Euler’s identity, ergo it is a scientific fact our minds could not have evolved. QED.
It was transparent where this was going from the whole dvd copying information nonsense in the OP. The choir will love it; don’t be surprised if there are few takers elsewhere.
Come-on, Sewell, do you really expect to be able to have your mathematical cake and eat it, too? Taking mathematics completely for granted is indistinguishable from taking language for granted. (Wait, yes, that’s exactly what the latest science concludes–that our linguistic abilities can only be explained as “instinctive”!) It is, in principle, no different from taking all of rationality for granted. And I mean without math, we would have approximately zero science.
I’ll admit that it is an astonishingly simple and easy argument. Nevertheless, the facts speak for themselves: to the extent that we can know anything at all, we can know what mathematics is not. It is not physical.
You are assuming that only physical things can evolve. That is not true. Stars are physical things. They change, but do not evolve as organisms do. Organisms evolves because they are alive. They can evolve because they are more than physical.
When we read the Bible we dee how the Jewish faith devolved and changed. Abraham’s faith changed to the tribes of Israel (Jacob), to the people of Moses, to the people under the Judges, to the Empire of David and Solomon, to the Divided people and the prophets, to the exiles, to the restored Temple, the Maccabees, and finally the New Temple
God, the Father, did not send the Son until the time and the people were ready for Him. If the non-material is real, it can change and evolve. If it is alive, it can change or grow faster than the material, which is not alive.
The observable universe operates by the natural laws dictated by its mathematical space-time structure. This and all the measurable phenomenon within it are physical. That which is not objectively observable and measurable is not phenomenon or events in that context.
Incorrect. The brain perceives and experiences things which are not a part of the mathematical space-time structure of the universe all the time. This is a demonstrable scientific fact.
Euler’s identity is not an example of any such thing. It is an observable, demonstrable relationship in the mathematical characteristics of the physical universe.
Incorrect. We measure the comprehension of arithmetic by the ability to do arithmetic not by any philosophical understanding or awareness of it. We measure the comprehension of English by the ability to speak the language and dictionaries do not have any such ability.
This does not follow. If we perceive light, does that mean we must be light? If animals perceive humans does that mean they must be human?
Our minds are just as physical as our body and brains. This is demonstrable by everything we can observe and measure of the mind. But yes our minds use and live in our brains. That much is true.
I don’t think even this follows. I don’t believe the mind evolved even though I think the mind is physical. So apparently opinions are all over the place on this one. So I don’t think you can even exclude the possibility that some believe the mind is non-physical, at least in the this sense of a claim that mathematical equations are non-physical, but still think the human mind is a product of some kind of evolution.
What you don’t choose to think about does not dictate what others think about.
The mind is not in the realm of what I call spirituality.
Sure a physical brain could conceive nonphysical phenomena, A is not non-A, and so forth. Why not?
Well I was using the word evolution in the Darwinian sense of random mutation and natural selection. That’s how they explain the development of the physical brain. But it would be meaningless to apply such to an immaterial mind. But if you want to use the word evolution as just a synonym for change, …I have no idea where that would go scientifically.
Now you’re calling Euler’s Identity a “relationship”. Formerly you said it was a “quality” and then an “abstraction”. While these are all valid descriptions, none of them contradict the claim that it is immaterial and has no physical qualities.
Set Euler’s Identity aside and just look at pi (3.14…) or even just a circle. Are circles material things? Of course not. They are just useful concepts/ideas/words.
Darwinian evolution is supposedly by trial and error, but it is clearly more complicated than that.
The evolution of the mind is a process of evolution, that is it is a process of adaption to the environment by the species.
And you have not explained why this is any different than saying the color red is immaterial and “has no physical qualities.” It is just more obvious how absurd this is with the color red.
Any way, you go ahead and believe in your fairy tale nonphysical equations and I will continue believing that these made up non-physical things of yours add nothing whatsoever to the relationship between the mathematical characteristics of the physical universe.
Like I said before… just because I happen to agree with the conclusion (that the nonphysical exists) doesn’t mean I think the argument you make for them is correct. I am just not that desperate to convince myself that anyone who disagrees with my beliefs are being irrational. And I think this flawed apologetics does not help in the understanding of the spiritual – quite the opposite. Its the pagan religion/philosophy of Plato, Pythagoras, and the Gnostics. As if the way to God was through the intellect. Not that people cannot connect to God in a multitude of ways. But I don’t see anything more spiritual in mathematics than art, music, and athletics frankly – even though I happen to like mathematics better than any of those other things.
