[dlorde]

Why not send it to me as private mail, and I'll quote it in a post?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

... I do not understand why we ,as human beings , are reduced to just neurophysiological , chemical , hormonal ...mechanical processes , unless we view life and the universe through the materialistic lense exclusively...

That's all we need to explain it. It's a form of Ockham's Razor; if you can explain observations using the structure of existing knowledge, there is no need to introduce new phenomena. When the Emperor Napoleon read Pierre-Simon Laplace's discourse on secular variations of the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter, he asked "'But where is God in all this?"; Laplace replied "Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis". Quite.

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one,just usually , not always .
The problem is : we are not just material mechanical processes, no matter how materialists  try to reduce us to just that via their materialistic keyhole or tunnel vision  .

( Try to take a look at the past to discover the very genesis of mechanical materialism introduced to the natural sciences by Descartes for the first time in medieval Europe ,and then afterwards to modern philosophy by others, to science as a whole later on , and elsewhere , in order to find out about the Eurocentric cultural social economic political historic ideologicak roots of materialism as a rebellion against medieval christianity , if you wanna know about the true nature of materialism as an Eurocentric  ideology  which has those false "universal, objective, true ) claims , post-modernism had largely refuted and discredited as such , even though post-modernism is driven by neo-Cartesianism )

Science can indeed approach us , nature , the universe ....from the material (=is not always synonymous of materialism ) perspective only , but that does not mean that that material side is what all there is : can you see the difference ?

I did not talk about God either in my statements here above you quoted, ironically enough .

Some scientists even say that even human love is just ...chemistry, to put it simply : weird .

The hormonal and neurological basis of many emotions is known in some detail, but knowing the why and the how doesn't make being angry or afraid or in love any less of an experience. For a detailed explanation of how consciousness is generated and structured, how emotions produce the feelings they do, and so-on, have a read of Antonio Damasio's 'Self Comes To Mind'. For a perspective on why knowing the science behind our experience only enhances it, see Feynman's 'Ode on a Flower' video.
I will try to take a look at those links you provided > Thanks.
But, you did not answer my question relating to the "scientific fact " that human love is just ...chemistry : explaining the neurophysiological chemical hormonal ...biological thus side of love does not mean that that biological side of love is all what there is , as many materialists say.

Quantum mechanics is weird and disturbing, but physicists don't reject it - because it works; it explains what we observe.

I used the word "weird " in the sense that it makes no sense to say that love is just chemistry .as many materialists say .

I should have said that science can say nothing about the natures of both human consciousness and of our inner lives, can it ?

Depends what you mean by 'nature'; it can tell you how consciousness is generated, why it behaves the way it does (for a fascinating explanation of the interaction and relationship between conscious awareness and the subconscious, check out Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'), and so-on. An indication of the power of an analytic approach, when applied effectively, is shown by a study of how we process colour perception in the brain, which predicted we should be able to perceive totally new colours that are not normally visible, and then demonstrated how to do it.. this paper, Chimerical Colours, actually describes and demonstrates those novel colours. If your monitor is correctly calibrated, or you have a photo-accurate printer, you can see them for yourself. Literally an eye-opener.

Thanks for those links .
I meant by "nature " what consciousness or our inner lives actually are : science can say nothing about just that , simply because the natures of those 2 are immaterial .

i am not convinced ,  if our consciousness was produced by the evolution of our brain , evolution as a matter of chance, survival, accident , evolution as a "blind " process , then it's pretty logical to question the validity of our knowledge in general itself as a product of that "blind " evolution , including that concerning evolution itself ...

Am i wrong again ?

Of course it's logical to question the validity of our knowledge - if you read Kahneman's book you'll discover just how unreliable our thinking processes are. It's a product of evolution and is only just 'good enough' for us to have survived. If it wasn't good enough we wouldn't have survived; perhaps some other hominid would have taken our niche. Any more than just good enough would have been an unnecessary drain on resources; brains are very energy-demanding, and skull size is limited by the female pelvis; so it's only 'good enough' by a process of literal elimination.

(The so-called new science =neurotheology , explains only the material biological neurophysiological electrical chemical..sides of some presumed religious experiences though, otherwise , if we say that those true religious experiences are just organic or epileptic malfunctions or just evolutionary survival strategies : then is our scientific knowledge itself via our senses and brains is also a...delusion  or malfunction or just an evolutionary survival strategy then = its validity is questionable )
So, our thinking  (The evolution of our senses and brains )  was/ is  just a survival strategy and hence our knowledge is just that also as a result ,which also means that our very knowledge of evolution itself are  just  survival strategies :  a paradox :  how can all that knowledge be valid or true enough then, including our knowledge concerning evolution itself then  ?

Even when we consciously focus our awareness on problems we make silly mistakes and blunders. This is a major reason progress was so slow until we finally developed and refined rules for critical thinking and a methodology for the reliable acquisition of knowledge - the scientific method. With these tools to assist us, and by following their rules, we can minimise the errors due to cognitive biases and intuitive thinking, and make the most of the limited faculties we have. Here we can see how culture itself has an evolutionary selective advantage, out-competing less organised social systems.

The same above mentioned paradox can be applied to  these words  of yours  :
How could  those evolved methods of critical thinking ,including the scientific method , be reliable , let alone valid , if we take into consideration the "fact " that they were /are just survival strategies , thanks to the evolutionary complexity of our brains ,which has "given birth " to our consciousness then ?

Second : how come that Darwin's theory of evolution which was only concerned with the biological evolution, be extended to the so-called evolutions of cultures , thought , consciousness, politics, economy, science, ethics......that theory does not cover as such ?

Third : how come that some primitive forms of cultures , some primitive forms of religions , and even some "evolved " religions ...how come they still exist ? 

Materialism which views even life itself as just  material processes   exclusively   can only come up with material or materialistic interpretations of scientific results .

Of course. I notice you keep using loaded language 'reduced to just...', 'just material processes', 'only come up with', etc. I refer you to Feynman's argument. It helps if you understand the many layers of complexity at each scale from sub-atomic particles to the human scale and beyond, and the many emergent behaviours on each level that contribute to the complexity of the next (e.g. knowing everything there is to know about a water molecule won't tell you that water is wet; that's an emergent property of water molecules in bulk). Check out this dynamic visualisation of different the scales of the universe. I suggest that your implicit denigration of materialism is another form of argument from incredulity - 'there must be more than this'. I was brought up in a Christian Catholic tradition, taught by Benedictine monks, but I dropped that belief system when my eyes were opened to the beauty, complexity and sheer awesomeness of the real, material world around us. It made their absurd contradictory god and the associated rituals seem meaningless. I could see the social and cultural advantages believers got from their religious club, but the rest was all wishful thinking, completely without evidence, fueled by a wish to belong, guilt,  and a fear of death. There is more evidence for the tooth fairy (I used to get cash for my baby teeth!). But enough autobiography.

Thanks for sharing some of your biography with me , appreciate indeed : t's good to have a human touch to this discussion .

I am afraid , your own personal experience  with religion or with christianity in this case (Catholicism ) is just that : your own subjective personal experience : it's good to know about , but it cannot be generalized or be valid  .

I know some christians who have the exact opposite to yours personal experiences with christianity  though .

My own experience with islam is exactly the opposite of yours also : the more i read , learn, watch...about modern thought in the broader sense , science , art, literature ...the more i read about other religions, cultures , thoughtstreams ...the more i get closer to islam, instead of getting away from it : all those different cultures, religions, thoughtstreams , science ...do bring me closer to islam , ironically enough ....


Or as the great philosopher Muhammed Iqbal once said : western modern thought is just an extension (That had taken/takes its won materialistic though...path )of the islamic original one : most , if not all the goodies, of western modern thought were already developed by the early muslims ...

Note : Islam  covers both the material as well as the spiritual mental intellectual ...sides of life   by the way : islam says yes also to the material life indeed and islam considers the material side of life as necessary to the spiritual mental psychological intellectual  ...evolution of believers and of mankind in general  ,Islam deals with the material life moderately though ,  while christianity  almost rejects the material side of life ....

Finate note here : The western enlightenment had made /has been making this following lethal unscientific thought error unfounded generalization :

western enlightenment rejected / rejects all religions, simply because it rejected / rejects christianity : the west had / has some good reasons to reject christianity though .

All religions are certainly not the same , even though they might have some common grounds and common properties with each other  ...

The point is, regardless of what you'd like and other wishful thinking, what's happening is that observations are being explained as simply as we can in terms of testable knowledge that makes predictions. So far, there is no requirement for any non-materialistic or non-physical explanations, and, understandably, no evidence has been found of any such thing. There are a few areas where we don't have enough information, or it's hard to see how to apply our knowledge acquisition rules (singularities. i.e. black holes, the origin of the universe, the nature of subjective experience, etc.), but even if we find that some such things are inevitably unexplainable, that doesn't make it reasonable to invent some non-materialistic fantasy around them. It is OK to say "we don't [yet] know".

I can turn your own words upside down as follows :
How can you be so sure then of the "fact " that what escapes or lays outside of the realms of science , reason, logic ....does not exist as such ? You tell me ...

Does the abscence of evidence always mean the evidence of abscence ?

I have been following some interesting debates between prominent atheists such as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris ,Dennett,Michael Schermer  ...and between some prominent christian thinkers or scientists such  as Dr D'Souza , John Lennox ...on youtube mainly : the latters do have some counter-arguments that would perplex you as they perplexed those atheists as well ,and vice versa : so, your argumentation and those of those atheists  are very relative indeed : so, don't think your argumentation here is waterproof, the same goes for mine . 

What then if there is a whole universe out there , whole levels of reality as i like to put , which escape any of our observations, reason, empirics,logic ....?

