On the Topic of Consciousness

[Divine Insight]

Maybe we should break this out.....

This topic is an offshoot from another thread which was on another topic altogether.

This thread is "On the Topic of Consciousness"

I wouldn't pass judgements. My biggest question is why you have a brain type that is willing to jump into the unknown with some assurance, while I seem to have a brain type that doesn't. If I don't know, I leave it at not knowing.

I don't think it comes down to just the brain alone. I think there are many other factors involved. Clearly even from a secular point of view it is recognize that the brain "evolves" as we grow as individuals based much on how we experience life, etc.

For example the very concept of the "unknown" may mean something entirely different to me than it does to you. I mean, sure we could get out a dictionary and look up the term, but that really wouldn't help much because what you believe you know and what I believe I know are going to clearly be two different things. Especially considering my last sentence of the above paragraph. Our knowledge and beliefs evolve in our own brains based upon our own experiences, which clearly are not going to be the same experiences.

Consciousness: I don't know of any scientist that makes his or her living studying it who declares they know what it is.

This is true, but there may be quite a few scientists who feel like Daniel Dennett. Even though he is just a philosopher.

[youtube][/youtube]

I don't disagree with much of what Dennett says about how the brain functions. I don't disagree at all. But he doesn't touch on the real issues as far as I'm concerned. Near the very end of the above video he state a kind of Deepity of his own, "It's not that the Emperor has no clothes, but rather the clothes have no Emperor". The idea intended to imply that we are attempting to push too much onto consciousness that doesn't need to be there.

But for me none of this is satisfying.

I don't disagree with the fact that the brain is indeed a functional portal for the experiences that we have in this incarnated life. Therefore everything he observes and states about how the brain functions and how it "creates" much of our experience, is not in question for me.

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

I've watched several of his lectures, and thus far I haven't been convinced of his conclusions.

To say it is supernatural vs natural seems a leap.

This is statement here goes back to what I had mentioned above, concerning how you and I may very well think differently due to our different experiences in life.

You speak of the term "supernatural" as though that's a meaningful term.

I have been a scientist my entire life. Isaac Newton, and certain Greek philosophies like Zeno and others were my childhood heroes. Albert Einstein was my next hero as I grew in my scientific knowledge. And today I hold many scientists in high regard and marvel at what they were able to discover and prove.

Just the same, in all of this, I have come to the profound realization that to date we cannot say what the true nature of reality genuinely is. Therefore does it even make any sense to speak of the supernatural, when we can't even say with certain what is natural?

So I'm not prepared to accept the insinuation that I'm "jumping off to assume something supernatural". All I'm doing is recognizing that we can't say where the boundaries of the natural world truly are.

So I don't feel that I'm actually leaping anywhere. I'm just recognizing that we can't know that things need to be restricted to what we believe to be a finite physical existence.

In fact, if you go back to Dennett's very argument perhaps you can see an irony there. He is proclaiming that we can't know nearly what we think we can know, yet he seems to think that he can make very clear conclusions from this evidence that our brains clearly trick us.

That's almost an oxymoron right there. If what Dennett says is true, that our brains can fool us considerably, then perhaps the entirety of physical reality is itself an illusion that we are being tricked into believing. What we believe to be "brains" may not be physical entities at all.

My position is that we know consciousness is affected by natural events, and we know nature exists... seems a very small slide to presume consciousness is a natural phenomenon. But not knowing, sure, I can't say it's not - but I haven't been offered ONE example of the supernatural. So, I simply can't presume it's supernatural. I can't even think of why I'd consider the supernatural when the supernatural has such a horrible track record.

Well, our difference of views here may indeed amount to the extremely different way we view the "supernatural". For you to say that the supernatural has a bad track record implies that you associate the term with just about any guess that anyone might come up with (and especially specific claims that have indeed been shown to be false).

Whilst those do indeed qualify as "supernatural", they may not qualify as the type of "supernatural" that I consider. In fact, the type of "supernatural" that I consider is actually quite natural. It simply amounts to nature that we haven't yet discovered or understood, so it's only in that sense that it seems to be supernatural to us, when in reality it may be perfectly natural.

Given this, there only seems to be the natural. Just because we don't know how consciouness works doesn't means it's because of the gods, or the supernatural or something else, or even "natural vs. I don't know".

Nature exists.
Consciousness exists.

