A splendid video about evolution

I agree that from the standpoint of formal logic, the sentence “There are n spiritual dimensions” is well-formed and, strictly speaking, either true or false. But from a logical positivist perspective, the deeper issue is that the question itself is meaningless, because the terms involved can’t be empirically defined or verified. So the sentence has propositional form, but it doesn’t express a cognitively meaningful proposition, which means we can’t meaningfully assign it a truth value at all.

That is an incredibly narrow of looking at things. Imagine a QM text that states, for every physical system there is a wavefunction  Ψ that .......

At that point the function  Ψ is pretty much undefined, and you couldn't sensibly give it a truth value until a lot more information about  Ψ is specified.

Imagine how Einstein must have groped about to come up with GR. Scientists have to deal with much vaguer ideas when inventing new concepts!

Personally I don't think we have to talk about God in these discussions. I mean it seems to me that injecting omniscience or omnipotence into a discussion is like inserting ∞ into a set of equations - a quick way to produce nonsense.

David

Thanks for starting to debate this issue iin a scientific way.
OK, my point is that following Behe's logic none of those observations should happen. Every one of them implies that living matter does not follow materialist laws. Somehow those biological systems must be able to sense which mutations are beneficial and which are not! I mean at rock bottom we have a stream of symbols (nucleotide bases) that must obey simple combinatorial rules.
Let's just take the case of bacterial resistance. This is an interesting case where a mutation can improve a bacterium provided a certain antibiotic is in use. In most (maybe all?) cases this weakens the bacterium in the wild. I think that is why bacteria have never absolutely overwhelmed the existing antibiotics.
A substantial number of biologists follow The Third Way (TTW):
https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/
This is a grouping that claims that evolution can somehow escape the limitations of RM+NS. @stephenw can give you more details of this approach. However, having read a bit of this concept, I couldn't find any clear example of how this way of thinking transcends the logic of Darwinism - even though it claims to. Maybe you will discover how this is done, and we will come into agreement!
I would say that the value of TTW is that it enables biologists to publish observations that aren't consistent with Darwinism - such as the ones you cite - but which do occur.
David

I'm a bit surprised by this response, as I was expecting you to challenge me again with Behe's classic bacterial flagellum argument or something similar. I'm in no way a proponent or defender of classical/neo-Darwinism. My only point throughout this entire thread is that it's difficult to disprove RM+NS and impossible to prove the existence of a designer through science. I personally think Max's point about classical evolution theory being an approximation is sound, and I fully support Third Way thinking as a way of opening up the entire field.

That is an incredibly narrow of looking at things. Imagine a QM text that states, for every physical system there is a wavefunction  Ψ that .......
At that point the function  Ψ is pretty much undefined, and you couldn't sensibly give it a truth value until a lot more information about  Ψ is specified

….

David

Exactly - which is why any physical/quantum chemistry textbook I know of defines Ψ in terms of the corresponding Hamiltonian for that specific physical system. The wavefunction only becomes meaningful when it's tied to observable, measurable properties through the Hamiltonian operator - this is completely in accordance with logical positivism's requirement that meaningful statements must be empirically verifiable.

I agree that from the standpoint of formal logic, the sentence “There are n spiritual dimensions” is well-formed and, strictly speaking, either true or false. But from a logical positivist perspective, the deeper issue is that the question itself is meaningless, because the terms involved can’t be empirically defined or verified. So the sentence has propositional form, but it doesn’t express a cognitively meaningful proposition, which means we can’t meaningfully assign it a truth value at all

But multiple subjects have independently had spiritual experiences of apparently other realities, therefore they have empirically experienced them.

What you mean is a scientific definition, or scientifically verified evidence of non-physical realities, which by definition has never been possible, because science is locked into a Materialist bias, physical tools, and so can never see beyond the physical at current.

Psychedelics involve experiencing different realities, OBEs involve layers above this one, NDEs involve coming close to the afterlife reality, veridical NDEs can be empirically verified ~ these can be indirectly defined and verified, yet the researcher themselves cannot empirically define and verify them for another.

You can't poke them in a petri dish. Yet they empirically exist for those that have experienced them.

That is an incredibly narrow of looking at things. Imagine a QM text that states, for every physical system there is a wavefunction  Ψ that .......

At that point the function  Ψ is pretty much undefined, and you couldn't sensibly give it a truth value until a lot more information about  Ψ is specified.

Imagine how Einstein must have groped about to come up with GR. Scientists have to deal with much vaguer ideas when inventing new concepts!

Personally I don't think we have to talk about God in these discussions. I mean it seems to me that injecting omniscience or omnipotence into a discussion is like inserting ∞ into a set of equations - a quick way to produce nonsense.

