How great to have a lecture by Dr. Swinburne on such an important topic. How strange to see the internet experts in the comments, whose diverse desires to argue against him (or just throw insults), ironically support the existence of free will.
Well said! But the irony will go straight over there heads. Nevertheless, their blind devotion to the Gods of “Materialism” and “determinism” condemns their myths to hollowness.
I have to take Swinburne's lectures in doses. Too many good points in each and every sentence he speaks, so too much good information to take in all at once.
My friend has a video like that/this about *GOD.* In eight minutes he proves *GOD* exists but it's the knowledge is so condensed, well, I transcribed that video and 60 others of his to begin to get the gist. czcams.com/video/XJUIxaSDfU0/video.html It's called kinesthetic learning. While I have some college under my belt, it's a technique I learned watching TV, movies about people in college, and from a book, and in a book: How to Be Twice as Smart: Boosting Your Brainpower and Unleashing the Miracles of Your Mind: Witt, Scott I take *_copious notes!_* If you do decide to transcribe this video or any other, I strongly suggest a CZcams / computer keyboard *foot pedal.* A really cheap one, not a 3 pedal setup, will at least allow you to pause and start the video again.
Unpredictability is dice being rolled. You don't know how they will fall but you could determine it if you knew all directions and all masses and shapes of the system (classical mechanics). Quantum mechanics doesn't work this way. If you do the double slit experiment, for example, and you have no sensor on your slits, you end up with an interference pattern. Here is where things differ from classical mechanics. If you fire just one photon at a time, *it still creates an interference pattern*. This means its not just that we "don't know" which slit the photon is going through. The photon is literally going through both and neither. It doesn't collapse until it is observed. Quantum mechanics is chance, not merely unpredictable.
Swinburne is amazing. as As an ex coal face worker in North Staffordshire, how did I manage moving 20 tons of coal per day without referring to Swimborne's philosophie on physical work, how do these theoist academic philosophers know so much about life, and with so little experience of hard dangerous physical work. He now an expert in the on partical physics, give me a break.
Hope you get this. I used to tear down transport and set up mobile homes. I was under a home showing one of two hillbilly brothers I had working for me how an electronic water level worked when the other brother released a locomotive jack that was currently holding up the home we were both under. Talking about physical forces! There actually is no such thing as particle physics. There is no such thing as particles, only discrete wave packets. czcams.com/video/F-PAjJcRVCs/video.html I've been studying physics for 11 years now, this video was made by my mentor. You're the only real reason I can give you for why I've studied it. WE're *_really_* on the same side. I'd rather do a physical day's work (honest) than study for 53 years (my case).
As an atheist i obviously do not say praise jesus but i do think swinburne makes some very important points but one can be an atheist without being a physicalist
Interesting. Can you ? I thought that if you reject the assumption that physicalism or matter is fundamental to reality this means you accept that reality is fundamentally qualitative in some way for example the qualitative subjective experience of consciousness. This is why geniuses such as Anthony Flew and Einstein rejected atheism for deism (Deism: the belief in a supreme consciousness). There’s also pantheism or if you believe nothing’s certain agnosticism. No offence intended all the best.
This was an awesome display of logic and reason, and very entertaining. I agree that Libet's results are nonsense. Having said that, I think he is wrong to accept determinism as true on the face of it. Just because you live in a universe with reliable causation does not mean that everything is predetermined at the big bang. Living things utilize reliable causation in order to respond to the environment, they are not mechanical machines that are built to work only one way. I also feel that his premise that mental events are separate from physical events in the brain is not right, even if it has a long history of being axiomatic in philosophy. In a material world, everything is instantiated in matter, so thoughts, feeling, intentions and all are physical events in the brain, so they can be physically causal, but not determined.
only iff we are “in a material world” (a physical-only world, welcome to monism) can that final sentence be true up to (not including) “so they can be physically causal, but not determined.” reductive causal determinism is entailed in reductive ontological physicalism. if you ignore some rather incoherent mathematics in a certain 1905 paper, and sundry people having failed to call that incoherence into question, there is no space for doubt (also, some not-directly-observable hypothetical entities bordering on mythological become unnecessary). regarding your neurons as the main interface between your mind and the physical world (assisted by your cardiac nerves and Vagus nerve) allows experimental results to much more closely match reality than does regarding either your mind as supervening upon your neurons or regarding your mind as being a physical artifact. some classes of physics experiments produce inexplicable results in a hypothetically monist universe (however are perfectly comprehensible in an interactionist substance-dualistic universe) and infiltrating your monism with panpsychism does not significantly improve your position in that model. I found it amusing a few years ago to run across one group attempting to demonstrate telekinesis using repeated physics experiments, who had failed to so do, yet had demonstrated interactionist substance dualism en passant.
@@OnlyTruthStands Thanks for the reply. Your use of jargon is most exceptional. Honestly, I'm not sure where you agreed with me and where you didn't. I did get your first point about determinism, and this is one of my main issues. The fact that a scientist can do a lab experiment the exact same way every time and get same results every time has been taken to mean that there is only one way for every event to unfold. This idea that the entire universe, over its entire history is one big experimental result has led perfectly reasonable people to conclude, with ontological certainty, that the universe can only unfold in one way based on the initial conditions of the big bang and the laws of physics. I seem to be the only person who can see the fatal flaw in this conclusion. If the scientist wants a different outcome, maybe a red solution instead of blue, he can alter the heating time or change the proportions of ingredients to get a desired result. It is the knowledge and intention of the scientist that determines the outcome. The chemicals are passive and simply react as their nature demands. The atoms and chemicals don't determine anything. Life uses reliable causation to try to reach goals. This is very different than a dead universe passively evolving through time by cause and effect. Once determinism is understood this way, then there is no contradiction between determinism and free will in a material monist universe.
