Philosophy Discussion Forums

Meleagar wrote:

James S Saint wrote: They didn't "say so". You did. You very erroneously a freely interpret (twist) what they say into your own preferred perspective and then claim their respectability as your own (name dropping). If you cannot defend the perspective on your own, you have nothing to say other than proselytizing.

Doesn't determinism rely upon the existence of actual material objects interacting in cause-and-effect temporal sequences - matter with specific locations, trajectories, characteristics in and of themselves?

NO! It doesn't. I have pointed that out to you before. Materialism has nothing to do with determinism. Determinism includes the existence of non-material entities such as a perfect circle, socialism, virtuous women, and good men.

Meleagar wrote:I'm sorry, you seemed to have missed the point: the greats of physics have proven over the past 75 years that there is no such thing as "matter".

That is NOT what "they" said either. Is your academic education ENTIRLY fictitious fantasy?

Meleagar,
You are taking things completely out of context to support your beliefs. Downsize your ego just a bit, and move on by admitting you don't fully understand the basics of quantum physics. It's not the end of the world this is just a philosophy forum.

Meleagar wrote:It's only a logical fallacy if the authorities in question are not actually authorities (experts) on the subject being argued.

No, it's a logcial fallacy in any case.

Those guys weren't right (or wrong) because they were named Bohr, Heisenberg, or Wheeler. If they were right, they were right because they discovered evidence to support their positions.

Avoid the fallacy by doing the same.

Stick to evidence; names don't matter.

James S Saint wrote: NO! It doesn't. I have pointed that out to you before. Materialism has nothing to do with determinism. Determinism includes the existence of non-material entities such as a perfect circle, socialism, virtuous women, and good men.

In any event, even if one is going to argue for a non-material determinism, such determinism has been disproven independently by other scientific experimentation which I covered in my other thread.

Keith Russell wrote:No, it's a logcial fallacy in any case.

No, it's not.

Those guys weren't right (or wrong) because they were named Bohr, Heisenberg, or Wheeler. If they were right, they were right because they discovered evidence to support their positions.

That's the evidence I referred to. I'm not making the case that because they say so materialism has been proven, but rather that quantum experimentation has disproven materialism, and supplied their quotes as evidence that I am not misapprehending the results of that work.

wanabe wrote:You are taking things completely out of context ....

Not according to the quotes from the heavy hitters of quantum physics I've provided.

...to support your beliefs.

What beliefs are you referring to? Also, since I don't base my beliefs on evidence, why would I try to support them via evidence?

Meleagar wrote:Also, since I don't base my beliefs on evidence, why would I try to support them via evidence?

Ok, as long as you admit your opinions are completely baseless Meleagar, then I have no problem with what you say.

wanabe wrote:

Meleagar wrote:Also, since I don't base my beliefs on evidence, why would I try to support them via evidence?

Ok, as long as you admit your opinions are completely baseless Meleagar, then I have no problem with what you say.

I said that I don't base my beliefs on evidence. My arguments are always based on evidence.

wanabe wrote:Positive affirmations are just self brain washing, you are not affecting the quantum world with positive affirmations.

How do you know this? Can you support the assertion that I have bolded?

Your arguments are clearly biased off of your beliefs by how you defend them.

Relay Meleagar, I'm going to go ahead and call that a burden of proof fallacy, and cite common sense as my support.

NOTICE: EDITED BY MONITOR APRIL 2

Meleagar wrote: In any event, even if one is going to argue for a non-material determinism, such determinism has been disproven independently by other scientific experimentation which I covered in my other thread.

You have provided no scientific experiment, nor can you, that conflicts with determinism or even purports to do so. The simple fact appears to be that you merely hear the fascinating tales of dreamers and choose to profess deep understanding about things that you have never seen, know anything about, or even heard truthfully about.

Meleagar wrote:Also, since I don't base my beliefs on evidence--

Wow. It's been a while since someone admitted to me (in no uncertain terms) that they were irrational; I always enjoy such admissions, but I certainly wasn't expecting it.

Keith Russell wrote:

Meleagar wrote:Also, since I don't base my beliefs on evidence--

Wow. It's been a while since someone admitted to me (in no uncertain terms) that they were irrational; I always enjoy such admissions, but I certainly wasn't expecting it.

