Consciousness: A State of Matter? (General)

by BBella @, Saturday, October 29, 2016, 21:09 (2697 days ago)

PHYSICISTS SAY CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A STATE OF MATTER:
THE “NON PHYSICAL” IS REAL

http://tinyurl.com/hch7qvd

"He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that."

We have been here before in this discussion -
but interesting to revisit at this point.

Consciousness: A State of Matter?

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 30, 2016, 00:52 (2697 days ago) @ BBella

Bbella: PHYSICISTS SAY CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A STATE OF MATTER:
THE “NON PHYSICAL” IS REAL

http://tinyurl.com/hch7qvd

"He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that."

We have been here before in this discussion -
but interesting to revisit at this point.

My take has always been that consciousness came first, then matter, which is how I interpret the thoughts in the above website

Consciousness: A State of Matter?

by dhw, Sunday, October 30, 2016, 12:28 (2697 days ago) @ David Turell

Bbella: PHYSICISTS SAY CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A STATE OF MATTER:
THE “NON PHYSICAL” IS REAL

http://tinyurl.com/hch7qvd

"He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that."
We have been here before in this discussion -
but interesting to revisit at this point.

DAVID: My take has always been that consciousness came first, then matter, which is how I interpret the thoughts in the above website.

Chicken and egg. If consciousness came before matter, we have some form of God. If matter came first, we have no God (at least of the conventional monotheistic kind). The expression “a state of matter” is not clear to me, but it would seem to imply panpsychism (the true meaning of which is that all forms of matter have some mental aspect). I don’t know how this leads to the conclusion that “The Universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy”, but there are gaps in the quote, so perhaps it’s out of context. Clearly none of us would be alive if matter was not a real part of the universe, so my conclusion would be that, regardless of what came first, unless you believe that neither we nor our thoughts are real, our world at least (we don’t know about the rest of the universe) is both material and mental, and we can enjoy both.

I am hoping to find a spare hour this week to formulate my own dastardly plan to reconcile dualism and materialism!

Consciousness: A State of Matter?

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 30, 2016, 14:21 (2697 days ago) @ dhw

Bbella: PHYSICISTS SAY CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A STATE OF MATTER:
THE “NON PHYSICAL” IS REAL

http://tinyurl.com/hch7qvd

"He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that."
We have been here before in this discussion -
but interesting to revisit at this point.

DAVID: My take has always been that consciousness came first, then matter, which is how I interpret the thoughts in the above website.

dhw: Chicken and egg. If consciousness came before matter, we have some form of God. If matter came first, we have no God (at least of the conventional monotheistic kind). The expression “a state of matter” is not clear to me, but it would seem to imply panpsychism (the true meaning of which is that all forms of matter have some mental aspect). I don’t know how this leads to the conclusion that “The Universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy”, but there are gaps in the quote, so perhaps it’s out of context. Clearly none of us would be alive if matter was not a real part of the universe, so my conclusion would be that, regardless of what came first, unless you believe that neither we nor our thoughts are real, our world at least (we don’t know about the rest of the universe) is both material and mental, and we can enjoy both.

I am hoping to find a spare hour this week to formulate my own dastardly plan to reconcile dualism and materialism!

If you read the whole website, my statement stands, consciousness first.

Consciousness: A State of Matter?

by dhw, Monday, October 31, 2016, 11:52 (2696 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Chicken and egg. If consciousness came before matter, we have some form of God. If matter came first, we have no God (at least of the conventional monotheistic kind). The expression “a state of matter” is not clear to me, but it would seem to imply panpsychism (the true meaning of which is that all forms of matter have some mental aspect). I don’t know how this leads to the conclusion that “The Universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy”, but there are gaps in the quote, so perhaps it’s out of context. Clearly none of us would be alive if matter was not a real part of the universe, so my conclusion would be that, regardless of what came first, unless you believe that neither we nor our thoughts are real, our world at least (we don’t know about the rest of the universe) is both material and mental, and we can enjoy both.

DAVID: If you read the whole website, my statement stands, consciousness first.

Yes, I realized that the article agrees with you. That is why I tried to restore some balance in my comment!:-)

Consciousness: A State of Matter?

by David Turell @, Monday, October 31, 2016, 17:06 (2695 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: If you read the whole website, my statement stands, consciousness first.

dhw: Yes, I realized that the article agrees with you. That is why I tried to restore some balance in my comment!:-)

Thank you.

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by David Turell @, Monday, January 30, 2017, 20:53 (2604 days ago) @ David Turell

The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by a band of fibers known as the corpus callosum. In patients with one-sided epilepsy, this body has been entirely sliced apart. In some patients it appears that consciousness might be split apart. New research says not so:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/315508.php

"A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness. Instead, the researchers behind the study, led by UvA psychologist Yair Pinto, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain.

"Split brain is a lay term to describe the result of a corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure first performed in the 1940s to alleviate severe epilepsy among patients. During this procedure, the corpus callosum, a bundle of neural fibres connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, is severed to prevent the spread of epileptic activity between the two brain halves. While mostly successful in relieving epilepsy, the procedure also virtually eliminates all communication between the cerebral hemispheres, thereby resulting in a 'split brain'.

"This condition was made famous by the work of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. In their canonical work, Sperry and Gazzaniga discovered that split-brain patients can only respond to stimuli in the right visual field with their right hand and vice versa. This was taken as evidence that severing the corpus callosum causes each hemisphere to gain its own consciousness.

"For their study, Pinto and his fellow researchers conducted a series of tests on two patients who had undergone a full callosotomy. In one of the tests, the patients were placed in front of a screen and shown various objects displayed in several locations. The patients were then asked to confirm whether an object appeared and to indicate its location. In another test, they had to correctly name the object they had seen, a notorious difficulty among spit-brain patients. 'Our main aim was to determine whether the patients performed better when responding to the left visual field with their left hand instead of their right hand and vice versa', says Pinto, assistant professor of Cognitive Psychology. 'This question was based on the textbook notion of two independent conscious agents: one experiencing the left visual field and controlling the left hand, and one experiencing the right visual field and controlling the right hand.'

"To the researchers' surprise, the patients were able to respond to stimuli throughout the entire visual field with all the response types: left hand, right hand and verbally. Pinto: 'The patients could accurately indicate whether an object was present in the left visual field and pinpoint its location, even when they responded with the right hand or verbally. This despite the fact that their cerebral hemispheres can hardly communicate with each other and do so at perhaps 1 bit per second, which is less than a normal conversation. I was so surprised that I decide repeat the experiments several more times with all types of control.'

"According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. 'The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness.'"

Comment: I view this study as strong evidence for my contention that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. If the brain creates consciousness its two separated lobes should produce dual consciousnesses. That is not the case. If the brain is a receiver, then both sides receive one whole consciousness which works as a whole in the patient's perception. Note that there is separation in physical sensation, visual appreciation as noted. A major finding!

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by dhw, Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 21:22 (2603 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. 'The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness.'"

David's comment: I view this study as strong evidence for my contention that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. If the brain creates consciousness its two separated lobes should produce dual consciousnesses. That is not the case. If the brain is a receiver, then both sides receive one whole consciousness which works as a whole in the patient's perception. Note that there is separation in physical sensation, visual appreciation as noted. A major finding!

It certainly is a fascinating discovery. Am I right in thinking that you have drawn attention in the past to cases in which a whole section of the brain was actually missing, and yet the patient was somehow able to fill the “gaps”? It would be interesting to hear the response of a materialist to these findings. In the meantime, I must mull over the implications for my attempted reconciliation of the two schools of thought!

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 01, 2017, 00:51 (2603 days ago) @ dhw


David's comment: I view this study as strong evidence for my contention that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. If the brain creates consciousness its two separated lobes should produce dual consciousnesses. That is not the case. If the brain is a receiver, then both sides receive one whole consciousness which works as a whole in the patient's perception. Note that there is separation in physical sensation, visual appreciation as noted. A major finding!

dhw: It certainly is a fascinating discovery. Am I right in thinking that you have drawn attention in the past to cases in which a whole section of the brain was actually missing, and yet the patient was somehow able to fill the “gaps”? It would be interesting to hear the response of a materialist to these findings. In the meantime, I must mull over the implications for my attempted reconciliation of the two schools of thought!

Yes, full mentation with missing brain! But complex enough to receive consciousness.

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 16:53 (2365 days ago) @ David Turell

A comment by the research scientist who produced the result in the prior post:

https://aeon.co/ideas/when-you-split-the-brain-do-you-split-the-person?utm_source=Aeon+...

"In so-called ‘split-brain’ patients, the corpus callosum – the highway for communication between the left and the right cerebral hemispheres – is surgically severed to halt otherwise intractable epilepsy.

"The operation is effective in stopping epilepsy; if a neural firestorm starts in one hemisphere, the isolation ensures that it does not spread to the other half. But without the corpus callosum the hemispheres have virtually no means of exchanging information.

***

"We’ve got to admit that split-brain patients feel and behave normally. If a split-brain patient walks into the room, you would not notice anything unusual. And they themselves claim to be completely unchanged, other than being rid of terrible epileptic seizures. If the person was really split, this wouldn’t be true.

***

"Based on these findings, we have proposed a new model of the split-brain syndrome. When you split the brain, you still end up with only one person. However, this person experiences two streams of visual information, one for each visual field. And that person is unable to integrate the two streams. It is as if he watches an out-of-sync movie, but not with the audio and video out of sync. Rather, the two unsynced streams are both video.

"And there’s more. While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism (split the brain, split the person), the current understanding seems to only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain into two halves, and yet you still have only one person.
How does a brain, consisting of many modules, create just one person? And, how do split-brainers operate as one when these parts are not even talking to each other?"

Comment: More proof that consciousness has no true basis in the idea that it is being produced by the brain. The brain receives the mechanism of consciousness and uses it.

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by dhw, Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 10:49 (2365 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "And there’s more. While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism (split the brain, split the person), the current understanding seems to only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain into two halves, and yet you still have only one person.
How does a brain, consisting of many modules, create just one person? And, how do split-brainers operate as one when these parts are not even talking to each other?"

DAVID’s comment: More proof that consciousness has no true basis in the idea that it is being produced by the brain. The brain receives the mechanism of consciousness and uses it.

This is a fascinating discovery. It’s based, though, on an almost throw-away statement that slightly bothers me:
“But without the corpus callosum the hemispheres have virtually no means of exchanging information.
Why “virtually”? If there is any means at all of exchanging information, how do we know the extent to which it can be operative? As I say, I’m only slightly bothered by it, and the source and nature of consciousness and the force that unifies ALL our cell communities, including those of the brain, remain an endlessly intriguing mystery which we shall keep returning to. As usual, many thanks for keeping us so well informed about all the latest findings.

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by David Turell @, Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 15:07 (2365 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "And there’s more. While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism (split the brain, split the person), the current understanding seems to only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain into two halves, and yet you still have only one person.
How does a brain, consisting of many modules, create just one person? And, how do split-brainers operate as one when these parts are not even talking to each other?"

DAVID’s comment: More proof that consciousness has no true basis in the idea that it is being produced by the brain. The brain receives the mechanism of consciousness and uses it.

dhw: This is a fascinating discovery. It’s based, though, on an almost throw-away statement that slightly bothers me:
“But without the corpus callosum the hemispheres have virtually no means of exchanging information.
Why “virtually”? If there is any means at all of exchanging information, how do we know the extent to which it can be operative? As I say, I’m only slightly bothered by it, and the source and nature of consciousness and the force that unifies ALL our cell communities, including those of the brain, remain an endlessly intriguing mystery which we shall keep returning to. As usual, many thanks for keeping us so well informed about all the latest findings.

The word 'virtually' implies that there might be an unknown way of communicating. Just covering all possibilities.

Consciousness: not split in split-brain patients

by David Turell @, Saturday, July 06, 2019, 18:01 (1717 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study shows split brain does not split the person or the consciousness, but does alter some sensory perceptions which depend on one lobe or the other:

https://aeon.co/ideas/when-you-split-the-brain-do-you-split-the-person?utm_source=Aeon+...

"The brain is perhaps the most complex machine in the Universe. It consists of two cerebral hemispheres, each with many different modules. Fortunately, all these separate parts are not autonomous agents. They are highly interconnected, all working in harmony to create one unique being: you.

"But what would happen if we destroyed this harmony? What if some modules start operating independently from the rest? Interestingly, this is not just a thought experiment; for some people, it is reality.

"In so-called ‘split-brain’ patients, the corpus callosum – the highway for communication between the left and the right cerebral hemispheres – is surgically severed to halt otherwise intractable epilepsy.

***

"We’ve got to admit that split-brain patients feel and behave normally. If a split-brain patient walks into the room, you would not notice anything unusual. And they themselves claim to be completely unchanged, other than being rid of terrible epileptic seizures. If the person was really split, this wouldn’t be true.

"To try to get to the bottom of things, my team at the University of Amsterdam re-visited this fundamental issue by testing two split-brain patients, evaluating whether they could respond accurately to objects in the left visual field (perceived by the right brain) while also responding verbally or with the right hand (controlled by the left brain).

"Astonishingly, in these two patients, we found something completely different than Sperry and Gazzaniga before us. Both patients showed full awareness of presence and location of stimuli throughout the entire visual field – right and left, both. When stimuli appeared in the left visual field, they virtually never said (or indicated with the right hand) that they saw nothing. Rather, they would accurately indicate that something had appeared, and where.

"But the split-brain patients we studied were still not completely normal. Stimuli could not be compared across the midline of the visual field. Moreover, when a stimulus appeared in the left visual field, the patient was better at indicating its visual properties (even when he responded with the right hand or verbally!), and when a stimulus appeared in the right visual field, he was better at verbally labelling it (even when he responded with the left hand).

"Based on these findings, we have proposed a new model of the split-brain syndrome. When you split the brain, you still end up with only one person. However, this person experiences two streams of visual information, one for each visual field. And that person is unable to integrate the two streams. It is as if he watches an out-of-sync movie, but not with the audio and video out of sync. Rather, the two unsynced streams are both video.

"And there’s more. While the previous model provided strong evidence for materialism (split the brain, split the person), the current understanding seems to only deepen the mystery of consciousness. You split the brain into two halves, and yet you still have only one person. How does a brain, consisting of many modules, create just one person? And, how do split-brainers operate as one when these parts are not even talking to each other?"

Comment: as usual materialism as it relates to brain function is not supported.

Consciousness: Gazzaniga's new book

by David Turell @, Thursday, April 05, 2018, 17:58 (2174 days ago) @ David Turell

He is famous for studying split brain subjects which have split brains and functions but not a split consciousness in this website:

Monday, January 30, 2017, 20:53

The book review:

http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03920-z?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180406&spMailin...

"Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga tackles this abiding mind–body problem anew in The Consciousness Instinct. His subtitle, Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind, rephrases Descartes’s conundrum into a bold promise. But then, Gazzaniga is a bold scientist. He made his name in the 1960s through pioneering work on severing the connection between the brain’s left and right hemispheres (‘split brains’), as his autobiography vividly details.

***

"With theoretical biologist Howard Pattee, Gazzaniga emphasizes that we should resist the lure of the “single-explanation fallacy” — the idea that one theory can cover everything, from our introspective sense of awareness down to the subatomic particles of brain tissue. Explanations, he asserts, should be thought of as context-dependent, just as light in quantum physics sometimes behaves like waves and sometimes like particles.

"Gazzaniga defines consciousness as “the subjective feeling of a number of instincts and/or memories playing out in time in an organism”. He points out that clinical cases — he spent a few years working on neurological wards — add complexities. For instance, people who are completely unable to move can still be conscious, a frightening condition called locked-in syndrome. Consciousness might be absent in sleepwalking. Thus, coupling it to behaviour is misleading. (my bold)

"Nor is it straightforward to link consciousness to parts of the brain. One of Gazzaniga’s earliest findings was that disconnecting the left and right hemispheres produced two separate conscious systems; only one, usually supported by the left brain, was able to express itself in language. It had been assumed that consciousness co-evolved with the cerebral cortex, supporting ‘higher’ functions such as language and reasoning. But referring to the work of neuroscientist Björn Merker, Gazzaniga makes the case that consciousness might not be necessarily — or exclusively — locked into cortical and linguistic processes. In some children born with a seriously compromised forebrain, the damaged tissue gets replaced by fluid (hydranencephaly). They grow up lacking language, but still express feelings and have subjective experiences. According to Gazzaniga, consciousness might actually originate in the evolutionarily older midbrain, with the cortex providing “a collection of extensions (apps!) to enhance conscious experiences”.

"In an engaging discussion of the brain’s architecture, he offers a mundane simile for consciousness. The brain should be thought of as a multitude of modules, each specialized for a single task, such as recognizing patterns or monitoring rhythm in music. The end products of these modules rise to the surface and burst like “bubbles in a boiling pot of water”, each a fleeting part of our awareness. Our subjective sense of continuity, described by pioneering psychologist William James as “stream of consciousness”, might be illusion: we merely experience the rapid succession of elements as a smooth movement, like the frames of a film.

"The metaphor of the bubbles seems first and foremost an invitation to generate a testable theory, and Gazzaniga’s observations will almost certainly provide much of the test material.
Gazzaniga ends by reflecting that the ultimate explanation for how mind emerges from meat might not prove “warm and cuddly”. Instead, it might vie with quantum mechanics for sheer counter-intuitive weirdness, hovering “way beyond our intuitions and imaginations”. Once again we seem to hear what Burman heard, 370 years ago: a sigh of resignation, as Descartes indicated that it might all be better left to the theologians."

Comment: If a brilliant scientist throws up his hands in surrender, who are we to try? Note my bold. Sleep walking is a great example of consciousness being present only if the brain allows it. In life the s/s/c doesn't work unless tied to the neuromechanics of the brain.

Consciousness: produces reality

by David Turell @, Sunday, May 13, 2018, 15:05 (2137 days ago) @ David Turell

Reality only exists in the eye of the observer. The universe requires consciousness. An 18 minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE

Comment: Reality must be observed to exist!

Consciousness: produces reality

by dhw, Monday, May 14, 2018, 12:38 (2136 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Reality only exists in the eye of the observer. The universe requires consciousness. An 18 minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE

DAVID’s comment: Reality must be observed to exist!

Really? There is a very telling remark in the commentary to the effect that some people think this is “only true of the quantum world but not the macro world. Pragmatically this is true….” Well who says pragmatism is false? My stock answer to this is to invite the researchers to step in front of a bus.

The headline given to this lecture is “Materialism is dead”. To me this is as blinkered and as arrogant as a title like “The God Delusion”. The fact that scientists conduct experiments with particles and cannot understand their behaviour apparently means that scientists who do understand and can even predict the behaviour of materials that are made up of particles (e.g. minerals, plants, stars, machines, the human body etc.) are suffering from some kind of delusion. In your days as a doctor, would you really have told your patients that they were only suffering because you were observing them, so they should get out of your sight and then their sufferings would disappear?

I’m not pretending for one moment that there aren’t mysteries we haven’t solved, or that the quantum world doesn’t exist. But I’m afraid I simply don’t believe that the reality of the stars and dinosaur fossils and the bus coming towards me is dependent on my observation of them. Sorry.

Consciousness: produces reality

by David Turell @, Monday, May 14, 2018, 15:47 (2136 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Reality only exists in the eye of the observer. The universe requires consciousness. An 18 minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE

DAVID’s comment: Reality must be observed to exist!

Dhw: Really? There is a very telling remark in the commentary to the effect that some people think this is “only true of the quantum world but not the macro world. Pragmatically this is true….” Well who says pragmatism is false? My stock answer to this is to invite the researchers to step in front of a bus.

The headline given to this lecture is “Materialism is dead”. To me this is as blinkered and as arrogant as a title like “The God Delusion”. The fact that scientists conduct experiments with particles and cannot understand their behaviour apparently means that scientists who do understand and can even predict the behaviour of materials that are made up of particles (e.g. minerals, plants, stars, machines, the human body etc.) are suffering from some kind of delusion. In your days as a doctor, would you really have told your patients that they were only suffering because you were observing them, so they should get out of your sight and then their sufferings would disappear?

I’m not pretending for one moment that there aren’t mysteries we haven’t solved, or that the quantum world doesn’t exist. But I’m afraid I simply don’t believe that the reality of the stars and dinosaur fossils and the bus coming towards me is dependent on my observation of them. Sorry.

I'm with you. Pragmatically it makes no difference, but these conclusions come from very bright particle physicists, who are thinking in an exasperated way , because they don't understand it any better than we do. But it strongly suggests consciousness runs the universe

Consciousness: And relation to quantum mechanics

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 19, 2017, 20:12 (2584 days ago) @ BBella

This is a very long review article which takes us from the realization that what we decide to do in quantum experimentation affects how the particles themselves react as if our consciousness is related directly to the particles. He then goes on to discuss the way quantum activity might be present in cells, in neurons, and thus somehow create consciousness:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-qua...

"For one thing, the mind seemed, to the great discomfort of physicists, to force its way into early quantum theory. What's more, quantum computers are predicted to be capable of accomplishing things ordinary computers cannot, which reminds us of how our brains can achieve things that are still beyond artificial intelligence. "Quantum consciousness" is widely derided as mystical woo, but it just will not go away.

***

"Today some physicists suspect that, whether or not consciousness influences quantum mechanics, it might in fact arise because of it. They think that quantum theory might be needed to fully understand how the brain works.

"Might it be that, just as quantum objects can apparently be in two places at once, so a quantum brain can hold onto two mutually-exclusive ideas at the same time?

These ideas are speculative, and it may turn out that quantum physics has no fundamental role either for or in the workings of the mind. But if nothing else, these possibilities show just how strangely quantum theory forces us to think.

***

"The physicist Pascual Jordan, who worked with quantum guru Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in the 1920s, put it like this: "observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position." In other words, Jordan said, "we ourselves produce the results of measurements."

"If that is so, objective reality seems to go out of the window.

***

"just as Bohr confidently predicted, it makes no difference whether we delay the measurement or not. As long as we measure the photon's path before its arrival at a detector is finally registered, we lose all interference.

It is as if nature "knows" not just if we are looking, but if we are planning to look.

***

"physicists do not agree on the best way to interpret these quantum experiments, and to some extent what you make of them is (at the moment) up to you. But one way or another, it is hard to avoid the implication that consciousness and quantum mechanics are somehow linked.

"Beginning in the 1980s, the British physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the link might work in the other direction. Whether or not consciousness can affect quantum mechanics, he said, perhaps quantum mechanics is involved in consciousness.

***

"Penrose first proposed that quantum effects feature in human cognition in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind. The idea is called Orch-OR, which is short for "orchestrated objective reduction". The phrase "objective reduction" means that, as Penrose believes, the collapse of quantum interference and superposition is a real, physical process, like the bursting of a bubble.

"Orch-OR draws on Penrose's suggestion that gravity is responsible for the fact that everyday objects, such as chairs and planets, do not display quantum effects. Penrose believes that quantum superpositions become impossible for objects much larger than atoms, because their gravitational effects would then force two incompatible versions of space-time to coexist.

"Penrose developed this idea further with American physician Stuart Hameroff. In his 1994 book Shadows of the Mind, he suggested that the structures involved in this quantum cognition might be protein strands called microtubules. These are found in most of our cells, including the neurons in our brains. Penrose and Hameroff argue that vibrations of microtubules can adopt a quantum superposition.

"But there is no evidence that such a thing is remotely feasible.

***

"In a study published in 2015, physicist Matthew Fisher of the University of California at Santa Barbara argued that the brain might contain molecules capable of sustaining more robust quantum superpositions. Specifically, he thinks that the nuclei of phosphorus atoms may have this ability.

***

"In other words, the mind could genuinely affect the outcomes of measurements.
It does not, in this view, exactly determine "what is real". But it might affect the chance that each of the possible actualities permitted by quantum mechanics is the one we do in fact observe, in a way that quantum theory itself cannot predict. Kent says that we might look for such effects experimentally.

"He even bravely estimates the chances of finding them. "I would give credence of perhaps 15% that something specifically to do with consciousness causes deviations from quantum theory, with perhaps 3% credence that this will be experimentally detectable within the next 50 years," he says.

"If that happens, it would transform our ideas about both physics and the mind. That seems a chance worth exploring."

Comment: We are as confused as ever about consciousness. Can we ever understand quantum reality? Perhaps we are not supposed to.

Consciousness: And relation to quantum mechanics

by dhw, Monday, February 20, 2017, 16:04 (2583 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is a very long review article which takes us from the realization that what we decide to do in quantum experimentation affects how the particles themselves react as if our consciousness is related directly to the particles. He then goes on to discuss the way quantum activity might be present in cells, in neurons, and thus somehow create consciousness:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-qua...

Thank you for this article, which as you say leaves us “as confused as ever about consciousness.” I’ll cherrypick some quotes:

QUOTE: “These ideas are speculative, and it may turn out that quantum physics has no fundamental role either for or in the workings of the mind.”

Yep. Both materialism and dualism are speculative too. Nobody has a clue.

QUOTE: In other words, Jordan said, "we ourselves produce the results of measurements."…"If that is so, objective reality seems to go out of the window.”

Even if it is so, I suggest for the umpteenth time that all of these quantum physicists should do another test and step in front of a moving bus.

Quote: "Beginning in the 1980s, the British physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the link might work in the other direction. Whether or not consciousness can affect quantum mechanics, he said, perhaps quantum mechanics is involved in consciousness.”

Might or might not, perhaps or perhaps not.

"Penrose first proposed that quantum effects feature in human cognition in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind. The idea is called Orch-OR, which is short for "orchestrated objective reduction". The phrase "objective reduction" means that, as Penrose believes, the collapse of quantum interference and superposition is a real, physical process, like the bursting of a bubble."

Give something a name, and you give it scientific credibility. Multiverse, string theory, dark energy and dark matter, Orch-OR… Except (let me put on my theist’s hat for a moment) if you theorize that life and the universe are the product of design and you call the designer God, you will lose all scientific credibility.

Quote: “Penrose and Hameroff argue that vibrations of microtubules can adopt a quantum superposition…But there is no evidence that such a thing is remotely feasible.”

As the bard put it, then: Much Ado About Nothing.

Consciousness: And relation to quantum mechanics

by David Turell @, Monday, February 20, 2017, 17:48 (2583 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: As the bard put it, then: Much Ado About Nothing.

Except we have to live with quantum theory that underlies all of reality. We use it but don't understand it.

Consciousness: using total brain connectivity?

by David Turell @, Friday, March 17, 2017, 14:26 (2559 days ago) @ David Turell

this article decries the modular approach to brain function and suggests that the whole brain must be studied to understand consciousness:

https://theconversation.com/the-brain-a-radical-rethink-is-needed-to-understand-it-74460

"Understanding the human brain is arguably the greatest challenge of modern science. The leading approach for most of the past 200 years has been to link its functions to different brain regions or even individual neurons (brain cells). But recent research increasingly suggests that we may be taking completely the wrong path if we are to ever understand the human mind.

"The idea that the brain is made up of numerous regions that perform specific tasks is known as “modularity”. And, at first glance, it has been successful. For example, it can provide an explanation for how we recognise faces by activating a chain of specific brain regions in the occipital and temporal lobes. Bodies, however, are processed by a different set of brain regions. And scientists believe that yet other areas – memory regions – help combine these perceptual stimuli to create holistic representations of people. The activity of certain brain areas has also been linked to specific conditions and diseases.

"The reason this approach has been so popular is partly due to technologies which are giving us unprecedented insight into the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which tracks changes in blood flow in the brain, allows scientists to see brain areas light up in response to activities – helping them map functions. Meanwhile, Optogenetics, a technique that uses genetic modification of neurons so that their electrical activity can be controlled with light pulses – can help us to explore their specific contribution to brain function.

"While both approaches generate fascinating results, it is not clear whether they will ever provide a meaningful understanding of the brain. A neuroscientist who finds a correlation between a neuron or brain region and a specific but in principle arbitrary physical parameter, such as pain, will be tempted to draw the conclusion that this neuron or this part of the brain controls pain. This is ironic because, even in the neuroscientist, the brain’s inherent function is to find correlations – in whatever task it performs.

"But what if we instead considered the possibility that all brain functions are distributed across the brain and that all parts of the brain contribute to all functions? If that is the case, correlations found so far may be a perfect trap of the intellect. We then have to solve the problem of how the region or the neuron type with the specific function interacts with other parts of the brain to generate meaningful, integrated behaviour. So far, there is no general solution to this problem – just hypotheses in specific cases, such as for recognising people.

***

"Some researchers now believe the brain and its diseases in general can only be understood as an interplay between tremendous numbers of neurons distributed across the central nervous system. The function of any one neuron is dependent on the functions of all the thousands of neurons it is connected to. These, in turn, are dependent on those of others. The same region or the same neuron may be used across a huge number of contexts, but have different specific functions depending on the context.

"It may indeed be a tiny perturbation of these interplays between neurons that, through avalanche effects in the networks, causes conditions like depression or Parkinson’s disease. Either way, we need to understand the mechanisms of the networks in order to understand the causes and symptoms of these diseases. Without the full picture, we are not likely to be able to successfully cure these and many other conditions.

"In particular, neuroscience needs to start investigating how network configurations arise from the brain’s lifelong attempts to make sense of the world. We also need to get a clear picture of how the cortex, brainstem and cerebellum interact together with the muscles and the tens of thousands of optical and mechanical sensors of our bodies to create one, integrated picture.

"Connecting back to the physical reality is the only way to understand how information is represented in the brain. One of the reasons we have a nervous system in the first place is that the evolution of mobility required a controlling system. Cognitive, mental functions – and even thoughts – can be regarded as mechanisms that evolved in order to better plan for the consequences of movement and actions.

"So the way forward for neuroscience may be to focus more on general neural recordings (with optogenetics or fMRI) – without aiming to hold each neuron or brain region responsible for any particular function. This could be fed into theoretical network research, which has the potential to account for a variety of observations and provide an integrated functional explanation. In fact, such a theory should help us design experiments, rather than only the other way around."

Comment: On its face the modular approach makes no sense, even if it is the current approach. Look at the figures showing the connectivity of the whole brain.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an ilusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, March 23, 2017, 00:48 (2553 days ago) @ David Turell

John Horgan thinks he is wrong:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-consciousness-real/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_...

"The idea that consciousness isn’t real has always struck me as crazy, and not in a good way, but smart people espouse it. One of the smartest is philosopher Daniel Dennett, who has been questioning consciousness for decades, notably in his 1991 bestseller Consciousness Explained.

"I’ve always thought I must be missing something in Dennett’s argument, so I hoped his new book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, would enlighten me. It does, but not in the way Dennett intended.

"Dennett restates his claim that Darwinian theory can account for all aspects of our existence. We don’t need an intelligent designer, or “skyhook,” to explain how eyes, hands and minds came to be, because evolution provides “cranes” for constructing all biological phenomena.

***

"But human cognition, Dennett emphasizes, still consists mainly of competence without comprehension. Our conscious thoughts represent a minute fraction of all the information processing carried out by our brains. Natural selection designed our brains to provide us with thoughts on a “need to know” basis, so we’re not overwhelmed with data.

***

"Our perceptions, memories and emotions are grossly simplified, cartoonish representations of hidden, hideously complex computations.

"None of this is novel or controversial. Dennett is just reiterating, in his oh-so-clever, neologorrheic fashion, what mind-scientists and most educated lay folk have long accepted, that the bulk of cognition happens beneath the surface of awareness.

***

"Trouble arises when Dennett, extending the computer-interface analogy, calls consciousness a “user-illusion.” I italicize illusion, because so much confusion flows from Dennett’s use of that term. An illusion is a false perception. Our thoughts are imperfect representations of our brain/minds and of the world, but that doesn’t make them necessarily false.

***

"Consider how Dennett talks about qualia, philosophers’ term for subjective experiences. My qualia at this moment are the smell of coffee, the sound of a truck rumbling by on the street, my puzzlement over Dennett’s ideas. Dennett notes that we often overrate the objective accuracy and causal power of our qualia. True enough.

"But he concludes, bizarrely, that therefore qualia are fictions, “an artifact of bad theorizing.” If we lack qualia, then we are zombies, creatures that look and even behave like humans but have no inner, subjective life.

***

"Dennett gets annoyed when critics accuse him of saying “consciousness doesn’t exist,” and to be fair, he never flatly makes that claim. His point seems to be, rather, that consciousness is so insignificant, especially compared to our exalted notions of it, that it might as well not exist.

"Dennett’s arguments are so convoluted that he allows himself plausible deniability, but he seems to be advocating eliminative materialism, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines as “the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist.”

***

"Reviewing From Bacteria to Bach, Nagel rebukes Dennett thus:

“'To say that there is more to reality than physics can account for is not a piece of mysticism: it is an acknowledgement that we are nowhere near a theory of everything, and that science will have to expand to accommodate facts of a kind fundamentally different from those that physics is designed to explain.”

***

"Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real.

Comment: I'm with Horgan and Nagel.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an ilusion

by dhw, Thursday, March 23, 2017, 13:07 (2553 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real."

DAVID's comment: I'm with Horgan and Nagel.

So am I, apart from the totally unnecessary comparison with belief in God. Why on Earth does he bring God into it?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an ilusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, March 23, 2017, 14:31 (2553 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real."

DAVID's comment: I'm with Horgan and Nagel.

dhw: So am I, apart from the totally unnecessary comparison with belief in God. Why on Earth does he bring God into it?

I believe Horgan admits to atheism

Consciousness: physicist/psychiatrist explains?

by David Turell @, Thursday, May 18, 2017, 15:51 (2497 days ago) @ David Turell

This odd mix of PhD's does not lead to an explanation:

https://aeon.co/essays/consciousness-is-not-a-thing-but-a-process-of-inference?utm_sour...

"As a physicist and psychiatrist, I find it difficult to engage with conversations about consciousness. My biggest gripe is that the philosophers and cognitive scientists who tend to pose the questions often assume that the mind is a thing, whose existence can be identified by the attributes it has or the purposes it fulfils.

"But in physics, it’s dangerous to assume that things ‘exist’ in any conventional sense. Instead, the deeper question is: what sorts of processes give rise to the notion (or illusion) that something exists?

***

"As a consequence, I’m compelled to treat consciousness as a process to be understood, not as a thing to be defined. Simply put, my argument is that consciousness is nothing more and nothing less than a natural process such as evolution or the weather. My favourite trick to illustrate the notion of consciousness as a process is to replace the word ‘consciousness’ with ‘evolution’ – and see if the question still makes sense. For example, the question What is consciousness for? becomes What is evolution for? Scientifically speaking, of course, we know that evolution is not for anything. It doesn’t perform a function or have reasons for doing what it does – it’s an unfolding process that can be understood only on its own terms. Since we are all the product of evolution, the same would seem to hold for consciousness and the self.

***

"Applying the same thinking to consciousness suggests that consciousness must also be a process of inference. Conscious processing is about inferring the causes of sensory states, and thereby navigating the world to elude surprises. While natural selection performs inference by selecting among different creatures, consciousness performs inference by selecting among different states of the same creature (in particular, its brain).

***

"But if consciousness is inference, does that mean all complex inferential processes are conscious, from evolution to economies to atoms? Probably not. A virus possesses all the self-organising dynamics to qualify as a process of inference; but clearly a virus doesn’t have the same qualities as a vegetarian. So what’s the difference?

What distinguishes conscious and non-conscious creatures is the way they make inferences about action and time.

***

" In our daily lives, this suggests that temporal thickness or depth waxes and wanes with the sleep-wake cycle – that there’s a mapping between the level of consciousness and the thickness of the inference we’re engaged in. On this view, a loss of consciousness occurs whenever our models lose their ‘thickness’ and become as ‘thin’ as a virus’s.

***

"We’ve gone fairly rapidly through the arguments. First, if we want to talk about complex systems, including living ones, we have to identify the necessary behaviours that their processes exhibit. This is fairly easy to do by noting that living entails existing in a set of attracting states that are frequented time and time again. This implies the existence of a Lyapunov function that is identical to (negative) self-evidence or surprise in information theory. This means that all biological processes can be construed as performing some form of inference, from evolution right through to conscious processing.

"If this is the case, then at what point do we invoke consciousness? The proposal on offer here is that the mind comes into being when self-evidencing has a temporal thickness or counterfactual depth, which grounds the inferences it can make about the consequences of future actions. There’s no real reason for minds to exist; they appear to do so simply because existence itself is the end-point of a process of reasoning. Consciousness, I’d contend, is nothing grander than inference about my future."

Comment: He describes what consciousness does, but not its inner mechanism if one exists. Very long complex article.

Consciousness: relationship to time

by David Turell @, Thursday, June 29, 2017, 00:12 (2455 days ago) @ David Turell

Time is something our consciousness observes, but physics treats it differently than our approach in which it has a one way arrow:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-time-of-our-lives

"But it is the unfolding of time, and its apparent “unidirectionality” — always moving (or so we are inclined to say) from earlier to later — that matters most in our experience of time. The attempts of physicists to explain this feature of time have on the whole been thoroughly inadequate, including the attempt, which we will discuss later in this essay, to define the direction of time in terms of an accumulation of information. The idea of time as an “arrow of information,” as it is sometimes called, shows the general inability of physics to accommodate the conscious observer that makes physical science possible — the inability, that is, to connect an objective explanation of time, understood as a feature of material events, with a person’s subjective experience of time.

***

"Physicists and philosophers of time feel that the unidirectionality of time is not simply a matter of definition but is connected with something fundamental about the universe in which we live.

***

"While every event in the universe is in theory temporally related to every other event, without an observer to experience the events and to connect them, they are neither “earlier” nor “later,” “before” or “after.” For example, an unobserved event on a distant planet does not have this ordering in relation to the events that I am aware of as going on around me now or indeed other unobserved events on that planet. This is why some have argued that, if there is an arrow of time, it must be built not out of the intrinsic properties of material events but out of the linkage of events through the succession of the experiences of them. Without this linkage, two happenings would not as it were reach beyond their own boundaries to relate to each other. Thus the basic argument for time’s arrow being a “psychological arrow.”

***

"The psychological theory of the arrow sits ill with the fact that something outside of consciousness, or a conscious individual, is the final determinant of the succession of events. What’s more, implicit in the notion that time’s arrow is based on our perception of the succession of events is the assumption that there is a succession of events to be perceived — that temporal order and direction is intrinsic to the events we perceive — that gives rise to the experience of succession. There is a confounder arising out of the fact that the order in which we perceive things also to some extent depends on us (just as what we perceive depends to some extent on where I choose to look from and the direction of my gaze). But this is not sufficient to determine the order of events, though it does determine the order of my perceptions.

***

"the forward movement of time is an accumulation of information, reflected in a difference between what we have known and what we will know; or between a remembered past of irreversible, determinate events, and an unknown, indeterminate future.

"This is expressed most clearly by Paul Davies: “The fact that we remember the past, rather than the future,” he says, “is an observation not of the passage of time but of the asymmetry of time.” Given that (as he and many others believe) memory is a matter of “information,” so the difference between the determinate past and the indeterminate future is also a matter of information. We obviously have more information about the past than we do about the future. Indeed, in one sense we have no information about the future, except at a probabilistic level. So, as the indeterminate future becomes a determinate past, information accumulates.

***

"Paul Davies again: As physicists have realized over the past few decades, the concept of entropy is closely related to the information content of a system. For this reason, the formation of memory is a unidirectional process — new memories add information and raise the entropy of the brain. We might perceive this unidirectionality as the flow of time.

***

"The notion of the unidirectionality of time, in short, is inseparable from our awareness of our mortality, of a life that has a diminishing quantity ahead and an increasing quantity behind; of birth as a one-way ticket to the grave. And a sense of our ignorance in the face of the future — contrasted with our knowledge of the past — lies at the root of the “arrow of information.” We may know how things turned out; never how they will turn out.

***

"In the final count, time is a fundamental property of the relationship between the universe and the observer which cannot be reduced to anything else.

***

"The project of understanding time is to try to get a clear and just idea of the nature of the relationship between the universe and the observer in respect of time. By rethinking time in this way, we may elude a form of naturalism that sees us as being at bottom material objects whose nature will ultimately be described by physics. We are more than cogs in the universal clock, forced to collaborate with the very progress that pushes us towards our own midnight. By placing human consciousness at the heart of time, it is possible to crack ajar a door through which a sense of possibility can stream."

Comment: We have consciousness, therefore we have time. That is a simplest view. Very long article, much skipped.

Consciousness: a neurosurgeon's observations

by David Turell @, Friday, June 30, 2017, 00:02 (2454 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor has been quoted before. As a neurosurgeon he has seen awake patients react while under brain surgery. Consciousness works seamlessly as parts of the brain are removed:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/06/a-map-of-the-soul

"Francis Crick, neuroscientist and co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA, expressed the widespread view that the mind is a function of material stuff: “A person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influenced them.” How, then, is it possible to converse with someone while removing the large portions of her brain that serve thought and reasoning?

***

"I have scores of patients who are missing large areas of their brains, yet who have quite good minds. I have a patient born with two-thirds of her brain absent. She’s a normal junior high kid who loves to play soccer. Another patient, missing a similar amount of brain tissue, is an accomplished musician with a master’s degree in English.

***

"Aquinas began by reaching back to an earlier thinker. Following Aristotle, he posited that the human soul has three kinds of powers. It has vegetative powers, which serve physiological functions such as heartbeat, respiration, and metabolism. It has sensitive powers, such as sensation, perception, memory, sensitive appetite, and locomotion. The vegetative and sensitive powers are caused by matter, in a purely physical way.

"But the human soul also has intellect and will, powers of a wholly different kind. With our intellect, we can think of universal concepts, such as mercy and justice and abstract mathematics. With our will, we can act on abstract principles. Because thinking of abstract concepts entails thoughts removed from particular things, Aquinas reasoned, intellect couldn’t be a material thing. Intellect and will are immaterial powers.

"Aquinas taught that our soul’s immaterial powers are only facilitated by matter, not caused by it, and the correlation is loose. His insight presaged certain findings of modern neuroscience.

"Wilder Penfield, an early-twentieth-century neurosurgeon who pioneered seizure surgery, noted that during brain stimulation on awake patients, he was never able to stimulate the mind itself—the sense of “I”—but only fragmented sensations and perceptions and movements and memories. Our core identity cannot be evoked or altered by physical stimulation of the brain.

"Relatedly, Penfield observed that spontaneous electrical discharges in the brain cause involuntary sensations and movements and even emotions, but never abstract reasoning or calculation. There are no “calculus” seizures or “moral” seizures, in which patients involuntarily take second derivatives or ponder mercy.

"Similar observations emerge from Roger Sperry’s famous studies of patients who had undergone surgery to disconnect the hemispheres of the brain. This was done to prevent seizures. The post-operative patients experienced peculiar perceptual and behavioral changes, but they retained unity of personal identity—a unified intellect and will. The changes Sperry discovered in his research (for which he won a Nobel Prize) were so subtle as to pass unnoticed in everyday life.

***

"The woman on the operating table who was talking to me while I removed her frontal lobe had both material and immaterial powers of mind. Our higher brain functions defy precise mapping onto brain tissue, because they are not generated by tissue, as our lower brain functions are.

"Materialism, the view that matter is all that exists, is the premise of much contemporary thinking about what a human being is. Yet evidence from the laboratory, operating room, and clinical experience points to a less fashionable conclusion: Human beings straddle the material and immaterial realms. ((my bold)

"We can do better science—and medicine—when we recognize that human beings have abilities that transcend reductionist material explanations. In this century of unprecedented advances in brain research, it’s remarkable that the deepest insights emerge from an ancient paradigm: Thomas Aquinas’s map of the soul."

Comment: Key point, when we stimulate the brain we only get sensory or motor events, never immaterial thought. Why? Because the brain is an active receiver and user of an immaterial consciousness which exists in the universe and is received by each newborn human.

Consciousness: video of active human brain fibers

by David Turell @, Friday, June 30, 2017, 14:46 (2454 days ago) @ David Turell

Take a look:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49772/title/Image-of-the-Day--Gol...

Comment: The pinnacle of evolutionary complexity. Do you think God is not present?

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 21, 2017, 00:54 (2371 days ago) @ David Turell

Raises the question whether we develop consciousness or is it given?

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/consciousness-goes-deeper-than-you-th...

"An article on the neuroscience of infant consciousness, which attracted some interest a few years ago, asked: “When does your baby become conscious?” The premise, of course, was that babies aren’t born conscious but, instead, develop consciousness at some point. (According to the article, it is about five months of age). Yet, it is hard to think that there is nothing it feels like to be a newborn.

"Newborns clearly seem to experience their own bodies, environment, the presence of their parents, etcetera—albeit in an unreflective, present-oriented manner. And if it always feels like something to be a baby, then babies don’t become conscious. Instead, they are conscious from the get-go.

"The problem is that, somewhat alarmingly, the word “consciousness” is often used in the literature as if it entailed or implied more than just the qualities of experience. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, for instance, insisted that “it is very important to realize that attention is the key to distinguish between unconscious thought and conscious thought. Conscious thought is thought with attention.” This implies that if a thought escapes attention, then it is unconscious. But is the mere lack of attention enough to assert that a mental process lacks the qualities of experience? Couldn’t a process that escapes the focus of attention still feel like something?

***

"Jonathan Schooler has established a clear distinction between conscious and meta-conscious processes. Whereas both types entail the qualities of experience, meta-conscious processes also entail what he called re-representation. “Periodically attention is directed towards explicitly assessing the contents of experience. The resulting meta-consciousness involves an explicit re-representation of consciousness in which one interprets, describes or otherwise characterizes the state of one’s mind.

***

"Because the study of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) is, by and large, dependent on subjective reports of experience, what passes for the NCC is liable to be merely the neural correlates of meta-consciousness. As such, potentially conscious mental activity—in the sense of activity correlated with experiential qualities—may evade recognition as such.

***

"By mistaking meta-consciousness for consciousness, we create two significant problems: First, we fail to distinguish between conscious processes that lack re-representation and truly unconscious processes. After all, both are equally unreportable to self and others. This misleads us to conclude there is a mental unconscious when, in reality, there may always be something it feels like to have each and every mental process in our psyche. Second, we fail to see our partial and tentative explanations for the alleged rise of consciousness may concern merely the rise of metacognition.

"This is liable to create the illusion we are making progress toward solving the “hard problem of consciousness” when, in fact, we are bypassing it altogether: Mechanisms of metacognition are entirely unrelated to the problem of how the qualities of experience could arise from physical arrangements.

"Consciousness may never arise—be it in babies, toddlers, children or adults—because it may always be there to begin with. For all we know, what arises is merely a metacognitive configuration of preexisting consciousness. If so, consciousness may be fundamental in nature—an inherent aspect of every mental process, not a property constituted or somehow generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain. Claims, grounded in subjective reports of experience, of progress toward reducing consciousness to brain physiology may have little—if anything—to do with consciousness proper, but with mechanisms of metacognition instead."

Comment: Exactly. Consciousness may be a mechanism we receive at birth. Some paragraphs are skipped which may help in following the discussion.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Thursday, September 21, 2017, 13:14 (2371 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: If so, consciousness may be fundamental in nature—an inherent aspect of every mental process, not a property constituted or somehow generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain. Claims, grounded in subjective reports of experience, of progress toward reducing consciousness to brain physiology may have little—if anything—to do with consciousness proper, but with mechanisms of metacognition instead." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID’s comment: Exactly. Consciousness may be a mechanism we receive at birth. Some paragraphs are skipped which may help in following the discussion.

An awful lot of words to describe the obvious and absolutely vital fact that there are different levels of consciousness. My bold suggests panpsychism. Your agreement that consciousness may not be “generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain” is, of course, essential to your dualism, but also makes a mockery of your claim that brainless organisms cannot be conscious.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 21, 2017, 14:59 (2371 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: If so, consciousness may be fundamental in nature—an inherent aspect of every mental process, not a property constituted or somehow generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain. Claims, grounded in subjective reports of experience, of progress toward reducing consciousness to brain physiology may have little—if anything—to do with consciousness proper, but with mechanisms of metacognition instead." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID’s comment: Exactly. Consciousness may be a mechanism we receive at birth. Some paragraphs are skipped which may help in following the discussion.

dhw: An awful lot of words to describe the obvious and absolutely vital fact that there are different levels of consciousness. My bold suggests panpsychism. Your agreement that consciousness may not be “generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain” is, of course, essential to your dualism, but also makes a mockery of your claim that brainless organisms cannot be conscious.

You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Friday, September 22, 2017, 13:07 (2370 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: An awful lot of words to describe the obvious and absolutely vital fact that there are different levels of consciousness. My bold suggests panpsychism. Your agreement that consciousness may not be “generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain” is, of course, essential to your dualism, but also makes a mockery of your claim that brainless organisms cannot be conscious.

DAVID: You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

Unless you're talking about syntax, I don't know what you mean. Being conscious is the same as having consciousness. But being conscious is not the same as having the same degree of consciousness as a human. I like your "generally". I’m interested in the responses that are not automatic.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Friday, September 22, 2017, 15:02 (2370 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: An awful lot of words to describe the obvious and absolutely vital fact that there are different levels of consciousness. My bold suggests panpsychism. Your agreement that consciousness may not be “generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain” is, of course, essential to your dualism, but also makes a mockery of your claim that brainless organisms cannot be conscious.

DAVID: You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

dhw: Unless you're talking about syntax, I don't know what you mean. Being conscious is the same as having consciousness. But being conscious is not the same as having the same degree of consciousness as a human. I like your "generally". I’m interested in the responses that are not automatic.

Do any organisms but humans have consciousness? Not proven. We do not know where in the progression of evolved organisms, being conscious appeared. You and I debate this all the time.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Saturday, September 23, 2017, 12:41 (2369 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

dhw: Unless you're talking about syntax, I don't know what you mean. Being conscious is the same as having consciousness. But being conscious is not the same as having the same degree of consciousness as a human. I like your "generally". I’m interested in the responses that are not automatic.

DAVID: Do any organisms but humans have consciousness? Not proven. We do not know where in the progression of evolved organisms, being conscious appeared. You and I debate this all the time.

The debate goes nowhere unless you explain what you mean by consciousness. Some people say that not even humans are conscious. Definitions mean translating words into other words, so one can play an endless game of asking for definitions of definitions, but I would hope for a more productive approach. By consciousness I mean an organism’s awareness of things inside and outside itself. The degree of consciousness will correspond to the quantity and nature of things the organism is aware of. I would assume – perhaps wrongly – that the simplest organisms are only aware of things in their immediate environment. Humans are aware not only of things that exist outside their immediate environment, but also of things that may not exist at all and even of their own awareness of being aware. However, awareness on its own would be pretty useless unless the organism used it to some purpose. That is where intelligence comes in. If consciousness is awareness, intelligence is the ability to use awareness. I can only define intelligence by its attributes, the most basic of which I would suggest are sentience (awareness of the environment), the ability to process information, to communicate, to take decisions. Every organism we know of possesses these basic attributes, but not to anything like the same degree as humans.

I regard it as feasible that the basic attributes listed above appeared when life began, i.e. that the first living cells possessed them. The only way we can gauge whether this is true is by studying the behaviour of single cells, and there seems little doubt that they conform to my definition. If, however, you have a different definition of consciousness and of intelligence, then perhaps you would share it with us.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 23, 2017, 14:34 (2369 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You forget that being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Of course, the brainless receive stimuli and have responses which are generally automatic.

dhw: Unless you're talking about syntax, I don't know what you mean. Being conscious is the same as having consciousness. But being conscious is not the same as having the same degree of consciousness as a human. I like your "generally". I’m interested in the responses that are not automatic.

DAVID: Do any organisms but humans have consciousness? Not proven. We do not know where in the progression of evolved organisms, being conscious appeared. You and I debate this all the time.

dhw:The debate goes nowhere unless you explain what you mean by consciousness. Some people say that not even humans are conscious. Definitions mean translating words into other words, so one can play an endless game of asking for definitions of definitions, but I would hope for a more productive approach. By consciousness I mean an organism’s awareness of things inside and outside itself. The degree of consciousness will correspond to the quantity and nature of things the organism is aware of. I would assume – perhaps wrongly – that the simplest organisms are only aware of things in their immediate environment. Humans are aware not only of things that exist outside their immediate environment, but also of things that may not exist at all and even of their own awareness of being aware. However, awareness on its own would be pretty useless unless the organism used it to some purpose. That is where intelligence comes in. If consciousness is awareness, intelligence is the ability to use awareness. I can only define intelligence by its attributes, the most basic of which I would suggest are sentience (awareness of the environment), the ability to process information, to communicate, to take decisions. Every organism we know of possesses these basic attributes, but not to anything like the same degree as humans.

I regard it as feasible that the basic attributes listed above appeared when life began, i.e. that the first living cells possessed them. The only way we can gauge whether this is true is by studying the behaviour of single cells, and there seems little doubt that they conform to my definition. If, however, you have a different definition of consciousness and of intelligence, then perhaps you would share it with us.

I'm sorry but I disagree. To be conscious is not consciousness. Organisms are conscious by recognizing stimuli and reacting to them both inside and out. Consciousness involves being aware of that state and philosophizing about it. I make a much sharper distinction than you do. As for intelligence and use of stimuli, simple organisms respond using intelligent information they are given.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Sunday, September 24, 2017, 13:19 (2368 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:[…] By consciousness I mean an organism’s awareness of things inside and outside itself. The degree of consciousness will correspond to the quantity and nature of things the organism is aware of. I would assume – perhaps wrongly – that the simplest organisms are only aware of things in their immediate environment. Humans are aware not only of things that exist outside their immediate environment, but also of things that may not exist at all and even of their own awareness of being aware. However, awareness on its own would be pretty useless unless the organism used it to some purpose. That is where intelligence comes in. If consciousness is awareness, intelligence is the ability to use awareness. I can only define intelligence by its attributes, the most basic of which I would suggest are sentience (awareness of the environment), the ability to process information, to communicate, to take decisions. Every organism we know of possesses these basic attributes, but not to anything like the same degree as humans.
I regard it as feasible that the basic attributes listed above appeared when life began, i.e. that the first living cells possessed them. The only way we can gauge whether this is true is by studying the behaviour of single cells, and there seems little doubt that they conform to my definition. If, however, you have a different definition of consciousness and of intelligence, then perhaps you would share it with us.

DAVID: I'm sorry but I disagree. To be conscious is not consciousness. Organisms are conscious by recognizing stimuli and reacting to them both inside and out. Consciousness involves being aware of that state and philosophizing about it. I make a much sharper distinction than you do. As for intelligence and use of stimuli, simple organisms respond using intelligent information they are given.

You seem to think the noun has a different meaning from the adjective! You agree that an organism is conscious if it recognizes stimuli and reacts to them both inside and out. I’ll settle for that, thank you. Bacteria are therefore conscious. But I do not for one second believe that their degree of being conscious extends to their being self-conscious and philosophizing about being conscious.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Sunday, September 24, 2017, 14:41 (2368 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: I'm sorry but I disagree. To be conscious is not consciousness. Organisms are conscious by recognizing stimuli and reacting to them both inside and out. Consciousness involves being aware of that state and philosophizing about it. I make a much sharper distinction than you do. As for intelligence and use of stimuli, simple organisms respond using intelligent information they are given.

dhw: You seem to think the noun has a different meaning from the adjective! You agree that an organism is conscious if it recognizes stimuli and reacts to them both inside and out. I’ll settle for that, thank you. Bacteria are therefore conscious. But I do not for one second believe that their degree of being conscious extends to their being self-conscious and philosophizing about being conscious.

My goodness, we agree!

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Monday, September 25, 2017, 13:17 (2367 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm sorry but I disagree. To be conscious is not consciousness. Organisms are conscious by recognizing stimuli and reacting to them both inside and out. Consciousness involves being aware of that state and philosophizing about it. I make a much sharper distinction than you do. As for intelligence and use of stimuli, simple organisms respond using intelligent information they are given.

dhw: You seem to think the noun has a different meaning from the adjective! You agree that an organism is conscious if it recognizes stimuli and reacts to them both inside and out. I’ll settle for that, thank you. Bacteria are therefore conscious. But I do not for one second believe that their degree of being conscious extends to their being self-conscious and philosophizing about being conscious.

DAVID: My goodness, we agree!

I have just walked round the house, announcing your agreement that bacteria are conscious, and I heard a strange sound in every room. It took some time for me to identify it, but with my newly invented microscope-amplifier-unicell-detector, I eventually discovered what it was. All the bacteria were singing “Cellelujah!”

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by David Turell @, Monday, September 25, 2017, 14:29 (2367 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm sorry but I disagree. To be conscious is not consciousness. Organisms are conscious by recognizing stimuli and reacting to them both inside and out. Consciousness involves being aware of that state and philosophizing about it. I make a much sharper distinction than you do. As for intelligence and use of stimuli, simple organisms respond using intelligent information they are given.

dhw: You seem to think the noun has a different meaning from the adjective! You agree that an organism is conscious if it recognizes stimuli and reacts to them both inside and out. I’ll settle for that, thank you. Bacteria are therefore conscious. But I do not for one second believe that their degree of being conscious extends to their being self-conscious and philosophizing about being conscious.

DAVID: My goodness, we agree!

dhw: I have just walked round the house, announcing your agreement that bacteria are conscious, and I heard a strange sound in every room. It took some time for me to identify it, but with my newly invented microscope-amplifier-unicell-detector, I eventually discovered what it was. All the bacteria were singing “Cellelujah!”

I'm sure as a cell committee they Handeled it well.

Consciousness: awareness and metacognition

by dhw, Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 12:07 (2366 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I have just walked round the house, announcing your agreement that bacteria are conscious, and I heard a strange sound in every room. It took some time for me to identify it, but with my newly invented microscope-amplifier-unicell-detector, I eventually discovered what it was. All the bacteria were singing “Cellelujah!”

DAVID: I'm sure as a cell committee they Handeled it well.

A great line, which they have greeted with a chorus of approval.

Consciousness: bird brain vs. human brain

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 28, 2017, 14:52 (2364 days ago) @ dhw

Pigeon vs. human in a speed test, the bird wins. Why?

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50506/title/Pigeons-Can-Switch-Ta...

Recent research has demonstrated that many bird species have high-order cognitive processing abilities comparable to primates. Sure enough, in a new study, when researchers asked pigeons and humans to switch between two activities as quickly as possible, they found that the birds performed just as well as, and sometimes even better than, the people. The scientists say the results emphasize that the brain region once thought to be required for such capabilities in humans may not be necessary.

“For a long time, scientists used to believe the mammalian cerebral cortex to be the anatomical cause of cognitive ability,” coauthor Sara Letzner of Ruhr-Universität Bochum says in a press release. But birds have no cortex. “That means the structure of the mammalian cortex cannot be decisive for complex cognitive functions such as multitasking.”

Instead, pigeons have a brain region known as the pallium, which, while it doesn’t have the layered structure of the human cortex, does have a high density of neurons—with about six times more cells per cubic millimeter than the human brain. This means that pigeon neurons are about 50 percent closer together than human neurons, which may allow for electrical signals to be relayed at a faster rate.

In this study, published this week (September 25) in Current Biology, the researchers asked both birds and humans to switch the nature of the task they were performing. For humans, this involved pushing buttons when they saw certain patterns on a screen. Pigeons were trained to peck at particular buttons based on light signals. 

When the signal to commence the second task came at the same time as the signal to stop the first task, both bird and human participants were able to switch with about the same speed. But when there was a short, 300-millisecond delay between the signal to stop the first task and the signal to start the second, the birds performed better than the human volunteers, with response times about 200 ms faster.

Comment: I think the study is misinterpreted. The birds are trained to respond automatically. The human metacognition, introspective brain comes to play when the delayed signal is introduced. But those birds are bright!

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 19, 2017, 05:28 (2312 days ago) @ David Turell

At least according to this essay:

http://bigthink.com/aeon-ideas/why-panpsychism-fails-to-solve-the-mystery-of-consciousn...

"Is consciousness everywhere? Is it a basic feature of the Universe, at the very heart of the tiniest subatomic particles? Such an idea – panpsychism as it is known – might sound like New Age mysticism, but some hard-nosed analytic philosophers have suggested it might be how things are, and it’s now a hot topic in philosophy of mind.

"Panpsychism’s popularity stems from the fact that it promises to solve two deep problems simultaneously. The first is the famous ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. How does the brain produce conscious experience? How can neurons firing give rise to experiences of colour, sound, taste, pain and so on? In principle, scientists could map my brain processes in complete detail but, it seems, they could never detect my experiences themselves – the way colours look, pain feels and so on.

***

"Yet physics seems to leave out something very important from its picture of the basic particles. It tells us, for example, that an electron has a certain mass, charge and spin. But this is a description of how an electron is disposed to behave: to have mass is to resist acceleration, to have charge is to respond in a certain way to electromagnetic fields, and so on. Physics doesn’t say what an electron, or any other basic particle, is like in itself, intrinsically.

***

"Here, some philosophers argue, there is scope for an exciting synthesis. Maybe consciousness – the elusive subjective aspect of our brain states – is the ingredient missing from physics. Perhaps phenomenal properties, or ‘proto-phenomenal’ precursors of them, are the fundamental intrinsic properties of matter we’re looking for, and each subatomic particle is a tiny conscious subject. This solves the hard problem: brain and consciousness emerge together when billions of basic particles are assembled in the right way.

***

"There are problems for panpsychism, of course, perhaps the most important being the combination problem. Panpsychists hold that consciousness emerges from the combination of billions of subatomic consciousnesses, just as the brain emerges from the organisation of billions of subatomic particles. But how do these tiny consciousnesses combine? We understand how particles combine to make atoms, molecules and larger structures, but what parallel story can we tell on the phenomenal side? How do the micro-experiences of billions of subatomic particles in my brain combine to form the twinge of pain I’m feeling in my knee?

***

"A related problem concerns conscious subjects. It’s plausible to think that there can’t be conscious experience without a subject who has the experience. I assume that we and many other animals are conscious subjects, and panpsychists claim that subatomic particles are too.

***

"I remain unpersuaded, and I’m not alone in this. Even if we accept that basic physical entities must have some categorical nature (and it might be that we don’t; perhaps at bottom reality is just dispositions), consciousness is an unlikely candidate for this fundamental property. For, so far as our evidence goes, it is a highly localised phenomenon that is specific not only to brains but to particular states of brains (attended intermediate-level sensory representations, according to one influential account). It appears to be a specific state of certain highly complex information-processing systems, not a basic feature of the Universe.

***

"Panpsychism offers no distinctive predictions or explanations. It finds a place for consciousness in the physical world, but that place is a sort of limbo. Consciousness is indeed a hard nut to crack, but I think we should exhaust the other options before we take a metaphysical sledgehammer to it.

"I’m not a panpsychist. I agree with panpsychists that it seems as if our experiences have a private, intrinsic nature that cannot be explained by science. But I draw a different conclusion from this.

"Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion. As well as senses for representing the external world, we have a sort of inner sense, which represents aspects of our own brain activity. And this inner sense gives us a very special perspective on our brain states, creating the impression that they have intrinsic phenomenal qualities that are quite different from all physical properties. It is a powerful impression, but just an impression. Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

Comment: What I present is disjointed, therefore, read the whole essay, but I don't think consciousness is an illusion

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Sunday, November 19, 2017, 14:41 (2312 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “Panpsychism offers no distinctive predictions or explanations. It finds a place for consciousness in the physical world, but that place is a sort of limbo. Consciousness is indeed a hard nut to crack, but I think we should exhaust the other options before we take a metaphysical sledgehammer to it.
"Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion. As well as senses for representing the external world, we have a sort of inner sense, which represents aspects of our own brain activity. And this inner sense gives us a very special perspective on our brain states, creating the impression that they have intrinsic phenomenal qualities that are quite different from all physical properties. It is a powerful impression, but just an impression. Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

DAVID's comment: What I present is disjointed, therefore, read the whole essay, but I don't think consciousness is an illusion.

If he thinks consciousness is an illusion, then of course panpsychism is a non-starter. And I agree with him completely when he says his view is every bit as strange as panpsychism. Many panpsychists are theists, but there is no need for a God if one takes the view that all matter already contains some rudimentary form of consciousness. Then it would be a matter of that rudimentary consciousness evolving step by step as matter begins to organize itself into living forms, which themselves become increasingly conscious. Yes indeed, it is an idea that is every bit as strange as no consciousness at all, or as chance engendering consciousness, or as a conscious mind that never had a source at all and was capable of creating a universe. Once again, it’s enough to drive a person to agnosticism.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 19, 2017, 15:39 (2311 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: “Panpsychism offers no distinctive predictions or explanations. It finds a place for consciousness in the physical world, but that place is a sort of limbo. Consciousness is indeed a hard nut to crack, but I think we should exhaust the other options before we take a metaphysical sledgehammer to it.
"Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion. As well as senses for representing the external world, we have a sort of inner sense, which represents aspects of our own brain activity. And this inner sense gives us a very special perspective on our brain states, creating the impression that they have intrinsic phenomenal qualities that are quite different from all physical properties. It is a powerful impression, but just an impression. Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

DAVID's comment: What I present is disjointed, therefore, read the whole essay, but I don't think consciousness is an illusion.

dhw: If he thinks consciousness is an illusion, then of course panpsychism is a non-starter. And I agree with him completely when he says his view is every bit as strange as panpsychism. Many panpsychists are theists, but there is no need for a God if one takes the view that all matter already contains some rudimentary form of consciousness. Then it would be a matter of that rudimentary consciousness evolving step by step as matter begins to organize itself into living forms, which themselves become increasingly conscious. Yes indeed, it is an idea that is every bit as strange as no consciousness at all, or as chance engendering consciousness, or as a conscious mind that never had a source at all and was capable of creating a universe. Once again, it’s enough to drive a person to agnosticism.

He has no answer for consciousness so he decides it is an illusion. That is simply throwing out the baby with the bath water. My brain allows me, and all of us, to experience consciousness. After that we are all stuck with the 'hard problem'. I believe the entire universe is conscious and it is God's.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Monday, November 20, 2017, 14:02 (2311 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If he thinks consciousness is an illusion, then of course panpsychism is a non-starter. And I agree with him completely when he says his view is every bit as strange as panpsychism. Many panpsychists are theists, but there is no need for a God if one takes the view that all matter already contains some rudimentary form of consciousness. Then it would be a matter of that rudimentary consciousness evolving step by step as matter begins to organize itself into living forms, which themselves become increasingly conscious. Yes indeed, it is an idea that is every bit as strange as no consciousness at all, or as chance engendering consciousness, or as a conscious mind that never had a source at all and was capable of creating a universe. Once again, it’s enough to drive a person to agnosticism.

DAVID: He has no answer for consciousness so he decides it is an illusion. That is simply throwing out the baby with the bath water. My brain allows me, and all of us, to experience consciousness. After that we are all stuck with the 'hard problem'. I believe the entire universe is conscious and it is God's.

I agree with your criticism of the article. With regard to belief, as I made clear above, I have as much difficulty imagining conscious chemicals and rocks as I have imagining a conscious, universal being that creates them, so you are right: I am stuck with the ‘hard problem’!

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 01:11 (2051 days ago) @ dhw

Another article that takes a brief look at panpsychism, but the real point is trying to resolve consciousness with spacetime research:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/spacetime-emergence-panpsychism-and-t...

"As you read this, it feels like something to be you. You are seeing these words on the page and hearing the world around you, for instance. And all these thoughts and sensations come together into your conscious “now.” Consciousness is this felt quality of experience. Without consciousness, there would be no enjoyment of a beautiful sunset. Nor would there be suffering. Experience, positive or negative, simply wouldn’t exist.

***

"panpsychists claim that it is a virtue of their theory that it meshes with fundamental physics, for experience is the underlying nature of the properties that physics identifies.

"The view is at odds with cutting edge work in physics, however. At the very heart of contemporary physics is an apparent contradiction between the study of the big and the very small, i.e., between massive structures (e.g., black holes) in Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the subatomic realm of quantum mechanics. Work in the field of quantum gravity attempts to resolve this contradiction, and increasingly, it is saying something astonishing: the fundamental ingredients of reality are not spatiotemporal. Instead, spacetime emerges from something more basic, something that is defined in terms of a mathematical structure that dispenses with any temporal ordering or spatial metric.

***

"If the more fundamental ingredients of reality are non-spatiotemporal, it is difficult to see how they can also be experiential. For if there is no time at this level, how could there be experience? Conscious experience has a felt quality that involves flow; thoughts seem to be present in the “now,” and they change from moment to moment. Timeless experience is an oxymoron. Relatedly, why say there are minds or subjects of experience at the fundamental level, if there is no spacetime? Minds would seem to have experiences. Without time, there are no mental events to unfold.

"Here, the panpsychist could retort that our ordinary sense of time is an illusion..... While Isaac Newton regarded time as being like a river flowing at the same rate every place throughout the universe, Albert Einstein overturned this picture, for both general relativity theory and the Standard Model of particle physics are temporally symmetric. These laws do not say whether time is moving forward or backwards. Nor do the laws identify so special a moment as appears to us as what we call “now.”

"This Einsteinian picture has been called a static, “block universe” view of spacetime because it lacks any sense of a flow or passage of time.

***

"Suppose that our ordinary sense of duration is just an illusion, and reality is timeless. If this is the case, the point shouldn’t be that the fundamental layer of reality is experiential. The point should be, instead, that fundamental reality is nonexperiential, and that underlying ingredients, whatever they are, will somehow serve to explain away our ordinary sense of time. But the panpsychists are not trying to explain away experience in terms of something nonexperiential. For them, experience is basic.

