Replies

1. funny - I would not consider babies/natural offspring to be "devices"

Neither would I, but so far that's what you seem to be saying. But perhaps I have misunderstood -- so tell me what the difference is between a device and a baby.

2.a. you assume that measuring the physics and chemistry fails to measure the feeling. I do not.

There a lot of different feelings and activities that can trigger the same neurochemical response. Frivolous fun and relaxing study of philosophy can pump in equal amounts of endorphins just as worry, fear, and anxiety can trigger equal amounts of reduction of serotonin re-uptake.

Then you have people who are good at hiding their feelings to the point where it would significantly alter neurochemical readings from a normal response range.

Then you have people whose neurochemistry (like mine) is deformed from birth and also significantly alters the results from normal. It's endless.

All you can really tell from measuring neurochemistry changes is changes in neurochemistry. The quality and nature and even quantity of these feelings cannot be revealed by the results since there are endless ways to deliberately or inadvertently or even congenitally mask them. So, again, what is a unit of fun as opposed to, say, a unit of serenity? How do you tell one from the other from reading endorphin levels?

2.b. spirit? we were discussing material LIFE, were we not?

This is the point where we part ways and makes my point. Your view of what life is is purely material, mine is of a spiritual nature. I mean that not condescendingly or in any other arrogant or obnoxious way, so I hope you don't take offense. But it just shows the difference in what we're talking about and how we're apparently talking past each other. You see living beings, humans included, as just machines or matter no different at their core than the atoms they are made of; I see them as inanimate matter animated by an eternal soul that is irreducible.

Ah, but you fail to take into account that what one might call art, another might call crap; what one might call porn, andother might call art. We are trying for something a *little* more concrete than such "instinctual" rubbish.

Actually I did take that into account. True, I didn't address it in any of my posts but I took it into account by anticipating this point from you and letting you bring it up, in part so my already lengthy posts wouldn't be longer than they are.

First I will stipulate that anyone can be fooled about anything at any time, including you and me. But the fact that we can be fooled doesn't mean we are fools. The fact that we don't know everything doesn't mean we cannot know anything; that is skepticism at its (ironically enough) most sophomoric. As I said before, I have been fooled into thinking a discarded hose was a snake in the right lighting (or lack thereof). But that doesn't mean I don't know what a snake is.

Second, as for your point about art, your point makes my point. For the very reasons you give, it is extremely difficult to give a precise, dare I say "scientific", definition of what art is. Yet most of the time, even if we think something is BAD art (crap as you said), we are somehow still able to quickly recognize that it's at least an ATTEMPT at art.

Same with pornography -- for the very reasons you give, it is difficult to impossible to give a 'scientific' definition of pornography. Yet most of the time we can tell when someone is genuinely making an effort to create art using the naked body and when it's just straight ahead porn. To make matters even more confusing for those who would attempt such a definition, you can have completely naked bodies that are portrayed very artistically and you can have fully clothed bodies that are portrayed extremely pornographically.

In other words, most of the time -- say again, most of the time -- we are generally able to quickly and accurately discern the intent behind these things in ways that science can only crudely measure at best, just like a deer is able to very quickly and accurately discern that it needs to drink water from a stream without needing a precise scientific definition of what is a stream or what is water. Yes, it can be fooled sometimes into thinking other liquids are water with fatal results, but that does not mean that it doesn't know on this instinctive, very unscientific level what water is.

4. Again, we were discussing material LIFE, are we not? Changing the game and moving the goalposts like that just ain't cricket.

This would be to say that I already agreed with your point before the debate even begins. My point from the beginning has been that life is NOT a strictly material affair. I'm not sure how you could have missed that; if you did, what did you think was the subject of our debate?

As stated earlier, you are looking at things from such a strictly naturalist point of view -- and so much so that you somehow assumed I was too even with endless clues that I wasn't. The whole point of my argument is that there is more to this world and universe than just the physical or the material -- and that if I am wrong, it renders everything meaningless. Science and philosophy (especially religion) may endlessly talk past each other and drive each other nuts, but in this way they are forever joined at the hip. They are the original Odd Couple...