Given these two facts, why presume we can't explain consciousness eventually?

I already gave my answer to this earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for clarity.

Copy and pasted from earlier in this very same post:

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

End of copy and paste

Yes, consciousness exists. And something is having an experience.

But what is it that is having an experience?

Energy and matter?

Electromagnetic fields?

Something else? Many people have suggested that the thing that is having an experience is some sort of "emergent property of complexity".

I suppose this is a valid philosophical idea, but it seems pretty strange to me that an abstract idea of an emergent property could have an experience.

So I'm still left with a deeper mystery.

To simply say that "consciousness" is a natural result of nature, still leaves me asking, "Who is the Emperor that is having this experience?"

If the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having the experience of conscious awareness? The clothes?

It just seems strange to me that the clothes (i.e. matter and energy) should be able to have an experience.

So this simply leaves the door to the "supernatural" (i.e. nature that we simply don't yet understand) wide open.

I'm not saying that the secular view is necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying that the purely secular view seems every bit as strange to me as the supernatural view.

In other words, that view doesn't "hit the spot" as being an obvious conclusion to accept either.

I'm not going to automatically accept Dennetts "Deepity" that "The clothes have no Emperor" as being the profound answer to this question. That's just as absurd as any other Deepity, IMHO.

So this is where I'm coming from.

I'm not claiming that the supernatural necessarily has to exist. But I am claiming that, insofar as I can see, it's on precisely equal footing with any other conclusions at this point.

Seeing that they are on the same footing, I don't mind using intuition and gut feelings to consider one over the other. So with that in mind, I confess that I lean toward the mystical view. But clearly I could be wrong.

[Divine Insight]

Ego as cute and complex as it is does not account for certain human faculties such as conscience, Love
and appreciation of the aesthetics.
Love for example is a timeless feeling and liberation of self for another, the antithesis of Ego.

I agree. There are clearly aspects of humanity that necessarily transcend (or trump) the ego.

However, on the topic of the ego, I think there is also something that needs to be said about the ego. As you point out the ego itself is an abstract construction. And as such this gives it reality (albeit not conscious awareness). But the ego has reality in the sense that it is indeed a well-defined construct of abstraction. And that construct can contain elements of the "real self" (or perhaps I should say it can be constructed using information that actually reflects the desires of the true self).

For this reason the ego itself does not need to be a bad thing. We often use the term ego in an almost derogatory sense, implying that it's something unwanted or bad. But this doesn't need to be the case at all. On the contrary an ego can actually be a very beautiful thing if constructed wisely. After all, it is an abstract construction, and there is no reason why that abstract construction needs to be negative, selfish, or anything negative that we might normally associate with an ego.

I think when the Eastern mystics recognize and acknowledge that the ego is an illusion (i.e. an abstract construction), they aren't suggesting that we need to do away with the ego entirely. But rather that we simply need to recognize is for what it is, and in doing so take charge of constructing it so that it is indeed a positive and non-selfish construction.

In other words, it is possible to abstractly construct very beautiful "egos" that are very positive and not self-centered at all. This is because the true self is constructing this ego and placing upon it all of the desires of the true self.

This would be quite different from someone who is constructing an ego from the vantage point that they are the ego.

In other words, an "enlightened person" who understands the difference between their true self and the abstraction of the ego, can then begin to place the values of the true self onto this abstract construct of the ego. In this way, the ego can actually become a quite lovable and positive construction. Actually it becomes more of a mirror than a construction at that point. There is also no need to preserve or protect the ego in this case because it is seen as a mirror. And who cares if a mirror is shattered? The mirror is not the object being reflected in it.

The ego only becomes dangerous or negative when people believe they are this reflection and they act to save the image of the reflection like as if that has some importance.

And this is no doubt where the fear of death comes from too. People are afraid that if the reflection dies they too will die. Because they have become convinced that they are the reflection.

[instantc]

We have already built machines that can exhibit creativity, solve problems and handle various tasks. What is it that you suggest a human can do but a machine can't, apart from subjective experience?

Figure out a brand new puzzle of a type it never encountered before. Not a different variation of a theme.

That's one thing. When it comes to many puzzles, and problems, the 'rules' have to be very specifically programed into the computer. A conscious being would not need that.

This is the problem, isn't it? How can you tell that the puzzles that monkeys solve are 'brand new puzzles', perhaps the rules of those puzzles are very specifically programmed into their brains?

