Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh, that. Um. Yeah, gimme a minute.
What does 'rational' (or 'irrational') even mean anyway?
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Oh, that. Um. Yeah, gimme a minute.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Roger Penrose reckons consciousness arises from the quantum superposition of different protein configurations in structures called microtubules that are found in neurons, and that they decohere via a process involving quantum gravity. I don't think he's found any way to work this into a viable theory, however. And he's arguably one of the cleverest people alive.
I used to like this theory, the old Hameroff-Penrose theory, which resulted mainly from Hameroff's observation that general anaesthetics appear to work by means of temporarily disassembling the tubulin cytoskeleton inside neurons. Consciousness was supposed to take the form of Frohlich condensation, coherent quantum states with a molecular basis, that somehow 'vanishes' or decoheres when the tubulin framework is disrupted. But all that does is postpone the question: what makes Frohlich condensation, if that's what it is, self aware, intentional with a unity of conscious experience?
So that too is bollocks. It's reasonable to assume that there is a quantum mechanical component to it though. I spat my coffee out earlier this year when researchers hesistantly suggested photosynthesis might rely on such phenomena. What, proteins being jiggled around energy states by incident photons? Really?! That's quantum mechanical? No shit.
Doh!
Study Rules Out Fröhlich Condensates in Quantum Consciousness Model
http://phys.org/news155904395.html
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, it looks that way, doesn't it? I think you have to bear in mind, though, that just because some phenomenon is not yet scientifically explicable, that certainly doesn't mean it is inexplicable in principle and will never be scientifically understood. I mean, everything that we now have a good explanation for was once a complete mystery.
Further, I think it's entirely plausible that some concepts will never be fully understood by humans because of the inherent limitations of our brains but that doesn't mean they couldn't be understood by rational beings with different (and perhaps greater) intellectual capabilities. You can make an analogy with perception in different numbers of dimensions. A being living in a 2-dimensional world could only ever see, at most, two sides of a square at any one time, and could not even in principle envisage how a 3-d being could see all four sides at once (though of course a sufficiently intelligent Flatlander could be convinced that this would be the case, even though he couldn't directly picture it). Similarly, I can accept that a four-dimensional being could see all six faces of a cube at once despite being fundamentally unable to picture how this would work.
So perhaps levels of consciousness work in a way comparable to dimensionality. Computers are great at performing rote calculations very, very fast but have no understanding of anything. Humans, if they choose, can understand how computers work. But maybe it takes a level of consciousness above what humans are in principle capable of to understand how human consciousness arises?
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Well yeah, I mean the fact that it's so difficult even to come up with a definition of consciousness that people can agree on is indicative of the inherent difficulty in analyzing the human mind with no computational tool more powerful than the human mind itself. "Like a sword that cuts, but cannot cut itself - like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself", the Zenrin-Kushu puts it.
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what conciousness actually is, is kind of ambiguous really.. perhaps muddies peoples different attempts to understand it or describe how it works. I found this talk really interesting, http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/consciousness_explored_and_explained
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
BTW speaking as we were of psychedelics, I've certainly 'understood' or rather intuitively grasped certain concepts or modes of experience while tripping that are completely inaccessible while sober. Unless perhaps you've spent 50 years doing yoga or za-zen for 12 hours a day, I dunno. I'm pretty sure that if anyone ever does come close to producing a 'unified theory of mind', psychs will have had an important part to play in it.
Nomad was good on this kind of stuff...
Yes, I've had that too, did a lot of that while I was studying philosophy of mind at college. The sense that it must depend on some weird but utterly necessary inside-out topological exception or interfacing of mind and matter, but nothing you could hang a scientific theory off of. Novalis said "The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap."
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That sounds intuitively appealing but it still doesn't convince me that the 'inner world' is anything other than an emergent phenomenon or epiphenomenon produced by the (physical) functioning of the bit of the 'outer world' that we happen to carry around in our skulls. Even if the way in which it emerges is so subtle and complex that it would take an intelligence exponentially greater than our own to really understand it in rational terms.
If this is the case, then as far as our own attempts to explain consciousness are concerned the question will remain forever open, like a statement that's formally undecidable within a certain consistent set of axioms.
If this is the case, then as far as our own attempts to explain consciousness are concerned the question will remain forever open, like a statement that's formally undecidable within a certain consistent set of axioms.
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sufi
lala
apologies for dragging up posts from earlier in the discussion but...
And you can ask him this evening when he will be expounding on exactly this topic - please go along & report back! http://www.cara1933.org/events/43/s...b-world-a-personal-and-historical-perspective
This i think is not correct, as i think structural inequalities tend to prevent poorer countries from indulging in scientific research more than any cultural preference, even if the lovely Dr Jim says otherwise.
