I have a few problems with this statement.

1. Evolution, the process itself, isn't unguided. It's guided by natural selection.
2. Most of our information processing isn't conscious at all. I think this is what you mean by awareness. We are only aware due to certain processes that require "awareness", like synthesizing sensory information into abstract concepts, or basic tools to aid us in survival. One could easily see how this could be a desirable trait in natural selection, given its parameters.

I don't think I agree with your definitions. Maybe explain what awareness means as well. Does this mean purely conscious thought or does this include subconscious thought too?

we can flaunt solipsism all day and night, but the fact of the matter is that we're playing a game of perception, so we're figuring out its rules.

Oh so you agree? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point of view on the matter. Or I changed your mind!

Well, we can presume only because of the absolute tremendous amount of indicative evidence gained through science by using inductive reasoning.

Note that I'm not denying the reality of physical correlates like nueronal activation that can be quantified; what I'm asking for is some physical interpretation of thought itself. — TheMadFool

Information cannot be destroyed. If, given we know in which way the brain interpreted information, then the physical representation can therefore be translated to us. Feelings, factual information, philosophical thoughts, all can be interpreted to an experience in some sense.

Simply because we lack a tool of which to interpret feelings to another's experience, doesn't therefore mean it is outside our universe. It just means we don't know how to quantify qualities, or we know how to quantify it, but not quantify it to a universal metric, then reinterpret it to someone's personal experience.

All non-quantifiable things are nonphysical things

I wouldn't necessarily assert that, but sure.

All minds are non-quantifiable things — TheMadFool

I definitely disagree with this premise. You mean to tell me we cannot quantify the firing of neurons, or the lighting up of the brain? These are clearly linked to thoughts correct?

What about color? Can we quantify color? Actually, yes. We can show which parts of the brain light up when one color is shown. We can also take a biometric look at the lenses associated with the eyes.

My stating of it being "non-quantifiable" is using your definition of mind. We can quantify "thoughts", but you and I are committing an equivocation fallacy. Mind is the thoughts and the brain matter, as well as the neurons and perception of the host, from my definition. You're using thoughts as your metric, but aren't thoughts created in conjunction with brain matter? Aren't thoughts ACTUALLY brain matter?

My question, I guess, is what is your definition of mind?

Do i understand you are saying if it cant be measured it cant exist?
What measuring tape are you using? — Asif

No, if it can't be measured using mathematics, then using mathematics to prove its existence isn't going to work. I get what you mean and I will retract my statement of lack of measurement being reason for nonexistence.

Good point but that's presupposing physicalism. — TheMadFool

Good point.

However, using mathematics to prove something non-mathematical isn't going to solve your problem.

@TheMadFool

The fact that it can't be measured shows that it doesn't exist, not that it does.

At this point, you've said there's no evidence for it existing outside of reality, so therefore it's an argument from assertion, and also an unfalsifiable claim.

What's your definition of mind? It can't be the same as mine.

You've said there's no physical representation of thought? Then what's neuroscience about? Why does the prefrontal cortex light up when people are figuring out what others think or feel?

You're making an appeal to a false system then. My point is that you're using mathematics to prove a non-mathematical element is true. You're using the rules of the universe to prove something outside of the universe is real.

yes, that's the point of my comment. You must first decide if something is able to be quantified before quantifying it, which you did not do

One thing that's incredibly important for a high IQ is self reflection and understanding. It also helps if one is creative and intuitive.

According to the Big Five, those with a high percentage in O, also known as Openness, are a lot more creative and more intelligent than those whom are not. The qualities go as OCEAN, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

The MBTI, or Myers Briggs Type Index, is another personality type similar to the Big Five. The types are set up as dichotomies. They go as: Introversion or Extroversion, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perceiving. According to IQ tests and research papers, Introverts are 60% smarter than Extroverts, Intuitives are about 80% smarter than Sensors, Thinkers are 70% smarter than feelers, and Judging and Perceiving make no difference. This leads us to believe INTJ and INTP are the highest IQ of all. The rankings go: INTJ, INTP (About equal), INFJ, ENTP, etc. Though this is a highly indicative test for who is high IQ or not, there are some definite exceptions. Magnus Carlsen being the biggest one in my opinion, who is ISTP and is ranked number one in Chess Internationals.