What then ? have you ever considered that possibility or option ? You should have as a rational scientific person , don't you think ? I am not referring here to that famous pragmatic argument of Pascal though, simply because one should believe in God and act accordingly in the process unconditionally  , not out of fear or out of expecting some reward from God for that :

Or as 1 famous ancient mystic woman muslim : Rabia Al Adaouia : she was very known in the medieval christian world , as this muslim woman said in 1 of her mystic poetry :

Something like the following :

Oh My Beloved God ,if i  happen to worship you out of fear for your hellfire, then burn me with it ,

And if i happen to worship you out of greed in relation to your paradise , then cast me out of it ...or don't let me enter in it .

Do you believe in the existence of the human soul by the way ?

Not as some paranormal or supernatural essence of self that transcends death, no. As a metaphor for the sum of an individual's mental life - experiences, beliefs, social, cultural, & moral stances, etc., yes.

I wonder what that means , if you happen to see life exclusively from the materialistic lense .

The Qur'an tells us ,for example, that only God knows about the very nature of our souls : i see a human soul as an evolutionary process on earth , which will keep on evolving after death : death as just the beginning of our most ultimate evolution .

No, that's not a pattern: when i say that science is not the only valid source of knowledge , i actually mean materialism in science , materialism which excludes all non-materialistic paradigms ...materialism which considers itself to be scientific and true exclusively

You misunderstand it; it simply has no need of non-materialistic paradigms - or anything else that has no discernable effect on the universe

.

You are arguing like someone who happens to look from a keyhole   ,while pretending there is nothingelse out there , unfortunately enough .

Materialism is no more than a keyhole to me .

How can you be so sure there is nothingelse out there then ?

"Science (and reason, logic ...) is the only valid source of knowledge " is the "conviction" of many scientists , especially the materialistic ones : that's what  i meant also ...

People are inherently prone to irrationality, magical thinking, superstition, and other shortcuts and simplifications. Scientists are human too. However, the statement is ambiguous; one could argue that a child playing in a sandpit, trying out ideas, seeing what succeeds and what fails, learning about sand and structure, is doing science - not applying an explicit methodology but observing, hypothesising, and experimenting. By this view any empirically based knowledge aquistion could be called science. One could equally argue that by 'valid' they mean suitable for addition to the established body of existing scientific knowledge; reliable, repeatable, independently verifiable, and so-on. I suspect the latter is closer.

Have you become an apologist for materialism ?

There are indeed some superstitions, fairytales, illusions ,delusions ...out there , but that's no reason to say that all what there is out there is just that : illusions, superstitions ....

Islam, for example , came also in order to debunk some illusions, superstitions, fairytales, delusions, idolatery........so, that's 1 of the reasons why the repeated urgent call for critical thinking , reason, logic ....the scientific method are so embedded in the Qur'an....

what other valid sources of knowledge do you accept as such, outside of reason, logic , science ?

Depends what you mean by 'valid'. I accept imagination, reported experience, personal perception, etc., as valid sources of various kinds of knowledge, but I don't accept them as necessarily having any direct relevance or import to the body of accumulated human knowledge; i.e., not necessarily valid in a scientific sense.

Why don't you then accept intuition, even thought it's not always reliable, feeling as a thought-project in the making , even though feeling is not always reliable , as relatively valid sources of knowledge ?

Taking into consideration the very evolutionary nature of our epistemology and scientific method , science ....what if , in the future, mankind would discover some other reliable sources of knowledge we do  not know nothing about yet right now ?

Are you gonna keep on being agnostic about that also ?

What if humankind would develop , in the future , some sophisticated , not exclusively materialistic, psychology, science ....that would be able to approach mystic and the true religious experiences properly ? (Materialism will be history, soon  enough = inevitable = just a matter of time : many scientists whistleblowers such as Linda Jean Shepherd and many others have turned their back on that exclusive materialistic approach in science and elsewhere by the way )

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ dlorde :

 The following is the rest of my reply to your above mentioned post :  We should see a message display reporting the potential exceeding length  of a post : That did not happen to be the case when i tried to post my reply on many occasions : I am very embarrassed as a result haha :


Materialism has been becoming a kindda orthodox conservative fanatic religion , science and humanity will get  rid of , soon enough : materialism that has been turning science into a kindda exclusive religion : you know that conservatism ,fanatism , extremism, conformism ...in any area of life mean decline at the end ,as that happened to earlier muslims : so, we should learn from history in that regard as well . [/b]

I can learn interesting things about an imaginary world in literature or film that may not be reasonable, logical, or scientific, but it's only valid within the constraints of its particular context. It has no application or validity to the accumulated body of knowledge of the world, except in its indirect effects on the people who find it interesting or entertaining. For me, this also applies to magical thinking, superstition, and paranormal, supernatural and religious beliefs (in which I am very interested, from the point of view of finding people's reasons for believing in such things; sadly, for the most part, they either seem either unable to articulate their reasons, or the reasons are incoherent, failing even simplistic critical examination).

Make no mistake, buddy :

Imagination , feeling , emotion even , and intuition were/are and will be  behind many scientific and other discoveries .

Imagination especially is very important in this regard : that's why Einstein said once :

"Imagination is more important than knowledge " : He knew that first hand : without imagination, he could never have been able to come up with his relativity theory ...

Sometimes, literature and art can convey some universal wisdom or approaches of some truths via symbols, fairytales , stories, fiction ....than science, reason,logic ...can ever do : that's 1 of the reasons why good movies, good literature, good art ...are so appealing , because they know how to touch the human soul, imagination and the deepest human consciousness and sub-consciousness in ways science, reason, logic ...can only dream about doing >

I see  religion, or  islam in this case , as the finest form of art ever also :

Most ,if not all, sophisticated forms of art and literature did come from religion in the broader sense and  from islam :

I am a great fan of world literature and i see how the early muslim great literatures and poetry, art have impacted humanity in unparalleled ways :

See how even Dante's Divine Comedy , for example ,even though it demonizes the pophet of islam , had its original antecedent in the form of "The Epistle of forgiveness " by Al Maari .

" Robinson Crusoe " originated from Ibn Toefail 's " Hay Ibn Yakdhan " ...

Not to mention the islamic impact on Goethe's work ...

I can give you a long list regarding that all . 

I wonder what those ancient Islamic scholars would say.

They would probably say that science , reason , logic , islamic revelation ...are all valid sources of knowledge , i presume , while separating science from islam in the process, i presume .

Quite. As I understand it (very little), they saw their task as discovering the wonders of the material world they found themselves in, without regard to immaterial religious considerations.

No, it's islam that encouraged them and helped them "invent " science as such , in order to discover God's secrets or signs both within and without : that was even a religious duty, a form of worship of God , in order to understand and serve islam and humanity better , with their eyes on the after-life in the same time , because this wordly life is just a phase leading to the other most  and much more  important life : the one after death .

And they did that while separating science from islam in the process.And then, afterwards , they tried to make a synthesis from both islam and science , art , literature, wisdom, poetry and from other forms of knowledge ...in order to approach the ultimate reality .

By the way : i think that the ultimate reality is ...spiritual , but that;s another discussion again .

High regards

Thanks

Abdel

[dlorde]

I used the word "weird " in the sense that it makes no sense to say that love is just chemistry .as many materialists say .

It's supposed to be an ironic joke, like when someone points to a raging ocean and you say "It's just water molecules...". An ironic joke that implicitly acknowledges that chemistry and a couple of billion years of evolution can produce something sublime - via the many levels of emergent behaviours and complexity I mentioned previously.

I meant by "nature " what consciousness or our inner lives actually are : science can say nothing about just that , simply because the natures of those 2 are immaterial .

They are processes.

So, our thinking  (The evolution of our senses and brains )  was/ is  just a survival strategy and hence our knowledge is just that also as a result ,which also means that our very knowledge of evolution itself are  just  survival strategies :  a paradox :  how can all that knowledge be valid or true enough then, including our knowledge concerning evolution itself then  ?

Evolution doesn't really have a strategy, although people do tend to describe it in anthropmorphic terms. We still have the basic drives, survival, reproduction, curiosity, etc., but we also evolved the capability to reason and plan, so we can direct and focus those drives according to rational log-term goals (at least, in principle - in practice, the desire for short term gratification usually wins out). As I said before, we have developed methods & procedures for acquiring reliable knowledge - it works doesn't it? you can talk to almost anyone on the planet just by pushing a few buttons, you can perform wonders that earlier peoples would consider magic. The power of knowledge that works.

Second : how come that Darwin's theory of evolution which was only concerned with the biological evolution, be extended to the so-called evolutions of cultures , thought , consciousness, politics, economy, science, ethics......that theory does not cover as such ?

Darwin's theory was evolution by natural selection. Other forms of evolution have different drivers, but most involve the generation of variants on a theme, of which only the most successful go on to be the source of further variants and so-on. Stepwise development and refinement.

Third : how come that some primitive forms of cultures , some primitive forms of religions , and even some "evolved " religions ...how come they still exist ?

They fill their particular niches; as long as they don't compete directly or significantly enough with the mainstream forms to be the focus of their attentions, they may continue. Having said that, they're all going extinct at an ever accelerating rate. How many languages have been lost in the last 100 years? How many hunter gather tribes remain?, how many nomads?

I am afraid , your own personal experience  with religion or with christianity in this case (Catholicism ) is just that : your own subjective personal experience : it's good to know about , but it cannot be generalized or be valid.

Well, yes; personal experience is personal experience. Whether it can be 'generalized' or be 'valid' rather depends on what you mean. Ultimately, we only have our personal experience, so we have to generalize it or be solipsistic. 'Valid' can mean a multitude of things in the context of personal experience.

How can you be so sure then of the "fact " that what escapes or lays outside of the realms of science , reason, logic ....does not exist as such ? You tell me ..

How can you be so sure science and materialism is a useless waste of time? What, you didn't say that? Tell you what - you stop telling me what I think, and I'll consider continuing the discussion.

What lies beyond science, reason, and logic is, by definition, illogical, irrational, and unscientific. I'm sure there are plenty of ideas that fit the bill. You're welcome to them.

