Fortuna:
akakiwibear
 
>>Perhaps fire should not burn us, nor should beng struck hurt, nor should we be able learn compassion from stories such as this, nor should we see the fruits of evil in case we learned something!
sala kahle – peace>>
 
 
I invite you to go down to the local burn ward, and explain to the patients there how their horrendous, excruciating, disfiguring, lifelong injuries have taught you compassion. I’m sure it’ll be ever so comforting.
 

Fortuna – and your point is? We should have a world without fire or consequencese? Maybe no gravity in case you fall and hurt yourself? …

Naug:   How many christians are not exclusivists? (I’m not trying to make an argumentum ad populum here, I’m just interested.)

No… I think outside Catholicism, most Christians are likely to be exclusivists.  But I do know inclusivism is the official position of the Catholic church these days.

cartesian: What do you take the Problem of Hell to be, exactly? Is there some sort of argument you could give me with clear premises that clearly entail a troubling conclusion?

 
 
Well, some have probably done it much better than this, but maybe this will give you an idea.
 
1. Hell is eternal and described as a place of suffering and torment.
2. Any sins committed in a human life will eventually be small compared to suffering and torment a being will experience in Hell (just as any suffering one may experience in life, will seem small compared to the eternal paradise of heaven).
3. Therefore, Hell seems unjust.
 
There are implied ideas about justice in this reasoning.  But you also do the same, when you claim we live in a just universe; you imply there is some sort of comprehensible and comforting idea of justice that we can understand.  Maybe I should have simply asked this first:  How do you define justice?
 
The discord I see is that once Hell starts being examined, common ideals of justice to which you appeal – the ones that are supposed to bring a Christian comfort or make Christianity seem appealing over other worldviews -  simply don’t mesh with God’s justice.   Our western ideals regarding crime,  punishment, and rehabilitation make God’s “justice” rather inexplicable and incomprehensible… and quite frightening, I might add (though I think that’s rather the point in some cases).
 

drj:   There are actually plenty of Christians who do not believe that.   I was always taught as a former Catholic, that one who never heard the message of Christ but lived according to his/her conscience, can achieve salvation.     What you are touching upon is called exclusivism.  Not all Christians are exclusivists.

How many christians are not exclusivists? (I’m not trying to make an argumentum ad populum here, I’m just interested.)
 

Jeremy Killian: Interestingly enough, this woman’s experience has not led her to atheism.Despite tremendous bitterness toward her torturers, the article says that “she believes God kept her alive for a reason.”

Interesting that none of the atheists have yet found grounds to attack your observation!
The greatest error is lukeprog drawing the conclusion Christianity is either the most insane fiction you’ve ever heard, or the most horrifying reality you can imagine from this story. There is absolutely no grounds for it!
Certainly the spin luke applied to the story seems to justify his position but luke has simply embellished the story to create  a straw man and establish his case … but does that represent common sense atheism?
What is his point?
That only good people should have freewill? That there should be no suffering?
Perhaps fire should not burn us, nor should beng struck hurt, nor should we be able learn compassion from stories such as this, nor should we see the fruits of evil in case we learned something!
sala kahle – peace

Naug: I didn’t know that Christianity had opened the doors of heaven for all faiths? When did this happen? I thought professing faith in another god but yahweh was a sin and the failure to repent for those sins earned you a spot next to the warm cozy fire downstairs. Also, if that is not required to get to heaven, why be a christian instead of any other religion? And likewise, why proselytize as a christian if there are no souls to be saved? (Since they presumably don’t need to be saved if everyone can get to heaven without being a christian)

There are actually plenty of Christians who do not believe that.   I was always taught as a former Catholic, that one who never heard the message of Christ but lived according to his/her conscience, can achieve salvation.
 
 
What you are touching upon is called exclusivism.  Not all Christians are exclusivists.

cartesian: What makes you think that this is entailed by Christianity?

I didn’t know that Christianity had opened the doors of heaven for all faiths? When did this happen? I thought professing faith in another god but yahweh was a sin and the failure to repent for those sins earned you a spot next to the warm cozy fire downstairs. Also, if that is not required to get to heaven, why be a christian instead of any other religion?
And likewise, why proselytize as a christian if there are no souls to be saved? (Since they presumably don’t need to be saved if everyone can get to heaven without being a christian)

cartesian: What makes you think that’s a piece of Christian doctrine? Did you mean essential Christian doctrine? Or just a doctrine that some Christians happen to hold?

A doctrine that tens of millions of Christians hold. I don’t know what essential Christian doctrine would be, especially since there are people who call themselves Christian atheists, or Christian pantheists.

cartesian: How much does your memory of your 18th birthday weigh?

I think the question makes sense, and may be answerable one day, except that a memory of my 18th birthday is probably not one neuron or tiny brain region or anything. It’s moving and changing all the time – every time I recall it, in fact. Also, there are certain parts of my brain states that will be partially related to the memory of my 18th birthday, and indeed a continuum of memories that are more and more or less and less related to that memory, so it would be hard to decide which ones to include in the weighing.

