And you know what, that might just very well be true if we’re talking about some supernatural force that is indifferent to its creations, not out of malice, but because it simply is truly neutral.
But as evidence for the religious capital ‘G’ God, the one who communicates and plans every little detail because he loves us so much? What is the point of these “subtle” proofs that took thousands of years to be studied and recorded when he has shown that he can just pop up anywhere or perform miracles and whatever the fuck.
It is no coincidence that the vast majority, possibly 99%, of devout religious people do not give a shit about using math to explain god because it’s all proven in their holy books. It is no coincidence that the “empirical” evidence is, in reality, just pointing at the existence of features and concepts of math and science rather than utilizing said features and concepts to prove the existence of god. And no, philosophical musings about morality using the language of mathematical proofs does not count as utilizing math and science (literally, all the axioms in these types of “proofs” are subjective shit like “bad” and “good” and not, say, the difference between 1 and 0).
And I didn’t even want to make a post dunking on religion, but I’m irritated because YouTube recommended some dumbass video by a channel called “Reformed Zoomer” and one of the arguments is “there is an infinite range of numbers between two numbers, and if we turn those numbers into letters, then every book possible has already been written. Checkmate atheoids”. https://youtu.be/z0hxb5UVaNE?si=RpjF6S0fHiF71iH-
You say that as though the metaphysical explanations of consciousness aren’t just as hand wavy (looking at you Hegel) and even worse, completely untestable materially. I’m comfortable in my Kantian agnosticism, but pretending that science-bro atheists are somehow on weaker theoretical footing than deists when it comes to the origins of consciousness is a really funny claim.
They are. The reductionist claim that consciousness supervenes on the physical is quite a strong one and none of them have a clue how you would even conceptually model consciousness through descriptions of physical systems. The closest thing they’ve come up with is Integrated Information Theory, and that already has plenty of problems and doesn’t seem viable as it predicts some clearly unconscious physical systems being highly conscious. Also it only predicts the amount of consciousness in the abstract, it doesn’t predict the actual quality of experience of a given physical system.
The reason dualists and idealists are on a somewhat higher footing IMO is that they don’t do mental gymnastics over the metaphysical status of consciousness, they just so posit that it exists as an assumption. This makes sense to me since it’s immediately and ineffably clear to me that my own consciousness does exist.
Dualists and idealists have theories for where consciousness comes from. It’s not just ‘an assumption’, it has to come from somewhere, usually as a relationship to a deity. Hegel famously does tons of gymnastics for the separation of the conscious self from God, and then the past conscious self from the present and future conscious self with his metaphysical idea of ‘becoming’.
Even Descartes has to relate consciousness to God. I think therefore I am doesn’t function as an assumption if we don’t also assume that what creates our consciousness and perception of consciousness is real and wouldn’t deceive us, a pretty bold assumption. And even then we can never actually assume the consciousness of other beings.
For both of these the hand waving begins just as immediately. I agree that IIS theory has a crap ton of issues with it, and that the metaphysical question likely can’t be solved physically. That is why I am agnostic on the matter because our best tool for investigation, scientific analysis, is wholly unsuited for that metaphysical question.
I guess I disagree there. There’s nothing inherent in the scientific method that binds it to reductive physicalism. There’s nothing stopping you assuming consciousness is non physical when formulating your hypotheses. The data may or may not prove you wrong but there’s nothing stopping you from applying the scientific method.
I realize dualism and idealism are also unsatisfactory explanations but I see no reason why you wouldn’t attempt to do science based on those ideas. I think the dominance of reductive physicalism in science is a cultural artifact more than anything.
In fact it does. The primary problem within the Kantian formation is not one just strictly of logic, but one of category. If we start our basis of understanding in Hume (radical skepticism), then the most we can achieve is the categorical imperative, actual truth is within those things that cannot contradict themselves (now we know from Marx and Hegel tha reality is in fact full of these contradictions, but I think that has more to do with our actual proximity to truth rather than a refutation of Kantian logical presumptions).
In particular, Kant supposes that the categories of physical and meta-physical, are oppositional and distinct categories. The Is and the Ought. The physical deals with the finite and consequential, while the meta-physical deals with the infinite, unconsequential and immortal. We begin in immediate contradiction. While deriving an is from an is and an ought from an ought is trivial, deriving an is from an ought is perilous and deriving an ought from an is is also hazardous. While the scientific method has proven to be particularly good at deriving physical is’s it’s ability to ‘prove’ oughts is tenuous at best. The best we are able to achieve is comprehensive theories about ‘oughts’ based of tested and retested data of ‘is’s’, cold piss in comparison to an ought coming from pure logic. Especially, when it comes to ethics.
But the problem is that there is still no actual methodology to prove an is from an ought. The closest thing that has been shown logically is (ironically enough) Hegel’s dialectical idealism, and it’s partner, of course, dialectical materialism. Clearly there is something going on in processual dialectics for it to reveal so much truth in contradiction, but the science of it is far too young to say at this point.
If we can find a way to do that, then we can prove both is’s and ought’s from backwards-forwards logic and solidify their connection. However, at this point in time, proving the properties of the metaphysical from the properties of the physical is likely an errand for fools.