What makes life vital (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 10, 2015, 00:05 (3546 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw:you don't seem to have fully understood my own point that science can explain the machinery by which thought is transmuted into action, but it cannot explain thought. That is why your attempts to automatize cells by describing their machinery seem to me to “miss the mark”.-I know that science can tell us how thoughts are made by cells, and I know that certain motor areas of the brain control muscular action. In my version of free will my conscious mind tells my brain to move my arm and it does. My brain automatically responds to my wishes. What is your point? I'm right on the mark.-> 
> dhw: You don't care about the illogicality of the argument that life and thought can only be created by a mind, but the mind that created them did not have to be created. You try to balance your theism by closing your eyes to the fact that belief in chance and belief in God BOTH run counter to reason. That is why we use the word “faith”.-You are using faith in my case in the wrong way. I see no other logical explanation for the universe and life than a planning mind. That is my logical conclusion. I have 'faith' in my reasoning that I am right. Then secondarily I accept faith in God. Just as I try not to interpret God's personality, I keep Him at a slight distance compared to reverential religious folk.
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> dhw: If other organisms behave as if they are intelligent, and many researchers tell us they are, why insist they are not? Why not keep an open mind? -Because the odds are 50/50 I am right, and I've reached this conclusion and will stick to it. Bacteria act intelligently because they follow intelligent instructions. I quote from Shapiro:-"The contemporary view of cell information processing...makes the point that DNA cannot do anything or direct anything by itself; it must interact with other cell molecules. So all genomic action is subject to the inputs and information-processing networks we know operate in living cells."- These networks are all molecular interactions. Nowhere in his book does he have a subject called cell thinking. Instead:-"The best we can do right now is to recognize that cells use many kinds of molecular interactions to process information and execute appropriate decisions." I haven't met a thinking protein molecule yet. They are thousands of atoms strung together to make a functional molecule. Those functional molecules interplay with DNA to achieve results, some of which are epigenetic changes in DNA, the thrust of his research. His thoughts and mine are NOT in opposition.-> 
> dhw: When people say consciousness “emerges”, they usually mean that it is produced by the interplay between the neurons. If consciousness exists independently and the brain is a receiver and not a transmitter, the progressive complexity of the nervous system and of brains is the RESULT of increasingly complex consciousness, not the producer. Is that what you mean?-The concept of receiving consciousness arises from the discovery that NDE's demonstrate consciousness independent of a living brain. The theory is really a form of dualism. I am sure the extreme complexity of our brain, as compared to lower animals, results in a much more complex form of consciousness, which we certainly have. Under this thought, there is a universal consciousness 'out there' with lower and higher levels that can be 'received' by the brain at its current level of complexity (or "receivingness"). Since I believe as God, the universal consciousness, it all fits with my way of looking at things.