It wasnt al-Ghazalis fault that muslim society adopted his idea that math is evil and made it doctrine. He was long gone by the 16th century.

It was the fault of the muslim religous authorities, but you cant say that in one sentence, if you are a muslim, even today. You have to go on and on for half an hour, naming all the muslim famous scientists, just like you would have to name all the famous russian scientists if you were a russian professor talking to a russian audience.

Even if 17th century muslim society had a Newton or Leibniz or Kopernik or Kepler and they managed to publish, what impact would their discoveries have had if they could not be used in practice for religious reasons?

It hardly matters who invented the lightbulb, if you have to keep using candles for religious reasons.

^ You can make all of that make sense by simply shifting your epistemological position to the only ones which truly make sense i.e. phenomenology &/or perspectivism.

To rephrase that in less impenetrable terms:
"Materialism" (or in your case I assume "Scientific Materialism") that is to say 'matter is primary', from a philosophers POV is a deeply flawed assumption. Flawed because there appears to be not one experience in human history that did not occur entirely within the mind.
When one see's say a Dog, one only ever experiences the images and sensations occurring within ones mind. You don't see the photons hitting your retina, only the way your mind as interpreted the data.

However the opposite position "Idealism" (mind is primary) is also fundamentally flawed in the exact opposite way. If our minds are the only "real" things then where exactly are they? And how do we even derive logic and reason if there is not something outside of ourselves which it describes? etc. etc.

Philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre' got around this by defining a new category, "phenomena". We know for certain that "phenomena" exist in some sense because we experience them, the categories of mind and matter then become secondary properties, both only existing as definitions we apply retrospectively to experiences. i.e. stuff happens and then our brains kick in and say "that happened because of X because in the past X has preceded similar experiences" or "that thing looks like other examples of Y so is probably Y".

The problem then is that this appears to come no closer to telling us what is objectively happening in the universe, it's more like linguistic/logical housekeeping. The phenomenologists and existentialists did a superb job of clearing away all of the old invalid baggage about how we try to describe things, but they did little or nothing to solve the problem of Kants "nouminal world" (i.e. the "real" stuff that we are experiencing by simulation in our minds).

Its stumped philosophers for centuries as we don't appear to have any way to ever get at this "nouminal" or "real" world we naturally assume must exist in some way. But....

I reckon ultimately one of the first western philosophers in history nailed the way out 3000 or so years ago. Pythagoras said "all is number" and due to the work of Euler, Riemann and Fourier in particular I think we can now make it stick. (yeh its turning into an essay sorry )

Without wishing to go deep into a subject you could spend half your life on; Fourier transforms are involved in signal processing. It is a mathematical means by which spatio-temporal signals (e.g. the vibration of a string or the movement of a record needle) can be converted with no meaningful loss of information into frequency (analog) or binary (digital) forms and back again.

Mathematically speaking there is no reason to regard the "signal" as any less "real" whether it is in frequency form or spatio-temporal form. It is the same "signal", it can be converted 100% either direction.

So then here's the biggie: Is there any reason why we could not regard instrumental mathematical numbers and operations (i.e. the stuff we write down and practice as "mathematics") and the phenomena in the universe they appear to describe. I.e. when we use man made mathematical equations to describe and model the behavior of "phenomena" we experience like say Physicists do, could we suggest that we are using a form of Fourier transform? And moreover that this indicates an Ontological (existing objectively outside of yourself) aspect to the mathematical "signals".

Or to put it another way, is mathematics itself really real?

The Reimann sphere and Eulers formula provide a mathematical basis to describe the entirety of known existence in purely mathematical terms, but they indicate that pure ontological mathematics itself is more primary than anything we ever experience. It suggests infact that we ourselves are ultimately reducible to Ontological mathematical phenomena (what Leibniz called "Monads").

What we think of as "reality" could then perhaps be regarded as non dimensional (enfolded) mathematics interacting in such a way as to create the experience of a dimensional (unfolded) universe of extension (such as ours).

(R = distance between two points)
Enfolded universe: R=0
Unfolded universe: R>0

Neither is more "real", they are simply different perspectives from which Ontological mathematics can observe itself.

"Reality": R>=0

I've explained parts of that poorly sorry. Its an immense subject and can be tackedled from many different (often completely incompatible) paradigms. I hope at the very lest I have perhaps demonstrated that the Holographic universe theory could have legs if we combine the advances of scientific exploration (i.e. study of matter) with those of Philosophy and neuroscience (i.e. study of mind & reason itself). The latest big theory doing the rounds with neuroscience is that the mind/consciousness is a fractal phenomenon, which plays into what I've been discussing here more than you might think.

Then again maybe you just wrote me off as a crackpot within the first few lines "lawl" etc..

