Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:10pm PT
|
Harris took just enough from 'neuroscience' to support his pre-conceived ideas about people. Why is it that he mostly focuses on people that have been dealt a bad hand - people that almost have no mind? It's either that or how we deal with those people. I'll have to read his essay on intelligent people that adhere to a religion. We already know that many people know how to keep their religion in a box.
|
|
StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:25pm PT
|
Use of after the fact events to prove determinism is a problem. Of course events look predetermined after they have occurred. How can you predict what experiences someone will have from one moment to the next? You can probably predict with some accuracy how they will respond to the various possibilities, but saying you can predict it with 100% accuracy is preposterous.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:30pm PT
|
Harris is not the source of information. He is an interpreter.
That's right.
QT So what do you call this neuroscientist? ANS One answer: A practicing neuroscientist.
The man has a phd in neuroscience. When he's out giving classroom or auditorium lectures on the subject of neuroscience, he is a practicing neuroscientist.
If anyone here has a problem with the material he presented he should speak to the idea (ad ideam) as opposed to the neuroscientist man (ad hominem) since the science stands (or should stand) on its own independent of the person or personality.
If anyone here hasn't had several years physics, math, chemistry, biology (general, ecology, physiology), he should start there - at least before ridiculing doctorates in neuroscience.
Else you read like a blowhard or worse.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:35pm PT
|
You're toxic, Forum Bully.
Your payoff for posting your endless tedious crap eludes me.
Imo, you're worse than Cruz and Hucklebee.
"Werner is by several yardsticks the most solid person posting here, though you might need to know him beyond this thread to realize that."
Uh huh.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:38pm PT
|
^^^^HFCS = All the qualities of a mini wannabee hiranyakashipu ^^^
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:41pm PT
|
"How can you predict what experiences someone will have from one moment to the next? You can probably predict with some accuracy how they will respond to the various possibilities, but saying you can predict it with 100% accuracy is preposterous." -stalbro
And no one is saying otherwise.
So it's one more who doesn't distinguish between causal determinism (re: causation) and epistemological determinism (re: knowing, predicting, prediction).
Just as Harris observed: people remain powerfully confused.
|
|
StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:44pm PT
|
Nice edit. I believe Harris is saying otherwise.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 05:46pm PT
|
Harris speaks of determinism only in the context of causation, not prediction.
Nice edit.
Really, you have a problem with me rendering some of your words in bold? is that it? Apologies.
|
|
StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 06:30pm PT
|
Not the bold. You did not quote the whole post.
But then you knew that.
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 06:40pm PT
|
I was thinking I had heard the answer to all this once before. Then it came to me, I had.
"The technique may be defined as turning the attention inwards towards the subtler levels of thoughts until the mind transcends the experience of the subtlest state of the thought and arrives at the source of the thought. This expands the conscious mind and at the same time brings it in contact with the creative intelligence that gives rise to every thought."
"A thought-impulse starts from the silent creative centre within, as a bubble starts from the bottom of the sea. As it rises, it becomes larger; arriving at the conscious level of the mind, it becomes large enough to be appreciated as a thought, and from there it develops into speech and action."
"Turning the attention inwards takes the mind from the experience of a thought at the conscious level . . . to the finer states of the thought, until the mind arrives at the source of thought. . . . This inward march of the mind results in the expansion of the conscious mind."
First there is a mountain
Then there is no mountain
Then there is
|
|
McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 06:46pm PT
|
Nice.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 07:18pm PT
|
"A thought-impulse starts from the silent creative centre within, as a bubble starts from the bottom of the sea.
I'm thinking I heard that before, too.
Ah, yes.
Your conscious awareness is only a light froth riding on an ocean of mental processing devoted to such things as temperature regulation, muscle coordination, and the pH of your blood.
MH2 5 Oct 2009
Creationists take another...
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 07:29pm PT
|
pH.D indeed!
|
|
McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
|
|
|
Nov 19, 2015 - 09:59pm PT
|
Here is a link that has some fodder for thought. The author of this essay and I are in agreement about the way Harris interprets the data of the experiments. He simply interprets it the way he desires:
http://aphilosopherstake.com/2012/07/29/free-will-why-sam-harris-needs-to-read-more-philosophy/
This is from the blog below it:
The Mele book is long (220 pages or so) but the chapter dealing directly with the neuroscientific data is the focus of chapter 2 which only runs about 20 pages or so. It’s heavy reading with lots of neuroscientific jargon, but, it’s well worth the read.
Also, Mark Balaguer has a great book out ‘Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem'(2010). He deals directly with the same data that Harris, Mele, and Libet refer to in their work. He’s a Libertarian that concludes that the free will question boils down to an empirical question about whether neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way. And, since there is no good evidence as to whether the neural events are undetermined in the way that’s required by his argument, then we must leave open the question of free will.
Personally, I like Mele’s book! It’s a detailed account of the science and where the interpretation that we don’t have free will goes wrong.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Nov 20, 2015 - 11:06am PT
|
^^^
"To summarize Mele, Libet (and now Harris) has no good reason to claim that what they are seeing in FMRI scans and other instruments used in RP experiments are in fact one’s decision or intention (or ACTUAL thought of either) to press a button (or perform any action for that matter) before the button has been pressed and not something like “an urge” to press them or perform an action. It should also be noted here that the neuroscientific experiments have not been able to predict with more than (roughly) 60% success if a button would in fact be pushed "
Interesting philosophical approach.
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
|
Nov 20, 2015 - 12:01pm PT
|
Harris does seem to rely heavily on philosophy. He has a number of lectures on Youtube. I watched one the other day about the topic of free will, but I disagree with part of what he is saying.
I dunno if Harris has a long and deep enough background in science. He is young, and as someone pointed out, hasn't published much. He mainly writes books and gives lectures. He doesn't do much research, if any.
I do tons of research, but I can't publish. It is all proprietary. Sometimes a geologist will publish the geology of an area, but it is after they have picked it clean. Most petroleum geology papers that come from industry never see the light of day.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Nov 20, 2015 - 01:03pm PT
|
^^^
Mathematicians working in government/industry encounter similar restrictions and this is a negative factor in their research "publications."
However, many if not most in the academic world work at institutions devoted primarily to teaching and these schools tend to place number of publications lower down on the list of promotion criteria. If you do research you do it because you like to.
DMT: I am in the grey area halfway between toga man and beaker boy.
|
|
McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
|
|
|
Nov 20, 2015 - 01:45pm PT
|
Has anyone repeated the Harris experiments in such a way that they too could conclude free will does not exist? It seems laughable.
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Nov 20, 2015 - 03:32pm PT
|
Hey McHale's Navy. Do you believe that animals have free will - how about, say, our cousin, the chimpanzee? We differ in less than 2% of our DNA. If chimpanzee's don't have free will, then somehow within a span of less than 4 million years we developed it.
I tuned into one of your up-thread links from a philosopher. Sheesh, I would trust science WAY before philosophy. If the philosopher does not really understand evolution, I wouldn't give 2 cents for the analysis.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!