For the sake of argument, I might agree. What concepts/ideas/words are not is information, at least in any sense that precludes “adding information in DNA”, or necessitates mind being independent of the development of the nervous system.
As I stated in a prior post above, I have little interest as to whether in principle math can exist apart from a material universe. We do have a material universe, so that question is moot. Math is rational and as Aristotle stated A is not non-A. The universe follows the same rationality. It is hardly necessary that existence be irrational to be material. Conversely, a rational universe does not infer immaterial dependency.
Yeah, I’m not equating irrationality with the material nor rationality with the immaterial. I am saying that every physical speck of the universe is a medium for nonphysical data. And if science has taught us anything at all over the past 2000 years, it has taught us to have faith that if we listen and looked carefully enough we will be able to translate that data into rational sentences such as “Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared” and “6CO2 + 6H2O + sunlightC6H12O6 + 6O2”.
(I’m carrying this over from another stream.) I’m saying that our brains cannot perceive immaterial phenomena, and that it is a mistake to presuppose that they can (i.e. to say, “I perceive it; therefore, my brain perceives it because I am my brain.”). So when you ask about perceiving “constructs” I immediately respond that “constructs” is an abstract word that cannot be seen, heard, tasted, felt or smelled.
For example, a circle is a very simple logical construct. From the drawing of a circle we can get an approximation of pi (3.14…) though we have hundreds of other ways to get that number. But what physical properties do circles have? Are they liquid (such as the ripples in a pond), solid (such as the rings of Saturn), gas (such as smoke rings), or pure light (such as a rainbow)? You can’t say that they are all four at once. Do they have any texture at all? Do they have a particular sound—“circle”, “Kreis”, “κύκλος”, “دائرة”, or “圈”? Do they have any chemical properties? Do they have any force or effect on anything? No, of course not. They have no material properties at all. The circle is simply an idea, an expression of pure meaning that can be translated into any language through an uncountable number of media—as a lead drawing on paper, as circuits in a pen drive, as “a closed curve all of whose points are equal distance from a given point called the center” (I learned that definition in sixth grade), etc.
I can use my brain to perceive it just like I can use a telescope to perceive the Andromeda Galaxy. But how could my brain itself perceive the circle any more than the telescope can perceive Andromeda?
Telescopes merely concentrate and focus light to various instruments; they are of course not conscious of the images they produce. The human brain, on the other hand, might well be the most complex organization in the universe. The number of neurons is commensurate with the number of stars in the milky way galaxy, and the number of interconnections in the trillions. So your material brain, and mine, are capable of carrying on this abstract conversation, even though both our brains together are probably incapable of coming to a mutual conclusion 
.
What you are saying is clear enough, but clarity does not equate to convincing. It remains that concepts can exist in an materially closed universe. You may be able to make a case that there is a level of presupposition involved, and that will reflect a person’s world view. However, it remains possible that a material universe can give rise to emergent rational consciousness, and your argument throughout has not demonstrated otherwise.
Are you saying that it’s plausible (and thus, by default, appropriate to presuppose) that with massive amounts of neural complexity, a brain could emerge that is able to physiologically comprehend an immaterial phenomena such as a circle? If so, I’m not saying that your proposition is not plausible; I’m saying that it is not coherent. No one even tries to articulate a theory as to how the physical could perceive the nonphysical. Instead they simply deny that the nonphysical exists. (Which, of course, I think is also incoherent–as absurd as declaring that circles and pi don’t exist.)
Yes, I’ll admit it sounds absurd–about as absurd, perhaps, as heliocentrism might have sounded to a 10th-century farmer. Nevertheless, it is coherent to say that the meaning of the word red is translated:
From a pattern of light waves
to (presumably) a pattern of neurons in our brains
to a pattern of black symbols on a screen
If you presuppose that the brain perceives the meaning of that word, how is that different from saying that a video camera or a computer or an English dictionary perceive the meaning of the word?
I’m truly oblivious to how effective this is apologetically, much less how it measures up to the Gnostics, etc.
Agreed on all counts.
I don’t.
It is the mind that perceives the meaning of words, not the brain.
