The onus is not on me, as I am not making broad unscientific claims about the nature of reality or the human mind, simply because we have a small portion of knowledge. It is precisely the Elephant problem that I linked to; you are making assumptions about the fundamental structure of the mind based on our current narrow understanding of it. This is almost by definition unscientific.
The justifiable position would be to say, "based on our current understanding of the mind, our metaphorical model X is the best model we have created, but it is merely the best answer up until now, not the ultimate solution."
> you are making assumptions about the fundamental structure of the mind based on our current narrow understanding of it
I'm trying to think of a way that would not have us go in circles ad infinitum. So I'll try one last time to convince you that this is a misrepresentation.
My assumptions are indeed, given the body of data we have gathered so far, that what lies ahead will fit into what we already know - as opposed to being something extraordinary that invalidates most of our current understanding.
Whenever there are unknowns in our scientific understanding (and I'm sure we'll have more than enough of those for aeons to come), it has so far not been fruitful to offer magical external influences as the explanation. It has so far always turned out that natural forces were at work, forces we can reason about rationally. From my perspective, there is nothing unusualy going on with minds in particular that would warrant a different approach.
Our current understanding may be narrow by your standards, but it doesn't follow that people just get to make up whatever lies outside and then insist on those doubting them being unscientific.
> "based on our current understanding of the mind, our metaphorical model X is the best model we have created, but it is merely the best answer up until now, not the ultimate solution."
That we can agree on. What we don't seem to agree on is the amount of credibility we should assign to claims that lie far outside of our physical expectations. Just because there are unknowns doesn't make it reasonable to assign extraordinary values to those unknowns.
> The onus is not on me, as I am not making broad unscientific claims
If you make a claim, especially one that falls widely outside of extrapolated scientific understanding, the burden of proof does indeed fall on you. By contrast I am making the claim that whatever gaps we have in our theory about minds will eventually turn out to be an extension of what we already know, as opposed to some revolutionary but as of yet unseen aspect of the universe. My claim is small, yours is quite large and also seems vague to me.
> My assumptions are indeed, given the body of data we have gathered so far, that what lies ahead will fit into what we already know - as opposed to being something extraordinary that invalidates most of our current understanding.
Would this describe the world of physics prior to Einstein and Quantum Mechanics? I'm not a physicist, but my impressions is that it absolutely was "something extraordinary that invalidates most of our current understanding."
> Whenever there are unknowns in our scientific understanding (and I'm sure we'll have more than enough of those for aeons to come), it has so far not been fruitful to offer magical external influences as the explanation.
Sure, offering magical solutions is not any better, and explanations based on current scientific understanding are likely more correct than magical explanation, but - that doesn't mean that the scientific explanation is the truth, but rather that it's simply a more useful theory.
This is also not mentioning the problem of induction, which is an entirely different and deeper conversation.
> By contrast I am making the claim that whatever gaps we have in our theory about minds will eventually turn out to be an extension of what we already know, as opposed to some revolutionary but as of yet unseen aspect of the universe. My claim is small, yours is quite large and also seems vague to me.
Again, the history of science would show otherwise. Did anyone in 1800 predict quantum mechanics? It seems naive to assume that science will never upend our fundamental view of the world.
My claim is simply that of the scientific method itself: observational knowledge is useful for constructing our current best view of the world, but it is simply that: our current best. Extrapolating that into statements about reality itself is a non-scientific act and is only common because agnosticism is such a nebulous difficult position for humans to hold.
> Would this describe the world of physics prior to Einstein and Quantum Mechanics? I'm not a physicist, but my impressions is that it absolutely was "something extraordinary that invalidates most of our current understanding."
I am (or was) a physicist. Even scientific revolutions like Relativity and Quantum mechanics don't invalidate 'most' of our prior understanding. Newtonian mechanics continues to be a very accurate model on the length scales that were testable at time it was conceived (apples and trees). The Relativity and Quantum Mechanics revolutions explained why classical mechanics breaks down at the scale of planets and atoms respectively. All that is invalidated is the idea that the current model is universal, but that would be naive thing to believe at any time. Scientific progress does not mean the prior results are wrong, it's an additive process, if done correctly.
Thanks for the input. I was just quoting the parent’s phrasing of ‘invalidates’. I’d agree that science is absolutely an additive process. However with regards to the mind, we may be in the position of physicists circa 1880. I suppose we simply can’t know.
Neither Lucas' argument here, nor any other anti-materialist argument, has offered any hint of what is missing from the materialist position, so the absence of adequate knowledge is at best symmetrical.
It is not unscientific to speculate on how things may be - without that, there would be no hypotheses.
Lucas's argument claims that materialism is false, so Udo is within his logical rights to assume otherwise -- it would be begging the question to insist he cannot do that.
None of this makes any progress on the question of whether Lucas' argument is valid and sound.
This argument is twisted out of shape. Basically, you're saying that keiferski is making the claim "we don't know whether cells are machines", which he should prove. When, in fact, we actually don't know and it is you who is proposing the added hypothesis that they are. I understand that it seems to you very likely that cells are machines, but that's just your feeling. You're the one making a claim and your arguments are not convincing to everybody, so that's that, there's not much more to add really.
> Basically, you're saying that keiferski is making the claim "we don't know whether cells are machines", which he should prove.
No. He/she challenged me, repeatedly, to prove my assumption that we're talking about machinery, which he/she called foolish and handwavy. I take the position that my assumption is in line with current understanding, and that the entirety of modern biochemistry is based on and working with that assumption. keiferski holds that I'm ignorant for taking that position, implying that wide and extraordinary counter claims of something paranatural going on with minds should be considered reasonable until explicitly disproven. The basic difference of opinion is - as I understand it - what the default position should be.
The justifiable position would be to say, "based on our current understanding of the mind, our metaphorical model X is the best model we have created, but it is merely the best answer up until now, not the ultimate solution."