Are theists and atheists epistemic peers?

there is a computer game called 'hand of God' (i think that's the name), the more 'God' (you) helps the ppl, the more dependent the ppl become on God (you)..

we don't need God as a babysitter..

 

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Some apparently do.

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If God works through natural means how would we be able to distinguish it from normal natural means?

a very loose analogy with the pool ball would be if God were to influence the shooter in a particular manner (go for the side pocket instead), or if God were to use the friction properties of the cloth(minor imperfections can influence the course of the ball), or the particular weight distribution in the ball itself, or many other factors that can naturally influence the ball, (of course this is all speculation)

 

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Then he got in the guy's brain and kicked some neurons around. What would the guy have done without him? Jumping neurons that weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing under the circumstances could be found too. There's a difference between what happened and what would have happened without him and we should be able (theoretically) to find the nexus of the miracle. There's no such thing as having an "influence" without leaving a hole in the causal nexus. Magic has to leave a fingerprint.

 

i am arguing that it is not magic,it is natural. science would only find the natural explanation and stop there.

 

And yet many systems function perfectly fine by the hierarchical principle.

For example, when you get fined for speeding, it's not the police officer who stops you who is the source of the law, but the parliament/legislative body. The two are not mutually exclusive.

When a river floods an area, you can identify many causes for it: the dam breaking, the water flowing due to gravity, the river filling up with water from several tributaries, the rain filling the tributaries, evaporation of water etc. etc.
Did the flood occur because the dam broke, or because there was so much rain?

 

In that case, you imply that humans are more than just their brains, and that human knowledge, experience and ingenuity cannot be limited to the brain.

You absolutely must meet poster Michael here!

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Absolutely not. I can't figure out how you drew that conclusion from what I said. Could you enlighten me?

 

That's a great argument. Lets see if this works.

It is pure parallelism if one level doesn't have control mechanisms which the other levels must live by. If the higher level system isn't doing the controlling, then it is just labels for movement and not a true entity.

I know how to move my arm and I can do it on purpose. Sure that means a lot of chemical and physical systems mirror and constitute that event, but I know what doesn't happen, my arm doesn't move for chemical reasons and then make my brain think I wanted to do it. Some level has the control, the rest are along for the ride. The control tends to be in the highest operating level. At least when we analyze the event we can figure out where the control was and which levels were along for the ride. I can move my legs voluntarily or I can suffer from restless leg syndrome. They might look the same but there is a clear difference that can be identified, which is what triggers the movement.

Apparently God is never just along for the ride. But the world sure doesn't act like puppets. We can trigger stuff all the time, which would make him just along for the ride. And in the case of something that can never be found to have contributed any trigger to the event, an unverifiable, extraneous hypothesis that serves no purpose in the explanation.

 

Well, Denny Crane, looks like you win this one!

It's interesting, because the way the brain in a vat scenario is usually conceived of, it is taken for granted the the supercomputer the brain is hooked up to, is, well, a supercomputer. It hasn't occured to me, or to anyone I know of who is familiar with the scenario, to think that the supercomputer might not be so super.

That said, the idea for the brain in a vat scenario is an abstract one, and the supercomputer in it is truly a supercomputer.

 

Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't.
Sometimes you move your leg deliberately, sometimes it moves on its own.

But sometimes we can't trigger things.

This is not proof of God, it just shows that we sometimes seem to be in control, and other times not.

 

Sounds like they have to make the supercomputer perfect, invincible and unaffected by any external event and thus created by a perfect god in order for the scenario to work. Anything less, and I can catch it screwing up. That sounds like at least two levels of unnecessary bullshit to believe for me to be in the solipsistic trap.

 

All true.

 

Indeed, with such a supercomputer, the brain in a vat scenario simply imposes a layer of skepticism that seems completely unnecessary.

However, I think the pull of the brain in a vat scenario is somewhere else. Namely, it implies the problem of the realization of complete determinism.

Suppose that one day, the person would outsmarten the computer and realize they are nothing but a brain in a vat - no body anymore with which they could act. This would probably be a devastating realization, so devastating that the person would fall into denial, and continue to think they are a normal person, thus never being conscious they are merely a brain in a vat. But probably that way, they would also experience considerable stress and anxiety.


A brain in a vat scenario is one that possibly some patients experience who have severe bodily paralysis. They are alive, conscious, at least some of the senses work, but they cannot move - and they are left completely at the mercy of their caretakers, who may or may not realize how conscious the person actually is.
I imagine this must be horrible, and anyone of us could come into such a situation.

 

Slightly OT, but true: My father was paralyzed from a stroke for 5 years before his death from multi-organ failure. The only muscles he could control were in his face. His throat and voice box were paralyzed, so he couldn't talk or swallow. His chest/lungs were paralyzed so he had to be on a ventilator. His brain was perfect, and I learned to read lips pretty well. He would have benefited from the vat and an adequate computer. However, I think he would have been able to tell that whatever the computer did to recreate me, wasn't really me.

 

then the question would be if he would accepted that image as you.

(so wait..
the computer would try to create a version of you as close as possible to you,close enough to count as a perfect you (consistency in decisions?:shrug

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,
so if grandpa could not accept a perfect you in a computer world, it makes sense that he would not accept a perfect you in reality..:shrug

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I was half kidding, but think how tough it would be to copy the mutual experiences of each of us, particularly which we held to be most significant to us, and copy how we might allude to them in the future. The context and intended meaning, not to mention the delivery, might be pretty elusive, and errors might be pretty easy to spot. Think Stepford wives.

 

Sure. But what do you think - why are these scenarios so appealing (both the brain in a vat as well as Stepford Wives)? What is it about them that sparks our interest?

 

If you mean generally, I think it is one goal of philosophers to create and solve what seem to be unsolvable puzzles. All the classic "problems" of philosophy are at least superficially unsolvable. Finding hidden assumptions, and the root of the dilemma is the challenge that philosophers in particular are supposed to be trained to do.

The brain in the vat is just solipsism. It's been with us from the beginning of philosophy. It's a great way to challenge any epistemology. How can we ever know anything for certain? It's a universal threshold test for the adequacy of your theory of knowledge. If you can't beat solipsism, your theory isn't going to be very credible. Both the Rationalists and the Empiricists tackled it and tried to beat it. They just happened to be two sides of the same coin, with deductive models of knowledge that had a lot of trouble with it.

 

ignorance is bliss..