciousness we know of-- ourselves; not some invisible energy inside the trees, ala Avatar or some bullshit like that.  The data is being preserved in ways that we can objectively understand if we're willing to.

If the human race survives a bit longer, we'll likely be expanding our numbers out into the rest of the universe.  If we don't, some other intelligence will almost certainly evolve and succeed at that eventually (I admit a certain leap of faith here, but it seems like a reasonable prediction based on the clear usefulness of intelligence for survival).  We might eventually encounter some intelligence that has evolved elsewhere and some new growing culture of ideas.  Our multi-generational consciousness will interact with theirs creating something new, likely benefiting from accumulated wisdom and knowledge of both consciousnesses.

I believe in emergent bottom-up order; not a top-down design.  I don't think the universe consciously designed me any more than my brain consciously designed my white blood cells.  But that the universe is "thinking" in exactly the same way we are as individuals is not something I'm pulling out of my ass.  I don't believe there's a supreme God who loves me like a son.  I don't believe the universe "loves" me any more than I love each neuron that's firing in my brain.  I just see a recurring pattern that makes sense-- that my "life" is a long series of events that was set into motion long before my "birth" in a grand scheme of events that's much larger than just me.  It's actually a disquieting realization until you come to terms with it.  My body, what makes up my sense of "self" is composed of a lot of cells that have some level of autonomy but interact to form the macro that is "me".  Unless you can prove to me some fundamental difference between the increasingly complex patterns developing on a macro level all around me and what seems to be happening inside my own body that leads to my self-awareness, then I have to see it as just faith built upon a subjective desire on your part that your thought process is special, that you are a completely separate entity from the rest of a growing consciousness.

Now if you can wrap your head around that, then you can start to think about forms in another way.  If through lots and lots of time, and lots and lots of events, we get lots and lots of attempts through trial and error to create more persistent patterns...

AND

If you can acknowledge that within a certain set of criteria, like ability to persist, that certain complex patterns are objectively better suited for that purpose of persisting, then you will see natural selection as a directional thing, albeit through a messy zig-zaggy path toward FORMS.  Again, they are not Gods.  They are not intelligent.  They are not designing the universe into something that thinks.  It is simply that the universe is destined to think and to think better and better as it approaches something, I don't know what.  It would be vain of me to claim I did.  I don't think we will ever understand the nature of consciousness because we're so integral with it and we can't step out of it and look at it objectively.  But it's reasonable to conclude that it is an integral part of the nature of the universe.  It's a sort of destiny.

[RANCE!]

Wow, you people spend a chicken-ton of time debating what literally comes down to nothing.  Sure, you can come up with a thousand names for nothing, but that doesn't make it anything.

[Cognitive Dissident]

It's just after 4am, eh?  Sleep-deprived and not thinking coherently?   Time for a good rant.
[huge rant] 

Wow!  That's a pretty good rant, right there.  I liked it, anyway.  I was a little thrown off when we jumped through glass into cold water, thinking I may have missed some of the meaning (though it was shocking and hurt.)  The Insane Clown Posse, which I never made any sense of anyway, didn't strike a cord in this context.  Otherwise, right on!

[BonerJoe]

When you say I didn't have those experiences, you are saying that everyone here and my entire existence are all figments of imagination in my head. Yes, I am that sure they happened, because they happened during the course of my everyday life events.

[Cognitive Dissident]

When you say I didn't have those experiences, you are saying that everyone here and my entire existence are all figments of imagination in my head. Yes, I am that sure they happened, because they happened during the course of my everyday life events.

Did someone say you didn't have them, or you cannot prove you had them, or they can't be made to believe you had them, or until you can prove you had them, they will not believe you had them?  I see plenty of room for conflation of all those possibilities, and more.

[Rillion]

Prove the OBJECTIVE difference to me scientifically.

The objective difference between what-- having intentions and not having intentions?  Show me a computer that has behavior which was not dictated by humans at some point.  

The things you are calling your motivations, your agency, are nothing but a really complicated sequence of events happening in your body that resulted from millions of years of reorganizing random molecules into fairly organized patterns through a strictly deterministic process of natural selection.  You were built with certain motivations, just like the computer, and your motivations have been altered by interactions with everyone and everything around you, the events in your life, much like the computer's "motivations" are altered by software and inputs from people using it.

If you're trying to convince me that determinism is true, don't bother-- I agree.  If you're trying to convince me that determinism negates the reality of intention and free will, please go here, download, and start listening at 2 hours 51 minutes.  

YOU are the one believing in something unprovable

So are we all, because nothing is provable.  

and you depend on that faith to be dismissive of the patterns I see as consistent with all my experiences of the world around me.

My commentary might have been rambling and half-awake, but at no point did it invoke faith in anything.  

I absolutely cannot objectively pinpoint the point at which evolution created "agency" as you refer to it.  Therefore, if I insist on relying only on reason for the things I believe in, I must see that as a purely subjective belief. 

Wait-- you don't know when agency began, so you must consider it subjective?  That makes no sense at all.  

I cannot pinpoint the separation between myself and my decisions from all the things happening in the universe around me.  Where does my "self" end?  Is it my skin?  Is it my brain?  Is my brain inhabiting my body like a vehicle?  Is my "self" just the electricity firing around in my brain?  Is my "self" the extent of my senses?  Which senses?  The nerve endings of my skin?  My field of vision?  Hearing?  What about when I sense things indirectly like on the TV or the radio?  Is THAT the extent of my senses?  Oh wait!  We are sensing EVERYTHING indirectly!  We see things because light is bouncing off them and back to us.  We feel things with a hand that can be chopped off and then it's not part of the "self" anymore, which leads back to pondering what the self is.

Exciting, isn't it?  If you want to ponder that for a while, I have an excellent reading suggestion for you.  