[scourge99]

So from my perspective the thing that really sets humans apart from other animals is not the self-reflection aspect so much as it is the ability to think abstractly.

How can someone self reflect if they can't think abstractly? That is, the ability to think abstractly seems to be a prerequisite for self reflection.

In fact, I would argue that this is what secularists are doing when they speak of an emergent property being able to have an experience. They are giving this abstract notion of an emergent property so much credence that they treat it as though it's an actual entity rather than just an abstract concept.

Kind of but not exactly. For example, a "chair" is an abstraction of atoms. Yet chairs are real and not just a concept. They have "legs" and can be sat upon even though atoms don't have legs and cannot be sat upon. But describing it this way doesn't mean I've somehow forgotten that a chair is just a bunch of atoms. That legs are just an abstraction, etc. You seem to like to accuse people of not recognizing this.

And this is the part where you usually backpedal into a form of know-nothing, "science has lost its balls", "all-is-one" preaching ... until its convenient for your argument where you'll suddenly return from your know-nothing retreat and talk about the findings of science and make distinctions between things.

[Rev. Hydrogen]

wtopic.php?p=593852#593852]instantc[/url]"]
We have already built machines that can exhibit creativity, solve problems and handle various tasks. What is it that you suggest a human can do but a machine can't, apart from subjective experience?[/quote]

Figure out a brand new puzzle of a type it never encountered before. Not a different variation of a theme.

That's one thing. When it comes to many puzzles, and problems, the 'rules' have to be very specifically programed into the computer. A conscious being would not need that.[/quote]



Thinking it would be possible to emulate the reflective strand with AI, but only with a powerful quantum computer like the one our unconscious mind is connected to.

We can probably emulate the workings of the mind with respect to ego using similar desktop technology we have now.but for the interference from the spontaneous response factor.
Spontaneous response and habitual reaction can run absolutely counter to each other and operate simultaneously in man... the honest man finds himself being dishonest, the spotless priest commits indecency, the loving mother leaves home, the thief who gives him self up.
An AI model of ego would not be totally accurate unless the spontaneous response factor is added to the mix.

Habitual reaction by superficial man is the desire to cling to the past object idea or attitude, or resist the new. It is a striving for certainty. While you want anything in the world, you are reacting. But this does not mean give up lifes' fun. Just that not desiring something is as positive reaction as to desire it.

At its finest knowledge acts with conscious perception, but with out a centre. In a centre I mean a stored attitude. Mind is not the substantive entity most think it is. The mind is identical with the multiplication sign in math and the function is the judging and classifying of things by comparing them with self centers.
And out of the multiplication comes the endless talking and thinking without purpose or design, = diversion.

Getting back to the computer and mind comparison, While man
acts with a centre as above, he becomes that centre and with that
like any machine, he like it becomes a machine of limited response
no matter how much information you pour into it/him.

best, Rev H.
.................

[Divine Insight]

How can someone self reflect if they can't think abstractly? That is, the ability to think abstractly seems to be a prerequisite for self reflection.

I think there are two reasons for this.

1. The ability to think abstractly does not need to be an on/off function. In other words, animals most likely have some ability for abstract thinking, it's just not nearly as profound as it is in the human brain.

2. The ego isn't entirely an abstraction. The ego is an abstraction on the actual dichotomy between the true self (the entity that is actually having an experience), and the vantage point of having a unique portal or perspective on the physically manifest world.

In other words, the illusion of the ego actually arises from this unique perspective of being separate from everything else in a physical sense. You could in some ways say that the ego has some reality in this sense. The reason the mystics recognize that it's an illusion is because it cannot be the ego that is having an experience. The ego is a construction created by the entity that is having the experience.

Because of this latter truth, even animals have some sense of an ego, albeit far less abstracted in terms of intellectual details. After all, even animals create social tribes with pecking order, etc. In this way they are indeed exhibiting a form of abstract ego. It's just not so profound that they intellectually grab onto it and elaborate upon it the way that humans do.

Animals tend to live in the moment. A monkey for example doesn't sit around and dwell on the fact that it is (or is not) the troop leader. Non the less it is aware of this abstraction at some level. But we as humans take this abstraction and run with it. Whether we are the troop leader or subservient to the leader becomes OUR definition of WHO we are. So we basically take an abstract concept that monkeys are only vaguely aware of and make it the focal point of our lives.

