What the heck is atheistic materialism?

I guess virtual masochism is safer than the real thing, eh, Paisley?

Whatever gets your rocks off, I guess.

You are hardly in a position to say who is and isn't intellectually equipped, little one. 

Need I point you again to the numerous occasions where you've contradicted yourself, dodged, and bailed from threads you started, never once owning up to your chicanery?

And here you are, starting yet another thread on the same bloody subject. 

As I've told you before:  "Paisley, stop dodging, or stop posting."

If atheism is linked to materialism?

It has been my experience that atheists who seek to extricate themselves from a strictly materialistic worldview have some kind of lurking god-belief.

Is there such a thing as theistic materialism?  If you believe in materialism it is almost certain that you are an atheist.  So why did you say atheistic materialism instead of just materialism?  It seems to me that you trying to say that all atheists are materialists.  If that is what you saying you are quite simply wrong.  I've met people before who are both atheists and who don't have a materialistic world view. 

This is the "Atheist vs. Theist" forum. If you find it offensive that I am challenging the worldview of atheistic materialism, then I suggest you find another forum.  

Paisley:

I posit that the universe, and everything within it, was actually created about 6-7 years ago when I Dark Ritual'd into 3 Festering Goblin, and sent them to the bin to lay down a Delraich, sending The Other Guy's Piledriver and Sharpshooter to the wrong side of his library before clocking his dome for 6 damage I needed to end the game.

Prove me wrong. If you can't, not believing in me as the deity who created everything while eating doritos and playing Magic: The Gathering is irrational.

Why the hell would paisley define anything, he never really has beyond vague terms that he can then change the definition/meaning at will and dismiss anything the proves his views wrong. We all know how the game goes with paisley, paisley is intellectually dishonest, a fraud and uneducated in regards how to debate/discuss a topic.

Oh yeah? What post was that?

I am in a position. This is my thread, not yours. And if you have a problem with that, then I suggest you start your own thread.

Actually, there is a post by me in another one of paisley's threads where paisley failed to respond.  It appears that paisley's proven pathology is to simply start new threads on the same theme when paisley can no longer hide behind paisley's obfuscation in previous threads.

If paisley has a problem with responding forthrightly, then it is suggested that paisley stop posting altogether.

How many threads on this forum are on the "irrationality of theism?"

To begin with, I don't see you or any other forum member taking issue with a fellow atheist who is insisting that quantum indeterminacy really does imply that "physical events occur without any cause at all." However, when I pointed out this obvious fact, I was ridiculed and scorned, being charged with scientific ignorance (that I didn't really understand what the term "indeterminacy" meant in the context of quantum physics).

Secondly, I have already presented in the past quantum mind theories by eminent physicists who attribute collapse of the wave function to consciouness/free will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

Excellent. The quantum mind.

You realize the quantum mind basically says that the brain might use quantum effects, right? That's all it says. It doesn't say it's not materialistic. (I know you claim QM is not materialistic, but since you don't know what QM is, how do you know?)

Even Roger Penrose has been unable to come up with a decent explanation of how quantum effects work within the brain to produce consciousness. So this isn't "knowledge," it's speculation based on interlocking ignorance: the ignorance of the mind, and the ignorance of quantum mechanics. I'm not saying Penrose isn't fully conversant with the current state of understanding of either of those subjects: I'm saying we still don't have a basis for any speculation. The fact that Penrose is speculating doesn't make his thoughts valid; they're just intersting thoughts, and possible paths to investigate, until we discover the real foundation of QM and consciousness.

In any case it is, at best, a way of attempting to tie two mysteries together (the source of quantum indeterminacy, and "consciousness" ). It's using one thing we only half-understand (QM) to claim that's why we only half-understand this other thing. There's no real hypothesis here. But in either case, QM is not "non-materialistic." Sure, at the moment it goes against newtonian physics in that it's statistical in many cases. That doesn't mean it's not materialistic. It just means that philsophers such as Descartes had no idea that QM even existed, so the old-style "materialism" that you claim we all believe is pre-QM. So far, there's nothing in QM to suggest dualism.

That said: considering that quantum processes are involved in at least photosynthesis (and quite likely other biological mechanisms), I would not be surprised to see things like quantum tunneling as a part of the purely natural mechanisms of neurons. But, considering that a single neuron does not provide consciousness, at most you can say that quantum effects help drive the very efficient computer that is the brain.

As for why I didn't take issue with someone else talking about quantum events being without cause: I did. I just didn't post it. I kind of take issue with modern QM as it stands right now, in fact. Not that there might be uncaused events. That doesn't concern me. What does concern me is people jumping to conclusions with knowledge for which we don't even have, and claiming it is valid knowledge. We don't know what QM really is. We don't know if it's ontologically deterministic or ontologically non-deterministic. We only know that QM involves statistics at the moment.