So it’s not like a file on a computer hard drive represented by a certain number of disk sectors, which could be (relatively easily) weighed.

cartesian: Your move from (1) to (2) is valid only if the move from (1′) to (2′) is valid. But the move from (1′) to (2′) is NOT valid. Therefore, your move from (1) to (2) is not valid. Your reply didn’t address this argument at all.

I understand this perfectly well, and I’m arguing that you’re just equivocating. When you sever the neck, the relevance of that action is its effect on the brain, i.e. killing brain cells.
 
Here’s the parallel: we agree that brain chemistry can affect memories, so having propanalol in my brain affects my memories. The step that is analogous to this is having an oxygen deficit in my brain, not the severing of the neck.
 
You might as well say “taking propanalol orally affects memory, therefore memories are stored in the digestive tract”. Both of us know that propanalol in the digestive tract isn’t what causes the memory alteration–it’s the presence of propanalol in the brain (as caused by its absorption in the digestive tract).
 
In the same way, the severing of the neck is not what causes the memory loss, but the lack of oxygen and nutrients in the brain (as caused by the severing of the neck).
 
So, the steps:
1) Neck is severed.
2) Oxygen and nutrient concentration in the brain fall.
3) Memory is affected.
is just as valid as the steps:
1′) Propanalol is ingested.
2′) Propanalol concentration in the brain increases.
3′) Memory is affected.
 
Your argument is a failure, because you are comparing two different steps, 1) and 2′). If you want to refute the argument in this way, you need to make sure to compare the correct steps.

Haukur: Thank you for responding, I’m trying to follow but not sure I have – so you do have a dualistic view of how a computer stores information? Are you some sort of Platonist?

It depends on what you mean by “information.” If you mean the 1s and 0s that computers push around, i.e. if you mean those symbols, then no, I’m not a dualist about information. But if you mean the propositional content expressed by these 1s and 0s, if you mean that which the symbols symbolize, then I don’t think that information is “in” or “on” computers. I think that sort of information is abstract, not concrete.

Fortuna: My understanding was that neural states don’t co-vary with thoughts, they precede them. Neural state -> thought.

What are thoughts, on your view? If neural states, then thoughts co-vary with neural states. If not neural states, then welcome to dualism.

Lorkas: Er… no, because we know that the reason why we lose all of our memories when we sever the neck is because it prevents oxygen from being delivered to the brain, thereby killing all brain cells. The important thing here is still the effect on the brain, not the effect on the neck.

I think you’ve missed my point. I thought you presented this argument (if this isn’t your argument, please correct me):

(1) There are some Xs and Ys such that, if we do X to my brain, then Y happens in my memories.
(2) Therefore, memories are in my brain.
 
I responded by pointing out that your inference here entails the more general inference:
(1′) There are some Xs, Ys, and Zs such that, if we do X to my Z, then Y happens to my memories.
(2′) Therefore, memories are in my Z.
 
I gave you a counterexample to this inference:
(CoEx) If you sever my neck, I’ll lose all my memories. Yet it’s not the case that memories are in the neck.
 
Your move from (1) to (2) is valid only if the move from (1′) to (2′) is valid. But the move from (1′) to (2′) is NOT valid. Therefore, your move from (1) to (2) is not valid. Your reply didn’t address this argument at all.
 
It’s a pretty straightforward point, which I’m sorry to make so tedious. The fact that X and Y are causally related doesn’t entail that X=Y (witness smoke and fire, drivers and cars, severed necks and memory loss, etc.). So the fact that certain brain states and my memories are causally related doesn’t entail that my memories just are those brain states.
 
——————————
I said:
>>I think that thinking is a basic activity of minds; there’s no “how” about it.>>
 
You replied:
>>Translation: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.>>
 
Physicist: Having a -1 charge is a basic fact about electrons. There’s no “how” about it.
 
Lorkas’ reply?: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

cartesian: But if you sever my neck, I’ll lose all my memories. And yet we don’t believe that memories are in the neck. There’s a counterexample to the main inference in your argument. So that inference is bad. So your argument fails.

Er… no, because we know that the reason why we lose all of our memories when we sever the neck is because it prevents oxygen from being delivered to the brain, thereby killing all brain cells. The important thing here is still the effect on the brain, not the effect on the neck.

cartesian: I think that thinking is a basic activity of minds; there’s no “how” about it.

Translation: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

tdd: Is John 14:6 not essential enough?

John 14:6 says:
6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
 
I’ve already said that I believe that Jesus is essential for salvation. I wholeheartedly agree with John 14:6. What I disagree with is the claim that belief in Jesus is necessary for salvation.
 