***

"Upon reflection, spacetime emergence seems to make the hard problem even harder. For how does conscious experience, which is so intimately tied to our perception of time and space, arise from timeless, non-spatial ingredients? Put another way, how does experience stem from the non-spatiotemporal ingredients such as those that loop quantum gravity says underlie tiny quanta of volume, or that string theory says underlie the fields on a surface traced out by a string or loop?

"The very same entities that fundamental physics investigates, these entities that spacetime is said to emerge from, may very well be the very same ingredients that give rise to experience. But if this is the case, we just don’t know how. For there seems to be an explanatory gap between the non-spatiotemporal and the experiential. They are different kinds of things. Consciousness may arise from an elaborate dance among non-spatiotemporal ingredients, but if it does, the choreography eludes us."

Comment: For me spacetime presents no problem. It is timeless but our conscious experience orders events in an arrow to the future and time appears.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 10:06 (2051 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: …"If the more fundamental ingredients of reality are non-spatiotemporal, it is difficult to see how they can also be experiential. For if there is no time at this level, how could there be experience?

So maybe the “more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal ingredients of reality” are not non-spatiotemporal, or maybe they are not more real than the spatiotemporal reality. Here’s a simple test for the author, which I have recommended a hundred times before: step in front of a bus, and then tell me your criteria for what constitutes fundamental reality.

QUOTE: ”there seems to be an explanatory gap between the non-spatiotemporal and the experiential. They are different kinds of things. Consciousness may arise from an elaborate dance among non-spatiotemporal ingredients, but if it does, the choreography eludes us."

Experience is not possible without time. There is no “explanatory gap” here if you accept the reality of time as sequence – see below – and we all know that the source of consciousness still eludes us, no matter how much we faff around with concepts of spacetime, so what was the point of all this?

DAVID: For me spacetime presents no problem. It is timeless but our conscious experience orders events in an arrow to the future and time appears.

For me it’s the same old story wrapped up in verbiage. We don’t know the source of consciousness, and none of this disproves the possibility that “each spatiotemporal thing has a mental or ‘inner’ aspect” (dictionary definition of panpsychism). Some people equate this idea with the presence of their God in all things (top-down consciousness), while others may use the concept as the basis for a bottom-up evolution of consciousness. As for the reality of time, if you believe in the sequence of cause and effect, you can’t say spacetime is timeless, because there is a before and after. If you don’t believe in the reality of cause and effect/before and after, try the above test. And I’ll be a devil here, and tell you that I really and truly believe that even if there were no humans consciously experiencing events, there would still be causes and effects/befores and afters going on in the universe.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 17:58 (2050 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: QUOTE: …"If the more fundamental ingredients of reality are non-spatiotemporal, it is difficult to see how they can also be experiential. For if there is no time at this level, how could there be experience?

So maybe the “more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal ingredients of reality” are not non-spatiotemporal, or maybe they are not more real than the spatiotemporal reality. Here’s a simple test for the author, which I have recommended a hundred times before: step in front of a bus, and then tell me your criteria for what constitutes fundamental reality.

QUOTE: ”there seems to be an explanatory gap between the non-spatiotemporal and the experiential. They are different kinds of things. Consciousness may arise from an elaborate dance among non-spatiotemporal ingredients, but if it does, the choreography eludes us."

Experience is not possible without time. There is no “explanatory gap” here if you accept the reality of time as sequence – see below – and we all know that the source of consciousness still eludes us, no matter how much we faff around with concepts of spacetime, so what was the point of all this?

DAVID: For me spacetime presents no problem. It is timeless but our conscious experience orders events in an arrow to the future and time appears.

dhw: For me it’s the same old story wrapped up in verbiage. We don’t know the source of consciousness, and none of this disproves the possibility that “each spatiotemporal thing has a mental or ‘inner’ aspect” (dictionary definition of panpsychism). Some people equate this idea with the presence of their God in all things (top-down consciousness), while others may use the concept as the basis for a bottom-up evolution of consciousness. As for the reality of time, if you believe in the sequence of cause and effect, you can’t say spacetime is timeless, because there is a before and after. If you don’t believe in the reality of cause and effect/before and after, try the above test. And I’ll be a devil here, and tell you that I really and truly believe that even if there were no humans consciously experiencing events, there would still be causes and effects/befores and afters going on in the universe.

The article does carry Einstein to illogical extremes, but the equations allow time in both directions. Does math always tell the whole truth? Before humans appeared there was a progression of events which upon our arrival we have studied. Time was always present as before and after.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 09:31 (2050 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: For me spacetime presents no problem. It is timeless but our conscious experience orders events in an arrow to the future and time appears.

dhw: For me it’s the same old story wrapped up in verbiage. We don’t know the source of consciousness, and none of this disproves the possibility that “each spatiotemporal thing has a mental or ‘inner’ aspect” (dictionary definition of panpsychism). Some people equate this idea with the presence of their God in all things (top-down consciousness), while others may use the concept as the basis for a bottom-up evolution of consciousness. As for the reality of time, if you believe in the sequence of cause and effect, you can’t say spacetime is timeless, because there is a before and after. If you don’t believe in the reality of cause and effect/before and after, try the above test. And I’ll be a devil here, and tell you that I really and truly believe that even if there were no humans consciously experiencing events, there would still be causes and effects/befores and afters going on in the universe.

DAVID: The article does carry Einstein to illogical extremes, but the equations allow time in both directions. Does math always tell the whole truth? Before humans appeared there was a progression of events which upon our arrival we have studied. Time was always present as before and after.

It’s a pleasure to find that we are in agreement!

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 19:48 (2049 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: For me spacetime presents no problem. It is timeless but our conscious experience orders events in an arrow to the future and time appears.

dhw: For me it’s the same old story wrapped up in verbiage. We don’t know the source of consciousness, and none of this disproves the possibility that “each spatiotemporal thing has a mental or ‘inner’ aspect” (dictionary definition of panpsychism). Some people equate this idea with the presence of their God in all things (top-down consciousness), while others may use the concept as the basis for a bottom-up evolution of consciousness. As for the reality of time, if you believe in the sequence of cause and effect, you can’t say spacetime is timeless, because there is a before and after. If you don’t believe in the reality of cause and effect/before and after, try the above test. And I’ll be a devil here, and tell you that I really and truly believe that even if there were no humans consciously experiencing events, there would still be causes and effects/befores and afters going on in the universe.

DAVID: The article does carry Einstein to illogical extremes, but the equations allow time in both directions. Does math always tell the whole truth? Before humans appeared there was a progression of events which upon our arrival we have studied. Time was always present as before and after.

dhw: It’s a pleasure to find that we are in agreement!

Why not?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by David Turell @, Monday, November 27, 2017, 15:41 (2303 days ago) @ David Turell

Neurosurgeon supports dualism:

https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/what-the-craniopagus-twins-teach-us-about-the-mind-an...

"Krista and Tatiana Hogan, are conjoined twins who share connections between their brains. The twins are the subject of two CBC TV documentaries, telling their remarkable stories at, respectively, ages seven and eleven. They have much to teach us about the relationship between the brain and the mind.

"The twins share portions of their brains and a common blood flow to their brains. They can never be safely surgically separated. The most important brain structure that they share is a thalamic bridge, which is a bundle of nerve axons. A similar connection exists in all people, and it connects the two sides of the thalamus. The thalamus is a critical part of the brain that mediates wakefulness and motor and sensory function.

***

"They are two people. They remain completely distinct children — they have, we might say, two separate souls, not one soul with two bodies. They remain different and fully distinct people. In fact, their story wouldn’t be so remarkable if they were one person, because centralized sensation and control of limbs is normal for one person, but quite remarkable for two people.

"It is important to understand the aspects of mind that they do share. They share some motor control, some common sensations, and probably share some aspects of imagination — that is, the ability to reconstruct sensory images (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.).

"This sharing of some aspects of the mind, but not others, is remarkably consistent with classical Thomistic dualism. In Thomistic dualism, the human soul is the composite of three powers: vegetative, sensory, and rational. Vegetative powers are what we today call autonomic physiological control — control of heart rate, control of blood pressure, control of growth, reproduction, respiration, hormonal control, etc. These are unconscious powers that make life possible in the most fundamental way.

"We also have “sensory” powers, which include (in modern terminology) sensation as well as motor function, and imagination and emotion. These vegetative and sensory powers of the mind are common to those of plants and animals, who have physiological (plants) and motor and sensory (animals) powers akin to those of humans.

"Human beings alone have rational powers, which is the ability to think abstractly, without reference to particular things. Abstract mathematics, and abstract thought about logic or morality, are examples of rational powers of the human soul that are not shared by plants or animals.

"However, rational powers of the soul — abstract thought — are immaterial powers. They are not caused by matter, although material processes, such as wakefulness, normal physiology, vision, imagination, etc., are necessary for normal expression of immaterial abstract thought. In the Thomistic understanding, material powers “present” information to the immaterial rational aspect of the soul, which abstracts the intelligible species (immaterial form) from the matter and comprehends it.

"In light of this Thomistic understanding of the soul, the abilities that Tatiana and Krista share are the material powers of the brain, which we expect them to share, because they share brain matter. What they don’t appear to share is the immaterial aspect of the soul — reasoning in an abstract sense, and personal identity, individuality, etc. They are separate souls who share some material brain tissue, and thus share some material powers of the mind. They do not share immaterial powers of the mind, because immaterial powers can’t be shared, because immaterial powers aren’t material things that can be common to two people.

"Tatiana’s and Krista’s shared and individual powers of mind are just what Thomistic dualism predicts. They share material powers of mind, but not immaterial powers. They remain distinct souls.

***

"Roger Sperry’s Nobel Prize-winning studies of split brain operations showed that what was “split” by surgically dividing the brain in half were sensory powers of the mind. A patient with a split brain remains a discrete individual person, with one self and one mind.

***

"A similar phenomenon was noted by Wilder Penfield, who was the pioneering neurosurgeon who started the discipline of epilepsy surgery. He noted that while operating on conscious patients he could stimulate many sensory and motor aspects of brain function, but he couldn’t stimulate or ablate that patient’s sense of self or experience of unitary existence. There was, Penfield noted, as aspect of the mind that he couldn’t reach, that remained beyond his surgical instruments.

"Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, who pioneered the scientific study of consciousness and of free will, also found an immaterial power of the mind that appears distinct from and prior to material mental powers. He concluded that free will is real.

***

"The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."

Comment: Egnor says dualism is real. Read the whole essay.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by dhw, Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 13:58 (2303 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."

DAVID's comment: Egnor says dualism is real. Read the whole essay.

A very interesting essay, and I doubt if even a materialist would disagree with the distinction between material and immaterial powers. The question is not what we can do, but what is the SOURCE of what we can do. However, before passing any further comment, I need your professional expertise. It’s clear from the pictures that there are areas of the brain the twins do NOT share, whereas the article only dwells on those they do. I’d be grateful if you would tell us exactly which parts of the brain they do NOT share, and what functions those parts are normally associated with.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 15:34 (2302 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."

DAVID's comment: Egnor says dualism is real. Read the whole essay.

dhw: A very interesting essay, and I doubt if even a materialist would disagree with the distinction between material and immaterial powers. The question is not what we can do, but what is the SOURCE of what we can do. However, before passing any further comment, I need your professional expertise. It’s clear from the pictures that there are areas of the brain the twins do NOT share, whereas the article only dwells on those they do. I’d be grateful if you would tell us exactly which parts of the brain they do NOT share, and what functions those parts are normally associated with.

Basically they share some sensory and motor controls, but there seems to be some prefrontal connection since they appear at times to read each others thoughts. And they share some posterior cortical information (vision). All of this seems quite clear to Egnor, short of doing an autopsy. The key to his discussion is that they are clearly separate personalities despite the connectivity. This would mean the way they speak and express their thoughts are separate. Speech is in a middle area of the cortex as is the motor control strip. There is no 'exactly' that I can give you. What is it you want and why?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by dhw, Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 18:38 (2301 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A very interesting essay, and I doubt if even a materialist would disagree with the distinction between material and immaterial powers. The question is not what we can do, but what is the SOURCE of what we can do. However, before passing any further comment, I need your professional expertise. It’s clear from the pictures that there are areas of the brain the twins do NOT share, whereas the article only dwells on those they do. I’d be grateful if you would tell us exactly which parts of the brain they do NOT share, and what functions those parts are normally associated with.

DAVID: Basically they share some sensory and motor controls, but there seems to be some prefrontal connection since they appear at times to read each others thoughts. And they share some posterior cortical information (vision). All of this seems quite clear to Egnor, short of doing an autopsy. The key to his discussion is that they are clearly separate personalities despite the connectivity. This would mean the way they speak and express their thoughts are separate. Speech is in a middle area of the cortex as is the motor control strip. There is no 'exactly' that I can give you. What is it you want and why?

I know what is meant by separate personalities. But if this is to be regarded as proof of dualism, we need to know which parts of the brain are joined and which are separate. Egnor only tells us about some parts that are shared (as you say, they are mainly sensory and motor). If other parts of the brain are responsible for thought and personality, as materialists believe, and those parts are separate, the case for dualism is far from proven. I noticed in the pictures that the back of one head is joined to one front side of the other (not really much “pre-frontal connection”), but I don’t know enough about the brain to tell how significant this might be. If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 20:03 (2301 days ago) @ dhw


dhw: If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case.

You are welcome. But I would state it differently. The soul/consciousness uses the prefrontal cortex as the personality develops in a child.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by dhw, Thursday, November 30, 2017, 13:13 (2301 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case.

DAVID: You are welcome. But I would state it differently. The soul/consciousness uses the prefrontal cortex as the personality develops in a child.

If the prefrontal cortex is the seat of the personality, and the children are not joined at the prefrontal cortex, I’m afraid Egnor’s example provides no evidence whatsoever for dualism. Your own comment simply means that the two children have different souls, and that would apply to everybody, joined or not.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 30, 2017, 14:32 (2301 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case.

DAVID: You are welcome. But I would state it differently. The soul/consciousness uses the prefrontal cortex as the personality develops in a child.

dhw: If the prefrontal cortex is the seat of the personality, and the children are not joined at the prefrontal cortex, I’m afraid Egnor’s example provides no evidence whatsoever for dualism. Your own comment simply means that the two children have different souls, and that would apply to everybody, joined or not.

Egnor's opinion repeated:

"The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."

'Nuff said.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by dhw, Friday, December 01, 2017, 11:56 (2300 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case.

DAVID: You are welcome. But I would state it differently. The soul/consciousness uses the prefrontal cortex as the personality develops in a child.

dhw: If the prefrontal cortex is the seat of the personality, and the children are not joined at the prefrontal cortex, I’m afraid Egnor’s example provides no evidence whatsoever for dualism. Your own comment simply means that the two children have different souls, and that would apply to everybody, joined or not.

DAVID: Egnor's opinion repeated:
"The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."
'Nuff said.

Not ‘nuff said. I know what dualism means, and I am not disagreeing with Egnor’s opinion. I am simply pointing out that this particular case, which he cites as EVIDENCE of dualism, is no such thing if the shared part of the brain only governs activities unrelated to the individual personality of each twin.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism

by David Turell @, Friday, December 01, 2017, 14:47 (2300 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If “pre-frontal” sections help to form personality (materialist approach), then Egnor’s “evidence” for dualism is badly weakened. But I’m not prejudging – I’d just like to know. And thank you again for telling us about this extraordinary case.

DAVID: You are welcome. But I would state it differently. The soul/consciousness uses the prefrontal cortex as the personality develops in a child.

dhw: If the prefrontal cortex is the seat of the personality, and the children are not joined at the prefrontal cortex, I’m afraid Egnor’s example provides no evidence whatsoever for dualism. Your own comment simply means that the two children have different souls, and that would apply to everybody, joined or not.

DAVID: Egnor's opinion repeated:
"The evidence for dualism, and specifically for Thomistic dualism, is abundant in neuroscience. We are composites of material powers and immaterial powers. In the traditional way of understanding man, we are composites of matter and spirit, and we bridge the gap between the two realms of nature."
'Nuff said.

dhw: Not ‘nuff said. I know what dualism means, and I am not disagreeing with Egnor’s opinion. I am simply pointing out that this particular case, which he cites as EVIDENCE of dualism, is no such thing if the shared part of the brain only governs activities unrelated to the individual personality of each twin.

Good point.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Tuesday, December 26, 2017, 00:53 (2275 days ago) @ David Turell

This review article demonstrates how much consciousness function can survive a variety of brain injuries or abnormalities:

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/12/Discre...

"Abstract: Neuroscientists typically assume that human mental functions are
generated by the brain and that its structural elements, including the different cell
layers and tissues that form the neocortex, play specific roles in this complex process.
Different functional units are thought to complement one another to create
an integrated self-awareness or episodic memory. Still, findings that pertain to
brain dysplasia and brain lesions indicate that in some individuals there is a considerable
discrepancy between the cerebral structures and cognitive functioning.
This seems to question the seemingly well-defined role of these brain structures.
This article provides a review of such remarkable cases. It contains overviews of
noteworthy aspects of hydrocephalus, hemihydranencephaly, hemispherectomy,
and certain abilities of “savants.” We add considerations on memory processing,
comment on the assumed role of neural plasticity in these contexts, and highlight
the importance of taking such anomalies into account when formulating
encompassing models of brain functioning."

***

"how important the usual
anatomy of the brain and its cellular layers really is. It still needs to be
determined according to which principles the involved synapses, cells,
and tissues of the brain successfully organize their fine-tuned neural circuits
under such abnormal anatomical and physiological conditions.
This problem is even more apparent after hemispherectomies in which,
for example, the language center was removed along with the malfunctioning
hemisphere. Assuming that a given brain structure dictates
the mental capacities of the individual, it remains difficult to explain
how the remaining brain structures and their neural activities can
“know” that a “language center” is missing now, and how these neurons
induce and guide its duplication in their own hemisphere. Majorek
(2012) argued that this activity requires the existence of a higher control
center that would be able to detect this gap in function and to initiate
steps that lead to its mending. He stressed that so far, the existence of
such a control center in the brain has not been reported and that, given
the decentralized organization of the brain, itwould be difficult to imagine
where such a control center could be located.

"Indeed, one might wonder whether such processes of reorganization
are purely self-organizing processes of neuronal tissue in response
to external stimuli, or whether the mind or “the self ” actively participates
in these processes. Several studies suggest that the brain can indeed be altered by mental stimuli and processes on the molecular, cellular,
and neural circuit levels. In a review focusing on neuroimaging
studies, Beauregard (2007) summarized examples of mental influence
on brain structure from research into emotional self-regulation, psychotherapy,
and placebo experiments. He concluded that these studies
strongly support the view that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and volition
do exert a causal influence on brain plasticity, and he pointed to the obvious
fact that mental causation is an essential ingredient for successful
therapies. This is, of course, also valid for patients who train to regain
lost faculties after strokes, hemispherectomy, or brain injuries. The degree
of success in rewiring the brain is clearly dependent on the patients'
volition and purposeful training. According to Beauregard (2007), such
findings call into question positions in which all mental processes are
thought to be entirely reducible to biochemical processes.

"In sum, the relation between the brain's structure and its functional
capacities, and the principles that govern neural rewiring processes after
or during developmental damage are still poorly understood. The cases
presented in this article highlight that there is still much to learn about
“the brain and its self ” from a neurobiological perspective.
On the basis of the different cases of discrepancy between cerebral
and cognitive functioning discussed in the present article, some authors
doubt that the brain serves as a comprehensive memory store, arguing
that its function more closely resembles a receptor or transmitter of
memory and allied cognitive processes."

Comment: Bruce Greyson has described and agrees with the way consciousness leaves the brain in NDE's. He is quoted in my first book. I believe consciousness as an operative entity uses the brain to bridge these problems.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Wednesday, December 27, 2017, 16:00 (2273 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This review article demonstrates how much consciousness function can survive a variety of brain injuries or abnormalities:
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/12/Discre...

Thank you for this extremely revealing article, which deals with many of the aspects of consciousness we have been discussing, but from an angle we have not considered before. I am going to cherrypick quotes that strike me as particularly relevant.

Neuroscientists typically assume that human mental functions are generated by the brain…

This of course is the materialist view.

“…findings that pertain to brain dysplasia and brain lesions indicate that in some individuals there is a considerable discrepancy between the cerebral structures and cognitive functioning.”

This makes it clear that the current attribution of certain cognitive functions to certain parts of the brain is unreliable.

"Assuming that a given brain structure dictates the mental capacities of the individual, it remains difficult to explain how the remaining brain structures and their neural activities can “know” that a “language center” is missing now, and how these neurons
induce and guide its duplication in their own hemisphere. Majorek(2012) argued that this activity requires the existence of a higher control center that would be able to detect this gap in function and to initiate steps that lead to its mending. He stressed that […] given the decentralized organization of the brain, it would be difficult to imagine where such a control center could be located
.”

We are getting very close to the nub of the matter now. It is clear that something organizes the materials of the brain to enable them to provide the elements that have gone missing. The dualist would argue that this is the immaterial “soul”/self/conscious mind. However:

Several studies suggest that the brain can indeed be altered by mental stimuli and processes on the molecular, cellular, and neural circuit levels.”

And this is the sentence that really made me prick up my ears. It lies at the very heart of the hypothesis which I suggest links the whole history of life, evolution and consciousness together: namely, the intelligent cell. Like every other cell community, the brain is an interlinking network in which individual cells and individual clusters communicate with one another. If one cluster is diseased or missing, the something that does the reorganizing may be the cells themselves, cooperating intelligently to fill the gap. An analogy would be ant communities, which never fail to fill any gaps in their social structure, although it is “difficult to imagine “ where a control centre could be located. Combined intelligences would explain at ALL levels of life and evolution precisely how each community works. David insists that cells only APPEAR to be intelligent, and it was all either preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago by his God, or his God dabbled. My hypothesis is that cells ARE intelligent, but it allows for a God to be the creator of cellular intelligence.

“[Beauregard] concluded that these studies strongly support the view that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and volition do exert a causal influence on brain plasticity, and he pointed to the obvious fact that mental causation is an essential ingredient for successful
therapies.”

Once again we have evidence that thought and the effort made by consciousness/the mind create changes in the brain, just like the Indian women learning to write. The brain does not change in anticipation of the thought/effort.

According to Beauregard (2007), such findings call into question positions in which all mental processes are thought to be entirely reducible to biochemical processes.”

This clearly opens the way to the dualistic split between mind and body.

DAVID’s comment: Bruce Greyson has described and agrees with the way consciousness leaves the brain in NDE's. […]

This is the point at which we need a reconciliation between the two theories, and one of these days I shall return to that subject!

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Wednesday, December 27, 2017, 18:23 (2273 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: We are getting very close to the nub of the matter now. It is clear that something organizes the materials of the brain to enable them to provide the elements that have gone missing. The dualist would argue that this is the immaterial “soul”/self/conscious mind. However:

dhw: “Several studies suggest that the brain can indeed be altered by mental stimuli and processes on the molecular, cellular, and neural circuit levels.”

And this is the sentence that really made me prick up my ears. It lies at the very heart of the hypothesis which I suggest links the whole history of life, evolution and consciousness together: namely, the intelligent cell. Like every other cell community, the brain is an interlinking network in which individual cells and individual clusters communicate with one another. If one cluster is diseased or missing, the something that does the reorganizing may be the cells themselves, cooperating intelligently to fill the gap. An analogy would be ant communities, which never fail to fill any gaps in their social structure, although it is “difficult to imagine “ where a control centre could be located. Combined intelligences would explain at ALL levels of life and evolution precisely how each community works. David insists that cells only APPEAR to be intelligent, and it was all either preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago by his God, or his God dabbled. My hypothesis is that cells ARE intelligent, but it allows for a God to be the creator of cellular intelligence.

And I will insist they are programmed by God to act automatically intelligently


dhw: “[Beauregard] concluded that these studies strongly support the view that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and volition do exert a causal influence on brain plasticity, and he pointed to the obvious fact that mental causation is an essential ingredient for successful therapies.”

Once again we have evidence that thought and the effort made by consciousness/the mind create changes in the brain, just like the Indian women learning to write. The brain does not change in anticipation of the thought/effort.

This applies to any existing level of pre-cortical development in an pre-sapiens type brain as well as to sapiens. It does not explain the jumps in cortical, pre-cortical size and complexity at each fossil level.


dhw: “According to Beauregard (2007), such findings call into question positions in which all mental processes are thought to be entirely reducible to biochemical processes.”

This clearly opens the way to the dualistic split between mind and body.

DAVID’s comment: Bruce Greyson has described and agrees with the way consciousness leaves the brain in NDE's. […]

This is the point at which we need a reconciliation between the two theories, and one of these days I shall return to that subject!

The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are dthe living wet hardware!

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Friday, December 29, 2017, 08:52 (2272 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “Several studies suggest that the brain can indeed be altered by mental stimuli and processes on the molecular, cellular, and neural circuit levels.”

dhw: And this is the sentence that really made me prick up my ears. It lies at the very heart of the hypothesis which I suggest links the whole history of life, evolution and consciousness together: namely, the intelligent cell. Like every other cell community, the brain is an interlinking network in which individual cells and individual clusters communicate with one another. If one cluster is diseased or missing, the something that does the reorganizing may be the cells themselves, cooperating intelligently to fill the gap. An analogy would be ant communities, which never fail to fill any gaps in their social structure, although it is “difficult to imagine “ where a control centre could be located. Combined intelligences would explain at ALL levels of life and evolution precisely how each community works. David insists that cells only APPEAR to be intelligent, and it was all either preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago by his God, or his God dabbled. My hypothesis is that cells ARE intelligent, but it allows for a God to be the creator of cellular intelligence.

DAVID: And I will insist they are programmed by God to act automatically intelligently

“Automatically intelligently” is another of your obfuscations which needs to be clarified. Either the cells are automatons that have been programmed with each and every one of their responses and therefore do not require even one iota of autonomous intelligence, or they have been endowed (perhaps by God) with autonomous intelligence which they naturally use when confronted with new problems.

QUOTE: “[Beauregard] concluded that these studies strongly support the view that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and volition do exert a causal influence on brain plasticity, and he pointed to the obvious fact that mental causation is an essential ingredient for successful therapies.”

Dhw: Once again we have evidence that thought and the effort made by consciousness/the mind create changes in the brain, just like the Indian women learning to write. The brain does not change in anticipation of the thought/effort.

DAVID: This applies to any existing level of pre-cortical development in an pre-sapiens type brain as well as to sapiens. It does not explain the jumps in cortical, pre-cortical size and complexity at each fossil level.

As I keep saying, nobody can explain the jumps, which is why we have so many different theories. However, since we KNOW that mental activity changes the brain, whereas there is absolutely no evidence of the brain changing in anticipation of mental activity (your theory that God enlarged the pre-sapiens brain before it could come up with its new concepts), my proposal at least has a degree of scientific backing, unlike your own.

QUOTE: “According to Beauregard (2007), such findings call into question positions in which all mental processes are thought to be entirely reducible to biochemical processes.
Dhw: This clearly opens the way to the dualistic split between mind and body.
DAVID’s comment: Bruce Greyson has described and agrees with the way consciousness leaves the brain in NDE's. […]
Dhw: This is the point at which we need a reconciliation between the two theories, and one of these days I shall return to that subject!
DAVID: The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are the living wet hardware!

I have no idea what this means. You have always insisted that mental processes are the province of the soul/self/consciousness and NOT of biochemical processes. If this is true, then biochemical processes provide information which is processed by the s/s/c, whose mental processes then trigger further biochemical processes to implement decisions made by the s/s/c.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Monday, January 08, 2018, 15:52 (2261 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: And I will insist they are programmed by God to act automatically intelligently

dhw: “Automatically intelligently” is another of your obfuscations which needs to be clarified. Either the cells are automatons that have been programmed with each and every one of their responses and therefore do not require even one iota of autonomous intelligence, or they have been endowed (perhaps by God) with autonomous intelligence which they naturally use when confronted with new problems.

I chose the first of your theories as you well know. The second involves the ability for independent thought without any sign of brain function being present in a cell.


DAVID: This applies to any existing level of pre-cortical development in an pre-sapiens type brain as well as to sapiens. It does not explain the jumps in cortical, pre-cortical size and complexity at each fossil level.

dhw: As I keep saying, nobody can explain the jumps, which is why we have so many different theories. However, since we KNOW that mental activity changes the brain, whereas there is absolutely no evidence of the brain changing in anticipation of mental activity (your theory that God enlarged the pre-sapiens brain before it could come up with its new concepts), my proposal at least has a degree of scientific backing, unlike your own.

I understand that God is not accepted by science! But the brains suddenly enlarged in each new stage and then the products of that new-sized brain appeared. That sequence tells us the new cortex could produce new thoughts and concepts, whereas the smaller brain could not.

DAVID: The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are the living wet hardware!

dhw: I have no idea what this means. You have always insisted that mental processes are the province of the soul/self/consciousness and NOT of biochemical processes. If this is true, then biochemical processes provide information which is processed by the s/s/c, whose mental processes then trigger further biochemical processes to implement decisions made by the s/s/c.

You keep refusing to accept my analogy that the brain is used as a computer by the s/s/c and for the living person, the brain is the access to the s/s/c. After death that connection is not required.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Wednesday, January 10, 2018, 10:48 (2260 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: And I will insist they are programmed by God to act automatically intelligently

dhw: “Automatically intelligently” is another of your obfuscations which needs to be clarified. Either the cells are automatons that have been programmed with each and every one of their responses and therefore do not require even one iota of autonomous intelligence, or they have been endowed (perhaps by God) with autonomous intelligence which they naturally use when confronted with new problems.

DAVID: I chose the first of your theories as you well know. The second involves the ability for independent thought without any sign of brain function being present in a cell.

A cell can hardly show brain function if it hasn’t got a brain. We normally judge intelligence by the ability of organisms to act intelligently, and if they are able to solve new problems, some of us would take that as a sign that they know what they’re doing. Any dualist who claims that intelligence is impossible without a brain is arguing against himself. Hence the continued confusion exemplified by your next comment:

DAVID: […] the brains suddenly enlarged in each new stage and then the products of that new-sized brain appeared. That sequence tells us the new cortex could produce new thoughts and concepts, whereas the smaller brain could not.

But according to you, the cortex does NOT produce thoughts and concepts! You keep forgetting that you are a dualist! However, if the cortex is indeed the producer of thoughts – materialist view, which may well be correct – it is perfectly feasible that individual old cortexes produced new thoughts and concepts (you don’t seem to recognize that just like sapiens some individual hominids might have been cleverer than others), but these required additional abilities for their implementation, and so just as the illiterate women’s brains rewired themselves IN RESPONSE to new concepts, the pre-sapiens brain expanded IN RESPONSE to the need for new abilities, i.e. the implementation of the concept was the cause of the expansion.

DAVID: The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are the living wet hardware!

Once again, you the dualist are telling us that mental processes are biochemical!

DAVID: You keep refusing to accept my analogy that the brain is used as a computer by the s/s/c and for the living person, the brain is the access to the s/s/c. After death that connection is not required.

The computer analogy leads to nothing but confusion. What is your dualistic self/soul/consciousness if it’s not the living person? So apparently the brain is the living person’s means of access to the living person. What does that mean? If the s/s/c is NOT confined to biochemical processes (your dualism), then mental processes are NOT biochemical processes, and no amount of obfuscation with computer analogies can disguise this contradiction! (See “learning new tasks” for yet more computer obfuscations).

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 10, 2018, 15:02 (2260 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] the brains suddenly enlarged in each new stage and then the products of that new-sized brain appeared. That sequence tells us the new cortex could produce new thoughts and concepts, whereas the smaller brain could not.

dhw: But according to you, the cortex does NOT produce thoughts and concepts! You keep forgetting that you are a dualist!

I never forget I am a dualist as I sit in front of my computer, from which I am totally separate. I view ( and you refuse to do so) my brain as a wet biologic computer which I (s/s/c) use within my body, but the s/s/c is a separate software as shown by NDE's.

dhw: However, if the cortex is indeed the producer of thoughts – materialist view, which may well be correct – it is perfectly feasible that individual old cortexes produced new thoughts and concepts (you don’t seem to recognize that just like sapiens some individual hominids might have been cleverer than others), but these required additional abilities for their implementation, and so just as the illiterate women’s brains rewired themselves IN RESPONSE to new concepts, the pre-sapiens brain expanded IN RESPONSE to the need for new abilities, i.e. the implementation of the concept was the cause of the expansion.

Twisted thought, backwards. An existing large cortex shrinks with use! These is no evidence that new desired uses forces expansion, but it is a neat theory to avoid God.


DAVID: The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are the living wet hardware!

dhw: Once again, you the dualist are telling us that mental processes are biochemical!

Of course they are! Read above.


DAVID: You keep refusing to accept my analogy that the brain is used as a computer by the s/s/c and for the living person, the brain is the access to the s/s/c. After death that connection is not required.

dhw: The computer analogy leads to nothing but confusion. What is your dualistic self/soul/consciousness if it’s not the living person?

My s/s/c is immaterially existing within me and can separate from me. NDE's!

dhw: So apparently the brain is the living person’s means of access to the living person. What does that mean? If the s/s/c is NOT confined to biochemical processes (your dualism), then mental processes are NOT biochemical processes, and no amount of obfuscation with computer analogies can disguise this contradiction! (See “learning new tasks” for yet more computer obfuscations).

Just try to imagine what I clearly see. Our personalities cannot be seen or felt. I know your personality but I can't see it or touch it. But I can see your face in my memory and recognize it, all immaterial. All of us are wet biology with functional immaterial s/s/c's existing in us to run the brain.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Thursday, January 11, 2018, 15:02 (2259 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] the brains suddenly enlarged in each new stage and then the products of that new-sized brain appeared. That sequence tells us the new cortex could produce new thoughts and concepts, whereas the smaller brain could not.
dhw: But according to you, the cortex does NOT produce thoughts and concepts! You keep forgetting that you are a dualist!
DAVID: I never forget I am a dualist as I sit in front of my computer, from which I am totally separate. I view ( and you refuse to do so) my brain as a wet biologic computer which I (s/s/c) use within my body, but the s/s/c is a separate software as shown by NDE's.

You keep desperately trying to hide the contradictions by reverting to your convoluted computer analogy. Do you, the dualist, believe that the cortex produces your thoughts, or is it your dualist “soul” that produces your thoughts?

dhw: […] just as the illiterate women’s brains rewired themselves IN RESPONSE to new concepts, the pre-sapiens brain expanded IN RESPONSE to the need for new abilities, i.e. the implementation of the concept was the cause of the expansion.
DAVID: Twisted thought, backwards. An existing large cortex shrinks with use! These is no evidence that new desired uses forces expansion, but it is a neat theory to avoid God.

The existing large cortex shrinks because the brain and skull have reached their optimum size, and so expansion has been replaced by complexification. This has proved so efficient that some cells and connections are no longer needed. The hypothesis that brain expansion was caused by the need for new abilities to implement new concepts does not avoid God – it merely avoids your theory that God preprogrammed or engineered expansion before hominins were able to come up with new concepts. If God exists, he would have set up the whole mechanism of cellular intelligence on which my hypothesis depends.

DAVID: The mental processes are biochemical processes at the base of consciousness functioning. But they are the living wet hardware!
dhw: Once again, you the dualist are telling us that mental processes are biochemical!
DAVID: Of course they are! Read above.

I have read above, and you simply refuse to answer the simple question: Do you, the dualist, believe that the material cortex produces your immaterial thoughts, or is it your immaterial soul that produces your immaterial thoughts? (Not to be conflated with the material processes of perception and implementation.)

DAVID: You keep refusing to accept my analogy that the brain is used as a computer by the s/s/c and for the living person, the brain is the access to the s/s/c. After death that connection is not required.
dhw: The computer analogy leads to nothing but confusion. What is your dualistic self/soul/consciousness if it’s not the living person?
DAVID: My s/s/c is immaterially existing within me and can separate from me. NDE's!

THAT is indeed dualism, and you do not need a computer analogy to muddy the waters with incomprehensible convolutions like the brain/computer being “the access to the s/s/c”.

dhw: If the s/s/c is NOT confined to biochemical processes (your dualism), then mental processes are NOT biochemical processes, and no amount of obfuscation with computer analogies can disguise this contradiction!
DAVID: Just try to imagine what I clearly see. Our personalities cannot be seen or felt. I know your personality but I can't see it or touch it. But I can see your face in my memory and recognize it, all immaterial. All of us are wet biology with functional immaterial s/s/c's existing in us to run the brain.

At last a clear and meaningful account of your dualistic beliefs, mercifully freed from the messy computer analogy, and specifying that it is the immaterial s/s/c that runs the material brain. If it is true, it is a complete rebuttal of your statements that the cortex PRODUCES the thoughts and concepts, and that mental processes are biochemical.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 11, 2018, 15:44 (2258 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] just as the illiterate women’s brains rewired themselves IN RESPONSE to new concepts, the pre-sapiens brain expanded IN RESPONSE to the need for new abilities, i.e. the implementation of the concept was the cause of the expansion.

DAVID: Twisted thought, backwards. An existing large cortex shrinks with use! These is no evidence that new desired uses forces expansion, but it is a neat theory to avoid God.

dhw: The existing large cortex shrinks because the brain and skull have reached their optimum size, and so expansion has been replaced by complexification. This has proved so efficient that some cells and connections are no longer needed. The hypothesis that brain expansion was caused by the need for new abilities to implement new concepts does not avoid God – it merely avoids your theory that God preprogrammed or engineered expansion before hominins were able to come up with new concepts. If God exists, he would have set up the whole mechanism of cellular intelligence on which my hypothesis depends.

The bold: I'm glad you know exactly what God would do. The complexity has nothing to do with optimum size. That is your theory, nothing more. And the shrinkage involved more wiring and connections of the neurons used, not less, i.e., more complexity of connections.

DAVID: My s/s/c is immaterially existing within me and can separate from me. NDE's!

dhw: THAT is indeed dualism, and you do not need a computer analogy to muddy the waters with incomprehensible convolutions like the brain/computer being “the access to the s/s/c”.

dhw: If the s/s/c is NOT confined to biochemical processes (your dualism), then mental processes are NOT biochemical processes, and no amount of obfuscation with computer analogies can disguise this contradiction!

DAVID: Just try to imagine what I clearly see. Our personalities cannot be seen or felt. I know your personality but I can't see it or touch it. But I can see your face in my memory and recognize it, all immaterial. All of us are wet biology with functional immaterial s/s/c's existing in us to run the brain.

dhw: At last a clear and meaningful account of your dualistic beliefs, mercifully freed from the messy computer analogy, and specifying that it is the immaterial s/s/c that runs the material brain. If it is true, it is a complete rebuttal of your statements that the cortex PRODUCES the thoughts and concepts, and that mental processes are biochemical.

I have always tried to present the concepts in the statement I've given above, and I think you have finally understood my position, except your last comment. Of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex, directed by the s/s/c. The base of mental processes is of course biochemical as that describes the material funtional brain which does act as a computer under control of the s/s/c software. The ability to produce very complex thought requires a very complex enlarged cortex for the s/s/c to use. Proven by new artifact production by each stage of hominin.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Friday, January 12, 2018, 13:07 (2258 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: An existing large cortex shrinks with use! These is no evidence that new desired uses forces expansion, but it is a neat theory to avoid God.
dhw: The existing large cortex shrinks because the brain and skull have reached their optimum size, and so expansion has been replaced by complexification. This has proved so efficient that some cells and connections are no longer needed. The hypothesis that brain expansion was caused by the need for new abilities to implement new concepts does not avoid God – it merely avoids your theory that God preprogrammed or engineered expansion before hominins were able to come up with new concepts. If God exists, he would have set up the whole mechanism of cellular intelligence on which my hypothesis depends. (David's bold)
DAVID: The bold: I'm glad you know exactly what God would do. The complexity has nothing to do with optimum size. That is your theory, nothing more. And the shrinkage involved more wiring and connections of the neurons used, not less, i.e., more complexity of connections.

The bold: you claimed that my hypothesis avoided God. I have shown you that it doesn’t. Of course I don’t know exactly what a God would do. Nor do you, with your hypothesis that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution in order to produce the human brain! As regards optimum size, you yourself said that an infinitely expanding brain/skull was the stuff of science fiction. But yes, my hypothesis is that any further increase would have led to problems for the rest of the anatomy, and so complexification took over from expansion. I am more than happy to be corrected on the exact nature of the shrinkage: if it does not entail the loss of cells and connections no longer needed, perhaps you would tell us exactly what the shrinkage consists of.

DAVID: Just try to imagine what I clearly see. Our personalities cannot be seen or felt. I know your personality but I can't see it or touch it. But I can see your face in my memory and recognize it, all immaterial. All of us are wet biology with functional immaterial s/s/c's existing in us to run the brain.
dhw: At last a clear and meaningful account of your dualistic beliefs, mercifully freed from the messy computer analogy, and specifying that it is the immaterial s/s/c that runs the material brain. If it is true, it is a complete rebuttal of your statements that the cortex PRODUCES the thoughts and concepts, and that mental processes are biochemical.
DAVID: I have always tried to present the concepts in the statement I've given above, and I think you have finally understood my position, except your last comment. Of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex, directed by the s/s/c. The base of mental processes is of course biochemical as that describes the material funtional brain which does act as a computer under control of the s/s/c software. The ability to produce very complex thought requires a very complex enlarged cortex for the s/s/c to use. Proven by new artifact production by each stage of hominin.

I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me. The whole essence of dualism is that the self/soul/consciousness IS the person’s thoughts, ideas, concepts, emotions, memories. The crucial obfuscation lies in your penultimate sentence: as physical beings (forget about the afterlife) we are able to produce thought – whether complex or not – and this requires the material brain for the provision of information and the material expression or implementation of thought (both of which processes are biochemica), but for a dualist the thought itself comes from the “soul” and not from the cortex. To use your otherwise totally unhelpful computer image: the software (soul) does the thinking, and the computer (brain) does the implementing. THAT is how the s/s/c “uses” the complexities of the brain. If you insist that the cortex (computer) does the thinking, then the soul (software) has no function.

dhw: (under "new tasks”) [Pre-sapiens brains] can only produce new advances by expanding. In my hypothesis, the expansion does not precede the production, it is CAUSED by the production.
DAVID: The artifacts appear only after the larger brain has arrived. You can't avoid the time sequence.

Of course that is the sequence. The artefacts CAN only appear once the brain has acquired the ability to produce them. The illiterate women’s rewiring took place while they learned to write, and by the time they could write, the rewiring was complete. The hominin brain changed through the process of making its tools, and by the time the tools were made, the expansion was complete. The appearance of the artefacts coincided with the expansion which, like the rewiring, did not take place before the implementation of the concept, but was caused BY the implementation of the concept.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 13, 2018, 01:05 (2257 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The bold: I'm glad you know exactly what God would do. The complexity has nothing to do with optimum size. That is your theory, nothing more. And the shrinkage involved more wiring and connections of the neurons used, not less, i.e., more complexity of connections.

dhw: I am more than happy to be corrected on the exact nature of the shrinkage: if it does not entail the loss of cells and connections no longer needed, perhaps you would tell us exactly what the shrinkage consists of.

From the original article:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132589-learning-to-read-and-write-rewires-adult-b...

"Rewired brains
By the end of the study, the team saw significant changes in the brains of the people who had learned to read and write. These individuals showed an increase in brain activity in the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, which is involved in learning.

"Learning to read also seemed to change brain regions that aren’t typically involved in reading, writing or learning. Two regions deep in the brain, in particular, appeared more active after training – portions of the thalamus and the brainstem."

Not in this article but in some other entry I presented it has been shown that sapiens brains have shrunk during the development of our new civilization activities. I have assumed that the shrinkage is due to the demonstrated rewiring.

DAVID: I have always tried to present the concepts in the statement I've given above, and I think you have finally understood my position, except your last comment. Of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex, directed by the s/s/c. The base of mental processes is of course biochemical as that describes the material funtional brain which does act as a computer under control of the s/s/c software. The ability to produce very complex thought requires a very complex enlarged cortex for the s/s/c to use. Proven by new artifact production by each stage of hominin.

dhw: I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me. The whole essence of dualism is that the self/soul/consciousness IS the person’s thoughts, ideas, concepts, emotions, memories. The crucial obfuscation lies in your penultimate sentence: as physical beings (forget about the afterlife) we are able to produce thought – whether complex or not – and this requires the material brain for the provision of information and the material expression or implementation of thought (both of which processes are biochemica), but for a dualist the thought itself comes from the “soul” and not from the cortex. To use your otherwise totally unhelpful computer image: the software (soul) does the thinking, and the computer (brain) does the implementing. THAT is how the s/s/c “uses” the complexities of the brain. If you insist that the cortex (computer) does the thinking, then the soul (software) has no function.

I can easily accept your version of my theory as you state it. I think that is what I have been stating all along, but perhaps not clearly.


dhw: (under "new tasks”) [Pre-sapiens brains] can only produce new advances by expanding. In my hypothesis, the expansion does not precede the production, it is CAUSED by the production.

DAVID: The artifacts appear only after the larger brain has arrived. You can't avoid the time sequence.

dhw: Of course that is the sequence. The artefacts CAN only appear once the brain has acquired the ability to produce them. The illiterate women’s rewiring took place while they learned to write, and by the time they could write, the rewiring was complete. The hominin brain changed through the process of making its tools, and by the time the tools were made, the expansion was complete. The appearance of the artefacts coincided with the expansion which, like the rewiring, did not take place before the implementation of the concept, but was caused BY the implementation of the concept.

We remain at opposite poles. I can only see the brain enlarging and only then the thoughts and concepts can appear. The enlargement is provided by God's action. Enlargement first, artifacts second. More intense thought shrinks the brain in sapiens and it is the only real evidence we have about thought and brain size. If evolution builds on the past, previous more ancient brains employed this same course. Why should only sapiens brains do this? Your statement that our brain is at a non-enlarging state in evolution only supports my contnetion that our brain is the end point of God's purpose.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Saturday, January 13, 2018, 14:17 (2257 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The complexity has nothing to do with optimum size. That is your theory, nothing more. And the shrinkage involved more wiring and connections of the neurons used, not less, i.e., more complexity of connections.
dhw: I am more than happy to be corrected on the exact nature of the shrinkage: if it does not entail the loss of cells and connections no longer needed, perhaps you would tell us exactly what the shrinkage consists of.

DAVID: From the original article:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132589-learning-to-read-and-write-rewires-adult-b...
"Rewired brains
By the end of the study, the team saw significant changes in the brains of the people who had learned to read and write. These individuals showed an increase in brain activity in the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, which is involved in learning.”
[dhw: Other areas of the brain were also affected]
DAVID: Not in this article but in some other entry I presented it has been shown that sapiens brains have shrunk during the development of our new civilization activities. I have assumed that the shrinkage is due to the demonstrated rewiring.

I don’t dispute brain shrinkage! But thank you for once more confirming the all-important fact that the brain RESPONDS to the implementation of new concepts! You challenged my statement that complexification had proved so efficient that “some cells and connections are no longer needed”. Shrinkage must mean that something is lost, and so I asked what else the shrinkage could consist of. You have not answered.

DAVID: Of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex, directed by the s/s/c. The base of mental processes is of course biochemical as that describes the material funtional brain which does act as a computer under control of the s/s/c software. The ability to produce very complex thought requires a very complex enlarged cortex for the s/s/c to use. Proven by new artifact production by each stage of hominin.

dhw: I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me. The whole essence of dualism is that the self/soul/consciousness IS the person’s thoughts, ideas, concepts, emotions, memories. The crucial obfuscation lies in your penultimate sentence: as physical beings (forget about the afterlife) we are able to produce thought – whether complex or not – and this requires the material brain for the provision of information and the material expression or implementation of thought (both of which processes are biochemical), but for a dualist the thought itself comes from the “soul” and not from the cortex. To use your otherwise totally unhelpful computer image: the software (soul) does the thinking, and the computer (brain) does the implementing. THAT is how the s/s/c “uses” the complexities of the brain. If you insist that the cortex (computer) does the thinking, then the soul (software) has no function.

DAVID: I can easily accept your version of my theory as you state it. I think that is what I have been stating all along, but perhaps not clearly.

Statements like “of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex”, and “the base of mental processes is of course biochemical”, can hardly mean that thoughts and concepts are produced by the soul and the soul is immaterial. Since you can now easily accept that the brain provides information and implements thoughts and concepts which according to your dualism are produced by the soul and not by the brain, perhaps you will also easily accept that the expansion of the brain must have followed on from and not preceded the soul’s acts of conceptualization, but no, back you go:

DAVID: We remain at opposite poles. I can only see the brain enlarging and only then the thoughts and concepts can appear. The enlargement is provided by God's action. Enlargement first, artifacts second.

But you believe thoughts and concepts are produced by the “soul” and so they do NOT depend on the brain! It is the implementation that depends on the brain, as is shown by the “only real evidence we have” (below). Therefore just as effort to read and write changes the brain (rewiring), effort to produce artefacts changed the brain (expansion).

DAVID: More intense thought shrinks the brain in sapiens and it is the only real evidence we have about thought and brain size. If evolution builds on the past, previous more ancient brains employed this same course. Why should only sapiens brains do this?

Yet again (if you keep asking the same question, I can only give the same answer): pre-sapiens brains may well have complexified to some degree, but they reached a stage at which more brain capacity was needed to implement new concepts – hence expansion. The brain/skull then reached a size at which further expansion would have caused anatomical problems (as you said yourself, an infinitely expanding brain/skull is the stuff of science fiction). Consequently, complexification took over from expansion, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. Please explain your objections to this hypothesis.

DAVID: Your statement that our brain is at a non-enlarging state in evolution only supports my contention that our brain is the end point of God's purpose.

Your God’s purpose is a separate issue from that of the mechanics of evolution, which is what we are discussing here.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 13, 2018, 14:52 (2257 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not in this article but in some other entry I presented it has been shown that sapiens brains have shrunk during the development of our new civilization activities. I have assumed that the shrinkage is due to the demonstrated rewiring.

dhw: I don’t dispute brain shrinkage! But thank you for once more confirming the all-important fact that the brain RESPONDS to the implementation of new concepts! You challenged my statement that complexification had proved so efficient that “some cells and connections are no longer needed”. Shrinkage must mean that something is lost, and so I asked what else the shrinkage could consist of. You have not answered.

I have said the shrinkage is known, but I am unaware of what else might be lost. Losing neurons is possible if the remaining ones become more complex by altering their branching and the variety of their synapses variety of strength.


DAVID: I can easily accept your version of my theory as you state it. I think that is what I have been stating all along, but perhaps not clearly.

dhw: Statements like “of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex”, and “the base of mental processes is of course biochemical”, can hardly mean that thoughts and concepts are produced by the soul and the soul is immaterial.

Of course the soul is not material. My point is it uses the brain which is material. there is a soul brain interface, thus dualism.

dhw; Since you can now easily accept that the brain provides information and implements thoughts and concepts which according to your dualism are produced by the soul and not by the brain, perhaps you will also easily accept that the expansion of the brain must have followed on from and not preceded the soul’s acts of conceptualization, but no, back you go:

DAVID: We remain at opposite poles. I can only see the brain enlarging and only then the thoughts and concepts can appear. The enlargement is provided by God's action. Enlargement first, artifacts second.

dhw: But you believe thoughts and concepts are produced by the “soul” and so they do NOT depend on the brain! It is the implementation that depends on the brain, as is shown by the “only real evidence we have” (below). Therefore just as effort to read and write changes the brain (rewiring), effort to produce artefacts changed the brain (expansion).

But the only evidence we have from our brains is the effort to 'produce' shrinks!


DAVID: More intense thought shrinks the brain in sapiens and it is the only real evidence we have about thought and brain size. If evolution builds on the past, previous more ancient brains employed this same course. Why should only sapiens brains do this?

dhw: Yet again (if you keep asking the same question, I can only give the same answer): pre-sapiens brains may well have complexified to some degree, but they reached a stage at which more brain capacity was needed to implement new concepts – hence expansion.

That is where God stepped in and created the next larger sized brain.

dhw: The brain/skull then reached a size at which further expansion would have caused anatomical problems (as you said yourself, an infinitely expanding brain/skull is the stuff of science fiction).

Taking my comment about science fiction brains out of original context doesn't help you. Our current brain was God's goal.

dhw: Consequently, complexification took over from expansion, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. Please explain your objections to this hypothesis.

No objection. God reached His goal.


DAVID: Your statement that our brain is at a non-enlarging state in evolution only supports my contention that our brain is the end point of God's purpose.

dhw: Your God’s purpose is a separate issue from that of the mechanics of evolution, which is what we are discussing here.

No it is not separate. Don't forget I think God used evolution to create us. God never goes away in my thinking, while you sneak Him in now and then when it suits your purpose.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Sunday, January 14, 2018, 14:31 (2256 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You challenged my statement that complexification had proved so efficient that “some cells and connections are no longer needed”. Shrinkage must mean that something is lost, and so I asked what else the shrinkage could consist of. You have not answered.
DAVID: I have said the shrinkage is known, but I am unaware of what else might be lost. Losing neurons is possible if the remaining ones become more complex by altering their branching and the variety of their synapses variety of strength.

Since neurons are cells, I take it you now agree that shrinkage might consist in the loss of cells and their connections.

DAVID: I can easily accept your version of my theory as you state it. I think that is what I have been stating all along, but perhaps not clearly.
dhw: Statements like “of course thoughts and concepts are produced by the pre-frontal and frontal cortex”, and “the base of mental processes is of course biochemical”, can hardly mean that thoughts and concepts are produced by the soul and the soul is immaterial.
DAVID: Of course the soul is not material. My point is it uses the brain which is material. there is a soul brain interface, thus dualism.

In the context of dualism (I shall come back to materialism eventually) that is also my point, which is why I objected to the statements quoted above. We are now in agreement as to the meaning and implications of dualism, despite the next quote:
DAVID: We remain at opposite poles. I can only see the brain enlarging and only then the thoughts and concepts can appear. The enlargement is provided by God's action. Enlargement first, artifacts second.
dhw: But you believe thoughts and concepts are produced by the “soul” and so they do NOT depend on the brain! It is the implementation that depends on the brain, as is shown by the “only real evidence we have” (below). Therefore just as effort to read and write changes the brain (rewiring), effort to produce artefacts changed the brain (expansion).
DAVID: But the only evidence we have from our brains is the effort to 'produce' shrinks!

I offered the explanation that the brain had reached its optimum size and….
dhw: Consequently, complexification took over from expansion, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. Please explain your objections to this hypothesis.
DAVID: No objection. God reached His goal.

You have no objection, and yet you continue to argue against it:
dhw: The brain/skull then reached a size at which further expansion would have caused anatomical problems (as you said yourself, an infinitely expanding brain/skull is the stuff of science fiction).
DAVID: Taking my comment about science fiction brains out of original context doesn't help you. Our current brain was God's goal.

Are you now saying that the brain could expand indefinitely, and you can imagine humans with elephant-sized heads? See below for “God’s goal”.

dhw: Your God’s purpose is a separate issue from that of the mechanics of evolution, which is what we are discussing here.
DAVID: No it is not separate. Don't forget I think God used evolution to create us. God never goes away in my thinking, while you sneak Him in now and then when it suits your purpose.

If God exists, it is perfectly feasible that he created the evolutionary mechanisms I have described. I am challenging your personal reading of your God’s mind and your interpretation of how he might have used evolution. The fact that you always think of God does not give your hypothesis any more credibility than mine.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Sunday, January 14, 2018, 15:26 (2255 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You challenged my statement that complexification had proved so efficient that “some cells and connections are no longer needed”. Shrinkage must mean that something is lost, and so I asked what else the shrinkage could consist of. You have not answered.
DAVID: I have said the shrinkage is known, but I am unaware of what else might be lost. Losing neurons is possible if the remaining ones become more complex by altering their branching and the variety of their synapses variety of strength.

dhw: Since neurons are cells, I take it you now agree that shrinkage might consist in the loss of cells and their connections.

Yes, I have proposed a way some neurons might be replaced by more complex ones, but since we don't autopsy living brains, I'm not sure there is any real evidence how the shrinkage happened.

dhw: But you believe thoughts and concepts are produced by the “soul” and so they do NOT depend on the brain! It is the implementation that depends on the brain, as is shown by the “only real evidence we have” (below). Therefore just as effort to read and write changes the brain (rewiring), effort to produce artefacts changed the brain (expansion).

DAVID: But the only evidence we have from our brains is the effort to 'produce' shrinks!

dhw: I offered the explanation that the brain had reached its optimum size and….
dhw: Consequently, complexification took over from expansion, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. Please explain your objections to this hypothesis.

DAVID: No objection. God reached His goal.

You have no objection, and yet you continue to argue against it:
dhw: The brain/skull then reached a size at which further expansion would have caused anatomical problems (as you said yourself, an infinitely expanding brain/skull is the stuff of science fiction).
DAVID: Taking my comment about science fiction brains out of original context doesn't help you. Our current brain was God's goal.

dhw: Are you now saying that the brain could expand indefinitely, and you can imagine humans with elephant-sized heads?

No, we have reached God's goal. You are supporting my view.


dhw: Your God’s purpose is a separate issue from that of the mechanics of evolution, which is what we are discussing here.
DAVID: No it is not separate. Don't forget I think God used evolution to create us. God never goes away in my thinking, while you sneak Him in now and then when it suits your purpose.

dhw: If God exists, it is perfectly feasible that he created the evolutionary mechanisms I have described. I am challenging your personal reading of your God’s mind and your interpretation of how he might have used evolution. The fact that you always think of God does not give your hypothesis any more credibility than mine.

I believe in my hypothesis, which means I'm convinced God exists. He is not credible to you.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Monday, January 15, 2018, 14:11 (2255 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The brain/skull then reached a size at which further expansion would have caused anatomical problems (as you said yourself, an infinitely expanding brain/skull is the stuff of science fiction).

DAVID: Taking my comment about science fiction brains out of original context doesn't help you. Our current brain was God's goal.

dhw: Are you now saying that the brain could expand indefinitely, and you can imagine humans with elephant-sized heads?

DAVID: No, we have reached God's goal. You are supporting my view.

You agree that sapiens’ brain could not expand any more, and so complexification took over from expansion. I’m afraid I can’t see why that should mean your God’s purpose in creating billions of life forms (including hominids and hominins), lifestyles and natural wonders was to produce the brain of Homo sapiens. No, I am not supporting your view.

dhw: If God exists, it is perfectly feasible that he created the evolutionary mechanisms I have described. I am challenging your personal reading of your God’s mind and your interpretation of how he might have used evolution. The fact that you always think of God does not give your hypothesis any more credibility than mine.

DAVID: I believe in my hypothesis, which means I'm convinced God exists. He is not credible to you.

Being convinced that God exists does not give you exclusive access to your God’s mind. It is perfectly possible to believe in God and to believe that he purposefully created a mechanism which allowed for all life forms to develop as they have done, in an ever changing spectacle of wonders, including but not confined to the brain of Homo sapiens.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Monday, January 15, 2018, 14:20 (2255 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: No, we have reached God's goal. You are supporting my view.

dhw: You agree that sapiens’ brain could not expand any more, and so complexification took over from expansion. I’m afraid I can’t see why that should mean your God’s purpose in creating billions of life forms (including hominids and hominins), lifestyles and natural wonders was to produce the brain of Homo sapiens. No, I am not supporting your view.

dhw: If God exists, it is perfectly feasible that he created the evolutionary mechanisms I have described. I am challenging your personal reading of your God’s mind and your interpretation of how he might have used evolution. The fact that you always think of God does not give your hypothesis any more credibility than mine.

DAVID: I believe in my hypothesis, which means I'm convinced God exists. He is not credible to you.

dhw: Being convinced that God exists does not give you exclusive access to your God’s mind. It is perfectly possible to believe in God and to believe that he purposefully created a mechanism which allowed for all life forms to develop as they have done, in an ever changing spectacle of wonders, including but not confined to the brain of Homo sapiens.

God did create a mechanism of evolution that lead to the bush of life. We don't disagree. Where we differ is I see our brain as a purposeful end point.

Consciousness: a group of theories about it

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 00:29 (2254 days ago) @ David Turell

Interesting:

http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-a-genius-scientist-thinks-our-consciousness-origina...

"Human consciousness is one of the grand mysteries of our time on earth. How do you know that you are “you”? Does your sense of being aware of yourself come from your mind or is it your body that is creating it? What really happens when you enter an “altered” state of consciousness with the help of some chemical or plant? Are animals conscious? While you would think this basic enigma of our self-awareness would be at the forefront of scientific inquiry, science does not yet have strong answers to these questions.

"The integrated information theory, created by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposes that conscious experience is an integration of a great of amount of information that comes into our brain, and that this experience is irreducible. Your brain interweaves a sophisticated information web from sensory and cognitive inputs.

"The global workspace theory of consciousness, developed by Bernard Baars, a neuroscientist at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, says that maybe consciousness is simply the act of broadcasting information around the brain from a memory bank.

"But there are some who think our attempts at understanding the nature of consciousness through neuroscience are doomed to fail unless quantum mechanics is involved. World-renowned Oxford University mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, for one, thinks that consciousness has quantum origins.

"Together with noted anesthesiologist Stuart Hammeroff, who teaches at the University of Arizona, Penrose came up with the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory of the mind. The theory is somewhat outlandish, but cannot be easily dismissed considering that Roger Penrose is regarded by many as one of the world’s most brilliant people for his contributions in cosmology and general relativity. He is known also for his prize-winning work with Stephen Hawking on black holes.

"Penrose believes that consciousness is not computational. Our awareness is not simply a mechanistic byproduct, like something you can make a machine do. And to understand consciousness, you need to revolutionize our understanding of the physical world. In particular, Penrose thinks the answer to consciousness may lie in a deeper knowledge of quantum mechanics.

"In an interview with Nautilus’s Steve Paulson, Penrose uses an example from quantum computing to explain that qubits of information remain in multiple states until coming together into an instantaneous calculation, called “quantum coherence,” making a large number of things act together in one quantum state.

"Here’s where Penrose’s theory draws upon the work of Hameroff by saying that this quantum coherence takes place in protein structures called “microtubules”. These microtubules reside inside the neurons in our brains and can store and process information and memory. Penrose and Hameroff think that microtubules are quantum devices that are orchestrating our conscious awareness.

"This theory is not appreciated by everyone in the scientific community, with many critics saying the brain is too “warm, wet, and noisy” and cannot sustain a quantum process. Another physicist, Max Tegmark, even calculated that the brain cannot possibly think as fast as this idea requires. Hawking is also not on board, suggesting Penrose should stick with his field of expertise.

"Yet, a 2013 study by Japanese scientists added some proof to the theory by Penrose and Hameroff as researchers detected vibrations in the microtubules. Penrose and Hameroff then proposed that by focusing brain stimulation on these vibrations one could conceivably “benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.”

"Still, this theory of consciousness is rather on the outs in a field that hasn’t had much advancement in a while."

Comment: The website contains a six minute interview with Sir Roger which is worth a listen. I think he is on to something.

Consciousness: a group of theories about it

by dhw, Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 12:24 (2254 days ago) @ David Turell

We discussed Penrose’s ideas on the thread with the horribly misleading title “Human Consciousness: Penrose: soul survives!

I couldn't get onto this site as it was heavily in demand. That's good to hear! I'll try again later.

Consciousness: a group of theories about it

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 17:37 (2253 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: We discussed Penrose’s ideas on the thread with the horribly misleading title “Human Consciousness: Penrose: soul survives!

I couldn't get onto this site as it was heavily in demand. That's good to hear! I'll try again later.

I copied the whole story. Here is the Penrose video:

https://youtu.be/lJmzfdF4CZk

Consciousness: a group of theories about it

by dhw, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 13:29 (2253 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We discussed Penrose’s ideas on the thread with the horribly misleading title “Human Consciousness: Penrose: soul survives!
I couldn't get onto this site as it was heavily in demand. That's good to hear! I'll try again later.

DAVID: I copied the whole story. Here is the Penrose video:

https://youtu.be/lJmzfdF4CZk

Many thanks, David. I'm afraid I didn't get much out of it beyond the fact that consciousness is a mysterious "extra", and maybe microtubules and quantum mechanics might just possibly somehow but so far inexplicably hold the key to what it is.

Consciousness: a group of theories about it

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 14:16 (2253 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: We discussed Penrose’s ideas on the thread with the horribly misleading title “Human Consciousness: Penrose: soul survives!
I couldn't get onto this site as it was heavily in demand. That's good to hear! I'll try again later.

DAVID: I copied the whole story. Here is the Penrose video:

https://youtu.be/lJmzfdF4CZk

dhw: Many thanks, David. I'm afraid I didn't get much out of it beyond the fact that consciousness is a mysterious "extra", and maybe microtubules and quantum mechanics might just possibly somehow but so far inexplicably hold the key to what it is.

I have the feeling that consciousness is at a quantum level of brain function, perhaps due to the fact both quantum mechanics and consciousness are so mysterious..

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 12:17 (2254 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Being convinced that God exists does not give you exclusive access to your God’s mind. It is perfectly possible to believe in God and to believe that he purposefully created a mechanism which allowed for all life forms to develop as they have done, in an ever changing spectacle of wonders, including but not confined to the brain of Homo sapiens.

DAVID: God did create a mechanism of evolution that lead to the bush of life. We don't disagree. Where we differ is I see our brain as a purposeful end point.

I’m afraid our disagreement is far wider-ranging, since I propose that the mechanism runs autonomously, whereas you insist that every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder has been preprogrammed or dabbled. Your view of the human brain varies from it being the sole purpose to its being “a purposeful end point”. If it’s the latter, please tell us what other purposeful end points you think your God had in mind.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 14:33 (2254 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Being convinced that God exists does not give you exclusive access to your God’s mind. It is perfectly possible to believe in God and to believe that he purposefully created a mechanism which allowed for all life forms to develop as they have done, in an ever changing spectacle of wonders, including but not confined to the brain of Homo sapiens.

DAVID: God did create a mechanism of evolution that lead to the bush of life. We don't disagree. Where we differ is I see our brain as a purposeful end point.

dhw: I’m afraid our disagreement is far wider-ranging, since I propose that the mechanism runs autonomously, whereas you insist that every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder has been preprogrammed or dabbled. Your view of the human brain varies from it being the sole purpose to its being “a purposeful end point”. If it’s the latter, please tell us what other purposeful end points you think your God had in mind.

Of course our disagreement is wider-ranging. To review: life did not start by chance. Evolution cannot procede by chance changes, and the human brain is the pinnacle of life's evolution. That brain is God's main end point as it can relate to Him. I've never deviated from this view.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 13:20 (2253 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God did create a mechanism of evolution that lead to the bush of life. We don't disagree. Where we differ is I see our brain as a purposeful end point.

dhw: I’m afraid our disagreement is far wider-ranging, since I propose that the mechanism runs autonomously, whereas you insist that every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder has been preprogrammed or dabbled. Your view of the human brain varies from it being the sole purpose to its being “a purposeful end point”. If it’s the latter, please tell us what other purposeful end points you think your God had in mind.

DAVID: Of course our disagreement is wider-ranging. To review: life did not start by chance. Evolution cannot procede by chance changes, and the human brain is the pinnacle of life's evolution. That brain is God's main end point as it can relate to Him. I've never deviated from this view.

I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 14:20 (2253 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God did create a mechanism of evolution that lead to the bush of life. We don't disagree. Where we differ is I see our brain as a purposeful end point.

dhw: I’m afraid our disagreement is far wider-ranging, since I propose that the mechanism runs autonomously, whereas you insist that every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder has been preprogrammed or dabbled. Your view of the human brain varies from it being the sole purpose to its being “a purposeful end point”. If it’s the latter, please tell us what other purposeful end points you think your God had in mind.

DAVID: Of course our disagreement is wider-ranging. To review: life did not start by chance. Evolution cannot procede by chance changes, and the human brain is the pinnacle of life's evolution. That brain is God's main end point as it can relate to Him. I've never deviated from this view.

dhw: I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

Beyond the brain, providing a broad bush of life to provide the necessary balance of nature to support an energy supply so the evolution of life could continue until sapiens appeared.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Thursday, January 18, 2018, 14:05 (2252 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...the human brain is the pinnacle of life's evolution. That brain is God's main end point as it can relate to Him. I've never deviated from this view.

dhw: I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

DAVID: Beyond the brain, providing a broad bush of life to provide the necessary balance of nature to support an energy supply so the evolution of life could continue until sapiens appeared.