The only way we will gain knowledge is through thorough investigation. It's fun to speculate on the nature of things, like Penrose does. What's less fun is correcting the ignorance of others, especially when that ignorance is presented as knowledge of something the person has no way of knowing.

And that's why your ignorance is so frustrating: because you are claiming knowledge of something you have no way of knowing.

It could bring one to tears - it really could. Okay, look: have I not been clear that because events at the quantum level have to be expressed as probability distributions, then they are (in that mathematical context) indeterminate? I must have written this a hundred times by now. You can only understand "cause" in that context as a distribution of probability. You could equally say, then, that these events have, and do not have, a cause that you can determine. You have to look at the data, and appreciate that the language used to describe such data is as accurate as possible about a very difficult topic. It is not, however, a bona fide philosophical statement. It's disingenuous to treat it is as such.

Because you're warping the meaning to arrive at your pre-determined conclusion! This mixing of philosophy and physical observation is speculative, so reaching all-encompassing conclusions about it is ridiculous. 

We both know there is still quite a lot of mystery - that's certainly easy to admit. If that mystery isn't yet explained, that doesn't mean that anyone who believes the most rational available explanation is being irrational (which seems to be what you're contending). Discussing various competing explanations is fine, but treating mystery as the downfall of everything we've learned so far is undoubtedly counter-productive.

I stand corrected. There are a couple of hypothesis, with testable predictions.

I take exception with the inclusion of Bohm in this list. His propositions made no specific, unique, testable predictions, and he gave no mechanism by which quantum effects could affect the mind. Therefore, his ideas don't qualify as an hypothesis, let alone a theory.

I haven't read Walker's book, so can't comment on that. I imagine I should meander on down to the library and check it out. He uses information theory (a subject dear to my heart), so he should at least be interesting. This could be very interesting, as he seems to relate quantum computing to the brain.

Why no Penrose and Hameroff on the list? Theirs is the hypothesis that makes the most solid predictions, and they actually provide a quantum effect that could account for consciousness. I suspect since they explicitely deny any connection with qualia, that might throw a monkey-wrench in your "quantum mechanics god of the gap" fetish.

In any case, QM is a naturalistic process, so any quantum events discovered in the brain are still naturalistic. It provides no evidence for a soul, or God, or pretty much any other dualistic nonsense.

The "distribution of probability" is the cause of the event? What kind of nonsense is this? The probabilities of a coin toss is 50-50 that it will land heads. But the actual outcome of a coin toss is not determined by the probabilities.   

If quantum indeterminacy is true, then some events are causeless. This is not philosophical speculation; this is the definition of term "indeterminism." (Now you can argue that the events only appear to be indeterminate. But you have to provide some explanation for the appearance.)

The definition of the term "indeterminism" is not a mystery.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indeterminism

Correction. There is a law. It's called the law of cause and effect - the most fundamental law there is and the one which science must presuppose in order to carry out its project. The bottom line here is that your worldview of atheistic materialism precludes you from ascribing mental causes. Mine does not. That's why my worldview has more explanatory power than yours. That's why my worldview is more rational than yours.

Okay. Bohm's probably qualifies as an interpretation.

I didn't mention Penrose and Hammeroff because you already mentioned them in your previous post.  Also, they don't deny "qualia" (what David Chalmers calls the hard-problem of consciousness).  In fact, Stuart Hammeroff mentions on his website that the qualia is not addressed by other theories.

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html

Naturalism is not inherently materialistic. Universal consciouness may simply be a brute fact of the natural order of things. And the whole point of quantum mind theories is that quantum indeterminacy is a description of the natural process of conscious free will (collapse of the wave function).

Excellent. This answers my last post.

I guess the only question is, then: what evidence is there that the seemingly-random collapse of a wave function is a natural process of conscious free will? Why is it not simply the random decoherence of a probability wave for purposes of interaction with other probability waves? Which of the various quantum-mind hypotheses have supporting evidence?

Actually, when it comes down to it, what evidence exists to support any of the competing hypotheses for the nature of QM?

Again, this is a sincere question.

Free will (as it is conventionally understood) implies that given the same possibilities (probabilities?), the agent could have chosen otherwise. And I would not use the term "randomness" when applied to an intelligent agent because agents are purpose-driven. The term "spontaneous" is more apt, although a lower life-form may exhibit (from our perspective) what may be construed as random behavior. I see free will is the animating aspect of life.

Free will is a religious concept that the actions of people are not determined solely by their circumstances, but also by something spiritual, so that:

1) it is fair for God to burn someone alive forever in a lake of fire for not believing in him after hearing the magic incantation "believe in Jesus"; and

2) its good for God to cause huge amounts of horrible otherwise useless suffering in the world to somehow promote this free-will.

