Does no one on this forum have the least understanding of the burden of proof and the scientific method? LoisYes we do. We know that theories begin with observations. People report their observations to others and compare experiences. Pretty much everyone I know expresses a sense they have that their body reacts to their commands. In the modern Western world, people will say "from my head", but I know I only experience thoughts as being in my head because everyone told me they are there from the time I could form words. It is only very recently that we have begun to treat thoughts as something outside of our control. We still don't know what a thought is. If you have a theory about how thoughts, that lead to actions, form, maybe you should present it. Then you should find a way to test it. Then you can get your Nobel prize when you are proven correct. That's a very brief description of the method. Did that help?
Does no one on this forum have the least understanding of the burden of proof and the scientific method? LoisYes we do. We know that theories begin with observations... Lois doesn't believe that self-observations matter in regards to anything that we do. She considers our conscious thoughts to be nothing more than superfluous self-observations that have no impact at all on what we do, ever. She demands proof that self-observations can impact behavior, in the form of scientific studies grounded in scientific methodology. Observations by organisms matter in determining the organism's behavior. Why would self-observations be a special class of observations that can have no impact on behavior? Yet, that is her claim. It is an audacious claim that she apparently believes is absolutely proven by some limited studies that suggest that our awareness of our actions, in some situations, is preceded by our action. Do we often act without conscious awareness? Of course. Would our actions always have been the same as they were, if we had never had any conscious awareness of anything? I would say "no". Lois would say "yes" and demand proof to the contrary. In Lois's paradigm, our awareness of any sentence that we read or write on this forum, has no effect on any subsequent sentence that we write, or how we write it, or edit it. It would, always, all be the same, whether we had any conscious thoughts about it or not.
It really amounts to nothing more than "you can't prove I'm wrong".And you can't. Lois I used that particular phrase because I wanted to compare you to a fundamentalist Christian who refuses to consider any other points of view. I consider any point of view that is rational. How about you?
Does no one on this forum have the least understanding of the burden of proof and the scientific method? LoisYes we do. We know that theories begin with observations. People report their observations to others and compare experiences. Pretty much everyone I know expresses a sense they have that their body reacts to their commands. In the modern Western world, people will say "from my head", but I know I only experience thoughts as being in my head because everyone told me they are there from the time I could form words. It is only very recently that we have begun to treat thoughts as something outside of our control. We still don't know what a thought is. If you have a theory about how thoughts, that lead to actions, form, maybe you should present it. Then you should find a way to test it. Then you can get your Nobel prize when you are proven correct. That's a very brief description of the method. Did that help? Since I don't think thoughts lead to actions, I'm hardly going to try to prove they do. That is the opposite of my position. If you think thoughts lead to actions, please provide evidence that they do. . My position is that they don't. You are the one making the claim that they do, so the burden is on you to support that claim objectively. If you can't, the default is that thoughts do not lead to actions. Lois
Does no one on this forum have the least understanding of the burden of proof and the scientific method? LoisYes we do. We know that theories begin with observations... Lois doesn't believe that self-observations matter in regards to anything that we do. She considers our conscious thoughts to be nothing more than superfluous self-observations that have no impact at all on what we do, ever. She demands proof that self-observations can impact behavior, in the form of scientific studies grounded in scientific methodology. Observations by organisms matter in determining the organism's behavior. Why would self-observations be a special class of observations that can have no impact on behavior? Yet, that is her claim. It is an audacious claim that she apparently believes is absolutely proven by some limited studies that suggest that our awareness of our actions, in some situations, is preceded by our action. Do we often act without conscious awareness? Of course. Would our actions always have been the same as they were, if we had never had any conscious awareness of anything? I would say "no". Lois would say "yes" and demand proof to the contrary. In Lois's paradigm, our awareness of any sentence that we read or write on this forum, has no effect on any subsequent sentence that we write, or how we write it, or edit it. It would, always, all be the same, whether we had any conscious thoughts about it or not. No, it would not always be the same and if you understood how our actions are determined you could never make such an inane statement. Our actions are determined by billions of factors we have no control over, which we are unaware of and which change every moment. Our conscious thoughts don't affect it, but other factors do, so it could never be "the same".
