Ourcellves? (Identity)

by David Turell , Monday, April 07, 2014, 19:10 (3670 days ago) @ dhw

Dhw: I will add as a postscript that Romansh's question and response are absolutely fundamental to the problem of consciousness and free will: "What manipulated my brain structure to want to manipulate my brain structure"...I don't have a clue." That is why some of us keep an open mind on all related subjects ... not just free will and consciousness, materialism and dualism, consciousness as an emergent property, but also psychic experiences such as NDEs and OBEs. None of us have a clue. I also accept, Romansh, that you use "manipulate" without implying "intent", but until we understand the nature of thought, consciousness, the mind, I hope you will also keep at least one section of your own mind open to the possibility of intent.-I wish to repeat my medical observations. Our bodies are designed to run on automatic pilot. We don't have to think to breathe, circulate blood, produce urine adjusted to our blood's requirements, digest food, add or lose body fat, create reproductive cells, autmaticaly replace cells that are aging, or during a lifetime developing a library of antibodies to fight infection. All of this is done for us by our bodies. This makes us two layers of being. Our voluntary-action us and our autonomic or automatic us. When we train for some activity, physical or mental, our brain knows (somehow) that we are demanding a change in the brain. New neurons, new connections, etc., and so the brain modifies itself to allow us newly trained abilities. And we have no idea how such an ability evolved. Major guesses involve the development of useful hands with opposable thumbs, later the development of language with babies having a built in syntax. All by chance, of course.-The two of us are not entirely separate. I can control my breathing underwater. I can choose to gain or lose weight. I can choose my training to modify my brain. I obviously have freedom of choice. Does my brain reach out to control my choices? I am me and I cannot sense that. My background of experiencing life had pushed me in various directions, but I made those pushes myself by responding to my experiences. Do I control individual neurons? Of course not. But I control batteries of them. That is obvious. This is why I view reductive materialism as a wasted effort. Life is more than a sum of its parts. No mechanical machine with all its parts is like the living machine represented by our bodies. This is why I am sure that AI research will never produce a computer like our brain. For Matt, yes reasonable facsimiles. Our bodies are automatically designed to give us consciousness, a sense of self, and the right to choose thoughts and/or actions as we wish. Darwin's version of evolutionary theory gives no inkling of how this developed.