According to the crazy religious doctrine of free will, people have some spiritual quality so that, identical people in identical physical circumstances could make different moral decisions that they would be morally responsible for. This has nothing to do with randomness. - if it was random then they would not be responsible.

Free will is useless because you could not detect it if it existed. Like all spiritual things, we should not believe that free-will exists until the proponents of free will offer reasonable evidence that shows that it exists.

Free choice means that an agent is allowed to make decisions based on his own values and not on incompatible values of others. Even if all his values are determined by his circumstances,  he still has free choice as long as his decisions are based on his values.

All animals exhibit random-like dodging behavior when being chased by a predator. If not, then the predator could predict their dodges and they would not survive to reproduce. Pseudo-randomness is part of the human decision making process, but I do not know how it is implemented , and I have no reason to think it is related to quantum mechanics.

Materialism seems to be merely a straw man that theists use in apologetics against rational atheism. I never hear about it except in relation to Christian apologetics. The only thing that most rational atheists hold regarding physicalism, is that, it should be presumed, that nothing spiritual exists, until there is reasonable evidence of spiritualism. The proponents of spiritualism have the burden of providing evidence that something spiritual exists.

No. The probability distribution is the observation. The description of that observation is that it is indeterminate, in that a quantum event cannot be given a cause. The framework for all this theory is mathematical. Again, the reason I say you don't understand this stuff is because you don't. Even with only my passing (and not comprehensive) knowledge in this area, these are still mathematical statements derived and modeled from observation, and your question is attempting to put quantum events into a classical model. It doesn't work, and everybody knows that already.

Also, I have to correct what I said above. I wrote:

I meant to correct that last sentence, and apparently didn't. I was trying to capture the probability distribution, and completely botched it. You can only say of quantum events that they have no cause. Full stop. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

This stuff is counter-intuitive, but it is based on observation. The theoretical model is all mathematical, so you'd have to appreciate that before thinking you could concoct some far-reaching conclusion about its results.

Right. But the probability remains the same, no matter how many times you toss the coin, and no matter what the outcome is. The coin toss is analogous to an electron's spin in its Hilbert space, if you thought of the coin being tossed constantly, and "read" instantly and then immediately tossed again. While the coin is in the air, it has only its probability distribution to give us a measurement.

Actually, if you want to extend the idea of quantum indeterminacy to the macroscopic world, then ALL events are without a cause. Mathematically speaking, of course. As you can see from above, it would be nonsensical to ascribe a cause.

No, of course not. The mystery I was referring to is found in probability distributions and statistical error involved in any measurement.

Yes, the theory is mathematical. The language of physics is mathematics. Quantum theory is a scientific theory which uses the language of mathematics to model what is being experimentally observed. So, I fail to see your point.

The theory of relativity is mathematical. Theories in physics are described in the language of mathematics which model what is being observed. Of course, quantum theory is only a theory and subject to falsification. But to date, it hasn't been falsified. So the theory and hence the model stands.

True, if all matter (mass/energy) reduces to the quantum potential (which is does according to quantum theory), then the phenomenal world is fundamentally indeterminate. And it is only nonsensical if you try to fit it into a materialistic framework. In other words, you may have to rethink your worldview.

Your response here leads me to believe that you really don't understand what is meant by indeterminacy in the context of QM. It's not due to an error in measurement.

Right.

What? A probability distribution is still a description of a physical thing in a physical environment. How does that take us outside of physicalism? How does that even hint at leaving the physical?

Oh, Paisley. When I say "error" when discussing statistics, I mean it statistically. In statistics, "error" doesn't mean "mistake". The Wikipedia article correctly states that statistical error is not what indeterminacy refers to. Quite right. But statistical error and probability distributions are both examples of the simplest example of everyday indeterminacy available.

Think of tolerances in manufacturing. Even when a 12" ruler is made, it's made within certain tolerances, say between -0.1mm and 0.1 mm off of exactly 12". Any ruler that's about to be made in our hypothetical ruler factory will be a 12" ruler, but it'll be a 12" ruler give or take 0.1 mm, because making a ruler 12" down to the micron is a bit much. Even if we were trying for exactly 12", there would still be the slightest variation in the size of the rulers, and the range in the measurement of those rulers (for all intents and purposes) would be the statistical "error" in their sizes.

By the same token, we could only give the exact size of any potential 12" ruler in terms of a probability distribution. It might be 12% probable that we'd see a ruler that's 0.1mm off of the ideal measurement, for example. You'd be right in saying that the probability did not determine the actual size of the upcoming ruler, but I doubt that's counter-intuitive.