Does the abscence of evidence always mean the evidence of abscence ?

Not necessarily.

don't think your argumentation here is waterproof, the same goes for mine .

I noticed.

What then if there is a whole universe out there , whole levels of reality as i like to put , which escape any of our observations, reason, empirics,logic ....?

What then ? have you ever considered that possibility or option ? You should have as a rational scientific person , don't you think ?

If it doesn't it impinge on us in any detectable way, how would we be aware of its existence? what should/could we do about something we are unaware of?

However, some cosmologists are developing various ideas about a multiverse, in which our universe is one of (possibly infinitely) many, none of which we can ever detect or interact with (well, in most ideas). So, yes, the possibilities have been, and are taken seriously. These ideas are based on the mathematics behind the physical models that explain the development of our own universe; rational speculation based on what is known, and the techniques developed have fed back to help work being done on the physics of our universe, so they're not entirely without practical value.

How can you be so sure there is nothing else out there then ?

How can you be so sure that the universe is shaped like a banana? what - you didn't say that?

There's a multitude of imaginable things I have no evidence of; some are reasonably likely, given what we know about the world; some are fairly unlikely; some very unlikely; and some contradict the most fundamental knowledge we have about the world. A reasonable man treats them accordingly.

Have you become an apologist for materialism ?

Weasel words. Have you stopped beating your wife?

There are indeed some superstitions, fairytales, illusions ,delusions ...out there , but that's no reason to say that all what there is out there is just that : illusions, superstitions ...

No, indeed.

Why don't you then accept intuition, even thought it's not always reliable, feeling as a thought-project in the making , even though feeling is not always reliable , as relatively valid sources of knowledge ?

Did I say that? Intuition can be extremely useful in appropriate contexts. Check out Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink'. When you are expertly familiar with a field, intuition can be one of the most useful tools. In a field you are not expertly familiar with, it can make a complete fool of you. As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool".

Taking into consideration the very evolutionary nature of our epistemology and scientific method , science ....what if , in the future, mankind would discover some other reliable sources of knowledge we do  not know nothing about yet right now ?

Are you gonna keep on being agnostic about that also ?

What am I being agnostic about?

What if humankind would develop , in the future , some sophisticated , not exclusively materialistic, psychology, science ....that would be able to approach mystic and the true religious experiences properly ? (Materialism will be history, soon  enough = inevitable = just a matter of time : many scientists whistleblowers such as Linda Jean Shepherd and many others have turned their back on that exclusive materialistic approach in science and elsewhere by the way )

What if it turns out the Jews were right? what if we're all characters in a simulation? what if I'm a brain in a jar? what if I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a man? what if the moon is made of cheese?

When the time comes, I will do what I think is right.

[dlorde]

Make no mistake, buddy :

Imagination , feeling , emotion even , and intuition were/are and will be  behind many scientific and other discoveries .

Imagination especially is very important in this regard : that's why Einstein said once :

"Imagination is more important than knowledge " : He knew that first hand : without imagination, he could never have been able to come up with his relativity theory ...

Sometimes, literature and art can convey some universal wisdom or approaches of some truths via symbols, fairytales , stories, fiction ....than science, reason,logic ...can ever do : that's 1 of the reasons why good movies, good literature, good art ...are so appealing , because they know how to touch the human soul, imagination and the deepest human consciousness and sub-consciousness in ways science, reason, logic ...can only dream about doing

Make no mistake buddy, I'm well aware of the power of imagination; and if I hadn't been, this discussion would do it.

I can give you a long list regarding that all .

Please don't trouble yourself.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I used the word "weird " in the sense that it makes no sense to say that love is just chemistry .as many materialists say .

It's supposed to be an ironic joke, like when someone points to a raging ocean and you say "It's just water molecules...". An ironic joke that implicitly acknowledges that chemistry and a couple of billion years of evolution can produce something sublime - via the many levels of emergent behaviours and complexity I mentioned previously.

Well, many materialistic scientists do not see that as a joke : they are very serious about it , as Dennet and others think seriously that the evolutionary complexity of the "organization " of neurons had produced human consciousness  haha .
It would be really a weird joke to say that love is just chemistry though : what a weird and silly sense of humor that would be haha  .
Besides : if human love is a product of evolution, then it is just a sophisticated pragmatic practical "sub-conscious " survival strategy or self-deceit without any intrinsic value : do you really actually think that your mother's or your other beloved's love for you is just that ? : that we love each other in order just to survive , deceiving  ourselves and others in the process ?

What about values or virtues such as honesty , altruism , self-sacrifice , dedication, loyalty , solidarity ...then , or ethics  in general  ? Do you see them also as just pragmatic survival strategies ? What a sinister cynical world that would be if that was the case .
I know what evolutionary materialists say about all that : it just does not convince me really , not always though .
I just recall Spinoza's monism or monistic ethics, as the roots of modern rational liberal ethics by the way :

Spinoza used to think that neither free will, good or evil as such do exist : only what feels good for us  or what benefits us  is good , he thought , and only what is bad for us is  evil : utilitarianism avant la lettre .

I prefer the neo-feminist ethics of care though to that at least  ,which try to improve those heartless so-called rational liberal ethics (Kantian, contractarianist, utilitarianist ) by introducing to them the notions of love , feeling , solidarity, human loyalty .... , even at the global level .

See how those liberal ethics and ethics of the market have been even invading our own private , personal and familial spaces where they do absolutely not belong :

Try to read this interesting book on the matter : "Ethics of care : personal, political and global " By Virginia Held .

I meant by "nature " what consciousness or our inner lives actually are : science can say nothing about just that , simply because the natures of those 2 are immaterial .

They are processes.

I know : i already mentioned that human consciousness was/ is and will be a  dynamic processes , i think : but it is not   just material processes , even though  science can study its material biological impact on or its interaction with the body ...

So, our thinking  (The evolution of our senses and brains )  was/ is  just a survival strategy and hence our knowledge is just that also as a result ,which also means that our very knowledge of evolution itself are  just  survival strategies :  a paradox :  how can all that knowledge be valid or true enough then, including our knowledge concerning evolution itself then  ?

Evolution doesn't really have a strategy, although people do tend to describe it in anthropmorphic terms. We still have the basic drives, survival, reproduction, curiosity, etc., but we also evolved the capability to reason and plan, so we can direct and focus those drives according to rational log-term goals (at least, in principle - in practice, the desire for short term gratification usually wins out). As I said before, we have developed methods & procedures for acquiring reliable knowledge - it works doesn't it? you can talk to almost anyone on the planet just by pushing a few buttons, you can perform wonders that earlier peoples would consider magic. The power of knowledge that works.

I used the concept  "survival strategy " in Dawkins' terms he displayed in his "Selfish Gene " : survival strategies via the natural selection as something not "conscious " :

in the same fashion that the mechanisms  of DNA , "selfish gene " ...do not refer to conscious processes , but to just mechanical ones "we just dance to their music ", as Dawkins said in that book of his .

The whole point of that book was to prove the "fact " that we are just some kindda robots driven by DNA ....and that  altruism, for example ,  is in fact just "selfishness in disguise " ..

So, if we are just robots driven by mechanical survival strategies via the natural selection , how come that we consider our knowledge , ethics , spirituality , consciousness, feelings,, emotions, love, conscience  ....as real or valid concepts ? = makes no sense .

There is a big difference though between knowledge that works, as you put it  = pragmatic practical knowledge , and between true knowledge .
William James changed our understanding of the concept of truth radically indeed : but that does not mean that  his assumptions true though, not in the absolute sense at least  .
Pragmatism and the truth are 2 different things , even though pragmatism = results on the reality ground can be easily confused with the truth ,despite the efforts of William James ,as one of the fathers of pragmatism,who tried to change the conventional subject-object relationship in philosophy and elsewhere radically , by   trying to prove in his "Does consciousness exist ? " that the latter does not exist as such, not as an "entity " at least ( I agree with this at least )  :so, what works for you is the truth , as he used to say :

He also extended that to religion by saying that if belief in God makes you happy , than it is true = a paradox , not to mention that he reduced religion to just the belief in God ...
We "see "  pragmatism nowadays extended to all areas , including to politics, science , economy , history , anthropology, sociology, psychology .....unfortunately enough .

Second : how come that Darwin's theory of evolution which was only concerned with the biological evolution, be extended to the so-called evolutions of cultures , thought , consciousness, politics, economy, science, ethics......that theory does not cover as such ?

Darwin's theory was evolution by natural selection. Other forms of evolution have different drivers, but most involve the generation of variants on a theme, of which only the most successful go on to be the source of further variants and so-on. Stepwise development and refinement.

Darwin's theory of evolution was only biological : why is it then applied to cultures , thought , ethics ...? That's what i should have said , even though , there are of course intellectual social cultural psychological political economic ...and even spiritual forms of evolution which occur at other levels than the biological one does , and therefore have some different set of "rules " : to apply the evolutionary biological "rules " of natural selection to thought, cultures, religions, ethics, politics, economics , society ....and so on , is simply incorrect thus .

Otherwise , how come that primitive cultures, primitive religions ....primitive societies even ...still exist ? , not to mention the fact that evolution is not always "progressive " = it fails to explain progress , for example, to mention just that .

BY the way : do you think that liberal secular democracy and its capitalist economic wing are the "highest " forms of culture ,or that they are "The end of history " ? , considering the fact that evolution is purposeless : high or low , developed or primitive judgements of value have no meaning in evolutionary terms.

Third : how come that some primitive forms of cultures , some primitive forms of religions , and even some "evolved " religions ...how come they still exist ?

They fill their particular niches; as long as they don't compete directly or significantly enough with the mainstream forms to be the focus of their attentions, they may continue. Having said that, they're all going extinct at an ever accelerating rate. How many languages have been lost in the last 100 years? How many hunter gather tribes remain?, how many nomads?

