Author Topic: On the ethics of consciousness  (Read 4803 times)

Radical_Dreamer

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #30 on: February 12, 2012, 06:17:54 am »
I think you and I have a fairly similar view, Thought, although we're coming at it from opposite ends. The key practical difference seems to be that I view things as more of a spectrum where as you view seem to view things as a series of tiers.

Thought

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #31 on: February 12, 2012, 10:00:56 pm »
Chi_z, the problem is that even if you were right in your suppositions, they would still be meaningless. Consider what the symptoms of vitamin C deficiency are: easy bruising, slow healing, lethargy, and gum disease. No one with scurvy is going to be "tripping balls." Thus, saying that a source isn't credible because they lack vitamin c is an ad hominem attack: you are attempting to reject a claim based on an irrelevant characteristic.

Even if scurvy did cause people to hallucinate, your basic supposition is still false. You seem to be mistaking ancient peoples for sailors on really long voyages. The truth is, ancient peoples did not lack nutrition, on a national level, to the extent that intense symptoms would appear. Take medieval Europeans, for example: a peasant diet generally consisted of ale, bread, peas, and beans. Where's vitamin C in that diet? In the peas. Now, this isn't to say that peasants were getting enough vitamin C to meet modern standards, but they were generally getting enough to avoid scurvy. But, you might notice, I am talking of peasants. What of monks? They were land owners. Their supply of food was far more stable than that of peasants, and their diet slightly more varied (such as with animal products, some of which also contain notable levels of vitamin C). Indeed, perhaps you can think of some European monk who is famous for his peas?

Most symptoms of nutrient deficiency are more physiological and less psychological. To be fair, irritability and depression are common psychological effects, but neither of those come close to hallucinations.

In short, malnutrition is entirely irrelevant to what you are attempting to use it for.

chi_z

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #32 on: February 13, 2012, 10:26:17 am »
you're hung up on the vitamin c thing, which is  a small part of it. your whole post was about that....if they are missing vitamin c,  they are missing a boatload of things. lack of sun, for one, countless antioxidants, extremely low glycogen, blood sugar, etc, combined with general malnourishment and extreme 'germiness' of the times. once again, during winters the monks would flog themselves until they 'saw god', just a trip from a malnourished over powered brain is all. the wounds would not heal (lack of vitamin c) and fester, all sorts of shit gets into the bloodstream and the brain can't handle that (neither can the liver due to malnourishment), and voila. and then with the bedouins we have amanita muscaria, severe dehydration,  lack of knowledge of science, etc. ezekiel's wheel? c'mon, either that's a trip or a ufo. graham hancock anyone? terrence mckenna?

this is a good introduction into similar subjects, of the vast amount of books from names already mentioned, especially mckenna as there is an incredible amount of scientific backing in his work http://psychonautdocs.com/docs/thevarieties.pdf
« Last Edit: February 13, 2012, 10:35:19 am by chi_z »

Thought

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #33 on: February 13, 2012, 05:18:30 pm »
This is an unfortunate digression, since it relates not at all to the topic of the thread. However, since logic and reason are important to ethics, it seems at least in part to be justifiable to address your fallacies.

I used vitamin C because that was the one you named, but let me be clear: malnutrition can’t cause the symptoms that you are ascribing to it. I have specifically checked lack of calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Niacin, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Omega fats, Cholesterol, Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, Iron, and Iodine. I don't doubt that you can find something edible that I haven't yet looked into, but if you would like to present it, then please do your research first. Make sure that lacking that nutrient can cause hallucinations and then please be sure that the people groups in question actually lacked it.

You will note that I had originally criticized your nutrition argument and did not say anything about your other, newer "claims." Since it seems that you would like me to, allow me to provide a small sampling concerning amanita muscaria. Along the way I will specifically identify those elements that your argument was lacking.

First, with an argument such as yours, you need to establish possibility. This is where you failed with nutrition, but you did better with the mushrooms: they actually can cause psychedelic episodes. However, you stopped here, so your argument remains an appeal to probability fallacy. It is necessary for something to be possible, but mere possibility tells us nothing useful.

Second, you need to establish the accessibility of the mushrooms. This would have several steps. The first is if the mushroom grows in the necessary regions. It grows in woodlands, so that rules out the desert-dwelling Bedouins, but not the swamp-draining European monks. Next, you would need to establish the individual’s access to the mushroom. A traveling mystic might be able to gather some, but an anchorite would only have had the strict diet that was provided to him.

Third, you need to establish intent. Why would the individual in question have taken the mushroom? If they knew it was psychedelic, where did they find that out from? If they didn't know, why did they eat an unknown mushroom? This plays into the repetition that we often see in the experiences of holy individuals: they encounter "god" several times. In short, you have to show that the individual intended to take them.