Which still means that the broad bush of life is geared to the production of sapiens’ brain, and so the broad bush of life is not an “end point” in itself. So let me approach the problem from another angle. You are continually educating us with an amazing array of Nature’s wonders, and they are just that. You and I both wonder at the marvellous inventiveness of existing organisms. (See today’s comment on the crab claw: "Nature always comes up with ingenious designs. Why not recognize the designer, God?") Even today, children are not the only ones fascinated by dinosaurs, long since dead. Religious people sing of “all things bright and beautiful…” for which they thank their God. Do you not think it possible that your God might also have enjoyed the bright and beautiful things produced by the process of evolution? Not as a mere means to an end – providing an energy supply so life could go on until sapiens appeared – but as an end in themselves?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 18, 2018, 17:45 (2251 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: ...the human brain is the pinnacle of life's evolution. That brain is God's main end point as it can relate to Him. I've never deviated from this view.

dhw: I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

DAVID: Beyond the brain, providing a broad bush of life to provide the necessary balance of nature to support an energy supply so the evolution of life could continue until sapiens appeared.

dhw: Which still means that the broad bush of life is geared to the production of sapiens’ brain, and so the broad bush of life is not an “end point” in itself. So let me approach the problem from another angle. You are continually educating us with an amazing array of Nature’s wonders, and they are just that. You and I both wonder at the marvellous inventiveness of existing organisms. (See today’s comment on the crab claw: "Nature always comes up with ingenious designs. Why not recognize the designer, God?") Even today, children are not the only ones fascinated by dinosaurs, long since dead. Religious people sing of “all things bright and beautiful…” for which they thank their God. Do you not think it possible that your God might also have enjoyed the bright and beautiful things produced by the process of evolution? Not as a mere means to an end – providing an energy supply so life could go on until sapiens appeared – but as an end in themselves?

You've gone back to humanizing God. I feel I know what God weanted to accomplish. I cannot know about His emotions, but you seem to without belief in Him.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Friday, January 19, 2018, 13:29 (2251 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

DAVID: Beyond the brain, providing a broad bush of life to provide the necessary balance of nature to support an energy supply so the evolution of life could continue until sapiens appeared.

dhw: Which still means that the broad bush of life is geared to the production of sapiens’ brain, and so the broad bush of life is not an “end point” in itself. […] Do you not think it possible that your God might also have enjoyed the bright and beautiful things produced by the process of evolution? Not as a mere means to an end – providing an energy supply so life could go on until sapiens appeared – but as an end in themselves?

DAVID: You've gone back to humanizing God. I feel I know what God weanted to accomplish. I cannot know about His emotions, but you seem to without belief in Him.

We cannot even “know” that God exists, but that doesn’t stop you from insisting that he does. You cannot “know” what your God wanted to accomplish, but that doesn’t stop you from dismissing any hypothesis that differs from your own. You cannot “know” why your God wanted to create Homo sapiens, but that doesn’t stop you from believing he wants a relationship with us (how very “human” of him). But I’m not asking you to believe anything at all, and I’m not claiming to “know” anything myself. You have said you believe your God watches his creations with interest from his quantum hiding place. I wonder why he's interested. Now I’m asking if you do or do not think that he might enjoy all these bright and beautiful things for their own sake rather than just for the sake of their providing energy for sapiens. Possible or not possible?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Friday, January 19, 2018, 19:07 (2250 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I would still like to know what other, less important end points you think your God may have had.

DAVID: Beyond the brain, providing a broad bush of life to provide the necessary balance of nature to support an energy supply so the evolution of life could continue until sapiens appeared.

dhw: Which still means that the broad bush of life is geared to the production of sapiens’ brain, and so the broad bush of life is not an “end point” in itself. […] Do you not think it possible that your God might also have enjoyed the bright and beautiful things produced by the process of evolution? Not as a mere means to an end – providing an energy supply so life could go on until sapiens appeared – but as an end in themselves?

DAVID: You've gone back to humanizing God. I feel I know what God weanted to accomplish. I cannot know about His emotions, but you seem to without belief in Him.

dhw: We cannot even “know” that God exists, but that doesn’t stop you from insisting that he does. You cannot “know” what your God wanted to accomplish, but that doesn’t stop you from dismissing any hypothesis that differs from your own. You cannot “know” why your God wanted to create Homo sapiens, but that doesn’t stop you from believing he wants a relationship with us (how very “human” of him). But I’m not asking you to believe anything at all, and I’m not claiming to “know” anything myself. You have said you believe your God watches his creations with interest from his quantum hiding place. I wonder why he's interested. Now I’m asking if you do or do not think that he might enjoy all these bright and beautiful things for their own sake rather than just for the sake of their providing energy for sapiens. Possible or not possible?

Again you attempt to humanize Him. I dismiss your hypotheses because I am firm in my faith. Since you don't believe in Him why do you bother to wonder about his possible interest in his creations? I'm sure He is interested in what He has created. 'Enjoy' is beyond my ability to know. Yes He might 'enjoy' as a possibility within His unique personality, since He is a person like no other person.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Saturday, January 20, 2018, 14:01 (2250 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You've gone back to humanizing God. I feel I know what God weanted to accomplish. I cannot know about His emotions, but you seem to without belief in Him.

dhw: We cannot even “know” that God exists, but that doesn’t stop you from insisting that he does. You cannot “know” what your God wanted to accomplish, but that doesn’t stop you from dismissing any hypothesis that differs from your own. You cannot “know” why your God wanted to create Homo sapiens, but that doesn’t stop you from believing he wants a relationship with us (how very “human” of him). But I’m not asking you to believe anything at all, and I’m not claiming to “know” anything myself. You have said you believe your God watches his creations with interest from his quantum hiding place. I wonder why he's interested. Now I’m asking if you do or do not think that he might enjoy all these bright and beautiful things for their own sake rather than just for the sake of their providing energy for sapiens. Possible or not possible?

DAVID: Again you attempt to humanize Him. I dismiss your hypotheses because I am firm in my faith. Since you don't believe in Him why do you bother to wonder about his possible interest in his creations? I'm sure He is interested in what He has created. 'Enjoy' is beyond my ability to know. Yes He might 'enjoy' as a possibility within His unique personality, since He is a person like no other person.

To clarify: I am not discussing your faith in God, but only your hypotheses concerning your God’s goal and ‘modus operandi’. However, I wonder how you would respond to an atheist who dismissed all the evidence and careful reasoning behind your arguments for design on the grounds that he was “firm in his faith”, i.e. had already closed his mind.

All your God’s attributes, as well as his existence and his goal, are beyond our “ability to know”. But if enjoyment of his own creations is a possibility, then it is possible that his enjoyment was his reason for starting life and evolution. Such a goal might possibly include his enjoyment of watching a being so intelligent that he can even question the existence of God – not to mention the other admirable, detestable, beautiful, horrific wonders that intelligent being is capable of!

As for why I "bother", I am an agnostic, not an atheist. I wrote the “brief guide” and opened this website because I am fascinated by the subject, and eager to explore all its ramifications, which include the possible nature of God, if he exists. In turn I’m surprised that someone who is so dedicated to his faith in a purposeful God that he has written two brilliant books about it, should nevertheless be unwilling to discuss what his God’s nature might be.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 20, 2018, 18:05 (2249 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Again you attempt to humanize Him. I dismiss your hypotheses because I am firm in my faith. Since you don't believe in Him why do you bother to wonder about his possible interest in his creations? I'm sure He is interested in what He has created. 'Enjoy' is beyond my ability to know. Yes He might 'enjoy' as a possibility within His unique personality, since He is a person like no other person.

dhw: All your God’s attributes, as well as his existence and his goal, are beyond our “ability to know”. But if enjoyment of his own creations is a possibility, then it is possible that his enjoyment was his reason for starting life and evolution. Such a goal might possibly include his enjoyment of watching a being so intelligent that he can even question the existence of God – not to mention the other admirable, detestable, beautiful, horrific wonders that intelligent being is capable of!

As for why I "bother", I am an agnostic, not an atheist. I wrote the “brief guide” and opened this website because I am fascinated by the subject, and eager to explore all its ramifications, which include the possible nature of God, if he exists. In turn I’m surprised that someone who is so dedicated to his faith in a purposeful God that he has written two brilliant books about it, should nevertheless be unwilling to discuss what his God’s nature might be.

I maintain my unwillingness on the basis of Adler's contention that God is a person like no other person. I cannot consider human characteristics in Him.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Sunday, January 21, 2018, 13:43 (2249 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I’m surprised that someone who is so dedicated to his faith in a purposeful God that he has written two brilliant books about it, should nevertheless be unwilling to discuss what his God’s nature might be.

DAVID: I maintain my unwillingness on the basis of Adler's contention that God is a person like no other person. I cannot consider human characteristics in Him.

You “cannot”? Of course you can, and you do (e.g. he watches us with interest, sets us problems, and wants a relationship with us). Nobody in his right mind would believe that a being who can create a whole universe is like any other “person”, but that does not mean he has no attributes in common with the beings he has created. Why bother to call him a “person” in the first place? Could it be that you are unwilling to consider another hypothesis (even though you acknowledge that you can find no fault in its reasoning) because it presents a logical threat to your firm belief in things you cannot “know” – such as the hypothesis that God’s only purpose in creating billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders was to provide energy until sapiens arrived?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Sunday, January 21, 2018, 15:00 (2249 days ago) @ dhw

Dhw: I’m surprised that someone who is so dedicated to his faith in a purposeful God that he has written two brilliant books about it, should nevertheless be unwilling to discuss what his God’s nature might be.

DAVID: I maintain my unwillingness on the basis of Adler's contention that God is a person like no other person. I cannot consider human characteristics in Him.

dhw: You “cannot”? Of course you can, and you do (e.g. he watches us with interest, sets us problems, and wants a relationship with us). Nobody in his right mind would believe that a being who can create a whole universe is like any other “person”, but that does not mean he has no attributes in common with the beings he has created. Why bother to call him a “person” in the first place? Could it be that you are unwilling to consider another hypothesis (even though you acknowledge that you can find no fault in its reasoning) because it presents a logical threat to your firm belief in things you cannot “know” – such as the hypothesis that God’s only purpose in creating billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders was to provide energy until sapiens arrived?

If you read Adler you might gain some understanding of the position. I can give God a goal (the brain) without attempting to personalize Him as you persist in doing. I do offer opinions about Him. I know that, but I do not know His underlying core positions. Religions claims He loves us. There is no proof, as an expmple of human wishful thinking. Does He respond to prayer? Adler says 50/50 chance. That is a reasonable point of view. Do you think God is humanlly logical. What is your proof?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Monday, January 22, 2018, 13:33 (2248 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I’m surprised that someone who is so dedicated to his faith in a purposeful God that he has written two brilliant books about it, should nevertheless be unwilling to discuss what his God’s nature might be.

DAVID: I maintain my unwillingness on the basis of Adler's contention that God is a person like no other person. I cannot consider human characteristics in Him.

dhw: You “cannot”? Of course you can, and you do (e.g. he watches us with interest, sets us problems, and wants a relationship with us). Nobody in his right mind would believe that a being who can create a whole universe is like any other “person”, but that does not mean he has no attributes in common with the beings he has created. Why bother to call him a “person” in the first place? Could it be that you are unwilling to consider another hypothesis (even though you acknowledge that you can find no fault in its reasoning) because it presents a logical threat to your firm belief in things you cannot “know” – such as the hypothesis that God’s only purpose in creating billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders was to provide energy until sapiens arrived?

DAVID: If you read Adler you might gain some understanding of the position. I can give God a goal (the brain) without attempting to personalize Him as you persist in doing. I do offer opinions about Him. I know that, but I do not know His underlying core positions. Religions claims He loves us. There is no proof, as an expmple of human wishful thinking. Does He respond to prayer? Adler says 50/50 chance. That is a reasonable point of view. Do you think God is humanlly logical. What is your proof?

Nobody “knows” your God’s underlying positions. There is no proof even of his existence, let alone of his purpose or his nature if he does exist. You needn’t shove religion at me. It is irrelevant to our discussion, which concerns your insistence that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to provide energy to keep life going until he could fulfil his sole purpose, the production of the sapiens brain. When I point out the illogicality of such an approach and offer an alternative, which you agree fits in with evolutionary history as we know it, your answer is your God’s logic must be different from ours. I don’t see how this justifies dismissal of my hypothesis. If you are happy with Adler’s 50/50 chance that your God listens to us and answers our prayers, why can’t you be happy with a 50/50 chance that your God has enjoyed life’s ever changing spectacle for its own sake, and not just for the sake of producing Homo sapiens (for reasons you “cannot” consider for fear of humanizing him).

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Monday, January 22, 2018, 15:27 (2247 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: If you read Adler you might gain some understanding of the position. I can give God a goal (the brain) without attempting to personalize Him as you persist in doing. I do offer opinions about Him. I know that, but I do not know His underlying core positions. Religions claims He loves us. There is no proof, as an expmple of human wishful thinking. Does He respond to prayer? Adler says 50/50 chance. That is a reasonable point of view. Do you think God is humanlly logical. What is your proof?

dhw: Nobody “knows” your God’s underlying positions. There is no proof even of his existence, let alone of his purpose or his nature if he does exist. You needn’t shove religion at me. It is irrelevant to our discussion, which concerns your insistence that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to provide energy to keep life going until he could fulfil his sole purpose, the production of the sapiens brain. When I point out the illogicality of such an approach and offer an alternative, which you agree fits in with evolutionary history as we know it, your answer is your God’s logic must be different from ours. I don’t see how this justifies dismissal of my hypothesis. If you are happy with Adler’s 50/50 chance that your God listens to us and answers our prayers, why can’t you be happy with a 50/50 chance that your God has enjoyed life’s ever changing spectacle for its own sake, and not just for the sake of producing Homo sapiens (for reasons you “cannot” consider for fear of humanizing him).

I won't accept your 50/50 humanizing on principle that we cannot know. Adler's opinion is his considered judgment which I follow.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Tuesday, January 23, 2018, 14:07 (2247 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If you are happy with Adler’s 50/50 chance that your God listens to us and answers our prayers, why can’t you be happy with a 50/50 chance that your God has enjoyed life’s ever changing spectacle for its own sake, and not just for the sake of producing Homo sapiens (for reasons you “cannot” consider for fear of humanizing him).

DAVID: I won't accept your 50/50 humanizing on principle that we cannot know. Adler's opinion is his considered judgment which I follow.

If your guiding principle is that we cannot “know”, then none of your beliefs should be acceptable to you. All of them, like Adler’s, are opinions and no doubt considered judgements, but they are not knowledge. The same applies to your insistence that God must have dabbled or preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to provide energy to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens. You cannot “know” this. It is an opinion, a considered judgement. Your unwillingness to consider a different divine motive and ‘modus operandi’ for evolution therefore has nothing to do with the principle that we cannot “know”. I will leave you to ask yourself what other possible reason you might have for refusing to consider alternatives.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 23, 2018, 15:06 (2247 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If you are happy with Adler’s 50/50 chance that your God listens to us and answers our prayers, why can’t you be happy with a 50/50 chance that your God has enjoyed life’s ever changing spectacle for its own sake, and not just for the sake of producing Homo sapiens (for reasons you “cannot” consider for fear of humanizing him).

DAVID: I won't accept your 50/50 humanizing on principle that we cannot know. Adler's opinion is his considered judgment which I follow.

dhw: If your guiding principle is that we cannot “know”, then none of your beliefs should be acceptable to you. All of them, like Adler’s, are opinions and no doubt considered judgements, but they are not knowledge. The same applies to your insistence that God must have dabbled or preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to provide energy to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens. You cannot “know” this. It is an opinion, a considered judgement. Your unwillingness to consider a different divine motive and ‘modus operandi’ for evolution therefore has nothing to do with the principle that we cannot “know”. I will leave you to ask yourself what other possible reason you might have for refusing to consider alternatives.

I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 14:22 (2246 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

We cannot know if God exists. Why try? We cannot know God’s purpose. Why try? We cannot know God’s methods. Why try? And yet you wrote two brilliant books on these very subjects. We try because we want to find explanations for all the great mysteries of life. Our efforts to do so are part of our human nature, and I am full of admiration at your own efforts to explain the inexplicable. However, if God exists, his motives and his nature are integral to solving the mysteries, and that is why we try to find clues in the only evidence we have, which is the world as we think we know it. I do not believe for one second that you exclude these matters from your thoughts just because you cannot “know” the answers. The difference between us in these current discussions lies in our interpretation of your God’s evolutionary purpose and method. It is impossible to talk of purpose without attempting to read the mind of the doer, which is why you come up with ideas like your God setting us problems, watching us with interest, wanting to have a relationship with us (what could be more “human” than that?). Your refusal to consider an alternative to anthropocentrism (purpose) and preprogramming/dabbling (method) therefore has nothing to do with our not being able to “know”, or with “humanizing”. Once more I will leave you to figure out what other reasons you might have.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 15:27 (2245 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

dhw: We cannot know if God exists. Why try? We cannot know God’s purpose. Why try? We cannot know God’s methods. Why try?

Don't use the word 'we'. That sentence is you. God exists. If I look at what is produced, I see purpose and methodology, but I don't look for God's humanized personality behind it.

dhw:Once more I will leave you to figure out what other reasons you might have.

As you can see, I have

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Friday, January 26, 2018, 13:33 (2244 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

dhw: We cannot know if God exists. Why try? We cannot know God’s purpose. Why try? We cannot know God’s methods. Why try?

DAVID: Don't use the word 'we'. That sentence is you. God exists. If I look at what is produced, I see purpose and methodology, but I don't look for God's humanized personality behind it.

You conveniently forget your humanizing and oft repeated belief that God watches us with interest and wants a relationship with us. However, we are discussing the subject of purpose and method on your own theistic terms, so we’ll assume God exists. Do you “know” that he preprogrammed or dabbled every twig of the ever changing bush of life for the purpose of providing energy until he could create the brain of Homo sapiens? Or is it just your personal belief? If it’s the latter, here’s an alternative hypothesis (not dogma, and not even belief): God’s purpose in creating the ever changing bush of life was to create an ever-changing bush of life, including humans, and his method was to give organisms an autonomous means of diversifying. No humanizing there, so that objection flies out of the window; “why try?” goes out of the window too, because if you can try, I can try; and you have repeatedly acknowledged that there is nothing in this hypothesis that does not fit in with the history of life on Earth. There is no proof for either of our hypotheses, so what other reason do you have for not considering mine?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 27, 2018, 00:30 (2243 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

dhw: We cannot know if God exists. Why try? We cannot know God’s purpose. Why try? We cannot know God’s methods. Why try?

DAVID: Don't use the word 'we'. That sentence is you. God exists. If I look at what is produced, I see purpose and methodology, but I don't look for God's humanized personality behind it.

dhw: You conveniently forget your humanizing and oft repeated belief that God watches us with interest and wants a relationship with us.

I have given those opinions about God because watching with interest would be a natural response for a Creator, which does not necessarily make Him human like us. As for having us seek a relationship with Him, that is the expectation from giving us our superior brain, and not necessarily a human desire of His. What He expects to have happen is not necessarily from a human desire.

dhw: here’s an alternative hypothesis (not dogma, and not even belief): God’s purpose in creating the ever changing bush of life was to create an ever-changing bush of life, including humans, and his method was to give organisms an autonomous means of diversifying. No humanizing there, so that objection flies out of the window; “why try?” goes out of the window too, because if you can try, I can try; and you have repeatedly acknowledged that there is nothing in this hypothesis that does not fit in with the history of life on Earth. There is no proof for either of our hypotheses, so what other reason do you have for not considering mine?

I can almost fully agree, except, as you know, I will still declare we are His main goal.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Saturday, January 27, 2018, 13:26 (2243 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You conveniently forget your humanizing and oft repeated belief that God watches us with interest and wants a relationship with us.

DAVID: I have given those opinions about God because watching with interest would be a natural response for a Creator, which does not necessarily make Him human like us. As for having us seek a relationship with Him, that is the expectation from giving us our superior brain, and not necessarily a human desire of His. What He expects to have happen is not necessarily from a human desire.

Nobody in his right mind would claim that a being which can create a whole universe is “human like us”. That does not mean we do not share certain characteristics. It seems highly unlikely that the organisms you believe your God created could have invented love, hate, curiosity, pleasure, desire etc. while your God knew nothing about such matters. Nor do I accept that terms such as interest and relationship are not “humanizing”, even if we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship.

dhw: ...here’s an alternative hypothesis (not dogma, and not even belief): God’s purpose in creating the ever changing bush of life was to create an ever-changing bush of life, including humans, and his method was to give organisms an autonomous means of diversifying. No humanizing there, so that objection flies out of the window; “why try?” goes out of the window too, because if you can try, I can try; and you have repeatedly acknowledged that there is nothing in this hypothesis that does not fit in with the history of life on Earth. There is no proof for either of our hypotheses, so what other reason do you have for not considering mine?

DAVID: I can almost fully agree, except, as you know, I will still declare we are His main goal.

I do not ask you to believe my hypothesis. I ask you not to dismiss it, and to recognize that it is a feasible alternative to your own. This would be another red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb if I could be sure that you would stick to it.

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 27, 2018, 15:04 (2243 days ago) @ dhw


dhw: Nobody in his right mind would claim that a being which can create a whole universe is “human like us”. That does not mean we do not share certain characteristics. It seems highly unlikely that the organisms you believe your God created could have invented love, hate, curiosity, pleasure, desire etc. while your God knew nothing about such matters. Nor do I accept that terms such as interest and relationship are not “humanizing”, even if we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship.

Thank you for: "we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship." Delving into the matter doesn't offer any proof of God or explanation of how He operates, which is why Adler is 50/50 or neutral.


dhw: ...here’s an alternative hypothesis (not dogma, and not even belief): God’s purpose in creating the ever changing bush of life was to create an ever-changing bush of life, including humans, and his method was to give organisms an autonomous means of diversifying. No humanizing there, so that objection flies out of the window; “why try?” goes out of the window too, because if you can try, I can try; and you have repeatedly acknowledged that there is nothing in this hypothesis that does not fit in with the history of life on Earth. There is no proof for either of our hypotheses, so what other reason do you have for not considering mine?

DAVID: I can almost fully agree, except, as you know, I will still declare we are His main goal.

dhw: I do not ask you to believe my hypothesis. I ask you not to dismiss it, and to recognize that it is a feasible alternative to your own. This would be another red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb if I could be sure that you would stick to it.

I do not accept your hypothesis as a belief of mine, but it does fit evolutioanry history. Fair enough?

Consciousness: and brain damage

by dhw, Sunday, January 28, 2018, 13:20 (2242 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Nobody in his right mind would claim that a being which can create a whole universe is “human like us”. That does not mean we do not share certain characteristics. It seems highly unlikely that the organisms you believe your God created could have invented love, hate, curiosity, pleasure, desire etc. while your God knew nothing about such matters. Nor do I accept that terms such as interest and relationship are not “humanizing”, even if we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship.

DAVID: Thank you for: "we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship." Delving into the matter doesn't offer any proof of God or explanation of how He operates, which is why Adler is 50/50 or neutral.

Delving into every subject under the sun does not offer any proof of God or, as of this moment, any explanation of how and why life began or how and why it evolved ("how He operates" if he exists), which is why I am a 50/50 agnostic. Strange that you agree with Adler, and yet you do not extend the 50/50 to the existence of God or to your own explanation of how and why he operates!

DAVD: I do not accept your hypothesis as a belief of mine, but it does fit evolutionary history. Fair enough?

You have always agreed that it fits evolutionary history, and you have always made it clear that you believe your own hypothesis. But I am happy to leave it at that until the next time you offer what I regard as silly reasons for rejecting mine (such as “humanizing” and “why try?”).

Consciousness: and brain damage

by David Turell @, Sunday, January 28, 2018, 18:46 (2241 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Nobody in his right mind would claim that a being which can create a whole universe is “human like us”. That does not mean we do not share certain characteristics. It seems highly unlikely that the organisms you believe your God created could have invented love, hate, curiosity, pleasure, desire etc. while your God knew nothing about such matters. Nor do I accept that terms such as interest and relationship are not “humanizing”, even if we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship.

DAVID: Thank you for: "we don’t know the exact nature of the interest/relationship." Delving into the matter doesn't offer any proof of God or explanation of how He operates, which is why Adler is 50/50 or neutral.

Delving into every subject under the sun does not offer any proof of God or, as of this moment, any explanation of how and why life began or how and why it evolved ("how He operates" if he exists), which is why I am a 50/50 agnostic. Strange that you agree with Adler, and yet you do not extend the 50/50 to the existence of God or to your own explanation of how and why he operates!

DAVD: I do not accept your hypothesis as a belief of mine, but it does fit evolutionary history. Fair enough?

dhw: You have always agreed that it fits evolutionary history, and you have always made it clear that you believe your own hypothesis. But I am happy to leave it at that until the next time you offer what I regard as silly reasons for rejecting mine (such as “humanizing” and “why try?”).

we agree to disagree.

Consciousness: the self is real

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 30, 2018, 01:32 (2240 days ago) @ David Turell

According to this article it is, while some anti-realist philosophers claim it is not:

https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-does-exist-and-is-amenable-to-scientific-investigation?...

" In fact, the self does exist. The phenomenal experience of having a self, the feelings of pain and of pleasure, of control, intentionality and agency, of self-governance, of acting according to one’s beliefs and desires, the sense of engaging with the physical world and the social world – all this offers evidence of the existence of the self. Furthermore, empirical research in the mind sciences provides robust reasons to deny antirealism. The self lends itself to scientific explanations and generalisations, and such scientific information can be used to understand disorders of the self, such as depression and schizophrenia, and to develop this self-understanding facilitates one’s ability to live a rich moral life.

"I call my proposed model the ‘multitudinous self’. ‘Do I contradict myself?’ asks the poet Walt Whitman in ‘Song of Myself’ (1891-92), ‘Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)’ The multitudinous self is empirically tractable and responsive to the experiences of ‘real people’ who do or do not have mental disorders. According to this model, the self is a dynamic, complex, relational and multi-aspectual mechanism of capacities, processes, states and traits that support a degree of agency. The multitudinous self has five distinct but functionally complementary dimensions: ecological, intersubjective, conceptual, private, and temporally extended. These dimensions work together to connect the individual to her body, her social world, her psychological world, and her environment.

***

"The multitudinous self is a variation of the Neisserian self in that it individuates the self as a complex mechanism with many dimensions that interact and work together to maintain a more or less stable agency over time. At times these different dimensions of the self contradict each other (very well then). Interpersonally, I might come across as gregarious, and present an image of a someone who enjoys companionship, yet my private sense of self might be that I am shy and introverted. Because these five dimensions are all more or less integrated, however, they help with self-regulation, and function as a locus of experience and agency. The multitudinous self gives a partial but helpful representation of the selves we encounter in our daily lives. It is also scientifically scrutable.

***

"Realism is mostly popular among psychologists and empirically informed philosophers of mind, such as William James in the late 19th century and, more recently, the aforementioned Jopling, as well as Owen Flanagan at Duke University in North Carolina and George Graham at Georgia State University. The reason for the realist commitment appears to be pragmatic. The reality of the self matters. The concept can be employed and manipulated in making sense of the complex human psyche, and successfully edifying enough so that the self is open to the enrichment of moral possibilities.

***

"Because the multitudinous-self model tracks all the different dimensions of selfhood, it offers rich scientific resources to investigate and intervene on different aspects of mental disorders. It encourages the development of research programmes not only in neuroscience and genetics but also disciplines that study the role of interpersonal relationships, environment, culture and the epidemiological factors in the development of illness. While a fractured engagement with different parts of the self is important, there is virtue in maintaining the self as a research construct in its full complexity, because what happens in one component of the self affects the self as a whole. An integrated understanding of the different parts of the self is necessary to fathom the complexity of mental disorders.

***

"The subjective and private dimensions that antirealists take to be obstacles to scientifically investigating the self do not pose a problem for the complex multilayered mechanism that I call the multitudinous self. And the variability in the private and the conceptual dimensions of the self can track some regularities and yield important information about, say, psychopathology, or how different social and cultural environments might create certain kinds of self-experiences and self-concepts.

"The multitudinous self mediates scientific explanations of the complexity of real people with and without mental disorders. It also provides resources for enhancing the moral agency that permits people to flourish. For me, flourishing is simply the development of a person’s psychological and social skills in engagement with herself and with others, in the face of the challenges triggered by her physical, social and psychological environment.

Comment: We all experience our 'self'. It is not an illusion, solipsism aside. The writer has a major point. The whole article is worth reading.

Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 23:42 (2042 days ago) @ dhw

Not exactly, because in none of the subjects was new information received:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2176721-why-taking-ayahuasca-is-like-having-a-near...

"A psychedelic drug taken as part of the South American plant brew ayahuasca produces effects that are strikingly similar to near-death experiences, a study has found.

"That means that feelings of leaving the body or inner peace associated with life-threatening experiences may simply be explained by changes in how the brain works, and aren’t evidence of paranormal phenomena, say the researchers.

"DMT is the main psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca, which is used as a sacrament by some indigenous peoples in the Amazon. People who take it commonly describe feeling that they transcend their body and enter another realm.

***

"Little is known about what happens in the brain when someone has a near-death experience. The subjective similarity with a DMT trip suggests that psychedelics could shed some light on the phenomenon, says Timmermann.

"Psychedelic drugs such as DMT work mainly by affecting the serotonin system in the brain. Although this study didn’t measure brain activity, “we could speculate that something similar is going on during near-death experiences,” says Timmermann.

"The feeling of leaving the body or living through death might be linked to the phenomenon of ego dissolution, a loss of one’s sense of self which is a common feature of the psychedelic experience. Brain imaging studies show that the default mode network, a collection of brain regions linked to our sense of self, becomes less cohesive under the influence of other psychedelic drugs, and this may explain why some people feel that they have survived the death of their ego.

"Intriguingly, DMT appears in trace amounts in blood and urine, but a source for the molecule inside the body has not been identified. Some have hypothesised that it is produced in the brain when we are facing death, but this is highly speculative.

"Near-death experiences are sometimes said to give people a different outlook on life, and may be helpful in reducing fear of death and increasing people’s concern for others. Similar effects have been reported for psychedelic experiences, and a number of studies have reported positive effects on wellbeing when patients with life-threatening cancer take the drug psilocybin."

Comment: Not entirely a comparison, but a clear example of thought alteration.

Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's

by dhw, Thursday, August 16, 2018, 11:51 (2042 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not exactly, because in none of the subjects was new information received:

Thank you for making this crucial point. For me it is an essential factor that demands open-mindedness in one’s attitude not just towards NDEs but towards all psychic experiences that provide information which would not otherwise have been accessible.

QUOTE: “Near-death experiences are sometimes said to give people a different outlook on life, and may be helpful in reducing fear of death and increasing people’s concern for others. Similar effects have been reported for psychedelic experiences, and a number of studies have reported positive effects on wellbeing when patients with life-threatening cancer take the drug psilocybin."

DAVID’s comment: Not entirely a comparison, but a clear example of thought alteration.

Yes, it’s a clear example of how drugs/diseases change the brain and hence a person’s thoughts and behaviour. As I keep pointing out, it is evidence for materialism, whereas psychic experiences that provide new information – together with the known fact that thought also changes the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians) – provide evidence for dualism. Hence the great dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, although we have spent so much time trying to resolve it.

Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 16, 2018, 17:51 (2041 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not exactly, because in none of the subjects was new information received:

Thank you for making this crucial point. For me it is an essential factor that demands open-mindedness in one’s attitude not just towards NDEs but towards all psychic experiences that provide information which would not otherwise have been accessible.

QUOTE: “Near-death experiences are sometimes said to give people a different outlook on life, and may be helpful in reducing fear of death and increasing people’s concern for others. Similar effects have been reported for psychedelic experiences, and a number of studies have reported positive effects on wellbeing when patients with life-threatening cancer take the drug psilocybin."

DAVID’s comment: Not entirely a comparison, but a clear example of thought alteration.

dhw: Yes, it’s a clear example of how drugs/diseases change the brain and hence a person’s thoughts and behaviour. As I keep pointing out, it is evidence for materialism, whereas psychic experiences that provide new information – together with the known fact that thought also changes the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians) – provide evidence for dualism. Hence the great dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, although we have spent so much time trying to resolve it.

All I have done is recognize the material side of the problem, not that I am a materialist, but your mind is tightly closed to the way I approach the problem. So be it.

Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's

by dhw, Friday, August 17, 2018, 11:10 (2041 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Yes, it’s a clear example of how drugs/diseases change the brain and hence a person’s thoughts and behaviour. As I keep pointing out, it is evidence for materialism, whereas psychic experiences that provide new information – together with the known fact that thought also changes the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians) – provide evidence for dualism. Hence the great dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, although we have spent so much time trying to resolve it.

DAVID: All I have done is recognize the material side of the problem, not that I am a materialist, but your mind is tightly closed to the way I approach the problem. So be it.

I am not saying you are a materialist! If you recognize the material side of the problem, then you recognize the dichotomy in your own thinking: i.e. you recognize the materialist side but you believe in the dualist side. And then you try to reconcile the two with a collection of theories that are riddled with contradictions. I have exactly the same problem as you, and I have tried to find a reconciliation of my own. You are as free to criticize my theory as I am to criticize your different theories. That is how this forum works!

Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's

by David Turell @, Friday, August 17, 2018, 17:33 (2040 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Yes, it’s a clear example of how drugs/diseases change the brain and hence a person’s thoughts and behaviour. As I keep pointing out, it is evidence for materialism, whereas psychic experiences that provide new information – together with the known fact that thought also changes the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians) – provide evidence for dualism. Hence the great dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, although we have spent so much time trying to resolve it.

DAVID: All I have done is recognize the material side of the problem, not that I am a materialist, but your mind is tightly closed to the way I approach the problem. So be it.

dhw: I am not saying you are a materialist! If you recognize the material side of the problem, then you recognize the dichotomy in your own thinking: i.e. you recognize the materialist side but you believe in the dualist side. And then you try to reconcile the two with a collection of theories that are riddled with contradictions. I have exactly the same problem as you, and I have tried to find a reconciliation of my own. You are as free to criticize my theory as I am to criticize your different theories. That is how this forum works!

You see contradictions I don't see, because you appear to have a fixed definition of dualism I do not have.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism:Decartes' blunder

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 22:28 (2252 days ago) @ David Turell

He uses Thomist and Aristotelian principals to make his point:

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/descartess-blunder/

"He concludes, famously, that he can be certain only of this: that he exists. Cogito ergo sum. Because even to doubt his own existence presupposes his existence.

"Most fundamentally, he is wrong about the thing that we are most sure of.

"The foundation of epistemology is not self-awareness. This can be understood by considering Descartes’s maxim, “Cogito ergo sum.” Notice that we cannot conclude that we exist unless we can conclude. That is, we must first know the principle of non-contradiction — that being is not non-being — before we can conclude that “I think therefore I am.” (my bold)

“'Therefore,” not “I think” nor “I am,” is the crux of the most important thing we know. The principle of non-contradiction is prior to self-awareness.

"This is a foundation of Thomistic philosophy. St. Thomas notes:
By nature our intellect knows being and the immediate characteristic of being as being, out of which knowledge arises the understanding of first principles, of the principle, say, that affirmation and denial cannot coexist (opposition between being and non-being) …

"Aquinas derives his principle from Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be and not be at the same time. It is the most fundamental thing we know, because if we do not know it, even Descartes’s first principle — cogito ergo sum — is not true. If being and not being could coexist, if contradiction were metaphysically possible, then it would be possible for me to think and at the same time not to exist.

"The law of non-contradiction, not cogito ergo sum, is the foundation of knowledge.

***

"Materialists and atheists claim that ID is scientifically wrong, and claim that ID is not scientifically testable. But of course, in order to be scientifically wrong, ID must be scientifically testable.

"Materialists and atheists believe that our minds evolved by natural selection. But if we evolved wholly by natural selection, we evolved to maximize reproductive success, not to discern truth, and thus we could not trust our belief that we evolved by natural selection.
Materialists and atheists believe that determinism is true and that free will is not real.

"But if determinism is true and we lack free will, then our opinions are determined by physical processes, which are not propositions and which lack truth value. Chemical reactions are neither true nor false, so a materialist’s opinion that determinism is true and free will is not real has no truth value.

"Materialists and atheists believe that the universe spontaneously came from nothing, and they define nothing as the laws of quantum mechanics.

"Materialists and atheists believe that the existence of evil disproves the existence of God, yet if there is no ultimate Source of right and wrong, there is no evil and no good; there are merely circumstances we like or dislike. Nietzsche, unlike the New Atheists, understood this.

"Again and again, materialists and atheists hold opinions that violate the law of non-contradiction. In this sense, atheism and materialism aren’t even really metaphysical theories. They’re just self-refuting nonsense."

Comment: Interesting point. We must be able to reach conclusions and never contradict. Certainy allows for dualism

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial

by David Turell @, Monday, February 05, 2018, 18:52 (2233 days ago) @ David Turell

More from a neurosurgeon on the immateriality of thought:

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/02/the-representation-problem-and-the-immateriality-of-t...

"Thoughts may be divided into thoughts about particulars and thoughts about universals. Thoughts about particulars are thoughts, including perceptions, imagination, memory, etc., about particular objects in our environments. Thoughts about my coffee, or my car, or my family would be thoughts about particulars.

"Thoughts about universals are abstract thoughts, and are thoughts about concepts. Justice, mercy, logic, mathematics, etc., are abstract thoughts.

"For a materialist, all thoughts are generated by the brain. All that exists is matter, as understood by physics and chemistry. Thus, all thoughts, for the materialist, are generated purely physically, by neurons, neurotransmitters, action potentials, etc. So when we think about a particular object, that thought must somehow actually be a physical thing — a molecule or a relationship between molecules, etc. But of course, if I think about a particular thing — my cat Tabby, for example — my actual cat Tabby isn’t in my brain, so the materialist would say that my cat Tabby is somehow “represented” in my brain, and that representation constitutes the thought, without (immaterial) remainder. In the materialist view, all thought is, boiled down, matter of some sort, or is at least wholly represented in matter.

"For thoughts about particular objects, this materialist scheme is not entirely implausible. For some aspects of visual perception, for example, there is a mapping of the visual field from the retina to the cortex, so that an image (of sorts) is represented in the brain as a field of neurons that are activated in a pattern. One might say that the pattern is the representation of the visual image. This still leaves much to be explained, but at least it is not utterly implausible to say that a thought about a particular thing — for example, a perception of my cat Tabby — is a representation in my brain. We still have no scientific (or metaphysical) explanation as to how this neuronal pattern actually becomes the thought, of course. But mental representation may provide a real level of explanation for thought about particulars.

"But abstract thought is different. ( my bold) Consider a thought about justice. Justice is a concept, not a particular thing existing in the physical world. The materialist must ask: how can a thought about justice be represented in the brain? It certainly can’t merely be a mapped field in the cortex — justice has no shape or physical pattern, unlike my cat Tabby. A materialist would no doubt say that, like perception of particulars, thought about justice is represented in the cortex. But note carefully what representation means: a representation is a map of a thing. It presumes the existence, in the physical world, of that which it maps. A representation of a city — a map — presumes the city. A representation of my cat presumes my cat. And here’s the problem: a representation of my thought about justice presumes my thought about justice. So representation cannot provide any final explanation for abstract thought, because the representation of an abstract thought, even if it exists, presupposes the abstract thought itself.

"As an example, let us suppose that a certain pattern of neuronal activation in my cortex were shown to represent my thought about justice. Obviously that pattern is not my thought about justice itself — justice is a concept, not a bunch of neurons. And if that pattern of neuronal activation represented my thought about justice, it must map to my thought of justice, which presupposes my thought about justice and thus cannot explain it.

"Succinctly, mental representation of abstract thought presupposes abstract thought, and cannot explain it. It is on abstract thought that materialism, as a theory of mind, flounders. Abstract thought, classically understood as intellect and will, are inherently immaterial. Any representation in the brain of abstract thought (while it may exist) necessarily presupposes abstract thought itself, which must, by its nature, be an immaterial power of the mind.

"The human mind is a composite of material particular thought and immaterial abstract thought. Interestingly, modern neuroscience supports this view. Perception of particulars maps with precision to brain anatomy, but abstract thought is not mapped in the same way. Material powers of the brain are ordinarily necessary for exercise of abstract thought (e.g., you have to be awake to think about justice), but matter is not sufficient for abstract thought."

"Abstract thought is an immaterial power of the mind."

Comment: this is the essence of my dualism concept. Abstract though has no physical representation in my mind as my dog does. But I have both particular thought and abstract thought mediated by material neurons and their connections. My s/s/c must use my brain to do both types of thought. There has to be a material and an immaterial level, which is dualism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial

by dhw, Tuesday, February 06, 2018, 16:02 (2232 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: this is the essence of my dualism concept. Abstract though has no physical representation in my mind as my dog does. But I have both particular thought and abstract thought mediated by material neurons and their connections. My s/s/c must use my brain to do both types of thought. There has to be a material and an immaterial level, which is dualism.

I hate to be rude, but most of this article is a verbose statement of the blindingly obvious. Even a materialist will recognize the difference between concrete objects and abstract ideas! As Egnor says, your brain passes on images of concrete objects but not of abstract ideas. And once you start, for instance, analysing the behaviour of your dog, it is your s/s/c that does the thinking, based on the information delivered by the brain, and the thinking becomes an abstract idea. It is the dualist’s soul that thinks abstract ideas, no matter whether those ideas are based on concrete objects, sensory perceptions, or on other people’s ideas, or on past experiences, books, newspaper articles, TV programmes. The brain provides the information, the s/s/c thinks about it, and then uses the brain to express itself in material ways (implementation). THAT is dualism. But none of this sheds any light on the origin of consciousness. The materialist will simply argue that consciousness emerges from the interaction between cells - regardless of whether the ideas are based on concrete objects or abstract ideas.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 06, 2018, 18:40 (2232 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: this is the essence of my dualism concept. Abstract though has no physical representation in my mind as my dog does. But I have both particular thought and abstract thought mediated by material neurons and their connections. My s/s/c must use my brain to do both types of thought. There has to be a material and an immaterial level, which is dualism.

dhw: I hate to be rude, but most of this article is a verbose statement of the blindingly obvious. Even a materialist will recognize the difference between concrete objects and abstract ideas! As Egnor says, your brain passes on images of concrete objects but not of abstract ideas. And once you start, for instance, analysing the behaviour of your dog, it is your s/s/c that does the thinking, based on the information delivered by the brain, and the thinking becomes an abstract idea. It is the dualist’s soul that thinks abstract ideas, no matter whether those ideas are based on concrete objects, sensory perceptions, or on other people’s ideas, or on past experiences, books, newspaper articles, TV programmes. The brain provides the information, the s/s/c thinks about it, and then uses the brain to express itself in material ways (implementation). THAT is dualism. But none of this sheds any light on the origin of consciousness. The materialist will simply argue that consciousness emerges from the interaction between cells - regardless of whether the ideas are based on concrete objects or abstract ideas.

Good analysis, but sensory information about real objects are vastly different than abstract thought which may have no relation to reality. As for materialists they have a right to invent consciousness from wet neurons, since none of know why we experience our level of self-awareness when no other living organism with a brain can do it.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial

by dhw, Wednesday, February 07, 2018, 13:30 (2232 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I hate to be rude, but most of this article is a verbose statement of the blindingly obvious. Even a materialist will recognize the difference between concrete objects and abstract ideas! As Egnor says, your brain passes on images of concrete objects but not of abstract ideas. And once you start, for instance, analysing the behaviour of your dog, it is your s/s/c that does the thinking, based on the information delivered by the brain, and the thinking becomes an abstract idea. It is the dualist’s soul that thinks abstract ideas, no matter whether those ideas are based on concrete objects, sensory perceptions, or on other people’s ideas, or on past experiences, books, newspaper articles, TV programmes. The brain provides the information, the s/s/c thinks about it, and then uses the brain to express itself in material ways (implementation). THAT is dualism. But none of this sheds any light on the origin of consciousness. The materialist will simply argue that consciousness emerges from the interaction between cells - regardless of whether the ideas are based on concrete objects or abstract ideas.

DAVID: Good analysis, but sensory information about real objects are vastly different than abstract thought which may have no relation to reality. As for materialists they have a right to invent consciousness from wet neurons, since none of know why we experience our level of self-awareness when no other living organism with a brain can do it.

For a change we are in total agreement!

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 07, 2018, 15:26 (2231 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Good analysis, but sensory information about real objects are vastly different than abstract thought which may have no relation to reality. As for materialists they have a right to invent consciousness from wet neurons, since none of know why we experience our level of self-awareness when no other living organism with a brain can do it.


dhw: For a change we are in total agreement!

Yes. Why not?

Consciousness: thoughts from a scientist

by David Turell @, Tuesday, May 15, 2018, 19:27 (2134 days ago) @ David Turell

He believes in a form of an intelligent information theory. The whole article is worth reading as it has excellent explanations of how the brain seems to work:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05097-x?utm_source=briefing-dy&utm_mediu...

".. we hope to get closer to solving the more fundamental problem.
We seek, in particular, the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC), defined as the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any specific conscious experience.

***

"Or consider the cerebellum, the “little brain” underneath the back of the brain. One of the most ancient brain circuits in evolutionary terms, it is involved in motor control, posture and gait and in the fluid execution of complex sequences of motor movements. Playing the piano, typing, ice dancing or climbing a rock wall—all these activities involve the cerebellum. It has the brain’s most glorious neurons, called Purkinje cells, which possess tendrils that spread like a sea fan coral and harbor complex electrical dynamics. It also has by far the most neurons, about 69 billion (most of which are the star-shaped cerebellar granule cells), four times more than in the rest of the brain combined.

"What happens to consciousness if parts of the cerebellum are lost to a stroke or to the surgeon’s knife? Very little!

"One important lesson from the spinal cord and the cerebellum is that the genie of consciousness does not just appear when any neural tissue is excited. More is needed. This additional factor is found in the gray matter making up the celebrated cerebral cortex, the outer surface of the brain. It is a laminated sheet of intricately interconnected nervous tissue, Two of these sheets, highly folded, along with their hundreds of millions of wires—the white matter—are crammed into the skull. All available evidence implicates neocortical tissue in generating feelings.

***

"Surgeons sometimes had to excise a large belt of prefrontal cortex to remove tumors or to ameliorate epileptic seizures. The loss of a portion of the frontal lobe did have certain deleterious effects: the patients developed a lack of inhibition of inappropriate emotions or actions, motor deficits, or uncontrollable repetition of specific action or words. Following the operation, however, their personality and IQ improved, and they went on to live for many more years, with no evidence that the drastic removal of frontal tissue significantly affected their conscious experience. Conversely, removal of even small regions of the posterior cortex, where the hot zone resides, can lead to a loss of entire classes of conscious content: patients are unable to recognize faces or to see motion, color or space.

"So it appears that the sights, sounds and other sensations of life as we experience it are generated by regions within the posterior cortex. As far as we can tell, almost all conscious experiences have their origin there.

***

"Fierce debates have arisen around the two most popular theories of consciousness. One is the global neuronal workspace (GNW) by psychologist Bernard J. Baars and neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene and Jean-Pierre Changeux. The theory begins with the observation that when you are conscious of something, many different parts of your brain have access to that information. If, on the other hand, you act unconsciously, that information is localized to the specific sensory motor system involved.

***

"According to GNW, consciousness emerges when incoming sensory information, inscribed onto such a blackboard, is broadcast globally to multiple cognitive systems—which process these data to speak, store or call up a memory or execute an action.

"Because the blackboard has limited space, we can only be aware of a little information at any given instant. The network of neurons that broadcast these messages is hypothesized to be located in the frontal and parietal lobes. Once these sparse data are broadcast on this network and are globally available, the information becomes conscious.

"Integrated information theory (IIT), developed by Tononi and his collaborators, including me, has a very different starting point: experience itself. Each experience has certain essential properties. It is intrinsic, existing only for the subject as its “owner”; it is structured... and it is specific—distinct from any other conscious experience, such as a particular frame in a movie.

***

"IIT theory also derives, from the complexity of the underlying interconnected structure, a single nonnegative number Φ (pronounced “fy”) that quantifies this consciousness. If Φ is zero, the system does not feel like anything to be itself. Conversely, the bigger this number, the more intrinsic causal power the system possesses and the more conscious it is. The brain, which has enormous and highly specific connectivity, possesses very high Φ, which implies a high level of consciousness.

"IIT also predicts that a sophisticated simulation of a human brain running on a digital computer cannot be conscious.... Consciousness cannot be computed: it must be built into the structure of the system. "

Comment: All thinking is in the prefrontal region. Most implementation involves the cerebellum. Most human brain enlargement is prefrontal. No answers but lots of information.

Consciousness: RNA seems to transfer memory

by David Turell @, Tuesday, May 15, 2018, 19:44 (2134 days ago) @ David Turell

From work in snails, some shocked, some not:

https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/54565/title/RNA-Moves-a-Memory-F...


"Researchers have transferred a memory from one snail to another via RNA, they report today. If confirmed in other species, the finding may lead to a shift in scientists’ thinking about how memories are made—rather than cemented in nerve-cell connections, they may be spurred on by RNA-induced epigenetic changes.

***

"The team found that the snail synapses built to “store” a memory weren’t necessarily the synapses that were removed from the neural circuits in the memory-erasing experiments.
“It was completely arbitrary which synaptic connections got erased,” Glanzman says. “That suggested maybe the memory wasn’t stored at the synapse but somewhere else.”

***

"In his team’s latest experiments, Glanzman and his colleagues zapped snails’ tails, then pulled the abdominal neurons from the shocked snails, extracted their RNA, dissolved the RNA into deionized water, and injected the solution into the necks of snails that had never been shocked.

***

"DNA methylation appeared to be essential for the transfer of the memory among snails. When Glanzman and his colleagues blocked DNA methylation in snails getting RNA from shocked ones, the injected snails withdrew their siphons for only a few seconds when tapped on the siphon.

"Glanzman wanted to know if the RNA from shocked snails actually affected the neuronal connections of the snails receiving the injections any differently than RNA from nonshocked snails. So, in a third test, he and his team removed sensory neurons from nonshocked snails, cultured the cells in a dish, and then exposed the cells to RNA from shocked snails. Zapping the culture with a bit of current excited the sensory neurons much more than neurons treated with RNA from nonshocked snails. RNA from shocked snails also enhanced a subset of synapses between sensory and motor neurons in vitro, suggesting it was indeed the RNA that transported the memory, Glanzman explains.

***

"Glanzman says that in his next experiments he will attempt to identify the RNAs involved, and he has an idea for the mechanism, too. The memory is not stored in the RNA itself, he speculates—instead, noncoding RNA produces epigenetic changes in the nucleus of neurons, thereby storing the memory.

“'This idea is probably going to strike most of my colleagues as extremely improbable,” Glanzman says. “But if we’re right, we’re just at the beginning of understanding how memory works.'”

Comment: Perhaps some memory is not carried by nerves to start but is stored by DNA causing methylation in the neuron. It is obvious molecules can carry information and impart it. This does not indicate intelligence is required.

Consciousness: thoughts from a scientist

by dhw, Wednesday, May 16, 2018, 13:48 (2134 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID's comment: All thinking is in the prefrontal region. Most implementation involves the cerebellum. Most human brain enlargement is prefrontal. No answers but lots of information.

Thank you for editing and presenting this article. Your final comment provides a perfect summary!

Thank you also for the other articles you have posted.

Consciousness: thoughts from David Berlinski

by David Turell @, Sunday, May 20, 2018, 20:55 (2129 days ago) @ dhw

He has no answers either, but has some interesting comments:

http://inference-review.com/article/godzooks

"It is hardly beyond dispute that the human brain is a computer, except on the level of generality under which the human brain is like a weather system. It is difficult even to depict the simplest computational scheme in neurological terms. One neuron fires, and then another. Still a third neuron fires twice, as if it were adding the results. This is mere dumb show. What is taking place on the neurological level lacks any coherent connection to addition, which is a recursive operation defined over the natural numbers. Michael Jordan offers a reasonable assessment:

"But it’s true that with neuroscience, it’s going to require decades or even hundreds of years to understand the deep principles. There is progress at the very lowest levels of neuroscience. But for issues of higher cognition—how we perceive, how we remember, how we act—we have no idea how neurons are storing information, how they are computing, what the rules are, what the algorithms are, what the representations are, and the like.

***

It is possible to embed the rules of recursive arithmetic in a computer, but how might embedding take place in the brain? If this question has no settled answer, then neither does the question of whether the brain is a computer.

"There remains the thesis that the human mind is identical to the human brain. Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem demonstrated that no formal systems adequate to the description of the natural numbers could prove its own consistency. ...Either it can demonstrate its own consistency, or it cannot. “So the following disjunctive conclusion is inevitable,” Gödel writes:

"Either mathematics is incompletable in this sense, that its evident axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule, that is to say, the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable Diophantine problems of the type specified.

***

"No discussion of these issues would be complete without some mention of consciousness. It is a topic on which it is possible to say anything without ever saying something. Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, a student of life extension and digital immortality.... “We have no idea how consciousness works,” he remarks. This is true only to the extent that we have no reason to think that consciousness works. Like the lilies of the field, it toils not and neither does it spin. “But the brain is still a machine,” Istvan goes on to say, “so it’s a matter of tinkering with it until we work it out.” For his part, Harari is as baffled as everyone else. Consciousness? What is it doing there?

"David Chalmers referred to consciousness as the hard problem. That the problem is hard has become a part of the gabble.... It is not easy to say—one reason, I suppose, that the problem is hard. If I am not under anesthesia, asleep, or dead, I must be conscious. I am a busy man. When else could I be conscious? Yet in considering the remains of day, I can hardly be expected to remember all of it, so I am largely unable to say anything about the apparently peculiar nature of my consciousness on those occasions. When I do remember what I was doing, what I remember is chiefly what I was doing, and not anything especially about consciousness. At times, I am moved to comment on my consciousness, the more so when, with a murmured glug, I assure the dentist that I do not feel a thing, but then what is at issue is self-consciousness, a commentary on the real thing. Beyond observing that it is always hanging around, I have no idea what that real thing might be."

Comment: Yes, we are self-conscious, and we don't think animals are. This is from a book review. The book proposes that computers will become conscious. Berlinski disagrees. These comments give a clear insight into how very complex the human brain happens to be. And it adds to my argument from incredulity. An inorganic universe cannot create our brain. Our brain is the best reason for accepting that God must exist.

Consciousness: thoughts from David Berlinski

by dhw, Monday, May 21, 2018, 14:18 (2129 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: He has no answers either, but has some interesting comments:
http://inference-review.com/article/godzooks

DAVID’s comment: Yes, we are self-conscious, and we don't think animals are. This is from a book review. The book proposes that computers will become conscious. Berlinski disagrees. These comments give a clear insight into how very complex the human brain happens to be. And it adds to my argument from incredulity. An inorganic universe cannot create our brain. Our brain is the best reason for accepting that God must exist.

I think many of our fellow animals have a degree of self-consciousness. I have no doubt, for instance, that our four-legged friends are aware of their own suffering, but their self-awareness is nothing like as extensive as our own. (I don’t think they would question how or why they got here). Re computers, see Part Three of my Theory of Intelligence. I agree with you that the complexity of life and especially of our brain is the best reason for belief in a designer – counterbalanced of course by the age-old and unanswerable question of who designed the designer.

Consciousness: different in left and right handed

by David Turell @, Tuesday, June 19, 2018, 21:10 (2099 days ago) @ dhw

Psychotherapy must take into account the handedness of the patient

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180618222617.htm

"Since the 1970s, hundreds of studies have suggested that each hemisphere of the brain is home to a specific type of emotion. Emotions linked to approaching and engaging with the world -- like happiness, pride and anger -- lives in the left side of the brain, while emotions associated with avoidance -- like disgust and fear -- are housed in the right.

"But those studies were done almost exclusively on right-handed people. That simple fact has given us a skewed understanding of how emotion works in the brain, according to Daniel Casasanto, associate professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University.

"That longstanding model is, in fact, reversed in left-handed people, whose emotions like alertness and determination are housed in the right side of their brains, Casasanto suggests in a new study. Even more radical: The location of a person's neural systems for emotion depends on whether they are left-handed, right-handed or somewhere in between, the research shows.

***

"According to the new theory, called the "sword and shield hypothesis," the way we perform actions with our hands determines how emotions are organized in our brains. Sword fighters of old would wield their swords in their dominant hand to attack the enemy -- an approach action -- and raise their shields with their non-dominant hand to fend off attack -- an avoidance action. Consistent with these action habits, results show that approach emotions depend on the hemisphere of the brain that controls the dominant "sword" hand, and avoidance emotions on the hemisphere that controls the non-dominant "shield" hand.

"The work has implications for a current treatment for recalcitrant anxiety and depression called neural therapy. Similar to the technique used in the study and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it involves a mild electrical stimulation or a magnetic stimulation to the left side of the brain, to encourage approach-related emotions.

"But Casasanto's work suggests the treatment could be damaging for left-handed patients. Stimulation on the left would decrease life-affirming approach emotions. "If you give left-handers the standard treatment, you're probably going to make them worse," Casasanto said.

"'And because many people are neither strongly right- nor left-handed, the stimulation won't make any difference for them, because their approach emotions are distributed across both hemispheres," he said.

"This suggests strong righties should get the normal treatment, but they make up only 50 percent of the population. Strong lefties should get the opposite treatment, and people in the middle shouldn't get the treatment at all.'"

Comment: I am a strong left-hander, which is why I noted this, but it clearly shows how the consciousness interlocks with parts of the brain.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, July 31, 2018, 21:53 (2057 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Tuesday, July 31, 2018, 21:59

A study of a boy who had his epilepsy causing area removed and still has full cognition:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175549-boys-brain-works-just-fine-after-a-large-p...

"A boy who had a large portion of his brain removed to relieve his severe epilepsy is still able to function normally, showing how adaptable our brains can be.

"The boy started having seizures at the age of four. No treatments could stop his epilepsy, so as a last resort surgeons removed a third of his brain’s right hemisphere just before his seventh birthday. This “lobectomy” surgery removed his entire occipital lobe, which carries out visual processing, and most of his temporal lobe, which processes visual and auditory information.

"Researchers wanted to find out how the boy’s brain would recover after losing one of its visual centres – we usually have two, one in each of the brain’s hemispheres. A key question was what would happen to the boy’s “higher order” visual capabilities, such as being able to recognise faces and objects – mainly the job of the right hemisphere.

"By studying the boy’s brain and behaviour for three years following his surgery, the team could see which parts of his brain were able to recover. Remarkably, they found that his intellect, visual perception, and face and object recognition skills were all normal for his age.

"The only thing the boy can’t do is see the whole visual field. “He is essentially blind to information on the left side of the world. Anything to the left of his nose is not transmitted to his brain, because the occipital lobe in his right hemisphere is missing and cannot receive this information,” says Marlene Behrmann of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. It seems that humans need two hemispheres to have full 180 degree vision, she says.

"While the boy’s ability to “see” with the right hand side of his brain never recovered, the team found that his left hemisphere reorganised itself to take over high-level tasks such as face and object recognition. This hemisphere is normally more involved in tasks like word recognition, such as knowing that a round green object you see is an apple.

“'We saw a kind of jostling in the left hemisphere between regions engaged in word and face recognition, which resolved and settled into a new organisation,” says Behrmann.

"These high-level abilities may have been able to recover because they were still developing when the boy had his lobectomy, says Behrmann. Other people who lose one of their visual systems may not fare as well, she warns.

"The boy says he wants to be a neurologist when he grows up."

Comment: Egnor is right. The mind is immaterial. When an adult has a stroke that destroys part of the visual cortex they do lose part of their field of vision, just as this child, which shows that the mind must depend on the brain circuits. But the boy maintained some higher-level functions It means the mind/soul must use the recovered and existing brain circuits to function.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, August 01, 2018, 12:54 (2057 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "By studying the boy’s brain and behaviour for three years following his surgery, the team could see which parts of his brain were able to recover. Remarkably, they found that his intellect, visual perception, and face and object recognition skills were all normal for his age."

DAVID: Egnor is right. The mind is immaterial. When an adult has a stroke that destroys part of the visual cortex they do lose part of their field of vision, just as this child, which shows that the mind must depend on the brain circuits. But the boy maintained some higher-level functions It means the mind/soul must use the recovered and existing brain circuits to function.

I can find no mention here of an immaterial mind. The only hint I can find is in the above, where he mentions intellect, but everything else is concerned with observation of the material world. Yes, the mind depends on the brain for provision of information. If the brain readjusts itself and the mind remains “normal”, then either the mind has reorganized the brain (dualism), or the brain has reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 01, 2018, 20:13 (2056 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "By studying the boy’s brain and behaviour for three years following his surgery, the team could see which parts of his brain were able to recover. Remarkably, they found that his intellect, visual perception, and face and object recognition skills were all normal for his age."

DAVID: Egnor is right. The mind is immaterial. When an adult has a stroke that destroys part of the visual cortex they do lose part of their field of vision, just as this child, which shows that the mind must depend on the brain circuits. But the boy maintained some higher-level functions It means the mind/soul must use the recovered and existing brain circuits to function.

dhw: I can find no mention here of an immaterial mind. The only hint I can find is in the above, where he mentions intellect, but everything else is concerned with observation of the material world. Yes, the mind depends on the brain for provision of information. If the brain readjusts itself and the mind remains “normal”, then either the mind has reorganized the brain (dualism), or the brain has reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

I was referring back to Egnor's previously presented article. We know the brain mechanically reorganized as the illustrations show.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Thursday, August 02, 2018, 09:39 (2056 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "By studying the boy’s brain and behaviour for three years following his surgery, the team could see which parts of his brain were able to recover. Remarkably, they found that his intellect, visual perception, and face and object recognition skills were all normal for his age."

DAVID: Egnor is right. The mind is immaterial. When an adult has a stroke that destroys part of the visual cortex they do lose part of their field of vision, just as this child, which shows that the mind must depend on the brain circuits. But the boy maintained some higher-level functions It means the mind/soul must use the recovered and existing brain circuits to function.

dhw: I can find no mention here of an immaterial mind. The only hint I can find is in the above, where he mentions intellect, but everything else is concerned with observation of the material world. Yes, the mind depends on the brain for provision of information. If the brain readjusts itself and the mind remains “normal”, then either the mind has reorganized the brain (dualism), or the brain has reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

DAVID: I was referring back to Egnor's previously presented article. We know the brain mechanically reorganized as the illustrations show.

So either the mind reorganized it (dualism), or it reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 02, 2018, 15:22 (2056 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "By studying the boy’s brain and behaviour for three years following his surgery, the team could see which parts of his brain were able to recover. Remarkably, they found that his intellect, visual perception, and face and object recognition skills were all normal for his age."

DAVID: Egnor is right. The mind is immaterial. When an adult has a stroke that destroys part of the visual cortex they do lose part of their field of vision, just as this child, which shows that the mind must depend on the brain circuits. But the boy maintained some higher-level functions It means the mind/soul must use the recovered and existing brain circuits to function.

dhw: I can find no mention here of an immaterial mind. The only hint I can find is in the above, where he mentions intellect, but everything else is concerned with observation of the material world. Yes, the mind depends on the brain for provision of information. If the brain readjusts itself and the mind remains “normal”, then either the mind has reorganized the brain (dualism), or the brain has reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

DAVID: I was referring back to Egnor's previously presented article. We know the brain mechanically reorganized as the illustrations show.

dhw: So either the mind reorganized it (dualism), or it reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

A six year old cannot tell his mind to think I must redo my surgically destroyed lobes so I maintain my IQ. We know it happens automatically with brain plasticity, but I can understand the mind/soul containing a mechanism of direction for plasticity.

See this article on the boy:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/case-study-boy-loses-huge-brain-section-his-iq-goes-up

“Our results favour dynamic reorganisation and fine-tuning in the functional architecture of cognition ... and argue for the critical role of experience in shaping the underlying circuitry,” the researchers write.

One function, however, was not regained. The boy, now 11, is unable to see things in the left half of his visual field, something the researchers say relates to those circuits being “established and fixed at an early age”.

They also note that in a recent review of similar cases, published by two of the authors, recoveries weren’t nearly so promising. They suggest the boy’s case may have been helped by the fact his pre-operative cognitive function was at a high level, and that his slow-growing tumour gave the brain enough time to re-home some of those visual tasks.

The boy remains seizure-free with an IQ of 118, comparable to his pre-surgical score of 116.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Friday, August 03, 2018, 11:18 (2055 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So either the mind reorganized it (dualism), or it reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

DAVID: A six year old cannot tell his mind to think I must redo my surgically destroyed lobes so I maintain my IQ. We know it happens automatically with brain plasticity, but I can understand the mind/soul containing a mechanism of direction for plasticity.

What is a “mechanism of direction”? If the soul directs the reorganization of the brain, you have dualism, and the reorganization is not “automatic”. If the brain reorganizes itself, you have materialism, but that is not automatic either, as is clear from this quote:

They also note that in a recent review of similar cases, published by two of the authors, recoveries weren’t nearly so promising. They suggest the boy’s case may have been helped by the fact his pre-operative cognitive function was at a high level, and that his slow-growing tumour gave the brain enough time to re-home some of those visual tasks.”

You could hardly have a clearer pointer to the brain being the source of intelligence, and in this case the brain cells working out what needed to be done. In other cases, the brain cells were not intelligent enough to do it.

Under “Brain complexity”:

QUOTE: This pattern of keeping most connections local, and having only a few cells transmit information long-distance, had huge consequences for primate evolution. It didn’t merely allow primate brains to squeeze in more neurons. Kaas thinks that it also had a more profound effect: It actually changed how the brain does its work. Since most cells communicated only with nearby partners, these groups of neurons became cloistered into local neighborhoods. Neurons in each neighborhood worked on a specific task—and only the end result of that work was transmitted to other areas far away. In other words, the primate brain became more compartmentalized. And as these local areas increased in number, this organizational change allowed primates to evolve more and more cognitive abilities.

DAVID: Was this genetic change purposeful from God? Or chance?

Throughout the article, we have cells communicating with other cells and reorganizing the brain. I don’t for one second believe that the primates were saying to themselves: “I must reorganize my brain.” So if we return to the boy whose brain reorganized itself to get back to normality, we are left with the distinct possibility that the cells work out how to reorganize themselves. Definitely not chance, but the inventive intelligence of cells may have been your God’s creation.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Friday, August 03, 2018, 15:47 (2055 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So either the mind reorganized it (dualism), or it reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

DAVID: A six year old cannot tell his mind to think I must redo my surgically destroyed lobes so I maintain my IQ. We know it happens automatically with brain plasticity, but I can understand the mind/soul containing a mechanism of direction for plasticity.

dhw: What is a “mechanism of direction”? If the soul directs the reorganization of the brain, you have dualism, and the reorganization is not “automatic”. If the brain reorganizes itself, you have materialism, but that is not automatic either, as is clear from this quote:

They also note that in a recent review of similar cases, published by two of the authors, recoveries weren’t nearly so promising. They suggest the boy’s case may have been helped by the fact his pre-operative cognitive function was at a high level, and that his slow-growing tumour gave the brain enough time to re-home some of those visual tasks.”


You could hardly have a clearer pointer to the brain being the source of intelligence, and in this case the brain cells working out what needed to be done. In other cases, the brain cells were not intelligent enough to do it.

I suspect in his developing brain, the pressure of the growing tumor stimulated some corrective plastic changes before the ablation surgery occurred. Somehow plasticity is related to level of cognition, which suggests the soul is involved in plasticity.


Under “Brain complexity”:

QUOTE: This pattern of keeping most connections local, and having only a few cells transmit information long-distance, had huge consequences for primate evolution. It didn’t merely allow primate brains to squeeze in more neurons. Kaas thinks that it also had a more profound effect: It actually changed how the brain does its work. Since most cells communicated only with nearby partners, these groups of neurons became cloistered into local neighborhoods. Neurons in each neighborhood worked on a specific task—and only the end result of that work was transmitted to other areas far away. In other words, the primate brain became more compartmentalized. And as these local areas increased in number, this organizational change allowed primates to evolve more and more cognitive abilities.

DAVID: Was this genetic change purposeful from God? Or chance?

dhw: Throughout the article, we have cells communicating with other cells and reorganizing the brain. I don’t for one second believe that the primates were saying to themselves: “I must reorganize my brain.” So if we return to the boy whose brain reorganized itself to get back to normality, we are left with the distinct possibility that the cells work out how to reorganize themselves. Definitely not chance, but the inventive intelligence of cells may have been your God’s creation.

Definitely not chance.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Saturday, August 04, 2018, 09:21 (2054 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So either the mind reorganized it (dualism), or it reorganized itself in order to produce the same “normal” mind (materialism).

DAVID: A six year old cannot tell his mind to think I must redo my surgically destroyed lobes so I maintain my IQ. We know it happens automatically with brain plasticity, but I can understand the mind/soul containing a mechanism of direction for plasticity.

dhw: What is a “mechanism of direction”? If the soul directs the reorganization of the brain, you have dualism, and the reorganization is not “automatic”. If the brain reorganizes itself, you have materialism, but that is not automatic either, as is clear from this quote:
“They also note that in a recent review of similar cases, published by two of the authors, recoveries weren’t nearly so promising. They suggest the boy’s case may have been helped by the fact his pre-operative cognitive function was at a high level, and that his slow-growing tumour gave the brain enough time to re-home some of those visual tasks.”

dhw: You could hardly have a clearer pointer to the brain being the source of intelligence, and in this case the brain cells working out what needed to be done. In other cases, the brain cells were not intelligent enough to do it.

DAVID: I suspect in his developing brain, the pressure of the growing tumor stimulated some corrective plastic changes before the ablation surgery occurred. Somehow plasticity is related to level of cognition, which suggests the soul is involved in plasticity.