No, it's almost all man made ,almost all those changes you were referring to :

strong cultures or strong empires tend to oppress and annihilate the weaker ones ,on purpose , in order to dominate them : misuse of power :  that's a conscious misuse of power that's deeply hidden in the human nature : that tendency to "crash , enslave , wipe out , cleanse ..." other weaker cultures , is a matter of free will . that can be resisted though .

See how globalism or Americanism in fact has been turning this planet into one global form of culture , thought , ethics ....(That's called imperialism in fact ) where almost everybody watches the same movies, eats the same food, thinks the same way , dresses the same way , listens to the same music , read the same books ...

That has nothing to do with evolution : that's what empires tend to do mostly : that's what the human nature , if not restrained , does to others and to other cultures :

And that's no irreversible development , simply because empires rise and fall ...simply because peoples tend to revolt against oppression, imperialism, injustices, slavery , inequalities .....

I am afraid , your own personal experience  with religion or with christianity in this case (Catholicism ) is just that : your own subjective personal experience : it's good to know about , but it cannot be generalized or be valid.

Well, yes; personal experience is personal experience. Whether it can be 'generalized' or be 'valid' rather depends on what you mean. Ultimately, we only have our personal experience, so we have to generalize it or be solipsistic. 'Valid' can mean a multitude of things in the context of personal experience.

What i meant is that the value of your personal experiences or those of others are a matter of relativity, of the uniqueness of every individual .... .
Every personal experience is unique and relative , not to mention that it is mostly subjective, even though , it contains some cognitive elements ...

We can , relatively , learn from other people's experiences , and vice versa , but they are certainly not objective , let alone universal or true  in the absolute sense .

How can you be so sure then of the "fact " that what escapes or lays outside of the realms of science , reason, logic ....does not exist as such ? You tell me ..

How can you be so sure science and materialism is a useless waste of time? What, you didn't say that? Tell you what - you stop telling me what I think, and I'll consider continuing the discussion.

My sincere genuine apologies if i have unintentionally hurt your feelings .I did not intend to do that .
You do not have to get angry . I just try to be honest with you : i do not see what hypocritical or politically -correct talk can do any of us any good , that's why i talked to you this way : i am not telling you what to think , i just question your words, that's all .

Besides, i do not reject science , i love it passionately , you have no idea : i just reject materialism in science as an ideology ,but not totally though ,  i just reject the materialistic interpretations of scientific facts , as i do reject the materialistic mechanical deterministic reductionistic exclusive paradigms in science , such as that materialistic outdated and largely refuted and discredited "Newtonian -Cartesian " paradigm in science , that's all .

What lies beyond science, reason, and logic is, by definition, illogical, irrational, and unscientific. I'm sure there are plenty of ideas that fit the bill. You're welcome to them.

We can "see"  some of what lies beyond that as something existing in other dimensions , other universes ,or in other levels of reality , why not ?

As there might be other living species outside of our known universe , there can be whole of other levels of reality with their own set of rules, logic , reason ....as well , Why not ?

Is this not an option ? 

Does the abscence of evidence always mean the evidence of abscence ?

Not necessarily

.

Well  then, why should we exclude the possibility or probability that there might be some other levels of reality out there which require other forms of evidence than just our poor reason, logic , science ...can provide ?

don't think your argumentation here is waterproof, the same goes for mine .

I noticed.

Exactly : no one posesses the "truth " , the latter as a dynamic process though ...

Our accumulated data is not "The end of history ", not even remotely close thus

What then if there is a whole universe out there , whole levels of reality as i like to put , which escape any of our observations, reason, empirics,logic ....?
What then ? have you ever considered that possibility or option ? You should have as a rational scientific person , don't you think ?

If it doesn't it impinge on us in any detectable way, how would we be aware of its existence? what should/could we do about something we are unaware of?

Exactly , that's 1 of the reasons why the merciful creator informed us about that possibility in the form of revelations, i presume .

However, some cosmologists are developing various ideas about a multiverse, in which our universe is one of (possibly infinitely) many, none of which we can ever detect or interact with (well, in most ideas). So, yes, the possibilities have been, and are taken seriously. These ideas are based on the mathematics behind the physical models that explain the development of our own universe; rational speculation based on what is known, and the techniques developed have fed back to help work being done on the physics of our universe, so they're not entirely without practical value.

Right : the advances of cosmology itself are  reasons enough to make us humble enough about what we can and cannot know about the universe (s).

We do not know much about the whole universe , not even remotely close , there are billions of galaxies discovered so far , and there might be much more than just that out there .Who knows?

So, why should we think that we can know everything about all that unknown , as a mortal species ?

How can you be so sure there is nothing else out there then ?

How can you be so sure that the universe is shaped like a banana? what - you didn't say that?

Banana ? haha

I love bananas ....why bananas ?

That put aside :
I do not know , i wanna know , but i know i cannot, as  we cannot know all what there is out there to know ....We should be humble enough to acknowledge the limits of our knowledge .

There's a multitude of imaginable things I have no evidence of; some are reasonably likely, given what we know about the world; some are fairly unlikely; some very unlikely; and some contradict the most fundamental knowledge we have about the world. A reasonable man treats them accordingly.

Knowledge is dynamic , not static , a lots of things were not known to other humans , say ,some centuries ago, or just some decades ago ...or just some years ago ... or just some days ago...or some secs ago...
The progress of science is so overwhelming and rapid that it changes our knowledge and ourselves in the process in a matter of secs sometimes, so ...

Have you become an apologist for materialism ?

Weasel words. Have you stopped beating your wife?

You were trying to find excuses for materialism , so : that makes you an apologist of it , no offense , sorry .

I never beat my wife though , never , or vice versa haha ...we are way too ethical for that: i do not get easily hurt , you see ? haha 

There are indeed some superstitions, fairytales, illusions ,delusions ...out there , but that's no reason to say that all what there is out there is just that : illusions, superstitions ...

No, indeed.

Well then

Why don't you then accept intuition, even thought it's not always reliable, feeling as a thought-project in the making , even though feeling is not always reliable , as relatively valid sources of knowledge ?

Did I say that? Intuition can be extremely useful in appropriate contexts. Check out Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink'. When you are expertly familiar with a field, intuition can be one of the most useful tools. In a field you are not expertly familiar with, it can make a complete fool of you. As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool".

Agree , but i did encounter some illiterate people even who had some good intuitions about many things though , not always , so .

I think you should see this about intuition in maths :

Very enlightening indeed :
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dangerous-knowledge/

Taking into consideration the very evolutionary nature of our epistemology and scientific method , science ....what if , in the future, mankind would discover some other reliable sources of knowledge we do  not know nothing about yet right now ?
Are you gonna keep on being agnostic about that also ?

What am I being agnostic about?

..about unknown levels of reality ...

What if humankind would develop , in the future , some sophisticated , not exclusively materialistic, psychology, science ....that would be able to approach mystic and the true religious experiences properly ? (Materialism will be history, soon  enough = inevitable = just a matter of time : many scientists whistleblowers such as Linda Jean Shepherd and many others have turned their back on that exclusive materialistic approach in science and elsewhere by the way )

What if it turns out the Jews were right? what if we're all characters in a simulation? what if I'm a brain in a jar? what if I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a man? what if the moon is made of cheese?

Well, then you should be humble enough not to exclude any unknown existences that Russell's tea pot argument does not cover ,unless you are absolutely sure they do not exist .

When the time comes, I will do what I think is right.

What if science , reason, logic ...can't provide you with the evidence or with the non-evidence of what you might or might not be  looking for ?
What then , what would you say to your creator when you will meet Him ? simply put .
Will you tell Him that science  , reason, logic ....could  not , per definition,  prove to you His existence ...?


Thanks, appreciate

Best wishes

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Make no mistake, buddy :

Imagination , feeling , emotion even , and intuition were/are and will be  behind many scientific and other discoveries .

Imagination especially is very important in this regard : that's why Einstein said once :

"Imagination is more important than knowledge " : He knew that first hand : without imagination, he could never have been able to come up with his relativity theory ...

Sometimes, literature and art can convey some universal wisdom or approaches of some truths via symbols, fairytales , stories, fiction ....than science, reason,logic ...can ever do : that's 1 of the reasons why good movies, good literature, good art ...are so appealing , because they know how to touch the human soul, imagination and the deepest human consciousness and sub-consciousness in ways science, reason, logic ...can only dream about doing

Make no mistake buddy, I'm well aware of the power of imagination; and if I hadn't been, this discussion would do it.

Right , i know , i just reminded you of that though .

I can give you a long list regarding that all .

Please don't trouble yourself.

It was just a though though

Thanks, buddy

Kind regards

Take care

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ dlorde :


I recommend strongly this nice book to read : "Geography of Thought , or how westerners and Asians think differently, and why ? ""  By Nisbett ( I will give you his full name later on )

Note : i do have  some trouble with his liberal evolutionary "Geography " of thought concept and paradigm though ...

(There has been a global brain-surge or thought revolution going on , in order to bring East and West together, that's how or why that book was born, among many others as well   .)

But , it's every enlightening in many ways anyway .

Most of us do think that we, as human beings , do think  " the same universal way "  , if we are educated enough at least , bu that's not the case , not in the absolute sense at least .

Nisbett's  final thought in the book was the expression of his hope and optimism , regarding the future of humanity at the level of thought , cultures, religions ....when humanity will come together to make a truely universal synthesis  of thought , cultures , religions ...via their universal common grounds , for the benefit of all mankind , instead of just those  exclusive dominating Eurocentric western thought , ethics, western cultures...

I do agree with the essence of his latter  plea i do share with him  as well  , as i told you earlier via that concert of Yanni , i just see that occuring in the future differently , as i do think differently than he does as a westerner ...

That unique book of his was also and mainly  a pragmatic utilitarianist practical approach as well , ironically enough , but there is nothing wrong about that , in essence at least .