This is more narrative than fact, but it is a fun narrative; most notable the inverse square law came around 1687 and his calculus was claimed in 1666, but only published in 1696 long after the Leibniz/Newton calculus controversy had begun. Philosophy minded people always credit Leibniz with being one of the smartest people ever, and Science people with Newton and fall in line usually with how they feel about the invention of calculus and such. The facts are always a bit more complicated than simple, cause driven narrative like this, but he is pretty much known for this kind of stuff, so whatever, Ill just have fun

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I am more of a Leibniz fan myself. Which polymath is your favorite seems to say a lot more about you than them

Yeah...especially since Leibniz hated jews.


Heheheh if you google "Leibniz hated jews", this page is the first hit...well done!

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I am more of a Leibniz fan myself. Which polymath is your favorite seems to say a lot more about you than them


Yeah...especially since Leibniz hated jews.

I am more of a Leibniz fan myself. Which polymath is your favorite seems to say a lot more about you than them

@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.

Depends on who's version you use exactly, it has had many different installments. Personally, my favorite are Spinoza, Leibniz and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's being the most interesting to me, as it tied in with Hinduism and didn't even intend to. One thing every single one of the arguments fails, however, is to point any any particular God, especially Spinoza. So even if it were true, it is unintelligible to choose a particular God based on its logical assertions, and thus, left back at square one of agnosticism.

Newton's got nothing on Leibniz!

Weeell, as Newton said "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants" if you don't have any shoulders to stand on, it's easily forgivable to believe things which are not true.

By now we have a nice big giant to stand on, so let's do that.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^robv:
>> ^EMPIRE:
He really doesn't "believe" in evolution? (as if something that is a proven scientific FACT needs belief)
Then it's settled. The man is an idiot. No way around it.
There is no way I would vote for him. Not only because I'm not american, but because I have this weird tendency to not vote for people with severe mental problems. Wait... maybe that's a bit harsh. I mean to say I have a tendency not to vote for ignorant idiots.

Not standing behind (or however you want to phrase it) evolution infers a lot about a person. Primarily that that person is willing to sacrifice some degree of scientific reason in place of faith. And generally that's not what I look for in my elected officials.

Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Max Planck, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, ect...what a bunch of morons.

>> ^robv:

>> ^EMPIRE:
He really doesn't "believe" in evolution? (as if something that is a proven scientific FACT needs belief)
Then it's settled. The man is an idiot. No way around it.
There is no way I would vote for him. Not only because I'm not american, but because I have this weird tendency to not vote for people with severe mental problems. Wait... maybe that's a bit harsh. I mean to say I have a tendency not to vote for ignorant idiots.

Not standing behind (or however you want to phrase it) evolution infers a lot about a person. Primarily that that person is willing to sacrifice some degree of scientific reason in place of faith. And generally that's not what I look for in my elected officials.


Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Max Planck, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, ect...what a bunch of morons.

I am very tired, so this post may be extremely error-ridden.

Notes as I proceed through the video:

Uh-oh. QualiaSoup's first point seems quite wrong-headed. He claims that "non-physical substance" illegitimately smuggles in the physical concept of "substance." But here I think he's problematically confusing our everyday colloquial use of the word "substance" with the philosophical meaning(s). To speak of a substance in philosophical jargon is merely to say that the "substance" is that which underlies all other properties of a thing and make it what it is. Thus, Spinoza was able to say that there is only one substance, underlying all materiality but not itself material. Leibniz made a somewhat similar claim, but allowed for the existence of an infinite number of substances called monads.

Second, even if it's true that speaking of a "non-physical substance" requires an analogy from physical substance, it's not at all obvious that this is problematic. Insofar as the non-physical shares some subset of properties with the physical, or has similar but somewhat different properties, one may legitimately borrow physical language to speak of it. The substance dualist might easily accept that there is some shared subset of properties.

Next, QS claims that substance dualists often conflate mind, soul, and consciousness without substantiating argument. This is either a straw man or an attack on the very weakest defenders of substance dualism. Waste of time making this point.

Next, QS offers an apparently coherent account of the public and private access of "physical" and "mental" events respectively, as against the dualist argument that such an account seems impossible. However, it is not at all obvious that he genuinely succeeds. A robust dualist argument would proceed under the assumption that the contents of the mind can be inferred perfectly from the contents of the brain (this is acceptable even under substance dualism). Even under such conditions, it is not obvious that the processes so identified are identical to my conscious experience. It has been argued even by atheist physicalists like Thomas Nagel that there is something in subjective experience uncaptured by physical accounts. As Nagel says in his most famous essay, even the most robust physical theory seems incapable of telling us what it would be like to be a bat. A dualist account might provide us with a coherent way to deal with this problem in a way that physicalism is incapable of.

