Human Consciousness: stimuli, analog to digital (Humans)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 12:52 (2984 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You are resolutely refusing to acknowledge that your beliefs are not based on EXPERIMENTAL evidence.
DAVID: Nuance of difference: my beliefs occurred because of the persuasive evidence from science. I know my beliefs are not testable.-Nuances make a difference. Both theists and atheists use nuances to kid people that their beliefs are based on science. By identifying yourself with a particular philosopher's category of “empiricist”, you implied that your beliefs were testable by experiments (which was a key element of his definition). Such use of language is on a par with Dawkins' claim that natural selection “explains the whole of life; it also raises our consciousness to the power of science to explain how organized complexity can emerge from simple beginnings without any deliberate guidance.” You would no doubt - and in my view quite rightly - leap on such misleading statements: science is no more capable of explaining how dinosaurs, humans or duckbilled platypuses can emerge from single celled forms of life than you can test your religious beliefs by experiment.
 
DAVID: And I view a brain as a required receiver to experience consciousness. Bacteria do not have any degree of a conscious experience or consciousness because they have no receiver. From NDE research.-dhw: NDE research (I'm not referring to OBEs here) suggests exactly the opposite - namely, that when the brain is clinically dead, the patient can enter a different world in which he/she DOES experience consciousness. You yourself have said you believe in an afterlife in which the brainless David WILL remain conscious. Therefore according to you it must be possible to experience consciousness without a brain.-DAVID: As a dualist, I believe when I die my consciousness/soul goes to Heaven intact, no brain required, the consciousness a separate entity from the brain.-Exactly. If consciousness can be experienced without a brain, it is a complete contradiction for you to state that bacteria cannot experience consciousness because they do not have a brain.