His final expressed wish to see a certain fusion or nice cocktails of all humanity 's thought , cultures ,ethics,  religions, thoughtstreams ...was not absolutely Eurocentrism-free though ,sub-consciously at least ,  i must add : but that's ok, simply because  we are all products of our cultures and societies , relatively speaking  .Only very very very few geniuses can rise above their own cultures . social and mental constructs, to some extent at least .

Bye: it has been a real pleasure talking to you , i have been learning a lot from  you  as well . I mean it .

See ya later , alligator . 

 kidding .

[dlorde]

Well, many materialistic scientists do not see that as a joke : they are very serious about it , as Dennet and others think seriously that the evolutionary complexity of the "organization " of neurons had produced human consciousness  haha .

I think they're right.

It would be really a weird joke to say that love is just chemistry though : what a weird and silly sense of humor that would be haha  .

I can only explain it, I can't make you understand it.

.. if human love is a product of evolution, then it is just a sophisticated pragmatic practical "sub-conscious " survival strategy or self-deceit without any intrinsic value : do you really actually think that your mother's or your other beloved's love for you is just that ? : that we love each other in order just to survive , deceiving  ourselves and others in the process ?

It's intrinsic value is it's contribution to the survival of the species. The associated rewarding emotional feelings are another form of intrinsic value. The latter is the chief driver of the former.

What about values or virtues such as honesty , altruism , self-sacrifice , dedication, loyalty , solidarity ...then , or ethics  in general  ? Do you see them also as just pragmatic survival strategies ?

Yup. Again with the loaded qualifier 'just' - your bias is showing...

What a sinister cynical world that would be if that was the case .

Naked appeal to emotion? Objectively they are rooted in pragmatic survival strategies. Subjectively they are core of human social & cultural experience. The distinction between objective and subjective is important. However you view it, the natural world is what it is, and has no obligation to pander to your tender sensibilities.

i already mentioned that human consciousness was/ is and will be a  dynamic processes , i think : but it is not   just material processes , even though  science can study its material biological impact on or its interaction with the body ...

A process is what material things do; it is not itself material, it is conceptual.

I used the concept  "survival strategy " in Dawkins' terms he displayed in his "Selfish Gene " : survival strategies via the natural selection as something not "conscious "

Dawkins doesn't exclude the development of consciousness from evolutionary survival strategies; He's saying all evolutionary strategies (including cognitive strategies) can be viewed in terms of genetic survival because the gene is the unit of heredity and genetic change supplies the variation on which natural selection operates.

The whole point of that book was to prove the "fact " that we are just some kindda robots driven by DNA ....and that  altruism, for example ,  is in fact just "selfishness in disguise "

If you think that was the point of the book, you missed the point... (he has said that, with hindsight, he wouldn't have used 'selfish' in the title because so many have misunderstood it). Did you actually read it?

So, if we are just robots driven by mechanical survival strategies via the natural selection , how come that we consider our knowledge , ethics , spirituality , consciousness, feelings,, emotions, love, conscience  ....as real or valid concepts ? = makes no sense .

We have evolved the capacity for creative, flexible, adaptable behaviour that enables us to more effectively achieve our goals. It's entirely up to you whether you want to call that 'just robotic' or not.

There is a big difference though between knowledge that works, as you put it  = pragmatic practical knowledge , and between true knowledge .

Hmm, is that 'false dichotomy' or 'no true Scotsman'? The former, I suspect.

Darwin's theory of evolution was only biological : why is it then applied to cultures , thought , ethics ...?

I explained that. The fundamental principle applies beyond biology.

Otherwise , how come that primitive cultures, primitive religions ....primitive societies even ...still exist ?

I already discussed this.

not to mention the fact that evolution is not always "progressive " = it fails to explain progress , for example, to mention just that .

It depends what you mean by progress. Evolution by natural selection is undirected and agnostic on complexity; it acts to remove variations that are not fit for (good enough to survive) their environment. Sometimes the fittest variations are more complex than their predecessors, sometimes less (there are many examples of evolutionary simplification). Drivers like predator prey 'arms races', or sexual selection, often rapidly increase complexity.

BY the way : do you think that liberal secular democracy and its capitalist economic wing are the "highest " forms of culture ,or that they are "The end of history " ? , considering the fact that evolution is purposeless : high or low , developed or primitive judgements of value have no meaning in evolutionary terms.

Unless the world ends tomorrow, they aren't the end of history. Whether they are the 'highest' forms of culture depends on your choice of criteria for height. In practice, they are not without flaws. Churchill amusing said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

strong cultures or strong empires tend to oppress and annihilate the weaker ones ,on purpose , in order to dominate them : misuse of power :  that's a conscious misuse of power that's deeply hidden in the human nature

Quite; it's an expression of some of our most basic evolutionary drives.

... that can be resisted though .

Yes; the same consciousness can rationalize a broader view, extending the group/tribe to encompass humanity as a whole. It's a struggle, because the natural tendency is towards smaller groups and competition.

That has nothing to do with evolution : that's what empires tend to do mostly : that's what the human nature , if not restrained , does to others and to other cultures

That's contradictory, as human nature is a product of evolution - the clue is in the word 'nature'. So it has a lot to do with evolution.

Every personal experience is unique and relative , not to mention that it is mostly subjective, even though , it contains some cognitive elements ...

Unique and relative personal experience is pretty much the definition of subjectivity. Conscious experience is all cognitive...

My sincere genuine apologies ... i am not telling you what to think , i just question your words, that's all .

Apology accepted. If you want to question my words, why not just do that instead of putting words in my mouth?

We can "see"  some of what lies beyond that as something existing in other dimensions , other universes ,or in other levels of reality , why not ?

I know of no evidence of such things. Can you describe what you 'see' and how you distinguish it from imagination?

As there might be other living species outside of our known universe , there can be whole of other levels of reality with their own set of rules, logic , reason ....as well , Why not ?

Is this not an option ?

You can speculate about whatever you can imagine. Let me know when you find plausible arguments and/or evidence to support whatever it may be.

.. why should we exclude the possibility or probability that there might be some other levels of reality out there which require other forms of evidence than just our poor reason, logic , science ...can provide ?

By all means speculate and fantasize to your heart's content. Others feel the observable universe is a more productive use of their time.

So, why should we think that we can know everything about all that unknown , as a mortal species ?

We don't, that's why we keep on questioning.

You were trying to find excuses for materialism , so : that makes you an apologist of it , no offense , sorry .

You're welcome to your opinion, but if you think describing how science and critical thinking work is excusing materialism, it probably says more about your agenda or bias than mine.

Well, then you should be humble enough not to exclude any unknown existences that Russell's tea pot argument does not cover ,unless you are absolutely sure they do not exist .

Indeed, we should all be so humble.

What then , what would you say to your creator when you will meet Him ? simply put .
Will you tell Him that science  , reason, logic ....could  not , per definition,  prove to you His existence ...?

Yes, I probably would. If a hypothetical creator seriously wanted to be acknowledged, one might expect it to do a better job of being noticed.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Well, many materialistic scientists do not see that as a joke : they are very serious about it , as Dennet and others think seriously that the evolutionary complexity of the "organization " of neurons had produced human consciousness  haha .

I think they're right.

I think not , for the obvious reasons that the implications of that make no sense whatsoever :
If we are just mechanical material processes driven by DNA ...via the natural selection, then there is no reason to assume that we have such "things" as love , ethics, knowledge , consciousness ....to put it simply : Think about it : material processes do not generate immaterial ones , as real machines cannot feel, think , love , ....Obvious.
Ethics or morality , love, emotions, consciousness , feelings , thought, progress ....are even meaningless in evolutionary terms, that's why are those Spinoza's approaches of ethics or modern materialistic monism instead  is dominant in science nowadays .

It would be really a weird joke to say that love is just chemistry though : what a weird and silly sense of humor that would be haha 

.
I can only explain it, I can't make you understand it.

A joke is mainly  a matter of taste , not of cognition .

.. if human love is a product of evolution, then it is just a sophisticated pragmatic practical "sub-conscious " survival strategy or self-deceit without any intrinsic value : do you really actually think that your mother's or your other beloved's love for you is just that ? : that we love each other in order just to survive , deceiving  ourselves and others in the process ?

It's intrinsic value is it's contribution to the survival of the species. The associated rewarding emotional feelings are another form of intrinsic value. The latter is the chief driver of the former.

I thought that love should be ...unconditional, not a sub-conscious or conscious transaction  : utilitarianism or pragmatism have no place under the beautiful umbrella of true love .
Do you really believe in love though ? You shouldn't believe in the existence of love as such , if you are a true materialist , i think , if you wanna be consistent with yourself at least , because that mechanical deterministic reductionistic materialism is the very logical negation or denial , per definition, of the existence of love as such .

What about values or virtues such as honesty , altruism , self-sacrifice , dedication, loyalty , solidarity ...then , or ethics  in general  ? Do you see them also as just pragmatic survival strategies ?

Yup. Again with the loaded qualifier 'just' - your bias is showing...

See above : if we are just mechanical processes ....ethics would have no meaning : ethics  have no meaning in evolutionary terms, ethics as just survival strategies = illusions in order to survive  .

Ethics should have an unconditional  human intrinsic value, not just an utilitarianist, contractarianist , Kantian  or pragmatic practical basis, otherwise they are just transactions without any intrinsic value , exactly as paper money mostly is  .

What a sinister cynical world that would be if that was the case .

Naked appeal to emotion? Objectively they are rooted in pragmatic survival strategies. Subjectively they are core of human social & cultural experience. The distinction between objective and subjective is important. However you view it, the natural world is what it is, and has no obligation to pander to your tender sensibilities.

You do sound like Dawkins ' soul mate : the natural world is what it is : a mechanical one : nature does neither care nor reflect , nature is just is , as he likes to say : but that's a matter of controversy , especially the nature of humans or human nature .
We are unique,even though we have many things in common with other animals , at the biological level at least .So, do not confuse the biological processes with the conscious ones, otherwise ethics , human consciousness, love , feelings , emotions ....have no meaning .