Fourth, you need to explain the public reaction. By far the majority of individuals who claimed to have talked to god were labeled crazy, drunkards, or possessed. Why, then, was the individual in question labeled otherwise? This is actually a very fascinating subject, but one that seems unlikely to interest you. However, at its most relevant level, successful holy men and women in Europe were watched closer than modern celebrities to see if they were faking their experiences.

Fifth, you need to explain the gap in the records. Despite there being numerous texts on how to obtain a religious experience (including texts that recommended mortification of the flesh), psychedelic substances do not appear. Nor are there records regarding either successful or unsuccessful "saints" who used them. As John King noted, if these mushrooms were responsible for any religious experiences, then that is history's best kept secret, since there is no documentation of it.

Amusingly, your arguments could possibly apply to St. Francis of Assisi (the Elvis of saints), if you were able to answer each point, but they couldn't apply to Julian of Norwich, who was an anchoress and contemplative mystic (that is, she didn't have access to psychedelics and didn't beat herself).

Do keep in mind that I have only given and supported the statement that logical fallacies (such as the ones you have used) do not belong in a discussion involving reason and logic. This would also includes the argumentum ad logicam: although your arguments are fallacious, that doesn't mean that your ultimate conclusion (that the bible is bunk) is wrong.

chi_z

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #34 on: February 13, 2012, 06:06:44 pm »
once again, malnourishment is the smallest part of it, you're leaving out the fact that people had no idea what germs were, whipped the piss outta themselves, and let the wounds fester. 'and then I saw god'. you of course don't get that just because you haven't ate an orange in 4 months, you get that because you are incredibly unintelligent and do everything to make your brain hate you. guess we'll have to agree to disagree, unless you or I decided to willingly malnourish ourselves, beat the piss out of ourselves, and decide to write stuff down. there's all sorts of drugs available in the desert, though dehydration does result in hallucinations.  on the slim chance these people weren't either tripping balls or had mental disorders, if they were in their right mind they were extremely evil to make things up out of thin air and claim it the truth to other humans. religion is by far the single worst thing to ever come about from human existence.

Thought

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #35 on: February 14, 2012, 06:33:20 pm »
guess we'll have to agree to disagree...

Not really. You continue to make fallacious assertions: you can agree to drop the issue, of course, but insofar as I support reason and logic, I must continue to hound your arguments. I do apologize that this must be: as I noted before, I am not claiming that your final conclusion (that religion is bunk) is wrong, merely that your arguments do not belong in the mouth of someone who claims to hold to reason and logic.

You are making the same logical fallacies as you started out making. If your argument is that disease caused delirium, then at least then you are stating a valid possibility. However, if that is your argument, then malnutrition and mortification are only relevant insofar as they lower the immune system and expose the body to infecting agents. Since one can (and usually does) become sick without these elements, they are extraneous. I still call them ad hominem attacks, but if you would wish, we can be kind and call them red herrings instead.

As for disease itself, as noted, science is quite aware that some sicknesses can cause delirium. But it is an “argument from probability” fallacy to then suppose that because a given religious figure COULD have had delirium resulting from illness, they actually had delirium resulting from illness. We can use many of the same questions I asked about psychedelic about diseases. Did delirium-causing diseases exist in Europe? Yes. Could holy individuals in Europe be infected by such diseases? Yes. The gap in the records is still quite problematic, however.

I don't doubt that you reject most medieval documents as reliable sources. However, by knowing the biases of the authors, we can still obtain pertinent information. Europeans in the middle ages had the perception of a holy illness. Saints were expected to become ill, or to have some malady, as a sign that they were particularly pious. There was a high level of motivation for religious figures to appear sick, and there was a high level of motivation for their vitae to contain this information. As such, we should expect an over-representation of sickness when compared to reality, rather than an under-representation. However, in studying vitae, one quickly realizes that few individuals were sick at the time of their first religious experiences. Some did indeed become sick later in life, but the types of sicknesses described are rarely in line with known diseases that cause delirium. Most appear, in all honesty, to be the result of hypochondriac. And, of course, only a portion of those who experienced delirium would have experienced it in such a way that would have been acceptable to society at large (more would-be saints were ostracized than accepted). Furthermore, as the Middle Ages progressed, the number of saints who experienced physical diseases decreased ("spiritual" manifestations became more popular: I am sure you can postulate why this might have been).

The result of what we know about medieval holy men and women is that only a portion were ever ill when they had a religious experience, and only a few of those who were ill sometime in their life were ill when they first had a religious experience. The logical conclusion from this is that your "slim chance" is actually the reverse. There is only a slim chance that any given religious figure was on drugs or in a sickness induced delirium when they had a religious experience. Your claim to the contrary has no basis in logic, reason, or the evidence.

