Interesting Thoughts to Share — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

Philosophy and other Silliness

Interesting Thoughts to Share

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	binary: I was wondering if you saw the second part of that video. If you haven't, give it a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9FO7JGWq4&NR=1 Ultimately, this is a clever yet misleading defense of substance dualism. I happen to be a substance dualist myself (as a vast majority of Christians and other religious individuals are), but the argument presented in this video is deceptive. Despite the disclaimer in the beginning that it is not philosophy and is "fact proven by science," it [i]is[/i] ultimately philosophy. Yes, there are scientific facts discussed, but the video tries to make a seamless leap between scientific fact and philosophy (and, in my opinion, fails). If you watch and listen closely, you'll catch the problem, but boiled down it is this: yes, it is true that we cannot be certain that a physical world exists outside of the perceiving consciousness--but that does not necessarily mean that the physical world does not exist. The video makes this point on a few occasions and then blithely ignores it, confusing the fact that what we perceive [i]may[/i] not physically exist (e.g., dreams) with the certainty that it [i]doesn't[/i] exist. It bugged me to no end as I watched this video how the narrator kept saying things like, "The bird does not exist except in our brains." No! That's not the way it works? The [i]perception[/i] of the bird exists in our brains, but the physical bird exists out there in the world. Yes, this is an assumption--but given our collective human experience I believe it is less of a logical leap than to assume that there is no physical world. At the end of the second half of the video, the narrator concludes that, because everything that we consider physical (material) is just perception, then the "perceiver" must be the immaterial soul. And if the perceiver is the immaterial soul, then someone must be "broadcasting" the "reality" that we "see" and "feel" (I believe I've just used up my year's quota of scare quotes there). That someone, of course, is God, although the narrator doesn't say this explicitly. Yet the same problem plagues us here--why does the fact that we can't know for certain whether the world exists outside us have to translate into the certainty that it doesn't exist? Honestly, this is a pretty lame attempt at proving the existence of God that falls prey to the simple logical flaw I discussed above. And even if everything the narrator said in the video were true (most of it is, actually, except for the leap of logic to go from possibility to certainty), why does this broadcasting being necessarily have to be God? We could all just as easily be plugged into the Matrix for all we know. For the record, I am a theist, but I think this is a rather pitiful attempt to prove God exists by confusing science and philosophy. Gah. I don't even know why I bothered writing this comment. (In retrospect, the video is not really espousing substance dualism--it is claiming that there is no matter at all, which is something different. But some of the arguments are similar, and I'm too lazy at this point to go back and rewrite the beginning of this post.) [img]http://www.liminality.org/asylum/sigs/quickie.gif[/img] ___________________________ Suho: [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/4837]Cell 270[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/5689]Sig Rotator[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/22173]the Fellowship of Sup[/url] Loading...
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