I haven't made any such admission, in uncertain terms or otherwise.

wanabe,

I'll take that to mean that you cannot support your assertion.

Meleagar wrote

In any event, even if one is going to argue for a non-material determinism, such determinism has been disproven independently by other scientific experimentation which I covered in my other thread.

Non-material determinism has not been disproven . Mind is non-material and mind certainly plays its part in causation. Psychology is a deterministic science.Which other thread and post do you mean?

As James S Saint wrote

NO! It doesn't. I have pointed that out to you before. Materialism has nothing to do with determinism. Determinism includes the existence of non-material entities such as a perfect circle, socialism, virtuous women, and good men.

A perfect circle, socialism, virtuous women, and good men are all mind entities.They are concepts, they are mind stuff.And yet each of those concepts is a cause and may have its effect upon material objects and events.

Belinda wrote:Which other thread and post do you mean?

The O.P. in the thread I started about determinism being disproven.

wanabe wrote:There is no "what if". The only thing we can OBSERVE is the material world. We can only conceive of(think about) the quantum world(or indirectly observe it). As of yet we can't do anything with the information but theorize with it. We should continue to do so until something can be done with it.

I think your point with that question is to note the bias; noted, but inherently necessary.

Matter doesn't just behave in correlation to observers there is more to it i promise you. My reasoning: ~Matter does not have to be the way we see it, but it has the highest probability[not definite], apparently, of being so. This is why things change, this is why no two things can be exactly alike. If things were solely up to observation, things could be the same, and would not change; because it is more simple to perceive and observe them as such.~

There are certainly instances in our mind that behave contrary to the material paradigm. That however is due to internal doings, not actually affecting the physical world. Though with enough practice, exceptions can be made; one can consciously affect the physical world (or if you prefer the quantum world) with the mind, but those are extremely rare cases.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/08/lhc. ... index.html This is a very old article and I am disappointed this was the best I could find. It is an attempt to recreate the conditions of the big bang. It is my understanding they have had recent success and unleashed a lot of energy by colliding two protons, but without a recent article to check what I think I heard, I can not be sure the news was about what was done last week, or is still at the level of what they hope to do. If they have achieved their goal, we might be able to resolve the world's energy problem, and increase the standard of living around the world, besides having a better understanding of the universe.

Atomic explosions release energy, so I think we can say matter is energy?

You should check out yesterday's broadcast of Science Friday on NPR. Some of the scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider were interviewed, and they talked about the first "test run" of the machine, what they found, and the energy levels that were achieved.

athena wrote:http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/08/lhc. ... index.html This is a very old article and I am disappointed this was the best I could find. It is an attempt to recreate the conditions of the big bang. It is my understanding they have had recent success and unleashed a lot of energy by colliding two protons, but without a recent article to check what I think I heard, I can not be sure the news was about what was done last week, or is still at the level of what they hope to do. If they have achieved their goal, we might be able to resolve the world's energy problem, and increase the standard of living around the world, besides having a better understanding of the universe.

Atomic explosions release energy, so I think we can say matter is energy?

Of course it is! E (energy) equals M (matter) times the speed of light (C) squared...

Quote:
An independent reality, in the ordinary physical sense, can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.

Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, Physics and Philosophy, (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p.145:

The quotation is cut from Mealeagar's OP.

I had asked M a question in my

Meleagar wrote
Quote:
In any event, even if one is going to argue for a non-material determinism, such determinism has been disproven independently by other scientific experimentation which I covered in my other thread.

Non-material determinism has not been disproven . Mind is non-material and mind certainly plays its part in causation. Psychology is a deterministic science.Which other thread and post do you mean?

Meleagar had averred that non-material determinism had been disproven-----And Meleagar in his next post said to look at his OP.I did , and pasted one of M's good examples above.

However and it;s an important however, materialism and determinism are not the same. Heisenberg's finding which I have copied above, does not disprove determinism. It does not even disprove materialism(physicalism).
An independent reality, in the ordinary physical sense, can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.
'The ordinary physical sense' surely means things like houses, trees, horses,bottles of milk, skin cells, molecules. 'The ordinary physical sense' does not mean energy. Heisenberg has not said that there is nothing 'out there'.