That was brilliant! Was it Swinburne who first pointed this out. ? I wonder how long neuroscientists we’re testing intention using this method before they realised it was self defeating to ask the participants when they had formed an intension as this required the intension to be the cause, that is non epiphenomenal ?
Buy my friend's book (off Lulu) God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis Ph.D. *Look at this!* Timing Awareness
Benjamin Libet and his colleagues studied the temporal relation of neural signals and awareness. In one study, he stimulated the skin electrically and found that applying an interfering stimulus directly to the primary sensory cortex within 500 ms (0.5 sec), prevented awareness.95 The strength of direct cortical stimulation required for neuronal adequacy96 also rose sharply when the brain was stimulated for less than 500 ms. These delays are puzzling given that (1) neural signals trigger a "primary evoked potential" in primary sensory cortex 10-25 ms after stimulation and (2) preprogrammed responses from the brain to sensory stimulus can occur in 100-200 ms. Thus, awareness requires more than data in the brain, or a minimal response to neural signals. Further, the awareness of the stimulus is subjectively referred back in time to be synchronous with the stimulus event, so that subjects are unaware of an time delay. Libet and his colleagues argued that the temporal mismatch between subjective awareness and brain events was a serious difficulty for psychoneural identity theory.97 Similarly, Popper and Eccles claimed, "this antedating procedure does not seem to be explicable by any neurophysiological process."98 This line of argument equivocates on "the time of subjective awareness." One meaning is the time when _subjective awareness occurred._ There is no evidence for that time being earlier than the time of the associated brain events, because the reports Libet used were given a few seconds _after_ the events. Relativity teaches us to think about _how_ we measure time. If we apply Aristotle's definition of time as "the measure of motion according to before and after" to the advent of awareness, we encounter immediate difficulties. No measurable motion can be attributed to a subjective reality such as awareness. We can measure the brain changes encoding sensory signals and behavioral responses depending on awareness. However, we cannot measure the instant of awareness. Since time is a measure, unmeasurable events _have no precise time._ By rejecting precognition, we can place the time of awareness between the object event and the first measurable use of awareness. Beyond that, its time indeterminate. The IH can explain the delayed availability of a unified representation. It predicts a delay while the neural net index is programmed by dendritic growth and pruning. A delay of 500 ms (twenty repetitions of 40 Hz oscillations for programming) explains Libet's data. The subjective backward time referral is due to the synchronization of the index's pointers to compensate for various delays. Since the indexing structure always points to events that impinged on the senses simultaneously, no comparison of its bound contents can reveal a temporal mismatch. Subjective backward referral of the time of events does not pose a new problem for psychoneural identity theory. Plausible neurophysical processes can explain how contents can be bound with synchronizing delays. The problem with identity theory continues to be its failure to explain the subjectivity essential to minds. 95 Libet, _et al._ (1979) "Subjective Referral of the Timing for a Consciousness Sensory Experience," and Libet (1993) "The Neural Time Factor in Conscious and Unconscious Events." 96 Libet calls the minimum level of activation required for awareness "neuronal adequacy." 97 Libet, _et al._ (1979), p. 222. 98 Popper and Eccles (1977), p. 364.
24:00 Isn't that actually the case with people who sleepwalk? All the brain sequences and bodily actions occur, but no intentions (mental states) are formed.
On the contrary, that is the entire dualist approach that is being discussed in the video. You believe that the universe is just a physical universe containing matter and energy, but that is not the entirety of the universe. Space/Time itself is not energy or matter but something else. Matter and energy reside and stem from it. This has been proven by Albert Einstein.
The mind not the brain is the great mystery of life! No one can understand let alone explain why there is such a thing in the first place? How do we know we are doing science or anything else for that matter? Language, communication, understanding, judgement, logic, imagination,memory, meaning etc are all features we attribute to the mind and not the brain! The mind is the unsolved riddle that utterly confounds all human reason. No amount of laboratory research will ever yield an accurate and comprehensive answer to this elusive question. We cannot even explain the very thing that distinguishes ourselves from every other thing that exists in this observable universe? It seems that we are our own self contained enigma and materialism remains in a never ending circular paradox? But an obstinate faith takes no cognizance of its folly and weakness.
“But an obstinate faith” “Folly and weakness” Well said! Totally agree with you. “we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup)
robots can get enough input or information from an intelligence to enable a sort of consciousness(like Ultron) and prob will in the near future---but it needs input and information to do this(a creator)
“You could use the same argument about a robot” But why should we take your “thoughts” and opinions seriously if you’re not conscious and are nothing more than a biological and chemical robot ? “Just a thought” lol. Whoops there goes the ghost in the machine again!! No offence intended if robots can take offence that is lol. I still love you though ❤️
For myself, I believe in Instant Karma. So much more direct and deterministic than all the other stuff. Someone says something stupid, I slap'em. A little voice in my heart of hearts tells me when. (That's what makes it deterministic.)
Consciousness is a part of the universe, and scientifically has been proven to be non-localized, meaning it's not just confined to the human brain. Read up on Asmit Goswami's work.