Try to think about that .

i already mentioned that human consciousness was/ is and will be a  dynamic processes , i think : but it is not   just material processes , even though  science can study its material biological impact on or its interaction with the body ...

I used the concept  "survival strategy " in Dawkins' terms he displayed in his "Selfish Gene " : survival strategies via the natural selection as something not "conscious "

Dawkins doesn't exclude the development of consciousness from evolutionary survival strategies; He's saying all evolutionary strategies (including cognitive strategies) can be viewed in terms of genetic survival because the gene is the unit of heredity and genetic change supplies the variation on which natural selection operates.

Once again , biological evolution cannot be extended to the human mental intellectual social cultural political , spiritual ...areas : those both categories do evolve , but at different levels , and via different set of "rules "
This deterministic reductionistic materialistic , no offense , view of man, life , nature , the universe ...of yours is not only outdated and largely discredited , but it does also make no sense : see how the theory of chaos in maths had kissed mechanical determinism and predictability goodbye :
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/high-anxieties-the-mathematics-of-chaos/

The whole point of that book was to prove the "fact " that we are just some kindda robots driven by DNA ....and that  altruism, for example ,  is in fact just "selfishness in disguise "

If you think that was the point of the book, you missed the point... (he has said that, with hindsight, he wouldn't have used 'selfish' in the title because so many have misunderstood it). Did you actually read it ?.

Yes i did , some time ago , why ?
Dawkins concluded in that book of his that altruism does not exist in nature , and that it had never existed in history either .Humans should try to develop altruism, he added,  in themselves though haha : a paradox ,  in others and in the next generations ...
How can altruism be developed or learned by humans if they are just material determined mechanical processes ? You tell me .
I do not understand , and it's a mystery to me how you cannot see the intrinsic contradictions of materialism at these levels we have been talking about .Really .

So, if we are just robots driven by mechanical survival strategies via the natural selection , how come that we consider our knowledge , ethics , spirituality , consciousness, feelings,, emotions, love, conscience  ....as real or valid concepts ? = makes no sense .

We have evolved the capacity for creative, flexible, adaptable behaviour that enables us to more effectively achieve our goals. It's entirely up to you whether you want to call that 'just robotic' or not.

[/quote]
Maybe you happen to have some unique to yourself definition of the word "robot " , i do not know : a robot , a machine , or any organic biological determined mechanical processes cannot , per definition , generate "things " like human consciousness, love , feelings , emotions ....
I would love to hear you explain to me how we were supposed to develop all those skills , consciousness , love , feelings , emotions, thinking ...via those mechanical biological processes that were/are driven by the natural selection ....Really : how does that happen ? via the different levels of that emergent property  theory ?  Come on, be serious .

There is a big difference though between knowledge that works, as you put it  = pragmatic practical knowledge , and between true knowledge .

Hmm, is that 'false dichotomy' or 'no true Scotsman'? The former, I suspect.

Ok, let me put it this way then :
Do you think that the pragmatic practical approach of the truth concept is true or valid ?
That what works for you is true, and vice versa  ?
That if the belief in God makes you happy , then is that belief ...true ?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ dlorde :
The following is the rest of my reply to your above displayed latest post :

Darwin's theory of evolution was only biological : why is it then applied to cultures , thought , ethics ...?

Quote by dlorde : I explained that. The fundamental principle applies beyond biology.

Beyond biology ? You are contradicting yourself again : i thought that Darwin's theory was all about biology and ecology ,in the material and materialistic senses .
Darwin's theory of evolution does not cover what is supposed to be beyond biology , simply because it is only about biology -ecology .

Otherwise , how come that primitive cultures, primitive religions ....primitive societies even ...still exist ?

I already discussed this.

Your arguments failed to address that issue , i should remind you .
"It grieves me that those religious neurophysiological biological processe do not go away , religion has a tenacity to survive " as Dawkins said , or in words to that same effect at least : is this what you meant earlier ?
But , religion is here to stay , my friend, until the end of time and beyond , i must disappoint you : religion should disappear , according to evolutionary geniuses : why does it not disappear then ?
How come that even many highly intelligent people and geniuses believed and do still believe in ...religion ? ,If the materialistic evolutionary approach of religion is true .

not to mention the fact that evolution is not always "progressive " = it fails to explain progress , for example, to mention just that .

It depends what you mean by progress. Evolution by natural selection is undirected and agnostic on complexity; it acts to remove variations that are not fit for (good enough to survive) their environment. Sometimes the fittest variations are more complex than their predecessors, sometimes less (there are many examples of evolutionary simplification). Drivers like predator prey 'arms races', or sexual selection, often rapidly increase complexity.

Evolution is all about just survival , let me remind you , progress is beyond just survival : progress is unnecessary in evolutionary terms : progress means nothing even , in evolutionary terms .Or is progress just a side effect of evolution, as music, for example , "is " ? How come that evolution can produce such side effects which go against the very nature and function of evolution : makes no sense .

BY the way : do you think that liberal secular democracy and its capitalist economic wing are the "highest " forms of culture ,or that they are "The end of history " ? , considering the fact that evolution is purposeless : high or low , developed or primitive judgements of value have no meaning in evolutionary terms.

Unless the world ends tomorrow, they aren't the end of history. Whether they are the 'highest' forms of culture depends on your choice of criteria for height. In practice, they are not without flaws. Churchill amusing said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

"Liberal democracy and its economic capitalist wing as he end of history " (The end of history and the end of time are 2 different things though ) means that they are the last cultural developments mankind can ever achieve at the levels of culture , politics , economy , society ....as that Japanese -US thinker stated in that famous book of his , i do not recall either his name or his book's name tight now , later then , after the fall of the Soviet Union : democracy and capitalism as the end of history -= their alleged final victory .
How come ? Evolution is supposedly still taking place though , not to mention progress which falls outside of any evolutionary approaches .

strong cultures or strong empires tend to oppress and annihilate the weaker ones ,on purpose , in order to dominate them : misuse of power :  that's a conscious misuse of power that's deeply hidden in the human nature

Quite; it's an expression of some of our most basic evolutionary drives.

... that can be resisted though .

Yes; the same consciousness can rationalize a broader view, extending the group/tribe to encompass humanity as a whole. It's a struggle, because the natural tendency is towards smaller groups and competition.

Where or when did you see that happening lately , that hypothetical utopian vision to encompass all humanity : via the western Eurocentric thought , ethics , cultures ... which do claim to be "universal, objective, true " in the absolute sense : see what post-modernism did to that modernistic false vision : Eurocentrism as  mainly a western white racist phallogocentric paternalistic imperialistic vision in disguise .

That has nothing to do with evolution : that's what empires tend to do mostly : that's what the human nature , if not restrained , does to others and to other cultures.

That's contradictory, as human nature is a product of evolution - the clue is in the word 'nature'. So it has a lot to do with evolution.

These are just semantics : the human nature and nature as such are 2 different things , even though the biological sides of humans has some common similarities with other living species in nature .
Second : If you think that the human nature was produced by evolution ,then is human nature just a mechanical deterministic process as well : how can that mechanical process called human nature produce "things " like greed , unnecessary ethnic -cleansing , unnecessary genocide ,love, hate , exaggerated unnecessary power lust -abuse, ...? I thought that evolution was a very efficient energy-manager .

Every personal experience is unique and relative , not to mention that it is mostly subjective, even though , it contains some cognitive elements ...

Unique and relative personal experience is pretty much the definition of subjectivity. Conscious experience is all cognitive...

There are subjective as well as "objective " cognitive elements to human personal experiences : think about all your sub-conscious and conscious decisions making , even though the roots of decision making are very controversial .
If we apply only materialistic determinism to decision making ,then, it's pretty logical to exclude any degree of human free will in decision making .
Worse : subjective or objective cognitive processes mean nothing in the evolutionary mechanical deterministic terms .
You have been contradicting yourself all along : i just informed you of some of that i detected .

My sincere genuine apologies ... i am not telling you what to think , i just question your words, that's all .

Apology accepted. If you want to question my words, why not just do that instead of putting words in my mouth?

Thanks . Don't worry about that : it's something inevitable sometimes, since i cannot read your mind , or always understand the exact meaning of your words as you  exactly  intended them to be : the theory of mind tells us a lot about that .
Look, even when we read books , we never get the very exact meanings of what the writer intended to say completely : we understand them our own unique ways , via both our subjective and objective filters .

We can "see"  some of what lies beyond that as something existing in other dimensions , other universes ,or in other levels of reality , why not ?

I know of no evidence of such things. Can you describe what you 'see' and how you distinguish it from imagination?

I just do not exclude the probable existence of other dimentions, levels of reality ....
My personal dynamic religious and other experiences , among other ways, make me approach those levels of reality my own unique way :
See William James ' " The varieties of religious experiences ", even though i do not agree much with his pragmatic approaches in general , not always at least .

As there might be other living species outside of our known universe , there can be whole of other levels of reality with their own set of rules, logic , reason ....as well , Why not ?
Is this not an option ?

You can speculate about whatever you can imagine. Let me know when you find plausible arguments and/or evidence to support whatever it may be.

As i said earlier , there might be some levels of reality which would require other forms of evidence than just the conventional ones : science , reason, logic ...

.. why should we exclude the possibility or probability that there might be some other levels of reality out there which require other forms of evidence than just our poor reason, logic , science ...can provide ?

By all means speculate and fantasize to your heart's content. Others feel the observable universe is a more productive use of their time.

Well, yes, i do not ignore the natural observable empirical reality i interact with every single moment of my life , i just do not think that natural reality is all what there is though .

So, why should we think that we can know everything about all that unknown , as a mortal species ?

We don't, that's why we keep on questioning.

No, you have already made up your mind by ignoring or rejecting the probability or possibility of the existence of other levels of reality ,so, Didn't you ? when you embraced materialism , i guess.

