Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, September 06, 2009, 12:54 (5343 days ago) @ George Jelliss

Concerning the mind, I wrote among other things: "I want to know what causes the involuntary activities (e.g. a new idea), what enables me to guide the deliberate ones (i.e. what actually endows me with consciousness and will), and what translates the "electrochemical connections" into thought, attitudes etc." I also wrote that the materialist view is "that there has to be a physical explanation, but nobody knows it (yet)."-George replied: "But we do know it to a considerable extent! You need to update your knowledge. We've come a long way since Descartes!"-You kindly recommended two websites which you thought might be helpful (and I do appreciate these references):
http://www.web-us.com/brain/bio_org.html
and http://network.nature.com/groups/bpcc-I found the latter hard to negotiate, but eventually logged onto a lengthy discussion which did not provide any sort of consensus, let alone concrete information. It may be that thanks to my technical incompetence I failed to find the section you wanted me to read. However, the first website was easy to follow, and impressed me for two reasons:-1) The sheer complexity of the connections between the tens of billions of neurons: "these connections have an incredibly complicated structure ... different portions of the brain have different types of connection pattern, while these different sectors of the brain are themselves linked together by further specialized networking." On the occasions when I'm forced to attend religious services (e.g. weddings and funerals), I find my scepticism concerning the benevolent creator figure impossible to suppress. I'm afraid it's the reverse procedure when I read about the above complexities. The author says that "the effective power of the brain is very much larger than current computers", and yet I'm expected to believe that this "incredibly complicated structure" is the result (even over aeons) of processes initiated by sheer chance. -2) We may have come a long way since Descartes, but my initial questions have still not been answered. The author you recommended writes: "The very complexity of these neural networks poses a formidable barrier to understanding. Nobody knows in detail how the individual firings of neurons coupled to their interconnections can lead to all of the features observed ... short and long term memory, complex pattern recognition, logical reasoning, emotion and consciousness. Indeed, it is not known how even the lower level unconscious functions such as those which regulate breathing and heart rate emerge out of the complicated mutual interaction of millions of neurons." This is precisely the point I have been making. We do not know, and it is an act of faith to assume that eventually the materialist explanation of our identity will be confirmed. I note that you would prefer to call your views "scientific", but I do not think that is appropriate. Materialism is a theory, and belief in it requires a high degree of subjectivity. Science purports to be objective, and so "scientific" would endow your belief with a quality it does not have. --I pointed out that agnosticism = not believing and not disbelieving. You replied: "you need to proportion your degree of belief to the degree of evidence! Just because two different views of a subject can be presented does not mean that they are equally valid, 50:50." 
You are right. But you and David both have a scientific background, have proportioned your degrees of belief to the degree of evidence, and have come to diametrically opposite conclusions. I have enormous respect for both of you, have learned and hope to go on learning a great deal from both of you, but ultimately both of you take a leap of faith which I'm not ready to take.-My thanks to David for correcting me on the Abiogenesis thread, and to Matt for the fascinating article on building a model brain. I note in the latter that "the biggest challenge is to understand how electric-magnetic-chemical patterns in the brain convert into our perception of reality." The author might have added consciousness, emotion, memory etc.