It cannot be proven scientifically respect to anything. It is like stating that you know what love is scientifically, when what you can do, at its best, is knowing how it reflects on human mind. Let´s learn what science can study and on what relies on and stop inferring stupid things from a simple method.
Swinburne is incorrectly mixing intentionality with awareness of intentionality. It is not self-defeating to say that the same brain event that will cause awareness already "knows" in advance awareness will occur. This same brain structure will report the expected awareness of intention by simple inductive computation. We can confirm my reasoning by realizing that we can report false awareness - false memories. If awareness is not necessary for belief/intention formation, it can't be its cause.
I think he’s wrong.I feel I understand determinism better. You have a brain and it thinks in certain ways due to how the neutrons fire and connect .but you never chose your brain and you cannot choose how it thinks.everyone thinks differently due to having unique neuro pathways and how they feel about past events . how they see the future and are limited by their own capacity to understand the world and all that makes us what we are.most people don’t make plans for fifty years in the future well are you gonna be here. It’s not something your going to choose one day. Your gonna die because of events you cannot change. I,m with the Robert Sapolsky school of thought that determinism is is a physical constant that we can not alter.
Who is this mysterious entity that you think should be able to choose your brain and how it thinks? You are the result of your brain thinking, so whatever your brain does is you.
It’s ok for him to get this all wrong because his life’s choices are predetermined” There’s no such thing as the qualitative subjective experience of feeling “ok” for getting “this all wrong” under determinism as all his life’s “experiences” are just predetermined by “matter”. Thus all meaning including all knowledge and truth is lost in a predetermined sea of incalculable, purposeless cause and effect. This hypothesis is like the multiverse hypothesis it explains nothing as it can be used to explain away anything including all knowledge and science itself.
If anyone wants a general summation: He wrongly defines physical determinism in an obviously false way, (and in a way that no-one is arguing), then spends 56 minutes explaining why an obvious false definition is false.
“there is only brain” If this is true it means we are all just soulless, meaningless biological and chemical robots and reality is just an illusion created by “brain chemicals” as we are all just determined by “matter”. However, if this is the case why should I take your claims seriously as your opinions are also created by the same “brain chemicals” and illusion. It’s absurd, circular reasoning and is literally “self” defeating. This is a perfect example of what happens when you try to use the natural sciences in a discussion about philosophy and the fundamental nature of reality. (Scientism: “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities.” (Merriam Webster Library definition). Because there is absolutely no evidence that the world of “matter” is the only world that matters. Equally no one observes consciousness without brains just as no one observes brains without consciousness, that is without the conscious observer. “The fact is that “evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.” (Thomas Nagel). According to Professor David Chalmers the Director of the (Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness).. “Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides” (David Chalmers). Consciousness is not simulating a materialist world as consciousness is simply doing what it does and what it does happens to be the universe. The fact that consciousness generates the universe requires no more complexity no more extra assumption than that the laws of physics, that are also irreducible, generate the universe. In the same way that the “laws of physics” are believed to generate the universe because of they’re own nature because of what they intrinsically do and are, in the same irreducible manner consciousness generates the universe because of its own nature unfolding according to stable patterns and regularities.
I don't have to prove that brain produces consciousness. You are the one who need to show otherwise given the current evidence. There's no "increasing evidence" of body/mind dualism. Such concept not only violates the 1st law of Thermodynamics, but is contrary to anything we know in Neuroscience. We don't know the nature of matter, therefore your claim it can't possibly cause consciousness is not only based on ignorance and wishful thinking, but goes against everything we know about reality.
This is nonsense. I cant believe how ignorant can theists be, he said that the only way to make physical determinism and mental events compatible is through epiphenomenalism, which is stupid. There are reductionist view and eliminitivist view for example, which are widely held and much more accepted than epiphenomenalism. Quantum mechanics doesn't disprove determinism, there are widely accepted interepretations (such as many worlds theory and pilot-wave theory), which are completely deterministic.
“This is nonsense” Is it ? You can’t have it both ways. The multiverse hypothesis is actually unfalsifiable and according to physicists an hypothesis that can be used to explain away anything explains nothing and will inevitably stifle scientific endeavour. The fact is that hardly any physicist/cosmologist believes that one universe is enough to explain the unbelievable fine tuning for life in this one universe. Ironically if the multiverse hypothesis turns out to be true all things become possible given an infinite amount of universes including the ontological argument for a supreme consciousness. In some parallel universe Christopher Hitchens is mother Teresa, Richard Dawkins is the Pope and Richard Swinburne is a determinist. Nevertheless, It is irrational and unparsimonious to postulate an infinite amount of (causally unconnected) multiverses in a desperate attempt to explain away the incontrovertible evidence for fine tuning in one universe, when postulating one ground of all being that is a supreme consciousness will do the job. By virtue of this filling of the causal gap, the most important demand of intuition namely that one's conscious efforts have the capacity to affect one's own bodily actions is beautifully met by the quantum ontology. And in this age of computers, and information, and flashing pixels there is nothing counterintuitive about the ontological idea that nature is built, not out of ponderous classically conceived matter, but out of events, and out of informational waves and signals that create tendencies for these events to occur.
“Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life” (Paul Davis).
At the root of all physical reality is not “primary matter” or little atoms of “stuff.” Relativity theory in cosmology and the complementarity thesis in quantum physics suggest that the basic reality is some sort of hybrid “matter/energy.” Quantum field theory and string theory (if it survives as a physical theory, which now seems unlikely) suggest the even more radical idea that this reality is more energy like than matter like. Either result is sufficient to falsify materialism in anything like the form that dominated the first 300 years of modern science. Since the multiverse argument is often invoked as a way to abolish the need for divine providence, it is ironic that it provides the best scientific argument yet for the existence of a god.
