A difficult puzzle..

Feelings are physical entities, they are tangle. They are real. There is absolutely nothing super natural about them.

Everything can be reduced to math. The brain is no exception. Just because it has not been mathematically described, yet, does not mean it won't be in the future.

 

You left out "things."

That appears to be your construction, yes. Do I misunderstand you?

 

We know the chemicals involved, we have the capability of manufacturing synthetic neurons and synapses (devices that work in like fashion), we even know how to fabricate a synthetic neural network. Why have the scientists not been able to fabricate a system using all that knowledge and data which would be able to feel emotions and form conceptualizations based on the data within its own databank?

Can you prove that it is a fallacy?

 

More strawmen! lol

First of all "tangible" means "able to be touched". You cannot literally touch an emotion, in fact there are physical things which are intangible such as neutrinos.

To:

1. be a mere mortal human with a mind limited (according to yourself) to a few billion tiny neurons working together, and

2. claim to truly understand the entirety of reality itself, such that you can even make this claim,

is to be arrogant beyond comprehension.

I do think we can say that there are non-mathematical things about reality, and not appear arrogant by claiming it. Such is because I realize that reality itself is boundless, and I, like all other beings, have an almost negligible comprehension of it's entirety.

"True knowledge comes form knowing that you know (close to) nothing".

 

My previous post, especially the second part of it, says it all.

 

No, you made up the notion that they are intangible using your own rule, which is circular.

 

Are you suggesting that they are in FACT tangible???? Meaning that one could be held in your hand and examined, weighed, measured. Not being simply the matter of observing the effect they may have.

 

And of course this is a futile equivocation. "Tangible" means several different things, and you appear to have selected one that makes your argument technically correct but actually false. Note for example the second most common definition:

1. capable of being touched; discernible by the touch; material or substantial.
2. real or actual, rather than imaginary or visionary: the tangible benefits of sunshine.
3. definite; not vague or elusive: no tangible grounds for suspicion.
4. (of an asset) having actual physical existence, as real estate or chattels, and therefore capable of being assigned a value in monetary terms.

You are welcome to insist on using definition #1, but that will only result in the rest of us abandoning the term altogether as useless to the actual conversation.

Because in what is a deep irony, the actual sense of touch is essentially identical to the feelings and emotions that you assert are "intangible." Both the perception of touch and the perception of love are merely the first person experience of electo-physio-chemical events in the brain. One may argue that touch has the additional mechanism of sense organs in the skin, but we know from phenomena such the "phantom limbs" of amputees that this mechanism is optional to the experience.

Feelings and emotions are no less and no more "tangible" than actual touch.

Need I point out that those "few billion tiny neurons working together" comprise three and a half pounds of the most complex matter in the known universe?

That said, this is merely an effort at burden shifting in the absence of evidence with which to defend your own position. No one is claiming to understand the entirety of reality. We have simply pointed out that 100% of the experience available to us has identified only the actual existence of things that are physical and that are able to be described by mathematics. Therefore, the empirical evidence is that only such things exist. We certainly might be wrong, after all science is explicitly tentative. But the depth and breadth of the evidence available to us warrants great confidence that what we have experienced is not an accident, and instead is a reflection of reality.

You are the one who has offered the innovative proposition, and therefore you are the one here who currently has the evidential ball in your court. I know that I have repeatedly asked you for the evidence or reasoning that would warrant serious consideration of what is otherwise merely a flight of mystical fancy.

You have responded with total silence.

Ad hominem accusations of "arrogance" are neither arguments nor evidence. You do yourself no credit by resorting to them.

Why? You have been asked repeatedly to show us why you "do think" this. You are being asked again.

True knowledge almost never comes from trite platitudes.

 

Please, be explicit.

Do I or do I not misunderstand you?

 

Again, the irony here is delicious.

The sense of touch is, itself, intangible using that definition.

You just can't make this stuff up.

 

Are you suggesting that the circle in a stone circle (ie, the pattern, that which goes away if the stones are in another arrangement) is tangible?

If yes, then I guess I do suggest that thoughts are tangible. It'd be squishy and moist, and perhaps you wouldn't be able to tell one thought from another because it's too complex and hard to read a brain but it's a pattern.

