Community Rules
Rule 1: Be respectful and inclusive.
Treat others with respect, and maintain a positive atmosphere.
Rule 2: No harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or trolling.
Avoid any form of harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or offensive behavior.
Rule 3: Engage in constructive discussions.
Contribute to meaningful and constructive discussions that enhance scientific understanding.
Rule 4: No AI-generated answers.
Strictly prohibit the use of AI-generated answers. Providing answers generated by AI systems is not allowed and may result in a ban.
Rule 5: Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Adhere to community guidelines and comply with instructions given by moderators.
Rule 6: Use appropriate language and tone.
Communicate using suitable language and maintain a professional and respectful tone.
Rule 7: Report violations.
Report any violations of the community rules to the moderators for appropriate action.
Rule 8: Foster a continuous learning environment.
Encourage a continuous learning environment where members can share knowledge and engage in scientific discussions.
Rule 9: Source required for answers.
Provide credible sources for answers. Failure to include a source may result in the removal of the answer to ensure information reliability.
By adhering to these rules, we create a welcoming and informative environment where science-related questions receive accurate and credible answers. Thank you for your cooperation in making the Ask Science community a valuable resource for scientific knowledge.
We retain the discretion to modify the rules as we deem necessary.
Any reason to doubt physicalism?
Describe "doubt" in purely physical terms.
A possibility which an intelligent organism discounts in decision-making.
Those are conceptual terms.
What is doubt's shape? Its size? Its mass? Of what elements is it composed?
If physicalism is true, then either those questions have answers or doubt does not exist.
“Huh well that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists”
Observed particles behave different.
Any reason to doubt physicalism? Is there anything in science that says “Huh well that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists”
If it had no basis in the physical, then what would it mean to say that it "exists?" How you define "existence" is a very big philosophical question. Excuse me while I nerd the fuck out about something.
Physics tells us that the observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter. However, we can sometimes observe objects leaving the observable universe. This is because of complicated physics reasons:
Physical space is expanding with time. Everything is getting farther apart from everything else, and the more distance there is between two points, the faster the space in between them is expanding. At a sufficiently large distance, the rate at which the distance between the two points is increasing, is faster than the speed of light. Neither point is actually moving faster than the speed of light, it's only the space between them that is expanding. This might be hard to understand, but think of it as if you drew two dots on a balloon and then inflated it.
Once an object gets far enough away from us that the space between is expanding faster than the speed of light, it becomes impossible for us to make any further observations about that thing. This is actually what defines the bounds of "the observable universe."
So, what happens to objects that leave the observable universe? Strictly speaking, it's impossible to say. Intuitively, we would expect that they're still there doing their thing and obeying the same physical laws as when we could observe them. But, if you told me that the stars simply vanish, or that they magically transform into butterflies as soon as they leave, there's no evidence that anyone could ever produce that would falsify that belief, because, by definition, there is no way to observe what happens outside of the observable universe. If we are defining what exists based on what is physically observable, then it follows that things outside the observable universe do not exist, even if it really seems like they should.
My conclusion from this line of thought is that existence is a relational property. I am not prepared to reject the idea that a thing has to be in some way observable in order to exist, but in that case, nothing can exist in isolation. Because for a thing to be observable means that there must exist a being which could observe it. This could be said to contradict physicalism, because physicalism would say that the material world exists regardless of our senses. I would say that the physical world only exists so long as there are beings capable of sensing it, and, should all sentient beings ever become extinct, the physical world would no longer exist in any meaningful sense.
No reason to doubt it.
It doesn't mean that there's no soul, god, or after life, just none that we can prove in any meaningful way.
If you're okay with an amoral God, that one's plausible but unfalsifiable, true. To have an afterlife you need a soul, though, and every part of the mind is right there in flesh for surgeons to watch break down.
I personally don't bother worrying too much about things we can't prove or disprove like that, but it's important to remember that just because we can't prove something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. My philosophy is that if there is some sort of beyond that whatever is out there is similar enough to ours that they'd be able to empathize with the decisions I make and judge me accordingly, assuming there even would be some sort of judgement process. I'm at peace with it. I was raised evangelical, and lots of my friends were. One of my atheist friends used to have nightmares about an eternity in hell. I don't think anyone who loves us could do that. And if whatever is there is different enough that our decisions don't matter then it's arbitrary anyways and there's no sense worrying. It's not about "being okay with an amoral god." It's just an acknowledgement that the idea of a reality we can't prove further than our own could exist.
But anyone making definitive statements about something like that shouldn't be trusted. Which rules out pretty much all religions because many make claims like that.
I'm guessing you knew what I meant there, right? Why would a moral god make a planet where most people die in agony, usually as kids, for most of history? That's direct evidence against.
If we're talking about unprovable things literally anything is possible. Because it's unprovable.
this seems more like metaphysics, or philosophy than actual science, this would be more appropiate in that discussion. you odnt want to mix religion into science.
I think the framing of questions like this assumes that there are certain “physical” things that follow one intrinsic set of laws, and certain other things that follow a fundamentally different, incommensurate set of laws.
But we don’t actually have direct knowledge of any intrinsic laws, physical or otherwise—the best we have are a set of purely provisional laws we’ve made up and regularly revise on the basis of cumulative evidence. And our method for revising these provisional laws requires that any new evidence that contradicts a law, invalidates it—provisional laws must apply to everything without exception. If we give ourselves the out that contradictory evidence can be attributed to “non-physical” causes, we can never invalidate anything nor update our models. So dualistic models are inherently unscientific—not because they’re wrong, but because starting with such assumptions is incompatible with the scientific method.