Does no one on this forum have the least understanding of the burden of proof and the scientific method? LoisYes we do. We know that theories begin with observations... Lois doesn't believe that self-observations matter in regards to anything that we do. She considers our conscious thoughts to be nothing more than superfluous self-observations that have no impact at all on what we do, ever. She demands proof that self-observations can impact behavior, in the form of scientific studies grounded in scientific methodology. Observations by organisms matter in determining the organism's behavior. Why would self-observations be a special class of observations that can have no impact on behavior? Yet, that is her claim. It is an audacious claim that she apparently believes is absolutely proven by some limited studies that suggest that our awareness of our actions, in some situations, is preceded by our action. Do we often act without conscious awareness? Of course. Would our actions always have been the same as they were, if we had never had any conscious awareness of anything? I would say "no". Lois would say "yes" and demand proof to the contrary. In Lois's paradigm, our awareness of any sentence that we read or write on this forum, has no effect on any subsequent sentence that we write, or how we write it, or edit it. It would, always, all be the same, whether we had any conscious thoughts about it or not. No, it would not always be the same and if you understood how our actions are determined you could never make such an inane statement. Our actions are determined by billions of factors we have no control over, which we are unaware of and which change every moment. Our conscious thoughts don't affect it, but other factors do, so it could never be "the same". Well, you and I have always agreed that our behavior is determined by a lot of factors. What we don't agree on is that our conscious thoughts are somehow always excluded from being factors. You seem quite content to include "billions of factors" that impact our behavior, but for some reason, you continue to maintain that "Our conscious thoughts don't affect it...". Are our conscious thoughts some special class of stimuli that don't work as stimuli? If a psychotic person hallucinatorially observed a demon trying to eat him alive, and jumped out of a 5 story window in an attempt to escape it, would he have jumped, just the same, if his hallucination had been of dancing bunnies?
Since I don't think thoughts lead to actions, I'm hardly going to try to prove they do. That is the opposite of my position. If you think thoughts lead to actions, please provide evidence that they do. . My position is that they don't. You are the one making the claim that they do, so the burden is on you to support that claim objectively. If you can't, the default is that thoughts do not lead to actions.Lois, your standpoint is highly unscientific. You are making a methodologically unjustified extrapolation from the experiment. From you own link]:
Haynes and his colleagues imaged the brains of 14 volunteers while they performed a decision-making task. The volunteers were asked to press one of two buttons when they felt the urge to.Bold by me. From just 'feeling the urge' your are concluding on 'thoughts are no factors in our behaviour'. The experiment is setup to exclude conscious thoughts as much as possible, and then you conclude from this experiment that thoughts have no causal impact! Besides: do you think that the volunteers were instructed to do this experiment, without them consciously knowing what they had to do?
Well, you and I have always agreed that our behavior is determined by a lot of factors. What we don't agree on is that our conscious thoughts are somehow always excluded from being factors.Exactly. Lois cannot explain how consciousness evolutionary developed. If conscious thoughts have no causal effects then there is no possibility that evolution can select for consciousness. Having evolutionary advantage means at least having causal impact. Again, Lois standpoint is highly unscientific.
It really amounts to nothing more than "you can't prove I'm wrong".And you can't. Lois I used that particular phrase because I wanted to compare you to a fundamentalist Christian who refuses to consider any other points of view. I consider any point of view that is rational. How about you? Yes I do, and there is nothing rational about "you can't prove I'm wrong". It's an irrational position on "prove" and "wrong".
Since I don't think thoughts lead to actions, I'm hardly going to try to prove they do. That is the opposite of my position. If you think thoughts lead to actions, please provide evidence that they do. . My position is that they don't. You are the one making the claim that they do, so the burden is on you to support that claim objectively. If you can't, the default is that thoughts do not lead to actions. LoisOne of my hobbies is writing fan fiction. A lot of people who don't write seem to believe that writing fiction is as simple as waiting for an "inspiration" to strike you. It isn't. From my observation, what I seem to be doing mainly is picking and choosing various story elements from pretty much everything I have ever read or seen and recombining them into hopefully new and original combinations. Some of this obviously takes place deep inside, in the unconscious, after which an idea will sometimes "pop into my head". But developing that idea into a plot takes a lot of hard and very conscious effort on my part. I know this from my personal experience. I may begin, for example, with an idea about a villain named The Bull. Who is he? Why is he called the Bull? What are his powers? How did he get those powers? What is he going to do which creates the conflict in the story? What happens when the heroine of the story confronts him? And so on, until a story finally emerges at the end of the process. All of this is the result of conscious effort, every single step of the way, before I can write a single word. So I don't know how anyone seriously claim that thoughts do not affect actions.