@@georgedoyle7971 i think we all know that design arguments, including the fine tuning argument, lead nowhere when it comes to proving god. Choosing to explain that we exist by chance is not an inferior option to the design one. The problems that underlie all design arguments are: 1. You dont know whether beings capable of creating our universe and willing to do that actually exist. 2. You haven't observed creation of our universe. If you knew with certainty that either of these is true, you wouldn't need design arguments to prove that god exists.
"There are people who have literally physically repaired parts of their brains by using the force of focused attention and their minds." LOL! You are hilarious. So you think you can demonstrate that people have the power to heal themselves and rebuild certain parts of their bodies using just focusing attention. And so what? How exactly this shows that there's a ghost in the brain?
“Ghost in the brain” Straw man argument and fallacy of false analogy lol . According to Professor Chalmers the Director of the Centre for Mind and Consciousness “Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.” (David Chalmers) Erm... (Brain plasticity) CBT therapy can literally rewire your brain leading to measurable neurobiological changes. As Iv already said the only “ghost in the brain” is the theoretical abstraction of the mind commonly known as “matter”. Equally as Iv already pointed out a few times in this discussion ,...”we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup)
HaecceitasQuidditas Oxford, seriously? He's completely clueless about philosophy in particular how the mind works. He deserves to be at some theology college in the bible belt not at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
David King Actually I'm pretty sure that he knows much more about the subject than you do. Just because he may not share your views doesn't mean he's clueless.
He's a professor of "christian theology".. Interests include "The meaning and justification of the central claims of Christianity." I have the idea he tries to 'philosophyse' theories of people like Stapp. Which, however interested and wellbuild, have been widely criticized. Basicly it tends to take the science to a more specific point, where the understanding falls a bit short (f.i. quantum collapse of wave-functions by observations) and push the magic stick in the hole... A lot harder to dispute, and way more challeging and interesting! But still biased on the religious views and as his profile reads.. 'justification' of them..
[This data leads in the direction of this "ghost in the machine"] The data points to a cure occurred in the body at most. Not knowing how to explain the event, AGAIN, is not evidence of your ghost in the machine, but merely evidence that you can't explain the phenomena.
"one can be an atheist without being a physicalist" - I didn't Swinburne is doing a sneaky straw man. I'm not convinced that he represents science well at all. It's great that he is skeptical, but I just don't think word games replace evidence. Yes, we don't know everything. That's not a case for anything else.
"we CAN explain these parts of reality" False. In order to explain something you need to produce an explanation. "I don't know how to explain consciousness therefore a ghost in the brain explains it" is not an explanation. You are just giving your ignorance a name to pretend you have knowledge. The oldest trick known to man.
“The oldest trick known to man” Sorry but this is clearly a scientism and materialism of the gaps argument. There’s no science without the conscious observer. Consciousness is simple, irreducible, fundamental and unassailable like the laws of physics it can not be reduced to “matter” because “we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup).
@@georgedoyle7971 Actually you are confused, and mixing metaphysics with science, that is supported by metaphysical claims. The reason materialism is the metaphysical foundation for science inquiry is because you gain no extra explanatory power appealing to a non material mind. Actually you don't even know what you are talking about when you appeal to non material stuff. Like always is the case, anyone using the word scientism as a pejorative doesn't know how science works and think that because science still not have the answer for something, you have it. You are the one appealing to gaps: science has this gap, therefore let's fill it with my undetectable stuff that explains absolutely nothing we already don't know using a materialist framework.
Stimulating the Brain requires input form the outside world. Pain that you feel in your leg is in your leg not in your brain. Your brain may tell you where it is but its not in the brain where the pain is felt. The fact that you need a body to support a brain is evidence that mental extends beyond just the brain. If you don't okay, but then define what you mean and give me answer don't just try to make me give explanations and leave yourself out. If you make a statement give evidence thats what I asked for when I asked you how you know this. Dont just ask me a bunch of questions when your the one claiming knowledge.
![Michael Ward: Silent Witness - The Horse and His Boy Sixty Years On [Torrey Honors Lecture]](/img/n.gif)
How great to have a lecture by Dr. Swinburne on such an important topic. How strange to see the internet experts in the comments, whose diverse desires to argue against him (or just throw insults), ironically support the existence of free will.
Michael Babbitt How do you know they arent robots who can pass the Turing Test?
I don't usually reply to robots. But with you, I am making an exception.
@@michaelbabbitt3837 based
Well said! But the irony will go straight over there heads. Nevertheless, their blind devotion to the Gods of “Materialism” and “determinism” condemns their myths to hollowness.
He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford
Gosh this guy is such a freakin’ genius! 😍
His book on the existence of God is honestly one of the best I've read on the subject
Well said Eric "smokin' Joe Frazier" Hernandez.
I love it when Richard laughs.
Impressive philosophical argument. BTW, Swinburne deals with the Libet experiments at about 17:00 into his talk.
Great lecture, crisp thinking, usual Swinburne! :-)
I have to take Swinburne's lectures in doses. Too many good points in each and every sentence he speaks, so too much good information to take in all at once.