So my first point is actually the answer to your question. The ability to think abstractly is not cut-and-dried, or all-or-nothing. It's just very much advanced in humans to the point where extremely detailed egos can be constructed, and then become our very definition of who we are.

This in fact, reveals the abstract quality of the ego. The fact that we are able to create more elaborate illusions of separation than animals do, proves that our creation of separation is indeed an abstraction. We are no more separated from anything else than the animals are. Yet we have profoundly more detailed egos.

That pretty much clinches it for a case that the ego is indeed an abstraction that we have created.

In fact, I would argue that this is what secularists are doing when they speak of an emergent property being able to have an experience. They are giving this abstract notion of an emergent property so much credence that they treat it as though it's an actual entity rather than just an abstract concept.

Kind of but not exactly. For example, a "chair" is an abstraction of atoms.
[/quote]

You've lost me here. How can a chair be an abstraction of atoms? Atoms aren't abstracting anything. They are physically joining together using forces to create objects. There is nothing abstract about it.

Our egos may be abstraction of our conscious perspective, but our bodies are actual physical objects. There is no abstraction there.

Yet chairs are real and not just a concept. They have "legs" and can be sat upon even though atoms don't have legs and cannot be sat upon. But describing it this way doesn't mean I've somehow forgotten that a chair is just a bunch of atoms. That legs are just an abstraction, etc. You seem to like to accuse people of not recognizing this.

A chair being just a bunch of atoms, versus being an abstraction are two entirely different things. An abstraction is a concept of pure thought that has no physical reality. A chair is not an abstraction.

And this is the part where you usually backpedal into a form of know-nothing, "science has lost its balls", "all-is-one" preaching ... until its convenient for your argument where you'll suddenly return from your know-nothing retreat and talk about the findings of science and make distinctions between things.

Science has lost its balls. At least it has lost its classical balls. The universe can no longer be thought of a being made of a bunch of tiny billiard balls that are simply obeying classical laws of Newtonian mechanics.

The current modern scientific description of the physical universe is that atoms themselves are made of waves of probability, or waves of potentiality. These waves do not obey the laws of classical physics at their deepest level. They only give rise to the classical laws of physics as they become instantiated and react with each other to create what we call "The Macro World".

The macro world does appear to have a Newtonian nature to some degree. But scientists keep reminding us that there are not two different realities. There is only one reality and that appears to be the quantum world.

In other words, the laws of quantum mechanics explain why the macro world behaves in a way that produces a Newtonian world on the macro scale. But the opposite is not true. We cannot extend the laws of classical physics down to explain the quantum world.

So we live in a quantum mechanical universe and there is no need to imagine a Newtonian classical world because it simply isn't required. Quantum mechanics sufficiently explains why the macro world is the way it is.

Because of this the distinction between things is ultimately an illusion. In other words, it's like waves on an ocean. The waves may appear to be individual things but in truth they are all just facets of the ocean. They are just the ocean doing its thing. Of course, this analogy is not truly a good one because even an ocean is made up of "separate" atoms and molecules of water, etc. But the ocean of quantum mechanics is a sea of potentiality that has no actual separation from itself. Every vibration that arises in this sea of potentially only appears to be a 'separate wave', but it's not really separate from anything.

So I don't deny the reality of the physical world. I just deny the idea that the world is ultimately made of atoms. It's not. It's made of waves of potentiality. Thinking that the buck stops with atoms is incorrect secularism. That would be Newtonian Secularism. The world of Spinoza, Newton, and Leibniz. Classical thinking.

[scourge99]

How can someone self reflect if they can't think abstractly? That is, the ability to think abstractly seems to be a prerequisite for self reflection.

The ability to think abstractly is not cut-and-dried, or all-or-nothing.

I agree.

It's just very much advanced in humans to the point where extremely detailed egos can be constructed, and then become our very definition of who we are.

This in fact, reveals the abstract quality of the ego. The fact that we are able to create more elaborate illusions of separation than animals do, proves that our creation of separation is indeed an abstraction. We are no more separated from anything else than the animals are. Yet we have profoundly more detailed egos.

I don't know what or how thinking abstractly or having an ego can be except in the way we humans perceive it. That is, i have no idea what it means to talk about "creating more elaborate illusions of separation". Just as I don't know what its like to be a chimpanzee or a bat. It seems like pure speculation. And I'm sure you are well aware of what i think about speculation that has no recourse to ANY evidence, experience, or basis.

