Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, October 14, 2013, 16:38 (4057 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The hypothesis which I think might be reasonable is that the brain is a complex radio receiver and it uses a workable consciousness that is received via the universal consciousness, and individually modifies what is received into the 'self' consciousness we perceive within ourselves. Since I have no idea how conscousness develops or emerges, it is an intereesting theory, voiced by many authors in the field of consciousness study.-What do you mean by a "workable consciousness"? If the brain "modifies" it into our individual identity, it can only be a blank (otherwise it would already have an identity, wouldn't it?). So presumably God places a blank awareness into the brain. What exactly can a receiver can do with a blank? How does the brain decide which ways to mould the blank into the 'self'? To do so, it would have to become active ... a producer, not a receiver. You won't receive much 'self' from a blank. I think you are on safer ground when you say you have no idea how biochemicals produce consciousness, and you have no idea how the brain might work as a receiver. Strangely enough I do, but you have already dismissed my ideas as amorphous.-dhw: As for your theory, it is consistent so long as you do not have to explain its inconsistencies. I accept that there must be a first cause, though we can't possibly know what it is. I accept that we cannot understand the emergence of life and consciousness. And I accept that if there is an afterlife, we do not know how the identity can survive the death of the body. That is why I remain open-minded on these subjects. I think you too should accept that you are "in puzzlement". I have great respect for your faith and for your hypotheses, but I am also prepared to consider alternative hypotheses. -DAVID: I would not attack if the 'intelligent cells' were not such an amorphous concept with no grounding in what we know about the genome and biochemical automatic signalling. Again, you are seeking a middle ground between chance or design when yhour middle ground is not grounded in the science we know.
 
Does the science that we know give any support to your hypothesis that cells contain billions of programmes put there by an unknown universal intelligence, to come into operation when conditions are right? ALL the explanatory hypotheses are amorphous, and that is why I ended this particular paragraph by saying "you can only find yourself throwing stones in a glass house".-DAVID: ...cells need an overall plan to follow to make a kidney or a liver. You have not explained the actual mechanism of their planning and manufacturing sessions. Just conjuring up bright cells doesn't tell us anything. You just jump to the completed products we see from a non-existent type of cell.-DAVID: The biochemical processes are in the individual neurons that produce ionized signals that transfer signals back and forth. The entire network of over 100 billion neurons with trillions of connections result in the emergence of consciousness. -What you have described above is the manner in which cell communities produce consciousness. You don't know how it actually works. Do you think the production of consciousness is any less complex than the production of a kidney or a liver? Your own description of how consciousness is produced requires the sort of deliberate cooperation that we see in ant colonies. You believe in emergence ... i.e. that the sum is greater than the individual parts. According to evolution, life progressed from single cell to multicellular, and from multicellular to communities of billions, all cooperating. Over billions of years, through billions of cooperative communities, miracles of engineering EMERGE just as ant colonies emerge from the interaction of the many individuals. There is no single ant and no single cell called Brunel. The product emerges from the community. -But you are right, I have not explained the mechanism. I can't. Nor can you. You have "no idea how consciousness develops or emerges". Nor do you have any idea how kidneys or livers emerge. Just conjuring up a universal, preprogramming god "doesn't tell us anything". "You just jump to the completed products we see from"...no, I shan't say a non-existent type of intelligence...I am an agnostic. But from a type of intelligence for which there is no more evidence than there is for the intelligence of the cell. All we see are the results, and everything else is inference - your hypothesis no less than my alternative.
 
For further evidence that cells do not merely react automatically, please see my other post on this thread.