My friend has a video like that/this about *GOD.* In eight minutes he proves *GOD* exists but it's the knowledge is so condensed, well, I transcribed that video and 60 others of his to begin to get the gist. czcams.com/video/XJUIxaSDfU0/video.html
It's called kinesthetic learning. While I have some college under my belt, it's a technique I learned watching TV, movies about people in college, and from a book, and in a book: How to Be Twice as Smart: Boosting Your Brainpower and Unleashing the Miracles of Your Mind: Witt, Scott
I take *_copious notes!_* If you do decide to transcribe this video or any other, I strongly suggest a CZcams / computer keyboard *foot pedal.* A really cheap one, not a 3 pedal setup, will at least allow you to pause and start the video again.
Quantum theorie does not give you chance, it gives you unpredictability.
Unpredictability is dice being rolled. You don't know how they will fall but you could determine it if you knew all directions and all masses and shapes of the system (classical mechanics).
Quantum mechanics doesn't work this way. If you do the double slit experiment, for example, and you have no sensor on your slits, you end up with an interference pattern.
Here is where things differ from classical mechanics. If you fire just one photon at a time, *it still creates an interference pattern*. This means its not just that we "don't know" which slit the photon is going through. The photon is literally going through both and neither. It doesn't collapse until it is observed.
Quantum mechanics is chance, not merely unpredictable.
Awesome.
Ok.
Swinburne is amazing. as
As an ex coal face worker in North Staffordshire, how did I manage moving 20 tons of coal per day without referring to Swimborne's philosophie on physical work, how do these theoist academic philosophers know so much about life, and with so little experience of hard dangerous physical work.
He now an expert in the on partical physics, give me a break.
Hope you get this. I used to tear down transport and set up mobile homes. I was under a home showing one of two hillbilly brothers I had working for me how an electronic water level worked when the other brother released a locomotive jack that was currently holding up the home we were both under. Talking about physical forces!
There actually is no such thing as particle physics. There is no such thing as particles, only discrete wave packets.
czcams.com/video/F-PAjJcRVCs/video.html
I've been studying physics for 11 years now, this video was made by my mentor. You're the only real reason I can give you for why I've studied it. WE're *_really_* on the same side. I'd rather do a physical day's work (honest) than study for 53 years (my case).
As an atheist i obviously do not say praise jesus but i do think swinburne makes some very important points but one can be an atheist without being a physicalist
Interesting. Can you ? I thought that if you reject the assumption that physicalism or matter is fundamental to reality this means you accept that reality is fundamentally qualitative in some way for example the qualitative subjective experience of consciousness. This is why geniuses such as Anthony Flew and Einstein rejected atheism for deism (Deism: the belief in a supreme consciousness). There’s also pantheism or if you believe nothing’s certain agnosticism. No offence intended all the best.
Michael, exactly how should we think about physicalism and what is she strapped to?
Fantastic!
Swinburne is a great man.
This was an awesome display of logic and reason, and very entertaining. I agree that Libet's results are nonsense. Having said that, I think he is wrong to accept determinism as true on the face of it. Just because you live in a universe with reliable causation does not mean that everything is predetermined at the big bang. Living things utilize reliable causation in order to respond to the environment, they are not mechanical machines that are built to work only one way. I also feel that his premise that mental events are separate from physical events in the brain is not right, even if it has a long history of being axiomatic in philosophy. In a material world, everything is instantiated in matter, so thoughts, feeling, intentions and all are physical events in the brain, so they can be physically causal, but not determined.
only iff we are “in a material world” (a physical-only world, welcome to monism) can that final sentence be true up to (not including) “so they can be physically causal, but not determined.” reductive causal determinism is entailed in reductive ontological physicalism.
if you ignore some rather incoherent mathematics in a certain 1905 paper, and sundry people having failed to call that incoherence into question, there is no space for doubt (also, some not-directly-observable hypothetical entities bordering on mythological become unnecessary).
regarding your neurons as the main interface between your mind and the physical world (assisted by your cardiac nerves and Vagus nerve) allows experimental results to much more closely match reality than does regarding either your mind as supervening upon your neurons or regarding your mind as being a physical artifact.
some classes of physics experiments produce inexplicable results in a hypothetically monist universe (however are perfectly comprehensible in an interactionist substance-dualistic universe) and infiltrating your monism with panpsychism does not significantly improve your position in that model.
I found it amusing a few years ago to run across one group attempting to demonstrate telekinesis using repeated physics experiments, who had failed to so do, yet had demonstrated interactionist substance dualism en passant.
@@OnlyTruthStands Thanks for the reply. Your use of jargon is most exceptional. Honestly, I'm not sure where you agreed with me and where you didn't. I did get your first point about determinism, and this is one of my main issues. The fact that a scientist can do a lab experiment the exact same way every time and get same results every time has been taken to mean that there is only one way for every event to unfold. This idea that the entire universe, over its entire history is one big experimental result has led perfectly reasonable people to conclude, with ontological certainty, that the universe can only unfold in one way based on the initial conditions of the big bang and the laws of physics.
I seem to be the only person who can see the fatal flaw in this conclusion. If the scientist wants a different outcome, maybe a red solution instead of blue, he can alter the heating time or change the proportions of ingredients to get a desired result. It is the knowledge and intention of the scientist that determines the outcome. The chemicals are passive and simply react as their nature demands. The atoms and chemicals don't determine anything.
Life uses reliable causation to try to reach goals. This is very different than a dead universe passively evolving through time by cause and effect. Once determinism is understood this way, then there is no contradiction between determinism and free will in a material monist universe.