In fact, I would argue that this is what secularists are doing when they speak of an emergent property being able to have an experience. They are giving this abstract notion of an emergent property so much credence that they treat it as though it's an actual entity rather than just an abstract concept.

Kind of but not exactly. For example, a "chair" is an abstraction of atoms.

You've lost me here. How can a chair be an abstraction of atoms? Atoms aren't abstracting anything. They are physically joining together using forces to create objects. There is nothing abstract about it.

Abstraction - Abstractions may be formed by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball retains only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball.

Instead of talking about the position and arrangement of every atom that forms "legs" and a "seat" we instead call it a "chair" for short. A chair is an abstraction of a particular arrangement of atoms. Thus a chair can be understood as an abstraction of atoms in a particular configuration.

Yet chairs are real and not just a concept. They have "legs" and can be sat upon even though they are just made of atoms. And atoms don't have legs and cannot be sat upon. But describing it this way doesn't mean I've somehow forgotten that a chair is just a bunch of atoms. That legs are just an abstraction, etc. You seem to like to accuse people of not recognizing this.

Similarly a mind can be reduced to the workings of a brain. Yet a mind can have experiences even though neurons in a brain do not have experiences. But that doesn't mean we've somehow forgotten that a mind is fundamentally just a bunch of neurons firing in a brain. SO despite what you think, there is no contradiction or problem in treating the mind as an actual entity anymore than there is a problem with treating a "chair" as an actual entity.

Yet chairs are real and not just a concept. They have "legs" and can be sat upon even though atoms don't have legs and cannot be sat upon. But describing it this way doesn't mean I've somehow forgotten that a chair is just a bunch of atoms. That legs are just an abstraction, etc. You seem to like to accuse people of not recognizing this.

A chair being just a bunch of atoms, versus being an abstraction are two entirely different things. An abstraction is a concept of pure thought that has no physical reality. A chair is not an abstraction.

Yes it is. A chair is just atoms. Chairs don't really exist. They are an abstraction of a certain configuration of atoms. But no one wants to talk about things as configurations of atoms. Its much more simple and useful to just talk using high-level abstraction like "chairs".

And this is the part where you usually backpedal into a form of know-nothing, "science has lost its balls", "all-is-one" preaching ... until its convenient for your argument where you'll suddenly return from your know-nothing retreat and talk about the findings of science and make distinctions between things.

Science has lost its balls. At least it has lost its classical balls. The universe can no longer be thought of a being made of a bunch of tiny billiard balls that are simply obeying classical laws of Newtonian mechanics.

Yes it can be. It depends on the context. If we are talking about things in the macro world (for example, at the level of chairs) then its perfectly acceptable to and usually accurate to do so.

The current modern scientific description of the physical universe is that atoms themselves are made of waves of probability, or waves of potentiality. These waves do not obey the laws of classical physics at their deepest level. They only give rise to the classical laws of physics as they become instantiated and react with each other to create what we call "The Macro World".

Yet we can still talk about "chairs" as a meaningful and useful concept that accurately describe the world for most everyday occasions. No need to backpedal into this , know-nothingness, "all is one", "science has lost its balls". Its just a red-herring. A conversation stopper that you deploy to avoid actually engaging in a discussion head-on

The macro world does appear to have a Newtonian nature to some degree. But scientists keep reminding us that there are not two different realities. There is only one reality and that appears to be the quantum world.

You are wrong. The micro world can and is abstracted away in almost every scenario. For example, we don't need to worry about atoms when discussing sociology. We don't need to worry about quantum mechanics when discussing biology. And we don't need to worry about "waves of probability" when talking about how chemistry.

In other words, the laws of quantum mechanics explain why the macro world behaves in a way that produces a Newtonian world on the macro scale. But the opposite is not true. We cannot extend the laws of classical physics down to explain the quantum world.

No one is trying to apply classical physics down to explain the quantum world. what I am saying is that you don;t need to get distracted with the micro world when we are at the scale of the macro world? Do you understand that? I have tried in several posts before to get that point across to you but you don't seem to get it.

So all this talk about "science has lost its balls" is a red-herring because consciousness and the mind is not a quantum-level phenomenon. Its in the MACRO WORLD!!!