The reason why what I'm talking about seems nonsensical to you is actually because you are the one clinging to old ideas that don't make any sense, that are completely unsupported by science or reason. 

Nothing you're talking about seems nonsensical to me, actually, because I've heard it or similar countless times.  Your "I bet you can't wrap your mind around this" mystical condescension, however, is charming. 

Your head is full of abstractions, albeit useful ones like the "self", but you have subjectively interpreted that abstraction out to an irrational degree which leads you to incorrect conclusions. 

Such as?

You have notions stuck in your head that are built on nonsense ideas like the soul

Really?  

like that the "you" abstraction is something that exists within your body which is just an object that "you" are driving

You don't say?  

and individual free will

Well yes, that, but if you follow the instructions above you'll see what I think free will actually is, and I doubt it's what you think I think it is.  

and an "agency" in humans that is fundamentally and objectively different from the rest of the universe, from an ape, or a tiger, or a tree, or a bacterium, or a rock (like the asteroid that was part of your decision to turn and look and maybe make a wish)

I feel quite comfortable saying that trees, rocks, and bacteria have no agency at all, and that the agency of tigers, apes, and humans (we are  apes, you know) is different from one another.  

and that you are a completely cut off and separate entity from the rest of the universe. 

Where would I be then?  In my own universe?  Did you mistake me for a free will libertarian?  

You believe in those things because you want to for some reason, because maybe those conclusions are convenient foundations for other things you want to believe in, but it doesn't actually make sense to.

Sorry Dale, but maybe you should stop assuming what I believe and why, because your track record is not good so far.  

[Rillion]

When you say I didn't have those experiences, you are saying that everyone here and my entire existence are all figments of imagination in my head. Yes, I am that sure they happened, because they happened during the course of my everyday life events.

Who said you didn't have those experiences? 

[BonerJoe]

LOL.

[dalebert]

I think the point is, Tyrant, that you saying you had those experiences is not a persuasive argument for others unless they have had a similar enough experience and could therefore relate.  Until then, it's purely anecdotal and just not very persuasive.

[BonerJoe]

I'm not trying to persuade anyone, they are trying to persuade me that I am being silly.

[Rillion]

Memory exists outside of your brain.  You can write books, record videos, things that other people can take in that have portions of your memories in them.  Data is constantly being transmitted between people, more so now than ever via the Internet.

Yes.  This is called extended mind theory. 

 Your consciousness, which as far I know is nothing but the experience of changing, evolving, developing patterns will be preserved to some degree after you die.

Not as such, unless you believe that personal experience extends beyond death and if so I'd like to know exactly how that happens without a brain. 

The death of your body and your brain will represent a significant change in that consciousness but not a fundamental change.

I'd say the cessation of experience is pretty fundamental. 

The Earth appears to be a "thinking" thing, and I base that on the physical world and primarily by the highest form of consciousness we know of-- ourselves; not some invisible energy inside the trees, ala Avatar or some bullshit like that.  The data is being preserved in ways that we can objectively understand if we're willing to.

Everything preserves data if by that you mean that examining a thing can reveal what has happened to that thing, which is how we understand what has happened to the planet.  That doesn't mean the planet is "thinking."

I believe in emergent bottom-up order; not a top-down design.  I don't think the universe consciously designed me any more than my brain consciously designed my white blood cells.  But that the universe is "thinking" in exactly the same way we are as individuals is not something I'm pulling out of my ass.  I don't believe there's a supreme God who loves me like a son.  I don't believe the universe "loves" me any more than I love each neuron that's firing in my brain.  I just see a recurring pattern that makes sense-- that my "life" is a long series of events that was set into motion long before my "birth" in a grand scheme of events that's much larger than just me.

And that means "thinking" to you?  The fact that the causal chain of events began before you emerged on the scene says that the universe has thoughts? 

It's actually a disquieting realization until you come to terms with it.  My body, what makes up my sense of "self" is composed of a lot of cells that have some level of autonomy but interact to form the macro that is "me".  Unless you can prove to me some fundamental difference between the increasingly complex patterns developing on a macro level all around me and what seems to be happening inside my own body that leads to my self-awareness, then I have to see it as just faith built upon a subjective desire on your part that your thought process is special, that you are a completely separate entity from the rest of a growing consciousness.

The experience of what it is like to be you is called qualia.  Empathy allows limited access to someone else's qualia, but it is by no means absolute.  The fact that my qualia is not yours is what demonstrates to me that we are two different selves. 

Now if you can wrap your head around that, then you can start to think about forms in another way.  If through lots and lots of time, and lots and lots of events, we get lots and lots of attempts through trial and error to create more persistent patterns...

AND

If you can acknowledge that within a certain set of criteria, like ability to persist, that certain complex patterns are objectively better suited for that purpose of persisting, then you will see natural selection as a directional thing, albeit through a messy zig-zaggy path toward FORMS.  

Ummm, yes I comprehend what natural selection means, thanks.  But you might want to re-think that sudden conflation between direction and purpose, because they are not at all the same. 

Again, they are not Gods.  They are not intelligent.  They are not designing the universe into something that thinks.  It is simply that the universe is destined to think and to think better and better as it approaches something, I don't know what.

I would ask for evidence of this, but I would think you would've given it to me already.

It would be vain of me to claim I did.  I don't think we will ever understand the nature of consciousness because we're so integral with it and we can't step out of it and look at it objectively.  But it's reasonable to conclude that it is an integral part of the nature of the universe.  It's a sort of destiny.

Dude, my prior reading suggestion?  It's expensive, but cheaper than a college course on consciousness.  Do check it out. 

[Rillion]

I'm not trying to persuade anyone, they are trying to persuade me that I am being silly.

And you don't see how declaring that you had an experience which is outside the bounds of scientific study is silly?