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

by dhw, Friday, December 11, 2020, 09:17 (1231 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."

dhw: 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: Which means both of us and the rest of the world have no knowledge of how immaterial consciousness appears.

Obviously. And Egnor’s argument ignores the problem by simply focusing on the fact that consciousness, thought, opinions etc. are immaterial, which we all know anyway.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The crystal ball is required for animals to jump into aquatic life. They are my strongest argument for design being required.

I would suggest this is your weakest argument – complexity being your strongest. If an animal sees that there is more food in the water than there is on the land, and it has a better chance of surviving in the water, then it will enter the water. The necessary adaptations will then follow. I’m afraid I find it quite absurd to picture an animal happily munching its supper on the seashore, dozing off, and then finding that its legs have turned into fins, and a voice says “Go thou into the water!”

xxxxxx

Memory Formation

DAVID: This is a look at 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The 'intelligence' is simply implanted intelligent instructions that run the cells.

Your usual statement of opinion as if it were fact.