If plasticity of the brain is related to the level of cognition, and in this case the brain was given enough time to re-hone some of the visual tasks, it suggests to me that the brain is related to the level of cognition and also does the re-honing! I see no suggestion anywhere of a soul doing anything at all.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 04, 2018, 15:08 (2054 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You could hardly have a clearer pointer to the brain being the source of intelligence, and in this case the brain cells working out what needed to be done. In other cases, the brain cells were not intelligent enough to do it.[/i]

DAVID: I suspect in his developing brain, the pressure of the growing tumor stimulated some corrective plastic changes before the ablation surgery occurred. Somehow plasticity is related to level of cognition, which suggests the soul is involved in plasticity.

dhw: If plasticity of the brain is related to the level of cognition, and in this case the brain was given enough time to re-hone some of the visual tasks, it suggests to me that the brain is related to the level of cognition and also does the re-honing! I see no suggestion anywhere of a soul doing anything at all.

Totally a materialism comment. I really don't think to expect anything different in our view. I've proposed, not proven, the soul plays a role with the brain functions. You have it separated off somewhere.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Sunday, August 05, 2018, 11:50 (2053 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If the soul directs the reorganization of the brain, you have dualism, and the reorganization is not “automatic”. If the brain reorganizes itself, you have materialism, but that is not automatic either, as is clear from this quote:
“They also note that in a recent review of similar cases, published by two of the authors, recoveries weren’t nearly so promising. They suggest the boy’s case may have been helped by the fact his pre-operative cognitive function was at a high level, and that his slow-growing tumour gave the brain enough time to re-home some of those visual tasks.”

You could hardly have a clearer pointer to the brain being the source of intelligence, and in this case the brain cells working out what needed to be done. In other cases, the brain cells were not intelligent enough to do it.

DAVID: I suspect in his developing brain, the pressure of the growing tumor stimulated some corrective plastic changes before the ablation surgery occurred. Somehow plasticity is related to level of cognition, which suggests the soul is involved in plasticity.

dhw: If plasticity of the brain is related to the level of cognition, and in this case the brain was given enough time to re-hone some of the visual tasks, it suggests to me that the brain is related to the level of cognition and also does the re-honing! I see no suggestion anywhere of a soul doing anything at all.

DAVID: Totally a materialism comment. I really don't think to expect anything different in our view. I've proposed, not proven, the soul plays a role with the brain functions. You have it separated off somewhere.

Sorry, but you’ve missed the point. This is not part of our discussion on the nature of dualism but on which of the two hypotheses is correct: dualism or materialism. The article does not mention a soul. If cognition depends on the plasticity of the brain, and if the brain rehones itself, that is evidence for materialism and not for dualism.

Same again under “chemical problems”:

DAVID: Another study which shows that a sick brain due to a missing chemical produces sick thoughts. The problem for dhw is if I or he uses the brain to think and the soul is I or he, why does dhw try to claim the soul thinks without the brain (as we in life don't) and thus the original thought is sick, not the expression of thought from a soul separated from the brain as dhw constantly tries to present. He doesn't seem to realize he is presenting his soul as separate from his actions with his own brain as if he is not his soul.

You are again conflating two separate issues. One is the definition of dualism, and the other is whether the soul exists (the dichotomy between materialism and dualism). The fact that drugs and diseases (including missing chemical products) change the way people think is evidence for materialism. Look at your own comment: “…a sick brain produces sick thoughts.” The belief that thought, consciousness, will etc. are produced by the body’s materials is the essence of materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 05, 2018, 18:51 (2052 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If plasticity of the brain is related to the level of cognition, and in this case the brain was given enough time to re-hone some of the visual tasks, it suggests to me that the brain is related to the level of cognition and also does the re-honing! I see no suggestion anywhere of a soul doing anything at all.

DAVID: Totally a materialism comment. I really don't think to expect anything different in our view. I've proposed, not proven, the soul plays a role with the brain functions. You have it separated off somewhere.

dhw: Sorry, but you’ve missed the point. This is not part of our discussion on the nature of dualism but on which of the two hypotheses is correct: dualism or materialism. The article does not mention a soul. If cognition depends on the plasticity of the brain, and if the brain rehones itself, that is evidence for materialism and not for dualism.

No it isn't. The brain is the material side of dualism. As a sole actor it has the right to have its own methods of change, with or without input from the soul. the soul might conribue to brain change or may not.


dhw: Same again under “chemical problems”:

DAVID: Another study which shows that a sick brain due to a missing chemical produces sick thoughts. The problem for dhw is if I or he uses the brain to think and the soul is I or he, why does dhw try to claim the soul thinks without the brain (as we in life don't) and thus the original thought is sick, not the expression of thought from a soul separated from the brain as dhw constantly tries to present. He doesn't seem to realize he is presenting his soul as separate from his actions with his own brain as if he is not his soul.

dhw: You are again conflating two separate issues. One is the definition of dualism, and the other is whether the soul exists (the dichotomy between materialism and dualism). The fact that drugs and diseases (including missing chemical products) change the way people think is evidence for materialism. Look at your own comment: “…a sick brain produces sick thoughts.” The belief that thought, consciousness, will etc. are produced by the body’s materials is the essence of materialism.

Once again you miss the point you've made: You are your soul, and if you in life use your brain to think, so does your soul. And then certainly a sick brain will produce sick thoughts for both you and your soul. The case you make for materialism simply recognizes that the brain is material. Dualism looks at the source of the immaterial output from the brain.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, August 06, 2018, 13:28 (2052 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The article does not mention a soul. If cognition depends on the plasticity of the brain, and if the brain rehones itself, that is evidence for materialism and not for dualism.

DAVID: No it isn't. The brain is the material side of dualism. As a sole actor it has the right to have its own methods of change, with or without input from the soul. the soul might conribue to brain change or may not.

Still missing the point. If an article tells us that cognition depends on the brain, and the brain changes itself in order to preserve its powers of cognition, the article is presenting the case for materialism as opposed to dualism. You are of course free to argue that you believe in dualism and the existence of an immaterial soul.

dhw: You are again conflating two separate issues. One is the definition of dualism, and the other is whether the soul exists (the dichotomy between materialism and dualism). The fact that drugs and diseases (including missing chemical products) change the way people think is evidence for materialism. Look at your own comment: “…a sick brain produces sick thoughts.” The belief that thought, consciousness, will etc. are produced by the body’s materials is the essence of materialism.

DAVID: Once again you miss the point you've made: You are your soul, and if you in life use your brain to think, so does your soul. And then certainly a sick brain will produce sick thoughts for both you and your soul. The case you make for materialism simply recognizes that the brain is material. Dualism looks at the source of the immaterial output from the brain.

Yet again you are conflating the two issues. I am not making a case for materialism. I am pointing out that if the brain is the source of thought (as in “a sick brain produces sick thoughts”), you have materialism. You have even confirmed this with your extraordinary last statement: if the immaterial output from the brain is thought, then the brain is the source of thought! And if the brain produces thought, you have materialism. I don’t know what you mean by “dualism looks at…” Dualism claims that the self consists of soul and brain, instead of just brain. If the brain produces thought, what does the soul do? Look at the thoughts the brain has produced?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, August 06, 2018, 15:24 (2052 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Once again you miss the point you've made: You are your soul, and if you in life use your brain to think, so does your soul. And then certainly a sick brain will produce sick thoughts for both you and your soul. The case you make for materialism simply recognizes that the brain is material. Dualism looks at the source of the immaterial output from the brain.

dhw: Yet again you are conflating the two issues. I am not making a case for materialism. I am pointing out that if the brain is the source of thought (as in “a sick brain produces sick thoughts”), you have materialism. You have even confirmed this with your extraordinary last statement: if the immaterial output from the brain is thought, then the brain is the source of thought! And if the brain produces thought, you have materialism. I don’t know what you mean by “dualism looks at…” Dualism claims that the self consists of soul and brain, instead of just brain. If the brain produces thought, what does the soul do? Look at the thoughts the brain has produced?

All you are stating is there is a material part to the dualism problem. Simple progression of fact: Please remember you are your soul. You think with your brain and consciously recognize the thought. So if there is a soul what did it do? It was your essence doing it also, not separate, but your quantum image providing the consciousness.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 09:34 (2051 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Once again you miss the point you've made: You are your soul, and if you in life use your brain to think, so does your soul. And then certainly a sick brain will produce sick thoughts for both you and your soul. The case you make for materialism simply recognizes that the brain is material. Dualism looks at the source of the immaterial output from the brain.

dhw: Yet again you are conflating the two issues. I am not making a case for materialism. I am pointing out that if the brain is the source of thought (as in “a sick brain produces sick thoughts”), you have materialism. You have even confirmed this with your extraordinary last statement: if the immaterial output from the brain is thought, then the brain is the source of thought! And if the brain produces thought, you have materialism. I don’t know what you mean by “dualism looks at…” Dualism claims that the self consists of soul and brain, instead of just brain. If the brain produces thought, what does the soul do? Look at the thoughts the brain has produced?

DAVID: All you are stating is there is a material part to the dualism problem. Simple progression of fact: Please remember you are your soul.

That is not what I am stating! Despite the heading you gave to this thread, the article is anything but an example of dualism. Show me where it tells us to remember that we are our soul! It offers nothing but evidence for materialism. And your comments do the same. If you argue that the brain is the source of thought, and a sick brain produces sick thoughts, you are arguing the case for materialism. Once again, this is not a discussion about the meaning of dualism. I have simply pointed out that the article provides evidence that the brain is the source of thought, and this supports the case for materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 17:44 (2050 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Once again you miss the point you've made: You are your soul, and if you in life use your brain to think, so does your soul. And then certainly a sick brain will produce sick thoughts for both you and your soul. The case you make for materialism simply recognizes that the brain is material. Dualism looks at the source of the immaterial output from the brain.

dhw: Yet again you are conflating the two issues. I am not making a case for materialism. I am pointing out that if the brain is the source of thought (as in “a sick brain produces sick thoughts”), you have materialism. You have even confirmed this with your extraordinary last statement: if the immaterial output from the brain is thought, then the brain is the source of thought! And if the brain produces thought, you have materialism. I don’t know what you mean by “dualism looks at…” Dualism claims that the self consists of soul and brain, instead of just brain. If the brain produces thought, what does the soul do? Look at the thoughts the brain has produced?

DAVID: All you are stating is there is a material part to the dualism problem. Simple progression of fact: Please remember you are your soul.

dhw: That is not what I am stating! Despite the heading you gave to this thread, the article is anything but an example of dualism. Show me where it tells us to remember that we are our soul! It offers nothing but evidence for materialism. And your comments do the same. If you argue that the brain is the source of thought, and a sick brain produces sick thoughts, you are arguing the case for materialism. Once again, this is not a discussion about the meaning of dualism. I have simply pointed out that the article provides evidence that the brain is the source of thought, and this supports the case for materialism.

Once again, you and I think with our brains. We know that. We know that thought is immaterial. No one knows how the electricity in the brain which is material turns into immaterial thought. By the way Egnor believes in a soul, which is why I titled this thread as I did. I am the source of thought I produce by using my brain which represents the thought as electricity. No thought without the electricity.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 09:29 (2050 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Despite the heading you gave to this thread, the article is anything but an example of dualism. Show me where it tells us to remember that we are our soul! It offers nothing but evidence for materialism. And your comments do the same. If you argue that the brain is the source of thought, and a sick brain produces sick thoughts, you are arguing the case for materialism. Once again, this is not a discussion about the meaning of dualism. I have simply pointed out that the article provides evidence that the brain is the source of thought, and this supports the case for materialism.

DAVID: Once again, you and I think with our brains. We know that.

This and your theories arising out of your own materialistic dualism are dealt with under “Theory of Intelligence” (in which I myself offer a very different theory of materialistic dualism). This post only deals with your claim that the article gives us an example of dualism.

DAVID: By the way Egnor believes in a soul, which is why I titled this thread as I did.

There is nothing in the article to promote the concept of a soul. If he meant it to do so, he has shot himself in the foot.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 18:57 (2049 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Despite the heading you gave to this thread, the article is anything but an example of dualism. Show me where it tells us to remember that we are our soul! It offers nothing but evidence for materialism. And your comments do the same. If you argue that the brain is the source of thought, and a sick brain produces sick thoughts, you are arguing the case for materialism. Once again, this is not a discussion about the meaning of dualism. I have simply pointed out that the article provides evidence that the brain is the source of thought, and this supports the case for materialism.

DAVID: Once again, you and I think with our brains. We know that.

This and your theories arising out of your own materialistic dualism are dealt with under “Theory of Intelligence” (in which I myself offer a very different theory of materialistic dualism). This post only deals with your claim that the article gives us an example of dualism.

DAVID: By the way Egnor believes in a soul, which is why I titled this thread as I did.

dhw: There is nothing in the article to promote the concept of a soul. If he meant it to do so, he has shot himself in the foot.

You misunderstand. Egnor is not a part of this article but he bases his belief in a soul based on this kind of medical case:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175549-boys-brain-works-just-fine-after-a-large-p...

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Thursday, August 09, 2018, 10:41 (2049 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: By the way Egnor believes in a soul, which is why I titled this thread as I did.

dhw: There is nothing in the article to promote the concept of a soul. If he meant it to do so, he has shot himself in the foot.

DAVID: You misunderstand. Egnor is not a part of this article but he bases his belief in a soul based on this kind of medical case:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175549-boys-brain-works-just-fine-after-a-large-p...

You are right. I didn’t realize he had nothing to do with the article. So why on earth did you call this thread “Egnor on dualism: another example”? Now we know it's an article by someone called Alison George, has nothing to do with Egnor, and nothing to do with dualism. Interesting article, though, which will be welcomed by non-Egnorians as an example of materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 09, 2018, 19:15 (2048 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: By the way Egnor believes in a soul, which is why I titled this thread as I did.

dhw: There is nothing in the article to promote the concept of a soul. If he meant it to do so, he has shot himself in the foot.

DAVID: You misunderstand. Egnor is not a part of this article but he bases his belief in a soul based on this kind of medical case:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175549-boys-brain-works-just-fine-after-a-large-p...

dhw: You are right. I didn’t realize he had nothing to do with the article. So why on earth did you call this thread “Egnor on dualism: another example”? Now we know it's an article by someone called Alison George, has nothing to do with Egnor, and nothing to do with dualism. Interesting article, though, which will be welcomed by non-Egnorians as an example of materialism.

Egnor, a religious neurosurgeon, believes the soul creates consciousness and even covers over loss of brain tissue in his ablative neurosurgery. He doesn't discuss the role of the electric networks and their contribution.

https://mindmatters.today/2018/08/the-brain-is-not-a-meat-computer/

"The materialist view that the brain as a computer made of meat and that the mind is the software run on this carnal machine is a profound misunderstanding of neurology and of the relationship between the mind and the brain.

***

"Every neuroanatomy and neurophysiology textbook I studied as a medical student described the function of the cerebellum in terms of circuits, neural networks, and computation. It appeared unlikely that anyone could sustain even a tiny injury in such a complex “computer” and retain normal coordination, let alone superb coordination, and play a sport at a high collegiate level.

"But I have learned in practice what every neurosurgeon knows, that much of the cerebellum is expendable. We remove major parts of it routinely in order to remove tumors or blood clots or to decompress the brainstem, which is immediately in front of the cerebellum, without any lasting neurological outcomes (sequelae).

***

"Many other parts of the brain can also be removed without discernable neurological injury. In fact, a vital aspect of neurosurgical practice is knowing which parts of the brain are ‘eloquent’—that is, they cannot be damaged without significant neurological injury—and which parts are ‘non-eloquent’ and can be removed without causing a significant neurological deficit.

***

"The materialist view that the brain as a computer made of meat and that the mind is the software run on this carnal machine is a profound misunderstanding of neurology and of the relationship between the mind and the brain. It is akin to the error of phrenology in the 19th century when materialist neuroscientists presumed that all regions of the brain were eloquent and that complex intellectual functions could be localized to specific gyri.

***

"Thinking is not computation. In fact, thinking is the anthesis of computation. Thought always has meaning, and computation inherently lacks meaning. That is what makes computation so versatile—it imparts no meaning of its own to the tasks to which we apply it.

***

"The brain looks like a computer only if we analyze it as if it were a computer. Our analysis does not mean that it is a computer, and it does not mean that computation explains the mind or even that computational approaches to neuroscience provide genuinely meaningful insight into neurophysiology."

Comment: I'd love to know what he thinks of the electricity. i had the same med school training he had.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Friday, August 10, 2018, 11:06 (2048 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Egnor, a religious neurosurgeon, believes the soul creates consciousness and even covers over loss of brain tissue in his ablative neurosurgery. He doesn't discuss the role of the electric networks and their contribution.
https://mindmatters.today/2018/08/the-brain-is-not-a-meat-computer/

QUOTE: "The materialist view that the brain as a computer made of meat and that the mind is the software run on this carnal machine is a profound misunderstanding of neurology and of the relationship between the mind and the brain."

Now that IS Egnor on dualism. But we shouldn’t forget the materialist article you quoted initially as if it were an example of dualism. The two together exemplify the two different schools of thought. And there is no consensus on which is correct.

DAVID: I'd love to know what he thinks of the electricity. i had the same med school training he had.

Our discussions under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE bring out the utter confusion when you attempt to reconcile your belief in an immaterial soul with the materialism arising from your medical training. If only you would recognize this dichotomy, you would not have to keep coming up with all the different theories which you then have to discard.

I have no idea why Egnor avoids the subject of electricity (I'll take your word for it that he does), but if he believes in a conscious immaterial soul, what alternative is there to the explanation that the soul’s thoughts spark the electricity, as opposed to the materialist explanation that the electricity sparks the thoughts? I doubt if he would subscribe to your translation theory, which tried to have it both ways!

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Friday, August 10, 2018, 15:10 (2048 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Egnor, a religious neurosurgeon, believes the soul creates consciousness and even covers over loss of brain tissue in his ablative neurosurgery. He doesn't discuss the role of the electric networks and their contribution.
https://mindmatters.today/2018/08/the-brain-is-not-a-meat-computer/

QUOTE: "The materialist view that the brain as a computer made of meat and that the mind is the software run on this carnal machine is a profound misunderstanding of neurology and of the relationship between the mind and the brain."

dhw: Now that IS Egnor on dualism. But we shouldn’t forget the materialist article you quoted initially as if it were an example of dualism. The two together exemplify the two different schools of thought. And there is no consensus on which is correct.

DAVID: I'd love to know what he thinks of the electricity. i had the same med school training he had.

dhw: Our discussions under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE bring out the utter confusion when you attempt to reconcile your belief in an immaterial soul with the materialism arising from your medical training. If only you would recognize this dichotomy, you would not have to keep coming up with all the different theories which you then have to discard.

I have no idea why Egnor avoids the subject of electricity (I'll take your word for it that he does), but if he believes in a conscious immaterial soul, what alternative is there to the explanation that the soul’s thoughts spark the electricity, as opposed to the materialist explanation that the electricity sparks the thoughts? I doubt if he would subscribe to your translation theory, which tried to have it both ways!

I think the desire to think initiates thought as new original electrical activity in the brain. The electricity does not spark the thought, it appears as a representation of thought. The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Saturday, August 11, 2018, 09:26 (2047 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Our discussions under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE bring out the utter confusion when you attempt to reconcile your belief in an immaterial soul with the materialism arising from your medical training. If only you would recognize this dichotomy, you would not have to keep coming up with all the different theories which you then have to discard.

dhw: I have no idea why Egnor avoids the subject of electricity (I'll take your word for it that he does), but if he believes in a conscious immaterial soul, what alternative is there to the explanation that the soul’s thoughts spark the electricity, as opposed to the materialist explanation that the electricity sparks the thoughts? I doubt if he would subscribe to your translation theory, which tried to have it both ways!

DAVID: I think the desire to think initiates thought as new original electrical activity in the brain. The electricity does not spark the thought, it appears as a representation of thought.

I don’t understand any of this. You make it sound as if your soul (if it exists) has no idea what it wants to think about! What is a “representation” of thought? Once again, either the brain’s electricity creates the thought (materialism), or the thought sparks the electricity (dualism).

It might help us to go back to concrete examples. The illiterate women wanted to learn how to read and write. As a consequence of their fulfilling this “desire”, the brain itself underwent changes. Here we have concrete evidence that thought engenders changes in the brain, which I presume are implemented by electricity. This can be taken as evidence for dualism. On the other hand, drugs and diseases have devastating effects on brain and behaviour, which can be taken as evidence for materialism. Hence the dichotomy you refuse to recognize.

DAVID: The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain.

Now you are back to your translation theory, which I’d hoped we’d seen the back of. If the soul sparks gibberish electricity in the brain and then translates the gibberish electricity (“consciously interprets it”) into meaningful thoughts, why on earth can’t it come up with its meaningful thoughts in the first place?

Under "brain complexity":

DAVID: A changed brain can change thought expression by altering the thought producing electric impulses.

If the electric impulses from the brain produce thought, then it’s not the expression of thought but the thought itself that is changed by changes in the brain. Pure materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 11, 2018, 19:04 (2046 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I think the desire to think initiates thought as new original electrical activity in the brain. The electricity does not spark the thought, it appears as a representation of thought.

dhw: I don’t understand any of this. You make it sound as if your soul (if it exists) has no idea what it wants to think about! What is a “representation” of thought? Once again, either the brain’s electricity creates the thought (materialism), or the thought sparks the electricity (dualism).

It might help us to go back to concrete examples. The illiterate women wanted to learn how to read and write. As a consequence of their fulfilling this “desire”, the brain itself underwent changes. Here we have concrete evidence that thought engenders changes in the brain, which I presume are implemented by electricity. This can be taken as evidence for dualism. On the other hand, drugs and diseases have devastating effects on brain and behaviour, which can be taken as evidence for materialism. Hence the dichotomy you refuse to recognize.

We have two totally different concept of soul. Unless we can agree on a definition, we will never reach an agreement. I start from the material side of the issue, and every time I discuss what we know about material brain function, you scream I am a materialist. Not so, as I constantly state. When I/soul attempt to think my frontal cortex lights up. The electricity must contain the thought! How it translates out of the electricity so I can recognize the thought in full expression to me (I feel/'hear' the words in my head) I believe is the function of my soul. Perfectly clear if you accept my concept of soul, but you won't, as evidenced from your past responses.


DAVID: The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain.

dhw: Now you are back to your translation theory, which I’d hoped we’d seen the back of. If the soul sparks gibberish electricity in the brain and then translates the gibberish electricity (“consciously interprets it”) into meaningful thoughts, why on earth can’t it come up with its meaningful thoughts in the first place?

Because when I think I use my brain. that is obvious. If 'I' am also my soul, which 'I' am, my soul does what the living 'I' does.


Under "brain complexity":

DAVID: A changed brain can change thought expression by altering the thought producing electric impulses.

dhw: If the electric impulses from the brain produce thought, then it’s not the expression of thought but the thought itself that is changed by changes in the brain. Pure materialism.

I am simply describing what we know about the material actions of the brain, with which we think. Any attempt at thought produces electricity, an obvious well-recognized scientific finding. The thought is created in the electricity as I/soul initiate thought.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Sunday, August 12, 2018, 10:03 (2046 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think the desire to think initiates thought as new original electrical activity in the brain. The electricity does not spark the thought, it appears as a representation of thought.

dhw: I don’t understand any of this. You make it sound as if your soul (if it exists) has no idea what it wants to think about! What is a “representation” of thought? Once again, either the brain’s electricity creates the thought (materialism), or the thought sparks the electricity (dualism).
It might help us to go back to concrete examples. The illiterate women wanted to learn how to read and write. As a consequence of their fulfilling this “desire”, the brain itself underwent changes. Here we have concrete evidence that thought engenders changes in the brain, which I presume are implemented by electricity. This can be taken as evidence for dualism. On the other hand, drugs and diseases have devastating effects on brain and behaviour, which can be taken as evidence for materialism. Hence the dichotomy you refuse to recognize.

DAVID: We have two totally different concept of soul. Unless we can agree on a definition, we will never reach an agreement. I start from the material side of the issue, and every time I discuss what we know about material brain function, you scream I am a materialist. Not so, as I constantly state. When I/soul attempt to think my frontal cortex lights up. The electricity must contain the thought! How it translates out of the electricity so I can recognize the thought in full expression to me (I feel/'hear' the words in my head) I believe is the function of my soul. Perfectly clear if you accept my concept of soul, but you won't, as evidenced from your past responses.

Once again you quote me and then ignore everything I have written! Ah well...Your concept of soul varies from one post to another, as does your concept of what the soul actually does. You say it is a piece of your God’s consciousness but is not conscious until it is linked to the brain (except when there is no brain); it is a quantum copy of “you” (but since “you” are your soul and body/brain, that means the soul is a quantum copy of a quantum copy plus your body/brain); it initiates thought but the brain is the source of thought; it initiates incomprehensible thought which is translated into electric brain waves which it then translates into comprehensible thought ….And now the focus is on electricity. You ignore the point I made above, with examples, that either the electricity is the producer of thought (materialism) or the product of thought (dualism). And finally you ignore the definition of soul I keep proposing: if dualism is correct, we consist of a material self (body/brain) and an immaterial self (the soul) which comprises all the immaterial aspects of the self such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory etc., and this is what many dualists believe is the self that survives the death of the brain.

DAVID: The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain.

dhw: Now you are back to your translation theory, which I’d hoped we’d seen the back of. If the soul sparks gibberish electricity in the brain and then translates the gibberish electricity (“consciously interprets it”) into meaningful thoughts, why on earth can’t it come up with its meaningful thoughts in the first place?

DAVID: Because when I think I use my brain. that is obvious. If 'I' am also my soul, which 'I' am, my soul does what the living 'I' does.

The dreaded mantra "use" again. What do you use your brain for, other than information and material expression? And you still haven’t explained why your soul, your piece of God’s consciousness, which can think meaningful thoughts when the brain is dead, can’t think meaningful thoughts when it is encased in its material body/brain. It is no answer to say it can’t think meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain.

Under "brain complexity":
DAVID: A changed brain can change thought expression by altering the thought producing electric impulses.

dhw: If the electric impulses from the brain produce thought, then it’s not the expression of thought but the thought itself that is changed by changes in the brain. Pure materialism.
DAVID: I am simply describing what we know about the material actions of the brain, with which we think. Any attempt at thought produces electricity, an obvious well-recognized scientific finding.

The process of thought producing electricity is what I described with the example of the illiterate women, as evidence for dualism. But above you said it was the electric impulses that produce thought, the direct opposite, which = materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 12, 2018, 15:31 (2046 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We have two totally different concept of soul. Unless we can agree on a definition, we will never reach an agreement. I start from the material side of the issue, and every time I discuss what we know about material brain function, you scream I am a materialist. Not so, as I constantly state. When I/soul attempt to think my frontal cortex lights up. The electricity must contain the thought! How it translates out of the electricity so I can recognize the thought in full expression to me (I feel/'hear' the words in my head) I believe is the function of my soul. Perfectly clear if you accept my concept of soul, but you won't, as evidenced from your past responses.

dhw: Once again you quote me and then ignore everything I have written! Ah well...Your concept of soul varies from one post to another, as does your concept of what the soul actually does. You say it is a piece of your God’s consciousness but is not conscious until it is linked to the brain (except when there is no brain); it is a quantum copy of “you” (but since “you” are your soul and body/brain, that means the soul is a quantum copy of a quantum copy plus your body/brain); it initiates thought but the brain is the source of thought; it initiates incomprehensible thought which is translated into electric brain waves which it then translates into comprehensible thought ….And now the focus is on electricity. You ignore the point I made above, with examples, that either the electricity is the producer of thought (materialism) or the product of thought (dualism). And finally you ignore the definition of soul I keep proposing: if dualism is correct, we consist of a material self (body/brain) and an immaterial self (the soul) which comprises all the immaterial aspects of the self such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory etc., and this is what many dualists believe is the self that survives the death of the brain.

As you accuse me of confusing thoughts, your religious adherence to what many dualists think dosn't advance the discussion. I've told you I don't follow any theories but my own, based on what we know happens materially .


DAVID: The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain.


DAVID: Because when I think I use my brain. that is obvious. If 'I' am also my soul, which 'I' am, my soul does what the living 'I' does.

The dreaded mantra "use" again. What do you use your brain for, other than information and material expression? And you still haven’t explained why your soul, your piece of God’s consciousness, which can think meaningful thoughts when the brain is dead, can’t think meaningful thoughts when it is encased in its material body/brain. It is no answer to say it can’t think meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain.

But that is my position. It thinks meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain as
I do.


Under "brain complexity":
DAVID: A changed brain can change thought expression by altering the thought producing electric impulses.

dhw: If the electric impulses from the brain produce thought, then it’s not the expression of thought but the thought itself that is changed by changes in the brain. Pure materialism.
DAVID: I am simply describing what we know about the material actions of the brain, with which we think. Any attempt at thought produces electricity, an obvious well-recognized scientific finding.

dhw: The process of thought producing electricity is what I described with the example of the illiterate women, as evidence for dualism. But above you said it was the electric impulses that produce thought, the direct opposite, which = materialism.

The electricity represents the production of thought by the brain, driving by an initiation from me/soul.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, August 13, 2018, 08:52 (2045 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your concept of soul varies from one post to another, as does your concept of what the soul actually does. You say it is a piece of your God’s consciousness but is not conscious until it is linked to the brain (except when there is no brain); it is a quantum copy of “you” (but since “you” are your soul and body/brain, that means the soul is a quantum copy of a quantum copy plus your body/brain); it initiates thought but the brain is the source of thought; it initiates incomprehensible thought which is translated into electric brain waves which it then translates into comprehensible thought ….And now the focus is on electricity. You ignore the point I made above, with examples, that either the electricity is the producer of thought (materialism) or the product of thought (dualism). And finally you ignore the definition of soul I keep proposing: if dualism is correct, we consist of a material self (body/brain) and an immaterial self (the soul) which comprises all the immaterial aspects of the self such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory etc., and this is what many dualists believe is the self that survives the death of the brain.

DAVID: As you accuse me of confusing thoughts, your religious adherence to what many dualists think dosn't advance the discussion. I've told you I don't follow any theories but my own, based on what we know happens materially.

I have reproduced some of your multiple, ever changing theories above, and you do not advance the discussion by ignoring all the contradictions they contain. They arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of your God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially.

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained why your soul, your piece of God’s consciousness, which can think meaningful thoughts when the brain is dead, can’t think meaningful thoughts when it is encased in its material body/brain. It is no answer to say it can’t think meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain.

DAVID: But that is my position. It thinks meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain as I do.

As you keep agreeing, the soul IS you. So apparently the soul can’t think meaningful thoughts because your soul uses your brain as your soul does. But you don’t find this confusing.

(dhw’s bold:)
1) DAVID: A changed brain can change thought expression by altering the thought producing electric impulses.
And:
2) DAVID: Any attempt at thought produces electricity, an obvious well-recognized scientific finding.

dhw: The process of thought producing electricity is what I described with the example of the illiterate women, as evidence for dualism. But above you said it was the electric impulses that produce thought, the direct opposite, which = materialism.

DAVID: The electricity represents the production of thought by the brain, driving by an initiation from me/soul.

What does all this mean? Apparently now the soul tells the brain to produce a thought, but it hasn’t a clue what the thought is supposed to be about because the brain has to “produce” it. Either the dualist’s soul, if there is such a thing, produces the thought, using information provided by the brain (electrical activity caused by soul gaining access to information or looking to give the thought material expression), or the brain produces the thought (electrical activity) using its own information (materialism).

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, August 13, 2018, 18:59 (2044 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: As you accuse me of confusing thoughts, your religious adherence to what many dualists think dosn't advance the discussion. I've told you I don't follow any theories but my own, based on what we know happens materially.

dhw: I have reproduced some of your multiple, ever changing theories above, and you do not advance the discussion by ignoring all the contradictions they contain. They arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of your God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially.

I know that. My multiple approaches confuse you, in part because you seem to have one rigid view of the characteristics of what a soul does or is capable of doing. I h ave my view. You have your different view. Until we find a common description of soul that we both agree to, our confused discussion will continue.


dhw: […] you still haven’t explained why your soul, your piece of God’s consciousness, which can think meaningful thoughts when the brain is dead, can’t think meaningful thoughts when it is encased in its material body/brain. It is no answer to say it can’t think meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain.

DAVID: But that is my position. It thinks meaningful thoughts because it uses the brain as I do.

dhw: As you keep agreeing, the soul IS you. So apparently the soul can’t think meaningful thoughts because your soul uses your brain as your soul does. But you don’t find this confusing.

No, I don't. I am my soul and I know the living I uses my brain to think. Don't you?

DAVID: The electricity represents the production of thought by the brain, driving by an initiation from me/soul.

dhw: What does all this mean? Apparently now the soul tells the brain to produce a thought, but it hasn’t a clue what the thought is supposed to be about because the brain has to “produce” it. Either the dualist’s soul, if there is such a thing, produces the thought, using information provided by the brain (electrical activity caused by soul gaining access to information or looking to give the thought material expression), or the brain produces the thought (electrical activity) using its own information (materialism).

Yes, the issue has a definitely material side from which the appearance of conscious thought has to be explained. The brain produces thought because I/soul drive it to produce thought. I/soul control the brain's activity. Doesn't yours?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 09:45 (2044 days ago) @ David Turell

I am telescoping two threads, as our discussion has now veered away from my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE and is focused solely on the nature of dualism.

dhw: I have reproduced some of your multiple, ever changing theories above, and you do not advance the discussion by ignoring all the contradictions they contain. They arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of your God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially.

DAVID: I know that. My multiple approaches confuse you, in part because you seem to have one rigid view of the characteristics of what a soul does or is capable of doing. I have my view. You have your different view. Until we find a common description of soul that we both agree to, our confused discussion will continue.

Since you know that all your contradictions arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially, why do you claim that you have “your view”? You have lots of different views (“multiple approaches”) which are full of contradictions, and so long as you dash from one to another, of course our confused discussion will continue. You never deal with the contradictions. You merely repeat your mantra that the soul thinks with the brain or uses the brain to think.

As for a common description, what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: I think more fully than you do because you have a pre-formed rigid concept of soul, when we have yet to agree on what the soul is, which is what I admit I am struggling with, knowing the presentation of the material side. We recognize consciousness, but when we look of the brain all we see is electricity. How does the electricity convert to consciousness is the continuing 'hard' problem. I think my soul offers a mechanism of translation.

You are struggling because you insist that the electricity from the brain is the CAUSE of consciousness, and that is the essence of materialism. You refuse to contemplate the possibility that the soul itself – IF it exists – is the source of consciousness (in spite of the fact that you believe it is conscious in an afterlife) and that the electricity is the RESULT of conscious thought. And yet you say yourself that the soul controls the brain: “I/soul control the brain's activity. Doesn't yours?” How can it control the brain if it is not conscious?

DAVID: We know electricity is activated in the frontal cortex of the brain when I think. My solution to consciousness is the soul provides an interpretive mechanism for the material electricity that we know exists during thought. I hear my thoughts in words, not electrical buzzing.

Again you have identified the dualistic process, but then tried to reverse it. Yes, in dualism there is electricity when “I” (= the soul) think. The soul thinks. Full stop. You don’t need all the confusion of “the brain produces thought because I/soul drive it to produce thought”, as if the soul can’t think a coherent thought of its own but mysteriously has to initiate gibberish which makes the brain come up with electrical waves that are also gibberish and have to be translated into words by the soul. If the soul knows words for the purpose of translation, it can think in words, so it can initiate thoughts in words! Its use of the brain to acquire information and to give material expression to its thoughts involves electrical activity in both cases. The alternative is that all the electrical activity is indeed what produces consciousness and thought (= materialism), i.e. there is no such thing as a soul. There is evidence for both theories, and that is why we have a dichotomy which you refuse to recognize (even though you struggle with it), and which I have tried to resolve with my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

On the subject of NDEs you wrote:
"The soul in death is totally disconnected from the soul in life. You are trying to subscribe to some sort of continuity in realms."

What on earth or in heaven would be the point of a soul and an afterlife if there was no continuity? If you are not the same person with the same attributes, you might as well stay dead. Once again, why do you reject the definition of the soul that I have proposed?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 19:37 (2043 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You never deal with the contradictions. You merely repeat your mantra that the soul thinks with the brain or uses the brain to think.

I repeat my mantra and you repeat yours. Both are unprovable theories based on the facts we both know. Even Stephen.


dhw: As for a common description, what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

Because in life I see different circumstances as you know.

dhw: You are struggling because you insist that the electricity from the brain is the CAUSE of consciousness, and that is the essence of materialism. You refuse to contemplate the possibility that the soul itself – IF it exists – is the source of consciousness (in spite of the fact that you believe it is conscious in an afterlife) and that the electricity is the RESULT of conscious thought. And yet you say yourself that the soul controls the brain: “I/soul control the brain's activity. Doesn't yours?” How can it control the brain if it is not conscious?

You still have a weird view of what I propose. The electricity is a representation of thought, not its cause! I believe the soul IS the cause of consciousness by translating the electricity so I can 'hear' my thoughts in my mind. Your last bolded sentence again separates the I from my soul. I am my soul at all times until death or NDE. If I am my soul and I think with my brain so does my soul. As my immaterial essence, it acts exactly as I do in life.


DAVID: We know electricity is activated in the frontal cortex of the brain when I think. My solution to consciousness is the soul provides an interpretive mechanism for the material electricity that we know exists during thought. I hear my thoughts in words, not electrical buzzing.

dhw: Again you have identified the dualistic process, but then tried to reverse it. Yes, in dualism there is electricity when “I” (= the soul) think. The soul thinks. Full stop. You don’t need all the confusion of “the brain produces thought because I/soul drive it to produce thought”, as if the soul can’t think a coherent thought of its own but mysteriously has to initiate gibberish which makes the brain come up with electrical waves that are also gibberish and have to be translated into words by the soul.

Why is there electricity to explain? Can you tell me why it exists? You tell me below it is expression of thought. How is that translated into my mind?

dhw: If the soul knows words for the purpose of translation, it can think in words, so it can initiate thoughts in words! Its use of the brain to acquire information and to give material expression to its thoughts involves electrical activity in both cases.

Remember the soul is me, never separate from me in life! I know words because I learned them from infancy on. At birth my soul was as much a blank slate as I was, and it took development of neurons and connections to have clear memory and thought. Do you remember anything before 2 1/2 years old. You can't. The circuits aren't there. Did my soul come aboard my newborn body knowing everything about English words or did it have to learn as I did with the development of my brain and passage of time? I am my soul and it and I developed together as my brain developed. This means my soul is dependent in life on my brain to produce thought. The soul and I produce thought by use of the brain. The brain never creates thought on its own, although you constantly try to tell me I that is what I am writing.

dhw: On the subject of NDEs you wrote:
"The soul in death is totally disconnected from the soul in life. You are trying to subscribe to some sort of continuity in realms."

What on earth or in heaven would be the point of a soul and an afterlife if there was no continuity? If you are not the same person with the same attributes, you might as well stay dead. Once again, why do you reject the definition of the soul that I have proposed?

Because the circumstances of life and death are totally different.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 11:34 (2043 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: Because in life I see different circumstances as you know.

The different circumstances of death do not mean that the soul no longer has the same immaterial attributes as in life! What is the point of an afterlife if you are no longer you? Apart from the means of observing and communicating, what has to change?

dhw: You are struggling because you insist that the electricity from the brain is the CAUSE of consciousness, and that is the essence of materialism. You refuse to contemplate the possibility that the soul itself – IF it exists – is the source of consciousness (in spite of the fact that you believe it is conscious in an afterlife) and that the electricity is the RESULT of conscious thought. And yet you say yourself that the soul controls the brain: “I/soul control the brain's activity. Doesn't yours?” How can it control the brain if it is not conscious?[/b]

DAVID: You still have a weird view of what I propose. The electricity is a representation of thought, not its cause! I believe the soul IS the cause of consciousness by translating the electricity so I can 'hear' my thoughts in my mind. Your last bolded sentence again separates the I from my soul.

What is a “representation” of thought? On “translation” see later. Now look at all your separations: I am my soul and my mind, so your sentence means: my soul translates the electricity so that my soul can ‘hear’ my soul’s thoughts in my soul. The weirdness, like the separation, is entirely yours.

DAVID: We know electricity is activated in the frontal cortex of the brain when I think. […]

dhw: Yes, in dualism there is electricity when “I” (= the soul) think. The soul thinks. Full stop. You don’t need all the confusion of “the brain produces thought because I/soul drive it to produce thought”, as if the soul can’t think a coherent thought of its own but mysteriously has to initiate gibberish which makes the brain come up with electrical waves that are also gibberish and have to be translated into words by the soul.

DAVID: Why is there electricity to explain? Can you tell me why it exists? You tell me below it is expression of thought. How is that translated into my mind?

Again you have ignored the gibberish your theory demands and prefer to ask me unanswerable questions instead! There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the soul to control the brain. We do, however, know that thought can change the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers. musicians etc.) and that the brain can change thought (drugs, diseases etc.), and these two facts lead to a dichotomy - which you refuse to recognize - and to all your contradictions, which you also refuse to recognize.

dhw (on the “translation” theory): If the soul knows words for the purpose of translation, it can think in words, so it can initiate thoughts in words!

Sadly, you have also ignored this obvious criticism of your “translation” theory.

DAVID: Remember the soul is me, never separate from me in life! I know words because I learned them from infancy on. […] I am my soul and it and I developed together as my brain developed. This means my soul is dependent in life on my brain to produce thought. *** The soul and I produce thought by use of the brain. The brain never creates thought on its own, although you constantly try to tell me I that is what I am writing.

If the soul exists, then until the passage beginning with my asterisks, I agree with almost all your comments. Of course the soul learns. Consciousness and the ability to think are a blank (unlike personality) until they have something to be conscious of/to think about. The developing brain provides the information that the learning soul is conscious of and thinks about. For example, the soul learns the language by hearing the words through the brain (information), and it learns to say the words by using the brain (material expression). As the brain develops, so the soul has more and more information to think about and to express. That is the sense in which your soul depends on your brain to produce thought. After the asterisks, it is you who again separate “I” from soul. Your materialism arises out of statements such as “a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”, "...the thought producing electrical impulses". Your utterly confusing “translation” theory is just one of several as you “struggle” (your word) to reconcile your religious dualism with your medical materialism. And you still haven’t explained why your English-speaking soul can’t think its thoughts in English.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 21:51 (2042 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Because in life I see different circumstances as you know.

dhw: What is the point of an afterlife if you are no longer you? Apart from the means of observing and communicating, what has to change?

The brain is no longer present for the soul to use.

DAVID: Why is there electricity to explain? Can you tell me why it exists? You tell me below it is expression of thought. How is that translated into my mind?

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the soul to control the brain.

I accept your second thought above. The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity of the brain. Definition from Britannica:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy

" Soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body."

DAVID: Remember the soul is me, never separate from me in life! I know words because I learned them from infancy on. […] I am my soul and it and I developed together as my brain developed. This means my soul is dependent in life on my brain to produce thought. *** The soul and I produce thought by use of the brain. The brain never creates thought on its own, although you constantly try to tell me I that is what I am writing.

dhw: If the soul exists, then until the passage beginning with my asterisks, I agree with almost all your comments. Of course the soul learns. Consciousness and the ability to think are a blank (unlike personality) until they have something to be conscious of/to think about. The developing brain provides the information that the learning soul is conscious of and thinks about. For example, the soul learns the language by hearing the words through the brain (information), and it learns to say the words by using the brain (material expression). As the brain develops, so the soul has more and more information to think about and to express. That is the sense in which your soul depends on your brain to produce thought. After the asterisks, it is you who again separate “I” from soul. Your materialism arises out of statements such as “a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”, "...the thought producing electrical impulses". Your utterly confusing “translation” theory is just one of several as you “struggle” (your word) to reconcile your religious dualism with your medical materialism. And you still haven’t explained why your English-speaking soul can’t think its thoughts in English.

Note, in the early part of your response we see you stating the soul uses the brain directly to learn. That is also me learning. Why does the soul have to stop using the brain to think when I know I use my brain to create thought as a living being? What you quote from me is my consideration of what we know on the material side of the question as to how consciousness appears and how a damaged brain can alter it from normal. And the answer to your question is always the same. Since the soul is myself (defined above) and I think with my brain, my soul thinks with my brain as represented by the electricity that appears when thought is in progress. My soul is the immaterial source of my consciousness from the electricity. My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Thursday, August 16, 2018, 12:12 (2042 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: Because in life I see different circumstances as you know. […]
dhw: What is the point of an afterlife if you are no longer you? Apart from the means of observing and communicating, what has to change?

DAVID: The brain is no longer present for the soul to use.

That is why a surviving soul would need psychic means of observing and communicating. What other changes would be required, and what is your objection to the above description of the soul?

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the soul to control the brain.

DAVID: I accept your second thought above.

Thank you. If the brain responds to the thoughts of the English-speaking soul, then the English-speaking soul is conscious and thinks in English! It doesn’t need to translate gibberish thoughts into gibberish electricity and then translate the gibberish electricity into comprehensible English!

DAVID: The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity of the brain.

What does “creating thought in the electricity…” mean? If the brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the soul, the soul creates thoughts!

David: Definition from Britannica:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy
"Soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body."

I see no difference between the two definitions. Individuality consists in each person’s immaterial thoughts, will, emotions, memories etc., and believers think these will survive death. How could the immaterial essence exclude consciousness and the ability to think?

dhw: Of course the soul learns. Consciousness and the ability to think are a blank (unlike personality) until they have something to be conscious of/to think about. The developing brain provides the information that the learning soul is conscious of and thinks about. For example, the soul learns the language by hearing the words through the brain (information), and it learns to say the words by using the brain (material expression). As the brain develops, so the soul has more and more information to think about and to express. That is the sense in which your soul depends on your brain to produce thought. […] Your materialism arises out of statements such as “a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”, "...the thought producing electrical impulses".

DAVID: Note, in the early part of your response we see you stating the soul uses the brain directly to learn. That is also me learning. Why does the soul have to stop using the brain to think when I know I use my brain to create thought as a living being?

Yet again you separate the soul from “me”! I have illustrated HOW the soul uses the brain: acquiring information and giving material expression. This process never stops, and I never said it did.

DAVID: What you quote from me is my consideration of what we know on the material side of the question as to how consciousness appears and how a damaged brain can alter it from normal.

Yes, we know that drugs/diseases change the brain and the way of thinking, and your statements support this evidence for materialism, i.e. that the brain (not a soul) produces thought.

DAVID: [..] Since the soul is myself (defined above) and I think with my brain, my soul thinks with my brain as represented by the electricity that appears when thought is in progress.

But we don’t know if the brain-engendered electricity is the source of thought (materialism) or the result of thought (dualism). Above you opted for the result of thought, which means the soul thinks and the brain responds. The soul therefore doesn’t need the electric waves to THINK.

DAVID: My soul is the immaterial source of my consciousness from the electricity.

But the electricity comes from the brain, so if the brain’s electricity is a RESPONSE to the soul’s conscious thoughts, as you have categorically confirmed, how can the conscious thoughts come FROM the brain’s electricity?

DAVID: My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.

Which theory? You have offered us multiple theories, including a “translation” theory which (mercifully) seems to have disappeared. If only you would stick to your now confirmed belief that the electricity is the brain’s response to the soul’s conscious thoughts, there would be none of this confusion over the meaning of dualism, and we could turn our attention to resolving the dichotomy between the two schools of thought.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 16, 2018, 18:11 (2041 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: ...what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: Because in life I see different circumstances as you know. […]

dhw: What is the point of an afterlife if you are no longer you? Apart from the means of observing and communicating, what has to change?

DAVID: The brain is no longer present for the soul to use.

dhw: That is why a surviving soul would need psychic means of observing and communicating. What other changes would be required, and what is your objection to the above description of the soul?

No objection to the description as stated.

DAVID: The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity of the brain.

dhw: What does “creating thought in the electricity…” mean? If the brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the soul, the soul creates thoughts!

By using the brain as I do in life.


David: Definition from Britannica:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy
"Soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body."

dhw: I see no difference between the two definitions. Individuality consists in each person’s immaterial thoughts, will, emotions, memories etc., and believers think these will survive death. How could the immaterial essence exclude consciousness and the ability to think?

It depends on how the soul operates in life and in death


dhw: Of course the soul learns. Consciousness and the ability to think are a blank (unlike personality) until they have something to be conscious of/to think about. The developing brain provides the information that the learning soul is conscious of and thinks about. For example, the soul learns the language by hearing the words through the brain (information), and it learns to say the words by using the brain (material expression). As the brain develops, so the soul has more and more information to think about and to express. That is the sense in which your soul depends on your brain to produce thought. […] Your materialism arises out of statements such as “a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”, "...the thought producing electrical impulses".

DAVID: Note, in the early part of your response we see you stating the soul uses the brain directly to learn. That is also me learning. Why does the soul have to stop using the brain to think when I know I use my brain to create thought as a living being?

dhw: Yet again you separate the soul from “me”! I have illustrated HOW the soul uses the brain: acquiring information and giving material expression. This process never stops, and I never said it did.

If your soul is in intimate communication with the brain, while learning, it is not separate so why can't you consider it uses the brain to think as I know I do.?


DAVID: [..] Since the soul is myself (defined above) and I think with my brain, my soul thinks with my brain as represented by the electricity that appears when thought is in progress.

dhw: But we don’t know if the brain-engendered electricity is the source of thought (materialism) or the result of thought (dualism).

That is your definition of dualism to which I disagree.

dhw: Above you opted for the result of thought, which means the soul thinks and the brain responds. The soul therefore doesn’t need the electric waves to THINK.

That is how you interpret what I think.


DAVID: My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.

dhw: Which theory? You have offered us multiple theories, including a “translation” theory which (mercifully) seems to have disappeared. If only you would stick to your now confirmed belief that the electricity is the brain’s response to the soul’s conscious thoughts, there would be none of this confusion over the meaning of dualism, and we could turn our attention to resolving the dichotomy between the two schools of thought.

Where do you think I said this? The electricity is the required means for I/soul to think.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Friday, August 17, 2018, 11:33 (2041 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: The brain is no longer present for the soul to use.

dhw: That is why a surviving soul would need psychic means of observing and communicating. What other changes would be required, and what is your objection to the above description of the soul?

DAVID: No objection to the description as stated.

You agree that the same soul (if it exists) survives the death of the brain, and you have come up with no changes apart from the means of observation and communication. You also agree that the soul is conscious and has the ability to think. Put the two together, and what have you got? In life, you have a conscious, thinking soul which depends on the brain for its means of observation and communication (= acquiring information and giving material expression to its thoughts – these functions being performed through the electricity of the brain). So why do you object to this perfectly logical description of how dualism works?

dhw: Individuality consists in each person’s immaterial thoughts, will, emotions, memories etc., and believers think these will survive death. How could the immaterial essence exclude consciousness and the ability to think?

DAVID: It depends on how the soul operates in life and in death.

Already agreed: if it exists, it “operates” by using material means of observing and communicating in life, and psychic means in death. Now please tell me how your immaterial essence could possibly exclude consciousness and the ability to think.


DAVID: If your soul is in intimate communication with the brain, while learning, it is not separate so why can't you consider it uses the brain to think as I know I do?

I have not said it is separate. I have pointed out that in dualism the two parts of the self (soul and body/brain) perform different functions, and the thinking soul uses the brain to provide the information it thinks about, and to give its thought material expression. The separation only occurs if the soul survives the death of the brain.

DAVID: My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.

dhw: Which theory? You have offered us multiple theories, including a “translation” theory which (mercifully) seems to have disappeared. If only you would stick to your now confirmed belief that the electricity is the brain’s response to the soul’s conscious thoughts, there would be none of this confusion over the meaning of dualism, and we could turn our attention to resolving the dichotomy between the two schools of thought.

DAVID: Where do you think I said this? The electricity is the required means for I/soul to think.

Here is the explicit exchange between us:

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the
soul to control the brain.

DAVID: I accept your second thought above.

If brain electricity is the brain’s RESPONSE to the thoughts of the soul, the thinking causes the electricity. It could hardly be clearer, and that is the dualistic view you accepted on Wednesday, although you then went on: “The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity in the brain”. I asked what “creating thought in the electricity” meant, and pointed out that if the brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the soul, the soul obviously creates the thoughts.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Friday, August 17, 2018, 17:53 (2040 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You agree that the same soul (if it exists) survives the death of the brain, and you have come up with no changes apart from the means of observation and communication. You also agree that the soul is conscious and has the ability to think. Put the two together, and what have you got? In life, you have a conscious, thinking soul which depends on the brain for its means of observation and communication (= acquiring information and giving material expression to its thoughts – these functions being performed through the electricity of the brain). So why do you object to this perfectly logical description of how dualism works?

Because I use the brain to create thought with electric currents in life and the soul is me, it does the same.


dhw: Individuality consists in each person’s immaterial thoughts, will, emotions, memories etc., and believers think these will survive death. How could the immaterial essence exclude consciousness and the ability to think?

DAVID: It depends on how the soul operates in life and in death.

dhw: Already agreed: if it exists, it “operates” by using material means of observing and communicating in life, and psychic means in death. Now please tell me how your immaterial essence could possibly exclude consciousness and the ability to think.

My body and brain are absent in death, and the soul maintains consciousness on its own as it joins the universal consciousness of God.

DAVID: If your soul is in intimate communication with the brain, while learning, it is not separate so why can't you consider it uses the brain to think as I know I do?

dhw: I have not said it is separate. I have pointed out that in dualism the two parts of the self (soul and body/brain) perform different functions, and the thinking soul uses the brain to provide the information it thinks about, and to give its thought material expression. The separation only occurs if the soul survives the death of the brain.

But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought


DAVID: My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.

dhw: Which theory? You have offered us multiple theories, including a “translation” theory which (mercifully) seems to have disappeared. If only you would stick to your now confirmed belief that the electricity is the brain’s response to the soul’s conscious thoughts, there would be none of this confusion over the meaning of dualism, and we could turn our attention to resolving the dichotomy between the two schools of thought.

DAVID: Where do you think I said this? The electricity is the required means for I/soul to think.

Here is the explicit exchange between us:

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the
soul to control the brain.

DAVID: I accept your second thought above.

dhw: If brain electricity is the brain’s RESPONSE to the thoughts of the soul, the thinking causes the electricity. It could hardly be clearer, and that is the dualistic view you accepted on Wednesday, although you then went on: “The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity in the brain”. I asked what “creating thought in the electricity” meant, and pointed out that if the brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the soul, the soul obviously creates the thoughts.

A total misinterpretation of my thinking as apparently I did yours. You know full well I know I create the electricity in the brain that represents thought. My soul is me and we together
initiate the thought/electricity in the brain. Your proposal separates you from your activity and your soul's activity, and you don't see the separation. Are you your soul or not?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Saturday, August 18, 2018, 07:41 (2040 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You agree that the same soul (if it exists) survives the death of the brain, and you have come up with no changes apart from the means of observation and communication. You also agree that the soul is conscious and has the ability to think. Put the two together, and what have you got? In life, you have a conscious, thinking soul which depends on the brain for its means of observation and communication (= acquiring information and giving material expression to its thoughts – these functions being performed through the electricity of the brain). So why do you object to this perfectly logical description of how dualism works?

DAVID: Because I use the brain to create thought with electric currents in life and the soul is me, it does the same.

Please point to any statement in the above which you think is incorrect, and please explain how the “immaterial essence of a human being” (the Britannica definition of “soul” which you accept), which you believe survives the death of the brain as your same essential self, can be conscious and able to think without electric currents in death, but cannot be conscious or able to think in life until the brain supplies it with electric currents.
Meanwhile, I don’t know how you can misinterpret the exchange below:

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the soul to control the brain.

DAVID: I accept your second thought above.

dhw: If you accept that the electricity is the brain’s response to the thought of the soul, the soul does not create thought with electricity, the electricity is the result of thoughts created by the soul.

DAVID: A total misinterpretation of my thinking as apparently I did yours. You know full well I know I create the electricity in the brain that represents thought.

I have no idea what you mean by the electricity “representing” thought. The only explanation you have given me so far is that the English-speaking soul thinks gibberish which creates electricity in the brain and the electricity goes back to the English-speaking soul which translates the gibberish into English. Why the soul should be capable of translating the gibberish into English but not capable of thinking its thought in English is beyond me.

DAVID: My soul is me and we together initiate the thought/electricity in the brain. Your proposal separates you from your activity and your soul's activity, and you don't see the separation. Are you your soul or not?

Yes, I am my soul, and since my soul is me, the only “we” who do things “together” are my soul and my brain. That is dualism. It is you who repeatedly separate my soul from me! I am quite happy to agree with you that the dualist’s soul initiates thought and is situated in the brain, but I don’t know why you have to bracket thought and electricity together as if they were the same thing. That is the basis of your extraordinary translation theory above. My proposal at the head of this post could hardly be clearer, but I’ll look forward to hearing which statements you reject. Your objection that the soul needs the brain’s electric currents in order to produce a thought clashes with your acceptance that the electric currents are the brain’s response to the thoughts of the soul. How can the brain respond to thought if the thought has not yet been created?

David: But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought.

I have accepted it a hundred times: in creating thought, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression. What I do not accept is your illogical translation theory, but perhaps you can answer my objections to it. Once more: either the brain’s electricity creates thought (materialism), or the soul’s thoughts cause electricity in the brain (dualism). Drugs/diseases suggest the former, and psychic experiences and experiments with learning suggest the latter. Hence the dichotomy we are trying to resolve. What is your objection to this statement?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 18, 2018, 18:33 (2039 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have no idea what you mean by the electricity “representing” thought. The only explanation you have given me so far is that the English-speaking soul thinks gibberish which creates electricity in the brain and the electricity goes back to the English-speaking soul which translates the gibberish into English. Why the soul should be capable of translating the gibberish into English but not capable of thinking its thought in English is beyond me.

DAVID: My soul is me and we together initiate the thought/electricity in the brain. Your proposal separates you from your activity and your soul's activity, and you don't see the separation. Are you your soul or not?

dhw: Yes, I am my soul, and since my soul is me, the only “we” who do things “together” are my soul and my brain. That is dualism. It is you who repeatedly separate my soul from me! I am quite happy to agree with you that the dualist’s soul initiates thought and is situated in the brain, but I don’t know why you have to bracket thought and electricity together as if they were the same thing. That is the basis of your extraordinary translation theory above. My proposal at the head of this post could hardly be clearer, but I’ll look forward to hearing which statements you reject. Your objection that the soul needs the brain’s electric currents in order to produce a thought clashes with your acceptance that the electric currents are the brain’s response to the thoughts of the soul. How can the brain respond to thought if the thought has not yet been created?

See below. I view the brain as my and my soul's tool for thought creation.


David: But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought.

dhw: I have accepted it a hundred times: in creating thought, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression. What I do not accept is your illogical translation theory, but perhaps you can answer my objections to it. Once more: either the brain’s electricity creates thought (materialism), or the soul’s thoughts cause electricity in the brain (dualism). Drugs/diseases suggest the former, and psychic experiences and experiments with learning suggest the latter. Hence the dichotomy we are trying to resolve. What is your objection to this statement?

One more time: as the soul and I, being the same, think, that process creates the electric waves in the brain which represent the thought. The brain on its own is only a tool for me and my soul. My soul and I process the thought by use of the electricity. How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity. Active thought is seen in fMRI's as increased blood flow, nothing more but it demonstrates the brain's activity in thought. If thought is electricity in the b rain, it must have a way of being translated back from electrical currents in living neurons and their connections. I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Sunday, August 19, 2018, 10:48 (2039 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought.

dhw: I have accepted it a hundred times: in creating thought, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression. What I do not accept is your illogical translation theory, but perhaps you can answer my objections to it. Once more: either the brain’s electricity creates thought (materialism), or the soul’s thoughts cause electricity in the brain (dualism). Drugs/diseases suggest the former, and psychic experiences and experiments with learning suggest the latter. Hence the dichotomy we are trying to resolve. What is your objection to this statement?

DAVID: One more time: as the soul and I, being the same, think, that process creates the electric waves in the brain which represent the thought.

This is fine with me. You now have the soul thinking, and the thought creates electric waves in the brain. That is dualism. But you never explain what you mean by the waves “representing” the thought. This is where the whole theory becomes so murky.

DAVID: The brain on its own is only a tool for me and my soul. My soul and I process the thought by use of the electricity.

Your bold is precisely what I also see as the essence of dualism, but your second statement is what causes the trouble. First of all, you continue to separate my soul and me. The dualistic “I” consist of two parts: the soul and the brain/body. The electricity comes from the brain. If my soul, as you said above, thinks, why does it need to “process” its thoughts by electricity? This in turn brings us back to your translation theory:

DAVID: How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity.

The hard problem is consciousness itself. What gives us the ability to think? You believe that the ability to think continues into an afterlife where there is no brain. And so your “essence” (Britannia) IS your ability to think, feel, remember etc. – what you call your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness – and the living you thinks in words, just as NDE patients do. The electricity in the brain is therefore the CONSEQUENCE of thought, as you agreed earlier but then disagreed. It makes no sense for the soul to think in electricity which it then has to translate into words! If it already knows the words, it thinks in words!

DAVID: Active thought is seen in fMRI's as increased blood flow, nothing more but it demonstrates the brain's activity in thought.

Yes, in dualism the thinking soul activates the brain.

DAVID: If thought is electricity in the brain….

But thought, as demonstrated by NDEs, appears NOT to be electricity in the brain. That is one reason why some people believe in a soul that does the thinking.

DAVID: …it must have a way of being translated back from electrical currents in living neurons and their connections.

As before: either thought is engendered by electricity in the brain (materialism) or it is engendered by an immaterial soul which CAUSES electricity in the brain (dualism). If there is a soul that thinks, it will think in words, and does not need to translate anything. It therefore only needs to use the brain for information and material expression.

DAVID: I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

Yes, that is what we are both trying to do, and I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 19, 2018, 19:38 (2038 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity.

dhw: The hard problem is consciousness itself. What gives us the ability to think? You believe that the ability to think continues into an afterlife where there is no brain. And so your “essence” (Britannia) IS your ability to think, feel, remember etc. – what you call your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness – and the living you thinks in words, just as NDE patients do. The electricity in the brain is therefore the CONSEQUENCE of thought, as you agreed earlier but then disagreed. It makes no sense for the soul to think in electricity which it then has to translate into words! If it already knows the words, it thinks in words!

The bold is not what I think about the brain and thought. The brain is a material electrical tool that I/soul use to create thought. The key is viewing the brain as as tool to use which is the materialism side of the discussion. When I/soul think fMRI lights up and electricity flows in the area designated. Those signals are the generation of thought using the brain. But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

And back to the newborn: blank slate, barely conscious with basic necessary reflex actions, sucking, grasping actively, while automatically breathing and digesting. The infant I/soul learn language from the brain, which acts as a teaching tool and gradually a use tool. Some how the input of vision, hearing brain electricity is translated for the infant into purposeful conscious information. At some point memory for living events appear and last a lifetime. At another point purposeful thought appears, rather than automatic reactions to hunger, discomfort, and other noxious brain input. I/soul must learn to use the brain and for all of this development I view the soul as providing the consciousness translation.


DAVID: Active thought is seen in fMRI's as increased blood flow, nothing more but it demonstrates the brain's activity in thought.

dhw: Yes, in dualism the thinking soul activates the brain.

DAVID: If thought is electricity in the brain….

dhw: But thought, as demonstrated by NDEs, appears NOT to be electricity in the brain. That is one reason why some people believe in a soul that does the thinking.

'Some people' but not me. I know I/soul uses the brain to create immaterial thought.


DAVID: …it must have a way of being translated back from electrical currents in living neurons and their connections.

dhw: As before: either thought is engendered by electricity in the brain (materialism) or it is engendered by an immaterial soul which CAUSES electricity in the brain (dualism). If there is a soul that thinks, it will think in words, and does not need to translate anything. It therefore only needs to use the brain for information and material expression.

As usual, at this point we stay in total disagreement. The act of thought by material me/soul creates thought represented by the electricity, which the brain passively creates as I/soul think.


DAVID: I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

dhw: Yes, that is what we are both trying to do, and I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.

Your theories skip over the material I present about child/brain development which show how the child/soul develop their use of the brain. I kn ow it is he material side of the problem.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, August 20, 2018, 12:21 (2038 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity.

dhw: The hard problem is consciousness itself. What gives us the ability to think? You believe that the ability to think continues into an afterlife where there is no brain. And so your “essence” (Britannia) IS your ability to think, feel, remember etc. – what you call your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness – and the living you thinks in words, just as NDE patients do. The electricity in the brain is therefore the CONSEQUENCE of thought, as you agreed earlier but then disagreed. It makes no sense for the soul to think in electricity which it then has to translate into words! If it already knows the words, it thinks in words!

DAVID: The bold is not what I think about the brain and thought. The brain is a material electrical tool that I/soul use to create thought. The key is viewing the brain as as tool to use which is the materialism side of the discussion. When I/soul think fMRI lights up and electricity flows in the area designated. Those signals are the generation of thought using the brain...

So far there is no difference between us. When the soul thinks, the brain lights up, and yes indeed, the thinking soul (if it exists) uses the brain.

DAVID: ...But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

And this is where your theory becomes incomprehensible to me. How can the soul think if it doesn’t have thoughts? Of course the signals are not thought itself: thought is thought itself. The English-speaking soul is conscious (as it is in NDEs), and so it thinks conscious thoughts inside your head (until you have no head). Once more: why does the soul have to translate its English words into electricity and then translate the electricity back into the English words it thought in the first place? Please answer.

DAVID: And back to the newborn: blank slate, barely conscious with basic necessary reflex actions, sucking, grasping actively, while automatically breathing and digesting. The infant I/soul learn language from the brain, which acts as a teaching tool and gradually a use tool. Some how the input of vision, hearing brain electricity is translated for the infant into purposeful conscious information. At some point memory for living events appear and last a lifetime. At another point purposeful thought appears, rather than automatic reactions to hunger, discomfort, and other noxious brain input. I/soul must learn to use the brain and for all of this development I view the soul as providing the consciousness translation.

I agree with all of this except the last non sequitur. What is a “consciousness translation”? The dualist’s soul IS his/her consciousness, and of course (unlike personality, with its inborn characteristics) it is a blank slate until it has something to be conscious of. As you say, the brain provides information, and as the brain develops, the dualist’s soul has more and more information to be conscious of and to use. This includes language, which the child’s soul learns to use in order to express the thoughts resulting from the information. You are right to point out that the infant doesn't yet think in words. My twin grandsons still aren’t talking, but they are thinking. If they want something, they can now point to it, go and get it, or even fight for it. They couldn’t do this at birth, but the soul develops and makes decisions as it absorbs information from the developing brain, and at the same time the brain/body develops the means of expression. Eventually, when their soul begins to master language as conveyed to them through the brain, they will think and express themselves as you and I do in words. The two thought processes are materially acquired information being immaterially processed (thinking about the information), and immaterial thought being expressed materially. That is how the soul “must learn to use the brain”. What do you disagree with?

DAVID: I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

dhw: Yes, that is what we are both trying to do, and I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.

DAVID: Your theories skip over the material I present about child/brain development which show how the child/soul develop their use of the brain. I know it is he material side of the problem.

My one theory incorporates the “material side of the problem”: the brain is the source of consciousness and thought, and as agreed above, the child is a blank (other than through its inborn characteristics) until the brain is mature enough to absorb information and then to instruct the rest of the (developing) body to express its thoughts materially. My theory in the context of child/brain development is the same as yours, except that the “soul” (if it exists) is the product of the brain through a process I have described under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, August 20, 2018, 17:47 (2037 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The bold is not what I think about the brain and thought. The brain is a material electrical tool that I/soul use to create thought. The key is viewing the brain as as tool to use which is the materialism side of the discussion. When I/soul think fMRI lights up and electricity flows in the area designated. Those signals are the generation of thought using the brain...

dhw: So far there is no difference between us. When the soul thinks, the brain lights up, and yes indeed, the thinking soul (if it exists) uses the brain.

DAVID: ...But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

dhw: And this is where your theory becomes incomprehensible to me. How can the soul think if it doesn’t have thoughts? Of course the signals are not thought itself: thought is thought itself. The English-speaking soul is conscious (as it is in NDEs), and so it thinks conscious thoughts inside your head (until you have no head). Once more: why does the soul have to translate its English words into electricity and then translate the electricity back into the English words it thought in the first place? Please answer.

I've answered over and over. Your soul is not separate from you as you exist in your material body. You think with your brain! Thought does not appear until you desire to initiate it and then we can see it in fMRI and electric waves. Remember evidence of no consciousness is a flat EEG during NDE's. You and your soul obviously think with brain waves as the container of the thoughts. You keep separating your soul from your brain. What do you think the EEG represents? .


DAVID: And back to the newborn: blank slate, barely conscious with basic necessary reflex actions, sucking, grasping actively, while automatically breathing and digesting. The infant I/soul learn language from the brain, which acts as a teaching tool and gradually a use tool. Some how the input of vision, hearing brain electricity is translated for the infant into purposeful conscious information. At some point memory for living events appear and last a lifetime. At another point purposeful thought appears, rather than automatic reactions to hunger, discomfort, and other noxious brain input. I/soul must learn to use the brain and for all of this development I view the soul as providing the consciousness translation.

dhw: I agree with all of this except the last non sequitur. What is a “consciousness translation”? The dualist’s soul IS his/her consciousness, and of course (unlike personality, with its inborn characteristics) it is a blank slate until it has something to be conscious of. ....Eventually, when their soul begins to master language as conveyed to them through the brain, they will think and express themselves as you and I do in words. The two thought processes are materially acquired information being immaterially processed (thinking about the information), and immaterial thought being expressed materially. That is how the soul “must learn to use the brain”. What do you disagree with?