Remember the bridge analogy: Suppose there’s just one bridge to some island. It will then be true that no one drives to the island except by this bridge. Yet it won’t be true that no one drives to the island except by believing anything in particular about this bridge. Someone could drive over the bridge to the island without even realizing that they had driven over a bridge. I think that’s how it works with Jesus.

Lorkas: We certainly know that memories can be tampered with by tampering with brain chemistry. They can be lost, modified, or even created from scratch by meddling with the chemicals. You have your work cut out for you if you want to argue that memories aren’t stored in brains.

What you point out is that, there are some Xs and Ys such that, if we do X to my brain, then Y happens in my memories. You then infer that memories are in my brain.

But if you sever my neck, I’ll lose all my memories. And yet we don’t believe that memories are in the neck. There’s a counterexample to the main inference in your argument. So that inference is bad. So your argument fails.

>>Furthermore, you’ve conveniently evaded the heart of the question: what is the mechanism that stores memories, if not the brain?>>

I don’t know if there is any mechanism. Who says there must be such a mechanism? I think that thinking is a basic activity of minds; there’s no “how” about it. And the same goes with remembering. Minds think, and minds remember, and they don’t think or remember by doing something else. It’s like an electron having a -1 charge. There’s no “how” about it. Electrons just have a -1 charge, and they don’t do that by doing something else. It’s a basic fact about them.

If you’re depressed about the lack of a research program here, let me be clear that we can still study how the brain stores various representations, how it shuffles syntax and symbols, etc. I’m as interested in neuroscience as the next guy. I think we just have to be clear about what neuroscience is telling us. I don’t think learning about the brain per se teaches us anything about thought, sensation, memory, etc. It just teaches us about neural states that causally covary with thoughts, sensations, memories, etc. That’s still pretty interesting, and worth looking into.

Similarly, just studying cars per se doesn’t teach us anything about drivers. We’ll just learn about some stuff that causally interacts with drivers, but we won’t be studying drivers themselves.

Haukur: Cartesian, how much does this comment weigh on your computer at the time you read it? Or do you also have a dualistic view of how your computer stores information?

Do you mean the symbols that conventionally express the propositional content of my comment? If so, those don’t weigh very much. I’m not sure how much they weigh. If that’s what you meant by “my comment,” then you’re right that my comment weighs something, but it’s not relevant to my claim about memories and brains.
 
Or do you mean the propositional content of my comment? Propositions don’t weigh anything. So if that’s what you meant by “my comment,” then my comment certainly isn’t “on” my computer, and it certainly doesn’t have a weight. This is what I was getting at with my comment about memories.
 
Here are examples to help grasp the distinction I’m making:
Symbols/words: “black,” “negro,” “schwarz”
Content: black, i.e. the color of this font.
 
Symbols/sentences: “It’s raining,” “Esta lloviendo,” “Es regnet”
Content: It is raining.
 
Computers shuffle symbols, not content. Same with brains.

cartesian: I don’t think that question makes any sense. But if memories are brain states, it makes perfect sense. Probably you’ll just bite the bullet here, but I hope you can at least feel the pull of dualism.

We certainly know that memories can be tampered with by tampering with brain chemistry. They can be lost, modified, or even created from scratch by meddling with the chemicals. You have your work cut out for you if you want to argue that memories aren’t stored in brains. I can’t really see how this is supposed to exhibit any pull for dualism at all, considering what we know about brains.
 
However, I don’t really think that this is a silly question at all–just one we can’t answer yet. We can calculate how much storage space a file takes up on a computer hard drive, and use that to find out how much a file weighs (although I’m not sure that the question is useful for any reason, and it depends on the storage medium as well), and we know that our brain works remarkably like a computer. As we learn more about what memories are and how they’re stored, it’s entirely possible that the question could be answered.
 
Furthermore, you’ve conveniently evaded the heart of the question: what is the mechanism that stores memories, if not the brain? I’ve never heard of a theory for how spirits store information like memories and personality, but there must be one if spirits can do that. At least the monist view has potential for an explanation as we study more. What lines of study could lead us to discover how the soul stores memories?

lukeprog: Naug,Yes, that’s another lovely piece of Christian doctrine.

What makes you think that’s a piece of Christian doctrine? Did you mean essential Christian doctrine? Or just a doctrine that some Christians happen to hold?
 

Lorkas: I wish I could understand the mechanism by which this is possible. I guess our memories are all downloaded from our brains to our souls, or something?

I don’t think our memories are in our brains. Here’s a cutesy question to help you see the worry: How much does your memory of your 18th birthday weigh? I don’t think that question makes any sense. But if memories are brain states, it makes perfect sense.
 
Probably you’ll just bite the bullet here, but I hope you can at least feel the pull of dualism.

cartesian: Yes, I think we’ll retain the memories of this life.

I wish I could understand the mechanism by which this is possible. I guess our memories are all downloaded from our brains to our souls, or something?