Your new claim about dehydration likewise doesn't stand up to a basic scholarly inquiry. Yes, severe dehydration can cause delirium. Desert peoples survive, however, because they know how to stay hydrated. In order to dehydration to be a valid explanation, you would need to explain the extraordinary circumstances that led someone who normally could stay hydrated to become so dehydrated that they became delirious (and, in turn, explain how they stopped the delirium before they died of dehydration, so as to spread their message).

But again, even if all your claims were accurate, they are still meaningless. Let us discard those who were malnourished, those who were injured, those who were sick, and those who were dehydrated: there are still individuals who have had religious experiences. The twirling dervishes are a wonderful example. Since they don't suffer from any of your proposed causes of religious experiences, will you accept their messages as being really from god?

If I may be so bold as to assume your answer before you give it, I suspect it is "of course not." Again, this is why your arguments are so ineffectual: you are addressing the circumstances around religious experiences, when it is really religious experiences themselves that you reject. These experiences are actually fairly well studied (given their religious nature). Modern scientists know what behaviors can cause them, and they know what happens in the brain when these occur. Some scientists even propose that they can artificially induce them. Suffice it to say, religious experiences are real, at least in the sense that they can occur in healthy, sane individuals, even if not in the sense that a person is really connecting with god. You gain nothing by discarding the circumstances of just a few such experiences.

Perhaps you'd prefer to instead attack the experiences themselves? You are welcome to, but I warn you, you'll have no better luck there than you have with any of your other "arguments."

chi_z

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #36 on: February 14, 2012, 11:26:26 pm »
people can get lost in the desert. things happen and you could lose your food/water supply. even if the person died as a result, whats to stop them from attempting to write down as best they could the wacky things they thought they were seeing.


 "they lower the immune system and expose the body to infecting agents"


yea I know, thats exactly the point I've made on several occasions now. When you are lacking nutrients and then proceed to whip the piss outta yourself, let the wounds fester and are already a germy mofo as is, your body and brain can't take it. thus fugged up stuff happens to you, unstable reality whether from visual or aural hallucinations or any number of things related to severe treatment of the body. what are the chances that a lot of these decently nourished non whipthepissoutthemselves holy men were under the influence of a mental disorder?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 08:21:06 am by chi_z »

Thought

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #37 on: February 15, 2012, 12:50:13 pm »
Very low. Again, religious experiences are a scientifically studied phenomenon. Perhaps you are misunderstanding the word "scientifically"? I do mean modern science, with ongoing studies, published in well respected, peer-reviewed journals. Michael Persinger's work is perhaps the most famous in the field. He even created a device that is supposed to artificially produce a religion experience. Richard Dawkins even subjected himself to this device. The point being, we know enough about religious experiences to know many triggers. Andrew Newberg, for example, has identified repetitive and rhythmic activities as being able to produce them. Prayer and meditation alone can produce a religious experience, as can dance (which including the Dervishes), physical exercise, and sex. Psychedelic substances can cause it, as can pain (such as produced from mortification of the flesh). So can stroke and seizures. Notably, they aren't particularly common during times of illness.

Again, a problem with your approach is that it doesn't address the larger issue of religious experiences. Even assuming all your factual errors were correct, and even assuming all your fallacious arguments were valid, you still haven't said anything meaningful.

But, you have given numerous factual errors, of which I've pointed out a few. You have given numerous fallacious arguments, of which I've identified a few. Indeed, the very last sentence in your previous post is a logical fallacy!

Quote
what are the chances that a lot of these decently nourished non whipthepissoutthemselves holy men were under the influence of a mental disorder?

That is the "appeal to probability" fallacy! Again! And, I would still maintain, an ad hominem attack, since you are attributing a negative trait to a group without evidence. And a red herring, since RE's have occurred to individual without mental disorders.

None of this means that religions weren't started by individuals who were "tripping balls," but to make that claim, you need evidence, you need logical arguments, and you lack both.

chi_z

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #38 on: February 15, 2012, 05:21:49 pm »
I blame the misunderstanding on the internet. I wasn't making an argument in that last sentence I was asking a legitimate questeeown.

Thought

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #39 on: February 15, 2012, 06:13:25 pm »
Alas, questions still have argumentative weight, and thus can contain a logical fallacy. Indeed, the "loaded question" fallacy can only take question form!

Anywho, I think my point's been made, so unless you wish to discuss it further, I'll be quiet now.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 06:18:47 pm by Thought »

chi_z

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #40 on: February 15, 2012, 09:04:04 pm »
this reminds me, we don't seem to have a religion thread on this board do we?

Sajainta

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Re: On the ethics of consciousness
« Reply #41 on: February 15, 2012, 11:16:09 pm »
this reminds me, we don't seem to have a religion thread on this board do we?

There are a LOT of religion threads in General Discussion.  They haven't been updated in a while, but better to necromance those than start a new one.