Your separation of soul from brain processes in initiation of thought, as described in the paragraph above.


DAVID: I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

dhw: Yes, that is what we are both trying to do, and I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.

DAVID: Your theories skip over the material I present about child/brain development which show how the child/soul develop their use of the brain. I know it is the material side of the problem.

dhw: My one theory incorporates the “material side of the problem”: the brain is the source of consciousness and thought, and as agreed above, the child is a blank (other than through its inborn characteristics) until the brain is mature enough to absorb information and then to instruct the rest of the (developing) body to express its thoughts materially. My theory in the context of child/brain development is the same as yours, except that the “soul” (if it exists) is the product of the brain through a process I have described under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

Your theory is pure materialism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 12:23 (2037 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

dhw: And this is where your theory becomes incomprehensible to me. How can the soul think if it doesn’t have thoughts? Of course the signals are not thought itself: thought is thought itself. The English-speaking soul is conscious (as it is in NDEs), and so it thinks conscious thoughts inside your head (until you have no head). Once more: why does the soul have to translate its English words into electricity and then translate the electricity back into the English words it thought in the first place? Please answer.

DAVID: I've answered over and over. Your soul is not separate from you as you exist in your material body. You think with your brain! Thought does not appear until you desire to initiate it and then we can see it in fMRI and electric waves. Remember evidence of no consciousness is a flat EEG during NDE's. You and your soul obviously think with brain waves as the container of the thoughts. You keep separating your soul from your brain. What do you think the EEG represents?

We cannot “see” thoughts in electric waves. We see electric waves! If you and I have such a thing as a soul, it thinks in English, and that is the whole point of using NDEs as evidence. That is when the soul DOES separate from the body, and the flat EEG "represents" the case for thought without a brain. The brain is not functioning, and yet the English-speaking patient is able to observe and think in English. So how can NDEs possibly support your inexplicable and illogical theory that the English-speaking soul cannot think until its English thoughts are translated into electric brain waves which it then translates back into English?

dhw: I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we
shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.

DAVID: Your theories skip over the material I present about child/brain development which show how the child/soul develop their use of the brain. I know it is the material side of the problem.

dhw: My one theory incorporates the “material side of the problem”: the brain is the source of consciousness and thought, and as agreed above, the child is a blank (other than through its inborn characteristics) until the brain is mature enough to absorb information and then to instruct the rest of the (developing) body to express its thoughts materially. My theory in the context of child/brain development is the same as yours, except that the “soul” (if it exists) is the product of the brain through a process I have described under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

DAVID: Your theory is pure materialism.

First you objected to my theory because it didn’t tackle brain development in a child. I have dealt with that, and so now you object because the theory incorporates the “material side of the problem” by (theistic version) having your God design a mechanism (the brain) that creates immaterial consciousness and thought which in turn may - a carefully chosen auxiliary verb - BECOME the soul. This is not “pure” materialism; it is a way of reconciling materialism with dualism.

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--

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 17:18 (2036 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I've answered over and over. Your soul is not separate from you as you exist in your material body. You think with your brain! Thought does not appear until you desire to initiate it and then we can see it in fMRI and electric waves. Remember evidence of no consciousness is a flat EEG during NDE's. You and your soul obviously think with brain waves as the container of the thoughts. You keep separating your soul from your brain. What do you think the EEG represents?

dhw: We cannot “see” thoughts in electric waves. We see electric waves!

Of course waves, which represent the thoughts. How they do that is the problem of consciousness.

dhw:If you and I have such a thing as a soul, it thinks in English, and that is the whole point of using NDEs as evidence. That is when the soul DOES separate from the body, and the flat EEG "represents" the case for thought without a brain. The brain is not functioning, and yet the English-speaking patient is able to observe and think in English. So how can NDEs possibly support your inexplicable and illogical theory that the English-speaking soul cannot think until its English thoughts are translated into electric brain waves which it then translates back into English?

You have avoided the point that you are your soul. In life you think along with your soul using the brain. Therefore your soul uses the same mechanism as you. As for NDE's, I don't envision a soul with a rigid, one type mechanism for observation and thought. It has one method in life and another in death. NDE folks only know about their event when their brain wakes up and receives the soul's input back into brain waves which they recognize as new conscious information. In life the brain waves must be used to present thought.


dhw: My one theory incorporates the “material side of the problem”: the brain is the source of consciousness and thought, and as agreed above, the child is a blank (other than through its inborn characteristics) until the brain is mature enough to absorb information and then to instruct the rest of the (developing) body to express its thoughts materially. My theory in the context of child/brain development is the same as yours, except that the “soul” (if it exists) is the product of the brain through a process I have described under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

DAVID: Your theory is pure materialism.

dhw: First you objected to my theory because it didn’t tackle brain development in a child. I have dealt with that, and so now you object because the theory incorporates the “material side of the problem” by (theistic version) having your God design a mechanism (the brain) that creates immaterial consciousness and thought which in turn may - a carefully chosen auxiliary verb - BECOME the soul. This is not “pure” materialism; it is a way of reconciling materialism with dualism.

But your theory is bottom up: a material brain from God creates immaterial consciousness. If consciousness comes from a material brain it is purely a materialism theory. If God adds consciousness from His universal consciousness, then we are back to true dualism.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, August 22, 2018, 11:23 (2036 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:If you and I have such a thing as a soul, it thinks in English, and that is the whole point of using NDEs as evidence. That is when the soul DOES separate from the body, and the flat EEG "represents" the case for thought without a brain. The brain is not functioning, and yet the English-speaking patient is able to observe and think in English. So how can NDEs possibly support your inexplicable and illogical theory that the English-speaking soul cannot think until its English thoughts are translated into electric brain waves which it then translates back into English?

DAVID: You have avoided the point that you are your soul. In life you think along with your soul using the brain.

In life “you” are your soul and your body/brain. Your soul thinks, and uses your brain for information and material expression. In death “you” are your soul. You do not have a body/brain, and yet you are still the thinking "you" (if NDEs are to be believed). This is seen as evidence that the soul is the thinking part of "you" in life. Meanwhile, you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

DAVID: As for NDE's, I don't envision a soul with a rigid, one type mechanism for observation and thought. It has one method in life and another in death.

We have agreed that in life the soul (if it exists) uses the brain for observation and communication, but must use psychic means in death. Why must it have a different “mechanism” for thought? The only reason you have given is your belief in an illogical and inexplicable translation theory which depends on brain waves which don’t exist in death. Why can’t you stick to your original idea (repeated on the Egnor thread) that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness – i.e. is the source of consciousness and thought – both in life and in death?

DAVID: NDE folks only know about their event when their brain wakes up and receives the soul's input back into brain waves which they recognize as new conscious information. In life the brain waves must be used to present thought.

How the heck does this work? Do you, who believe in a soul, really believe that when the NDE patient’s soul undergoes these experiences it doesn’t know what’s happening? What “input” can it have if it doesn’t know what happened? Now you have the soul experiencing an event but not knowing anything about it until it gets the brain to translate what it doesn’t know into electric waves, and then the soul translates the waves into knowledge of the event it experienced. Why must we have all these illogical convolutions? Here’s a straightforward alternative: the soul – the immaterial thinking, feeling, remembering part of yourself – returns to the reawakened brain, and then the patient is able to recount his/her experiences as a disembodied soul.

DAVID: Your theory is pure materialism.

dhw: First you objected to my theory because it didn’t tackle brain development in a child. I have dealt with that, and so now you object because the theory incorporates the “material side of the problem” by (theistic version) having your God design a mechanism (the brain) that creates immaterial consciousness and thought which in turn may - a carefully chosen auxiliary verb - BECOME the soul. This is not “pure” materialism; it is a way of reconciling materialism with dualism.

DAVID: But your theory is bottom up: a material brain from God creates immaterial consciousness. If consciousness comes from a material brain it is purely a materialism theory. If God adds consciousness from His universal consciousness, then we are back to true dualism.

You’ve got it. My theory inverts the conventional concept of dualism, and that is how it reconciles the two schools of thought. Now that you’ve understood it, what are your objections?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 22, 2018, 18:50 (2035 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You have avoided the point that you are your soul. In life you think along with your soul using the brain.

dhw: In life “you” are your soul and your body/brain. Your soul thinks, and uses your brain for information and material expression. In death “you” are your soul. You do not have a body/brain, and yet you are still the thinking "you" (if NDEs are to be believed). This is seen as evidence that the soul is the thinking part of "you" in life. Meanwhile, you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

I've explained it over and over. Let's start by not accepting 'soul'. In life all of us think with our brains. You don't deny that. Next, accept our souls are our essence. They do exactly what we do but as immaterial forms. If I think with my brain my soul does also. There can be no other conclusion unless, as you always proclaim, the soul thinks separatly from the brain and just broadcasts its thoughts through the brain just like a radio broadcaster speaking into a mic.

DAVID: NDE folks only know about their event when their brain wakes up and receives the soul's input back into brain waves which they recognize as new conscious information. In life the brain waves must be used to present thought.

dhw: Do you, who believe in a soul, really believe that when the NDE patient’s soul undergoes these experiences it doesn’t know what’s happening? What “input” can it have if it doesn’t know what happened? Now you have the soul experiencing an event but not knowing anything about it until it gets the brain to translate what it doesn’t know into electric waves, and then the soul translates the waves into knowledge of the event it experienced.

A total misrepresentation of my theory. Of course the soul knows what is going on in the NDE, but the unconscious patient does not know until the soul returns to usable brain networks to inform the now conscious patient. You need to read Eben Alexander's book, a far greater expert than I.


DAVID: Your theory is pure materialism.

dhw: First you objected to my theory because it didn’t tackle brain development in a child. I have dealt with that, and so now you object because the theory incorporates the “material side of the problem” by (theistic version) having your God design a mechanism (the brain) that creates immaterial consciousness and thought which in turn may - a carefully chosen auxiliary verb - BECOME the soul. This is not “pure” materialism; it is a way of reconciling materialism with dualism.


DAVID: But your theory is bottom up: a material brain from God creates immaterial consciousness. If consciousness comes from a material brain it is purely a materialism theory. If God adds consciousness from His universal consciousness, then we are back to true dualism.

dhw: You’ve got it. My theory inverts the conventional concept of dualism, and that is how it reconciles the two schools of thought. Now that you’ve understood it, what are your objections?

I've got it all along. It doesn't explain immaterial consciousness at all, but a material source for the immaterial. How are the EEG waves translated into understandable thought? My addition of God's consciousness is not what you have really proposed in the past or even now. You still have the brain with a brain-based mechanism for consciousness which is not really a part of a universal God's consciousness.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Thursday, August 23, 2018, 12:44 (2035 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

DAVID: I've explained it over and over.

You have repeated it over and over, but have never explained it, no doubt because one cannot explain something that makes no sense. My apologies if this sounds offensive, but I really do wish you would drop the whole theory! At least your original theory, that our consciousness (soul) was part of God’s consciousness, was intelligible.

DAVID: Let's start by not accepting 'soul'. In life all of us think with our brains. You don't deny that.

In this context, “we think with our brains” is an obfuscation. There are two possibilities. If the soul doesn’t exist, our brains do the thinking. If the soul does exist, the soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and material expression.

DAVID: Next, accept our souls are our essence. They do exactly what we do but as immaterial forms. If I think with my brain my soul does also.

Yet again you separate the soul from “I” – the “crime” you keep accusing me of! The soul IS the immaterial essence of you. It doesn’t do what you do. It does what it does! And yes it thinks and uses your brain as above.

DAVID: There can be no other conclusion unless, as you always proclaim, the soul thinks separatly from the brain and just broadcasts its thoughts through the brain just like a radio broadcaster speaking into a mic.

It is your belief that the soul thinks separately from the brain when there is no brain! So if the soul can think separately from the brain when there is no brain, there “can be no other conclusion” than that in life it thinks and uses the brain to gather information and to “broadcast” or give material expression to its thoughts (speech is not the only form of expression).

DAVID: NDE folks only know about their event when their brain wakes up and receives the soul's input back into brain waves which they recognize as new conscious information. In life the brain waves must be used to present thought.

dhw: Do you, who believe in a soul, really believe that when the NDE patient’s soul undergoes these experiences it doesn’t know what’s happening? What “input” can it have if it doesn’t know what happened? Now you have the soul experiencing an event but not knowing anything about it until it gets the brain to translate what it doesn’t know into electric waves, and then the soul translates the waves into knowledge of the event it experienced.

DAVID: A total misrepresentation of my theory. Of course the soul knows what is going on in the NDE, but the unconscious patient does not know until the soul returns to usable brain networks to inform the now conscious patient. […]

Once again, it is you who are separating the soul from the self! The soul IS the unconscious patient – it is his immaterial identity, the conscious part of his self. And it still knows about its experiences when it returns to the brain, and then it uses the brain to communicate its experience to others. It makes no sense to say that the soul informs itself of what it experienced!

dhw: You’ve got it. My theory inverts the conventional concept of dualism, and that is how it reconciles the two schools of thought. Now that you’ve understood it, what are your objections?

DAVID: I've got it all along. It doesn't explain immaterial consciousness at all, but a material source for the immaterial. How are the EEG waves translated into understandable thought?

NOTHING explains immaterial consciousness! It is a mystery. At those moments when you forget about your illogical translation theory, you claim that our consciousness is a part of your God’s consciousness. That doesn’t explain consciousness either – it merely shifts the mystery to God instead of ourselves. And how, in your illogical translation theory, can the soul think incomprehensible thoughts and have them “translated” into electrical waves, which it then translates back into understandable thought?

DAVID: My addition of God's consciousness is not what you have really proposed in the past or even now. You still have the brain with a brain-based mechanism for consciousness which is not really a part of a universal God's consciousness.

I don’t know what you mean by “addition” – I thought you believed the soul WAS part of God’s consciousness, but couldn’t think until it had done the weird translation trick. My theory (theistic version) has your God inventing a machine (the brain) which can produce thought and possibly even an immaterial essence that can survive the demise of the machine. Humans are also trying to produce machines that can think, but (theistic version), your God got there before them. Your only objection now seems to be that this doesn’t fit in with your theory (whichever one it happens to be). I’ve told you my logical objections to yours. What are your logical objections to mine?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 23, 2018, 19:56 (2034 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

DAVID: I've explained it over and over.

dhw: You have repeated it over and over, but have never explained it, no doubt because one cannot explain something that makes no sense. My apologies if this sounds offensive, but I really do wish you would drop the whole theory! At least your original theory, that our consciousness (soul) was part of God’s consciousness, was intelligible.

That our consciousness is part of God's has never changed.


DAVID: Let's start by not accepting 'soul'. In life all of us think with our brains. You don't deny that.

dhw: In this context, “we think with our brains” is an obfuscation. There are two possibilities. If the soul doesn’t exist, our brains do the thinking. If the soul does exist, the soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and material expression.

Not so. I use my brain to think. I control my brain . It does nothing until I tell it to act. That is the material side of the issue. I view your thought at totally confused.


DAVID: Next, accept our souls are our essence. They do exactly what we do but as immaterial forms. If I think with my brain my soul does also.

dhw: Yet again you separate the soul from “I” – the “crime” you keep accusing me of! The soul IS the immaterial essence of you. It doesn’t do what you do. It does what it does! And yes it thinks and uses your brain as above.

My soul is me! You've separated us again!


dhw: You’ve got it. My theory inverts the conventional concept of dualism, and that is how it reconciles the two schools of thought. Now that you’ve understood it, what are your objections?

DAVID: I've got it all along. It doesn't explain immaterial consciousness at all, but a material source for the immaterial. How are the EEG waves translated into understandable thought?

dhw: NOTHING explains immaterial consciousness! It is a mystery. At those moments when you forget about your illogical translation theory, you claim that our consciousness is a part of your God’s consciousness. That doesn’t explain consciousness either – it merely shifts the mystery to God instead of ourselves. And how, in your illogical translation theory, can the soul think incomprehensible thoughts and have them “translated” into electrical waves, which it then translates back into understandable thought?

The soul and I, one and the same, use the brain to create thoughts. My soul is separate from me only in death or NDE's,


DAVID: My addition of God's consciousness is not what you have really proposed in the past or even now. You still have the brain with a brain-based mechanism for consciousness which is not really a part of a universal God's consciousness.

I don’t know what you mean by “addition” – I thought you believed the soul WAS part of God’s consciousness, but couldn’t think until it had done the weird translation trick. My theory (theistic version) has your God inventing a machine (the brain) which can produce thought and possibly even an immaterial essence that can survive the demise of the machine. Humans are also trying to produce machines that can think, but (theistic version), your God got there before them. Your only objection now seems to be that this doesn’t fit in with your theory (whichever one it happens to be). I’ve told you my logical objections to yours. What are your logical objections to mine?

Having the grain invent consciousness is materialism. My soul is me and the soul and I use the brain to create thought. When Libet asked his subjects to think and timed EEG results why did he measure EEG timing ?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 23, 2018, 23:03 (2034 days ago) @ David Turell

This article is about a scientist who studies comatose patients and others who have brain damage and might or might not be conscious and may or may not have consciousness:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

"Can consciousness be stimulated?

"Yes, by transcranial direct-current stimulation. Using scalp electrodes, we can stimulate particular regions of the brain. By careful placement, we can select the region responsible for speech, which is connected with consciousness. If I stimulate this region of the brain, the patient may hear and understand what I say. In some cases, a patient has been able to communicate transiently for the first time after a 20-minute stimulation—by, for example, making a simple movement in response to a question. Other patients have been able to follow a person with their eyes. Although consciousness does not reside in our muscles, stimulating patients may enable them to move muscles consciously.
This technique works in about half of patients with minimal consciousness. In my opinion, this represents the future of treatment, even though we do not yet know precisely which regions of the brain are the most responsive to stimulation or whether they should be stimulated on a daily basis. But I don’t want to give people false hope. We are still faced with the question of the minimum acceptable quality of life. This is a major philosophical and ethical problem that will be answered differently by different people. I would recommend that everyone discuss these issues in advance with a trusted person. Then you will know that, if you are ever in that position, your desires and values will be taken into account.

"Do you think that consciousness can be reduced to the brain alone?

"We already know quite a bit about the brain processes that underlie attention, perception and emotions. There is no point in throwing this knowledge out the window. As a neurologist, I see the consequences of brain damage every day. It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions. As a physician, it is my aim to translate this knowledge into practice. It may be frustrating that we currently lack the tools to measure the hundreds of billions of synapses with their tangled mass of neurotransmitters. Nonetheless, I think it is a mistake to infer from this that we can never understand consciousness.

Comment: This is the conclusion of the interview. The whole interview is fascinating.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 24, 2019, 05:00 (1577 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study on six folks wit h half the brain removed in childhood to stop severe epilepsy:

https://www.livescience.com/hemisphere-removed-brain-plasticity.html?utm_source=Sellige...

"One of the best ways to understand this plasticity is to study patients who had parts of their brains removed. For the new study, a group of researchers at the California Institute of Technology analyzed the brains of six adults in their 20s and 30s who had hemispherectomies when they were between 3 months old and 11 years old to reduce epileptic seizures.

"The team found that, among patients with only one brain hemisphere, brain regions involved in the same network (such as vision) worked together just as well as those in healthy patients who had their entire brains intact.

"What's more, the authors found that connectivity — and thus communication — between parts of different networks are actually stronger in patients who had a hemisphere removed. In this way, it seems the brain is able to compensate for the loss of brain structure, the authors said.Many of these patients were high functioning, with intact language skills. "When I put them in the scanner we made small talk, just like the hundreds of other individuals I have scanned," lead author Dorit Kliemann, a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, said a the statement. "You can almost forget their condition when you meet them for the first time."

***

"There are many other cases in the literature that document the brain's amazing ability to adapt to an unexpected situation. For example, a young boy had a third of his right hemisphere removed, which included the part of the brain responsible for sight. But a few years after his surgery, neuroscientists found that the left side of his brain started taking on the missing left side's visual tasks, and he could still see just fine, according to a previous Live Science report.

"Another recent study found a small group of women who could smell despite missing their olfactory bulbs, the region in the front of the brain that processes information about smells. Though it's unclear how this happens, researchers think that it's possible another part of their brain took on the task of processing smells, according to another Live Science report."

Comment: this degree of adaptive plasticity comes built in. And note full consciousness with a half brain. Consciousness is not related to a whole substrate. it seems any portion of the brain will have it. Egnor has noted fully functional folks with a sliver of rind for a brain. We know substances that alter brain function alter consciousness. But a normally functioning half a brain is all that is needed. Obviously the brain does not make consciousness, which is Egnor's point.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by dhw, Sunday, November 24, 2019, 13:41 (1577 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A new study on six folks with half the brain removed in childhood to stop severe epilepsy:
https://www.livescience.com/hemisphere-removed-brain-plasticity.html?utm_source=Sellige...

QUOTES: In this way, it seems the brain is able to compensate for the loss of brain structure…

“There are many other cases in the literature that document the brain's amazing ability to adapt to an unexpected situation. For example, a young boy had a third of his right hemisphere removed, which included the part of the brain responsible for sight. But a few years after his surgery, neuroscientists found that the left side of his brain started taking on the missing left side's visual tasks, and he could still see just fine, according to a previous Live Science report.”

"Another recent study found a small group of women who could smell despite missing their olfactory bulbs, the region in the front of the brain that processes information about smells. Though it's unclear how this happens, researchers think that it's possible another part of their brain took on the task of processing smells, according to another Live Science report."

DAVID: this degree of adaptive plasticity comes built in. And note full consciousness with a half brain. Consciousness is not related to a whole substrate. it seems any portion of the brain will have it. Egnor has noted fully functional folks with a sliver of rind for a brain. We know substances that alter brain function alter consciousness. But a normally functioning half a brain is all that is needed. Obviously the brain does not make consciousness, which is Egnor's point.

Although I remain neutral on the subject of materialism v dualism, I am mystified as to how you (and Egnor) can use these cases to argue against materialism. The proposal is clearly that the remaining cells cooperate to compensate for the loss, thereby “taking on the…visual tasks” or the “task of processing smells”. This suggests that the cells of the brain know precisely what they are doing (= they are conscious). How does that “obviously” mean they don’t "make consciousness?

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 24, 2019, 20:43 (1576 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A new study on six folks with half the brain removed in childhood to stop severe epilepsy:
https://www.livescience.com/hemisphere-removed-brain-plasticity.html?utm_source=Sellige...

QUOTES: In this way, it seems the brain is able to compensate for the loss of brain structure…

“There are many other cases in the literature that document the brain's amazing ability to adapt to an unexpected situation. For example, a young boy had a third of his right hemisphere removed, which included the part of the brain responsible for sight. But a few years after his surgery, neuroscientists found that the left side of his brain started taking on the missing left side's visual tasks, and he could still see just fine, according to a previous Live Science report.”

"Another recent study found a small group of women who could smell despite missing their olfactory bulbs, the region in the front of the brain that processes information about smells. Though it's unclear how this happens, researchers think that it's possible another part of their brain took on the task of processing smells, according to another Live Science report."

DAVID: this degree of adaptive plasticity comes built in. And note full consciousness with a half brain. Consciousness is not related to a whole substrate. it seems any portion of the brain will have it. Egnor has noted fully functional folks with a sliver of rind for a brain. We know substances that alter brain function alter consciousness. But a normally functioning half a brain is all that is needed. Obviously the brain does not make consciousness, which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Although I remain neutral on the subject of materialism v dualism, I am mystified as to how you (and Egnor) can use these cases to argue against materialism. The proposal is clearly that the remaining cells cooperate to compensate for the loss, thereby “taking on the…visual tasks” or the “task of processing smells”. This suggests that the cells of the brain know precisely what they are doing (= they are conscious). How does that “obviously” mean they don’t "make consciousness?

There is another side to this discussion. Have you forgotten that split brain folks also have one intact consciousness. We both agree the brain neurons know how to change brain connections. That is built in and of no issue. You seize on smell and vision to support your theory and I am discussing only at the level of immaterial whole consciousness with parts of a brain always able to produce it. I'm with Egnor and the evidence. How does that happen if consciousness comes only from a material brain? Unless you can define your materialism differently, you make no sense.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by dhw, Monday, November 25, 2019, 13:28 (1576 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: this degree of adaptive plasticity comes built in. And note full consciousness with a half brain. Consciousness is not related to a whole substrate. it seems any portion of the brain will have it. Egnor has noted fully functional folks with a sliver of rind for a brain. We know substances that alter brain function alter consciousness. But a normally functioning half a brain is all that is needed. Obviously the brain does not make consciousness, which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Although I remain neutral on the subject of materialism v dualism, I am mystified as to how you (and Egnor) can use these cases to argue against materialism. The proposal is clearly that the remaining cells cooperate to compensate for the loss, thereby “taking on the…visual tasks” or the “task of processing smells”. This suggests that the cells of the brain know precisely what they are doing (= they are conscious). How does that “obviously” mean they don’t "make consciousness?

DAVID: There is another side to this discussion. Have you forgotten that split brain folks also have one intact consciousness. We both agree the brain neurons know how to change brain connections. That is built in and of no issue. You seize on smell and vision to support your theory and I am discussing only at the level of immaterial whole consciousness with parts of a brain always able to produce it. I'm with Egnor and the evidence. How does that happen if consciousness comes only from a material brain? Unless you can define your materialism differently, you make no sense.

It is not my theory. I remain neutral. However, materialism argues that the source of consciousness is the material cells, and if parts of a brain (i.e. material cells) “are always able to produce it”, that means that cells are always able to produce it! You could hardly state a clearer case for materialism! And the article shows that if parts of the brain lose the ability to see or hear, the remaining parts of the brain use their consciousness to cooperate in taking on the new tasks.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by David Turell @, Monday, November 25, 2019, 14:15 (1576 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: this degree of adaptive plasticity comes built in. And note full consciousness with a half brain. Consciousness is not related to a whole substrate. it seems any portion of the brain will have it. Egnor has noted fully functional folks with a sliver of rind for a brain. We know substances that alter brain function alter consciousness. But a normally functioning half a brain is all that is needed. Obviously the brain does not make consciousness, which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Although I remain neutral on the subject of materialism v dualism, I am mystified as to how you (and Egnor) can use these cases to argue against materialism. The proposal is clearly that the remaining cells cooperate to compensate for the loss, thereby “taking on the…visual tasks” or the “task of processing smells”. This suggests that the cells of the brain know precisely what they are doing (= they are conscious). How does that “obviously” mean they don’t "make consciousness?

DAVID: There is another side to this discussion. Have you forgotten that split brain folks also have one intact consciousness. We both agree the brain neurons know how to change brain connections. That is built in and of no issue. You seize on smell and vision to support your theory and I am discussing only at the level of immaterial whole consciousness with parts of a brain always able to produce it. I'm with Egnor and the evidence. How does that happen if consciousness comes only from a material brain? Unless you can define your materialism differently, you make no sense.

dhw: It is not my theory. I remain neutral. However, materialism argues that the source of consciousness is the material cells, and if parts of a brain (i.e. material cells) “are always able to produce it”, that means that cells are always able to produce it! You could hardly state a clearer case for materialism! And the article shows that if parts of the brain lose the ability to see or hear, the remaining parts of the brain use their consciousness to cooperate in taking on the new tasks.

Your analysis means a material evolution developed an immaterial form in our consciousness. Incredulous!

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by dhw, Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 10:51 (1575 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: There is another side to this discussion. Have you forgotten that split brain folks also have one intact consciousness. We both agree the brain neurons know how to change brain connections. That is built in and of no issue. You seize on smell and vision to support your theory and I am discussing only at the level of immaterial whole consciousness with parts of a brain always able to produce it. I'm with Egnor and the evidence. How does that happen if consciousness comes only from a material brain? Unless you can define your materialism differently, you make no sense.

dhw: It is not my theory. I remain neutral. However, materialism argues that the source of consciousness is the material cells, and if parts of a brain (i.e. material cells) “are always able to produce it”, that means that cells are always able to produce it! You could hardly state a clearer case for materialism! And the article shows that if parts of the brain lose the ability to see or hear, the remaining parts of the brain use their consciousness to cooperate in taking on the new tasks.

DAVID: Your analysis means a material evolution developed an immaterial form in our consciousness. Incredulous!

We have been over the arguments for and against materialism and dualism many times, and I am surprised that you are now surprised that materialists believe that consciousness has a material source. I am also surprised at your failure to answer the points I have made above in relation to the article, which you claimed provided evidence for dualism.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 15:35 (1574 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: There is another side to this discussion. Have you forgotten that split brain folks also have one intact consciousness. We both agree the brain neurons know how to change brain connections. That is built in and of no issue. You seize on smell and vision to support your theory and I am discussing only at the level of immaterial whole consciousness with parts of a brain always able to produce it. I'm with Egnor and the evidence. How does that happen if consciousness comes only from a material brain? Unless you can define your materialism differently, you make no sense.

dhw: It is not my theory. I remain neutral. However, materialism argues that the source of consciousness is the material cells, and if parts of a brain (i.e. material cells) “are always able to produce it”, that means that cells are always able to produce it! You could hardly state a clearer case for materialism! And the article shows that if parts of the brain lose the ability to see or hear, the remaining parts of the brain use their consciousness to cooperate in taking on the new tasks.

DAVID: Your analysis means a material evolution developed an immaterial form in our consciousness. Incredulous!

dhw: We have been over the arguments for and against materialism and dualism many times, and I am surprised that you are now surprised that materialists believe that consciousness has a material source. I am also surprised at your failure to answer the points I have made above in relation to the article, which you claimed provided evidence for dualism.

I was being sarcastic. None of us know how the material creates the immaterial. And its persistence no matter how many neurons are left, means if one thinks of consciousness having a functional active size, that means in materialism each neuron is capable of doing more and more work.

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by dhw, Wednesday, November 27, 2019, 08:55 (1574 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your analysis means a material evolution developed an immaterial form in our consciousness. Incredulous!

dhw: We have been over the arguments for and against materialism and dualism many times, and I am surprised that you are now surprised that materialists believe that consciousness has a material source. I am also surprised at your failure to answer the points I have made above in relation to the article, which you claimed provided evidence for dualism.

DAVID: I was being sarcastic. None of us know how the material creates the immaterial. And its persistence no matter how many neurons are left, means if one thinks of consciousness having a functional active size, that means in materialism each neuron is capable of doing more and more work.

None of us know how the immaterial works anyway, and dualism raises just as many questions as materialism! It’s clear from the article that the neurons are indeed capable of more and more work, but there must presumably be a limit, and if that is reached, the patient will no longer be able to see, hear, or think. I’m sure that during your long career as a doctor you will have seen many such patients!

Consciousness: only half brain needed

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 27, 2019, 15:25 (1573 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your analysis means a material evolution developed an immaterial form in our consciousness. Incredulous!

dhw: We have been over the arguments for and against materialism and dualism many times, and I am surprised that you are now surprised that materialists believe that consciousness has a material source. I am also surprised at your failure to answer the points I have made above in relation to the article, which you claimed provided evidence for dualism.

DAVID: I was being sarcastic. None of us know how the material creates the immaterial. And its persistence no matter how many neurons are left, means if one thinks of consciousness having a functional active size, that means in materialism each neuron is capable of doing more and more work.

dhw: None of us know how the immaterial works anyway, and dualism raises just as many questions as materialism! It’s clear from the article that the neurons are indeed capable of more and more work, but there must presumably be a limit, and if that is reached, the patient will no longer be able to see, hear, or think. I’m sure that during your long career as a doctor you will have seen many such patients!

Yes, I have.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Friday, August 24, 2018, 12:03 (2034 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

DAVID: I've explained it over and over.

dhw: You have repeated it over and over, but have never explained it, no doubt because one cannot explain something that makes no sense. My apologies if this sounds offensive, but I really do wish you would drop the whole theory! At least your original theory, that our consciousness (soul) was part of God’s consciousness, was intelligible.

DAVID: That our consciousness is part of God's has never changed.

You still haven’t explained your unintelligible translation theory. I hope this means you’ve quietly withdrawn it.

DAVID: Let's start by not accepting 'soul'. In life all of us think with our brains. You don't deny that.

dhw: In this context, “we think with our brains” is an obfuscation. There are two possibilities. If the soul doesn’t exist, our brains do the thinking. If the soul does exist, the soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and material expression.

DAVID: Not so. I use my brain to think. I control my brain . It does nothing until I tell it to act. That is the material side of the issue. I view your thought at totally confused.

Yet again you separate your soul from you! “You” in your dualistic life are your soul and your brain. Your soul uses your brain and controls your brain and your brain does nothing until your soul tells it to act.

DAVID: Next, accept our souls are our essence. They do exactly what we do but as immaterial forms. If I think with my brain my soul does also.

dhw: Yet again you separate the soul from “I” – the “crime” you keep accusing me of! The soul IS the immaterial essence of you. It doesn’t do what you do. It does what it does! And yes it thinks and uses your brain as above.

DAVID: My soul is me! You've separated us again!

You say the soul does what we do. THAT separates soul from us! Soul and brain are the two parts of your dualistic self. The soul part of you uses the brain part of you to think (in the manner I keep describing).

DAVID: I've got it all along. It [= the dhw theory] doesn't explain immaterial consciousness at all, but a material source for the immaterial. How are the EEG waves translated into understandable thought?

dhw: NOTHING explains immaterial consciousness! It is a mystery. At those moments when you forget about your illogical translation theory, you claim that our consciousness is a part of your God’s consciousness. That doesn’t explain consciousness either – it merely shifts the mystery to God instead of ourselves. And how, in your illogical translation theory, can the soul think incomprehensible thoughts and have them “translated” into electrical waves, which it then translates back into understandable thought?

DAVID: The soul and I, one and the same, use the brain to create thoughts. My soul is separate from me only in death or NDE's.

You have repeated the points we agree on (except for HOW the soul uses the brain). No comment on your illogical translation theory. This is a hopeful sign.

DAVID: My addition of God's consciousness is not what you have really proposed in the past or even now. You still have the brain with a brain-based mechanism for consciousness which is not really a part of a universal God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know what you mean by “addition” – I thought you believed the soul WAS part of God’s consciousness, but couldn’t think until it had done the weird translation trick. My theory (theistic version) has your God inventing a machine (the brain) which can produce thought and possibly even an immaterial essence that can survive the demise of the machine. Humans are also trying to produce machines that can think, but (theistic version), your God got there before them. Your only objection now seems to be that this doesn’t fit in with your theory (whichever one it happens to be). I’ve told you my logical objections to yours. What are your logical objections to mine?

DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

Not invent. Produce. Yes, my theory attempts to reconcile materialism and dualism by inverting the conventional approach, and showing how materials might produce a soul.

DAVID: […] When Libet asked his subjects to think and timed EEG results why did he measure EEG timing ?

Why must you muddy the waters with Libet’s experiments? They support the belief that the brain initiates thought, and so we do not have free will. Dualists object. If anything, I can use Libet to support my theory.
xxxxxx
DAVID: This article is about a scientist who studies comatose patients and others who have brain damage and might or might not be conscious and may or may not have consciousness:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.

Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Friday, August 24, 2018, 23:22 (2033 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: That our consciousness is part of God's has never changed.

dhw: You still haven’t explained your unintelligible translation theory. I hope this means you’ve quietly withdrawn it.

Never! Thoughts are fully represented by the brain's electric waves. Whatever solves the problem of consciousness translates them back


DAVID: Not so. I use my brain to think. I control my brain . It does nothing until I tell it to act. That is the material side of the issue. I view your thought at totally confused.

dhw: Yet again you separate your soul from you! “You” in your dualistic life are your soul and your brain. Your soul uses your brain and controls your brain and your brain does nothing until your soul tells it to act.

You've separated again: I am my soul and we together use the brain to think.

dhw: You say the soul does what we do. THAT separates soul from us! Soul and brain are the two parts of your dualistic self. The soul part of you uses the brain part of you to think (in the manner I keep describing).

And I keep rejecting, because you refuse to accept the electricity as representing the thoughts created


DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

dhw: Not invent. Produce. Yes, my theory attempts to reconcile materialism and dualism by inverting the conventional approach, and showing how materials might produce a soul.

The consciousness we experience is presented by the soul; consciousness by itself is not the soul . your inverted mechanism is still materialism.


DAVID: […] When Libet asked his subjects to think and timed EEG results why did he measure EEG timing ?

Why must you muddy the waters with Libet’s experiments? They support the belief that the brain initiates thought, and so we do not have free will. Dualists object. If anything, I can use Libet to support my theory.

The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much..

xxxxxx

DAVID: This article is about a scientist who studies comatose patients and others who have brain damage and might or might not be conscious and may or may not have consciousness:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.

dhw: Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Saturday, August 25, 2018, 11:34 (2033 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: That our consciousness is part of God's has never changed.

dhw: You still haven’t explained your unintelligible translation theory. I hope this means you’ve quietly withdrawn it.

DAVID: Never! Thoughts are fully represented by the brain's electric waves. Whatever solves the problem of consciousness translates them back.

You have never explained what you mean by thoughts being “represented”. I thought you believed that the soul was part of God’s consciousness, and so the soul was the solution to the problem and was the initiator of thought. So back we go: your English-speaking soul initiates thought, the thought is translated into electric brain waves, the English-speaking soul translates the brain waves into English, and then your English-speaking soul understands the English-speaking thought it had in the first place. Usual question: why can’t your English-speaking soul understand its own thoughts without all this rigmarole, as you believe it does in the afterlife when there is no brain? You can treat the question as rhetorical if you like, since it is clearly unanswerable.

DAVID: I use my brain to think. I control my brain . It does nothing until I tell it to act. That is the material side of the issue. I view your thought at totally confused.

dhw: Yet again you separate your soul from you! “You” in your dualistic life are your soul and your brain. Your soul uses your brain and controls your brain and your brain does nothing until your soul tells it to act.

DAVID: You've separated again: I am my soul and we together use the brain to think.

In life you are your soul and your brain/body. “I am my soul” is correct. “We together” separates you from the soul.

dhw: You say the soul does what we do. THAT separates soul from us! Soul and brain are the two parts of your dualistic self. The soul part of you uses the brain part of you to think (in the manner I keep describing).

DAVID: And I keep rejecting, because you refuse to accept the electricity as representing the thoughts created.

I don’t know what you mean by “representing” thought, as above. Electricity is explained by the brain passing information to the soul, and the soul passing instructions to the brain. It is not explained by the illogical translation theory described above, which you have never managed to explain.

DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

dhw: Not invent. Produce. Yes, my theory attempts to reconcile materialism and dualism by inverting the conventional approach, and showing how materials might produce a soul.

DAVID: The consciousness we experience is presented by the soul; consciousness by itself is not the soul. Your inverted mechanism is still materialism.

I don’t know what you mean by “presented by the soul”. "We" = the material body/brain and the immaterial soul, the latter being the source of consciousness. Of course the dualist’s consciousness by itself is not the soul. It is the whole immaterial identity, including consciousness. I keep saying that the inverted mechanism is materialism, but it offers the possibility that (theistic version) your God has created materials which in turn produce the immaterial soul. You continually ignore this part of the theory.

DAVID: […] When Libet asked his subjects to think and timed EEG results why did he measure EEG timing ?

dhw: Why must you muddy the waters with Libet’s experiments? They support the belief that the brain initiates thought, and so we do not have free will. Dualists object. If anything, I can use Libet to support my theory.

DAVID: The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much.

It doesn’t upset me at all. Libet believes that thought is engendered by the brain, and that is why there is no such thing as free will – the exact opposite of what you believe. Most studies focus on the brain, because you can only study materials, you can’t study souls. That is why dualists disagree with Libet, and why you and I cheered the article below:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.

dhw: Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

DAVID: And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

Unfortunately the whole article is not available, but in the extract you gave us there is nothing whatsoever about your cryptic “brain waves representing the ability to think”. The author tells us to be opened-minded about the source of consciousness (which is inseparable from the ability to think). The brain’s ability to act on thoughts is one part of my own proposal – that the electric waves signify the process of giving material expression to thought – the other being the passing of information.


--

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 25, 2018, 18:51 (2032 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Never! Thoughts are fully represented by the brain's electric waves. Whatever solves the problem of consciousness translates them back.

dhw: You have never explained what you mean by thoughts being “represented”.....Usual question: why can’t your English-speaking soul understand its own thoughts without all this rigmarole, as you believe it does in the afterlife when there is no brain? You can treat the question as rhetorical if you like, since it is clearly unanswerable.

Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply. In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness. I am my soul, no separation, and I propose the soul has a mechanism to accomplish the conversions into electricity and out again. My soul does not think for me. My soul and I think together using the brain as described.

dhw: Yet again you separate your soul from you! “You” in your dualistic life are your soul and your brain. Your soul uses your brain and controls your brain and your brain does nothing until your soul tells it to act.

DAVID: You've separated again: I am my soul and we together use the brain to think.

dhw: In life you are your soul and your brain/body. “I am my soul” is correct. “We together” separates you from the soul.

I'm not implying any separation. "We together" implies my material and immaterial sides dualistically.

DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

dhw: Not invent. Produce. Yes, my theory attempts to reconcile materialism and dualism by inverting the conventional approach, and showing how materials might produce a soul.

DAVID: The consciousness we experience is presented by the soul; consciousness by itself is not the soul. Your inverted mechanism is still materialism.

dhw: I keep saying that the inverted mechanism is materialism, but it offers the possibility that (theistic version) your God has created materials which in turn produce the immaterial soul. You continually ignore this part of the theory.

Not ignoring: any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

DAVID: The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much.

It doesn’t upset me at all. Libet believes that thought is engendered by the brain, and that is why there is no such thing as free will – the exact opposite of what you believe. Most studies focus on the brain, because you can only study materials, you can’t study souls. That is why dualists disagree with Libet, and why you and I cheered the article below:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.

dhw: Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

DAVID: And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

dhw: Unfortunately the whole article is not available, but in the extract you gave us there is nothing whatsoever about your cryptic “brain waves representing the ability to think”. The author tells us to be opened-minded about the source of consciousness (which is inseparable from the ability to think). The brain’s ability to act on thoughts is one part of my own proposal – that the electric waves signify the process of giving material expression to thought – the other being the passing of information.

The whole article is here. Google the address and it should turn up:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

Read it all. I'll stick to the position that the brain's electricity IS thought itself in electric form and as created in electricity it must be translated back into understandable mental words by a consciousness mechanism supplied by the soul. I thought this should be quite clear as my constant position. You limit the brain to acting as a dictating machine-like organ, a recorder which can play back what is deposited.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 09:14 (2032 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Thoughts are fully represented by the brain's electric waves. Whatever solves the problem of consciousness translates them back.

dhw: You have never explained what you mean by thoughts being “represented”.....Usual question: why can’t your English-speaking soul understand its own thoughts without all this rigmarole, as you believe it does in the afterlife when there is no brain? You can treat the question as rhetorical if you like, since it is clearly unanswerable.

DAVID: Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply.

Never implied. In dualism, I am my soul and my body/brain. Look at your own comment: “My soul and I think together using the brain as described.” THAT is a separation of my soul and me, and you keep doing it!

DAVID: In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness.

The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.

DAVID: I am my soul, no separation, and I propose the soul has a mechanism to accomplish the conversions into electricity and out again. My soul does not think for me.

Your soul IS you, and so once again apparently you/your soul thinks thoughts, converts them into electric waves through the brain, then converts them back again into the thoughts you/your soul started with. No matter how often you repeat the theory, it still doesn’t make sense.

DAVID: Your inverted mechanism is still materialism.

dhw: I keep saying that the inverted mechanism is materialism, but it offers the possibility that (theistic version) your God has created materials which in turn produce the immaterial soul. You continually ignore this part of the theory.

DAVID: Not ignoring: any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

DAVID: The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much.

It doesn’t upset me at all. Libet believes that thought is engendered by the brain, and that is why there is no such thing as free will – the exact opposite of what you believe. Most studies focus on the brain, because you can only study materials, you can’t study souls. That is why dualists disagree with Libet, and why you and I cheered the article below:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.
dhw: Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

DAVID: And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

dhw: Unfortunately the whole article is not available, but in the extract you gave us there is nothing whatsoever about your cryptic “brain waves representing the ability to think”. The author tells us to be opened-minded about the source of consciousness (which is inseparable from the ability to think).

DAVID: The whole article is here. Google the address and it should turn up:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

This is what I get.

WE'RE SORRY
The page you were looking for could not be found. We Suggest:

• Check the spelling of the web address.
• Browse through our archive for a magazine article from a specific issue.
• Go to our home page.
• Search the site
SUBSCRIBE

It doesn’t matter. Your translation theory remains as illogical as ever, and even if our author does say “brain waves represent the ability to think” (perhaps you can find it for me) I would still want to know what it meant.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 19:47 (2031 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply.

dhw: Never implied. In dualism, I am my soul and my body/brain. Look at your own comment: “My soul and I think together using the brain as described.” THAT is a separation of my soul and me, and you keep doing it!

My soul is me. All I mentioned is both parts, which does not imply separation.


DAVID: In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness.

dhw: The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.

Separate again. In life I/soul think by using the brain, not the soul alone!


DAVID: I am my soul, no separation, and I propose the soul has a mechanism to accomplish the conversions into electricity and out again. My soul does not think for me.

dhw: Your soul IS you, and so once again apparently you/your soul thinks thoughts, converts them into electric waves through the brain, then converts them back again into the thoughts you/your soul started with. No matter how often you repeat the theory, it still doesn’t make sense.

What doesn't make sense to you is the hard problem of consciousness. Those electric waves are thought in a material form.


DAVID: Your inverted mechanism is still materialism.

dhw: I keep saying that the inverted mechanism is materialism, but it offers the possibility that (theistic version) your God has created materials which in turn produce the immaterial soul. You continually ignore this part of the theory.

DAVID: Not ignoring: any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

dhw: That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

I don't think souls arise from material forms. God breathed a soul into Adam making him a living being, to quote the Bible.


DAVID: The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much.

dhw: It doesn’t upset me at all. Libet believes that thought is engendered by the brain, and that is why there is no such thing as free will – the exact opposite of what you believe. Most studies focus on the brain, because you can only study materials, you can’t study souls. That is why dualists disagree with Libet, and why you and I cheered the article below:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.
dhw: Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.

DAVID: And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

dhw: Unfortunately the whole article is not available, but in the extract you gave us there is nothing whatsoever about your cryptic “brain waves representing the ability to think”. The author tells us to be opened-minded about the source of consciousness (which is inseparable from the ability to think).

DAVID: The whole article is here. Google the address and it should turn up:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

I understand your problem. The 'https' means it is encrypted. I have a cookie that gets it. I'll quote from the article in a followup post.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 20:11 (2031 days ago) @ David Turell

Quotes from the Sci. am. article on looking at degrees of consciousness:

"in clinical practice we need unambiguous criteria. In that setting, everyone needs to know what we mean by an “unconscious” patient. Consciousness is not “all or nothing.” We can be more or less awake, more or less conscious. Consciousness is often underestimated; much more is going on in the brains of newborns, animals and coma patients than we think.

" is it possible to study something as complex as consciousness?

" For example, without brain scanners we would know much, much less than we now do. We study the damaged brains of people who have at least partially lost consciousness. We examine what happens during deep sleep, when people temporarily lose consciousness. We’ve also been working with Buddhist monks because we know that meditation can trigger alterations in the brain; connections that are important in the networks involved in consciousness show changes in activity. Hypnosis and anesthesia can also teach us a great deal about consciousness.

"What processes in the brain create consciousness?

"Two different networks seem to play a role: the external, or sensory, network and the internal self-consciousness network. The former is important for the perception of all sensory stimuli. To hear, we need not only ears and the auditory cortex but also this external network, which probably exists in each hemisphere of the brain—in the outermost layer of the prefrontal cortex as well as farther back, in the parietal-temporal lobes. Our internal consciousness network, on the other hand, has to do with our imagination—that is, our internal voice. This network is located deep within the cingulate cortex and in the precuneus. For us to be conscious of our thoughts, this network must exchange information with the thalamus.

***

"How do we know whether a coma patient who has awakened is conscious?

"For that we use the Glasgow Coma Scale. The physician says, “Squeeze my hand.” Or we observe whether the patient responds to sounds or touch. If patients do not respond, the condition used to be called “vegetative”; they appear to be unconscious. If a patient responds but is unable to communicate, we categorize the consciousness as “minimal.” Such patients may, for example, follow a person with their eyes or answer simple questions. If we pinch their hand, they will move it away. But these signs of consciousness are not always evident, nor do we see them in every patient. A patient who awakens from a coma may also develop a so-called locked-in syndrome,being completely conscious but paralyzed and unable to communicate, except through eye blinks.

***

"How can minimal consciousness be distinguished from locked-in syndrome?

"Minimally conscious patients can barely move and are not completely aware of their surroundings. In other words, their motor and mental abilities are limited. Locked-in patients can’t move either, but they are completely conscious. They have suffered a particular type of injury to the brain stem. Their cerebral cortex is intact but is disconnected from their body. All they can move is their eyes. This is why diagnosis is so difficult. Just because patients cannot move does not mean they are unconscious.

***

"How can a person who cannot move manage to communicate?

"To communicate with a minimally conscious patient for the first time, we placed him in a scanner. Of course, the scanner cannot tell us directly whether someone is saying yes or no. But there are a couple of tricks. For example, we can tell the patient, “If you want to say yes, imagine that you are playing tennis. If you intend to say no, make a mental trip from your front door to your bedroom.” “Yes” answers activate the motor cortex; “ no” answers engage the hippocampus, which plays a role in spatial memory. Because these two regions of the brain are located far apart from each other, it is pretty easy to tell the difference between yes and no. From that point on, we can ask the patient pertinent questions.

"What other potential techniques do you have in the pipeline?

"In the future, it may be possible to read brain signals using scalp electrodes and a brain-computer interface. This would make communication much quicker and less costly than with a brain scanner. We have also found that it is possible to examine a person’s pupils: we ask patients to multiply 23 by 17 if they intend to say yes. This difficult problem causes the patients to concentrate, and their pupils will dilate slightly as a result. If we direct a camera at their eyes and a computer analyzes the signals, we can determine quite quickly whether the intended answer is positive or negative.

"Can consciousness be stimulated?

"Yes, by transcranial direct-current stimulation. Using scalp electrodes, we can stimulate particular regions of the brain. By careful placement, we can select the region responsible for speech, which is connected with consciousness. If I stimulate this region of the brain, the patient may hear and understand what I say. In some cases, a patient has been able to communicate transiently for the first time after a 20-minute stimulation—by, for example, making a simple movement in response to a question. Other patients have been able to follow a person with their eyes. (my bold)

Comment: Note he uses electricity to stimulate thought. And his scans and electrodes view thought/consciousness as electrical.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by dhw, Monday, August 27, 2018, 10:01 (2031 days ago) @ David Turell

Thank you for the quotes from the article I couldn’t get:
QUOTE: We’ve also been working with Buddhist monks because we know that meditation can trigger alterations in the brain...

This is thought changing the brain (as with the illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians), and is evidence for dualism.

QUOTE: What processes in the brain create consciousness?

Pure materialsm.

Quote: Two different networks seem to play a role: the external, or sensory, network and the internal self-consciousness network. The former is important for the perception of all sensory stimuli. To hear, we need not only ears and the auditory cortex but also this external network, which probably exists in each hemisphere of the brain—in the outermost layer of the prefrontal cortex as well as farther back, in the parietal-temporal lobes. Our internal consciousness network, on the other hand, has to do with our imagination—that is, our internal voice. This network is located deep within the cingulate cortex and in the precuneus. For us to be conscious of our thoughts, this network must exchange information with the thalamus.

Once again pure materialism: the first network is the brain supplying information. The second network is what dualists attribute to the soul – our “internal voice”.

QUOTE: Using scalp electrodes, we can stimulate particular regions of the brain. By careful placement, we can select the region responsible for speech, which is connected with consciousness. (David’s bold)

Speech gives material expression to conscious thought, whether you’re a materialist or a dualist.

DAVID’s comment: Note he uses electricity to stimulate thought. And his scans and electrodes view thought/consciousness as electrical.

All of these quotes except the first give full support to materialism, i.e. that the brain is the source of thought and consciousness. There is no mention of a soul. In the other section that you quoted, however, he casts doubt on whether the brain tells the whole story of consciousness, and asks us to keep an open mind. This brings us back to the alternative I gave you in the first post: if the electric brain waves are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the soul is the source of thought (= dualism), then the electric brain waves are the result of thought. That is the dichotomy I have tried to resolve with my theory, and I still await your logical objections.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by David Turell @, Monday, August 27, 2018, 18:44 (2030 days ago) @ dhw

Thank you for the quotes from the article I couldn’t get:
QUOTE: We’ve also been working with Buddhist monks because we know that meditation can trigger alterations in the brain...

This is thought changing the brain (as with the illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians), and is evidence for dualism.

QUOTE: What processes in the brain create consciousness?

Pure materialsm.

Quote: Two different networks seem to play a role: the external, or sensory, network and the internal self-consciousness network. The former is important for the perception of all sensory stimuli. To hear, we need not only ears and the auditory cortex but also this external network, which probably exists in each hemisphere of the brain—in the outermost layer of the prefrontal cortex as well as farther back, in the parietal-temporal lobes. Our internal consciousness network, on the other hand, has to do with our imagination—that is, our internal voice. This network is located deep within the cingulate cortex and in the precuneus. For us to be conscious of our thoughts, this network must exchange information with the thalamus.

Once again pure materialism: the first network is the brain supplying information. The second network is what dualists attribute to the soul – our “internal voice”.

QUOTE: Using scalp electrodes, we can stimulate particular regions of the brain. By careful placement, we can select the region responsible for speech, which is connected with consciousness. (David’s bold)

Speech gives material expression to conscious thought, whether you’re a materialist or a dualist.

DAVID’s comment: Note he uses electricity to stimulate thought. And his scans and electrodes view thought/consciousness as electrical.

dhw: All of these quotes except the first give full support to materialism, i.e. that the brain is the source of thought and consciousness. There is no mention of a soul. In the other section that you quoted, however, he casts doubt on whether the brain tells the whole story of consciousness, and asks us to keep an open mind. This brings us back to the alternative I gave you in the first post: if the electric brain waves are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the soul is the source of thought (= dualism), then the electric brain waves are the result of thought. That is the dichotomy I have tried to resolve with my theory, and I still await your logical objections.

Your rigid fixation on your concept of dualism is amazing. Of course this is all pure materialism, as it is the current concept of brain and thought with neuroscientists as they research. I accept this as true. The problem is the how we 'hear' the words in our heads, which you keep ignoring by having the soul think separately and dictating to the brain like a dictation machine. I believe the universe is mind centric under God:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-does-it-mean-to-say-mind-is-primary/

"1. Mind is the universal substrate of existence and experience, not matter.
2. There are universal and local principles by which mind operates and by which experience is generated.
3. There are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind, such as: consensual physicality (what we call the conscious, waking world); non-consensual physicality (such as dreams); non-physical & non-consensual thought & imagery (such as imagination, visualization); and consensual thought (such as self-evident truths, morality, logic and math). There are other kind of experience that are less accepted, but which have been researched successfully, such as consensual visualization, semi-consensual experience, and others.
It is my view that this is a much more elegant theory of experience than those which include an actual material-world component, because an actual material world is (1) philosophically unnecessary, (2) unsupported by the evidence, and (3) impossible to verify or validate outside of mental experience anyway."

Comment: Read all to follow reasoning.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by dhw, Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 14:28 (2030 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: All of these quotes except the first give full support to materialism, i.e. that the brain is the source of thought and consciousness. There is no mention of a soul. In the other section that you quoted, however, he casts doubt on whether the brain tells the whole story of consciousness, and asks us to keep an open mind. This brings us back to the alternative I gave you in the first post: if the electric brain waves are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the soul is the source of thought (= dualism), then the electric brain waves are the result of thought. That is the dichotomy I have tried to resolve with my theory, and I still await your logical objections.

David: Your rigid fixation on your concept of dualism is amazing. Of course this is all pure materialism, as it is the current concept of brain and thought with neuroscientists as they research. I accept this as true. The problem is the how we 'hear' the words in our heads, which you keep ignoring by having the soul think separately and dictating to the brain like a dictation machine.

According to your belief in an afterlife, the soul DOES think separately, so why do you think it can’t think separately in life as it processes information provided by the brain (but provided by psychic means in an afterlife) and instructs the brain to give its thoughts material expression (but expressing its thoughts psychically in an afterlife)?

DAVID: I believe the universe is mind centric under God:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-does-it-mean-to-say-mind-is-primary/

QUOTE:
1. Mind is the universal substrate of existence and experience, not matter.
2. There are universal and local principles by which mind operates and by which experience is generated.
3. There are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind, such as: consensual physicality (what we call the conscious, waking world); non-consensual physicality (such as dreams); non-physical & non-consensual thought & imagery (such as imagination, visualization); and consensual thought (such as self-evident truths, morality, logic and math). There are other kind of experience that are less accepted, but which have been researched successfully, such as consensual visualization, semi-consensual experience, and others.
It is my view that this is a much more elegant theory of experience than those which include an actual material-world component, because an actual material world is (1) philosophically unnecessary, (2) unsupported by the evidence, and (3) impossible to verify or validate outside of mental experience anyway."

I doubt if anyone will disagree that “there are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind”. As for the rest, I suggest as I have done many times before that the author should step in front of a bus and, if he survives, tell us if he still thinks that an actual material world is unsupported by the evidence. We both agree that in life we have a material brain, and our discussion concerns whether there is such a thing as an immaterial mind or soul, and if there is, what role it plays in life. The above goes to extremes in its rejection of a material world, so I don’t see how the author could possibly support your claim that in life the soul/mind can’t think without translating its thought into electrical waves from the material brain, which it then translates back into its original thought so that it can understand what it was thinking about in the first place. As far as he is concerned, even the brain is "unsupported by the evidence"!

--

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 18:40 (2029 days ago) @ dhw

David: Your rigid fixation on your concept of dualism is amazing. Of course this is all pure materialism, as it is the current concept of brain and thought with neuroscientists as they research. I accept this as true. The problem is the how we 'hear' the words in our heads, which you keep ignoring by having the soul think separately and dictating to the brain like a dictation machine.

dhw: According to your belief in an afterlife, the soul DOES think separately, so why do you think it can’t think separately in life as it processes information provided by the brain (but provided by psychic means in an afterlife) and instructs the brain to give its thoughts material expression (but expressing its thoughts psychically in an afterlife)?

Explained in previous Egnor entry. The soul/I use the brain in material life and the soul uses the universal consciousness in death.


DAVID: I believe the universe is mind centric under God:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-does-it-mean-to-say-mind-is-primary/

QUOTE:
1. Mind is the universal substrate of existence and experience, not matter.
2. There are universal and local principles by which mind operates and by which experience is generated.
3. There are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind, such as: consensual physicality (what we call the conscious, waking world); non-consensual physicality (such as dreams); non-physical & non-consensual thought & imagery (such as imagination, visualization); and consensual thought (such as self-evident truths, morality, logic and math). There are other kind of experience that are less accepted, but which have been researched successfully, such as consensual visualization, semi-consensual experience, and others.
It is my view that this is a much more elegant theory of experience than those which include an actual material-world component, because an actual material world is (1) philosophically unnecessary, (2) unsupported by the evidence, and (3) impossible to verify or validate outside of mental experience anyway."

dhw: I doubt if anyone will disagree that “there are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind”. As for the rest, I suggest as I have done many times before that the author should step in front of a bus and, if he survives, tell us if he still thinks that an actual material world is unsupported by the evidence. We both agree that in life we have a material brain, and our discussion concerns whether there is such a thing as an immaterial mind or soul, and if there is, what role it plays in life. The above goes to extremes in its rejection of a material world, so I don’t see how the author could possibly support your claim that in life the soul/mind can’t think without translating its thought into electrical waves from the material brain, which it then translates back into its original thought so that it can understand what it was thinking about in the first place. As far as he is concerned, even the brain is "unsupported by the evidence"!

I know you have problems with quantum/consciousness theories, but there is a immaterial mind without question and quantum reality is the basis of our reality. Ed Feser, a Catholic philosopher, in this video explains his view, using Descartes and Aristotle/St.Thomas as contrasting views. About 55 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6GmCyKylTw

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by dhw, Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 12:08 (2029 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I doubt if anyone will disagree that “there are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind”. As for the rest, I suggest as I have done many times before that the author should step in front of a bus and, if he survives, tell us if he still thinks that an actual material world is unsupported by the evidence. We both agree that in life we have a material brain, and our discussion concerns whether there is such a thing as an immaterial mind or soul, and if there is, what role it plays in life. The above goes to extremes in its rejection of a material world, so I don’t see how the author could possibly support your claim that in life the soul/mind can’t think without translating its thought into electrical waves from the material brain, which it then translates back into its original thought so that it can understand what it was thinking about in the first place. As far as he is concerned, even the brain is "unsupported by the evidence"!

DAVID: I know you have problems with quantum/consciousness theories, but there is a immaterial mind without question and quantum reality is the basis of our reality. Ed Feser, a Catholic philosopher, in this video explains his view, using Descartes and Aristotle/St.Thomas as contrasting views. About 55 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6GmCyKylTw

I’m sorry, but timewise I am already at full stretch, and there is no limit to the number of theists and atheists we should all study! I have no problem understanding the concept of an immaterial mind, nobody understands quantum “reality”, but if you truly believe that “an actual material world…is unsupported by the evidence”, and this supports your theory that the immaterial mind can’t think without a material brain except when there is no brain, and even though according to your author there is no evidence for a material brain either, then so be it.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example II

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 19:40 (2028 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I doubt if anyone will disagree that “there are many different kinds of experience one can have in mind”. As for the rest, I suggest as I have done many times before that the author should step in front of a bus and, if he survives, tell us if he still thinks that an actual material world is unsupported by the evidence. We both agree that in life we have a material brain, and our discussion concerns whether there is such a thing as an immaterial mind or soul, and if there is, what role it plays in life. The above goes to extremes in its rejection of a material world, so I don’t see how the author could possibly support your claim that in life the soul/mind can’t think without translating its thought into electrical waves from the material brain, which it then translates back into its original thought so that it can understand what it was thinking about in the first place. As far as he is concerned, even the brain is "unsupported by the evidence"!

DAVID: I know you have problems with quantum/consciousness theories, but there is a immaterial mind without question and quantum reality is the basis of our reality. Ed Feser, a Catholic philosopher, in this video explains his view, using Descartes and Aristotle/St.Thomas as contrasting views. About 55 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6GmCyKylTw

dhw: I’m sorry, but timewise I am already at full stretch, and there is no limit to the number of theists and atheists we should all study! I have no problem understanding the concept of an immaterial mind, nobody understands quantum “reality”, but if you truly believe that “an actual material world…is unsupported by the evidence”, and this supports your theory that the immaterial mind can’t think without a material brain except when there is no brain, and even though according to your author there is no evidence for a material brain either, then so be it.

Strange reply. i'm sorry you don't have the time. That I accept, but please be clear, you have heard me many times say that I read and make my own conclusions. I don't buy all of his statements, but his contrast of St. Thomas and Descartes was very interestng. And I also recognize how uncomfortable you are with quantum theories.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, August 27, 2018, 09:53 (2031 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply.

dhw: Never implied. In dualism, I am my soul and my body/brain. Look at your own comment: “My soul and I think together using the brain as described.” THAT is a separation of my soul and me, and you keep doing it!

DAVID: My soul is me. All I mentioned is both parts, which does not imply separation.

If my soul AND I use the brain, there are three parts. You do it all the time. Once more: the dualistic self consists of soul and brain/body.

DAVID: In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness.

dhw: The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.

DAVID: Separate again. In life I/soul think by using the brain, not the soul alone!

There is no separation of soul and ME. There is a distinction between soul and brain/body, which are the two parts of the self that work together in life. Meanwhile, do you or do you not agree with my two "ifs"?

DAVID: I am my soul, no separation, and I propose the soul has a mechanism to accomplish the conversions into electricity and out again. My soul does not think for me.

dhw: Your soul IS you, and so once again apparently you/your soul thinks thoughts, converts them into electric waves through the brain, then converts them back again into the thoughts you/your soul started with. No matter how often you repeat the theory, it still doesn’t make sense.

DAVID: What doesn't make sense to you is the hard problem of consciousness. Those electric waves are thought in a material form.

What doesn’t make sense to me is your whole translation theory. Nobody has solved the “hard problem of consciousness”, which is why we have different theories. The material form of thought is expression, which comes about through the use of electricity. If the soul thinks, it directs the brain to give material expression to the thought. It makes no sense for the soul to think, have its thoughts translated into electric waves and then sent back again for it to translate into its original thought, which it then sends back again to the brain to translate into material expression (e.g. speech).


DAVID: [...] any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

dhw: That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

DAVID: I don't think souls arise from material forms. God breathed a soul into Adam making him a living being, to quote the Bible.

I know what you believe. That doesn’t explain why you think it is impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, August 27, 2018, 18:18 (2030 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness.

dhw: The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.

DAVID: Separate again. In life I/soul think by using the brain, not the soul alone!

dhw: There is no separation of soul and ME. There is a distinction between soul and brain/body, which are the two parts of the self that work together in life. Meanwhile, do you or do you not agree with my two "ifs"?

IF-one: The brain is not the source of thought, it is the maker of thought with its electric grid under my/soul impetus. Looking on the material side I/soul use the brain to create thought.

IF-two: Absolutely wrong. I/soul must employ the brain circuits to create thought.


DAVID: What doesn't make sense to you is the hard problem of consciousness. Those electric waves are thought in a material form.

dhw: What doesn’t make sense to me is your whole translation theory. Nobody has solved the “hard problem of consciousness”, which is why we have different theories. The material form of thought is expression, which comes about through the use of electricity. If the soul thinks, it directs the brain to give material expression to the thought. It makes no sense for the soul to think, have its thoughts translated into electric waves and then sent back again for it to translate into its original thought, which it then sends back again to the brain to translate into material expression (e.g. speech).

I'm sorry you are so confused, but this is what the research scientists think on the material side of the issue. Thought is encoded in the electricity and comes out as words in my head, the hard problem we face.

DAVID: [...] any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

dhw: That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

DAVID: I don't think souls arise from material forms. God breathed a soul into Adam making him a living being, to quote the Bible.

dhw: I know what you believe. That doesn’t explain why you think it is impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

Anything is possible for God according to human religious reasoning, but the Bible is specific on the point. Since from quantum theory I accept the concept of universal consciousness as God or coming from God, I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 14:22 (2030 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness.

dhw: The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.[…]

DAVID: IF-one: The brain is not the source of thought, it is the maker of thought with its electric grid under my/soul impetus. Looking on the material side I/soul use the brain to create thought.

So once again we have the soul thinking thought but it doesn’t know what it is thinking about until the brain “makes the thought” into electric waves and sends them back to the soul to translate into words. Please tell me what you believe your soul thinks in initially.

DAVID: IF-two: Absolutely wrong. I/soul must employ the brain circuits to create thought.

Same problem. What does your soul, which must be the source of thought if the brain is not, think in initially?

DAVID: What doesn't make sense to you is the hard problem of consciousness. Those electric waves are thought in a material form.

dhw: What doesn’t make sense to me is your whole translation theory. Nobody has solved the “hard problem of consciousness”, which is why we have different theories. The material form of thought is expression, which comes about through the use of electricity. If the soul thinks, it directs the brain to give material expression to the thought. It makes no sense for the soul to think, have its thoughts translated into electric waves and then sent back again for it to translate into its original thought, which it then sends back again to the brain to translate into material expression (e.g. speech).

DAVID: I'm sorry you are so confused, but this is what the research scientists think on the material side of the issue. Thought is encoded in the electricity and comes out as words in my head, the hard problem we face.

Perhaps you can tell us which research scientists inform us that there is a soul which initiates thought but cannot understand its own thought until it translates the electric waves which the brain sends to it. Since you believe in a soul, which is a part of God’s consciousness and which can think on its own when separated from the brain, your “hard problem” is why in life the dualist's soul can’t think coherent thoughts in the first place, just as you believe it does in an afterlife. This “hard problem” becomes dead easy if the soul thinks coherent thoughts, in life as in death, but in life uses the brain to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression, both processes requiring electric waves.

DAVID: [...] any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

dhw: That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

DAVID: I don't think souls arise from material forms. God breathed a soul into Adam making him a living being, to quote the Bible.

dhw: I know what you believe. That doesn’t explain why you think it is impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

DAVID: Anything is possible for God according to human religious reasoning, but the Bible is specific on the point.

All of a sudden you, who have always rejected the Bible as a source of reliable information, are a convert to Genesis.

DAVID: Since from quantum theory I accept the concept of universal consciousness as God or coming from God, I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

I know you do. That is not a logical reason for rejecting the proposal that your God might have created a material machine which can produce immaterial consciousness. It’s simply a reaffirmation of your rigid belief.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 18:30 (2029 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: IF-one: The brain is not the source of thought, it is the maker of thought with its electric grid under my/soul impetus. Looking on the material side I/soul use the brain to create thought.

So once again we have the soul thinking thought but it doesn’t know what it is thinking about until the brain “makes the thought” into electric waves and sends them back to the soul to translate into words. Please tell me what you believe your soul thinks in initially.