The brain does a lot of things. It most certainly perceives light, sounds, and smells. You can even say that it attaches meaning to some of those things when it produces instinctive reactions. But our linguistic landscape is very different. None of the animals have language as far as we can tell. Communication they have. But not a language with all the ability to represent things including abstract things rivaling (and even surpassing) that of DNA. This is the medium of the human mind, and thus linguistic meaning comes from the mind and not the brain.
Sounds a lot like what you are saying… doesn’t it? Except for one thing. Even though it is not the same thing as the brain, I believe the mind is just as physical as the body.
So you cannot understand my objections. The stuff you have been saying just sounds good to you. The problem with creationism is much the same. Most simply do not understand evolution and creationism sounds good to them.
What are you looking for? Neuroscience is dedicated to such questions. You refer to one yourself in your quote below.
Right now, I’m going to have my material brain conceive of a circle. 3 - 2 - 1 There it is, a full on abstracted circle! You have no scientific basis for denying that was an activity of the brain.
I have not read anyone who denies that concepts exist.
Seriously? What part of “it remains possible that a material universe can give rise to emergent rational consciousness” is not coherent?
Well everyone presupposes that the mind is a physical thing–that the mind and the brain are one-and-the-same. (Just like when you presupposed that when you perceive a circle, it’s your brain that perceives it.) What they won’t do is articulate a theory as to how a physical thing (the brain) could ever perceive a nonphysical thing (such as math). So in that SciAm article, “How Matter Becomes Mind” they use the metaphor of music and talk poetically about how just music is composed of notes the mind is composed of neurons. But they don’t address the issue of how it could interact with the nonphysical.
Everyone is acutely aware of the dilemma though, and call it “the hard problem of consciousness.” So how do they resolve the dilemma? One leading neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, wrote a book, Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, in which, like everyone else, he presupposed materialism. Then at the end of the book, when he addressed the question, “What are numbers?”, that would have been the point at which he could have tried to articulate a theory about how the physical brain could comprehend something nonphysical. Instead, he ended up insisting (“If I insist so strongly on this…”) that we not even ask the question at all (the question “What are numbers?”). His reason for insisting on that is that it would torture students to try to understand it.
Then he just says our ability to perceive math is instinctive. That’s the key word scientists use for resolving the dilemma: simply say that the brain’s ability to perceive language and mathematics is instinctive. Just take it for granted as something that the brain can do because, after all, as you said, it is extremely complex.
It’s a massively ironic answer though because instincts are something we do without thinking. A laptop can instantly solve massively complex math equations and then give you the answer in one of a dozen languages because that’s what it’s programmed to do. My liver can do all kinds of complex chemistry because that’s what it’s programmed to do. We don’t need to presuppose that either the laptop or the liver is actually thinking. By contrast, we ourselves cannot do such things without thinking very slowly and carefully. I mean to think instinctively would be thinking without thinking!!!
Maybe it would help if you specified exactly what it is that you think our physical brains do in fact do, and what all that electrical activity is for.
Oh, for sure, that’s where we live. I mean we use our brains in principle the same way that we use our hands and our laptops and our machine guns. We use our brains to direct our bodies and to put men on the moon and to create fajita recipes and write songs.
Now we can program supercomputers and use them to discover things that we could not otherwise discover and to create things that we could not otherwise create. But that’s no different from using a telescope to see things that we could not otherwise see, or using a crane to build things that we could not otherwise build. By contrast, supercomputers cannot be creative. We can program them for deep learning and for trouble-shooting, but in such cases, they are still just tools in our hands doing what we programmed them to do. Computers might appear intelligent and creative, but that’s no different from the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park appearing to be real or an Impossible “Burger” seeming to taste like meat. And so in a similar fashion, the brain is like a tool that is not in and of itself creative.
Incorrect. We do not presuppose that the mind is a physical thing we examine the question and come to that conclusion based on all the observable evidence.
Incorrect again! This is a completely different question. I have been saying that the mind is physical even though it is not the same thing as the brain.
Yes! Where the mind lives in the physical world of space-time. LOL
But in the case of the mind we use the brain for EVERYTHING including the very act of living. The end result is that it is all physical and the only non-physical thing is a figment of your imagination much the same with mathematics – an invisible dragon in the garage that can’t even bite if it chooses.
You see that is the difference from God. In the case of the mind we are talking about ourselves. So it is one thing to say that God cannot be examined when His cooperation is not assured and quite another to say to say that we ourselves are this unmeasurable thing when are a cooperative part of the investigation.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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