... Our conscious thinking and planning would have no effect on what we actually do. LoisYou are persistent in being wrong about this. You might as well say that taking a gear out of an intricately working watch, would have no effect on its functioning. If I'm wrong, prove it. A human being--or any animal, is nothing like an intricately working watch. Read some biology, or, better yrt, have someone read it to you. Lois Implying that I cannot read is another example of your poor logic. If I couldn't read, I couldn't respond to your posts. But if the watch analogy is offensive to you, I will try an analogy with organisms. You suggested humans, so I'll go with that. A human walks into a bar... He thinks to himself "I just got my 90 day chip and I'm in a bar. I better call my sponsor. What was that number? Oh, yeah, it's 999-867-5309." He calls his sponsor and avoids relapse. One thought leads to another. If the human had not consciously brought the phone # of his sponsor to mind, would he have called his sponsor? If he had never been aware of his idea of calling his sponsor, would he have tried to remember the phone #? If his 1st thought, after walking into the bar, that he self-observed was "I'm not here to drink. I'm just here to meet the ladies." instead of "I just got my 90 day chip and I'm in a bar." would he have wound up calling his sponsor? In your way of thinking, the human would have called his sponsor anyway. Whether he had a conscious memory of the number would be irrelevant. AND, in your way of thinking the human, if he did indeed have those conscious thoughts, he would only have been aware of them as an "observer". AND, in your way of thinking any thought that the human "observed" himself having would not have effected any subsequent thought that he had. Can you prove that one thought has no impact on a subsequent thought? And can you prove that our awareness of our thoughts have no impact on anything that we do? That is your claim. That is an extraordinary claim. You should be the one that is providing extraordinary proof that your claim is correct. And you cannot. Are you claiming the opposite? I am saying there is no evidence that one thought has an impact on another or, if it does, how much, and that there is no evidence that awareness of thoughts have any impact on what we do. There are too many unknown factors that determine thoughts and actions. We have no way of knowing which factors are present and which will supersede others. I apologize for implying you can't read. Lois
We have no way of knowing which factors are present and which will supersede others. I apologize for implying you can't read. LoisWell, I guess that Sociology degree wasn't worth it.
We have no way of knowing which factors are present and which will supersede others. I apologize for implying you can't read. LoisWell, I guess that Sociology degree wasn't it worth it. I've just about come to the conclusion that Lois must be one of those "zombies" psychology books are always talking about -- people who appear to be people but have no internal monologue. That's the only way I can figure that she could claim with a straight face that one thought has no effect on any other thought. ?
Well, since we concluded that part of this thread, let’s get back to my sermon helper. The week of 6/12 is one of my favorites. The site has a variety of themes and this week falls under the major theme of exegesis. The idea is to draw believers in with those, then hopefully they will read on and hit one of the major themes of A-Theology where I point out a forgery that has obvious political implications. This is not a hidden agenda, BTW, it works in reverse also. Someone looking for an introduction to applying Bart Ehrman’s work to the Bible might also come across this site, then hopefully they will read on and hit one of the pages like 6/12 and see ancient scripture can be relevant.
Milepost 100.com]
Summer is always a time of getting outside, so not as much writing. As such, I got behind, but I’m back on pace. The challenge now will be to get ahead over the next 6 months, so next summer is a nice easy slide to the end of the 3 year cycle. Here’s a couple best ofs:
Milepost 100 A Holy 6 - just noticed I need to fix the link within this one, to another of my favorites, this one:
Milepost 100 C Proper 12 - that responds to the slam on philosophers, and offers a beautiful interpretation of the the symbolism of “bread” from William Herzog
Milepost 100 C Proper 20 - next week’s. Shows how the Old Testament just can’t be reconciled to the New.
Milepost 100 Template C Proper 28 - where I try to fix the fundamentalist interpretation