The soul can only think during material life if the brain is functioning and the soul uses it.


DAVID: IF-two: Absolutely wrong. I/soul must employ the brain circuits to create thought.

dhw: Same problem. What does your soul, which must be the source of thought if the brain is not, think in initially?

When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

DAVID: I'm sorry you are so confused, but this is what the research scientists think on the material side of the issue. Thought is encoded in the electricity and comes out as words in my head, the hard problem we face.

dhw: Perhaps you can tell us which research scientists inform us that there is a soul which initiates thought but cannot understand its own thought until it translates the electric waves which the brain sends to it.

Straw man. The scientists use an atheistic approach to their science no soul involved.

dhw: Since you believe in a soul, which is a part of God’s consciousness and which can think on its own when separated from the brain, your “hard problem” is why in life the dualist's soul can’t think coherent thoughts in the first place, just as you believe it does in an afterlife. This “hard problem” becomes dead easy if the soul thinks coherent thoughts, in life as in death, but in life uses the brain to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression, both processes requiring electric waves.

The true 'hard problem' is how electric waves in the brain are heard as words in the brain, not your inventive description, in all I have read.


DAVID: Anything is possible for God according to human religious reasoning, but the Bible is specific on the point.

All of a sudden you, who have always rejected the Bible as a source of reliable information, are a convert to Genesis.

DAVID: Since from quantum theory I accept the concept of universal consciousness as God or coming from God, I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

dhw: I know you do. That is not a logical reason for rejecting the proposal that your God might have created a material machine which can produce immaterial consciousness. It’s simply a reaffirmation of your rigid belief.

I said anything is possible for God. I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 12:03 (2029 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: IF-one: The brain is not the source of thought, it is the maker of thought with its electric grid under my/soul impetus. Looking on the material side I/soul use the brain to create thought.

DAVID: So once again we have the soul thinking thought but it doesn’t know what it is thinking about until the brain “makes the thought” into electric waves and sends them back to the soul to translate into words. Please tell me what you believe your soul thinks in initially.

DAVID: The soul can only think during material life if the brain is functioning and the soul uses it.

Yes, it can only think if it has something to think about, and the brain supplies it with information. This does not explain why the soul can’t think in words until the brain translates its thoughts into electric waves which the soul re-translates into the thoughts it had in the first place.

DAVID: IF-two: Absolutely wrong. I/soul must employ the brain circuits to create thought.

dhw: Same problem. What does your soul, which must be the source of thought if the brain is not, think in initially?

DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: I'm sorry you are so confused, but this is what the research scientists think on the material side of the issue. Thought is encoded in the electricity and comes out as words in my head, the hard problem we face.

dhw: Perhaps you can tell us which research scientists inform us that there is a soul which initiates thought but cannot understand its own thought until it translates the electric waves which the brain sends to it.

DAVID: Straw man. The scientists use an atheistic approach to their science no soul involved.

You just told us that research scientists support your translation theory! Now you’re telling us they don’t. Research scientists interpret the electric waves materialistically, so why did you mention them?

dhw: Since you believe in a soul, which is a part of God’s consciousness and which can think on its own when separated from the brain, your “hard problem” is why in life the dualist's soul can’t think coherent thoughts in the first place, just as you believe it does in an afterlife. This “hard problem” becomes dead easy if the soul thinks coherent thoughts, in life as in death, but in life uses the brain to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression, both processes requiring electric waves.

DAVID: The true 'hard problem' is how electric waves in the brain are heard as words in the brain, not your inventive description, in all I have read.

Yes, that is the problem for materialists: how do electric brain waves become thoughts in the brain? Dualists solve the problem by claiming that there is a SOUL which does the thinking (generally in words), and the soul uses the brain for information and for material expression, which both require electric waves. I don’t know why you regard this conventional and perfectly straightforward view as “inventive”, especially by comparison with your translation theory which is so inventive that it has the English-speaking soul thinking gibberish until the brain translates the gibberish into electric waves which the soul then translates into English.

DAVID: I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

dhw: I know you do. That is not a logical reason for rejecting the proposal that your God might have created a material machine which can produce immaterial consciousness. It’s simply a reaffirmation of your rigid belief.

DAVID: I said anything is possible for God. I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

Then clearly you can’t find any fault with the theory except that it isn’t your theory.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 19:34 (2028 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The soul can only think during material life if the brain is functioning and the soul uses it.

dhw: Yes, it can only think if it has something to think about, and the brain supplies it with information. This does not explain why the soul can’t think in words until the brain translates its thoughts into electric waves which the soul re-translates into the thoughts it had in the first place.

I am my soul and I/soul think using my brain. Yes, that is the materialistic side. The problem is how does electricity in the brain become words in my head.

DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

dhw: And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

DAVID: Straw man. The scientists use an atheistic approach to their science no soul involved.

dhw: You just told us that research scientists support your translation theory! Now you’re telling us they don’t. Research scientists interpret the electric waves materialistically, so why did you mention them?

Because I recognize brain research assumes a material side to thought. I'm sure you do to.

DAVID: The true 'hard problem' is how electric waves in the brain are heard as words in the brain, not your inventive description, in all I have read.

dhw: Yes, that is the problem for materialists: how do electric brain waves become thoughts in the brain? Dualists solve the problem by claiming that there is a SOUL which does the thinking (generally in words), and the soul uses the brain for information and for material expression, which both require electric waves.

I am not one of those dualists. I see you cannot think independently of that supposition.

dhw: I don’t know why you regard this conventional and perfectly straightforward view as “inventive”, especially by comparison with your translation theory which is so inventive that it has the English-speaking soul thinking gibberish until the brain translates the gibberish into electric waves which the soul then translates into English.

I'm simply accepting the materialist observation that the brain thinks in electric waves and explaining words in my head by the mechanism of soul.


DAVID: I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

dhw: I know you do. That is not a logical reason for rejecting the proposal that your God might have created a material machine which can produce immaterial consciousness. It’s simply a reaffirmation of your rigid belief.

DAVID: I said anything is possible for God. I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

dhw: Then clearly you can’t find any fault with the theory except that it isn’t your theory.

Theories are not proofs. We each have preferences. You will stick with yours, and I with mine

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Thursday, August 30, 2018, 08:20 (2028 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The problem is how does electricity in the brain become words in my head.

If you believe in a soul that thinks in words, the problem doesn’t arise. You have a problem because despite your dualistic belief in your thinking, English-speaking soul, you doggedly stick to the materialistic idea that thoughts are formed by electricity in the brain, but you can’t see the contradiction. (See also below.)

DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

dhw: And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words, instead of this pointless rigmarole of having its thoughts translated into waves and then translating them back again into words which it must have known from the start if it is able to use them in translation? David, this theory is an embarrassment. I do wish you would drop it.

DAVID: Straw man. The scientists use an atheistic approach to their science no soul involved.

dhw: You just told us that research scientists support your translation theory! Now you’re telling us they don’t. Research scientists interpret the electric waves materialistically, so why did you mention them?

DAVID: Because I recognize brain research assumes a material side to thought. I'm sure you do to.

Yes, brain research favours materialism not dualism, let alone your translation theory. Of course there is a material side to thought: either the materials engender thought (= materialism), or there is a soul that engenders thought and uses the brain for information or material expression (= dualism).

DAVID: I am not one of those dualists. I see you cannot think independently of that supposition.

My theory of intelligence is totally independent of that supposition. Your own form of dualistic materialism leads you to the unnecessary problem you create at the start of this post, and to a solution (your translation theory) which makes no sense.

dhw: I don’t know why you regard this conventional and perfectly straightforward view as “inventive”, especially by comparison with your translation theory.

DAVID: I'm simply accepting the materialist observation that the brain thinks in electric waves and explaining words in my head by the mechanism of soul.

So now you “accept” that it’s the brain and not the soul that thinks, but the brain’s thoughts are gibberish until the soul translates them into words. Slightly different from the soul’s gibberish thoughts being translated into waves so that it can translate them back again into the words it knew in the first place. But just as muddled.

DAVID: I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

dhw: Then clearly you can’t find any fault with the theory except that it isn’t your theory.

DAVID: Theories are not proofs. We each have preferences. You will stick with yours, and I with mine.

I’ll be happy to have you pick holes in mine, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep falling down the holes in yours!

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 30, 2018, 18:21 (2027 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, August 30, 2018, 18:48

DAVID: The problem is how does electricity in the brain become words in my head.

dhw: If you believe in a soul that thinks in words, the problem doesn’t arise. You have a problem because despite your dualistic belief in your thinking, English-speaking soul, you doggedly stick to the materialistic idea that thoughts are formed by electricity in the brain, but you can’t see the contradiction.

I see no contradiction, since I don't accept your approach. I fully accept the idea that I/soul think by using my brain and its electricity. I see the soul as having a translation mechanism so I hear the words in my head. I will not change.


DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

dhw: And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

dhw: If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words, instead of this pointless rigmarole of having its thoughts translated into waves and then translating them back again into words which it must have known from the start if it is able to use them in translation? David, this theory is an embarrassment. I do wish you would drop it.

Why should In drop it if this is what I believe? You have no idea if your type of soul mechanism is true.

DAVID: Because I recognize brain research assumes a material side to thought. I'm sure you do to.

dhw: Yes, brain research favours materialism not dualism, let alone your translation theory. Of course there is a material side to thought: either the materials engender thought (= materialism), or there is a soul that engenders thought and uses the brain for information or material expression (= dualism).

I don't accept your form of dualsim.


DAVID: I am not one of those dualists. I see you cannot think independently of that supposition.

dhw: My theory of intelligence is totally independent of that supposition. Your own form of dualistic materialism leads you to the unnecessary problem you create at the start of this post, and to a solution (your translation theory) which makes no sense.

To you, not to me because of my different starting point.


dhw: I don’t know why you regard this conventional and perfectly straightforward view as “inventive”, especially by comparison with your translation theory.

You can be conventional. I am not.


DAVID: I'm simply accepting the materialist observation that the brain thinks in electric waves and explaining words in my head by the mechanism of soul.

dhw: So now you “accept” that it’s the brain and not the soul that thinks, but the brain’s thoughts are gibberish until the soul translates them into words. Slightly different from the soul’s gibberish thoughts being translated into waves so that it can translate them back again into the words it knew in the first place. But just as muddled.

Twisting me again. I/soul initiate and use the brain to create thought. The brain is simply a mechanism I/soul use.


DAVID: I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

dhw: Then clearly you can’t find any fault with the theory except that it isn’t your theory.

DAVID: Theories are not proofs. We each have preferences. You will stick with yours, and I with mine.

dhw: I’ll be happy to have you pick holes in mine, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep falling down the holes in yours!

Why can't you think originally as I do? You simply will not accept that I/soul use the brain as a mechanism to think? We might as well move on as we never will agree. I've read Chalmer's essay and he looks at neuroscience as showing consciousness in brain waves but offers nothing like immaterial dualism to explain it. He is pure materialism.

http://www.consc.net/papers/facing.html

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Friday, August 31, 2018, 13:49 (2027 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The problem is how does electricity in the brain become words in my head.

dhw: If you believe in a soul that thinks in words, the problem doesn’t arise. You have a problem because despite your dualistic belief in your thinking, English-speaking soul, you doggedly stick to the materialistic idea that thoughts are formed by electricity in the brain, but you can’t see the contradiction.

DAVID: I see no contradiction, since I don't accept your approach. I fully accept the idea that I/soul think by using my brain and its electricity. I see the soul as having a translation mechanism so I hear the words in my head. I will not change.

Nothing to do with my approach. We agree that the soul uses the brain and its electricity, and we agree that we hear the words in our head. The illogicality (I’ll switch here from “contradiction”) lies in your claim that the soul initiates thought but does not think in words until the brain translates the thought into electric waves which the soul translates into words. If the soul knows the words, it can initiate thought in words (just as it does in the afterlife you believe in)! It doesn’t need electric waves before it can translate its own thoughts into words it already knows!

Here is a contradiction:

DAVID: I'm simply accepting the materialist observation that the brain thinks in electric waves and explaining words in my head by the mechanism of soul.

dhw: So now you “accept” that it’s the brain and not the soul that thinks, but the brain’s thoughts are gibberish until the soul translates them into words. Slightly different from the soul’s gibberish thoughts being translated into waves so that it can translate them back again into the words it knew in the first place. But just as muddled.

DAVID: Twisting me again. I/soul initiate and use the brain to create thought. The brain is simply a mechanism I/soul use.

Yes, that is conventional dualism. “The brain thinks in electric waves” is conventional materialism. I am not twisting you.

DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

dhw: And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

dhw: If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words? […]

DAVID: […] You have no idea if your type of soul mechanism is true.

I have no idea if the soul even exists, but you have not answered the above question, bearing in mind that your translation theory means the soul KNOWS the words.

DAVID: Theories are not proofs. We each have preferences. You will stick with yours, and I with mine.

dhw: I’ll be happy to have you pick holes in mine, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep falling down the holes in yours!

DAVID: Why can't you think originally as I do? You simply will not accept that I/soul use the brain as a mechanism to think? We might as well move on…

If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Friday, August 31, 2018, 20:00 (2026 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I see no contradiction, since I don't accept your approach. I fully accept the idea that I/soul think by using my brain and its electricity. I see the soul as having a translation mechanism so I hear the words in my head. I will not change.

dhw: Nothing to do with my approach. We agree that the soul uses the brain and its electricity, and we agree that we hear the words in our head. The illogicality (I’ll switch here from “contradiction”) lies in your claim that the soul initiates thought but does not think in words until the brain translates the thought into electric waves which the soul translates into words. If the soul knows the words, it can initiate thought in words (just as it does in the afterlife you believe in)! It doesn’t need electric waves before it can translate its own thoughts into words it already knows!

I do not assume the soul uses the same mechanism in life and in death. I am my soul and know I create electricity when I try to think and that electricity contains the created thought.


Here is a contradiction:

DAVID: Twisting me again. I/soul initiate and use the brain to create thought. The brain is simply a mechanism I/soul use.

Yes, that is conventional dualism. “The brain thinks in electric waves” is conventional materialism. I am not twisting you.

I am simply trying to solve the 'words in the head' problem by starting on the obviously correct material side of the science and adding an immaterial soul with mechanisms to solve the problem. Your view of the soul is that it exists only in one rigid form in life and death.


DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

dhw: And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

dhw: If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words? […]

Because in life it uses the brain networks as I do in the material side of existence.

dhw: I’ll be happy to have you pick holes in mine, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep falling down the holes in yours!

DAVID: Why can't you think originally as I do? You simply will not accept that I/soul use the brain as a mechanism to think? We might as well move on…

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

You jumped right in with singular form of a soul from the beginning. Of course it contradicts me. We will each stick to our own theories. We cannot know which theory is valid. I would note that As I progressed from birth I learned words which are in the memory bank of my brain. When I think I must use the memory bank and must use electricity to do it. Don't you think my soul is in the same boat, or as you imply, the soul has its own memory bank for words? My theory starts on the material side. I don't think yours does.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Saturday, September 01, 2018, 10:06 (2026 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:. If the soul knows the words, it can initiate thought in words (just as it does in the afterlife you believe in)! It doesn’t need electric waves before it can translate its own thoughts into words it already knows!

DAVID: I do not assume the soul uses the same mechanism in life and in death. I am my soul and know I create electricity when I try to think and that electricity contains the created thought.

Round we go. Once again you say you are your soul and promptly forget that you are your soul. Your sentence now reads: my soul is my soul and my soul knows my soul creates electricity when my soul tries to think. Why does your soul only “try” to think? Yes, your soul (if it exists) creates electricity, but it makes no sense for your soul not to know what it’s thinking until it has sent electricity to the brain, the brain sends it back, and then the soul translates the electricity into its own thought!

Dhw: Here is a contradiction: [...]

DAVID: Twisting me again. I/soul initiate and use the brain to create thought. The brain is simply a mechanism I/soul use.

Dhw: Yes, that is conventional dualism. “The brain thinks in electric waves” is conventional materialism. I am not twisting you.

DAVID: I am simply trying to solve the 'words in the head' problem by starting on the obviously correct material side of the science and adding an immaterial soul with mechanisms to solve the problem.

As you keep telling us, the material side of science makes the brain the source of thought: as you put it, “the brain thinks in electric waves”. Materialists will also tell you that there is no soul, and the brain thinks in words. If you believe in a soul, then the problem of “words in the head” is solved if you believe your soul thinks in words, as it apparently does in NDEs.

dhw: If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words? […]

DAVID: Because in life it uses the brain networks as I do in the material side of existence.

We agree that the dualist’s soul uses the brain in life. The disagreement is over what it uses the brain for. As for your explanation, your soul is you, remember? So in life your soul uses the brain as your soul does in life (the material side of existence). How does that explain why your soul can’t think in words as it does in the afterlife?

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

DAVID: You jumped right in with singular form of a soul from the beginning. Of course it contradicts me. […] As I progressed from birth I learned words which are in the memory bank of my brain. When I think I must use the memory bank and must use electricity to do it. Don't you think my soul is in the same boat, or as you imply, the soul has its own memory bank for words? My theory starts on the material side. I don't think yours does.

Until now you have complained that my theory starts with the material side! I suggested (theistic version) that your God created a material mechanism that produced conscious thought and might even produce a soul. But what you have written here illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism that both of us are trying to resolve. Materialists will tell you that there is no soul, the brain learns words, the brain has its memory bank, the brain thinks in those words, and the brain gives material expression to its thoughts, and it all works through electricity. That’s it. But you believe in a soul, and at the same time you believe in “the material side”, and so you try to work out a role for the soul, and this is what leads to all the illogical convolutions of your translation theory, as summarized above. But if you really think it is logical for an English-speaking soul to have to translate its own thoughts into English via the brain’s electric waves although the brain is NOT the source of the thought, we shall have to move on.

--

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 01, 2018, 15:45 (2026 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

DAVID: You jumped right in with singular form of a soul from the beginning. Of course it contradicts me. […] As I progressed from birth I learned words which are in the memory bank of my brain. When I think I must use the memory bank and must use electricity to do it. Don't you think my soul is in the same boat, or as you imply, the soul has its own memory bank for words? My theory starts on the material side. I don't think yours does.

dhw: Until now you have complained that my theory starts with the material side! I suggested (theistic version) that your God created a material mechanism that produced conscious thought and might even produce a soul. But what you have written here illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism that both of us are trying to resolve. Materialists will tell you that there is no soul, the brain learns words, the brain has its memory bank, the brain thinks in those words, and the brain gives material expression to its thoughts, and it all works through electricity. That’s it. But you believe in a soul, and at the same time you believe in “the material side”, and so you try to work out a role for the soul, and this is what leads to all the illogical convolutions of your translation theory, as summarized above. But if you really think it is logical for an English-speaking soul to have to translate its own thoughts into English via the brain’s electric waves although the brain is NOT the source of the thought, we shall have to move on.

Lots of words but no answer to my question above. It is obvious the words I learn from birth are in a memory portion of the brain represented by electrical activity. When I think I find those words in the brain. When my soul thinks during life where do the words come from to be used? Does the soul rely on the memories in the brain or have its own memory bank? And if the soul uses words stored in the brain it can translate electricity like I do, although I don't know how it happens And yes, I'm trying to combine the material and the immaterial in a reasonable way, especially accounting for how we find the brain working for us in life. I don't have to 'believe in "the material side". It exists! I am my soul. We can only work together as one. And we must use the brain in the same way with its electricity.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Sunday, September 02, 2018, 09:22 (2025 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is obvious the words I learn from birth are in a memory portion of the brain represented by electrical activity. When I think I find those words in the brain. When my soul thinks during life where do the words come from to be used? Does the soul rely on the memories in the brain or have its own memory bank?

You are asking a question that illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism which you refuse to recognize. Those who believe in an afterlife tell us that the surviving soul DOES have its own memory bank, together with all the other immaterial facets of our identity. Materialists say all these facets have their source in materials, and they die when the materials die. You are trying to reconcile the two theories with a translation theory that is totally illogical for reasons which I keep explaining and which you keep ignoring. (See below)

DAVID: And if the soul uses words stored in the brain it can translate electricity like I do, although I don't know how it happens.

Once again you separate “I” from the soul, the crime you like to accuse me of. Your sentence should read the soul translates electricity like the soul does. But how can the soul translate electricity into words if it doesn’t know the words already? And if it knows the words already, why can’t it think in words?

DAVID: And yes, I'm trying to combine the material and the immaterial in a reasonable way, especially accounting for how we find the brain working for us in life. I don't have to 'believe in "the material side". It exists! I am my soul. We can only work together as one. And we must use the brain in the same way with its electricity.

When I said you “believe in the material side”, I meant you believe in the materialist explanation for thought, i.e. that it is produced by the brain, which is why, in your unguarded moments, you make statements like “the brain thinks in electric waves”. And in other unguarded moments you forget your belief that you and the soul are one, and make statements like “I am my soul. We can only work together. And we must use the brain….” If you are your soul, you and your soul don’t work TOGETHER. Your soul works together with the brain. And there is no disagreement on that. I can therefore only repeat the paragraph I wrote earlier:

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Sunday, September 02, 2018, 15:41 (2025 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It is obvious the words I learn from birth are in a memory portion of the brain represented by electrical activity. When I think I find those words in the brain. When my soul thinks during life where do the words come from to be used? Does the soul rely on the memories in the brain or have its own memory bank?

dhw: You are asking a question that illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism which you refuse to recognize. Those who believe in an afterlife tell us that the surviving soul DOES have its own memory bank, together with all the other immaterial facets of our identity. Materialists say all these facets have their source in materials, and they die when the materials die. You are trying to reconcile the two theories with a translation theory that is totally illogical for reasons which I keep explaining and which you keep ignoring. (See below) (my bold)

The bold tells me that your opinions on the theory of soul are based on the opinion of others. You have simply followed along. I am presenting my own theory of the soul and its mechanisms, based on what the material side reveals in studies..


DAVID: And if the soul uses words stored in the brain it can translate electricity like I do, although I don't know how it happens.

dhw: Once again you separate “I” from the soul, the crime you like to accuse me of. Your sentence should read the soul translates electricity like the soul does. But how can the soul translate electricity into words if it doesn’t know the words already? And if it knows the words already, why can’t it think in words?

I/soul can only use words I/soul find in my memory back in the brain when I/soul initiate a thought.


DAVID: And yes, I'm trying to combine the material and the immaterial in a reasonable way, especially accounting for how we find the brain working for us in life. I don't have to 'believe in "the material side". It exists! I am my soul. We can only work together as one. And we must use the brain in the same way with its electricity.

dhw: When I said you “believe in the material side”, I meant you believe in the materialist explanation for thought, i.e. that it is produced by the brain, which is why, in your unguarded moments, you make statements like “the brain thinks in electric waves”. And in other unguarded moments you forget your belief that you and the soul are one, and make statements like “I am my soul. We can only work together. And we must use the brain….” If you are your soul, you and your soul don’t work TOGETHER. Your soul works together with the brain. And there is no disagreement on that. I can therefore only repeat the paragraph I wrote earlier:

I write with implications of my belief: the soul/I must use the brain to produce thought. We are together as one. The quotes you have cited are simply shorthand writings on that belief, not Freudian slips as you imply.

dhw: And there is no disagreement on that. I can therefore only repeat the paragraph I wrote earlier:

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

Yes, move on. You simply don't accept my view in how the soul might solve the problem of consciousness. It is certainly OK to disagree.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, September 03, 2018, 09:58 (2024 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is obvious the words I learn from birth are in a memory portion of the brain represented by electrical activity. When I think I find those words in the brain. When my soul thinks during life where do the words come from to be used? Does the soul rely on the memories in the brain or have its own memory bank?

dhw: You are asking a question that illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism which you refuse to recognize. Those who believe in an afterlife tell us that the surviving soul DOES have its own memory bank, together with all the other immaterial facets of our identity. Materialists say all these facets have their source in materials, and they die when the materials die. You are trying to reconcile the two theories with a translation theory that is totally illogical for reasons which I keep explaining and which you keep ignoring. (See below) (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold tells me that your opinions on the theory of soul are based on the opinion of others. You have simply followed along. I am presenting my own theory of the soul and its mechanisms, based on what the material side reveals in studies.

Not the opinions – the experiences! All of a sudden you are discounting NDEs, which until now you have quoted again and again as evidence that there is such a thing a soul that survives the death of the brain! Your theory ignores the evidence you keep quoting, and presents us with the absurdity of an English-speaking soul which cannot understand its own thoughts until it translates them into English.

dhw: However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

DAVID: Yes, move on. You simply don't accept my view in how the soul might solve the problem of consciousness. It is certainly OK to disagree.

Of course the soul (if it exists) solves the problem of consciousness! According to you it is a piece of your God's consciousness, and consciousness has to be conscious! It doesn't have to translate its own thoughts into its own language before it knows what it is thinking about.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, September 03, 2018, 15:29 (2024 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It is obvious the words I learn from birth are in a memory portion of the brain represented by electrical activity. When I think I find those words in the brain. When my soul thinks during life where do the words come from to be used? Does the soul rely on the memories in the brain or have its own memory bank?

dhw: You are asking a question that illustrates the dichotomy between materialism and dualism which you refuse to recognize. Those who believe in an afterlife tell us that the surviving soul DOES have its own memory bank, together with all the other immaterial facets of our identity. Materialists say all these facets have their source in materials, and they die when the materials die. You are trying to reconcile the two theories with a translation theory that is totally illogical for reasons which I keep explaining and which you keep ignoring. (See below) (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold tells me that your opinions on the theory of soul are based on the opinion of others. You have simply followed along. I am presenting my own theory of the soul and its mechanisms, based on what the material side reveals in studies.

dhw: Not the opinions – the experiences! All of a sudden you are discounting NDEs, which until now you have quoted again and again as evidence that there is such a thing a soul that survives the death of the brain! Your theory ignores the evidence you keep quoting, and presents us with the absurdity of an English-speaking soul which cannot understand its own thoughts until it translates them into English.

NDE's not ignored. The soul when it leaves the body changes so it can operate without any dependence on the living brain which while living, you have admitted a dependence exists. Where we disagree is on the degree of dependence. You accept information and expression, but not thought. I accept thought in addition. Since I accept that I/soul are one and in life must use the brain, my soul is always using the brain as I know I do. I/soul as one think with my brain's actions.


dhw: However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

DAVID: Yes, move on. You simply don't accept my view in how the soul might solve the problem of consciousness. It is certainly OK to disagree.

dhw: Of course the soul (if it exists) solves the problem of consciousness! According to you it is a piece of your God's consciousness, and consciousness has to be conscious! It doesn't have to translate its own thoughts into its own language before it knows what it is thinking about.

Again separating your soul in life from your living brain. I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process. All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads. And yes, we agree the soul solves the problem of consciousness. Your version of your soul is not my version of my soul in how a soul functions.

At birth I could not think. I had to develop my physical brain and learn to think. What was the infant soul capable of in thought process at that point in life? In your version of soul please tell me.

Consciousness: placebo effect of mind on body

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 04, 2018, 00:23 (2023 days ago) @ David Turell

The placebo effect is powerful and doctors use it all the time. I know, I did:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931920-600-how-a-positive-mind-really-can-crea...

"A positive mindset isn't just mental – it can trigger physical changes making you fitter, slimmer, more energetic and less stressed. It will even help you live longer.

“OUR minds aren’t passive observers simply observing reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindsets we hold today.” That’s what Alia Crum told global movers and shakers at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It may sound like New Age nonsense, but Crum, who heads the Mind & Body lab at Stanford University in California, can back up her claims with hard evidence showing the mysterious influence the mind has over our health and well-being.

"Crum’s pioneering research was inspired by her own experiences as a child gymnast and college ice hockey player. “You can be the same physical being from one day to the next,” she says, “but your mindset can have a dramatic effect on performance and physiological capabilities.” She often wondered why. Then, as a psychology student, she read about the placebo effect and had a eureka moment: if our expectations can influence the effectiveness of a drug, perhaps something similar can happen in other situations, too.

"Pursuing that idea, Crum and others have discovered that your mindset affects everything from your weight and fitness to the physical toll of insomnia and stress – even how well you age. The upshot is that two people could have identical genes and lifestyles but one can end up healthier than the other, thanks solely to their different thoughts.

Crum's talk:

https://sparq.stanford.edu/sparq-health-director-crum-discusses-mindsets-world-economic...

Comment: It is a five minute video and well worth it as it covers the conclusions of her work on stress, mindset, and the beneficial effects on the body. We see what we already know. The immaterial mind can affect the material body, not only through chemical effects but even more directly. She found she could see a blood pressure reduction of 10 points with her methods of changing mindsets. The placebo effects continue long after the placebo is stopped.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, September 04, 2018, 09:42 (2023 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: All of a sudden you are discounting NDEs […] Your theory ignores the evidence you keep quoting, and presents us with the absurdity of an English-speaking soul which cannot understand its own thoughts until it translates them into English.

DAVID: NDE's not ignored. The soul when it leaves the body changes so it can operate without any dependence on the living brain which while living, you have admitted a dependence exists. Where we disagree is on the degree of dependence. You accept information and expression, but not thought. I accept thought in addition. […]

And your ambivalent versions concerning the source of thought are what lead to the absurdity of the above theory, which I keep repeating and which you keep glossing over.

DAVID: You simply don't accept my view in how the soul might solve the problem of consciousness.

dhw: Of course the soul (if it exists) solves the problem of consciousness! According to you it is a piece of your God's consciousness, and consciousness has to be conscious! It doesn't have to translate its own thoughts into its own language before it knows what it is thinking about.

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.

Now who are “you”? I thought “you” were your soul, so what exactly is “dragging” what? A few days ago, it was your soul that instructed the brain, but if your soul is being “dragged” along, presumably it’s now the brain that is in command. Hey ho, this is the topsy-turvy world of the translation theory.

DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

Created by what? Electric waves come from the brain, but if the brain creates and has a memory bank of words, as you told us last time, why does it need the soul to translate its waves into words it already knows? Why can’t the brain think directly in the words already at its disposal? Same question I asked about the soul. Topsy-turvy again.

DAVID: At birth I could not think. I had to develop my physical brain and learn to think. What was the infant soul capable of in thought process at that point in life? In your version of soul please tell me.

I have told you before (but please keep in mind that I remain neutral in the battle between materialism and dualism, and have actually proposed a hypothesis that would reconcile the two). At birth the conscious soul (but not the personality) is blank. It is your God-given ability to think, but it cannot function until it has something to be conscious OF! The brain supplies the information for the soul, mainly through the senses, and as the brain matures, the amount of information it passes on (including language) increases, and so the conscious soul increases the range of its thought, and continues to do so throughout life.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 04, 2018, 14:26 (2023 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You simply don't accept my view in how the soul might solve the problem of consciousness.

dhw: Of course the soul (if it exists) solves the problem of consciousness! According to you it is a piece of your God's consciousness, and consciousness has to be conscious! It doesn't have to translate its own thoughts into its own language before it knows what it is thinking about.

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.

dhw: Now who are “you”? I thought “you” were your soul, so what exactly is “dragging” what? A few days ago, it was your soul that instructed the brain, but if your soul is being “dragged” along, presumably it’s now the brain that is in command. Hey ho, this is the topsy-turvy world of the translation theory.

Not what I wrote at all, as usual. you have again 'presumed the brain is in command.


DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

Created by what? Electric waves come from the brain, but if the brain creates and has a memory bank of words, as you told us last time, why does it need the soul to translate its waves into words it already knows? Why can’t the brain think directly in the words already at its disposal? Same question I asked about the soul. Topsy-turvy again.

DAVID: At birth I could not think. I had to develop my physical brain and learn to think. What was the infant soul capable of in thought process at that point in life? In your version of soul please tell me.

dhw: I have told you before (but please keep in mind that I remain neutral in the battle between materialism and dualism, and have actually proposed a hypothesis that would reconcile the two). At birth the conscious soul (but not the personality) is blank. It is your God-given ability to think, but it cannot function until it has something to be conscious OF! The brain supplies the information for the soul, mainly through the senses, and as the brain matures, the amount of information it passes on (including language) increases, and so the conscious soul increases the range of its thought, and continues to do so throughout life.

Thank you for making my point. The brain works in electricity. If it supplies the soul with information the soul can translate the electricity into meaningful information!

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Wednesday, September 05, 2018, 08:19 (2022 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.

dhw: Now who are “you”? I thought “you” were your soul, so what exactly is “dragging” what? A few days ago, it was your soul that instructed the brain, but if your soul is being “dragged” along, presumably it’s now the brain that is in command. Hey ho, this is the topsy-turvy world of the translation theory.

DAVID; Not what I wrote at all, as usual. you have again 'presumed the brain is in command.

I have presumed that if the brain drags the soul along, you mean the brain is in command. Since when did the servant drag the master along? But perhaps you will explain what you meant by this strange image.

DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Created by what? Electric waves come from the brain, but if the brain creates and has a memory bank of words, as you told us last time, why does it need the soul to translate its waves into words it already knows? Why can’t the brain think directly in the words already at its disposal? Same question I asked about the soul. Topsy-turvy again.

Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

DAVID: At birth I could not think. I had to develop my physical brain and learn to think. What was the infant soul capable of in thought process at that point in life? In your version of soul please tell me.

dhw: [...] At birth the conscious soul (but not the personality) is blank. It is your God-given ability to think, but it cannot function until it has something to be conscious OF! The brain supplies the information for the soul, mainly through the senses, and as the brain matures, the amount of information it passes on (including language) increases, and so the conscious soul increases the range of its thought, and continues to do so throughout life.

DAVID; Thank you for making my point. The brain works in electricity. If it supplies the soul with information the soul can translate the electricity into meaningful information!

This is what I keep telling you! The soul, if it exists, uses the brain’s electricity for information and for material expression. Information is not thought! It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

I’m off to do my packing! Back in a few days....

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Wednesday, September 05, 2018, 15:02 (2022 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.

dhw: Now who are “you”? I thought “you” were your soul, so what exactly is “dragging” what? A few days ago, it was your soul that instructed the brain, but if your soul is being “dragged” along, presumably it’s now the brain that is in command. Hey ho, this is the topsy-turvy world of the translation theory.

DAVID; Not what I wrote at all, as usual. you have again 'presumed' the brain is in command.

dhw: I have presumed that if the brain drags the soul along, you mean the brain is in command. Since when did the servant drag the master along? But perhaps you will explain what you meant by this strange image.

Same thought as usual. I am my soul and I must think with my brain which has its thoughts represented by electric waves. Those waves must be translated by some mechanism, which I think is supplied by the soul, since we have no valid theory of consciousness.


DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

The brain does not initiate/create thought. I/soul do. The Brain's thoughts are seen in the brain's representation of thought in electricity waves over circuits of networks of neurons.

dhw: [...] At birth the conscious soul (but not the personality) is blank. It is your God-given ability to think, but it cannot function until it has something to be conscious OF! The brain supplies the information for the soul, mainly through the senses, and as the brain matures, the amount of information it passes on (including language) increases, and so the conscious soul increases the range of its thought, and continues to do so throughout life.

DAVID; Thank you for making my point. The brain works in electricity. If it supplies the soul with information the soul can translate the electricity into meaningful information!

dhw: This is what I keep telling you! The soul, if it exists, uses the brain’s electricity for information and for material expression. Information is not thought! It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

You have again agreed that the I/soul understands the brain's electricity, which means it translates the electricity into words in my head, whether it is retrieved information from memory or new observations in thought.


dhw: I’m off to do my packing! Back in a few days....

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Monday, September 10, 2018, 09:11 (2017 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.
[…]
dhw: I have presumed that if the brain drags the soul along, you mean the brain is in command. Since when did the servant drag the master along? But perhaps you will explain what you meant by this strange image.

DAVID: Same thought as usual. I am my soul and I must think with my brain which has its thoughts represented by electric waves. Those waves must be translated by some mechanism, which I think is supplied by the soul, since we have no valid theory of consciousness.

But what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along? Do you think the soul instructs the brain, or the brain instructs the soul?

DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

DAVID: The brain does not initiate/create thought. I/soul do. The Brain's thoughts are seen in the brain's representation of thought in electricity waves over circuits of networks of neurons.

If the soul creates thoughts, then the thoughts are the soul’s, so what are “the brain’s thoughts”? Same unanswered question: Why must your English-speaking soul’s thoughts be “represented” by the brain in electric waves which the soul then has to translate back into the English in which it initiated/created its thoughts?

dhw: It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

DAVID: You have again agreed that the I/soul understands the brain's electricity, which means it translates the electricity into words in my head, whether it is retrieved information from memory or new observations in thought.

I am the one who keeps telling you that the soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire the information it thinks about and to give material expression to its thoughts. Now you come up with “new observations in thought”? What does that mean? (Memory is a problem for dualism, which we can discuss separately.) Observation and thinking about what is observed are two different processes. When I walk round the garden thinking about the meaning of life, I observe the trees (otherwise I would bump into them), but I don’t think about them. Observing the bus is not verbal. Interpreting the observation and its implications is a verbal process, and that is the province of the dualist’s soul (if it exists). What is your objection to the bus example I have given above, and to the link with the afterlife (if it exists)?

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Monday, September 10, 2018, 21:25 (2016 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Same thought as usual. I am my soul and I must think with my brain which has its thoughts represented by electric waves. Those waves must be translated by some mechanism, which I think is supplied by the soul, since we have no valid theory of consciousness.

dhw: But what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along? Do you think the soul instructs the brain, or the brain instructs the soul?

The soul/I use the brain to think. the soul and I instruct the rain which is our tool for thoiught.


DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

DAVID: The brain does not initiate/create thought. I/soul do. The Brain's thoughts are seen in the brain's representation of thought in electricity waves over circuits of networks of neurons.

dhw: If the soul creates thoughts, then the thoughts are the soul’s, so what are “the brain’s thoughts”? Same unanswered question: Why must your English-speaking soul’s thoughts be “represented” by the brain in electric waves which the soul then has to translate back into the English in which it initiated/created its thoughts?

The brain is a tool to create thoughts in electricity. we know the brain works by producing electricity. For creation of thought, dredging up memories, it is all electricity.


dhw: It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

DAVID: You have again agreed that the I/soul understands the brain's electricity, which means it translates the electricity into words in my head, whether it is retrieved information from memory or new observations in thought.

dhw: I am the one who keeps telling you that the soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire the information it thinks about and to give material expression to its thoughts. Now you come up with “new observations in thought”? What does that mean? (Memory is a problem for dualism, which we can discuss separately.) Observation and thinking about what is observed are two different processes. When I walk round the garden thinking about the meaning of life, I observe the trees (otherwise I would bump into them), but I don’t think about them. Observing the bus is not verbal. Interpreting the observation and its implications is a verbal process, and that is the province of the dualist’s soul (if it exists). What is your objection to the bus example I have given above, and to the link with the afterlife (if it exists)?

I can only answer as above. The brain is a tool for thought, observation, memory that the soul/I use. Like your biceps which you use in your arm to lift as as tool, you and I use our brains as tools for thought. The EEG shows only electric waves as the brain works.

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by dhw, Tuesday, September 11, 2018, 13:19 (2016 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: … what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along? Do you think the soul instructs the brain, or the brain instructs the soul?

DAVID: The soul/I use the brain to think. the soul and I instruct the brain which is our tool for thought.

So what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along?

DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

DAVID: The brain does not initiate/create thought. I/soul do. The Brain's thoughts are seen in the brain's representation of thought in electricity waves over circuits of networks of neurons.

dhw: If the soul creates thoughts, then the thoughts are the soul’s, so what are “the brain’s thoughts”? Same unanswered question: Why must your English-speaking soul’s thoughts be “represented” by the brain in electric waves which the soul then has to translate back into the English in which it initiated/created its thoughts?

DAVID: The brain is a tool to create thoughts in electricity. we know the brain works by producing electricity. For creation of thought, dredging up memories, it is all electricity.

If, as you have just said, your English-speaking soul and not your brain creates thought, then the brain’s electricity cannot be the creator of thought! The soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire information, but not to think about the information it has acquired. It doesn’t need to translate its own thoughts into the English in which it created its own thoughts!

dhw: It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

DAVID: You have again agreed that the I/soul understands the brain's electricity, which means it translates the electricity into words in my head, whether it is retrieved information from memory or new observations in thought.

dhw: I am the one who keeps telling you that the soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire the information it thinks about and to give material expression to its thoughts. Now you come up with “new observations in thought”? What does that mean? (Memory is a problem for dualism, which we can discuss separately.) Observation and thinking about what is observed are two different processes. When I walk round the garden thinking about the meaning of life, I observe the trees (otherwise I would bump into them), but I don’t think about them. Observing the bus is not verbal. Interpreting the observation and its implications is a verbal process, and that is the province of the dualist’s soul (if it exists). What is your objection to the bus example I have given above, and to the link with the afterlife (if it exists)?

DAVID; I can only answer as above. The brain is a tool for thought, observation, memory that the soul/I use. Like your biceps which you use in your arm to lift as as tool, you and I use our brains as tools for thought. The EEG shows only electric waves as the brain works.

Yes, in dualism your soul uses your brain as a tool. And yes, there are electric waves in the brain. And I understand perfectly well why these non-answers are the only answers you can offer to the above. I think we should end this discussion for now.


--

Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 11, 2018, 14:09 (2016 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: … what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along? Do you think the soul instructs the brain, or the brain instructs the soul?

DAVID: The soul/I use the brain to think. the soul and I instruct the brain which is our tool for thought.

dhw: So what did you mean by the ‘possible’ soul being dragged along?

I've forgotten the context.


DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

DAVID: The brain is a tool to create thoughts in electricity. we know the brain works by producing electricity. For creation of thought, dredging up memories, it is all electricity.

dhw: If, as you have just said, your English-speaking soul and not your brain creates thought, then the brain’s electricity cannot be the creator of thought! The soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire information, but not to think about the information it has acquired. It doesn’t need to translate its own thoughts into the English in which it created its own thoughts!

Don't you use your brain to think? I do.


dhw: I am the one who keeps telling you that the soul uses the brain’s electricity to acquire the information it thinks about and to give material expression to its thoughts. Now you come up with “new observations in thought”? What does that mean? (Memory is a problem for dualism, which we can discuss separately.) Observation and thinking about what is observed are two different processes. When I walk round the garden thinking about the meaning of life, I observe the trees (otherwise I would bump into them), but I don’t think about them. Observing the bus is not verbal. Interpreting the observation and its implications is a verbal process, and that is the province of the dualist’s soul (if it exists). What is your objection to the bus example I have given above, and to the link with the afterlife (if it exists)?

DAVID; I can only answer as above. The brain is a tool for thought, observation, memory that the soul/I use. Like your biceps which you use in your arm to lift as as tool, you and I use our brains as tools for thought. The EEG shows only electric waves as the brain works.

dhw: Yes, in dualism your soul uses your brain as a tool. And yes, there are electric waves in the brain. And I understand perfectly well why these non-answers are the only answers you can offer to the above. I think we should end this discussion for now.

Agreed. We'll stop. You view them as non-answers because they disagree with your strange view about the brain's function, which is a tool to use for thinking, among other abilities.

Consciousness: Egnor on what a brain does

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 02, 2018, 01:11 (1995 days ago) @ David Turell

Basically he shows it is the seat of consciousness:

https://mindmatters.today/2018/09/do-either-machines-or-brains-really-learn/

"In critiquing my analogy between machine learning and a book that opens on specific pages more easily because of repeated use, Shallit writes:

"Egnor claims that computers “don’t have minds, and only things with minds can learn”. But he doesn’t define what he means by “mind” or “learn”, so we can’t evaluate whether this is true.

"Very well. “Mind” is the ability to have thoughts. Thoughts are absolutely distinguished from matter in that thoughts are always about something else but matter is never inherently about anything other than itself. A rock or a pencil is just a rock or a pencil whereas my thought about my cat or about the White House is about the cat or the White House. This fundamental difference between thought and matter was noted in modern times by Franz Brentano, a 19th century philosopher, although this property of thought—technically called ‘intentionality’— has been recognized by philosophers since the time of Plato and Aristotle.

"Knowledge is thought that corresponds to reality and learning is the acquisition of new knowledge. Only living things with minds can learn because only living things have minds and only living things that have minds can have knowledge. Any attribution of mind or thought or learning to inanimate objects is merely metaphorical.

"Shallit then stumbles into the mereological fallacy:

Most people who actually work in machine learning would dispute his claim [that machines don’t have minds]. And Egnor contradicts himself when he claims that machine learning programs “are such that repeated use reinforces certain outcomes and suppresses other outcomes”, but that nevertheless this isn’t “learning”. Human learning proceeds precisely by this kind of process, as we know from neurobiology.

"Shallit implies that the reinforcement and suppression of neural networks in the brain that accompanies learning means that brains, like machines, learn. He is mistaken. Brains are material organs that contain neurons and glia a host of cells and substances. Brains have action potentials and neurotransmitters.

"Brains are extraordinarily complex, and brain function is a necessary condition for ordinary mental function.
But brains don’t have minds, and brains don’t have knowledge, and brains don’t learn. Reinforcement and suppression of neural networks in the brain are not learning. They are a necessary condition for learning, but learning is an ability of human beings, considered as a whole, to acquire new knowledge, not an ability of human organs considered individually.

"Human organs don’t “know” or “learn” anything. This error is the mereological fallacy. It is the same mereological fallacy to say that my brain learns as it is to say that my lungs breathe or my legs walk. I learn and I breathe and I walk, using my brain and lungs and legs.

"And it is just as much a fallacy to say that machines learn. Human beings learn, using brains, eyes, hands, and books—and machines. We use many things to learn, but only we do the learning, not our organs nor our tools."

Comment: I'm with Egnor's dualism. The brain is the seat of consciousness. The brain is material and consciousness is totally immaterial.

Consciousness: Egnor on what a brain does

by dhw, Tuesday, October 02, 2018, 13:31 (1995 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Human organs don’t “know” or “learn” anything. This error is the mereological fallacy. It is the same mereological fallacy to say that my brain learns as it is to say that my lungs breathe or my legs walk. I learn and I breathe and I walk, using my brain and lungs and legs.

DAVID’s comment: I'm with Egnor's dualism. The brain is the seat of consciousness. The brain is material and consciousness is totally immaterial.

I think we have covered every facet of this subject under “Egnor on dualism” and “Theory of Intelligence”.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 27, 2018, 21:54 (1969 days ago) @ dhw

The author's essay:

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-panpsychism-fails-to-solve-the-mystery-of-consciousness?utm_s...

"Panpsychism’s popularity stems from the fact that it promises to solve two deep problems simultaneously. The first is the famous ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. How does the brain produce conscious experience? How can neurons firing give rise to experiences of colour, sound, taste, pain and so on? In principle, scientists could map my brain processes in complete detail but, it seems, they could never detect my experiences themselves – the way colours look, pain feels and so on: the phenomenal properties of the brain states involved. Somehow, it seems, brain processes acquire a subjective aspect, which is invisible to science. How can we possibly explain this?

***

"Here, some philosophers argue, there is scope for an exciting synthesis. Maybe consciousness – the elusive subjective aspect of our brain states – is the ingredient missing from physics. Perhaps phenomenal properties, or ‘proto-phenomenal’ precursors of them, are the fundamental intrinsic properties of matter we’re looking for, and each subatomic particle is a tiny conscious subject. The brain arises from the particles’ dispositions to interact and combine, and consciousness arises from what the particles are like in themselves. They are two sides of the same coin – or, rather, since on this view consciousness is the fundamental reality underlying physical reality, brains are manifestations of consciousness.

"Panpsychism also promises to solve another problem. It seems obvious that conscious experiences affect how we behave. Yet it looks as if science will be able to explain our behaviour entirely in terms of brain states, without mentioning consciousness at all. So something seems to get left out here. But if panpsychism is true, then this problem disappears. For brain science is, albeit indirectly, mentioning consciousness when it gives explanations in terms of brain states, since consciousness is just the intrinsic aspect of those states.

"There are problems for panpsychism, of course, perhaps the most important being the combination problem. Panpsychists hold that consciousness emerges from the combination of billions of subatomic consciousnesses, just as the brain emerges from the organisation of billions of subatomic particles. ...How do the micro-experiences of billions of subatomic particles in my brain combine to form the twinge of pain I’m feeling in my knee? If billions of humans organised themselves to form a giant brain, each person simulating a single neuron and sending signals to the others using mobile phones, it seems unlikely that their consciousnesses would merge to form a single giant consciousness. Why should something similar happen with subatomic particles?

"A related problem concerns conscious subjects. It’s plausible to think that there can’t be conscious experience without a subject who has the experience. I assume that we and many other animals are conscious subjects, and panpsychists claim that subatomic particles are too. But is that it? Are there any intermediate-level conscious subjects (molecules, crystals, plants?), formed like us from combinations of micro-subjects? It’s hard to see why subjecthood should be restricted to just subatomic particles and higher animals, but equally hard to think of any non-arbitrary way of extending the category.

"Even if we accept that basic physical entities must have some categorical nature , consciousness is an unlikely candidate for this fundamental property. For, so far as our evidence goes, it is a highly localised phenomenon that is specific not only to brains but to particular states of brains It appears to be a specific state of certain highly complex information-processing systems, not a basic feature of the Universe.

"Moreover, panpsychism gives consciousness a curious status. It places it at the very heart of every physical entity yet threatens to render it explanatorily idle. For the behaviour of subatomic particles and the systems they constitute promises to be fully explained by physics and the other physical sciences. Panpsychism offers no distinctive predictions or explanations. It finds a place for consciousness in the physical world, but that place is a sort of limbo.

"I agree with panpsychists that it seems as if our experiences have a private, intrinsic nature that cannot be explained by science. Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion. As well as senses for representing the external world, we have a sort of inner sense, which represents aspects of our own brain activity. And this inner sense gives us a very special perspective on our brain states, creating the impression that they have intrinsic phenomenal qualities that are quite different from all physical properties. It is a powerful impression, but just an impression. Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

Comment: I do not accept panpsychism in any sense other than I think we live in the consciousness of God.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Sunday, October 28, 2018, 11:34 (1969 days ago) @ David Turell

Thank you for this interesting article. For the record, I never thought for one minute that panpsychism solved the mystery of consciousness. But it can offer an alternative mystery to that of a single consciousness that creates all other consciousnesses. See below.

QUOTE: "There are problems for panpsychism, of course, perhaps the most important being the combination problem.

This is why I like the ant analogy and the concept of emergence – namely that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In terms of the human brain, my hypothesis is that cooperation between my intelligent cells/cell communities produces the unified “colony” of my consciousness.

QUOTE: “I agree with panpsychists that it seems as if our experiences have a private, intrinsic nature that cannot be explained by science. Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion [……] Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

None stranger, in my view, than the claim that consciousness is an illusion.

DAVID: I do not accept panpsychism in any sense other than I think we live in the consciousness of God.

I’m not sure what “in the consciousness of God” means. You've always claimed that you are a panentheist, and your God is both inside and outside everything. This makes you a theistic panpsychist, but does it mean your God’s consciousness is in a pebble, a grain of sand, a table and chair, the sun?

My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 28, 2018, 18:17 (1968 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Thank you for this interesting article. For the record, I never thought for one minute that panpsychism solved the mystery of consciousness. But it can offer an alternative mystery to that of a single consciousness that creates all other consciousnesses. See below.

QUOTE: "There are problems for panpsychism, of course, perhaps the most important being the combination problem.

This is why I like the ant analogy and the concept of emergence – namely that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In terms of the human brain, my hypothesis is that cooperation between my intelligent cells/cell communities produces the unified “colony” of my consciousness.

No one knows how consciousness appears. We now now know it feels to be a human ( thank you,
Thomas Nagel) according to dhw: his cell committees vote.


dhw; QUOTE: “I agree with panpsychists that it seems as if our experiences have a private, intrinsic nature that cannot be explained by science. Rather than thinking that this is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion [……] Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views."

None stranger, in my view, than the claim that consciousness is an illusion.

I agree.


DAVID: I do not accept panpsychism in any sense other than I think we live in the consciousness of God.

dhw: I’m not sure what “in the consciousness of God” means. You've always claimed that you are a panentheist, and your God is both inside and outside everything. This makes you a theistic panpsychist, but does it mean your God’s consciousness is in a pebble, a grain of sand, a table and chair, the sun?

I think in everything that can be conscious with its brain.


dhw: My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism..

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Monday, October 29, 2018, 12:07 (1968 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Thank you for this interesting article. For the record, I never thought for one minute that panpsychism solved the mystery of consciousness. But it can offer an alternative mystery to that of a single consciousness that creates all other consciousnesses. See below.

QUOTE: "There are problems for panpsychism, of course, perhaps the most important being the combination problem.”

dhw: This is why I like the ant analogy and the concept of emergence – namely that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In terms of the human brain, my hypothesis is that cooperation between my intelligent cells/cell communities produces the unified “colony” of my consciousness.

DAVID: No one knows how consciousness appears. We now now know it feels to be a human (thank you, Thomas Nagel) according to dhw: his cell committees vote.

I’m surprised you didn’t know how it feels to be human before you read Thomas Nagel. You have already agreed that cell communities have to cooperate, whether preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, divinely dabbled, or endowed with their own intelligence. Since nobody knows how consciousness appears, I’m afraid your God theory is every bit as dubious as any other. (See my final comment.)

DAVID: I do not accept panpsychism in any sense other than I think we live in the consciousness of God.

dhw: I’m not sure what “in the consciousness of God” means. You've always claimed that you are a panentheist, and your God is both inside and outside everything. This makes you a theistic panpsychist, but does it mean your God’s consciousness is in a pebble, a grain of sand, a table and chair, the sun?

DAVID: I think in everything that can be conscious with its brain.

So your panentheistic God, who is inside and outside everything, is outside bacteria and all plant life and all the stars and planets. Or do you mean he’s inside them but hasn’t brought his consciousness with him?

dhw: My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Monday, October 29, 2018, 17:05 (1967 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: No one knows how consciousness appears. We now now know it feels to be a human (thank you, Thomas Nagel) according to dhw: his cell committees vote.

dhw: I’m surprised you didn’t know how it feels to be human before you read Thomas Nagel. You have already agreed that cell communities have to cooperate, whether preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, divinely dabbled, or endowed with their own intelligence. Since nobody knows how consciousness appears, I’m afraid your God theory is every bit as dubious as any other. (See my final comment.)

You don't understand the reference to Nagel. Brains give the sense of how to feel oneself.


DAVID: I think in everything that can be conscious with its brain.

dhw; So your panentheistic God, who is inside and outside everything, is outside bacteria and all plant life and all the stars and planets. Or do you mean he’s inside them but hasn’t brought his consciousness with him?

Brainless organisms cannot have consciousness or be conscious, but God is there for them. Otherwise how does He design evolutionary advances?


dhw: My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

dhw: Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

God is easy to recognize logically from the complexity of life

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Tuesday, October 30, 2018, 08:58 (1967 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You’ve always claimed that […] your God is both inside and outside everything. This makes you a theistic panpsychist, but does it mean your God’s consciousness is in a pebble, a grain of sand, a table and chair, the sun?

DAVID: I think in everything that can be conscious with its brain.

dhw; So your panentheistic God, who is inside and outside everything, is outside bacteria and all plant life and all the stars and planets. Or do you mean he’s inside them but hasn’t brought his consciousness with him?

DAVID: Brainless organisms cannot have consciousness or be conscious, but God is there for them. Otherwise how does He design evolutionary advances?

Your usual assumption that although as a dualist you do not believe the brain to be the source of consciousness, nothing can be conscious unless it has a brain. Anyway, God is now apparently inside and outside everything, but he is not inside bacteria or plants or stones or suns. But he is “there” for them. Where?

dhw: My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

dhw: Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

DAVID: God is easy to recognize logically from the complexity of life.

Formless energy can’t become conscious, but formless energy can be conscious, and this is easy to recognize because life is complex. I do not follow the logic.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 30, 2018, 16:33 (1966 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You’ve always claimed that […] your God is both inside and outside everything. This makes you a theistic panpsychist, but does it mean your God’s consciousness is in a pebble, a grain of sand, a table and chair, the sun?

DAVID: I think in everything that can be conscious with its brain.

dhw; So your panentheistic God, who is inside and outside everything, is outside bacteria and all plant life and all the stars and planets. Or do you mean he’s inside them but hasn’t brought his consciousness with him?

DAVID: Brainless organisms cannot have consciousness or be conscious, but God is there for them. Otherwise how does He design evolutionary advances?

dhw: Your usual assumption that although as a dualist you do not believe the brain to be the source of consciousness, nothing can be conscious unless it has a brain. Anyway, God is now apparently inside and outside everything, but he is not inside bacteria or plants or stones or suns. But he is “there” for them. Where?

God started life and evolved us from a start with bacteria. God's consciousness is within this universe as well as without.


dhw: My atheistic form of panpsychism, which leaves gaps every bit as large as the theistic hypothesis, would be that as energy and matter have gone on eternally forming new combinations, eventually the most rudimentary consciousness came into being, and in due course this evolved into billions of consciousnesses which themselves combined to create increasingly complex forms, perhaps culminating in our own. But at what level consciousness actually began we can have no idea, just as we can have no idea how it can have existed without a beginning (God).

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

dhw: Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

DAVID: God is easy to recognize logically from the complexity of life.

dhw: Formless energy can’t become conscious, but formless energy can be conscious, and this is easy to recognize because life is complex. I do not follow the logic.

The logic must be holistic, looking at every bit of evidence there is a designer. Questioning each tiny aspect of the evidence is not logical. Look at the video of the larva that decides to look like a snake when provoked and tell me it can't have been the result of a designer. Just a bit of evidence you keep denying.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Wednesday, October 31, 2018, 09:37 (1966 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Brainless organisms cannot have consciousness or be conscious, but God is there for them. Otherwise how does He design evolutionary advances?

dhw: Your usual assumption that although as a dualist you do not believe the brain to be the source of consciousness, nothing can be conscious unless it has a brain. Anyway, God is now apparently inside and outside everything, but he is not inside bacteria or plants or stones or suns. But he is “there” for them. Where?

DAVID: God started life and evolved us from a start with bacteria. God's consciousness is within this universe as well as without.

If God exists, then of course he started life, and we agree that he would have started it with bacteria. How does that prove that organisms must have a brain to be intelligent? As for within and without, it would appear, then, that God’s consciousness is not in bacteria, plants, stones or the sun but is only in brains, and otherwise floats around wherever there is formless energy inside and outside the universe.

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

dhw: Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

DAVID: God is easy to recognize logically from the complexity of life.

dhw: Formless energy can’t become conscious, but formless energy can be conscious, and this is easy to recognize because life is complex. I do not follow the logic.

DAVID: The logic must be holistic, looking at every bit of evidence there is a designer. Questioning each tiny aspect of the evidence is not logical. Look at the video of the larva that decides to look like a snake when provoked and tell me it can't have been the result of a designer. Just a bit of evidence you keep denying.

We are not arguing about evidence for design, which you know perfectly well I accept – hence the whole discussion about your God’s possible invention of cellular intelligence as the designing mechanism. We are arguing, under the heading of “panpsychism”, about the origin of consciousness. There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 31, 2018, 18:38 (1965 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Formless energy /matter in this concept is given the property of complexifying all by itself with some sort of imagined self-contained mechanism.

dhw: Yes, the concept is as difficult to conceive as formless energy (God) simply endowed for ever with some sort of sourceless imagined self-contained non-material mechanism for consciousness.

DAVID: God is easy to recognize logically from the complexity of life.

dhw: Formless energy can’t become conscious, but formless energy can be conscious, and this is easy to recognize because life is complex. I do not follow the logic.

DAVID: The logic must be holistic, looking at every bit of evidence there is a designer. Questioning each tiny aspect of the evidence is not logical. Look at the video of the larva that decides to look like a snake when provoked and tell me it can't have been the result of a designer. Just a bit of evidence you keep denying.

dhw: We are not arguing about evidence for design, which you know perfectly well I accept – hence the whole discussion about your God’s possible invention of cellular intelligence as the designing mechanism. We are arguing, under the heading of “panpsychism”, about the origin of consciousness. There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Thursday, November 01, 2018, 11:05 (1965 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 01, 2018, 17:34 (1964 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

dhw: I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Friday, November 02, 2018, 13:13 (1964 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

dhw: I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

DAVID: The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

Fuzzier and fuzzier. Why is it more logical that first cause energy can possess purposeful consciousness than that first cause energy can develop purposeful consciousness?

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Friday, November 02, 2018, 19:18 (1963 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

dhw: I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

DAVID: The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

dhw: Fuzzier and fuzzier. Why is it more logical that first cause energy can possess purposeful consciousness than that first cause energy can develop purposeful consciousness?

We cannot explain consciousness, yet it can create itself! Talk about fuzzy.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Saturday, November 03, 2018, 09:56 (1963 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

dhw: I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

DAVID: The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

dhw: Fuzzier and fuzzier. Why is it more logical that first cause energy can possess purposeful consciousness than that first cause energy can develop purposeful consciousness?

DAVID: We cannot explain consciousness, yet it can create itself! Talk about fuzzy.

You still don’t understand the nature of agnosticism. BOTH explanations are fuzzy. That’s why I do not believe or disbelieve either. However, you believe in one of the fuzzy explanations, and dismiss the other because it’s fuzzy.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 03, 2018, 18:22 (1962 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There is no logic in the argument that formless energy can BE conscious but cannot BECOME conscious.

DAVID: The concept is that one very special form of energy exists, like no other energy. God is not the same energy as all the other energy in the universe we know about. You keep forgetting that difference.

dhw: I’m reminded of Russell’s invisible teapot orbiting the sun. We can’t see it, but it must be there because you say it is. Anyway, you now propose a form of formless energy that CAN’T become conscious, and a different form of formless energy which IS conscious. Well, the concept I’ve proposed is a form of formless energy which CAN become conscious. Why is your hypothesis more logical than mine?

DAVID: The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

dhw: Fuzzier and fuzzier. Why is it more logical that first cause energy can possess purposeful consciousness than that first cause energy can develop purposeful consciousness?

DAVID: We cannot explain consciousness, yet it can create itself! Talk about fuzzy.

dhw: You still don’t understand the nature of agnosticism. BOTH explanations are fuzzy. That’s why I do not believe or disbelieve either. However, you believe in one of the fuzzy explanations, and dismiss the other because it’s fuzzy.

I fully understand the nature of agnosticism. Proof is required, but as courses in logic tell us, logic can lead to conclusions which are reasonable. First, research shows us just how very complex life's processes are. You have admitted they show design. Second, in human experience, complex design requires advanced thinking, which can only come from a working mind that can foresee the needs of the future the design is aimed at. Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Sunday, November 04, 2018, 12:44 (1962 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The difference is the purposeful drive of first cause. Free-floating energy is just that, free of anything except its existence.

dhw: Fuzzier and fuzzier. Why is it more logical that first cause energy can possess purposeful consciousness than that first cause energy can develop purposeful consciousness?

DAVID: We cannot explain consciousness, yet it can create itself! Talk about fuzzy.

dhw: You still don’t understand the nature of agnosticism. BOTH explanations are fuzzy. That’s why I do not believe or disbelieve either. However, you believe in one of the fuzzy explanations, and dismiss the other because it’s fuzzy.

DAVID: I fully understand the nature of agnosticism. Proof is required, but as courses in logic tell us, logic can lead to conclusions which are reasonable.

Proof is impossible. Logic can lead to conclusions which individuals consider to be reasonable. This individual finds BOTH explanations to be sufficiently reasonable/unreasonable to make it impossible to believe/disbelieve either of them.

DAVID: First, research shows us just how very complex life's processes are. You have admitted they show design. Second, in human experience, complex design requires advanced thinking, which can only come from a working mind that can foresee the needs of the future the design is aimed at.

You simply refuse to recognize that life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain. Yet again: I do not accept that human birth canals, whales’ fins, spiders’ webs, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ migration all had to be planned before they were needed in anticipation of conditions that did not exist. I find it far more logical that they all resulted from the needs or opportunities created by changing conditions. And so, yet again, instead of your proposal that they were all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally dabbled by your God (although apparently his purpose was to produce the body and brain of Homo sapiens), I propose that they were endowed right from the start - possibly by your God - with the intelligence to organize their own responses to those changing conditions. But of course, yet again: this remains a hypothesis because “life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain”. I believe I may have said all this before.

DAVID: Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

Consciousness has to be designed, the formless energy we find is not conscious, and therefore there must be a form of formless energy that we are not aware of whose consciousness doesn't have to be designed but simply is. No, I’m afraid I do not find that logical. Sorry.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 04, 2018, 18:46 (1961 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: I fully understand the nature of agnosticism. Proof is required, but as courses in logic tell us, logic can lead to conclusions which are reasonable.

dhw: Proof is impossible. Logic can lead to conclusions which individuals consider to be reasonable. This individual finds BOTH explanations to be sufficiently reasonable/unreasonable to make it impossible to believe/disbelieve either of them.

DAVID: First, research shows us just how very complex life's processes are. You have admitted they show design. Second, in human experience, complex design requires advanced thinking, which can only come from a working mind that can foresee the needs of the future the design is aimed at.

dhw: You simply refuse to recognize that life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain. Yet again: I do not accept that human birth canals, whales’ fins, spiders’ webs, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ migration all had to be planned before they were needed in anticipation of conditions that did not exist. I find it far more logical that they all resulted from the needs or opportunities created by changing conditions.

Again, an example of your magical thinking. Needs and opportunities don't design, when design is required.

dhw: And so, yet again, instead of your proposal that they were all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally dabbled by your God (although apparently his purpose was to produce the body and brain of Homo sapiens), I propose that they were endowed right from the start - possibly by your God - with the intelligence to organize their own responses to those changing conditions. But of course, yet again: this remains a hypothesis because “life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain”. I believe I may have said all this before.

You sure have said it before, scurrying back to an God-given inventive mechanism, which means God is in change of evolution, which is always my point


DAVID: Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

dhw: Consciousness has to be designed, the formless energy we find is not conscious, and therefore there must be a form of formless energy that we are not aware of whose consciousness doesn't have to be designed but simply is. No, I’m afraid I do not find that logical. Sorry.

That is why you are agnostic. Your logic doesn't carry as far as mine.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by dhw, Monday, November 05, 2018, 10:07 (1961 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You simply refuse to recognize that life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain. Yet again: I do not accept that human birth canals, whales’ fins, spiders’ webs, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ migration all had to be planned before they were needed in anticipation of conditions that did not exist. I find it far more logical that they all resulted from the needs or opportunities created by changing conditions.

DAVID: Again, an example of your magical thinking. Needs and opportunities don't design, when design is required.

Again an example of your dislocated thinking. You have forgotten that in my hypothesis it is the intelligent cells/cell communities that do the designing, in response to the needs and opportunities.

dhw: And so, yet again, instead of your proposal that they were all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally dabbled by your God (although apparently his purpose was to produce the body and brain of Homo sapiens), I propose that they were endowed right from the start - possibly by your God - with the intelligence to organize their own responses to those changing conditions. But of course, yet again: this remains a hypothesis because “life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain”. I believe I may have said all this before.

DAVID: You sure have said it before, scurrying back to an God-given inventive mechanism, which means God is in charge of evolution, which is always my point.

You have forgotten that my hypothesis (theistic version) is the reverse of yours: in mine, your God has invented the mechanism so that he does NOT personally preprogramme or dabble every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution but organisms do it themselves. And this explains the vast variety of organisms and natural wonders extant and extinct – a history that runs directly counter to your belief that the whole of evolution was geared to the production of sapiens’ brain and body.

DAVID: Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

dhw: Consciousness has to be designed, the formless energy we find is not conscious, and therefore there must be a form of formless energy that we are not aware of whose consciousness doesn't have to be designed but simply is. No, I’m afraid I do not find that logical. Sorry.

DAVID: That is why you are agnostic. Your logic doesn't carry as far as mine.

Even you have admitted that your belief ultimately rests on faith, not on logic. That is why whenever I pinpoint the illogicality of your arguments, you fall back on the mantra that your God’s logic is different from ours.

Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism

by David Turell @, Monday, November 05, 2018, 20:26 (1960 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You simply refuse to recognize that life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain. Yet again: I do not accept that human birth canals, whales’ fins, spiders’ webs, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ migration all had to be planned before they were needed in anticipation of conditions that did not exist. I find it far more logical that they all resulted from the needs or opportunities created by changing conditions.

DAVID: Again, an example of your magical thinking. Needs and opportunities don't design, when design is required.

dhw: Again an example of your dislocated thinking. You have forgotten that in my hypothesis it is the intelligent cells/cell communities that do the designing, in response to the needs and opportunities.

I've not forgotten it.


DAVID: Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

dhw: Consciousness has to be designed, the formless energy we find is not conscious, and therefore there must be a form of formless energy that we are not aware of whose consciousness doesn't have to be designed but simply is. No, I’m afraid I do not find that logical. Sorry.

DAVID: That is why you are agnostic. Your logic doesn't carry as far as mine.

dhw: Even you have admitted that your belief ultimately rests on faith, not on logic. That is why whenever I pinpoint the illogicality of your arguments, you fall back on the mantra that your God’s logic is different from ours.

My logic leads to faith with the preponderance of evidence I've presented.

Consciousness: Egnor on what a brain does

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 04, 2018, 00:47 (1962 days ago) @ David Turell

More Egnor on brain, mind, and why AI is different and always will be:

https://mindmatters.today/2018/07/neurosurgeon-outlines-why-machines-cant-think/

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning.