It seems we are getting closer to defining what is and isn't a good classification for who is going to be high IQ. The Right Brain is used for creativity, or Intuition usually, the Left is used for Logical thinking, or Thinking, it would thereby follow that those who are high energy in both departments are able to have high IQ.

My apologies. No I'm a relativist, but then read what your definition of moral objectivism was. I totally am fine with coming up with a complete moral system, if it's, as Nietzsche describes, a "strong" moral system instead of a "weak" one.

A strong one is one which we recognize it comes from the self and a weak one is one which we project where the moral system comes from.

Unfortunately, I don't believe in a fully natural objective morality.

I was thinking about this for awhile, and let me know if this makes sense, but i believe a reason for there to be something rather than nothing is because of a lack of energy in the processes of life. As in, we are not infinitely dense or infinitely energetic, so we must take that process's path.

Think of it like running a program on your computer. If you don't have a fast write speed, it will take a long time to download a file. But it gets faster and faster as more computing power is put into it, if that makes sense.

Now, why do we exude something rather than nothing? And what changed our density to be so? Honestly I feel this is a toss up of information. Could be a simulation, could be a delusion. Could be a place in which God created. Could be just because. Or it could be something entirely different than any of those reasons.

I've honestly been waiting to tell my hypothesis about there being a lack of energy to be the reason that everything doesn't all just happen at once. (This is, of course, taking the hard determinsm perspective.)

Any non-physical object is, in turn, non-quanitfiable, so it's impossible to use mathematics to describe a non quantifiable object, except maybe imaginary numbers, which are imaginary.

You might think "zero" is used in mathematics all the time and it is "nothing", well, nothing is in relation to what is being quantified. If there are no attainable coins in someone's coin pouch, they have zero, but that doesn't mean there are zero coins, or that there is nothing to make the coins with, or that there isn't mass in relation to what a coin is. It just means there are zero coins from an arbitrated point of view of what is and isn't valuable.

I'm guessing this is sarcasm

Welp, I voted No instead of Yes because I just skimmed through what your definition of objectivism was.

Wow, someone's defensive.

Absolutely not, but it is telling of a cognitive dissonant mindset, which you may be able to jump on before it's too late.

That's entirely counterintuitive to helping start a legitimate discussion within the context of religion.

I think the whole discussion has a sort of annoying point. First, if you'd like to know an atheist's personal position on their belief in god, then ask them to answer in accordance to it. There's a few things you're missing:

1. Language changes in accordance to societal definitions of it, you're acting as though definitions are independent of subjective views, and instead rely on their linguistic backgrounds. Weird.

2. If an atheist denotes his/her definition, then use that definition at face value if arguing for religion or getting to the core of their beliefs, or instead create a discussion with the person specifically about where their use of the word atheist is wrong. If you cannot come to a conclusive definition, then the argument is pointless, might be easier for you to just accept their definition.

3. I see quite a bit of arguments from assertion. Especially when defining your own societal rules about what is appropriate use of language or not. Perhaps it's just me, but your viewing of the term as "inappropriate," goes to show that the entire crux of your argument is based on your specific attachment to a negative view of the word, not whether it is a pragmatic use of it or not.

I'm not quite sure what the := means. Is it just equals?

Saying something's equal to me would be considered nesting right?

P1 = (P1 > P2) — TheMadFool

Doesn't the equality cause for an infinite regress in variables or am I not understanding?

You could easily say:

(P1>P2) = ((P1>P2)>P2)

and furthermore for infinity by your definition.

I'm still not convinced of the quantum physics part, I'd like to know if you have the study linked to it so I can reevaluate determinism.

I don't believe in chance. I believe in a deterministic world, where every action was caused by something else.

So you believe in chance?

I sincerely think it's one of the only ways to do so. It's almost like we have no other choice. I actually have a hypothesis that logic and existence are the same thing, so philosophy advances with logic because logic is everything that is.