David

Indeed ~ spiritual dimensions stand on their own. References to "God" and whatnot have no meaning in such discussions ~ but it demonstrates a lack of understand between the difference between the religious and spiritual.

[Laird]

the terms involved can’t be empirically defined or verified.

"Empirically" is redundant: all terms are defined empirically, by people out in the empirical world starting to use them with a certain meaning.

When lexicographers "empirically verify" that a term is in widespread enough usage with a widespread enough particular (set of) meaning(s) to be considered standard usage, then they add it, along with that corresponding (set of) meaning(s), to a dictionary.

The conditions you stipulate thus apply to all terms anyway. You're not stipulating any unique set of conditions.

Thus, your claim reduces to, "the terms involved can't be defined", which is clearly false, because they already are defined: all of them can be found in any reputable dictionary, and any fluent English speaker would understand a sentence of the form "There are n spiritual dimensions".

So the sentence has propositional form, but it doesn’t express a cognitively meaningful proposition

More redundancy: I'm not aware of any means of apprehending meaning (in this sense) other than cognitively. Thus, your claim reduces to "it doesn't express a meaningful proposition", but, as I pointed out above, it clearly does. Its terms can be found in any dictionary, and any fluent English speaker would understand it.

Thus, that...

we can’t meaningfully assign it a truth value at all

...is also false (again, setting aside for now the question of whether or not we could know what the correct truth value is).

Given that, clearly, your claim that such sentences are "meaningless" is false, it seems to me that what you're really doing here is redefining "meaningful".

With that in mind, let's return to your original claim:

ontological statements are meaningful only if they can be verified through empirical observation or are analytically true (such as logical or mathematical statements).

This is not so much a claim as an idiosyncratic, context-limited redefinition of "meaningful" (the limited context being that of ontological statements).

Do you accept this?

But multiple subjects have independently had spiritual experiences of apparently other realities, therefore they have empirically experienced them.

What you mean is a scientific definition, or scientifically verified evidence of non-physical realities, which by definition has never been possible, because science is locked into a Materialist bias, physical tools, and so can never see beyond the physical at current.

Psychedelics involve experiencing different realities, OBEs involve layers above this one, NDEs involve coming close to the afterlife reality, veridical NDEs can be empirically verified ~ these can be indirectly defined and verified, yet the researcher themselves cannot empirically define and verify them for another.

You can't poke them in a petri dish. Yet they empirically exist for those that have experienced them.

I wish there was a 10x like buttons here. If there was, I'd give you one of those for that post!

Exactly - which is why any physical/quantum chemistry textbook I know of defines Ψ in terms of the corresponding Hamiltonian for that specific physical system. The wavefunction only becomes meaningful when it's tied to observable, measurable properties through the Hamiltonian operator - this is completely in accordance with logical positivism's requirement that meaningful statements must be empirically verifiable.

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a whole series of possible wave functions, the ground state (which may be degenerate, and so give rise to an infinite set of possible Ψ), but also the system might be in an excited state!

I too can play at being picky, but I don't do it often because it just irritates people.

I think this forum works best when people each contribute their own ideas and constructively combine them.

David

"Empirically" is redundant: all terms are defined empirically, by people out in the empirical world starting to use them with a certain meaning.

Technically, every single thing within experience is "empirical" by raw definition ~ but what the philosophical Empiricists redefine that to mean is that everything must be "objectively" known to be "valid", therefore, everything must ergo be physical or objective, because that is the shared, public world. (Nevermind that what we call "objective" is barely so, because it is really inter-subjective agreement about what is what.)

But such a view inherently denies private, subjective experiences that are had by the individual, because those denying them haven't personally experienced them. All we generally have down here are mostly private, subjective experiences anyways. (Barring telepathy, which pierces that wall) Besides that, it can be considered that many have a perhaps minor form of telepathy through the unconscious ability to empathically pick up on the emotions of others without realizing it. 

There is too much overlap between classical Empiricists and Materialists these days ~ perhaps they are basically identical, in that the Empiricists are the ancestors of the modern Materialist? Especially considering that so many definitional-Materialists espouse that they believe in an "empirical" worldview.

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a whole series of possible wave functions, the ground state (which may be degenerate, and so give rise to an infinite set of possible Ψ), but also the system might be in an excited state!

I too can play at being picky, but I don't do it often because it just irritates people.

I think this forum works best when people each contribute their own ideas and constructively combine them.

David

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a set of solutions, one ground state and a set of excited states,  and the general solution is a superposition of these. In terms of logical positivism, the general solution is meaningful because it yields observable predictions. Without additional constraints it is the general solution that describes the QM system defined by a given Hamiltonian.