Next, some nonsense about split brains. Yawn. No ground is going to be gained or lost for dualism on these grounds; the most QS can show is that a monist account is equally capable of accounting for such phenomena. I suppose he's correct that this can't be used as a good argument against

Next, a discussion of replacement of all one's cells every seven years. Not only is it not the case that this happens, but this would be a particularly bad argument for dualism. Is QS just going after the easy objections to his position and leaving alone the strong ones?

Next, damage to the body causing changes and/or damage in mental functioning. So what? Under substance dualism, there must be reciprocal causal relationships between the brain and the mind. This kind of thing is just what one expects under substance dualism.



This may be QS's most poorly argued video. At the most compelling point in the video, QS offers an apparently coherent account of private and public access which, if the dualist position is correct, should not be at all likely, if even possible. And, to be sure, there are philosophers of mind who will agree with him, such as Daniel Dennett. Yet there are just as many who will not, including very prominent philosophers like David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. At every other point, he is either wrong or irrelevant.

First of all, these are two brilliant people faced with an uncertain question about an unclear topic. To have any meaningful conversation for any longer than 30 mins is a feat in and of itself. Bravo to everyone involved for their time and energy!

Since this is the internets, I will of course give my opinion. AI was something I wrote much about in college. First, I stared like the man on our left. I was a technologist, I believed in the power of computing and simulation. Facts were only things that were verifiable and proven through rigorous trial and error. In an effort to discover the truths of the universe. I had the utmost zeal for technology solving all the worlds problems, and that it could realize any possible challenge. After years of study and introduction to many different areas and ways of thinking, I had a, what I consider, more realistic understanding about technology and philosophy. With that said, lets get some meat!

Let us go over some of the things they mentioned. First, the Chinese room argument.
This is a thought experiment where a man goes into a room. It is locked and only has a small slot for access. In the room with the man is a typewriter and book of Chinese. The man does not speak Chinese, but the book has explanations of how to respond to certain symbol sets. It does not offer translated meaning or things of this nature. It is simply if you see "This" then type "That". It is pure syntax, no meaning is applied.

Now, a second man comes to the slot of the room. He inserts a sentence into the slot and waits. The man inside the box looks at the paper, looks at this guide and begins to churn out his output. He slides the output through the slot and the second man receives it. He reads it and it appears that the response is from something that knows Chinese. Something that understood what he said and replied. However, this is not what happen. The person inside knows nothing of how to speak that language, he was only responding syntactically to other syntax. This is not intelligence, rather, more definitely, this is not understanding.

Much to my disappointment I became aware of this thought experiment. Because currently, this is how ALL software is realized. The hardware is essentially dumb, it does nothing except what the software tells it to do. This means at best, a computer in its current form can never have understanding. So at best, this conversation has to be about new, different computers that doesn't work on the same syntactical model that we have today.

The counter to this was that humans can be understood in the same way a computer can, were as the hardware is just doing what the brain is telling it to. That we are just state machines with brains being the software and the body being the dumb hardware. This would imply that humans also do not have understanding. However, we do, and that is where the problem is.

Now, we must be clear on what understanding means before we move further. Understanding is hard to flesh out briefly, but I will try. Experiencing the color blue is more than just experiencing a certain wavelength a light. It has a context that goes beyond just the facts of it, you experience blueness! Blue has a real experienced value. You have done more than just become aware of it, you have experience of it. More over, you can actually think back upon the experience itself, it is more than just a wavelength to you, not only is it blue, but you have an experience of blue to reflect on with all sorts of other things relating to it.

The man in the room had no understanding of Chinese. It was gibberish to him. He can only do what he was told in his special language.

The next is a typical fallacy that I have used from time to time without realizing it. It is easy to do and it is made in this presentation. Appeal To complexity in a slightly modified form. That, we don't understand how human consciousness as the brain is complex. And, in fact, it is in that complexity that the emergent property of consciousness comes from. This of course is not necessarily true or untrue, but he is stating this as a fact of consciousness in computing being a possibility because of this.

Let us use another example. Let us say that we have broadcasting towers all over the USA. They are broadcasting all sorts of different programs to all sorts of different people. It is a complex web of towers and receivers but it all seems to work out ok. So, are we to conclude that radio towers are conscious? Of course not, but that is what are are doing with the human experience of consciousness. Lets look at that quickly.

When you experience something, you experience every one of your scenes simultaneously. You remember the sounds, the tastes, the sights...it is all there. However, your brain never really has a point in which all points connect. Your consciousness is something that seems to violate the laws of physics, that things are happening in different locations in space at different times, but for your consciousness, at the same time. This isn't something that is reducible to brain states, and not something that is physically possible in computer technology as we know it. It doesn't matter if it is parallel or not, if things don't touch but are somehow related this is mystifying; and as a result, unreproducible. Perhaps consciousnesses is reducible to one point in the brain we haven't found, but so far, there is no such thing.

