Free Will, and consciousness: Egnor's latest (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 10, 2020, 12:26 (1444 days ago) @ David Turell

EGNOR: "Both mind (intentionality) and design (teleology) refute materialism, and for fundamentally the same reason. Minds and life manifest goals, which matter alone lacks."

Of course intentions and purposes and thoughts and opinions and decisions and consciousness itself are not material. In view of your comment under memory (see below), we should include that too. The whole question is what is the SOURCE of all these? Nobody knows. The only thing we do know is that we ARE matter! It is just as possible (or if you prefer it, unbelievable) that the SOURCE is matter, by way of an unknown process, as it is that the SOURCE is an unknown immaterial something or the other that simply exists without a source of its own. Giving it a name (e.g. “soul”) is no more a guarantee of existence than the word “God”. But please remember that on the subject of dualism v materialism, I am just as agnostic as I am on the subject of God. All I can do is test the different arguments for their feasibility. It seems to me that Egnor has merely stated the obvious without facing up to the problem.

DAVID: Does an 'intelligent cell' have a mind? Certainly not, but it can contain intelligent instructions from a mind providing the appearance of teleology in living actions.. Only a mind can consider future needs and design for them. This consideration solves Gould's famous and well-recognized problem with fossil gaps.

Why “certainly not”? Even you have admitted that the odds are 50/50. But not a mind like ours. Reread Shapiro’s quote on the other thread. And please stop pretending that evolution involves gazing into a crystal ball. The theory I have proposed involves REACTING to conditions, not forecasting them. The problem of fossil gaps would be solved if there were a continuous fossil record of every creature that ever lived. Failing that, the intelligence of cells is just as good a solution as a divine 3.8-billion-year old computer programme for every undabbled life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, with every single one mysteriously being “part of the goal of evolving humans” while 99% of them have no connection with humans.

xxxxxx

Memory Formation
DAVID: This is a look the cellular genetic and molecular level of encoding memories. Note the memory is an abstraction of an event. The brain has recorded it but none of this research explains how consciousness can seek and find it in recall. The soul to brain link is there but never seen. In my view of dualism discussions and debates, this fact must be emphasized: invisibly tied together.

Yes, the authors do the same as you often do when discussing cellular intelligence: you and they focus on the material processes and ignore the intelligence that directs those processes. Your point here is covered by the discussion above and by the first post on Egnor’s theories.