Science of Self (Humans)

by romansh , Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 02:16 (3902 days ago) @ 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?
emerge, result from - I have no problem with. I do have a problem with the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You know, the first law of thermodynamics etc.
 
> 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.
> 
Agreed, can we know anything 100%? Noumenon versus phenomenon etc.
Personally, I would avoid the word know being agnostic 'n all-> 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?
> 
I am not trying to prove anything ... just show my reasoning. All the things that we think of self are not intrinsically 'self'
 
> 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.
> 
I presume you are referring to libertarianism and compatibilism here? I have not come across a theory for free will that does not fall into one of these camps dhw. -I can hold people responsible for people slacking in the same way as I can hold the Gulf Stream moderating the British rain. -> 
> 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. 
I don't think manipulation is a one way street. We may think it is.-This devolves into a semantic game.-Either way ... free will (the definition I use) is an incoherent proposition, even in David's hypothesis. 
> *************
> 
> 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.-Actually I had worked that out the wonder of having no intonation or eye contact.