***

"The assertion that computation is thought, hence thought is computation, is called computer functionalism. It is the theory that the human mind is to the brain as software is to hardware. The mind is what the brain does; the brain “runs” the mind, as a computer runs a program. However, careful examination of natural intelligence (the human mind) and artificial intelligence (computation) shows that this is a profound misunderstanding.

"What is the hallmark of human thought, and what distinguishes thoughts from material things? Franz Brentano (1838–1917), a German philosopher in the 19th century, answered this question decisively. All thoughts are about something, whereas no material object is inherently “about” anything. This property of aboutness is called intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind. Every thought that I have shares the property of aboutness—I think about my vacation, or about politics, or about my family. But no material object is, in itself, “about” anything. A mountain or a rock or a pen lacks aboutness—they are just objects. Only a mind has intentionality, and intentionality is the hallmark of the mind.

"Another word for intentionality is meaning. All thoughts inherently mean something. A truly meaningless thought is an oxymoron. The meaning may be trivial or confusing, but every thought entails meaning of some sort. Every thought is about something, and that something is the meaning of the thought.

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning. That is, in fact, what makes thought so remarkable and also what makes computation so useful. You can think about anything, and you can use the same computer to express your entire range of thoughts, because computation is blind to meaning.

"What is the hallmark of computation? Computation is an algorithmic process. It is the matching of an input to an output according to an algorithm. That function is termed a Turing Machine. Computation in this sense is independent of the physical substrate on which it occurs. Computation can take place on silicon, copper, or protoplasm.

Yet computation is independent of the semantic content.

***

"The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning. That is, in fact, what makes thought so remarkable and also what makes computation so useful. You can think about anything, and you can use the same computer to express your entire range of thoughts because computation is blind to meaning.

"Thought is not merely not computation. Thought is the antithesis of computation. Thought is precisely what computation is not. Thought is intentional. Computation is not intentional.

***

"But to believe that machines can think or that human thought is a kind of computation is a profound error. Belief in this fundamental error about AI will lead us away from, not toward, the truth about AI. Machines, for example, will never become malevolent and harm mankind. Men will act with malevolence, using machines, or men will use machines in ways that (unintentionally) harm others. Men can use cars malevolently and carelessly and can thus harm others. But the malevolence and careless is in the man, not in the car.

"To paraphrase Pogo: we have met AI, and AI is us."

Comment: As a kid I loved the comic strip Pogo. The brain is not a computer in the sense that it can convey meaning with original thought, but it can be analogized to work like a computer, understanding the difference.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Wednesday, December 12, 2018, 22:00 (1923 days ago) @ David Turell

Several areas have been mapped and associated:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-brain-injuries-deprive-people-of-a-sense...

"When Ryan Darby was a neurology resident, he was familiar with something called alien limb syndrome, but that did not make his patients’ behavior any less puzzling. Individuals with this condition report that one of their extremities—often a hand—seems to act of its own volition. It might touch and grab things or even unbutton a shirt the other hand is buttoning up. Patients are unable to control the rebellious hand short of grabbing or even sitting on it. They seem to have lost agency—that unmistakable feeling of ownership of one’s actions and an important component of free will. “It was one of those symptoms that really questioned the mind and how it brings about some of those bigger concepts,” says Darby,

"Alien limb syndrome can arise after a stroke causes a lesion in the brain. But even though patients who have it report the same eccentric symptoms, their lesions do not occur in the same place. “Could the reason be that the lesions were just in different parts of the same brain network?” Darby wondered. To find out, he and his colleagues compiled findings from brain-imaging studies of people with the syndrome. They also looked into akinetic mutism—a condition that leaves patients with no desire to move or speak, despite having no physical impediment.

***

"Lesions associated with alien limb syndrome all mapped onto a network of areas connecting to the precuneus, a region previously linked to self-awareness and agency. In patients with akinetic mutism, the lesions were part of another network centered on the anterior cingulate cortex, which is thought to be involved in voluntary actions. These two networks also include brain regions, which, when stimulated by electrodes in previous studies, altered subjects’ perceptions of free will,

"The study suggests at least some components of free will—volition and agency for movements—are not localized in any one brain area but instead rely on a network of regions. The perception of will may break down with disruption to any part of that network.

“'This is a creative way of using data that’s been sitting around for decades and reconceptualizing it to learn something actually new and make sense of things that didn’t make sense before,” says Amit Etkin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, who was not involved in the work. Studies of many other brain conditions could benefit from taking such an approach, he adds."

Comment: long agree we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Thursday, December 13, 2018, 09:50 (1923 days ago) @ David Turell

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Thursday, December 13, 2018, 21:27 (1922 days ago) @ dhw

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

dhw: Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

You keep forgetting most of the articles available for presentation are Darwinian in underlying premise.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Friday, December 14, 2018, 10:55 (1922 days ago) @ David Turell

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

dhw: Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

DAVID: You keep forgetting most of the articles available for presentation are Darwinian in underlying premise.

This has nothing to do with Darwin. You seem to think that the very mention of the name invalidates any conclusions other than your own. But my comment was a simple clarification, as your own could have been taken to mean that consciousness was not actually produced by the brain, and that was not agreed between us. (I remain typically neutral on the subject of materialism v. dualism!)

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Friday, December 14, 2018, 19:50 (1921 days ago) @ dhw

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

dhw: Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

DAVID: You keep forgetting most of the articles available for presentation are Darwinian in underlying premise.

dhw: This has nothing to do with Darwin. You seem to think that the very mention of the name invalidates any conclusions other than your own. But my comment was a simple clarification, as your own could have been taken to mean that consciousness was not actually produced by the brain, and that was not agreed between us. (I remain typically neutral on the subject of materialism v. dualism!)

And we agree that certain attributes of consciousness are associated with different areas of the brain.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Saturday, December 15, 2018, 12:17 (1921 days ago) @ David Turell

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

dhw: Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

DAVID: You keep forgetting most of the articles available for presentation are Darwinian in underlying premise.

dhw: This has nothing to do with Darwin. You seem to think that the very mention of the name invalidates any conclusions other than your own. But my comment was a simple clarification, as your own could have been taken to mean that consciousness was not actually produced by the brain, and that was not agreed between us. (I remain typically neutral on the subject of materialism v. dualism!)

DAVID: And we agree that certain attributes of consciousness are associated with different areas of the brain.

Yes indeed. Again, the question is whether those sections of the brain are the source of the attributes of consciousness, or the tools which a “soul” uses in order to implement particular aspects of itself, or a combination of both (see THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE).

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Saturday, December 15, 2018, 14:47 (1921 days ago) @ dhw

David’s comment: long ago we agreed that the brain is the site of consciousness which uses specific areas of the brain to appear properly in thought.

dhw: Your comment threatens to reopen the whole debate concerning materialism v dualism, which can only lead to our going over the same ground again and again. Just to clarify: the question is whether consciousness is a product of the brain (which seems to be the implication in this article) or is an immaterial “soul” which works with the brain. The only agreement we had was that if there is such a thing as a “soul”, it is sited in the brain.

DAVID: You keep forgetting most of the articles available for presentation are Darwinian in underlying premise.

dhw: This has nothing to do with Darwin. You seem to think that the very mention of the name invalidates any conclusions other than your own. But my comment was a simple clarification, as your own could have been taken to mean that consciousness was not actually produced by the brain, and that was not agreed between us. (I remain typically neutral on the subject of materialism v. dualism!)

DAVID: And we agree that certain attributes of consciousness are associated with different areas of the brain.

dhw: Yes indeed. Again, the question is whether those sections of the brain are the source of the attributes of consciousness, or the tools which a “soul” uses in order to implement particular aspects of itself, or a combination of both (see THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE).

And as Egnor, the pediatric neurosurgeon notes, removing large sections of the brain usually does not change the attributes of consciousness, so how necessary are normal brain regions?

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Sunday, December 16, 2018, 12:08 (1920 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: And we agree that certain attributes of consciousness are associated with different areas of the brain.

dhw: Yes indeed. Again, the question is whether those sections of the brain are the source of the attributes of consciousness, or the tools which a “soul” uses in order to implement particular aspects of itself, or a combination of both (see THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE).

DAVID: And as Egnor, the pediatric neurosurgeon notes, removing large sections of the brain usually does not change the attributes of consciousness, so how necessary are normal brain regions?

This whole article is based on the observation that brain lesions remove free will. Wouldn’t you regard free will as an attribute of consciousness? (But do we really want to reopen this discussion? We have covered every aspect of it before!)

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Sunday, December 16, 2018, 14:41 (1920 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: And we agree that certain attributes of consciousness are associated with different areas of the brain.

dhw: Yes indeed. Again, the question is whether those sections of the brain are the source of the attributes of consciousness, or the tools which a “soul” uses in order to implement particular aspects of itself, or a combination of both (see THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE).

DAVID: And as Egnor, the pediatric neurosurgeon notes, removing large sections of the brain usually does not change the attributes of consciousness, so how necessary are normal brain regions?

dhw: This whole article is based on the observation that brain lesions remove free will. Wouldn’t you regard free will as an attribute of consciousness? (But do we really want to reopen this discussion? We have covered every aspect of it before!)

O f course free will is part of consciousness.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Sunday, July 21, 2019, 15:24 (1703 days ago) @ David Turell

Another article trying to make the same point that a damaged brain has trouble producing free will:

http://nautil.us/blog/can-neuroscience-understand-free-will

Clinical neuroscientists and neurologists have identified the brain networks responsible for this sense of free will. There seems to be two: the network governing the desire to act, and the network governing the feeling of responsibility for acting. Brain-damaged patients show that these can come apart—you can have one without the other.

***

Lacking essentially all motivation to move or speak has a name: akinetic mutism. The researchers, lead by neurologists Michael Fox, of Harvard Medical School, and Ryan Darby, of Vanderbilt University, analyzed 28 cases of this condition, not all of them involving damage in the same departments. “We found that brain lesions that disrupt volition occur in many different locations, but fall within a single brain network, defined by connectivity to the anterior cingulate,” which has links to both the “emotional” limbic system and the “cognitive” prefrontal cortex, the researchers wrote. Feeling like you’re moving under the direction of outside forces has a name, too: alien limb syndrome. The researchers analyzed 50 cases of this condition, which again involved brain damage in different spots. “Lesions that disrupt agency also occur in many different locations, but fall within a separate network, defined by connectivity to the precuneus,” which is involved, among other things, in the experience of agency.

The results may not map onto “free will” as we understand it ethically—the ability to choose between right and wrong. “It remains unknown whether the network of brain regions we identify as related to free will for movements is the same as those important for moral decision-making, as prior studies have suggested important differences,” the researchers wrote. For instance, in a 2017 study, he and Darby analyzed many cases of brain lesions in various regions predisposing people to criminal behavior, and found that “these lesions all fall within a unique functionally connected brain network involved in moral decision making.”

***

In a 2016 paper, Darby noted that people who have behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia “develop immoral behaviors as a result of their disease despite the ability to explicitly state that their behavior is wrong.” This complicates how moral responsibility should be understood, he explains. People can be capable of acknowledging wrongdoing and yet be incapable of acting accordingly. Responsibility can’t hinge on any simple notion of “reason responsiveness,” Darby says, which is a view of how free will can be compatible with determinism—the idea, in the case of behavior, that brain activity causes feelings, intentions, and actions, moral or not.

***

The concept of free will doesn’t make any sense to me. As Kavka’s thought experiment shows, we don’t have much control over our thoughts. Take this article I’m writing: The words I’m committing to print pop into my mind unbeckoned. It’s less me choosing them and more them presenting themselves to me. ( my bold)

***

In any case, the mystery of free will isn’t going away anytime soon. In March, a group of neuroscientists and philosophers announced that they’ve received $7 million to study the nature of free will and whether humans have it. Uri Maoz, a computational neuroscientist at Chapman University, is leading the project. “As a scientist, I don’t know what it entails to have free will,” he said in an interview with Science. That’s a philosophical puzzle. But once Maoz’s philosopher colleagues agree on a definition, he can get to work to see if it occurs in humans. “This is an empirical question. It may be that I don’t have the technology to measure it, but that is at least an empirical question that I could get at.”

Comment: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 07:32 (1694 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE:The concept of free will doesn’t make any sense to me. As Kavka’s thought experiment shows, we don’t have much control over our thoughts. Take this article I’m writing: The words I’m committing to print pop into my mind unbeckoned. It’s less me choosing them and more them presenting themselves to me. (DAVID’s bold)

In any case, the mystery of free will isn’t going away anytime soon. In March, a group of neuroscientists and philosophers announced that they’ve received $7 million to study the nature of free will and whether humans have it. Uri Maoz, a computational neuroscientist at Chapman University, is leading the project. bbb“ bbbAs a scientist, I don’t know what it entails to have free will,” he said in an interview with Science. That’s a philosophical puzzle. But once Maoz’s philosopher colleagues agree on a definition, he can get to work to see if it occurs in humans. “This is an empirical question. It may be that I don’t have the technology to measure it, but that is at least an empirical question that I could get at.” (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

Nobody knows “how” words pop into their heads, because nobody knows how consciousness works. It’s a straight choice: either your cell communities are communicating with one another at different levels, the highest of which is what you suppose to be “you” (= materialism), or an immaterial “you” is communicating with your cell communities (= dualism). The former appears to exclude free will, and the latter allows it. However, on a different plane, it might be said that the law of cause and effect precludes free will both for materialists and for dualists. The effects of brain damage clearly favour materialists, but psychic experiences favour dualists. You may remember that some time ago I proposed a theory of intelligence which attempted a compromise between the two schools of thought.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 18:26 (1693 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE:The concept of free will doesn’t make any sense to me. As Kavka’s thought experiment shows, we don’t have much control over our thoughts. Take this article I’m writing: The words I’m committing to print pop into my mind unbeckoned. It’s less me choosing them and more them presenting themselves to me. (DAVID’s bold)

In any case, the mystery of free will isn’t going away anytime soon. In March, a group of neuroscientists and philosophers announced that they’ve received $7 million to study the nature of free will and whether humans have it. Uri Maoz, a computational neuroscientist at Chapman University, is leading the project. bbb“ bbbAs a scientist, I don’t know what it entails to have free will,” he said in an interview with Science. That’s a philosophical puzzle. But once Maoz’s philosopher colleagues agree on a definition, he can get to work to see if it occurs in humans. “This is an empirical question. It may be that I don’t have the technology to measure it, but that is at least an empirical question that I could get at.” (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

dhw: Nobody knows “how” words pop into their heads, because nobody knows how consciousness works. It’s a straight choice: either your cell communities are communicating with one another at different levels, the highest of which is what you suppose to be “you” (= materialism), or an immaterial “you” is communicating with your cell communities (= dualism). The former appears to exclude free will, and the latter allows it. However, on a different plane, it might be said that the law of cause and effect precludes free will both for materialists and for dualists. The effects of brain damage clearly favour materialists, but psychic experiences favour dualists. You may remember that some time ago I proposed a theory of intelligence which attempted a compromise between the two schools of thought.

The problem is always the same. A material brain is the seat of immaterial consciousness, which can survive transient death of the brain. Where does it go while the brain is not functioning? My answer is nowhere. The brain is like a radio and receives consciousness when the brain is functional . As for free will it is part and parcel of consciousness, which each person mediates by using his brain to exercise control.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Wednesday, July 31, 2019, 12:27 (1693 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

dhw: Nobody knows “how” words pop into their heads, because nobody knows how consciousness works. It’s a straight choice: either your cell communities are communicating with one another at different levels, the highest of which is what you suppose to be “you” (= materialism), or an immaterial “you” is communicating with your cell communities (= dualism). The former appears to exclude free will, and the latter allows it. However, on a different plane, it might be said that the law of cause and effect precludes free will both for materialists and for dualists. The effects of brain damage clearly favour materialists, but psychic experiences favour dualists. You may remember that some time ago I proposed a theory of intelligence which attempted a compromise between the two schools of thought.

DAVID: The problem is always the same. A material brain is the seat of immaterial consciousness, which can survive transient death of the brain. Where does it go while the brain is not functioning? My answer is nowhere. The brain is like a radio and receives consciousness when the brain is functional . As for free will it is part and parcel of consciousness, which each person mediates by using his brain to exercise control.

I thought your answer was that when the brain was not functioning, consciousness went to another world. Of course free will is part and parcel of consciousness. The problem is the source of consciousness, as I have attempted to describe above.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Wednesday, July 31, 2019, 18:48 (1692 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

dhw: Nobody knows “how” words pop into their heads, because nobody knows how consciousness works. It’s a straight choice: either your cell communities are communicating with one another at different levels, the highest of which is what you suppose to be “you” (= materialism), or an immaterial “you” is communicating with your cell communities (= dualism). The former appears to exclude free will, and the latter allows it. However, on a different plane, it might be said that the law of cause and effect precludes free will both for materialists and for dualists. The effects of brain damage clearly favour materialists, but psychic experiences favour dualists. You may remember that some time ago I proposed a theory of intelligence which attempted a compromise between the two schools of thought.

DAVID: The problem is always the same. A material brain is the seat of immaterial consciousness, which can survive transient death of the brain. Where does it go while the brain is not functioning? My answer is nowhere. The brain is like a radio and receives consciousness when the brain is functional . As for free will it is part and parcel of consciousness, which each person mediates by using his brain to exercise control.

dhw: I thought your answer was that when the brain was not functioning, consciousness went to another world. Of course free will is part and parcel of consciousness. The problem is the source of consciousness, as I have attempted to describe above.

I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

Consciousness: new philosophic view of free will

by David Turell @, Wednesday, July 31, 2019, 19:51 (1692 days ago) @ David Turell

Really not different at all:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0510

Abstract: "Free will is an apparent paradox because it requires a historical identity to escape its history in a self-guided fashion. Philosophers have itemized design features necessary for this escape, scaling from action to agency and vice versa. These can be organized into a coherent framework that neurocognitive capacities provide and that form a basis for neurocognitive free will. These capacities include (1) adaptive access to unpredictability, (2) tuning of this unpredictability in the service of hierarchical goal structures, (3) goal-directed deliberation via search over internal cognitive representations, and (4) a role for conscious construction of the self in the generation and choice of alternatives. This frames free will as a process of generative self-construction, by which an iterative search process samples from experience in an adaptively exploratory fashion, allowing the agent to explore itself in the construction of alternative futures. This provides an explanation of how effortful conscious control modulates adaptive access to unpredictability and resolves one of free will's key conceptual problems: how randomness is used in the service of the will. The implications provide a contemporary neurocognitive grounding to compatibilist and libertarian positions on free will, and demonstrate how neurocognitive understanding can contribute to this debate by presenting free will as an interaction between our freedom and our will."

***

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-07-neurocognitive-basis-free.html

"Commenting on his paper, Professor Hills said: "Neurocognitive free will—the free will that we have as humans—is a process of generative self-construction. I demonstrate that effortful consciousness samples from our experience in an adaptively exploratory fashion, allowing us to explore ourselves in the construction of alternative futures.

"'There is evidence that people who believe in free will are more pro-social. They adopt behaviour that benefits others and society as a whole, and have a greater sense of control of their future—they believe they can influence the future in positive ways. This is important. Neurocognitive free will provides a basis for understanding why they are correct.

"'Neurocognitive free will ties our understanding of free will to something real. It also helps us to understand what it means. I suspect it's not what most people think. As Sartre once said, "Freedom is not a triumph." But I think neurocognitive free will gives some hints to how it could be. That will be a focus of future work.' "

Comment: Doesn't answer the problem at all to answer what the brain does electrically/mechanically that the materialists point to.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Thursday, August 01, 2019, 11:29 (1692 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Note my bolds. We are all aware that brain damage can damage proper thought. This nutty paper tries to twist that into a case against free will. In the first bold, the author is unaware how words pop into his head. Really? "Garbage in ....garbage out".

dhw: Nobody knows “how” words pop into their heads, because nobody knows how consciousness works. It’s a straight choice: either your cell communities are communicating with one another at different levels, the highest of which is what you suppose to be “you” (= materialism), or an immaterial “you” is communicating with your cell communities (= dualism). The former appears to exclude free will, and the latter allows it. However, on a different plane, it might be said that the law of cause and effect precludes free will both for materialists and for dualists. The effects of brain damage clearly favour materialists, but psychic experiences favour dualists. You may remember that some time ago I proposed a theory of intelligence which attempted a compromise between the two schools of thought.

DAVID: The problem is always the same. A material brain is the seat of immaterial consciousness, which can survive transient death of the brain. Where does it go while the brain is not functioning? My answer is nowhere. The brain is like a radio and receives consciousness when the brain is functional . As for free will it is part and parcel of consciousness, which each person mediates by using his brain to exercise control.

dhw: I thought your answer was that when the brain was not functioning, consciousness went to another world. Of course free will is part and parcel of consciousness. The problem is the source of consciousness, as I have attempted to describe above.

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

DAVID: Really not different at all:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0510
QUOTE: "'Neurocognitive free will ties our understanding of free will to something real. It also helps us to understand what it means. I suspect it's not what most people think. As Sartre once said, "Freedom is not a triumph." But I think neurocognitive free will gives some hints to how it could be. That will be a focus of future work.' " (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Doesn't answer the problem at all to answer what the brain does electrically/mechanically that the materialists point to.

I love it when you and I agree. This is a fine example of scientific language being used to tell us absolutely nothing new, but to pave the way for “future work”, which for all we know might require future grants.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 01, 2019, 21:09 (1691 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

dhw: Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

I just reiterated my belief in a panentheistic God in and out of this universe.


DAVID: Really not different at all:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0510
QUOTE: "'Neurocognitive free will ties our understanding of free will to something real. It also helps us to understand what it means. I suspect it's not what most people think. As Sartre once said, "Freedom is not a triumph." But I think neurocognitive free will gives some hints to how it could be. That will be a focus of future work.' " (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Doesn't answer the problem at all to answer what the brain does electrically/mechanically that the materialists point to.

dhw: I love it when you and I agree. This is a fine example of scientific language being used to tell us absolutely nothing new, but to pave the way for “future work”, which for all we know might require future grants.

So do I.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Friday, August 02, 2019, 12:40 (1691 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

dhw: Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

DAVID: I just reiterated my belief in a panentheistic God in and out of this universe.

It would be interesting to know what you really believe will happen to your consciousness after your death! Anyway, the fact remains that the concept of free will remains highly dependent on dualism, and even then it requires careful handling of the problem of cause and effect, since all our decisions are predicated on factors such as heredity, environment, upbringing and chance experiences which determinists rightly claim are beyond our control.

I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Friday, August 02, 2019, 18:18 (1690 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

dhw: Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

DAVID: I just reiterated my belief in a panentheistic God in and out of this universe.

dhw: It would be interesting to know what you really believe will happen to your consciousness after your death! Anyway, the fact remains that the concept of free will remains highly dependent on dualism, and even then it requires careful handling of the problem of cause and effect, since all our decisions are predicated on factors such as heredity, environment, upbringing and chance experiences which determinists rightly claim are beyond our control.

First a note re' yesterday. We had no internet for long periods, so I couldn't respond. My view is after death my consciousness completely rejoins God's consciousness, and that is 'Heaven'


dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects?

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Saturday, August 03, 2019, 10:15 (1690 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

dhw: Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

DAVID: I just reiterated my belief in a panentheistic God in and out of this universe.

dhw: It would be interesting to know what you really believe will happen to your consciousness after your death! Anyway, the fact remains that the concept of free will remains highly dependent on dualism, and even then it requires careful handling of the problem of cause and effect, since all our decisions are predicated on factors such as heredity, environment, upbringing and chance experiences which determinists rightly claim are beyond our control.

DAVID: First a note re' yesterday. We had no internet for long periods, so I couldn't respond. My view is after death my consciousness completely rejoins God's consciousness, and that is 'Heaven'.

Sounds to me like another world.

dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

DAVID: Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects?

This is a totally different topic: the subjectivity of perception and the forming of “Gestalten” (as in gestalt psychology), or patterns. I don’t know why you, as a dualist, say the brain “overcomes” our perceptions of reality: for a materialist, the senses do the perceiving and the brain forms the patterns, and you seem to agree. I would have thought that as a dualist you would argue the opposite: that the soul processes perceptions and forms patterns out of them. However, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself on that topic! It has nothing to do with the subject of free will.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Monday, August 05, 2019, 17:25 (1687 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't know where consciousness goes, but my thought is in a layer of our reality at a quantum level. Not another world or whatever you mean.

dhw: Then I apologize. I thought you believed in an afterlife in which our consciousness linked up again with your God’s.

DAVID: I just reiterated my belief in a panentheistic God in and out of this universe.

dhw: It would be interesting to know what you really believe will happen to your consciousness after your death! Anyway, the fact remains that the concept of free will remains highly dependent on dualism, and even then it requires careful handling of the problem of cause and effect, since all our decisions are predicated on factors such as heredity, environment, upbringing and chance experiences which determinists rightly claim are beyond our control.

DAVID: First a note re' yesterday. We had no internet for long periods, so I couldn't respond. My view is after death my consciousness completely rejoins God's consciousness, and that is 'Heaven'.

Sounds to me like another world.

dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

DAVID: Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects?

dhw: This is a totally different topic: the subjectivity of perception and the forming of “Gestalten” (as in gestalt psychology), or patterns. I don’t know why you, as a dualist, say the brain “overcomes” our perceptions of reality: for a materialist, the senses do the perceiving and the brain forms the patterns, and you seem to agree. I would have thought that as a dualist you would argue the opposite: that the soul processes perceptions and forms patterns out of them. However, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself on that topic! It has nothing to do with the subject of free will.

Not off point at all! What I was describing was the interaction of brain and soul to have experienced memories solidified into helpful patterns of reality used to fill the blanks in our perception. Well shown in research.

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by dhw, Tuesday, August 06, 2019, 13:30 (1687 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

DAVID: Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects? (dhw’s bold)

dhw: This is a totally different topic: the subjectivity of perception and the forming of “Gestalten” (as in gestalt psychology), or patterns. I don’t know why you, as a dualist, say the brain “overcomes” our perceptions of reality: for a materialist, the senses do the perceiving and the brain forms the patterns, and you seem to agree. I would have thought that as a dualist you would argue the opposite: that the soul processes perceptions and forms patterns out of them. However, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself on that topic! It has nothing to do with the subject of free will. (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Not off point at all! What I was describing was the interaction of brain and soul to have experienced memories solidified into helpful patterns of reality used to fill the blanks in our perception. Well shown in research.

The subject of this thread is free will, and now you have changed it to the subjectivity of perception, which of course I accept totally. I note, however, that in your reply you claimed that it was the brain that filled the gap, which I have bolded, but now that I have pointed out that this makes you a materialist, you have switched to “the interaction of brain and soul”. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us as to why you changed the subject from free will to subjective perception, and whether your decision was made of your own free will, and whether it was made by the soul or by the brain. (I'm teasing.);-)

Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 06, 2019, 18:28 (1686 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

DAVID: Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects? (dhw’s bold)

dhw: This is a totally different topic: the subjectivity of perception and the forming of “Gestalten” (as in gestalt psychology), or patterns. I don’t know why you, as a dualist, say the brain “overcomes” our perceptions of reality: for a materialist, the senses do the perceiving and the brain forms the patterns, and you seem to agree. I would have thought that as a dualist you would argue the opposite: that the soul processes perceptions and forms patterns out of them. However, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself on that topic! It has nothing to do with the subject of free will. (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Not off point at all! What I was describing was the interaction of brain and soul to have experienced memories solidified into helpful patterns of reality used to fill the blanks in our perception. Well shown in research.

dhw: The subject of this thread is free will, and now you have changed it to the subjectivity of perception, which of course I accept totally. I note, however, that in your reply you claimed that it was the brain that filled the gap, which I have bolded, but now that I have pointed out that this makes you a materialist, you have switched to “the interaction of brain and soul”. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us as to why you changed the subject from free will to subjective perception, and whether your decision was made of your own free will, and whether it was made by the soul or by the brain. (I'm teasing.);-)

The soul using free will , with the help of the brain's contribution to perceptions!

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Saturday, February 23, 2019, 20:25 (1850 days ago) @ David Turell

Two entries:

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/02/how-can-mere-products-of-nature-have-free-will/

"Most of us assume we have free will. But if we live in a universe where everything is totally governed by laws of nature (a deterministic universe), we must ask ourselves an important question: Is our own free will compatible with total control by the laws of nature? There are only two fundamental positions on the issue: Either our free will is compatible with such laws (compatibilism) or it isn’t (incompatibilism).

***

"The modern debate centers on a scientific understanding of determinism. If determinism is true—that is, if every state of the universe is determined from moment to moment entirely by the laws of nature (physics, chemistry, etc)—how is it possible that we could have free will? It is certainly true that we don’t have control of natural laws—I cannot change gravitation or electromagnetism simply by willing it. Thus, it seems obvious that I cannot have free will in a deterministic universe. It seems obvious then that compatibilism is false and incompatibilism is true.

"Here is my view: I believe that genuine (“libertarian”) free will is real and that free will is logically incompatible with determinism in nature.

***

"I think that compatibilists’ efforts to avoid the obvious — that free will and determinism can’t both be true — fail in every instance. If determinism is true, then our actions are determined by natural forces over which we have no genuine control and free will is an illusion.

"Compatibilists hold their view, I believe, because they believe that determinism is true and also that we unquestionably have some kind of freedom to act or not act according to our choices. Although most compatibilists have a more or less materialist view of nature, they find it impossible to shake the conviction that free will is real. Stuck between an affirmation of determinism and an affirmation of some kind of genuine freedom of choice, they prefer to twist logic and reason to accommodate their cognitive dissonance, rather than jettison one of their beliefs.

'Nonetheless, compatibilism is incoherent. Sophistry notwithstanding, if determinism is real, we are not free.

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/02/but-is-determinism-true/

'It’s an interesting philosophical question, and most scientists (and ordinary folks) who have considered it seem to have decided that determinism is likely true. But they’re wrong.

"In 1964, Irish physicist John Bell (1928–1990) published a paper titled “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox”. In it, he observed that there is a way to test determinism at the quantum level by measuring the ratio of quantum states of particles emitted by radioactive decay.1 Bell’s experiment has now been done many times, and the answer is unequivocal: determinism at the quantum level is not true. Nature is not deterministic.

"The experiments showed that every quantum process entails some degree of “indeterminism”; that is, there are predictable probabilities but there is never certainty. If we knew the exact state of the universe at any given moment, we could still never know with certainty what would happen next. Technically, this means that there are no local “hidden variables” which really govern how things happen, as many determinists (including Albert Einstein) had hoped.

"Determinism in nature has been shown, scientifically, to be false. There is no real debate about this among physicists. So the question as to whether determinism, if it really existed, would be compatible with free will is merely an academic question, an interesting bit of metaphysical speculation.

"Remarkably, modern theoretical and experimental physics, by decisively debunking determinism, is quite consistent with the view that libertarian free will is possible. It is not in any way ruled out by science.

"The question that looms before us is no longer whether free will is compatible with determinism (compatibilism vs. incompatibilism) Rather, given the fact that nature is indeterminate, is it possible that human will is not free? If human actions are not determined by physics or chemistry, what besides free will could determine them? "

Comment: This is why I have pushed our discussion of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics are the basis of the universe.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Sunday, February 24, 2019, 09:46 (1850 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The question that looms before us is no longer whether free will is compatible with determinism (compatibilism vs. incompatibilism) Rather, given the fact that nature is indeterminate, is it possible that human will is not free? If human actions are not determined by physics or chemistry, what besides free will could determine them? "

DAVID: This is why I have pushed our discussion of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics are the basis of the universe.

We have had this discussion many times. Who says determinism depends entirely on physics and chemistry? Does Egnor not realize that this is a philosophical problem as well as a scientific problem? Has he never heard of cause and effect? Does he not realize that he is not just a product of physics and chemistry but also of his upbringing, his material and cultural environment and other factors that are beyond his control (including random events and encounters)? Nobody knows to what extent our behaviour and our decisions are the product of these factors. I am not arguing for or against either alternative, because as usual I see both sides, but I’m sorry, in my view this attempt to resolve the issue gets us nowhere.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 24, 2019, 15:10 (1850 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "The question that looms before us is no longer whether free will is compatible with determinism (compatibilism vs. incompatibilism) Rather, given the fact that nature is indeterminate, is it possible that human will is not free? If human actions are not determined by physics or chemistry, what besides free will could determine them? "

DAVID: This is why I have pushed our discussion of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics are the basis of the universe.

dhw: We have had this discussion many times. Who says determinism depends entirely on physics and chemistry? Does Egnor not realize that this is a philosophical problem as well as a scientific problem? Has he never heard of cause and effect? Does he not realize that he is not just a product of physics and chemistry but also of his upbringing, his material and cultural environment and other factors that are beyond his control (including random events and encounters)? Nobody knows to what extent our behaviour and our decisions are the product of these factors. I am not arguing for or against either alternative, because as usual I see both sides, but I’m sorry, in my view this attempt to resolve the issue gets us nowhere.

From Egnor's writings he is well acquainted with philosophy in this area of thought. I know my thought conclusions come from my personality which is 40% inherited, 40% from childhood influence, primarily from parents, and 20% subsequent experience. I have no reason to doubt those percentages. Quantum confusion most play a role in how we view this since we know quantum mechanics plays a large role in our bodies.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Monday, February 25, 2019, 13:19 (1849 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The question that looms before us is no longer whether free will is compatible with determinism (compatibilism vs. incompatibilism) Rather, given the fact that nature is indeterminate, is it possible that human will is not free? If human actions are not determined by physics or chemistry, what besides free will could determine them? "

DAVID: This is why I have pushed our discussion of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics are the basis of the universe.

dhw: We have had this discussion many times. Who says determinism depends entirely on physics and chemistry? Does Egnor not realize that this is a philosophical problem as well as a scientific problem? Has he never heard of cause and effect? Does he not realize that he is not just a product of physics and chemistry but also of his upbringing, his material and cultural environment and other factors that are beyond his control (including random events and encounters)? Nobody knows to what extent our behaviour and our decisions are the product of these factors. I am not arguing for or against either alternative, because as usual I see both sides, but I’m sorry, in my view this attempt to resolve the issue gets us nowhere.

DAVID: From Egnor's writings he is well acquainted with philosophy in this area of thought.

I can only comment on the information you give us.

DAVID: I know my thought conclusions come from my personality which is 40% inherited, 40% from childhood influence, primarily from parents, and 20% subsequent experience. I have no reason to doubt those percentages.

And a determinist can argue that all of those factors are beyond your control. Don’t get me wrong. We had long discussions with Romansh on this, and as he is a determinist, I presented arguments in favour of free will. I remain neutral, but in fairness I must say that I would never dream of blaming my bad decisions on my genes, my upbringing or the many random events that have shaped my life!

DAVID: Quantum confusion most play a role in how we view this since we know quantum mechanics plays a large role in our bodies.

I find quantum confusion confusing, and don’t know how it can settle the argument either way.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Monday, February 25, 2019, 15:18 (1849 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "The question that looms before us is no longer whether free will is compatible with determinism (compatibilism vs. incompatibilism) Rather, given the fact that nature is indeterminate, is it possible that human will is not free? If human actions are not determined by physics or chemistry, what besides free will could determine them? "

DAVID: This is why I have pushed our discussion of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics are the basis of the universe.

dhw: We have had this discussion many times. Who says determinism depends entirely on physics and chemistry? Does Egnor not realize that this is a philosophical problem as well as a scientific problem? Has he never heard of cause and effect? Does he not realize that he is not just a product of physics and chemistry but also of his upbringing, his material and cultural environment and other factors that are beyond his control (including random events and encounters)? Nobody knows to what extent our behaviour and our decisions are the product of these factors. I am not arguing for or against either alternative, because as usual I see both sides, but I’m sorry, in my view this attempt to resolve the issue gets us nowhere.

DAVID: From Egnor's writings he is well acquainted with philosophy in this area of thought.

dhw: I can only comment on the information you give us.

In the articles I present he discusses philosophy and philosophers. Take a look.


DAVID: I know my thought conclusions come from my personality which is 40% inherited, 40% from childhood influence, primarily from parents, and 20% subsequent experience. I have no reason to doubt those percentages.

dhw: And a determinist can argue that all of those factors are beyond your control. Don’t get me wrong. We had long discussions with Romansh on this, and as he is a determinist, I presented arguments in favour of free will. I remain neutral, but in fairness I must say that I would never dream of blaming my bad decisions on my genes, my upbringing or the many random events that have shaped my life!

Fair enough


DAVID: Quantum confusion most play a role in how we view this since we know quantum mechanics plays a large role in our bodies.

dhw: I find quantum confusion confusing, and don’t know how it can settle the argument either way.

You are not alone. Results depend on the observer.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2194747-quantum-experiment-suggests-there-really-a...

"There are no objective facts in the world. This isn’t a statement about fake news. Rather, it is the implication of an experiment that suggests the nature of reality depends on who is looking.

"The work is rooted in thought experiments about the nature of quantum mechanics, but this is the first time one has been done in the lab, with potentially profound implications. “I am very excited about it,” says theorist Carlo Rovelli at Aix-Marseille University in France.
The experiment, carried out by Alessandro Fedrizzi at Heriot-Watt University, UK, …

Comment: Paywall blocks me from more

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 09:53 (1848 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Quantum confusion most play a role in how we view this since we know quantum mechanics plays a large role in our bodies.

dhw: I find quantum confusion confusing, and don’t know how it can settle the argument either way.

DAVID: You are not alone. Results depend on the observer.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2194747-quantum-experiment-suggests-there-really-a...

QUOTE:"There are no objective facts in the world. This isn’t a statement about fake news. Rather, it is the implication of an experiment that suggests the nature of reality depends on who is looking".

Well, well, well. If humans and animals weren’t here, there would be no stars, no planets, no universe, because “there are no objective facts in the world”. Here is my sensational counter-hypothesis: if there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.

And from “Transmitting sound waves

QUOTE: "Without brains of human and animals to interpret the air vibration into sounds that we experience, there is no sound at all, only soundless air vibration. The entire universe is in fact ‘silent’. Sound only really exists in human’s and animals’ minds".

I suggest that if there were no minds to hear the sound of thunder, there would be no minds to hear the sound of thunder. By the same token, I do not believe that if there were no minds to see the universe, the universe would consist of nothing but light waves.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 15:38 (1847 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Quantum confusion most play a role in how we view this since we know quantum mechanics plays a large role in our bodies.

dhw: I find quantum confusion confusing, and don’t know how it can settle the argument either way.

DAVID: You are not alone. Results depend on the observer.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2194747-quantum-experiment-suggests-there-really-a...

QUOTE:"There are no objective facts in the world. This isn’t a statement about fake news. Rather, it is the implication of an experiment that suggests the nature of reality depends on who is looking".

dhw: Well, well, well. If humans and animals weren’t here, there would be no stars, no planets, no universe, because “there are no objective facts in the world”. Here is my sensational counter-hypothesis: if there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.

And from “Transmitting sound waves

QUOTE: "Without brains of human and animals to interpret the air vibration into sounds that we experience, there is no sound at all, only soundless air vibration. The entire universe is in fact ‘silent’. Sound only really exists in human’s and animals’ minds".

dhw: I suggest that if there were no minds to hear the sound of thunder, there would be no minds to hear the sound of thunder. By the same token, I do not believe that if there were no minds to see the universe, the universe would consist of nothing but light waves.

It is like if 'a tree falls in the forest and no one around to hear it' was there sound (?), and the answer is no. It takes a mind to hear it but the bacteria in the soil would feel the vibrations. Hot, cold, rough, smooth, sweet, sour, etc. are all living interpretations of physically inert properties.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 08:47 (1847 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE:"There are no objective facts in the world. This isn’t a statement about fake news. Rather, it is the implication of an experiment that suggests the nature of reality depends on who is looking".

dhw: Well, well, well. If humans and animals weren’t here, there would be no stars, no planets, no universe, because “there are no objective facts in the world”. Here is my sensational counter-hypothesis: if there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.
And from “Transmitting sound waves”

QUOTE: "Without brains of human and animals to interpret the air vibration into sounds that we experience, there is no sound at all, only soundless air vibration. The entire universe is in fact ‘silent’. Sound only really exists in human’s and animals’ minds".

dhw: I suggest that if there were no minds to hear the sound of thunder, there would be no minds to hear the sound of thunder. By the same token, I do not believe that if there were no minds to see the universe, the universe would consist of nothing but light waves.

DAVID: It is like if 'a tree falls in the forest and no one around to hear it' was there sound (?), and the answer is no. It takes a mind to hear it but the bacteria in the soil would feel the vibrations. Hot, cold, rough, smooth, sweet, sour, etc. are all living interpretations of physically inert properties.

Yes, it takes a mind to hear it, so if there is no mind, no one can hear it. Your question is believed to have been asked way back in the 19th century by George Berkeley, who at least had the good sense to argue that “the nature of reality depends on who is looking” but this did NOT mean there are no objective facts. I have found a delightful quote in Wikipedia:
Albert Einstein is reported to have asked his fellow physicist and friend Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, whether he realistically believed that 'the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.' To this Bohr replied that however hard he (Einstein) may try, he would not be able to prove that it does.

I would add that nobody can possibly prove that the tree does not make a sound or the moon does not exist, and I would also add my usual proposal that anyone who believes there are no objective facts should step in front of a bus travelling at, let’s say 50 miles an hour.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 17:39 (1846 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE:"There are no objective facts in the world. This isn’t a statement about fake news. Rather, it is the implication of an experiment that suggests the nature of reality depends on who is looking".

dhw: Well, well, well. If humans and animals weren’t here, there would be no stars, no planets, no universe, because “there are no objective facts in the world”. Here is my sensational counter-hypothesis: if there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.
And from “Transmitting sound waves”

QUOTE: "Without brains of human and animals to interpret the air vibration into sounds that we experience, there is no sound at all, only soundless air vibration. The entire universe is in fact ‘silent’. Sound only really exists in human’s and animals’ minds".

dhw: I suggest that if there were no minds to hear the sound of thunder, there would be no minds to hear the sound of thunder. By the same token, I do not believe that if there were no minds to see the universe, the universe would consist of nothing but light waves.

DAVID: It is like if 'a tree falls in the forest and no one around to hear it' was there sound (?), and the answer is no. It takes a mind to hear it but the bacteria in the soil would feel the vibrations. Hot, cold, rough, smooth, sweet, sour, etc. are all living interpretations of physically inert properties.

dhw: Yes, it takes a mind to hear it, so if there is no mind, no one can hear it. Your question is believed to have been asked way back in the 19th century by George Berkeley, who at least had the good sense to argue that “the nature of reality depends on who is looking” but this did NOT mean there are no objective facts. I have found a delightful quote in Wikipedia:
Albert Einstein is reported to have asked his fellow physicist and friend Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, whether he realistically believed that 'the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.' To this Bohr replied that however hard he (Einstein) may try, he would not be able to prove that it does.

I would add that nobody can possibly prove that the tree does not make a sound or the moon does not exist, and I would also add my usual proposal that anyone who believes there are no objective facts should step in front of a bus travelling at, let’s say 50 miles an hour.

So the question really is: if original and many subsequent organisms until presumably the Cambrian could not recognize sound or in any way be aware of its possible existence, how could cell committees from the Ediacaran invent it in the Cambrian? My usual question. It takes a mind to visualize what is needed or available to evolve anything.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Thursday, February 28, 2019, 10:11 (1846 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Yes, it takes a mind to hear it, so if there is no mind, no one can hear it. Your question is believed to have been asked way back in the 19th century by George Berkeley, who at least had the good sense to argue that “the nature of reality depends on who is looking” but this did NOT mean there are no objective facts. I have found a delightful quote in Wikipedia:
"Albert Einstein is reported to have asked his fellow physicist and friend Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, whether he realistically believed that 'the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.' To this Bohr replied that however hard he (Einstein) may try, he would not be able to prove that it does."

I would add that nobody can possibly prove that the tree does not make a sound or the moon does not exist, and I would also add my usual proposal that anyone who believes there are no objective facts should step in front of a bus travelling at, let’s say 50 miles an hour.

DAVID: So the question really is: if original and many subsequent organisms until presumably the Cambrian could not recognize sound or in any way be aware of its possible existence, how could cell committees from the Ediacaran invent it in the Cambrian? My usual question. It takes a mind to visualize what is needed or available to evolve anything.

This thread began with the subject of free will versus determinism and then moved on to the question of whether there is or is not such a thing as objective reality. All of a sudden you switch the subject to the one we have been discussing year after year, and are still discussing on the two threads “Big brain evolution” and “Genome complexity”: i.e. the mechanisms that have driven evolution. Please can we keep to one subject at a time. In this case, I have argued that although “the nature of reality depends on who is looking”, there is such a thing as objective reality. Do you or do you not agree?

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 28, 2019, 15:52 (1845 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Yes, it takes a mind to hear it, so if there is no mind, no one can hear it. Your question is believed to have been asked way back in the 19th century by George Berkeley, who at least had the good sense to argue that “the nature of reality depends on who is looking” but this did NOT mean there are no objective facts. I have found a delightful quote in Wikipedia:
"Albert Einstein is reported to have asked his fellow physicist and friend Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, whether he realistically believed that 'the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.' To this Bohr replied that however hard he (Einstein) may try, he would not be able to prove that it does."

I would add that nobody can possibly prove that the tree does not make a sound or the moon does not exist, and I would also add my usual proposal that anyone who believes there are no objective facts should step in front of a bus travelling at, let’s say 50 miles an hour.

DAVID: So the question really is: if original and many subsequent organisms until presumably the Cambrian could not recognize sound or in any way be aware of its possible existence, how could cell committees from the Ediacaran invent it in the Cambrian? My usual question. It takes a mind to visualize what is needed or available to evolve anything.

dhw: This thread began with the subject of free will versus determinism and then moved on to the question of whether there is or is not such a thing as objective reality. All of a sudden you switch the subject to the one we have been discussing year after year, and are still discussing on the two threads “Big brain evolution” and “Genome complexity”: i.e. the mechanisms that have driven evolution. Please can we keep to one subject at a time. In this case, I have argued that although “the nature of reality depends on who is looking”, there is such a thing as objective reality. Do you or do you not agree?

Objective reality exists. You've not answered my point that it requires a mind to appreciate all of reality. And again, if there was no awareness of a large potion of reality how did cell committees know to create brains/minds. Cell committees can't create evolved new forms.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by dhw, Friday, March 01, 2019, 13:10 (1845 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This thread began with the subject of free will versus determinism and then moved on to the question of whether there is or is not such a thing as objective reality. All of a sudden you switch the subject to the one we have been discussing year after year, and are still discussing on the two threads “Big brain evolution” and “Genome complexity”: i.e. the mechanisms that have driven evolution. Please can we keep to one subject at a time. In this case, I have argued that although “the nature of reality depends on who is looking”, there is such a thing as objective reality. Do you or do you not agree?

DAVID: Objective reality exists. You've not answered my point that it requires a mind to appreciate all of reality.

My criticism of this article concerned the assumption that just because it takes minds to observe and interpret the universe, there is no such thing as objective reality. That is why I parodied the whole argument: “If there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.” You have agreed with me in rejecting the claim that there are no objective facts. And I have agreed that it needs a mind to observe and interpret reality, though I have no idea why you have changed this to “appreciate all of reality”.

DAVID: And again, if there was no awareness of a large portion of reality how did cell committees know to create brains/minds. Cell committees can't create evolved new forms.

I will answer this on the appropriate thread (“Genome complexity”). Once again, please can we stick to one subject at a time.

Consciousness: Egnor on determinism and free will

by David Turell @, Friday, March 01, 2019, 23:39 (1844 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: This thread began with the subject of free will versus determinism and then moved on to the question of whether there is or is not such a thing as objective reality. All of a sudden you switch the subject to the one we have been discussing year after year, and are still discussing on the two threads “Big brain evolution” and “Genome complexity”: i.e. the mechanisms that have driven evolution. Please can we keep to one subject at a time. In this case, I have argued that although “the nature of reality depends on who is looking”, there is such a thing as objective reality. Do you or do you not agree?

DAVID: Objective reality exists. You've not answered my point that it requires a mind to appreciate all of reality.

My criticism of this article concerned the assumption that just because it takes minds to observe and interpret the universe, there is no such thing as objective reality. That is why I parodied the whole argument: “If there were no minds in the objectively existing universe, there would be no minds to observe and interpret the objectively existing universe.” You have agreed with me in rejecting the claim that there are no objective facts. And I have agreed that it needs a mind to observe and interpret reality, though I have no idea why you have changed this to “appreciate all of reality”.

DAVID: And again, if there was no awareness of a large portion of reality how did cell committees know to create brains/minds. Cell committees can't create evolved new forms.

dhw: I will answer this on the appropriate thread (“Genome complexity”). Once again, please can we stick to one subject at a time.

I did. My point was if nothing is mental in the universe how do cells know to create a mental capacity? Just another logical attack on your beloved cell groups.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Thursday, May 16, 2019, 18:32 (1768 days ago) @ David Turell

An interview:

http://nautil.us/issue/72/quandary/yes-determinists-there-is-free-will

"Christian List, a philosopher who specializes in how humans make decisions, has a new book, Why Free Will Is Real, that tries to bridge the gap.

"List accepts the skeptics’ definition of free will as a genuine openness to our decisions, and he agrees this seems to be at odds with the clockwork universe of fundamental physics and neurobiology. But he argues that fundamental physics and neurobiology are only part of the story of human behavior. You may be a big bunch of atoms governed by the mechanical laws, but you are not just any bunch of atoms. You are an intricately structured bunch of atoms, and your behavior depends not just on the laws that govern the individual atoms but on the way those atoms are assembled. At a higher level of description, your decisions can be truly open. When you walk into a store and choose between Android and Apple, the outcome is not preordained. It really is on you.

"Skeptics miss this point, List argues, because they rely on loose intuitions about causation. They look for the causes of our actions in the basic laws of physics, yet the concept of cause does not even exist at that level, according to the broader theory of causation developed by computer scientist Judea Pearl and others. Causation is a higher-level concept. This theory is fully compatible with the view that humans and other agents are causal forces in the world.

***

"I am quite happy to concede that free will requires intentional agency, alternative possibilities among which we can choose, and causation of our actions by our mental states. I think the mistake in the standard arguments against free will lies in a failure to distinguish between different levels of description. If we are searching for free will at the fundamental physical level, we are simply searching in the wrong place.

"If you try to make sense of human behavior, not just in ordinary life but also in the sciences, then the ascription of intentionality is indispensable. It’s infeasible and not illuminating to explain human behavior at the level of astronomically complex neural firing patterns that take place in the brain.

***

"The neuroscientific skeptic is absolutely right that, at the fundamental physical level, there is no such thing as intentional goal-directed agency. The mistake is to claim that there is no such thing at all. Intentional agency is an emergent higher-level property, but it is no less real for that. Whenever our best scientific explanations of a particular phenomenon commit us to postulating certain entities or properties, then it is very good scientific practice to treat those postulated entities or properties as genuinely real. We observe patterns and regularities in our social and human environment, and the best way to make sense of those patterns and regularities is by assigning intentional agency to the people involved.

"The jury is out on whether the world is fundamentally deterministic—it depends on how we interpret quantum mechanics—but suppose it is. This does not necessitate that the world is also deterministic at some higher level of description. Indeterminism at the level of psychology is required for free will and alternative possibilities. That is entirely compatible with determinism at the fundamental physical level.

***

"to describe the complete state of a human agent, we do not describe the full microphysical state of every elementary particle in the brain and body. That would be the wrong level of description. If our best theories of human agency compel us to postulate forks in the road between which agents can choose, then we’ve got very good scientific reasons to take alternative possibilities at face value. If you ask psychologists, cognitive scientists, and economists, they will give you different theories of how human choice-making works. But they all treat human beings as agents who are faced with choices between different options, so all these theories assume alternative possibilities.

"in the social sciences, we use a different kind of indeterminism based on option availability. In decision theory, we draw a distinction between the options an agent could choose and the option the agent will in fact choose, based on maximizing expected utility or some other criteria. If I’m rational, I’m going to try to systematically make choices that are in line with my beliefs and preferences and goals. But the other options don’t disappear. They are available to me right up to the moment of my choice.

***

"Let’s suppose, once again, I lift my arm to drink some water. You can fully account for the action by reference to the physical state of my brain, so there is no reason to postulate yet another cause—namely, a distinct mental cause.

"My response, which Peter Menzies and I developed, is that if we accept the interventionist theory of causation, the causal exclusion argument does not generally hold. For any given system, the most systematic causal relations may not involve the lowest-level variables, but could involve higher-level variables, or there might be systematic causal relations at both levels."

Comment: Straight forward, there is no illusion of free will, as per Dan Dennett.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by dhw, Friday, May 17, 2019, 08:35 (1768 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Straight forward, there is no illusion of free will, as per Dan Dennett.

I remain neutral on this subject, but I find his arguments far too simplistic, despite the complications of his language. He seems to think causation stops at the level of physics. It doesn’t. We are all products not just of our materials, but also of our upbringing, our education, our experiences, chance events and other influences we may not even be aware of. There is no doubt that we feel responsible for our decisions, but that does not mean our decisions have not been moulded by factors beyond our control. People who believe in an omniscient God would by definition have to assume that God would know every decision they make even before they make it, and he would also know all the causes that led to their decision. Hence belief in predestination (= no free will). There is no conclusion to the debate between materialists and dualists, and although I did try to find a compromise in my Theory of Intelligence, of course that debate – which is integral to the subject of free will – also remains wide open, and is absolutely not “straightforward”. We have no way of knowing whether free will is an illusion or not.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Friday, May 17, 2019, 18:34 (1767 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Straight forward, there is no illusion of free will, as per Dan Dennett.

dhw: I remain neutral on this subject, but I find his arguments far too simplistic, despite the complications of his language. He seems to think causation stops at the level of physics. It doesn’t. We are all products not just of our materials, but also of our upbringing, our education, our experiences, chance events and other influences we may not even be aware of. There is no doubt that we feel responsible for our decisions, but that does not mean our decisions have not been moulded by factors beyond our control. People who believe in an omniscient God would by definition have to assume that God would know every decision they make even before they make it, and he would also know all the causes that led to their decision. Hence belief in predestination (= no free will). There is no conclusion to the debate between materialists and dualists, and although I did try to find a compromise in my Theory of Intelligence, of course that debate – which is integral to the subject of free will – also remains wide open, and is absolutely not “straightforward”. We have no way of knowing whether free will is an illusion or not.

You have described ways in which our theories are molded by past experiences. That alone does not remove the concept of free will. The deep problem is how the brain functions in semi-automatic ways, seemingly beyond our control, which Dennett touts. As for God knowing every one of our thoughts in advance, that is an interpretation of God I do not accept. It is a God- controlled form of determinism. I'm with the philosopher, and feel I have free will.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by dhw, Saturday, May 18, 2019, 11:39 (1767 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Straight forward, there is no illusion of free will, as per Dan Dennett.

dhw: I remain neutral on this subject, but I find his arguments far too simplistic, despite the complications of his language. He seems to think causation stops at the level of physics. It doesn’t. We are all products not just of our materials, but also of our upbringing, our education, our experiences, chance events and other influences we may not even be aware of. There is no doubt that we feel responsible for our decisions, but that does not mean our decisions have not been moulded by factors beyond our control. People who believe in an omniscient God would by definition have to assume that God would know every decision they make even before they make it, and he would also know all the causes that led to their decision. Hence belief in predestination (= no free will). There is no conclusion to the debate between materialists and dualists, and although I did try to find a compromise in my Theory of Intelligence, of course that debate – which is integral to the subject of free will – also remains wide open, and is absolutely not “straightforward”. We have no way of knowing whether free will is an illusion or not.

DAVID: You have described ways in which our theories are molded by past experiences. That alone does not remove the concept of free will.

No I haven’t, and I agree that it doesn’t. I have offered a list of different factors which may control the way we think, but I remain neutral on the subject, because there is no way I can decide between materialism and dualism, or between free will and determinism.

DAVID: The deep problem is how the brain functions in semi-automatic ways, seemingly beyond our control, which Dennett touts.

The deep problem as I see it is whether we are the product of influences which are beyond our control – and these include the composition and function of our brain – or our individual persona also comprises an immaterial self which is able to control our responses to all those influences. I do not pretend to know the answer.

DAVID: As for God knowing every one of our thoughts in advance, that is an interpretation of God I do not accept. It is a God- controlled form of determinism. I'm with the philosopher, and feel I have free will.

I think most of us “feel” we have free will. That is not the point. Once you oppose the religious view of an omniscient God, you are proposing a God with limitations. And that leads to all sorts of complications, as we have seen with your concept of evolution.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Saturday, May 18, 2019, 16:01 (1767 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Straight forward, there is no illusion of free will, as per Dan Dennett.

dhw: I remain neutral on this subject, but I find his arguments far too simplistic, despite the complications of his language. He seems to think causation stops at the level of physics. It doesn’t. We are all products not just of our materials, but also of our upbringing, our education, our experiences, chance events and other influences we may not even be aware of. There is no doubt that we feel responsible for our decisions, but that does not mean our decisions have not been moulded by factors beyond our control. People who believe in an omniscient God would by definition have to assume that God would know every decision they make even before they make it, and he would also know all the causes that led to their decision. Hence belief in predestination (= no free will). There is no conclusion to the debate between materialists and dualists, and although I did try to find a compromise in my Theory of Intelligence, of course that debate – which is integral to the subject of free will – also remains wide open, and is absolutely not “straightforward”. We have no way of knowing whether free will is an illusion or not.

DAVID: You have described ways in which our theories are molded by past experiences. That alone does not remove the concept of free will.

dhw: No I haven’t, and I agree that it doesn’t. I have offered a list of different factors which may control the way we think, but I remain neutral on the subject, because there is no way I can decide between materialism and dualism, or between free will and determinism.

DAVID: The deep problem is how the brain functions in semi-automatic ways, seemingly beyond our control, which Dennett touts.

dhw: The deep problem as I see it is whether we are the product of influences which are beyond our control – and these include the composition and function of our brain – or our individual persona also comprises an immaterial self which is able to control our responses to all those influences. I do not pretend to know the answer.

DAVID: As for God knowing every one of our thoughts in advance, that is an interpretation of God I do not accept. It is a God- controlled form of determinism. I'm with the philosopher, and feel I have free will.

dhw: I think most of us “feel” we have free will. That is not the point. Once you oppose the religious view of an omniscient God, you are proposing a God with limitations. And that leads to all sorts of complications, as we have seen with your concept of evolution.

I'll stick with what I feel is real. It works just fine. And the illusion of consciousness and free will has created the modern world unimpeded.

Consciousness: a physicist believes in free will

by David Turell @, Monday, May 20, 2019, 20:01 (1764 days ago) @ David Turell

No reductionism or chance:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/rob-sheldon-offers-a-physics-perspective...

" I will develop two streams, in that both reductionism and emergence are just wrong, as is the philosophical denial of free will based on them.

"Speaking philosophically, reductionism and atomism are necessary assumptions if one believes in chance and emergence. The idea is that progress cannot be obtained by purpose and vision, or the whole concept of chance is destroyed.

***

" “directed” evolution will always be so much faster than “random”, it will always win the race. This is the inverse of Behe’s argument that devolution (breaking things) is always faster than evolution (fixing things),

***

"emergence says that there is a size dependence–when there are enough neurons, suddenly consciousness arrives and if we take one out, we lose consciousness. We cannot pinpoint a cause when everything depends on everything else. This “anti-reductionism” is the curse of physics, because we cannot isolate our system from outside disturbances, we cannot make any predictions about individual atoms. That’s why all of physics is reductionist.

" we can plot bacterial motion on a plate of agar and know that it is not going to be explained by chance. Since we have some hope of simulating a bacterium on a computer, we do not attribute this non-Gaussian behavior to consciousness, but rather to design. That is, something conscious designed the bacterium to behave in a fractal way. Since we are at least as alive as the bacterium, it is almost trivial to claim that we too are designed.

***

"we’ve cleared the hurdle that observed reductionism necessarily demands the loss of free will. But I have another argument against reductionism applied to causality....Just like the CO2 example, everything depends on everything, so the reductionist ends up needing the entire universe to cause the effect, which is either absurd or makes the universe conscious.

"When we get down to say electrons or protons, we discover that they cannot be regarded as point particles but as wavefunctions. When we plug in the math for wavefunctions, we immediately discover they are not local, but extend over large regions of space. In order to get back classical physics and locality, we have to argue for some mechanism to eliminate this non-locality....Therefore we must face the very real possibility that “locality” is a fiction for physics, and therefore “local causation” is a fiction. Every electron in the universe is a wavefunction, and the electrons in our brain are potentially entangled with every one of them. Then everything depends on everything and finding “the cause” for our free-will is hopeless.

***

"because every experiment involves both local and non-local effects. But once-in-a-while the system stubbornly refuses to decouple from the environment, and then we have to take it into account.... you will notice that each experiment takes into account a larger and larger portion of the universe so as to incorporate these “long-range” forces. So just as fractals were the observation that proved Gaussian-reductionism wrong, so also long-range forces are the observation that proves emergent-reductionism wrong.

"As an aside, special relativity connected space and time with a speed–light-velocity X time = space. Therefore “long-range” forces are also “long-time” correlations divided by light-speed. If we have “long-range” forces, then we also have “prediction” and “teleology”. If spatial correlation is a characteristic of long-range forces, then temporal correlation is the logical extension. If “irreducible complexity” is a spatial correlation, then “functional design” is the necessary temporal correlation. Accordingly, just as gravity waves are distortions of space-time occurring mega-parsecs away, it may be necessary to explain free will as a teleological product of society and history and the mind of the Designer.

"Finally, let me bring the two anti-reductionist threads together. The peculiar thing about QM and electrons is that just when we have got that electron squeezed into a tiny box, the wavefunction gets bigger and bigger and escapes our boundaries. At the very smallest scales, the effects become more global. When we look at the neurons in our brain, we discover that they are distributed like French lace in a fractal pattern. The “reason” is quite simple, they are optimized to collect signals from the entire brain while using the smallest amount of material, which turns out to be a fractal. Likewise, tree trunks are fractal for exactly the same reason, they are optimized to collect the most sunlight with the least amount of wood. This optimization is proof that they are designed rather than diffused by chance.

"But when we turn our telescopes to the heavens and map out the galaxies in three dimensions, we find that they are likewise fractally distributed. In fact, when we overlay the neural map of our brain, and the galaxy map of the universe, they are disturbingly alike. Like the electron, the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. Whether we extrapolate to infinity or 1/infinity in time or space, we find fractals, showing that this Gaussian world we idealize for physics lies at the crossroads of design in space-time.

Comment: Reduced as much as possible. Read the entire article for clarity from skipped examples.

Consciousness: mind and brain relationship

by David Turell @, Thursday, July 25, 2019, 20:28 (1698 days ago) @ David Turell

An attempted explanation:

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/is-the-human-mind-a-computer/

"Let’s focus on a very simple, fundamental aspect of the mind: it has experiences. Philosophers call these experiences qualia. When we see the color red, hear a bell, or smell a flower, it is a subjective, first-person experience. Of course, there are physical processes involved but they result in a mental state. That mental state is what our conscious minds experience. This conscious state is the hard problem of consciousness. That’s our focus today.

***

"So, by the standard definitions of computer science, a computer is something that can be simulated on this abstract mathematical device. But an abstract mathematical device cannot experience qualia or consciousness. If they could, we would expect mathematical formulas like the quadratic formula or the area of a sphere to experience consciousness. But that seems absurd, so we must conclude that a computer cannot exhibit consciousness. Put another way, consciousness is not a form of computation.

***

"...consciousness is not computation but something else, generated coincidentally with computation in the physical realm.

"It should be noted that computers are actually very limited. All they can do is transform inputs into outputs. While any computing system can perform any computation (assuming sufficient time and memory), computation alone does not enable the system to act. To do anything, a computer must interact with non-computer devices in its environment—typically, screens, keyboards, mice, printers, speakers, etc.

***

"The conscious mind is not computation. However, this does not mean that computation is not involved with consciousness. Rather, the conscious mind is better understood as something that interacts with the computer than the computer itself. In particular, our conscious minds appear to be observing the outputs of our physical brains, acting as computers. What we experience as qualia are thus those inputs, manifested in our minds.

***

"we know by direct experience that we have conscious minds experiencing qualia. We also know that our brains engage in speech and writing about consciousness and qualia. It seems a highly implausible coincidence that our brains would talk about consciousness without receiving some sort of input from our consciousness. As such, they must be under some form of control by the conscious mind of the brain.

"Furthermore, I would suggest that the idea that consciousness is separate from the brain “computer” makes sense of our own experience of mind. We experience a limited degree of understanding and control over our own mind. We have a subconsciousness of which we are not fully aware. We are unaware of the details of our own thought processes. Often we have thoughts we do not want. It is as though we have some control over the inputs into our conscious mind, but it is limited. Some research suggests that we have free won’t rather than free will. That is, our conscious minds may not be able to freely choose our actions but they can veto those actions.

"However, if the conscious mind is not generated by computation, what is it generated by? Most crucially, is the conscious mind generated by a physical system? This depends on what exactly we mean by “physical.” If consciousness were shown to be caused by something non-physical, the domain of physics would simply be expanded to include the new domain. As such, consciousness is not explicable by physics as we understand it today but it is impossible to show that no physics would ever explain it. The question is simply ill-formed unless we stipulate a specific definition of “physical.”

"In any event, consciousness is not computation. There is simply no way to generate consciousness out of strictly computational tools. Instead, consciousness is something which interacts with computation. This is why we experience minds over which have partial but not complete control and knowledge. As for the causes of consciousness itself, we can know little except that they are something quite different from the laws of nature we have so far uncovered."

Comment: Doesn't solve the problem but explains how the brain as a computer interacts with consciousness, which must be seen as separate but 'attached' to the brain, whatever 'attached' means.

Consciousness: mind and brain relationship

by Balance_Maintained @, U.S.A., Monday, July 29, 2019, 17:15 (1694 days ago) @ David Turell

If I recall correctly we had already established this in our discussions with Matt. Glad to see the literature catching up with us. :-P

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Friday, February 07, 2020, 21:09 (1501 days ago) @ David Turell

Schopenhauer believes in free will:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/yes-free-will-exists/?utm_source=news...

"To see why, notice first that the prefix “pre” in “predetermined choice” is entirely redundant. Not only are all predetermined choices determined by definition, all determined choices can be regarded as predetermined as well: they always result from dispositions or necessities that precede them. Therefore, what we are really asking is simply whether our choices are determined.

***

"But if our choices are always determined anyway, what does it mean to talk of free will in the first place? If you think about it carefully, the answer is self-evident: we have free will if our choices are determined by that which we experientially identify with. I identify with my tastes and preferences—as consciously felt by me—in the sense that I regard them as expressions of myself. My choices are thus free insofar as they are determined by these felt tastes and preferences.

"Why, then, do we think that metaphysical materialism—the notion that our choices are determined by neurophysiological activity in our own brain—contradicts free will? Because, try as we might, we don’t experientially identify with neurophysiology; not even our own. As far as our conscious life is concerned, the neurophysiological activity in our brain is merely an abstraction. All we are directly and concretely acquainted with are our fears, desires, inclinations, etc., as experienced—that is, our felt volitional states. So, we identify with these, not with networks of firing neurons inside our skull. The alleged identity between neurophysiology and felt volition is merely a conceptual—not an experiential—one.

***

"So, the question of free will boils down to one of metaphysics: are our felt volitional states reducible to something outside and independent of consciousness? If so, there cannot be free will, for we can only identify with contents of consciousness. But if, instead, neurophysiology is merely how our felt volitional states present themselves to observation from an outside perspective—that is, if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves.

***

"So, the question of free will boils down to one of metaphysics: are our felt volitional states reducible to something outside and independent of consciousness? If so, there cannot be free will, for we can only identify with contents of consciousness. But if, instead, neurophysiology is merely how our felt volitional states present themselves to observation from an outside perspective—that is, if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (my bold)


"Kant considered the world-in-itself unknowable. Schopenhauer, however, argued that we can learn something about it not only through the sense organs, but also through introspection. His argument goes as follows: even in the absence of all self-perception mediated by the sense organs, we would still experience our own endogenous, felt volition.

"Therefore, prior to being represented we are essentially will. Our physical body is merely how our will presents itself to an external vantage point. And since both our body and the rest of the world appear in representation as matter, Schopenhauer inferred that the rest of the world, just like ourselves, is also essentially will.


"In Schopenhauer’s illuminating view of reality, the will is indeed free because it is all there ultimately is. Yet, its image is nature’s seemingly deterministic laws, which reflect the instinctual inner consistency of the will."

Comment: Although not stated, Schopenhauer's free will is God's consciousness in my view. Our will is free, not determined by electrical waves in our brain. We run those waves.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by dhw, Saturday, February 08, 2020, 15:24 (1500 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE:if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will (dhw’s bold) ; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (David's bold)

DAVID:: Although not stated, Schopenhauer's free will is God's consciousness in my view. Our will is free, not determined by electrical waves in our brain. We run those waves.

(Schopenhauer died in 1869, so I'm not sure how much of this post is taken directly from him.) We have discussed this subject at great length – it’s a pet topic of Romansh’s – and it is emphatically NOT just a matter of materialism versus dualism, as implied by the words I have bolded or by David's comment. Nor do I see what is meant by "free will is God’s consciousness". It certainly can't mean that he takes our decisions! Whether consciousness is a blank slate or not, produced by God or produced by the brain, the important question is where do the eventual characteristics come from that influence the decisions made by our consciousness?