And you can ask him this evening when he will be expounding on exactly this topic - please go along & report back! http://www.cara1933.org/events/43/s...b-world-a-personal-and-historical-perspective
this is correct though
the UK? the queen being the head of the state and the national religion? I don't think you'll find that countries with muslim populations are less likely to have secular systems of government or law, count them up!
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
But where do these structural inequalities come from in the first place? Surely they come in large part from the culture, of which religion is an important aspect? And I don't see quite why you've substituted 'poorer countries' for 'Muslim countries' - Saudi Arabia and certain other Gulf states weren't short of a few quid the last time I looked, yet they invest virtually nothing in R&D because they can just rely on oil. In fact Uganda proportionally outspends Saudi Arabia eight times over. Look at this map:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS/countries?display=map
Oh come oooon, England (not the UK) may notionally have an 'official religion' but by any reasonable measure we're one of the most secularized countries in the world. I said some Muslim countries have legal systems that are explicitly based on religious law in a way that, as far as I know, few if any Christian countries do (with a caveat about recent worrying developments in Russia). Why isn't there a colour on this map for 'Christian law' in the way there is for 'Islamic law'?
Is there a country that's basically the Christian equivalent of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Iran? I'll take it all back if you can provide an example.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
sufi
lala
wish i could have gone as i'm sure it would be fascinating, although i think dr jim is a bit of a safe mouthpiece for the beeb secularist viewpoint...
sufi
lala
that's interesting, but equally shows that impoverished african, (also asian and latin american) countries that aren't mainly muslim spend less, and that's not because of their religion, it's because of them not having enough money to spend on the basics, let alone scientific R&D. When the proportion of minted countries like saudi is compared to somewhere like uganda that means that a big amount is actually getting spent - Saudi has pretty good science education, & is actually world leader is some random stuff like conjoined twins
surely you're not saying that the reason that many southern countries, (regardless of their religion), are poor, is simply down to their culture?
ok i was being a wee bit silly there, but if you ask an iranian whether uk is a christian country, they will give the same misinformed response, based on that slim evidence, that you're coming up with on saudi - which is a monarchy, run by the royals who style themselves defenders of the faith, just as the brits do.
I think that religion, or at least an ethics based on understandings historically derived from whatever religion, is fairly fundamental to most legal systems, west or elsewhere.
So as for why the map has not got "christian legal system" on it, that's a case in point; it's cos it was (presumably) done by a xtian - wikipedia is chronically blind to it's own lack of conciousness of such matters (cf their culturally insensitive treatment to complaints about putting up pictures of the prophet). What you call 'the legal system' a non-christian would call 'the christian legal system'.
Sorry if that all sounds a bit patronising, but i expect a high level of ideological sophistication from you, Tea!!
Anyhow, I had been considering starting up a thread on 'stuff science can't explain' for a while, & this one was nicely heading in that direction, so apologies to divert from that interesting convo with this culture warrior stuff that has been fairly well rinsed on many other threads...
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well it's part of it, isn't it? If you have a culture where education for boys consists mainly of studying religious scripture and for girls is non-existent, that's not very conducive to having a developed economy. What chance does a young would-be scientist, doctor or engineer stand in a part of Nigeria that's under the influence of Boko Haram ("Western knowledge is forbidden")?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Alright, the UK is of course a culturally Christian country. More people celebrate Christmas than Eid, yadda yadda. But when was the last time someone in Britain was prosecuted for blasphemy? Yes there are bishops in the House of Lords they have rather less sway over how laws are made than the ayatollahs in the Guardian Council. I think you're well aware that you're arguing from false equivalence for the sake of having an argument, if you're totally honest with yourself.
(Although it's interesting - several Iranians have told me that most of the people they know back home aren't any more religious than the average English person; it's the regime, rather than the populace at large, that's religious. But I expect it's the usual case of educated people in cities becoming secular while faith remains more important out in the country. The Church of England these days is an almost exclusively rural/small-town phenomenon.)
I can see where you're coming from but I think there's a big question of timescale here. Laws were once explicitly based on Christian teachings, sure, and there were laws that stipulated the subordination of women to men, that forbade blasphemy, banned non-Christians (or the wrong sort of Christians) from holding certain positions and so on. And over the centuries those laws have gradually changed from reflecting Christian values to being based on universal humanitarian ideals. A Muslim might call the laws of the UK 'Christian laws' because it's a (traditionally, culturally) Christian culture and because practicing Christians form the largest religious minority, but that doesn't make it true.
OK, point taken, but to me the statement that religion plays no greater part in the legal system of majority-Muslim countries as a whole than it does in majority-(culturally)-Christian countries as a whole is so patently untrue that it can't go unchallenged in a discussion about religion, reason and culture.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Finally, the voice of reason.