No, I'd say comprehension is almost totally set in stone. Think of it as IQ. It's the ability to understand things at a certain level, it's not what you understand or know. A person with an IQ of 200 can still be wrong about a piece of information, and a person with an IQ of 90 can be right about that same thing. It's moreso what we can understand, not what we do understand.

What you don't know or what you can't know? Because that is what I'm arguing, what we cannot know.

Actually, I'd rather say that nonexistence is actually moreso arbitrary nonexistence, not real nonexistence.

Two libraries of things:

Things we comprehend
Possibilities:

• It does exist (evidence supports)
• It doesn't exist (lack of evidence, evidence to the contrary)

Things we cannot comprehend
Possibilities:

• It does exist (evidence must be comprehended to understand)
• It doesn't exist ('')

At this point we have identified reality into two parts, each of which have not split existence at all really, only our reason. Since we can identify it into two groups, those are two ways of viewing it to come to some conclusion. Since incomprehension has no bearing on our reality in any sense, practically the admittance is that we shouldn't be concerned with it. But practicality does not always coincide with reality, so, since we cannot comprehend it, then it must be out of our own existence. The view is then that human comprehension limits our view of the universe, as we have already established. However, in order to define the terms, since rules govern life, we must say that everything that does not exist is everything we have disproved and everything that we cannot comprehend.

Well, then it must be. And since we can comprehend it, it is possible to exist.

What evidence do we have to point to that? We must therefore only conclude what is evidentiary, and the way to find that is to comprehend it! It must be the only way.

I've taken some time to think. So what I've found, and am here to state with certainty, that existence is therefore only provable insofar as human comprehension can be achieved. This means that existence so far is only provable with the human that can comprehend the universe the most, or the collective reasoning of it.

Well, we have to make a few assumptions first. I don't know for a fact that humans even experience anything anyways, all I know is that I do. The only way to truly know if there is anything beyond our comprehension is with a non-human who can communicate to humans. A.I.? Maybe, but we're still operating on our plane. I try to avoid defeatist mentality as much I can though, so let's examine. What does it take to make an A.I.? A programmer. Actually, if anything, all computers are operating on the principle that objectivity, as in what we can sense, is what is, which we can say we don't know conclusively that that's the case, only that logic is the only determining factor for complete thought.

If we assume and act as though truth is found outside of our feeling, we actually get pretty far. We can specify where our minds originate from, how we came to be, what happens if we do a certain action etc. And because operating on the assumption that existence exists and is outside of us, we can obtain logic without even trying. It's already there. At this point, we're still on an assumption, but at least its coherent. What about science? The scientific method is perhaps the best source for why this assumption has merit. Under science, assumptions are only met with the most stringent tests, and when those assumptions are concluded with coherent results, we assume its truth, i.e. evolution, gravity, cell theory, etc.

Okay fine, but how do we define what this reality is and where does it stop if it is "everything," what even is "everything." Hmmm, now we have a real problem. Well first we need to find if existence is a dichotomy or a spectrum. We really have no way of answering it per se, other than what we experience. We only experience a dichotomy of reality right? We might have to conclude that. Doesn't mean there isn't anything outside of it, only that it's outside of our comprehension, making it non existent in our terms. What we can comprehend is something telling us that something's outside of our comprehension, so the thought exists, but not the actuality of the statement. What we're not saying is that humans are the only way the universe can exist, but merely that we abstract and define the terms of it.

well I'm not so sure that concludes anything. If a non-human observed something out of our comprehension, there's absolutely no way of telling and we would never even realize it.

What else is there other than our experience and observation of what is and isn't?

If we define the universe as everything humanly capable to comprehend, and the AI is able to learn and learns everything, possibly more than human comprehension, and is able to communicate everything that it has learned to humans, then it itself should be defined as human comprehension, thus making it the universe.

There is at some point where truth can be defined as an object. Since the universe exists and theoretically AI could operate on the entire universe's principles, then that AI would be truth.

However, from our viewpoint it would appear that objectivity exists outside of ourselves.