 

You can touch/measure electricity, and you can touch/measure chemicals. They are tangible.

You can also touch neutrinos,, the only issue being that very few will interact with your skin.

Your experience is limited by your physical brain, there is not supernatural or far reach about it.

This is not a position of arrogance, but a position of reality. Your argument falls apart because of a faulty premise, that feelings are beyond science. Which has been shown, more than once, to be false.

I haven't a problem with anyone pursuing a higher level of understand, I love Tool because of that message. However, my issue arises when the supernatural is invoked to answer questions or give meaning to life, it is not necessary. Even on the premise of humanity being confined to the capabilities of the brain, life is stile quite beautiful and amazing.

 

This answer is intentionally not existing.

http://youtu.be/Rn9uT3rxAEs

 

What was the question?

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZrZxyRBAlM"]THE DAWN OF ART - YouTube[/ame]

 

I still have no idea what you are trying to say.

 

You mean you can "touch" the sensation itself (rather than the brain behind it) of the sensation of pain?

No, you cannot. Nor can you mathematically describe it.

This is getting to be a deadlock. If people can't agree with me on this basic (obvious) point, then there's no continuing.

 

If you put stones onto an imaginary ring, that's not a circle because a true circle is continuous, whereas a finite number of rocks placed in a ring would not be. The "circle" would be an intangible thought in someone's mind.

 

Again..that...isn't...my...claim.

My claim is that they are not mathematical intrinsically, nor model-able using purely mathematics.

Some people say that reality itself and everything that is real, is mathematical, whereas Chris Langan (whom I don't agree with on everything) and myself for example, do not.

 

The sense of touch is quite intangible; you can't touch the intangible sensation of touch that others experience when they touch something.

 

Fine, but even if so, that doesn't address my point, which is that this first person experience has emergent properties such as the non-mathematically-describable sensation of feelings themselves.

So? That's still finite. Reality is infinite.

Well if you are aware (falsely) that reality is entirely mathematical, and you understand all the fundamentals of mathematics, then you're way closer to understanding the entirety of reality than if reality goes beyond mathematics (which, I certainly think it's obvious that it does).

That single phrase is one of few single phrases that has a lot of meaning. True knowledge does come (partly) from being aware that your mind is finitely "deep", that reality is infinitely "deep", and therefore you know almost nothing.

By "deep", I'm referring to level of difficulty/complexity of concepts. Some concepts go beyond mathematics (such as the non-mathematically describable sensations of feelings), and the idea of "teleology".

 

The first person experience has no more or fewer emergent properties than the third hand experience. They are simply two different perspectives of the same exact thing. All higher aspects of mental function are emergent properties. And emergent properties are ordinary physical phenomena.

Reality is neither finite nor infinite. It is simply a state of being. Things either are real, or they are not. As such it is completely comprehensible even by by people who are not very smart.

If the human brain is (and as far as we know, it is) the most complex matter in the universe, then everything else in the universe is by definition simpler, and therefore potentially comprehensible by it.

There is nothing in that statement that makes sense. It starts by posing a straw-man, dives into a garbled discussion of ontology, and then ends with the preferred answer you desired in the first place. It would be a circular argument had you actually been able to assemble it into a circle. As it is, the shape cannot be intelligently characterized.

In final measure, it does nothing to further the comment it was ostensibly a response to, that "No one is claiming to understand the entirety of reality."

That single phrase is pointless to the point of mind numbing. More meaning can generally be found in a fortune cookie.

Those ideas are not "deep." They are merely "different." And as far as the evidence goes, they are also likely false.

 

1. There is no such things as a "sensation itself" that is not identical in reality to "the brain behind it."

2. Are you really unaware that "pain" is by definition the sense of touch?

 

Too bad you have still, after all these posts, been unable to give us a single good evidence based reason for your belief.

 

Well actually, my answer is no. You see, if you have a stone circle (with all the stones interconnected [touching one another], then you have something that is tangible... the stones. If however, the stones are not touching one another, then you do not have a 'circle' but instead have the broken circumference of what would be a circle if the stones were touching.

Now, what do stone circles have to do with feelings and emotions outside of being hit or smashed by one of those stones?