That was brilliant! Was it Swinburne who first pointed this out. ? I wonder how long neuroscientists we’re testing intention using this method before they realised it was self defeating to ask the participants when they had formed an intension as this required the intension to be the cause, that is non epiphenomenal ?
Buy my friend's book (off Lulu) God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis Ph.D. *Look at this!*
Timing Awareness
Benjamin Libet and his colleagues studied the temporal relation of neural signals and awareness. In one study, he stimulated the skin electrically and found that applying an interfering stimulus directly to the primary sensory cortex within 500 ms (0.5 sec), prevented awareness.95 The strength of direct cortical stimulation required for neuronal adequacy96 also rose sharply when the brain was stimulated for less than 500 ms. These delays are puzzling given that (1) neural signals trigger a "primary evoked potential" in primary sensory cortex 10-25 ms after stimulation and (2) preprogrammed responses from the brain to sensory stimulus can occur in 100-200 ms. Thus, awareness requires more than data in the brain, or a minimal response to neural signals. Further, the awareness of the stimulus is subjectively referred back in time to be synchronous with the stimulus event, so that subjects are unaware of an time delay.
Libet and his colleagues argued that the temporal mismatch between subjective awareness and brain events was a serious difficulty for psychoneural identity theory.97 Similarly, Popper and Eccles claimed, "this antedating procedure does not seem to be explicable by any neurophysiological process."98 This line of argument equivocates on "the time of subjective awareness." One meaning is the time when _subjective awareness occurred._ There is no evidence for that time being earlier than the time of the associated brain events, because the reports Libet used were given a few seconds _after_ the events.
Relativity teaches us to think about _how_ we measure time. If we apply Aristotle's definition of time as "the measure of motion according to before and after" to the advent of awareness, we encounter immediate difficulties. No measurable motion can be attributed to a subjective reality such as awareness. We can measure the brain changes encoding sensory signals and behavioral responses depending on awareness. However, we cannot measure the instant of awareness. Since time is a measure, unmeasurable events _have no precise time._ By rejecting precognition, we can place the time of awareness between the object event and the first measurable use of awareness. Beyond that, its time indeterminate.
The IH can explain the delayed availability of a unified representation. It predicts a delay while the neural net index is programmed by dendritic growth and pruning. A delay of 500 ms (twenty repetitions of 40 Hz oscillations for programming) explains Libet's data. The subjective backward time referral is due to the synchronization of the index's pointers to compensate for various delays. Since the indexing structure always points to events that impinged on the senses simultaneously, no comparison of its bound contents can reveal a temporal mismatch.
Subjective backward referral of the time of events does not pose a new problem for psychoneural identity theory. Plausible neurophysical processes can explain how contents can be bound with synchronizing delays. The problem with identity theory continues to be its failure to explain the subjectivity essential to minds.
95 Libet, _et al._ (1979) "Subjective Referral of the Timing for a Consciousness Sensory Experience," and Libet (1993) "The Neural Time Factor in Conscious and Unconscious Events."
96 Libet calls the minimum level of activation required for awareness "neuronal adequacy."
97 Libet, _et al._ (1979), p. 222.
98 Popper and Eccles (1977), p. 364.
Excellent and he's right! Praise Jesus!
How physical determinism should be defined, then?
24:00 Isn't that actually the case with people who sleepwalk? All the brain sequences and bodily actions occur, but no intentions (mental states) are formed.
May I just say I think you have the best name in all of youtube! XD
On the contrary, that is the entire dualist approach that is being discussed in the video. You believe that the universe is just a physical universe containing matter and energy, but that is not the entirety of the universe. Space/Time itself is not energy or matter but something else. Matter and energy reside and stem from it. This has been proven by Albert Einstein.
The mind not the brain is the great mystery of life! No one can understand let alone explain why there is such a thing in the first place? How do we know we are doing science or anything else for that matter? Language, communication, understanding, judgement, logic, imagination,memory, meaning etc are all features we attribute to the mind and not the brain! The mind is the unsolved riddle that utterly confounds all human reason. No amount of laboratory research will ever yield an accurate and comprehensive answer to this elusive question. We cannot even explain the very thing that distinguishes ourselves from every other thing that exists in this observable universe? It seems that we are our own self contained enigma and materialism remains in a never ending circular paradox? But an obstinate faith takes no cognizance of its folly and weakness.
"How do we know we are doing science or anything else for that matter?"
The same way you know you are doing this question and not any other question.
“But an obstinate faith”
“Folly and weakness”
Well said! Totally agree with you. “we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup)
Absolutely. The physicalist is not strapped to universal epiphenomenalism like he suggests.
You could use the same argument about a robot. So even if you're right, you've also shown that we should believe that robots are conscious.
robots can get enough input or information from an intelligence to enable a sort of consciousness(like Ultron) and prob will in the near future---but it needs input and information to do this(a creator)
“You could use the same argument about a robot”
But why should we take your “thoughts” and opinions seriously if you’re not conscious and are nothing more than a biological and chemical robot ?
“Just a thought” lol. Whoops there goes the ghost in the machine again!! No offence intended if robots can take offence that is lol. I still love you though ❤️
For myself, I believe in Instant Karma. So much more direct and deterministic than all the other stuff. Someone says something stupid, I slap'em. A little voice in my heart of hearts tells me when. (That's what makes it deterministic.)
