Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Ed. -- aka the "Panda Trial" - Page 15

You're also fairly adept at doing the antagonizing. For one thing, by being so evasive... In fact, I see you took the opportunity of critizing the tone of a short post over dealing with the challenges of the longer posts.

Dispense with your evasiveness and start really answering some tough questions, and I'll consider it.

Which is damn convenient at times, isn't it?

I am making my points, as briefly as your predictable slipperiness and ability to (willfully it often seems) misread anything shorter allows.

Considering the positive reviews of my posts which I often receive, you'll have to forgive me if I think I'm doing just fine in long form.

I think this depends on what you mean by "self aware". (I see while I've been typing this you've already gotten to that obvious point.) For some very limited definition, perhaps. As time goes on, perhaps we will develop artificial intelligence so advanced that it can pass any test we can imagine giving a human being to test their self awareness -- we're quite far from getting there at this point.

Suppose we do get there, however. Some people would still insist on saying that our AI mimicked self awareness, rather than actually being self aware. Why? Because there's something about one's own experience of one's own self awareness which alludes easy explanation, which feels like more than producing outputs which correspond to given inputs.

Of course, that feeling is totally internal. Not only are we unable to tell if a machine might have that kind of feeling, we can't even know for sure if other people have that feeling. Getting back to the thread topic, this points out the kind of question science can't answer -- anything regarding the full character of what another being's perceptions and awareness are like, the quality and flavor of those perceptions beyond the mere technical specifications of measured responses to given stimuli -- is not in the realm of the observable, therefore not subject to scientific discussion.

Now some people around here should note that it's perfectly possible to reach this conclusion (a) without filling in with metaphysics or religion, and (b) without denying metaphysical or religious "explanations" either. This is where one who uses science simply says "I don't know".

Ironic, ain't it?

Of course, any point I have to make has to be considered far too pedestrian, next to the amazing blend of erudition and Revealed Truth dmz brings to the table, to be worth very many words. I should simply provide a simple phrase or two at a time, easily packaged for dmz's quick refutation, and accept that if it appears to me that dmz is totally misreading those few words, that it's really because he's seeing deeper into my own words than I myself do.

Do I think he's using straw men, false dichotomies, over simplifications of opposing viewpoints, contrived dilemmas? No, no, no... I have to realize that these apparent problems exist only because dmz has already leaped far ahead on these issues via not only logic and philosophical depth beyond my ken, but by the Guiding Hand of Grace. Apparent evasiveness? That's simply his Zen-master like approach of teasing us along to follow in his own path. He can't just tell us what he means and how he got there -- he can only reveal his Wisdom to us in tantalizing glimpses, in the hope we can discover our own path to his (and His) TRVTH.

Other than a General Discussion thread I just noticed, talking about the existence of God but starting to veer off into evolution, it's remarkable how quiet the anti-evolution, pro-ID crowd has been since that decision.

I'm sure it's only a temporary respite, but damn, it's been nice.