You were trying to find excuses for materialism , so : that makes you an apologist of it , no offense , sorry .

You're welcome to your opinion, but if you think describing how science and critical thinking work is excusing materialism, it probably says more about your agenda or bias than mine.

Once again , i love science very much , i just reject many aspects of materialism in science , that's all : talking about putting words in somebody's mouth , ironically enough .

Well, then you should be humble enough not to exclude any unknown existences that Russell's tea pot argument does not cover ,unless you are absolutely sure they do not exist .

Indeed, we should all be so humble.

You are not ,excuse me  for saying that ,  in the sense that you pretend to know there are no other levels of reality , don't you ?

What then , what would you say to your creator when you will meet Him ? simply put .
Will you tell Him that science  , reason, logic ....could  not , per definition,  prove to you His existence ...?

Yes, I probably would. If a hypothetical creator seriously wanted to be acknowledged, one might expect it to do a better job of being noticed

.

God already made Himself known to humans , on many occasions, via revelations ...
You know :
Prophet Abraham 's attempts to "find " God on his own, via reason, logic ... failed pathetically , so, he cried out , in despair and hope at the same time : God, if you happen to be out there ,if you really exist , just let me know you are there , otherwise , i would be lost .
And then,and only then, God made Himself known to Abraham, somehow .
The essence of this story is that God "makes Himself known " to people ,only if they surrender to Him totally  , and only if they are genuinely interested in "knowing " Him ...

Enough preaching now haha I do not like or do any preaching in fact normally though .
That was just a  final  thought i wanted to share with you, that's all .

Thanks ,buddy

Have fun

Bye

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ dlorde :

The name of the author of " Geography of Thought ..."  is : Richard E.Nisbett

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

History of the origin of the scientific method must be rewritten :

Someone should correct what wikipedia says about the origin of science  :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method

[dlorde]

My nice discussion partner left me without saying a word and without any explanation whatsoever haha , despite all the good things and good times we used to have together and used to share with each other ...: i have been dumped before by a couple of my former or ex-girl-friends , but they always had the  decency and courtesy to tell me why though

The reason?

I think i will quit these discussions , simply because their scope is too wide to debate this way , and simply because they do  cost me too much time i can hardly afford...

I took that to mean you were going and/or did not want to spend any more time here.

[dlorde]

Oh, and the other reason - you'd stopped discussing with me and were disparaging various naive stereotypes and strawmen of your own devising. Clearly time to move on.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Oh, and the other reason - you'd stopped discussing with me and were disparaging various naive stereotypes and strawmen of your own devising. Clearly time to move on.

haha

Where is your sense of humor . buddy ?

I was just teasing you by being ironic ,that's all , because when i saw no replies from you to my reactions to your posts , i just assumed  you were not interested in any further discussions with me ,that's all, ironically enough  .

My mistake then.We were both mistaken thus .

Well, just try to go back to the discussion then , please, and i will try to answer your replies .

But , we should keep it short though .

Deal ?

I will erase those irrelevent posts of mine i was teasing you  you with : when i mentioned those couple of ex-girl-friends who dumped me , i was referring to you ,somehow , ....if you haven't noticed yet .I think you have .

Take care

See ya soon then

Bye

[dlorde]

I think I've said what I wanted to say about the OP - unless you have some particular issue you're prepared to discuss reasonably; I'm not here for juvenile point-scoring and disparagement.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I think I've said what I wanted to say about the OP - unless you have some particular issue you're prepared to discuss reasonably; I'm not here for juvenile point-scoring and disparagement.

I am serious , i was just kidding for a change .I said why .Come on.
Besides, those accusations of yours never crossed my mind .
Anyway : I am interested in discussing the following with you , i am extremely fascinated by :
Evolutionary biology / genetics + computer science technology have been applied to what one calls artificial intelligence, to mention just that  :
Some scientists say they will  be able to make future machines or robots match or even surpass human consciousness, feelings , emotions, thinking , ...and even love .

We are all familiar now with computer viruses ....for example : computer science copying those  biological language , notions, techniques, mechanisms ...and applying them to machines.

Future intelligent machines will be able to be conscious , have feelings , emotions ....and will be even able to ...love : i do not buy that .

There are many science -fiction movies out there on the subject as well , as you know .

Artificial intelligence advances seem to corroborate  and confirm the validity of  those materialistic mechanical evolutionary approaches of human consciousness , life, emotions, love ... ....thus as just  determined mechanical material processes .

The notion of Cyborgs, for example  = human-machine , is getting more real than ever : some sort of chips can be implanted in human bodies in order to correct some deficiencies, handicap , brain damage ....

If the materialistic view of life in general , human consciousness , emotions, ...gets  completely validated  some day , then, we will be able to download or upload knowledge , personal experiences, skills , emotions ....from or to a machine ,from or to our brains , computer or from humans to humans, in both ways  : that would be awesome though .

I would love to download the contents of the US library of congress some day, to my brain  haha .kidding .

I am really fascinated by all that though, seriously  .

I think that biology/genetics combined with  computer science and with other sciences  will shape the future of humanity in ways we can only imagine today : that would be even beyond our own imagination : the sky is the limit .
Look, if the nature as well as the function of our human consciousness is just a matter of material processes which originated from the evolutionary complexity of the human brain (Emergent property theory ), our consciousness , thoughts , knowledge , ethics , progress ...and the rest are just illusions then : just mechanical material determined processes .....I do not buy this either ,i have been struggling with, for some time now  .

Otherwise , why can't we convert neurophysiological electrical, chemical ...brain waves to thoughts ,and vice versa ?

How come we cannot read the minds of people that way , via that activity of the brain , we should be able to convert to thoughts , in the future maybe ? ...even though it is a fact that electro-magnetic fields can alter the functioning of the human brain , and make people imagine things that are not real in the process, as a result ( This reminds me of that so-called God helmet designed by a scientist  he subjected even Dawkins  haha  himself to ,in vain though, simply because Dawkins' predisposition to that was too low  ,"God helmet " which makes people that are subjected to it have some religious feelings even or imagine the presence of some entity out there that does not exist ...).

What do you think about all that ?

Can  the scientific method or science finally decipher or decode those mysteries of the human consciousness, thought , thought process ....as science did much earlier  at the level of biology at least ,in relation to   the  secrets of the molecule of life , the architect of life and its replication : DNA .?



I would love to download all the human existing knowledge , experiences ,skills....to my brain : not all of them though haha : i cannot tolerate to experience the evils of nazism , fascism , communism ....for example ...


Later , duty calls .

Kind regards

Bye

[dlorde]

BTW, all-bold text doesn't aid readability...

Look, if the nature as well as the function of our human consciousness is just a matter of material processes which originated from the evolutionary complexity of the human brain (Emergent property theory ), our consciousness , thoughts , knowledge , ethics , progress ...and the rest are just illusions then : just mechanical material determined processes

They're not illusions, they're real emergent phenomena, unpredictable and qualitatively different from the properties of neurons; like the wetness of water is a real emergent phenomenon, unpredictable and qualitatively different from the properties of water molecules, and heat and pressure are emergent phenomena of the movement of atoms and molecules.

Otherwise , why can't we convert neurophysiological electrical, chemical ...brain waves to thoughts ,and vice versa ?

How come we cannot read the minds of people that way , via that activity of the brain , we should be able to convert to thoughts , in the future maybe ?
...
What do you think about all that ?

We are already making progress in this area. By studying brain activity it is possible determine what someone is reading, and what someone is thinking about in a limited way; i.e. the brain activity associated with certain thoughts is measured and then can be recognised later. The current problems are that the measuring devices are fairly crude, although improving rapidly, and that no two brains are the same, so what they are thinking needs to be learned for each individual. It is possible to imagine a 'companion' system that could learn how a person thinks over many years, observes their facial expressions, behaviour, and body language and so knows what they're thinking, their mood, etc. How that could be used is an interesting speculation.
Past experiences, sensations, emotions, memories, etc., can be 'replayed' by stimulation of the appropriate brain area during surgery; one can imagine making this possible from outside the skull. A lot of ethical issues there.

Can  the scientific method or science finally decipher or decode those mysteries of the human consciousness, thought , thought process ?

I think so, eventually.

I would love to download all the human existing knowledge , experiences ,skills....to my brain

I would imagine it's more likely that such information would be made available to you on demand transparently, or with minimum effort, rather than be actually stored in your brain in advance.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

author=dlorde link=topic=48315.msg416517#msg416517 date=1376900663]
BTW, all-bold text doesn't aid readability...

Ok, I will try to skip that next time .Sorry.But , sometimes, i just like to make a point that way ,that's all .

author=DonQuichotte link=topic=48315.msg416493#msg416493 date=1376855477]Look, if the nature as well as the function of our human consciousness is just a matter of material processes which originated from the evolutionary complexity of the human brain (Emergent property theory ), our consciousness , thoughts , knowledge , ethics , progress ...and the rest are just illusions then : just mechanical material determined processes

They're not illusions, they're real emergent phenomena, unpredictable and qualitatively different from the properties of neurons; like the wetness of water is a real emergent phenomenon, unpredictable and qualitatively different from the properties of water molecules, and heat and pressure are emergent phenomena of the movement of atoms and molecules

.

You do not seem to get my point  yet , and you have been just giving me material emergent property phenomena as examples  : how on earth could those biological material determined processes give birth to something immaterial such as human consciousness....thought...ethics...

How can the material give birth to the immaterial or conceptual ?