Consciousness is a part of the universe, and scientifically has been proven to be non-localized, meaning it's not just confined to the human brain. Read up on Asmit Goswami's work.
It cannot be proven scientifically respect to anything. It is like stating that you know what love is scientifically, when what you can do, at its best, is knowing how it reflects on human mind.
Let´s learn what science can study and on what relies on and stop inferring stupid things from a simple method.
you could just believe in mental determinism
45:27 bookmark
Swinburne is incorrectly mixing intentionality with awareness of intentionality. It is not self-defeating to say that the same brain event that will cause awareness already "knows" in advance awareness will occur. This same brain structure will report the expected awareness of intention by simple inductive computation. We can confirm my reasoning by realizing that we can report false awareness - false memories. If awareness is not necessary for belief/intention formation, it can't be its cause.
I think he’s wrong.I feel I understand determinism better. You have a brain and it thinks in certain ways due to how the neutrons fire and connect .but you never chose your brain and you cannot choose how it thinks.everyone thinks differently due to having unique neuro pathways and how they feel about past events . how they see the future and are limited by their own capacity to understand the world and all that makes us what we are.most people don’t make plans for fifty years in the future well are you gonna be here. It’s not something your going to choose one day. Your gonna die because of events you cannot change. I,m with the Robert Sapolsky school of thought that determinism is is a physical constant that we can not alter.
Who is this mysterious entity that you think should be able to choose your brain and how it thinks? You are the result of your brain thinking, so whatever your brain does is you.
It's okay for him to get this all wrong,
because his life's choices are predetermined.
It’s ok for him to get this all wrong because his life’s choices are predetermined”
There’s no such thing as the qualitative subjective experience of feeling “ok” for getting “this all wrong” under determinism as all his life’s “experiences” are just predetermined by “matter”. Thus all meaning including all knowledge and truth is lost in a predetermined sea of incalculable, purposeless cause and effect. This hypothesis is like the multiverse hypothesis it explains nothing as it can be used to explain away anything including all knowledge and science itself.
Another Deceiver of Mankind. The causes which determine/govern/control the Phenomena are the Physical Laws, not necessarily "prior events".
The fact is that “Physical” laws, that is the laws of physics are irreducible to “matter” as is consciousness.
If anyone wants a general summation:
He wrongly defines physical determinism in an obviously false way, (and in a way that no-one is arguing), then spends 56 minutes explaining why an obvious false definition is false.
Incorrect
You’re an idiot. This guy is professor emeritus. Who are you? Clean the hot Cheetos off your fingers and pipe down freakshow
there is no "I" or "you" - there is only brain which is part of body
+Baby G Thanks for wanting to share that.
“there is only brain”
If this is true it means we are all just soulless, meaningless biological and chemical robots and reality is just an illusion created by “brain chemicals” as we are all just determined by “matter”. However, if this is the case why should I take your claims seriously as your opinions are also created by the same “brain chemicals” and illusion. It’s absurd, circular reasoning and is literally “self” defeating. This is a perfect example of what happens when you try to use the natural sciences in a discussion about philosophy and the fundamental nature of reality.
(Scientism: “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities.” (Merriam Webster Library definition).
Because there is absolutely no evidence that the world of “matter” is the only world that matters. Equally no one observes consciousness without brains just as no one observes brains without consciousness, that is without the conscious observer. “The fact is that “evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.” (Thomas Nagel). According to Professor David Chalmers the Director of the (Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness).. “Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides” (David Chalmers). Consciousness is not simulating a materialist world as consciousness is simply doing what it does and what it does happens to be the universe. The fact that consciousness generates the universe requires no more complexity no more extra assumption than that the laws of physics, that are also irreducible, generate the universe. In the same way that the “laws of physics” are believed to generate the universe because of they’re own nature because of what they intrinsically do and are, in the same irreducible manner consciousness generates the universe because of its own nature unfolding according to stable patterns and regularities.
I don't have to prove that brain produces consciousness. You are the one who need to show otherwise given the current evidence. There's no "increasing evidence" of body/mind dualism. Such concept not only violates the 1st law of Thermodynamics, but is contrary to anything we know in Neuroscience. We don't know the nature of matter, therefore your claim it can't possibly cause consciousness is not only based on ignorance and wishful thinking, but goes against everything we know about reality.
This is nonsense. I cant believe how ignorant can theists be, he said that the only way to make physical determinism and mental events compatible is through epiphenomenalism, which is stupid. There are reductionist view and eliminitivist view for example, which are widely held and much more accepted than epiphenomenalism. Quantum mechanics doesn't disprove determinism, there are widely accepted interepretations (such as many worlds theory and pilot-wave theory), which are completely deterministic.
“This is nonsense”
Is it ?
You can’t have it both ways. The multiverse hypothesis is actually unfalsifiable and according to physicists an hypothesis that can be used to explain away anything explains nothing and will inevitably stifle scientific endeavour. The fact is that hardly any physicist/cosmologist believes that one universe is enough to explain the unbelievable fine tuning for life in this one universe. Ironically if the multiverse hypothesis turns out to be true all things become possible given an infinite amount of universes including the ontological argument for a supreme consciousness. In some parallel universe Christopher Hitchens is mother Teresa, Richard Dawkins is the Pope and Richard Swinburne is a determinist.
