pears

I'm not commenting on the content of what was said since I know next to nothing about neuroscience, but I don't think that's a poisoning the well fallacy, rather a general statement that simply requires further information or backup.

Yes I agree - if something has no beginning then it is uncreated. If something has not been created then I don't understand how it can exist. I agree that the ideas, the options you present are incomprehensible (to me). I'm not sure that makes them illogical though. But then what is logic? Is it human comprehensibility? Is logic a human construct? In any case, one of your three options must have occurred, since here we are. I prefer the "it came from something else" line because "something else" is not defined and therefore cannot be expected to be necessarily comprehensible to human minds.

And can you prove that claim using rigorous logic? Or is it just a hunch?

Does it go against logic? Or does it go against the ability of a human mind to comprehend such a concept?

Not just the press no - I said a liberal democracy with a free press - there are more features to a liberal democracy than a free press and I said "some degree" of trust. OK I don't know so much about how liberal democracy is acheived in the US. When it comes to a lot of conspiracy theories I generally don't have enough faith in the competence of governments to pull off such a thing.

That's a fair point, though I think that if you live in a liberal democracy with a free press you can have some degree of trust in the system - not that that makes it perfect, or guarantees it is curruption-free by any means.

I'm not sure how trusting them in the absence of evidence of a conspiracy and then stating you'll review that trust in the presence of evidence can be called 'blind trust'.

When we talk about time we usually specify the direction (e.g. in an hour's time or an hour ago) not sure if that makes it a scalar or a vector though :/ Would it be a scalar if it was never used in reference to it's direction? What would be an example of such a usage?

Me too

But testability and repeatability only have meaning once you have denied solipsism, otherwise you are putting the cart before the horse. But what does "it works" mean? You mean "it works" in the objective reality you have assumed exists by denying solipsism?

Why? You are saying that because the perception is persistent that means it's not an illusion but how do you logically come to that conclusion from that premise? Yes. Me too. But "better explanation" is an opinion, it's not a logical necessity. It's testable but the results of those experiments are perceived. If the perception is wrong then the testability is irrelevant.

Ringer makes a good post here. If you want to learn about evolution but are suspicious of it then you might like sites like http://biologos.org/ which is run by christians who reject creationism and Intelligent Design and embrace evolution as taught by mainstream science.

Why? How could you know? I don't understand what you mean here about sceince has no claim to life. I agree that given our scientific understanding (which is based on an assumption of objective reality - including the objective reality of brains) that minds depend on physical brains. However in order to reach that conclusion I have had to accept that brains exist in an objective way. I have to assume that the things I experience are real. What if they're not? What if all I see (and that includes brains) is an illusion. If it's an illusion then all scientific knowledge is under question including the dependence of minds on brains. I happen to agree that minds like ours depend on brains based on scientific understanding but I cannot be certain of it without making the assumptions that brains exist. I can leave solipsism behind and step out into science but it's not science that leads me out of solipsism it's a philosophical assumption (and a bit of pragmatism perhaps) .

Villain is right. In solipsism all that can be truly known is our own mind (and by mind we mean only mental, conscious experiences). We infer objective reality through our conscious experience. We infer the brain as a part of objective reality because we can have a conscious experience of a brain (by seeing it when we dissect something). Science assumes objective reality and is thus based on the assumption that solipsism is false. Therefore I don't think one can approach solipsism scientifically but rather the other way round: we approach science based on the assumption that solipsism is fase. That's my understanding of things anyway.

Unless matter is somehow a part of God, one ultimate substance arranged in different ways to produce complexity?

My understanding is that photons (and similar) are not *actual* waves but sometimes it's useful to think of them as *like* waves. In the same way they are not *actual* particles, but sometimes it'se useful to think of them as being *like* particles.

What do you need it for?

Yippee another one The poll still shows a more than 6:1 ratio though

For me it's one of those "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" moments.

Is there not some kind of trickery going on there?

I think in terms of ethics it would be important to know whether a robot/simulation is conscious or not. If you are conscious then you can suffer. I agree that pain is a kind of consciousness. I would say anything with an experience element is consciousness. However I don't think we can know for certain whether ants feel pain, or whether they are conscious at all. I would suspect that they do have some level of consciousness - but that is all we can ever do in the realm of consciousness: suspect; and the further away we get from our own species the harder it is to know (whether things are conscious at all, or what the nature of their consciousness is i.e. what it *feels* like).

Sounds a little bit cheaty?

I just looked up the brain simulation you talked about. That sounds fascinating. Thanks. If we are talking about consciousness, then since we understand so little about how brains produce consciousness I think it's hard to speculate whether non-biological brains could ever produce the same. Again it depends on what we mean by think. Also how would we ever 'know' that a robot is conscious? That could be a big problem for science.

No of course it doesn't matter if someone is male/female/hippo (though I imagine a hippo might find it difficult to login/perform experiments with those big clumsy hands). But I was curious. I work in a very male-dominated environment and noticed that I'd only seen one other regular contributor with the female gender box ticked so i wondered if science was similarly male-dominated. It would seem a shame to me if women were as poorly represented in science as they are in computing. Similarly it seems a shame if they aren't as interested in science as men are (and so are under-represented in sites like this). This is not because I would prefer to have discussions with women or want to judge someone on their gender but because I would like to see women engaging with and enjoying science. I don't like to think of a gender as missing out.