I discussed this issue of human consciousness , the latter as the alleged product of the evolution of the human brain, with many materialists and atheists , but they could not come up with convincing explanations in that regard ,and nobody can prove yet, if ever ,  that allegation that human consciousness was the product of evolution .this allegation just makes part of those materialistic beliefs or materialistic theology ,or materialistic historicity in science with no reasonable proof of that .
Materialism just replaced the theology or the metaphysics of the church by its own, ironically enough .
That's why i said once that materialism has become a kindda exclusive religion,while pretending to disprove religions via science, ironically enough   .
That's why i also said that materialism as a world view has been hijacking science exclusively for more than 5 centuries now, excluding all the non-materialistic world views in the process, as a result  .
That's why i also said that materialistic scientists think that only reason, logic , science are the only valid sources of knowledge .
That's also 1 of the reasons why i said that materialists think they have the monopoly of the truth , by considering materialism as the one and only valid or true world view , materialism which considers itself to be scientific ...
......
Those guys i used to discuss this issue of human consciousness with just resorted to comparing the human body to a computer , for example, and the human consciousness to windows haha, for instance  , or they just gave the following analogy in that regard , or things like that :

The projection of a film on a white screen or white sheet : the projector  would refer to the body and the film to the human consciousness via the light of the projector  , as you have been doing all along, failing to see that both the projector and the film were material entities , the same goes for computer and windows .
So, emergent property theory fails to  explain that , simply because it just refers to material phenomena, while consciouness is not a material phenomena  .

Emergent property theory can just explain  some material levels or scales of those material biological processes, no more , no less .

Try to see this extremely fascinating alternative  approach of consciousness :
He exposes the problems science has  been encountering  in explaining consciousness via that exclusive materialist world view , and proposes  an alternative world view in that regard ,he considers the mind as being more fundamental than matter , the key to which  shift lies  in our  revolutionary  ...understanding of light ....An alternative world view which makes sense of much of modern physics...
An alternative world view which confirms what old muslim and other mystics used to say about human consciousness by the way also :
<repeated link (removed) over multiple pages comes across as evangelising. Please stick to responding to the topic - thanks, Mod>

Otherwise , why can't we convert neurophysiological electrical, chemical ...brain waves to thoughts ,and vice versa ?
How come we cannot read the minds of people that way , via that activity of the brain , we should be able to convert to thoughts , in the future maybe ? ...
What do you think about all that ?

We are already making progress in this area. By studying brain activity it is possible determine what someone is reading, and what someone is thinking about in a limited way; i.e. the brain activity associated with certain thoughts is measured and then can be recognised later. The current problems are that the measuring devices are fairly crude, although improving rapidly, and that no two brains are the same, so what they are thinking needs to be learned for each individual. It is possible to imagine a 'companion' system that could learn how a person thinks over many years, observes their facial expressions, behaviour, and body language and so knows what they're thinking, their mood, etc. How that could be used is an interesting speculation.

I have read about and watched some interesting docus regarding what you said here above :
When someone reads something , a book , a magazine...or thinks about something , feels something ....certain regions or areas of the brain are activated , a brain scan or other device can detect and display on certain monitors indeed , but that's just the the brain activity in action  related to those thoughts, feelings ..., not the actual thought process, or feeling process ...themselves.

Please , try not to confuse between those 2 processes : they have different natures , while interacting with each other , somehow .
 We do not know yet how body and mind  actually interact with each other though, let alone how the mind heals the body , how the mind even changes the body , and vice versa,even though we can "see" , relatively speaking , how the mind actually changes the body , and vice versa ... but we cannot yet explain just that or how it actually occurs exactly .

I do think that the mind is way more primordial fundamental and stronger than the body in many cases , that's why i said once to you that the ultimate reality is spiritual : see how even modern physics' views of matter itself have changed radically thanks to both quantum physics and to the relativity theory with its space-time concept :we do not actually know what matter really is , some say it is energy , some say it is action, let alone that we know what the nature of the human mind or spirit is .
You know : this issue of the human mind or spirit was/ is so a huge real challenge to materialistic evolutionists that they just decided to consider it as just the evolutionary product of the brain : how ? via the emergent property theory : how the physical biological material evolved human brain did  give birth to the human mind,via the emergent property theory and natural selection  ?  Well, in order for materialists to escape this lethal trap for materialism, they say , well, the mind is just a word , just semantics , there is no such a thing , as we understand it to be at least called mind , mind as an immaterial "entity" or rather process , it is just a material phenomena, that's all : here ,in this case and elsewhere, we see how materialism obviously tries to validate itself so desperately , instead of searching of the unconditional truth on the matter out there ...= truth in the service of ideology, not the other way around ,as one should expect ...
To get back to your above mentioned statements :
Certain brain activity can inform us just about what specific or particular areas of the brain which fire or get activated when we do this or that ,say this or that , think about this or that , experience this or that ... but they can actually say nothing about our actual thoughts , feelings ,experiences  ....related to that brain activity .

No wonder that materialistic scientists think they can deduce or "extract " our thoughts , feelings . consciousness ... from our brain activity , simply because of the very nature of materialism itself which considers brain activity and consciousness as being both material : don't you get it ? They can come up only with those kindda interpretations of those experiments , otherwise , they would go against materialism itself : they set a trap for themselves they cannot afford to escape ,otherwise they would contradict themselves .

Therefore, i think, personally , that we will never be able to "convert " brain activity  to thought or vice versa, for example, simply because the 2 have different natures .
A phone can, for example, convert the sound waves of our voices to electrical signals and otherwise at the other end of the phone  ,so we we can hear each other clearly on both ends of the phone , but that's simply because both our voices and electrical signals are both material phenomenas....That  does certainly not mean that the phone or whatever can "convert " our thoughts to electricity-magnetism  and otherwise for the other guy at the other end  of the receiving phone to read : Do you get the difference ?
We can try to read people's minds , relatively speaking , via body language , and via other ways , via reading the related brain activity on a monitor, but we can never be able to actually read people's minds , their real thoughts , no way , for the above mentioned reasons .
Body language , brain scans,other devices,  and other ways can only inform us about the fact that the mind can have effects on the body and vice versa , that does not mean that we actually read people's minds those ways : Get it ?

Past experiences, sensations, emotions, memories, etc., can be 'replayed' by stimulation of the appropriate brain area during surgery; one can imagine making this possible from outside the skull. A lot of ethical issues there

.

Certainly not ethical indeed : those surgeons scientists can trigger certain memories , emotions, experiences , sensations,...as you put it , via their biological side , but that does not mean that the actual memories, sensations, experiences...are also biological ,material or that they can be located or stored  ,somehow, in the brain .

Again, we come across this materialistic world view in science you just mentioned by saying what you said .

I remember the fact when i was a teen-ager in the biology -class how our teacher talked about memory ,....as if it were , somehow , stored , like in a computer , in the hard drive of man or in the brain : i used to challenge his view passionately that  made no sense to me and which still does not make any sense to me , all he could say to try to prove his materialistic view is by saying , well, there is no other valid explanation for that ,something you can expect from a materialist : one cannot expect from him as a materialist to try to search for an alternative explanation or interpretation outside of materialism , that's the problem with materialists mainly :

I do remember reading a book called " Are we unique ? The unparalleled intelligence of the human mind " or something like that written by a self-declared materialistic scientist who tried to explain the  relative uniqueness of man and the relative uniqueness of  human consciousness, for example, among other things , via that emergent property theory , while demonstrating the striking similarities between us and other animals , in the sense that we are unique indeed , but not that unique , to put it simply .
He stunned me in that book of his when he said that he believed in the existence of the human free will , unlike many other materialists : a real paradox  or contradiction from the materialistic point of view though .

That put aside :
He said somethingelse very interesting as follows :
Most , if not all, scientists deliberately ignore some facts ,while hoping they would go away some day , or that they would be proven to be false some day , try to integrate them in their world views or theories, paradigms... if they can at least , but the only thing they could not / cannot do is deny their existence .

That's 1 of the reasons why i said to you that total objectivity ,even in science , is a myth .
Materialists just stick to their world view ,paradigms, theories , interpretations ...despite the existence of alternative ones : they cannot afford to see the world but through that materialistic narrow-minded exclusive key hole of theirs , otherwise , they would be no materialists > do you get this ? And that's what is really happening ...

I remember also a materialistic quantum physics ' scientist , if i am not mistaken at least , in Linda Jean Shepherd's unique book saying to her , that if she was right about the non-deterministic nature of the universe , he would put a gun to his head and pull the trigger ...

Can  the scientific method or science finally decipher or decode those mysteries of the human consciousness, thought , thought process ?

I think so, eventually.

I do not think so ,if science remains exclusively dominated by materialism , but  if science allows itself to be taken on the path of other alternative world views , other than or in combination with materialism (We cannot reject all aspects of materialism in science , as i said earlier : some are true indeed ) , then the sky is the limit .

But , if science remains confined within the boundaries of materialism , then i fear the worst for science and the truth as a result .
I am afraid some fanatic hard core materialistic scientists  such as Dawkins and co. are the real threat to science , not religious extremists : the latters clash with science out of ignorance , but the formers say some , do some things in the name of science , science has nothing to do with ,unfortunately enough .

Dawkins and co are the kindda ultimate Frankenstein's monsters who can take science down with them in the process, even though their purely scientific works  are ,relatively speaking, beneficial to science,relatively speaking then  .

I would love to download all the human existing knowledge , experiences ,skills....to my brain

I would imagine it's more likely that such information would be made available to you on demand transparently, or with minimum effort, rather than be actually stored in your brain in advance.

Right , but that  can never be stored in my brain the way i mentioned by "downloading it " from other humans or from machines , computers ...for the above mentioned reasons relating to the different natures of both body and mind , not to mention the fact that human individual experiences, skills, talents , knowledge , feelings , emotions ....are "located " in the whole beings of those individuals ....in their souls : i see a soul as not "something"  separate from  the body : i see it as "something" integrated with the whole beings of humans , in every atom ,cell ,and organs of theirs : the soul permeates or espouses the body from within and without .

In other words :

Consciousness is not the product of evolution, it's "something " inherent to humans.

No wonder that an  old great muslim mystic  dared to say : "I am God " , but conservative muslims did misunderstand him in that regard , and they killed the poor wise  guy  unjustly , as a result : you would understand the why or how of that "I am God " expression ... 

Take care