Science of Self (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, March 17, 2014, 08:14 (3903 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: OK Emergence - if we are using the term where a particular set of conditions a behaviour emerges or that set of conditions results in - no problem. if you literally mean the whole is greater than the sum of the parts ... this is literally contrary to the first law of thermodynamics. You better have some pretty good evidence to corroborate this possibility dhw.-Like David, I admire your "knowledge and training", but why do you make things so complicated? You have assumed that consciousness, will and self are physical. The term "emergence" is commonly used to suggest that these phenomena "emerge" from interaction between cells and cell communities which in isolation could not produce them, and so the product of the interaction between the parts is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Does this not describe the process you believe in?-ROMANSH: Temporary does not mean unreal, agreed. [...]. But when we say temporary are we not taking two arbitrary points in time and space and saying that is me?
 
Yes. We can never know ourselves 100%, since we can never experience all the things that can mould our "self". We can only identify the self that we know at any given moment.-ROMANSH: [...] Everything that is what I consider my 'self' has come from outside of myself. Ideas, DNA, food, matter, energy you name it - they come together in me and are spat out as ideas, DNA, food, matter and energy.-I don't know what you are trying to prove. It doesn't matter what I absorb or what I spit out ... it's still me. Is it not the one and only Romansh reading these posts and writing these replies?-ROMANSH: Do cells produce our thoughts? Our cells are our thoughts I would argue. That nobody can explain how a particular dualism works after two millenia or more might just be a clue here. Nobody can explain (reasonably) how an Abrahamic god might work either, it does not mean I have to accept it as a hypothesis worth further consideration.-Of course it doesn't. But since nobody can explain how cells can be our thoughts (what does that mean anyway?) why should anyone accept that as "a hypothesis worth further consideration"? There are questions to which we have no answers, and so we theorize. Until you can explain how a cell can "be" a thought, your own theory is as flawed as any other, though you are naturally at liberty to have faith in it if you consider it more reasonable than others. That's how David justifies his theism.-ROMANSH: Caused versus compelled ... I think this belies being stuck in a libertarian quagmire as opposed to a compatibilist one. There are many benefits to a lack of belief in free will ... the primary one being we can cut some slack to other people and at a push ourselves too.-I think both theories are equally flawed, though that doesn't mean free will is a delusion. If "benefits" are your criterion for accepting a theory, think of all the benefits of believing in a benign god! You can cut slack through human empathy, and still believe people are responsible for their actions. Even in courts of law, where responsibility is usually assumed, allowance is made for mitigating circumstances.-Dhw: I don't think we can deny cause and effect, but most of us do feel that we have freedom. [...] Nobody has a clue, which is why I cannot make the assumption, as you do, that consciousness, will and the self are purely physical.
ROMANSH: If you truly mean that you cannot deny cause and effect, then the second part of the paragraph does not make sense to me. My apparent consciousness, will and self can be manipulated by (interacts with) the physical. Are you denying this? Even if these things are somehow immaterial they have to "one" with the physical ... otherwise they may as well be not here.-Manipulation is one-way, and interaction is two-way. Consciousness etc. can be manipulated by the physical, through drugs, alcohol, diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia etc. Consciousness manipulates the physical by sending instructions to the cells (write a response to Romansh, go and cook your supper, take yourself upstairs). If consciousness is immaterial, yes of course it has to interact with the physical, because we live in a physical world. So what doesn't make sense to you? Cause and effect will still apply whether consciousness is material or immaterial. However, if it is immaterial, there is the possibility ... as David has argued in his post of 11 March at 23.13 ... that it can make its own decisions independently of materials (and can even influence those materials). Then it becomes a question of the extent to which its decisions are influenced by other causes (experiences, the environment, upbringing, accident, past history), and that is where I chicken out. -*************-ROMANSH: At work I am known as a contrarian.
COLLEAGUE: No you're not.
ROMANSH: Not any colleague of mine dhw-Sorry, that was meant to be a contrarian joke.