I have already gone on way to long, and I could go on for about 20 more pages. I still have my thesis on it laying around here somewhere. I LOVE THIS TOPIC, but my studies have lead me to believe that creating an ACTUAL intelligence isn't possible with current digital technology. Let me remind everyone that digital computing hasn't changed since basically Leibniz , and that was in the 1600s. In other words, AI, or Computers with Consciousness is NOT possible with state machine logic.

I would like to point out one more fallacy the pro-AI guy was (and let me be clear, I love the idea of AI too, so I am pro as well! But I just think it is impossible) that simulations of of brain states is simulacrum, not experience. Simulacrum difference from actual experience because it begs the question, is this thing ACTUALLY experiencing anything other than a brain state. For instance, the color blue is not necessarily equal to any particular brain state. Brain states alone do not sufficiently explain human consciousnesses, to assume that a proper modeling of them is anything other than just another simulacrum is without cause. In short, a simulacrum does not an experience make. (The people in the painting aren't experiencing a wonderful day)

I get that this guy is doing satire, but there's a line between satire and a pure straw man--and NonStampCollector took a flying leap over that line in this video.

In the first place, any halfway competent theist using those arguments will of course make it clear that these argument do not necessarily support any one religion over the others. This is how Aquinas used similar arguments in the 13th century, and it's how theistic thinkers deploy them today. They are only intended to weaken the atheist position generally. NonStampCollector doesn't even attempt to address them on this level.

In the second place, it's asinine to assume that every religion is the same--either with regard to how well they are supported by the cosmological, teleological and moral arguments, or how much or little they incline their followers to religious violence. As it happens, the Hindu has a much better case than the Christian or Muslim for saying that these arguments support his religion. Brahma, unlike the God of Abraham, does not have a seemingly petty concern with particular tribes of humans or become angry or feel wronged because of sin. Brahma is described as illimitable, all-embracing. Brahma is a more cosmic God, better supported by the discovery of the age and vast distances of the universe.

Other Gods or divine realities so supported include Plato's Form of the Good, the Logos of the Stoics, the God of Leibniz or Spinoza, and even the God of A. N. Whitehead (co-author of the Principia Mathematica with acclaimed atheist Bertrand Russel) and Charles Hartshorne.

Tendencies toward violence differ considerably between religions. The Hindu and the worshiper of Amun have no reason to get into a fight about religion. Hinduism is not a single religion, but thousands of intertwined religions which have co-existed peacefully for thousands of years. A plurality of religious beliefs and practices--including atheism--has long been not fought by Hindus, but embraced. Only when aggressive evangelistic monotheisms actively attack Hinduism does anything like an instinct to violence come into play--and even then it tends to arise mainly in extreme circumstances. (As in Orissa in 2008, when the assassination of a Hindu leader by Christian Maoist extremists sparked a riot and violence by members of both religions, or the year before, in 20007, when Christians deliberately provoked Hindus by .) Likewise, there is no reason anyone would go to war over Amun. It would not be appropriate to describe the religions of Egypt as tolerant--the word implies a perception of annoyance or burden in allowing others to co-exist, when co-existence was assumed as a daily fact of life. In fact, the priests of Amun welcomed Zeus-worshiping Greeks to the oracle of Amun at Siwa, which once declared Alexander the Great to be the son of Amun.

But, of course, NonStampCollector doesn't actually know any of this. He just assumes, like nearly all the New Atheists, that all the other religions in the world are more or less just like the ones he's most familiar with. Makes it easier that way; you don't have to do as much studying or thinking.

I don't think you have to resort to placebo, or mysticism in order to counteract hyper-individualism.

Take calculus: invented by Newton, and then by Leibniz (since Newton didn't publish). The information required for this discovery (some well documented comet activity) added to existing knowledge was sufficient that it would arise from the intellectual environment of the time. Both of these men were brilliant, Newton almost certainly more so, but neither of them could have come upon it without the information which became available during their lifetimes.

They, and all creative people, work as prisms or lenses for their society, focusing, and shifting what is already there in ways which illuminate and add to the general understanding. They depend on their society to provide them the raw ingredients, and they, at times, happen to be just the right tool to discover what lies under the surface, but this in more a coincidence then an act of conscious creativity.

Newton did not discover, for instance, the photo-electric effect, Einstein did that. This does not mean that Einstein was smarter than Newton, in all likelihood he was not, but the preconditions for the discovery did not exist in Newtons time, the discovery is in some sense a product of its time, more then it is the product of a single mind.

The speaker makes an argument from consequences, but offers no basis. I think my argument from example stands logical scrutiny much better, as well as having the consequence she desires. It's not right because it has the desired outcome, it's just convenient that it does that in addition to being a coherent hypothesis.