Nevertheless, It is irrational and unparsimonious to postulate an infinite amount of (causally unconnected) multiverses in a desperate attempt to explain away the incontrovertible evidence for fine tuning in one universe, when postulating one ground of all being that is a supreme consciousness will do the job. By virtue of this filling of the causal gap, the most important demand of intuition namely that one's conscious efforts have the capacity to affect one's own bodily actions is beautifully met by the quantum ontology. And in this age of computers, and information, and flashing pixels there is nothing counterintuitive about the ontological idea that nature is built, not out of ponderous classically conceived matter, but out of events, and out of informational waves and signals that create tendencies for these events to occur.
“Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics".
To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile.
Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life”
(Paul Davis).
At the root of all physical reality is not “primary matter” or little atoms of “stuff.” Relativity theory in cosmology and the complementarity thesis in quantum physics suggest that the basic reality is some sort of hybrid “matter/energy.” Quantum field theory and string theory (if it survives as a physical theory, which now seems unlikely) suggest the even more radical idea that this reality is more energy like than matter like. Either result is sufficient to falsify materialism in anything like the form that dominated the first 300 years of modern science. Since the multiverse argument is often invoked as a way to abolish the need for divine providence, it is ironic that it provides the best scientific argument yet for the existence of a god.
@@georgedoyle7971 how could the multiverse argument prove that god exists?
@@georgedoyle7971 i think we all know that design arguments, including the fine tuning argument, lead nowhere when it comes to proving god. Choosing to explain that we exist by chance is not an inferior option to the design one. The problems that underlie all design arguments are:
1. You dont know whether beings capable of creating our universe and willing to do that actually exist.
2. You haven't observed creation of our universe.
If you knew with certainty that either of these is true, you wouldn't need design arguments to prove that god exists.
"There are people who have literally physically repaired parts of their brains by using the force of focused attention and their minds."
LOL! You are hilarious. So you think you can demonstrate that people have the power to heal themselves and rebuild certain parts of their bodies using just focusing attention. And so what? How exactly this shows that there's a ghost in the brain?
“Ghost in the brain”
Straw man argument and fallacy of false analogy lol
. According to Professor Chalmers the Director of the Centre for Mind and Consciousness “Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.” (David Chalmers)
Erm... (Brain plasticity) CBT therapy can literally rewire your brain leading to measurable neurobiological changes. As Iv already said the only “ghost in the brain” is the theoretical abstraction of the mind commonly known as “matter”. Equally as Iv already pointed out a few times in this discussion ,...”we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup)
this guy is a professor at a university....WHAT??!!
At the University of Oxford for 17 years.
HaecceitasQuidditas Oxford, seriously? He's completely clueless about philosophy in particular how the mind works. He deserves to be at some theology college in the bible belt not at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
David King
Actually I'm pretty sure that he knows much more about the subject than you do. Just because he may not share your views doesn't mean he's clueless.
David King Words are so very cheap.
He's a professor of "christian theology"..
Interests include "The meaning and justification of the central claims of Christianity."
I have the idea he tries to 'philosophyse' theories of people like Stapp. Which, however interested and wellbuild, have been widely criticized.
Basicly it tends to take the science to a more specific point, where the understanding falls a bit short (f.i. quantum collapse of wave-functions by observations) and push the magic stick in the hole...
A lot harder to dispute, and way more challeging and interesting! But still biased on the religious views and as his profile reads.. 'justification' of them..
[This data leads in the direction of this "ghost in the machine"]
The data points to a cure occurred in the body at most. Not knowing how to explain the event, AGAIN, is not evidence of your ghost in the machine, but merely evidence that you can't explain the phenomena.
"one can be an atheist without being a physicalist"
- I didn't Swinburne is doing a sneaky straw man. I'm not convinced that he represents science well at all. It's great that he is skeptical, but I just don't think word games replace evidence. Yes, we don't know everything. That's not a case for anything else.
"we CAN explain these parts of reality" False. In order to explain something you need to produce an explanation. "I don't know how to explain consciousness therefore a ghost in the brain explains it" is not an explanation. You are just giving your ignorance a name to pretend you have knowledge. The oldest trick known to man.
“The oldest trick known to man”
Sorry but this is clearly a scientism and materialism of the gaps argument. There’s no science without the conscious observer. Consciousness is simple, irreducible, fundamental and unassailable like the laws of physics it can not be reduced to “matter” because
“we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup).
@@georgedoyle7971 Actually you are confused, and mixing metaphysics with science, that is supported by metaphysical claims. The reason materialism is the metaphysical foundation for science inquiry is because you gain no extra explanatory power appealing to a non material mind. Actually you don't even know what you are talking about when you appeal to non material stuff. Like always is the case, anyone using the word scientism as a pejorative doesn't know how science works and think that because science still not have the answer for something, you have it. You are the one appealing to gaps: science has this gap, therefore let's fill it with my undetectable stuff that explains absolutely nothing we already don't know using a materialist framework.
Mental events are identical to brain events.
tell me how you know this hahaha
Tell me what a mental event is hahaha!
a combination of mind body and nature, you claim they are identical explain
That's extremely vague. How would I begin to check whether a brain is different from whatever that is? You're going to have to be more specific.
Stimulating the Brain requires input form the outside world. Pain that you feel in your leg is in your leg not in your brain. Your brain may tell you where it is but its not in the brain where the pain is felt. The fact that you need a body to support a brain is evidence that mental extends beyond just the brain.
If you don't okay, but then define what you mean and give me answer don't just try to make me give explanations and leave yourself out. If you make a statement give evidence thats what I asked for when I asked you how you know this. Dont just ask me a bunch of questions when your the one claiming knowledge.