So I don't deny the reality of the physical world. I just deny the idea that the world is ultimately made of atoms. It's not. It's made of waves of potentiality.

I agree. But we aren't talking about things at that fine of grain. That you constantly try to divert the conversation to that scale is just a distraction. Its irrelevant.

[instantc]

And I'm sure you are well aware of what i think about speculation that has no recourse to ANY evidence, experience, or basis.

I have asked you this a few times already. You say you don't believe that arguments can give us any information about the real world, unless they reference to some evidence from the real world.

A grand scientific advance was debunking the Aristotelian theory regarding heavier objects falling faster than lighter objects. Now, as I have demonstrated, this piece of information about the real world can be acquired using mere logic without any experiments or references to evidence. Doesn't that contradict your position?

[scourge99]

And I'm sure you are well aware of what i think about speculation that has no recourse to ANY evidence, experience, or basis.

I have asked you this a few times already. You say you don't believe that arguments can give us any information about the real world, unless they reference to some evidence from the real world.

A grand scientific advance was debunking the Aristotelian theory regarding heavier objects falling faster than lighter objects. Now, as I have demonstrated, this piece of information about the real world can be acquired using mere logic without any experiments or references to evidence. Doesn't that contradict your position?

I disagree with the same explanation i gave you before: we can imagine logical and real world impossibilities. So the ability to think up an idea doesn't tell us if its actually true. We have to test it to verify its truth.

Furthermore, your example doesn't demonstrate acquiring knowledge about the real world. It demonstrates that theories about the real world can be discredited by logical analysis (your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument). Showing a theory as logically flawed is not equivalent to proving a theory about the real world is true. Do you understand that difference?

[instantc]

your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument

I'd gladly take credit for it, but unfortunately it's not my analysis, but rather a well-known thought experiment first used by Galileo. I'm not here to debate over commonly known facts, you can read about the same thought experiment here for example.

http://www.philosophical-investigations ... xperiments

Richard Dawkins discusses and agrees with the same thought experiment here

we can imagine logical and real world impossibilities. So the ability to think up an idea doesn't tell us if its actually true.

Perhaps you are right and conceivability doesn't entail possibility, can you show this to be the case?

Furthermore, your example doesn't demonstrate acquiring knowledge about the real world. It demonstrates that theories about the real world can be discredited by logical analysis (your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument). Showing a theory as logically flawed is not equivalent to proving a theory about the real world is true. Do you understand that difference?

They are two sides of the same coin. Consider Noether's theorem, which can be mathematically proven and shows that the law of conservation of energy holds in any logically possible universe with any given set of laws of physics, including this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem. Both this and Galileo's thought experiment give us scientifically useful information about the real world that we live in.

[Goat]

your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument

I'd gladly take credit for it, but unfortunately it's not my analysis, but rather a well-known thought experiment first used by Galileo. I'm not here to debate over commonly known facts, you can read about the same thought experiment here for example.

http://www.philosophical-investigations ... xperiments

Richard Dawkins discusses and agrees with the same thought experiment here

we can imagine logical and real world impossibilities. So the ability to think up an idea doesn't tell us if its actually true.

Perhaps you are right and conceivability doesn't entail possibility, can you show this to be the case?

Furthermore, your example doesn't demonstrate acquiring knowledge about the real world. It demonstrates that theories about the real world can be discredited by logical analysis (your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument). Showing a theory as logically flawed is not equivalent to proving a theory about the real world is true. Do you understand that difference?

They are two sides of the same coin. Consider Noether's theorem, which can be mathematically proven and shows that the law of conservation of energy holds in any logically possible universe with any given set of laws of physics, including this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem. Both this and Galileo's thought experiment give us scientifically useful information about the real world that we live in.

Thought experiments are useful in trying to articulate a theory, or concept.

However, it doesn't mean a darn thing unless the principle can be verified through an actual experiment. Take, for example, the EPR paradox experiment. Einstein, Poldolsky and Rosen came up with it to show that QM was false. .. by coming up with a consequence of QM that wasn't thought about at the time, dealing with entanglement and 'spooky action at a distance'. They intended to show that QM was totally inadequate.

Because of experimental data, starting with bells theorem in 1964, and further experiments starting in 1976, they showed the conclusions in the EPR paradox paper were wrong. The world of QM really is that strange, and it is only a paradox in that the predicted actions do not make sense in the classical physics sense.