We are faced with the problem of cause and effect, which this article totally ignores. No point in going over it all again in detail, but Romansh’s anti-free will argument is that all our decisions are determined by causes beyond our control – not just the make-up of the brain, but also the influences that unconsciously shape our decisions: heredity, upbringing, chance occurrences etc. My answer to the cause-and-effect argument would be that nevertheless, those influences are part of “me”, and so it cannot be argued that the decisions are not “mine”. I therefore have the ability, within given constraints (if I’m in prison, I can’t decide to go for a walk in the country), to take decisions independently of any influence outside myself.

So it boils down to definitions. If you define free will as the autonomous ability of an individual within given constraints to make decisions independently from outside influences, my answer would be yes, we have it. If the definition is ….to make decisions independently from causes and effects over which the individual has no control, my answer would be, no, we don’t have it.The dilemma is relived again and again in courts of law.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Saturday, February 08, 2020, 18:44 (1500 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE:if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will (dhw’s bold) ; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (David's bold)

DAVID:: Although not stated, Schopenhauer's free will is God's consciousness in my view. Our will is free, not determined by electrical waves in our brain. We run those waves.

dhw: (Schopenhauer died in 1869, so I'm not sure how much of this post is taken directly from him.)

This quote from the website explains for you: "As elucidated in my concise new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, for Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition—that is, will."

dhw: We have discussed this subject at great length – it’s a pet topic of Romansh’s – and it is emphatically NOT just a matter of materialism versus dualism, as implied by the words I have bolded or by David's comment. Nor do I see what is meant by "free will is God’s consciousness". It certainly can't mean that he takes our decisions! Whether consciousness is a blank slate or not, produced by God or produced by the brain, the important question is where do the eventual characteristics come from that influence the decisions made by our consciousness?

I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.


dhw: We are faced with the problem of cause and effect, which this article totally ignores. No point in going over it all again in detail, but Romansh’s anti-free will argument is that all our decisions are determined by causes beyond our control – not just the make-up of the brain, but also the influences that unconsciously shape our decisions: heredity, upbringing, chance occurrences etc. My answer to the cause-and-effect argument would be that nevertheless, those influences are part of “me”, and so it cannot be argued that the decisions are not “mine”. I therefore have the ability, within given constraints (if I’m in prison, I can’t decide to go for a walk in the country), to take decisions independently of any influence outside myself.

I fully agree with you.


dhw: So it boils down to definitions. If you define free will as the autonomous ability of an individual within given constraints to make decisions independently from outside influences, my answer would be yes, we have it. If the definition is ….to make decisions independently from causes and effects over which the individual has no control, my answer would be, no, we don’t have it.The dilemma is relived again and again in courts of law.

Here I disagree. In our ability to logically reason we can review the influences we know we have gained/were given from our pasts. We can certainly change our basic precepts. I went from agnostic to belief. As a child my parents taught me to be a liberal Democrat. I am now a libertarian who votes Republican, and generally despises them for their spinelessness because they are so two-faced. We are stuck with two ridiculous parties set in legalistic stone.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by dhw, Sunday, February 09, 2020, 10:38 (1500 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will (dhw’s bold) ; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (David's bold)

dhw: (Schopenhauer died in 1869, so I'm not sure how much of this post is taken directly from him.)

DAVID: This quote from the website explains for you: "As elucidated in my concise new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, for Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition—that is, will."

Thank you. I’m in no position to judge anything beyond what is said in the article itself, but the first quote above seems to me to be woefully inadequate, as explained in detail yesterday.

dhw: […] Whether consciousness is a blank slate or not, produced by God or produced by the brain, the important question is where do the eventual characteristics come from that influence the decisions made by our consciousness?

DAVID: I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.

I do not believe for one second that all babies are born with exactly the same temperament, degree of intelligence, capacity to learn or to reason. These are all factors that influence the decisions we have to take when we exercise our will. In my post, I offered two definitions of free will. I shan’t repeat the reasoning behind the definitions:

dhw: If you define free will as the autonomous ability of an individual within given constraints to make decisions independently from outside influences, my answer would be yes, we have it. If the definition is ….to make decisions independently from causes and effects over which the individual has no control, my answer would be, no, we don’t have it. The dilemma is relived again and again in courts of law.

DAVID: Here I disagree. In our ability to logically reason we can review the influences we know we have gained/were given from our pasts. We can certainly change our basic precepts. I went from agnostic to belief. As a child my parents taught me to be a liberal Democrat. I am now a libertarian who votes Republican, and generally despises them for their spinelessness because they are so two-faced. We are stuck with two ridiculous parties set in legalistic stone.

I agree with your political comments, which apply equally to the shambles we have over here! You accepted the first definition (the argument being that all the influences are part of the unique “me”, and so it is still the unique “me” that makes the decisions), because you believe in free will! But your changes of belief will certainly have taken place as a result of new experiences and knowledge. Once we start delving into causes and effects - why and how you had those experiences and gained that knowledge, and why you reacted to them in the way that you did (inborn characteristics, temperament, intelligence) - we shall embark on a never-ending quest, and not even you know what you will find at the end of it. I remain caught between the two definitions – agnostic, as usual!

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 09, 2020, 16:53 (1499 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will (dhw’s bold) ; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (David's bold)

dhw: (Schopenhauer died in 1869, so I'm not sure how much of this post is taken directly from him.)

DAVID: This quote from the website explains for you: "As elucidated in my concise new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, for Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition—that is, will."

dhw: Thank you. I’m in no position to judge anything beyond what is said in the article itself, but the first quote above seems to me to be woefully inadequate, as explained in detail yesterday.

dhw: […] Whether consciousness is a blank slate or not, produced by God or produced by the brain, the important question is where do the eventual characteristics come from that influence the decisions made by our consciousness?

DAVID: I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.

dhw: I do not believe for one second that all babies are born with exactly the same temperament, degree of intelligence, capacity to learn or to reason. These are all factors that influence the decisions we have to take when we exercise our will.

I agree that 40% of our personality tendencies are inherited.

dhw: In my post, I offered two definitions of free will. I shan’t repeat the reasoning behind the definitions:

dhw: If you define free will as the autonomous ability of an individual within given constraints to make decisions independently from outside influences, my answer would be yes, we have it. If the definition is ….to make decisions independently from causes and effects over which the individual has no control, my answer would be, no, we don’t have it. The dilemma is relived again and again in courts of law.

DAVID: Here I disagree. In our ability to logically reason we can review the influences we know we have gained/were given from our pasts. We can certainly change our basic precepts. I went from agnostic to belief. As a child my parents taught me to be a liberal Democrat. I am now a libertarian who votes Republican, and generally despises them for their spinelessness because they are so two-faced. We are stuck with two ridiculous parties set in legalistic stone.

dhw: I agree with your political comments, which apply equally to the shambles we have over here! You accepted the first definition (the argument being that all the influences are part of the unique “me”, and so it is still the unique “me” that makes the decisions), because you believe in free will! But your changes of belief will certainly have taken place as a result of new experiences and knowledge. Once we start delving into causes and effects - why and how you had those experiences and gained that knowledge, and why you reacted to them in the way that you did (inborn characteristics, temperament, intelligence) - we shall embark on a never-ending quest, and not even you know what you will find at the end of it. I remain caught between the two definitions – agnostic, as usual!

But at least you admit those of us who do introspective thinking can learn and change from the learning.

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by dhw, Monday, February 10, 2020, 16:05 (1498 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.

dhw: I do not believe for one second that all babies are born with exactly the same temperament, degree of intelligence, capacity to learn or to reason. These are all factors that influence the decisions we have to take when we exercise our will.

DAVID: I agree that 40% of our personality tendencies are inherited.

Which would mean firstly that consciousness is not a blank slate, and secondly that 40% of our decision-making processes are influenced by factors beyond our control.

dhw: You accepted the first definition (the argument being that all the influences are part of the unique “me”, and so it is still the unique “me” that makes the decisions), because you believe in free will! But your changes of belief will certainly have taken place as a result of new experiences and knowledge. Once we start delving into causes and effects - why and how you had those experiences and gained that knowledge, and why you reacted to them in the way that you did (inborn characteristics, temperament, intelligence) - we shall embark on a never-ending quest, and not even you know what you will find at the end of it. I remain caught between the two definitions – agnostic, as usual!

DAVID: But at least you admit those of us who do introspective thinking can learn and change from the learning.

Yes of course. Even our fellow animals whose “introspective thinking” is no doubt far less advanced than our own, can learn and change from the learning. The question remains as to what factors influence our decision-making (which is the manifestation of free will).

Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will

by David Turell @, Monday, February 10, 2020, 18:23 (1498 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.

dhw: I do not believe for one second that all babies are born with exactly the same temperament, degree of intelligence, capacity to learn or to reason. These are all factors that influence the decisions we have to take when we exercise our will.

DAVID: I agree that 40% of our personality tendencies are inherited.

Which would mean firstly that consciousness is not a blank slate, and secondly that 40% of our decision-making processes are influenced by factors beyond our control.

dhw: You accepted the first definition (the argument being that all the influences are part of the unique “me”, and so it is still the unique “me” that makes the decisions), because you believe in free will! But your changes of belief will certainly have taken place as a result of new experiences and knowledge. Once we start delving into causes and effects - why and how you had those experiences and gained that knowledge, and why you reacted to them in the way that you did (inborn characteristics, temperament, intelligence) - we shall embark on a never-ending quest, and not even you know what you will find at the end of it. I remain caught between the two definitions – agnostic, as usual!

DAVID: But at least you admit those of us who do introspective thinking can learn and change from the learning.

dhw: Yes of course. Even our fellow animals whose “introspective thinking” is no doubt far less advanced than our own, can learn and change from the learning. The question remains as to what factors influence our decision-making (which is the manifestation of free will).

Those factors have primarily to be what has influenced our thinking from past experiences and conclusions. I don't worry about the Romansh concerns re' a wet computer.

Consciousness: A physicist believes in free will

by David Turell @, Tuesday, June 09, 2020, 19:38 (1378 days ago) @ David Turell

Essay by George Ellis:

https://aeon.co/essays/heres-why-so-many-physicists-are-wrong-about-free-will?utm_sourc...

"The structure of these molecules is truly the secret of life, as Francis Crick and James Watson exclaimed when they discovered the double helix structure of DNA, helped by the work of Rosalind Franklin...And all this functioning follows from the details of the complex shapes of these proteins.

***

"So the actual question is: does the Schrödinger equation, together with the initial state of the wave function describing everything that existed in the early Universe, determine everything I think today because it determines the states of all the biomolecules in my body?

***

"In the case of the biomolecules that underlie the existence of life, it’s the shape of the molecule that acts as a constraint on what happens. These molecules are quite flexible, bending around joints rather like hinges...Any particular such molecular ‘conformation’ (a specific state of folding) constrains the motions of ions and electrons at the underlying physical level. This can happen in a time-dependent fashion, according to biological needs. In this way, biology can reach down to shape physical outcomes.

***

"Ion channels are proteins imbedded in the cell wall, controlling the flow of ions in and out of the cell. They can be open or closed, depending on the position of their hinged parts. They thereby either allow movement of ions into or out of the cell...

"This gating plays a crucial role in brain functioning...These ion channels are a biological analogue of transistors in computers, which allow currents to flow or not, based in the voltage difference between two parts of the circuit.

***

"The gating function, then, is a consequence of the detailed shape of the ion channel.

***

"The broad structure of that network is the same for everyone, but the details are not. It’s the detailed structure in each brain that embodies the differences between us, and specifically our long-term memories. The details of which neuron is connected to which, and the strength of each connection, have been shaped by our own history and memories.

***

"mental states change the shape of proteins because the brain has real logical powers. This downward causation trumps the power of initial conditions. Logical implications determine the outcomes at the macro level in our thoughts, and at the micro level in terms of flows of electrons and ions.

***

"At molecular scales, the processes at work forget initial data due to billions on billions of collisions between molecules every second. Biology thrives on that disorder – a ‘molecular storm’, as Peter Hoffman calls it in his book Life’s Ratchet (2012). Molecular machines do work, such as kinesin moving cargos from one place to another in the cell, extracting order out of the chaos.

"As explained by Denis Noble and Raymond Noble in their paper for the journal Chaos in 2018, molecular randomness gives cellular mechanisms the option of choosing the outcomes they want, and discarding those they don’t. This power of choice enables physiological systems such as the heart and brain to function in a way that isn’t enslaved by the lower-level interactions, but rather choosing the outcomes of the preferred interactions from a multitude of options. In this way, a layer of order can emerge from the disorder – and micro data – at the lower level. This isn’t conclusive proof that free will exists, but at least it opens up a way for it to exist.

"For the sake of argument, let’s suppose I’m wrong. Let’s ignore all these issues and take the deterministic view seriously. It implies that the words of every book ever written – the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Das Kapital, the Harry Potter series – were encoded into the initial state of the Universe, whatever that was. No logical thinking by a human played a causal role in the specific words of these books: they were determined by physics alone.

***

"Genuine mental functioning and the ability to make decisions in a rational way is a far more persuasive explanation of how books get written. That this is possible is due to the extraordinary hierarchical structure of our brain and its functioning.

***

"there are still physicists today who confidently proclaim that we can’t have free will because physics determines everything, including brain functioning – entirely ignoring the complex context and the power of constraints."

comment: this is a purely materialistic view of brain function, but it certainly allows for free will. Enormous article filled with explanations worth studying.

Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness

by David Turell @, Monday, February 01, 2021, 21:05 (1141 days ago) @ David Turell

A different point of view:

https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/your-soul-has-no-off-switch/

"I believe that “consciousness” is a mere narrative gloss on the mind — it denotes nothing beyond the mental powers of the soul.

"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless. It leads us to misunderstand the mind in a profound way, as I will explain. The point may seem subtle but I believe that, if you think deeply enough about it, you will see that it is obviously true.

***

"I think the reason “consciousness” became a new concept in early modern philosophy is the advent of mechanical philosophy, which replaced Platonism and Aristotelian hylomorphism as the default scientific metaphysics. Mechanical philosophy is the assertion that nature and man are machines of a sort.

***

"I believe that “consciousness” became a concept in the early modern era because of this machine analogy. Machines, after all, can be turned on and off. If a body is a machine, life is the on position of the switch, and death is the off position. If the mind is a machine, conscious is the on position, and unconsciousness is the off position. If we are machines, “on” and “off” as states of consciousness seem inevitable.

"There are strong scientific reasons to reject this notion that the soul, including the powers of the mind, can be extinguished in the sense of being “switched off.” Here are some of them:

"Medical practice avoids use of the terms “conscious” or “unconscious” (if a medical student uses the term, I correct him). These terms for mental states are horribly imprecise, and it is not clear that they correspond meaningfully to any reproducibly measurable state of mind. Mental status is commonly assessed by the Glasgow Coma Scale which measures ability to follow commands, to open eyes, and to speak. “Consciousness,” as distinct from individual mental abilities, plays no role.
"When we sleep, although we would commonly be called “unconscious,” we remain aware to a significant extent of our surroundings. We wake up to noise or pain or cold. If we were not “conscious” of stimuli in some real sense, we could not respond to them.
During sleep, we are aware of dreams, which often have very complex imagery and content. Dreams are often metaphorical and represent profound introspection and insights about experiences.
“'Unconsciousness” is a poorly defined term in anesthesiology. The fundamental goal of surgical general anesthesia is analgesia, pharmacological paralysis of voluntary muscles, and amnesia, not unconsciousness, per se. Because anesthetic drugs are generally amnestic agents and drugs are given that cause muscular paralysis, it is impossible to know to what extent awareness (without pain or movement) exists during anesthesia.
Patients who are “unconscious” from concussion or other brain injury often show varying levels of awareness of their surroundings.
"Patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), which is the deepest level of coma, have been traditionally assumed to have no mental states at all. Yet careful studies over the past two decades show that many patients in PVS have high levels of awareness and thought and are simply unable to demonstrate their thoughts to others.
"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function. A significant portion of these experiences are veridical, which means that the reality of the perceptions can be confirmed (e.g. the person sees things that occurred when he was clinically dead).

***

"The more we understand about the neuroscience of arousal, sleep, anesthesia, coma, and NDEs, the more it evident that “consciousness” is to neuroscience what phlogiston and the ether was to thermodynamics. It is an outdated concept that served as a scientific placeholder and obscured reality, until deeper insights are gained that render it superfluous.

***

"Neuroscience shows that we are not machines with “on” and “off” switches. Our minds are never off; we just have states in which one or more powers of the mind — sensation or perception or memory etc. — are temporarily inactive. It makes no sense to speak of an “on switch” either.There is no scientific reason to speak of consciousness or unconsciousness, and that terminology has largely been abandoned in medical practice as meaningless and even dangerous, as it should be.

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death.

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

Comment: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.

Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness

by dhw, Tuesday, February 02, 2021, 11:28 (1141 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor:

"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless.”

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death.

"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function."

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

DAVID: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.

I’m sorry, but I find this sort of thing intensely irritating. Apparently “consciousness” is a useless concept because there are different levels of consciousness, and because when people are said to be unconscious (e.g. asleep, in a coma, during NDEs) in actual fact they are or may be conscious. How does this make the concept of “consciousness” worse than useless? Egnor uses it and thinks of it in exactly the same way as the rest of us! All his argument boils down to is the fact that he believes in an immortal soul, i.e. he does not believe that consciousness ends when the body dies (= the “machine” is switched off), and NDEs are his evidence. I agree with him and you about NDEs – they suggest that consciousness does not die when the brain dies. So how does that make “consciousness” a useless concept? This is not even “linguistic nitpicking” – it’s simply muddled thinking.

Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 02, 2021, 18:10 (1140 days ago) @ dhw

Egnor:

"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless.”

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death.

"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function."

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

DAVID: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I find this sort of thing intensely irritating. Apparently “consciousness” is a useless concept because there are different levels of consciousness, and because when people are said to be unconscious (e.g. asleep, in a coma, during NDEs) in actual fact they are or may be conscious. How does this make the concept of “consciousness” worse than useless? Egnor uses it and thinks of it in exactly the same way as the rest of us! All his argument boils down to is the fact that he believes in an immortal soul, i.e. he does not believe that consciousness ends when the body dies (= the “machine” is switched off), and NDEs are his evidence. I agree with him and you about NDEs – they suggest that consciousness does not die when the brain dies. So how does that make “consciousness” a useless concept? This is not even “linguistic nitpicking” – it’s simply muddled thinking.

The issues he raised were not muddled. The comatose patient may well be thinking as studies have shown. Locked in syndrome as one example. I agree it is nitpicking to some extent, but it does act to clarify our thinking about the concept of overt and hidden consciousness

Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness

by dhw, Wednesday, February 03, 2021, 10:54 (1140 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor:
"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless.”

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death. (dhw's bold)

"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function."

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

DAVID: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I find this sort of thing intensely irritating. Apparently “consciousness” is a useless concept because there are different levels of consciousness, and because when people are said to be unconscious (e.g. asleep, in a coma, during NDEs) in actual fact they are or may be conscious. How does this make the concept of “consciousness” worse than useless? […] This is not even “linguistic nitpicking” – it’s simply muddled thinking.

DAVID: The issues he raised were not muddled. The comatose patient may well be thinking as studies have shown. Locked in syndrome as one example. I agree it is nitpicking to some extent, but it does act to clarify our thinking about the concept of overt and hidden consciousness.

Egnor has told us that the concept of consciousness is worse than useless. Why? Because there are different degrees of consciousness, and sometimes people who are thought to be unconscious are in fact conscious. And therefore we have an immortal soul! I do wish you wouldn’t leap to the defence of such muddled non sequiturs. Egnor uses the concept of “consciousness” in exactly the same way as non-believers do, but he thinks consciousness survives the death of the brain. No problem if that’s what he thinks, but that does not make the concept of consciousness “worse than useless” or responsible for people not believing what he believes.

Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 03, 2021, 17:33 (1139 days ago) @ dhw

Egnor:
"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless.”

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death. (dhw's bold)

"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function."

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

DAVID: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I find this sort of thing intensely irritating. Apparently “consciousness” is a useless concept because there are different levels of consciousness, and because when people are said to be unconscious (e.g. asleep, in a coma, during NDEs) in actual fact they are or may be conscious. How does this make the concept of “consciousness” worse than useless? […] This is not even “linguistic nitpicking” – it’s simply muddled thinking.

DAVID: The issues he raised were not muddled. The comatose patient may well be thinking as studies have shown. Locked in syndrome as one example. I agree it is nitpicking to some extent, but it does act to clarify our thinking about the concept of overt and hidden consciousness.

dhw: Egnor has told us that the concept of consciousness is worse than useless. Why? Because there are different degrees of consciousness, and sometimes people who are thought to be unconscious are in fact conscious. And therefore we have an immortal soul! I do wish you wouldn’t leap to the defence of such muddled non sequiturs. Egnor uses the concept of “consciousness” in exactly the same way as non-believers do, but he thinks consciousness survives the death of the brain. No problem if that’s what he thinks, but that does not make the concept of consciousness “worse than useless” or responsible for people not believing what he believes.

I'll agree he was a bit too bombastic making his points, but I felt they were valuable to our understanding of consciousness..

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Monday, August 12, 2019, 19:46 (1680 days ago) @ David Turell

How are the mind and the body connected?:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/discovery-mind-body-problem/

"What is characteristic of a mind, Descartes claims, is that it is conscious, not that it has shape or consists of physical matter. Unlike the brain, which has physical characteristics and occupies space, it does not seem to make sense to attach spatial descriptions to it. In short, our bodies are certainly in space, and our minds are not, in the very straightforward sense that the assignation of linear dimensions and locations to them or to their contents and activities is unintelligible. That this straightforward test of physicality has survived all the philosophical changes of opinion since Descartes, almost unscathed, is remarkable.

***

"Though we do find in the “Meditations” itself the distinction between mind and body, drawn very sharply by Descartes, in fact he makes no mention of our mind-body problem. Descartes is untroubled by the fact that, as he has described them, mind and matter are very different: One is spatial and the other not, and therefore one cannot act upon the other. Descartes himself writes in his Reply to one of the Objections:

"The whole problem contained in such questions arises simply from a supposition that is false and cannot in any way be proved, namely that, if the soul and the body are two substances whose nature is different, this prevents them from being able to act on each other.

***

"The difficulty, however, is not merely that mind and body are different. It is that they are different in such a way that their interaction is impossible because it involves a contradiction. It is the nature of bodies to be in space, and the nature of minds not to be in space, Descartes claims. For the two to interact, what is not in space must act on what is in space. Action on a body takes place at a position in space, however, where the body is. Apparently Descartes did not see this problem.

***

"Mind is consciousness, which has no extension or spatial dimension, and matter is not conscious, since it is completely defined by its spatial dimensions and location. Since mind lacks a location and spatial dimensions, [Princess] Elisabeth is arguing, it cannot make contact with matter. Here we have the mind-body problem going at full throttle.

***

"We have inherited the sharp distinction between mind and body, though not exactly in Descartes’s form, but we have not inherited Descartes’s solution to the mind-body problem. So we are left with the problem, minus a solution.

***

"Physics consists of a set of concepts that includes mass, velocity, electron, wave, and so on, but does not include the concepts red, yellow, black, and the like. Physiology includes the concepts neuron, glial cell, visual cortex, and so on, but does not include the concept of color. In the framework of current scientific theory, “red” is a psychological term, not a physical one. Then our problem can be very generally described as the difficulty of describing the relationship between the physical and the psychological, since, as Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi realized, they possess no common relating terms.

***

"What happens, if anything, for example, when we decide to do even such a simple thing as to lift up a cup and take a sip of coffee? The arm moves, but it is difficult to see how the thought or desire could make that happen. It is as though a ghost were to try to lift up a coffee cup. Its ghostly arm would, one supposes, simply pass through the cup without affecting it and without being able to cause it or the physical arm to go up in the air.

"It would be no less remarkable if merely by thinking about it from a few feet away we could cause an ATM to dispense cash. It is no use insisting that our minds are after all not physically connected to the ATM, and that is why it is impossible to affect the ATM’s output — for there is no sense in which they are physically connected to our bodies. Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself." (my bold)

Comment: My answer is still the same. Neurons of the brain receive consciousness and can act on what consciousness wants performed. NDE's shows clearly that consciousness can survive a sick brain and return to it. Consciousness must exist separately when it has to be separate.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by dhw, Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 10:55 (1680 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself." (David’s bold)

DAVID: My answer is still the same. Neurons of the brain receive consciousness and can act on what consciousness wants performed. NDE's shows clearly that consciousness can survive a sick brain and return to it. Consciousness must exist separately when it has to be separate.

This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind. I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver. There is little point is hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 15:18 (1680 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself." (David’s bold)

DAVID: My answer is still the same. Neurons of the brain receive consciousness and can act on what consciousness wants performed. NDE's shows clearly that consciousness can survive a sick brain and return to it. Consciousness must exist separately when it has to be separate.

dhw: This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind.

You fail to note that a damaged receiver may well produce a distorted image of consciousness

dhw: I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver.

Same failed conclusion because it ignores the evidence from NDE's.

dhw: There is little point is hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are. It is without question my brain is entirely material but produces thoughts which never are. Your plays are material only when you compose them so actors can mouth the words.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by dhw, Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 13:33 (1679 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself." (David’s bold)

DAVID: My answer is still the same. Neurons of the brain receive consciousness and can act on what consciousness wants performed. NDE's shows clearly that consciousness can survive a sick brain and return to it. Consciousness must exist separately when it has to be separate.

dhw: This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind.

DAVID: You fail to note that a damaged receiver may well produce a distorted image of consciousness.

You are assuming that the brain is only a receiver! That is the essence of dualism. Materialists claim that a damaged brain changes the nature of an individual’s consciousness because it is the brain that produces consciousness! I leave both options open.

dhw: I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver.

DAVID: Same failed conclusion because it ignores the evidence from NDE's.

It is not a conclusion. You have ignored the beginning of my post, which I have now bolded. NDEs are part of the evidence that I accept.

dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 17:10 (1678 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself." (David’s bold)

DAVID: My answer is still the same. Neurons of the brain receive consciousness and can act on what consciousness wants performed. NDE's shows clearly that consciousness can survive a sick brain and return to it. Consciousness must exist separately when it has to be separate.

dhw: This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind.

DAVID: You fail to note that a damaged receiver may well produce a distorted image of consciousness.

dhw: You are assuming that the brain is only a receiver! That is the essence of dualism. Materialists claim that a damaged brain changes the nature of an individual’s consciousness because it is the brain that produces consciousness! I leave both options open.

Of course materialism points to consciousness changes with a damaged brain. A damaged receiver of course will produce distortion .


dhw: I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver.

DAVID: Same failed conclusion because it ignores the evidence from NDE's.

dhw; It is not a conclusion. You have ignored the beginning of my post, which I have now bolded. NDEs are part of the evidence that I accept.

How do you accept NDE's? They fully support dualism.


dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

I'll stick with the NDE evidence.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by dhw, Thursday, August 15, 2019, 10:08 (1678 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind.

DAVID: You fail to note that a damaged receiver may well produce a distorted image of consciousness.

dhw: You are assuming that the brain is only a receiver! That is the essence of dualism. Materialists claim that a damaged brain changes the nature of an individual’s consciousness because it is the brain that produces consciousness! I leave both options open.

DAVID: Of course materialism points to consciousness changes with a damaged brain. A damaged receiver of course will produce distortion.

And so we have two “of courses” providing evidence for two different interpretations of the brain: transmitter versus receiver. Or maybe parts of the brain transmit and others receive.

dhw: I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver.

DAVID: Same failed conclusion because it ignores the evidence from NDE's.

dhw: It is not a conclusion. You have ignored the beginning of my post, which I have now bolded. NDEs are part of the evidence that I accept.

DAVID: How do you accept NDE's? They fully support dualism.

And character change as a result of brain damage fully supports materialism! You do not seem to have grasped the fact that there is evidence for both –isms, which is why I remain uncommitted.

dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

DAVID: I'll stick with the NDE evidence.

That is your right. I’ll stay on the fence, although in my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE I did try to find a compromise.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 15, 2019, 19:49 (1677 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: This whole argument is based on the assumption that the cause of consciousness is non-physical! I remain neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism, but the article and your comment require a restoration of balance. Nobody knows the source of consciousness. You cite evidence that it is non-physical, and I accept that much of this does indeed favour dualism. But on the other hand, we see example after example to illustrate how damage to the brain can totally change the nature of the mind.

DAVID: You fail to note that a damaged receiver may well produce a distorted image of consciousness.

dhw: You are assuming that the brain is only a receiver! That is the essence of dualism. Materialists claim that a damaged brain changes the nature of an individual’s consciousness because it is the brain that produces consciousness! I leave both options open.

DAVID: Of course materialism points to consciousness changes with a damaged brain. A damaged receiver of course will produce distortion.

dhw; And so we have two “of courses” providing evidence for two different interpretations of the brain: transmitter versus receiver. Or maybe parts of the brain transmit and others receive.

dhw: I find it difficult to believe the argument that despite loss of memory, changes in character, and all the other changes that accompany brain damage, the mind remains exactly as it was before the accident, disease, drug-taking etc. but simply can’t express its immaterial self properly. These changes provide evidence that the mind emerges from the brain and the brain is not merely the receiver.

DAVID: Same failed conclusion because it ignores the evidence from NDE's.

dhw: It is not a conclusion. You have ignored the beginning of my post, which I have now bolded. NDEs are part of the evidence that I accept.

DAVID: How do you accept NDE's? They fully support dualism.

dhw: And character change as a result of brain damage fully supports materialism! You do not seem to have grasped the fact that there is evidence for both –isms, which is why I remain uncommitted.

dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

DAVID: I'll stick with the NDE evidence.

dhw: That is your right. I’ll stay on the fence, although in my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE I did try to find a compromise.

It all depends on whether you accept the receiver concept. But I see you do consider it although downplaying NDE evidence..

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by dhw, Friday, August 16, 2019, 08:42 (1677 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

DAVID: I'll stick with the NDE evidence.

dhw: That is your right. I’ll stay on the fence, although in my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE I did try to find a compromise.

DAVID: It all depends on whether you accept the receiver concept. But I see you do consider it although downplaying NDE evidence.

I do not “downplay” NDE evidence – but I give it equal ranking to the evidence that the brain is the source of consciousness. That is why I continue to sit on my fence. It is those with fixed beliefs who downplay the evidence presented by the opposition.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Friday, August 16, 2019, 18:46 (1676 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There is little point in hammering home the logic that if the mind is immaterial, it follows that it can be separated from the body. The same logic applies to the argument that if it is material, it cannot be separated from the body. And the fact is that there is evidence for both premises, but no conclusive evidence for either, and so nobody knows which one is true.

DAVID: My thoughts are never material, but this comment of yours implies they are.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! I don’t know of anyone who claims that thought is material! I have simply put both sides of the case. Immaterial thought is produced either by an immaterial mind (dualism) or by the material brain (materialism).

DAVID: I'll stick with the NDE evidence.

dhw: That is your right. I’ll stay on the fence, although in my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE I did try to find a compromise.

DAVID: It all depends on whether you accept the receiver concept. But I see you do consider it although downplaying NDE evidence.

dhw: I do not “downplay” NDE evidence – but I give it equal ranking to the evidence that the brain is the source of consciousness. That is why I continue to sit on my fence. It is those with fixed beliefs who downplay the evidence presented by the opposition.

You can have your picket fence.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by romansh ⌂ @, Saturday, August 17, 2019, 00:35 (1676 days ago) @ David Turell

You can have your picket fence.

Oh no the metaphor is all wrong … agnostics are digging in the dirt looking for answers. It is those who think they have come to answer are sitting on their fences, thinking they can see further.

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by dhw, Saturday, August 17, 2019, 11:28 (1676 days ago) @ romansh

DAVID: You can have your picket fence.

ROMANSH: Oh no the metaphor is all wrong … agnostics are digging in the dirt looking for answers. It is those who think they have come to answer are sitting on their fences, thinking they can see further.

"To sit on the fence": to avoid saying which side of an argument you support (Longman). Perhaps an example of you trying to change the normal definition of an expression? Oh, perish the thought! ;-) (I'm only teasing.)

Consciousness: reviewing Descartes on mind and body

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 17, 2019, 15:12 (1676 days ago) @ romansh

David: You can have your picket fence.


Romansh: Oh no the metaphor is all wrong … agnostics are digging in the dirt looking for answers. It is those who think they have come to answer are sitting on their fences, thinking they can see further.

Cute, but I think my conclusions are firmly grounded with my feet firmly on the ground. There is much more to reality than dirt. But then dirt is obviously material and nothing more.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 14, 2019, 19:25 (1647 days ago) @ David Turell

A reporter/philosopher's view on how tough it is

https://aeon.co/essays/will-we-ever-get-our-heads-round-consciousness?utm_source=Aeon+N...

"The question of how the brain produces the feeling of subjective experience, the so-called ‘hard problem’, is a conundrum so intractable that one scientist I know refuses even to discuss it at the dinner table. Another, the British psychologist Stuart Sutherland, declared in 1989 that ‘nothing worth reading has been written on it’. For long periods, it is as if science gives up on the subject in disgust. But the hard problem is back in the news, and a growing number of scientists believe that they have consciousness, if not licked, then at least in their sights.

***

"The problem is that, even if we know what someone is thinking about, or what they are likely to do, we still don’t know what it’s like to be that person. Hemodynamic changes in your prefrontal cortex might tell me that you are looking at a painting of sunflowers, but then, if I thwacked your shin with a hammer, your screams would tell me you were in pain. Neither lets me know what pain or sunflowers feel like for you, or how those feelings come about. In fact, they don’t even tell us whether you really have feelings at all. One can imagine a creature behaving exactly like a human — walking, talking, running away from danger, mating and telling jokes — with absolutely no internal mental life.

***

"David Barash summarised some of the current theories. One possibility, he says, is that consciousness evolved to let us to overcome the ‘tyranny of pain’. Primitive organisms might be slaves to their immediate wants, but humans have the capacity to reflect on the significance of their sensations, and therefore to make their decisions with a degree of circumspection. This is all very well, except that there is presumably no pain in the non-conscious world to start with, so it is hard to see how the need to avoid it could have propelled consciousness into existence.

***

"Even if Markram’s Blue Brain manages to produce fleeting moments of ratty consciousness (which I accept it might), we still wouldn’t know how consciousness works. Saying we understand consciousness because this is what it does is like saying we understand how the Starship Enterprise flies between the stars because we know it has a warp drive. We are writing labels, not answers.

***

"Compare a supernova to, say, the mind of a woman about to give birth, or a father who has just lost his child, or a captured spy undergoing torture. These are subjective experiences that are off the scale in terms of importance. ‘Yes, yes,’ you might say, ‘but that sort of thing only matters from the human point of view.’ To which I reply: in a universe without witness, what other point of view can there be? The world was simply immaterial until someone came along to perceive it. And morality is both literally and figuratively senseless without consciousness: until we have a perceiving mind, there is no suffering to relieve, no happiness to maximise.

"...it is worth noting that there seems to be rather a limited range of basic options for the nature of consciousness. You might, for example, believe that it is some sort of magical field, a soul, that comes as an addendum to the body, like a satnav machine in a car. This is the traditional ‘ghost in the machine’ of Cartesian dualism. It is, I would guess, how most people have thought of consciousness for centuries, and how many still do. In scientific circles, however, dualism has become immensely unpopular. The problem is that no one has ever seen this field. How is it generated? More importantly, how does it interact with the ‘thinking meat’ of the brain? We see no energy transfer. We can detect no soul.

"If you don’t believe in magical fields, you are not a traditional dualist, and the chances are that you are a materialist of some description.

***

"The consensus seems to be that we must run away from too much magic. Daniel Dennett dismisses the idea of ‘qualia’ (perhaps an unfortunately magical-sounding word) altogether. To him, consciousness is simply our word for what it feels like to be a brain. He told me: " a neural representation is not a simulacrum of something, made of ‘mental clay’; it is a representation made of … well, patterns of spike trains in neuronal axons and the like."

***

"Once you have accepted that feelings and experiences can be quite independent of time and space (those causally connected but delocalised cogwheels), you might take a look at your assumptions about what, where and when you are with a little reeling disquiet.

"I don’t know. No one does. And I think it is possible that, compared with the hard problem, the rest of science is a sideshow. Until we get a grip on our own minds, our grip on anything else could be suspect. It’s hard, but we shouldn’t stop trying."

Comment: And he doesn't mention that NDE's indicate that consciousness can leave a non-functional brain and then come back to it when it is well.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by dhw, Sunday, September 15, 2019, 10:17 (1647 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A reporter/philosopher's view on how tough it is
https://aeon.co/essays/will-we-ever-get-our-heads-round-consciousness?utm_source=Aeon+N...

We have covered this subject at great length in the threads devoted to dualism versus materialism. Initially, I found myself critiquing individual quotes from this article, but I’ve now read it all and see that in fact it expertly summarizes lots of different views. I really like the conclusion:

"I don’t know. No one does. And I think it is possible that, compared with the hard problem, the rest of science is a sideshow. Until we get a grip on our own minds, our grip on anything else could be suspect. It’s hard, but we shouldn’t stop trying."

DAVID: And he doesn't mention that NDE's indicate that consciousness can leave a non-functional brain and then come back to it when it is well.

A good argument for dualism. As a materialist counter to this, he doesn’t mention that all kinds of factors – e,g, disease, accidents, drugs, alcohol - can change the way in which consciousness functions through their effect on the brain. He’s right, though: we don’t know. We agnostics came to this conclusion long ago about most of the “hard” subjects , but I agree: we shouldn’t stop trying! Hence this website!

Under “Free will”:

"These observations point to a fundamental paradox about consciousness. We have the strong impression that we choose when we do and don’t act and, as a consequence, we hold people responsible for their actions.”

Yes, that is the essence of free will.

Yet many of the ways we encounter the world don’t require any real conscious processing, and our feeling of agency can be deeply misleading.”

They require conscious processing when there is need for a decision. That is when free will comes into play.

"If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean? Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal? If so, I completely disagree, and I’m surprised that you endorse the bold. That doesn’t mean I am championing free will, because this depends on one’s view of the influences that cause us to process the information in a particular way. But perhaps I've missed his point?

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by David Turell @, Sunday, September 15, 2019, 18:19 (1646 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A reporter/philosopher's view on how tough it is
https://aeon.co/essays/will-we-ever-get-our-heads-round-consciousness?utm_source=Aeon+N...

dhw: We have covered this subject at great length in the threads devoted to dualism versus materialism. Initially, I found myself critiquing individual quotes from this article, but I’ve now read it all and see that in fact it expertly summarizes lots of different views. I really like the conclusion:

"I don’t know. No one does. And I think it is possible that, compared with the hard problem, the rest of science is a sideshow. Until we get a grip on our own minds, our grip on anything else could be suspect. It’s hard, but we shouldn’t stop trying."

DAVID: And he doesn't mention that NDE's indicate that consciousness can leave a non-functional brain and then come back to it when it is well.

dhw: A good argument for dualism. As a materialist counter to this, he doesn’t mention that all kinds of factors – e,g, disease, accidents, drugs, alcohol - can change the way in which consciousness functions through their effect on the brain. He’s right, though: we don’t know. We agnostics came to this conclusion long ago about most of the “hard” subjects , but I agree: we shouldn’t stop trying! Hence this website!

Under “Free will”:

"These observations point to a fundamental paradox about consciousness. We have the strong impression that we choose when we do and don’t act and, as a consequence, we hold people responsible for their actions.”

dhw: Yes, that is the essence of free will.

Yet many of the ways we encounter the world don’t require any real conscious processing, and our feeling of agency can be deeply misleading.”

They require conscious processing when there is need for a decision. That is when free will comes into play.

"If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw; Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean?

That is his meaning as I read it.

dhw: Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal?

Again I read it as acknowledging that we do weight pros and cons before choosing.

dhw: If so, I completely disagree, and I’m surprised that you endorse the bold. That doesn’t mean I am championing free will, because this depends on one’s view of the influences that cause us to process the information in a particular way. But perhaps I've missed his point?

As I read it I've accepted his view.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by dhw, Monday, September 16, 2019, 10:26 (1646 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean?

DAVID: That is his meaning as I read it.

I’m glad we agree.

dhw: Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal?

DAVID: Again I read it as acknowledging that we do weight pros and cons before choosing.

But he says “agency” – the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions – only begins AFTER our actions!

dhw: If so, I completely disagree, and I’m surprised that you endorse the bold. That doesn’t mean I am championing free will, because this depends on one’s view of the influences that cause us to process the information in a particular way. But perhaps I've missed his point?

DAVID: As I read it I've accepted his view.

Then you agree with him that we only feel responsible AFTER we act, and therefore the decision-making itself is not our responsibility! I thought you believed that we did have free will, i.e. that we are consciously in charge of our own decision-making BEFORE we act.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by David Turell @, Monday, September 16, 2019, 17:12 (1645 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean?

DAVID: That is his meaning as I read it.

dhw: I’m glad we agree.

dhw: Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal?

DAVID: Again I read it as acknowledging that we do weight pros and cons before choosing.

dhw: But he says “agency” – the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions – only begins AFTER our actions!

That is our 'feeling' after our acts, but doesn't negate that we carefully considered and made real choices.


dhw: If so, I completely disagree, and I’m surprised that you endorse the bold. That doesn’t mean I am championing free will, because this depends on one’s view of the influences that cause us to process the information in a particular way. But perhaps I've missed his point?

DAVID: As I read it I've accepted his view.

dhw: Then you agree with him that we only feel responsible AFTER we act, and therefore the decision-making itself is not our responsibility! I thought you believed that we did have free will, i.e. that we are consciously in charge of our own decision-making BEFORE we act.

You have totally misinterpreted his meaning. Our feeling of full control (free will) does appear after we decided what to think or do. That is my feeling of my decisions.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by dhw, Tuesday, September 17, 2019, 10:14 (1645 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean?

DAVID: That is his meaning as I read it.

dhw: I’m glad we agree.

dhw: Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal?

DAVID: Again I read it as acknowledging that we do weight pros and cons before choosing.

dhw: But he says “agency” – the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions – only begins AFTER our actions!

DAVID: That is our 'feeling' after our acts, but doesn't negate that we carefully considered and made real choices.

If the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions is only relevant AFTER we act, how does that come to mean that it is relevant BEFORE we act?

DAVID: You have totally misinterpreted his meaning. Our feeling of full control (free will) does appear after we decided what to think or do. That is my feeling of my decisions.

I’m not disputing that we feel responsible afterwards. I’m disputing that we do not feel responsible before our actions, when we are in the process of making our decision. (I’d better repeat that I am disputing his argument, but I am not defending or attacking the concept of free will.) I don’t know why you are supporting an argument with which you profoundly disagree, or why you think that “only after” includes “before”!

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 17, 2019, 14:56 (1645 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: Perhaps you understand all this better than I do. “Feeling of agency” presumably means the feeling that we are the “agents” responsible for our actions. If not, what exactly does it mean?

DAVID: That is his meaning as I read it.

dhw: I’m glad we agree.

dhw: Once again, we are confronted with the mystery of consciousness. Is he saying that when we need to make a decision, we do not consciously weigh up the pros and cons offered by the information at our disposal?

DAVID: Again I read it as acknowledging that we do weight pros and cons before choosing.

dhw: But he says “agency” – the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions – only begins AFTER our actions!

DAVID: That is our 'feeling' after our acts, but doesn't negate that we carefully considered and made real choices.

dhw: If the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions is only relevant AFTER we act, how does that come to mean that it is relevant BEFORE we act?

I feel I am fully in charge beforehand while deliberating as well as afterward.


DAVID: You have totally misinterpreted his meaning. Our feeling of full control (free will) does appear after we decided what to think or do. That is my feeling of my decisions.

dhw: I’m not disputing that we feel responsible afterwards. I’m disputing that we do not feel responsible before our actions, when we are in the process of making our decision. (I’d better repeat that I am disputing his argument, but I am not defending or attacking the concept of free will.) I don’t know why you are supporting an argument with which you profoundly disagree, or why you think that “only after” includes “before”!

Explained above. The no-free-will folks believe the brain, own its own, influences our thoughts. I feel I run my brain, even though it is a wet-computer which helps us see, feel our reality in an indirect way.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by dhw, Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 09:02 (1644 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: If the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions is only relevant AFTER we act, how does that come to mean that it is relevant BEFORE we act?

DAVID: I feel I am fully in charge beforehand while deliberating as well as afterward.

Exactly. So you disagree with him!

DAVID: You have totally misinterpreted his meaning. Our feeling of full control (free will) does appear after we decided what to think or do. That is my feeling of my decisions.

dhw: I’m not disputing that we feel responsible afterwards. I’m disputing that we do not feel responsible before our actions, when we are in the process of making our decision. (I’d better repeat that I am disputing his argument, but I am not defending or attacking the concept of free will.) I don’t know why you are supporting an argument with which you profoundly disagree, or why you think that “only after” includes “before”!

DAVID: Explained above. The no-free-will folks believe the brain, own its own, influences our thoughts. I feel I run my brain, even though it is a wet-computer which helps us see, feel our reality in an indirect way.

I was simply pointing out that free will requires “agency” BEFORE the act. For some reason, you have supported the bolded statement at the start of this post, although it contradicts your own beliefs! This is a non-discussion.

Consciousness: hard problem not solvable?

by David Turell @, Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 19:19 (1643 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other." (DAVID’S bold)

DAVID’s comment: Libet did not interpret correctly. The bold considers agency a feeling after we act. That sounds correct to me.

dhw: If the feeling that we are the agents responsible for our actions is only relevant AFTER we act, how does that come to mean that it is relevant BEFORE we act?

DAVID: I feel I am fully in charge beforehand while deliberating as well as afterward.

Exactly. So you disagree with him!

DAVID: You have totally misinterpreted his meaning. Our feeling of full control (free will) does appear after we decided what to think or do. That is my feeling of my decisions.

dhw: I’m not disputing that we feel responsible afterwards. I’m disputing that we do not feel responsible before our actions, when we are in the process of making our decision. (I’d better repeat that I am disputing his argument, but I am not defending or attacking the concept of free will.) I don’t know why you are supporting an argument with which you profoundly disagree, or why you think that “only after” includes “before”!

DAVID: Explained above. The no-free-will folks believe the brain, own its own, influences our thoughts. I feel I run my brain, even though it is a wet-computer which helps us see, feel our reality in an indirect way.

dhw: I was simply pointing out that free will requires “agency” BEFORE the act. For some reason, you have supported the bolded statement at the start of this post, although it contradicts your own beliefs! This is a non-discussion.

Ended

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 02, 2021, 21:31 (1140 days ago) @ David Turell

Our body is soul and material without a problem of interaction:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/01/princess-elisabeth-of-bohemia-on-soul.html#more

"The letters exchanged between Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia – especially their 1643 exchange on the interaction problem – are among the best-known correspondences in the history of philosophy. And justly so, for they help to elucidate the true nature of that crucial problem and the inadequacy of Descartes’ response to it.

"Contemporary property dualists suggest that a material substance, the human body, can have both physical and non-physical attributes. What Elisabeth is suggesting is that an immaterial substance, the soul, might have both physical and non-physical attributes.

***

"This is an interesting proposal that amounts to a version of what is these days called property dualism, but of a very different kind than the sort usually on offer today. Contemporary property dualists suggest that a material substance, the human body, can have both physical and non-physical attributes. What Elisabeth is suggesting is that an immaterial substance, the soul, might have both physical and non-physical attributes.

"But there are two problems with this idea considered as a solution to the interaction problem facing Descartes. First, it turns out that even body-to-body interaction is not as unproblematic as Elisabeth (and most other people who comment on the interaction problem) assume. For Descartes’ abstract mathematical conception of matter is so desiccated that it is hard to see how it can have any efficacy at all with respect to anything, whether physical or non-physical. Occasionalism – attributing all causality to God rather than to anything in the created order – was a natural position for Cartesians like Malebranche to take, and Descartes himself arguably took it with regard to everything except soul-body interaction.

"A second problem is that if you are going to attribute physical properties to the soul in order to explain how it interacts with the body, why not go the whole hog and make the whole body itself an attribute of the soul? That way you don’t have to posit any interaction between soul and body at all, because they will no longer be distinct substances.

"Indeed, you’d be very close to returning to precisely the Scholastic conception of soul and body that Descartes was trying to replace. You’ll be treating a human being as one substance, not two, but a substance with both incorporeal powers (thinking and willing) and corporeal ones (seeing, hearing, digesting, walking, etc.). And I would say that that is indeed the correct solution to the interaction problem: to dissolve it by giving up the Cartesian thesis that soul and body are distinct substances, so that there aren’t any longer two things that need to “interact.”

"As I have often suggested, the real problem with Descartes’ position is not that he has trouble explaining how soul and body interact. The problem is that he thinks of them as interacting in the first place. It is that he posits two substances rather than one. And the reason this is a problem is that he thereby simply fails to capture the truth about human nature.

***

“'How, if soul and body are two independent substances, can the soul affect the body in the specific way that it does (rather than in the way a ghost or an angel would)?” The problem is explaining how the body could be a true part of you rather than a mere extrinsic instrument that is no more part of you than any other physical object.

***

"This is why Elisabeth’s point about body-to-soul causation is so important. If soul and body are two distinct substances, then even if the soul could, as a substance of a higher ontological order, produce effects in the body (even if only in the way an angel might), it is nevertheless entirely mysterious how the body could produce effects in the soul (any more than a stone or a tree could have any effect on an angel or demon).

"This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise."

Comment: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by dhw, Wednesday, February 03, 2021, 10:57 (1140 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "As I have often suggested, the real problem with Descartes’ position is not that he has trouble explaining how soul and body interact. The problem is that he thinks of them as interacting in the first place. It is that he posits two substances rather than one. And the reason this is a problem is that he thereby simply fails to capture the truth about human nature.” (dhw’s bold)

This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

No it doesn’t. The article could hardly be more emphatic: there is NO interaction between soul and body, because a human being is ONE THING, not two! See the bolds above. This is the compromise that I have been suggesting, though I go one step further: my version is that the material brain produces immaterial thought, emotion etc. (materialism) but the product itself may be (I would emphasize “may”) a form of energy that can exist independently of its original source. Hence NDEs and other psychic experiences.

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 03, 2021, 15:25 (1139 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: "As I have often suggested, the real problem with Descartes’ position is not that he has trouble explaining how soul and body interact. The problem is that he thinks of them as interacting in the first place. It is that he posits two substances rather than one. And the reason this is a problem is that he thereby simply fails to capture the truth about human nature.” (dhw’s bold)

This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

dhw: No it doesn’t. The article could hardly be more emphatic: there is NO interaction between soul and body, because a human being is ONE THING, not two! See the bolds above. This is the compromise that I have been suggesting, though I go one step further: my version is that the material brain produces immaterial thought, emotion etc. (materialism) but the product itself may be (I would emphasize “may”) a form of energy that can exist independently of its original source. Hence NDEs and other psychic experiences.

Your interpretation is exactly what my statement says. Material body, immaterial thought which represents my soul, an energy which can become independent after death.

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by dhw, Thursday, February 04, 2021, 08:41 (1139 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

dhw: No it doesn’t. The article could hardly be more emphatic: there is NO interaction between soul and body, because a human being is ONE THING, not two! See the bolds above. This is the compromise that I have been suggesting, though I go one step further: my version is that the material brain produces immaterial thought, emotion etc. (materialism) but the product itself may be (I would emphasize “may”) a form of energy that can exist independently of its original source. Hence NDEs and other psychic experiences.

DAVID: Your interpretation is exactly what my statement says. Material body, immaterial thought which represents my soul, an energy which can become independent after death.

The article contradicts your view of “two interacting aspects” – body and soul. Hence the points I have bolded. My compromise is that the brain produces immaterial thought etc. – there is no interaction between two distinct entities – but it is possible that the immaterial product may take on its own independent existence in the form of psychic experiences and ultimately life after death, as suggested by NDEs. I didn’t think your own version envisaged the “soul” as the product of the brain, but if it does, then we have agreed on this compromise.

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 04, 2021, 15:19 (1139 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: “This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

dhw: No it doesn’t. The article could hardly be more emphatic: there is NO interaction between soul and body, because a human being is ONE THING, not two! See the bolds above. This is the compromise that I have been suggesting, though I go one step further: my version is that the material brain produces immaterial thought, emotion etc. (materialism) but the product itself may be (I would emphasize “may”) a form of energy that can exist independently of its original source. Hence NDEs and other psychic experiences.

DAVID: Your interpretation is exactly what my statement says. Material body, immaterial thought which represents my soul, an energy which can become independent after death.

dhw: The article contradicts your view of “two interacting aspects” – body and soul. Hence the points I have bolded. My compromise is that the brain produces immaterial thought etc. – there is no interaction between two distinct entities – but it is possible that the immaterial product may take on its own independent existence in the form of psychic experiences and ultimately life after death, as suggested by NDEs. I didn’t think your own version envisaged the “soul” as the product of the brain, but if it does, then we have agreed on this compromise.

In my version the immaterial soul uses the material brain for thought capacity while alive. So of course there is continuous interaction.

Consciousness: Feser on dualism by Descartes

by dhw, Friday, February 05, 2021, 08:35 (1138 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “This problem does not arise for the Scholastic conception of soul and body, because, again, it does not regard them as distinct substances in the first place. A human being is one thing, not two, albeit a thing with both corporeal and incorporeal activities. And since it is one thing, the question of interaction does not arise." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: This fits my view of soul body dualism as two interacting aspects of 'me', one material and one immaterial.

dhw: No it doesn’t. The article could hardly be more emphatic: there is NO interaction between soul and body, because a human being is ONE THING, not two! See the bolds above. This is the compromise that I have been suggesting, though I go one step further: my version is that the material brain produces immaterial thought, emotion etc. (materialism) but the product itself may be (I would emphasize “may”) a form of energy that can exist independently of its original source. Hence NDEs and other psychic experiences.

DAVID: Your interpretation is exactly what my statement says. Material body, immaterial thought which represents my soul, an energy which can become independent after death.

dhw: [...] I didn’t think your own version envisaged the “soul” as the product of the brain, but if it does, then we have agreed on this compromise.

DAVID: In my version the immaterial soul uses the material brain for thought capacity while alive. So of course there is continuous interaction.

Yes, I thought so. Exactly the opposite of the proposal put forward by the article and by my compromise.

Consciousness: relationship to time

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 15, 2018, 20:51 (1950 days ago) @ David Turell

This author defines it as a conscious series of snapshots. Don't think it adds much to the discussion:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-we-actually-experience-the-flow-of...

"Time is a contentious topic in physics. Some physicists, such as Julian Barbour, argue that it doesn’t even exist. Others, such as Carlo Rovelli, hold that it arises as a secondary effect of deeper quantum processes. Yet others, such as Lee Smolin, maintain that time is the sole fundamental dimension of nature. And because the laws of physics are time-symmetrical, much debate has gone into figuring out why we seem unable to travel back in time.

"All this theorizing is motivated by—and attempts to make sense of—our subjective experience of the forward flow of time. Indeed, our reliance on what we think we experience as the flow of time goes so deep that some philosophers take it for a self-evident axiom. For instance, writing for this magazine, Susan Schneider claimed that the flow of time is inherent to experience—so much so that, according to her, “timeless experience is an oxymoron.”

***

"the experiences of remembering the past and imagining the future, as well as that of reading this essay right now, all exist simultaneously in the present snapshot of your conscious life.

***

"The flow from snapshot to snapshot is a story you tell yourself, irresistibly compelling as it may be. Neuroscience itself suggests that this flow is indeed a cognitive construct.

***

"You see, whether time flows forward, or doesn’t flow at all, or moves back and forth, our resulting subjective experience would be identical in all cases: we would always find ourselves in an experiential snapshot extending smoothly backwards in memory and forwards in expectation, just like the desert road. We would always tell ourselves the same story about what’s going on. A mere cognitive narrative—based purely on contents of the experiential snapshot in question—would suffice to convince us of the forward flow of time even when such is not the case.

"The ostensible experience of temporal flow is thus an illusion. All we ever actually experience is the present snapshot, which entails a timescape of memories and imaginings analogous to the landscape of valley and mountains. Everything else is a story. The implications of this realization for physics and philosophy are profound. Indeed, the relationship between time, experience and the nature of reality is liable to be very different from what we currently assume, as I discuss in my upcoming book, The Idea of the World. To advance our understanding of reality we must thus revise cherished assumptions about our experience of time. "

Comment: I've left out lots of verbiage. His conclusion is just as ours in the past. Time is a conscious construct of flowing snapshots. we recognize before and after and we cannot get to t he future until it happens.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 26, 2019, 20:30 (1635 days ago) @ David Turell

An essay by a Dennett follower:

https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-consciousness-is-an-illusion-created-by-your-brain?...

"Neuroscientists are beginning to understand the brain processes underlying all this. To put it simply, light reflected from the apple stimulates light-sensitive cells in the retina, sending trains of electrochemical impulses along the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus and then on to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. Here these signals trigger activity in hierarchically organised groups of cells specialised for the detection of increasingly complex features (edges, colours, motion, faces and so on). When you attend to what you are seeing, this visual information is ‘globally broadcast’ to mental systems involved in memory, reasoning, emotion and decision making, generating the host of effects mentioned. This process of global broadcast is called access consciousness, since it makes sensory information accessible to the rest of the mind, and thus to ‘you’ – the person constituted by these embodied mental systems. Again, I don’t deny the reality of consciousness in this sense.

***

"Here you might want to object (rightly, I think) that these sensory qualities don’t seem to be features of our experiences but of the things we experience. When you attend to the apple, the red quality you experience seems to be a feature of the apple, which causes the reactions in you. (You believe the apple is red because it looks red.) Similarly, the sound seems to be in the air, the taste in the wine, the pain in your toe, and so on. But it is generally agreed that this can’t be right. For science tells us that objects don’t have such qualitative properties, just complex physical ones of the sort described by physics and chemistry. The atoms that make up the skin of the apple aren’t red. Considered as properties of external things, colours are light-reflective surface features, sounds are vibrations in the air, tastes and smells are chemical compounds, and the pain in your toe is cell damage. It seems, then, that the qualities of colour, sound, pain and so on exist only in our minds, as properties of our experiences. Philosophers refer to these subjective qualities of experience as ‘qualia’ or ‘phenomenal properties’, and they say that creatures whose experiences have them are phenomenally conscious.

***

"For it is not only illusionists who must address this problem. The notion of mental representation is a central one in modern cognitive science, and explaining how the brain represents things is a task on which all sides are engaged. Indeed, even realists about phenomenal consciousness must explain how we mentally represent phenomenal properties, if they are to account for the fact that we think and talk about them. There is a challenge here for illusionism but not an objection.

"Finally, who is the subject of this illusion? Doesn’t illusionism presuppose a conscious subject who experiences the illusion? My answer is that the subject is the person as a whole, the autonomous evolved organism composed of interacting biological subsystems. ‘We’ are aware of something if information about it reaches enough of our neural subsystems for us to be able to think and act flexibly with respect to it – to use it, remember it, tell others about it and so on. Think of a large organisation composed of many departments, each responsible for one function but sharing information with each other. If enough departments possess and use a certain piece of information, then the organisation as a whole can be said to be aware of it. The same goes for biological organisms such as us. If enough mental systems receive and use representations of a certain property, then the organism itself can be said to be aware of the property. And if the representations are illusory, then the organism is under an illusion. It is tempting to suppose that there is a boss system, a self, to which all other mental systems report, and that we are aware of something only if the boss system gets to know about it. But I would argue that this boss system is itself an illusion. That is another story, however.

"The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us. To call it a fiction is not to disparage it. Fictions can be wonderful, life-enhancing things that reveal deep truths about the world and can be more compelling than reality. Unlike Neo in The Matrix, you shouldn’t want to escape this fictional world; it’s a benign one, designed by evolutionary processes to help you thrive. But you shouldn’t mistake it for reality either."

Comment: Of course what the brain presents is a neurological representation of the world out there, but it obviously is a realistic presentation or I couldn't be typing these words. Dennett and the author seem upset about this, but is the best our evolved brain can do. We still have no source of our self-awareness but we all experience it.

Consciousness: it can be present without language

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 26, 2019, 22:40 (1635 days ago) @ David Turell

As shown by this article:

http://nautil.us/issue/76/language/language-is-the-scaffold-of-the-mind?mc_cid=f1801be5...

"Imagine growing up without words. You live in a typical industrialized household, but you are somehow unable to learn the language of your parents. That means that you do not have access to education; you cannot properly communicate with your family other than through a set of idiosyncratic gestures; you never get properly exposed to abstract ideas such as “justice” or “global warming.” All you know comes from direct experience with the world.


"It might seem that this scenario is purely hypothetical. There aren’t any cases of language deprivation in modern industrialized societies, right? It turns out there are. Many deaf children born into hearing families face exactly this issue. They cannot hear and, as a result, do not have access to their linguistic environment. Unless the parents learn sign language, the child’s language access will be delayed and, in some cases, missing completely.

***

"So far, the evidence we have seen does suggest that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” However, what happens if language disappears once the mind is fully developed? Will we then lose the ability to use math and understand others?


Imagine you are a typical adult; let’s say you’re 40. You wake up one day, and suddenly, you realize that your language is gone. You look around the room, but no words come to mind to describe the objects you see. You’re starting to plan out your day, but no half-formed phrases rush through your mind. You unlock your smartphone, but, instead of text, you see a sea of squiggles. Desperate, you cry out for help, and someone rushes up to you—but, instead of speech, all you hear is meaningless murmur.

"The condition I have just described is known as global aphasia. It arises from severe damage to the brain, often as a result of a massive stroke. While some aphasias are temporary, in some cases the damage is irreparable, and the person may lose language for life. In your case, let’s say that a dozen doctors examined you and said (or, you think they said) that nothing can be done. If the limits of your language mean the limits of your world, should you conclude the way you experience the world is now fundamentally limited? Do you even have a mind?

"Desperate, you attempt to figure out what cognitive functions you still have left. Can you count? 1, 2, 3 … You take a pen and write 5+7=12. You get a little bolder and attempt to multiply 12 by 5 in your mind, then 12 by 51 on paper. It works! Turns out, losing language as an adult does not prevent you from using math.

"You meet up with some friends. You cannot understand a word they say, but you try to gesticulate—at least it’s an attempt at a conversation. You notice that they exchange guilty looks, then start discussing something in hushed voices (no need, since you don’t know what they’re saying anyway). You realize that they each thought the other one was going to bring a gift. You chuckle. Even though you can’t really communicate with your friends anymore, you still know what’s on their mind.

***

"Neuroimaging evidence also supports the claim that language in adults is separate from the rest of cognition. In recent years, neuroscientists have isolated a network of brain regions (typically in the left hemisphere) that react almost exclusively to linguistic input. They respond to written sentences, spoken narratives, words, monologues, conversations, but will not activate in response to memory tasks, spatial reasoning, music, math, or social situations that do not involve dialogue. No wonder many patients with aphasia do not have impairments in other cognitive domains—language and other functions are housed in separate chunks of brain matter.

***

"So, what can we say about the role language plays in shaping our minds? Well, pick a mind that is still developing, and you will find that removing language will alter it for life. However, pick a mind that is fully formed and take all words away, and you will discover that the rest of cognition remains mostly intact. Our language is but a scaffold for our minds: indispensable during construction but not necessary for the building to remain in place."

Comment: Fascinating. I know I think in words, but I still have consciousness even without language.

Consciousness: did consciousness evolve?

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 26, 2019, 22:58 (1635 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor says no, because it is not material:

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/09/did-consciousness-evolve/

"So what does it mean to say that consciousness — the first-person experience of “I” — “evolved”? There are at least two reasons why the evolution of consciousness is problematic.

"Let’s look at the first problem: How can natural selection act on something that is not physical? Darwinian natural selection, whatever its worth as a scientific theory, can’t explain how non-physical attributes emerge.

"The reason it can’t is this: In order to “evolve” by Darwinism mechanisms, which is apparently what Graziano means, first-person experience must provide a selective advantage over third-person existence. That is, consciousness must manifest itself physically. Any aspect of consciousness that didn’t manifest itself physically could not evolve because Darwinian natural selection can only act on physical attributes.

"Consciousness can manifest itself physically in only two ways: either consciousness is itself a physical thing, or it is caused by a physical thing.

***

"...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.

"There is another possibility. Darwinian theory could account for non-physical consciousness if consciousness were caused by the brain — that is, if non-physical consciousness were a property of brain activity and thus inextricably linked to brain activity. In that case, the argument is that the brain evolved and consciousness was dragged along because it is linked to brain activity.

"In this view, consciousness is an epiphenomenal property of the brain. Epiphenomenalism was first explicitly proposed by “Darwin’s bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895). If consciousness were epiphenomenal to physical brain processes — as a sort of by-product, like smoke from a steam engine — what evolves is the brain. Does this satisfactorily explain the evolution of consciousness?

"The problem with this epiphenomenal view of consciousness is that it renders the mind powerless. If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency — no power to cause anything — in itself. Properties can’t do anything. For example, if you hit a nail with a yellow hammer, you hit it with the hammer, not with the yellow. Epiphenomenalism, which is the only framework by which an immaterial consciousness could evolve, asserts that what actually causes us to do things is brain activity. Consciousness is a useless spin-off.

"Let’s sum up the problem with Dr. Graziano’s claim that consciousness is subjective experience and that it evolved:

"Only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations. If consciousness has no physical manifestation, it can’t evolve.

"However, conscious first-person experience must be non-physical because p[hilosophic]-zombies don’t violate any physical laws, yet we know we are not p-zombies.

"The only way consciousness could be non-physical and still “evolve” is if consciousness were caused by a physical process that could itself evolve.

"If non-physical consciousness were caused by physical processes in the brain, it would be an epiphenomenal property of brain activity.

"Epiphenomenal properties have no causal power in themselves. Properties can’t do anything. So if consciousness is an epiphenomenal property that could evolve, it would have to be ineffective.

"Graziano argues that consciousness is non-physical (subjective experience) and that consciousness evolved; therefore he argues that consciousness is epiphenomenal on brain activity.

"Therefore Graziano’s opinion is not caused by his mind, but merely by his brain, like a reflex or a chemical reaction.

"If Graziano is right, his argument is mindless."

Comment: My approach is that the brain was evolved to a point where is could receive consciousness, the van Lommel theory from cardiac resuscitation evidence. Egnor does not approach it from that type of evidence.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, September 27, 2019, 18:37 (1634 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us. To call it a fiction is not to disparage it. Fictions can be wonderful, life-enhancing things that reveal deep truths about the world and can be more compelling than reality.Unlike Neo in The Matrix, you shouldn’t want to escape this fictional world; it’s a benign one, designed by evolutionary processes to help you thrive. But you shouldn’t mistake it for reality either."

This sums up the argument and what I see as the fallacy in the argument. Yes, our perception of reality is subjective, and no, we cannot know what objective reality consists of. But for precisely that reason, people shouldn’t assume that a subjective perception of reality does NOT correspond to objective reality. Let ‘em try my favourite example, and step in front of a bus.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with consciousness being an illusion. Consciousness is awareness. When we are conscious, we are aware of a reality around us – no matter how subjective our perception may be. When we are unconscious, we are not aware of any reality around us. But perhaps our philosophers would be kind enough to define what they mean by consciousness if they do NOT mean awareness. Only then, most of them will probably ask what is meant by awareness, as if they didn't know, and so philosophy turns into an endless game of language.

xxxx

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness, as described here:

QUOTE: "There is another possibility. Darwinian theory could account for non-physical consciousness if consciousness were caused by the brain [= MATERIALISM] — that is, if non-physical consciousness were a property of brain activity and thus inextricably linked to brain activity. In that case, the argument is that the brain evolved and consciousness was dragged along because it is linked to brain activity.[…] The problem with this epiphenomenal view of consciousness is that it renders the mind powerless. If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency — no power to cause anything — in itself.”

What does he mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, September 27, 2019, 22:44 (1634 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us. To call it a fiction is not to disparage it. Fictions can be wonderful, life-enhancing things that reveal deep truths about the world and can be more compelling than reality.Unlike Neo in The Matrix, you shouldn’t want to escape this fictional world; it’s a benign one, designed by evolutionary processes to help you thrive. But you shouldn’t mistake it for reality either."

dhw: This sums up the argument and what I see as the fallacy in the argument. Yes, our perception of reality is subjective, and no, we cannot know what objective reality consists of. But for precisely that reason, people shouldn’t assume that a subjective perception of reality does NOT correspond to objective reality. Let ‘em try my favourite example, and step in front of a bus.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with consciousness being an illusion. Consciousness is awareness. When we are conscious, we are aware of a reality around us – no matter how subjective our perception may be. When we are unconscious, we are not aware of any reality around us. But perhaps our philosophers would be kind enough to define what they mean by consciousness if they do NOT mean awareness. Only then, most of them will probably ask what is meant by awareness, as if they didn't know, and so philosophy turns into an endless game of language.

I certainly agree


xxxx

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness, as described here:

QUOTE: "There is another possibility. Darwinian theory could account for non-physical consciousness if consciousness were caused by the brain [= MATERIALISM] — that is, if non-physical consciousness were a property of brain activity and thus inextricably linked to brain activity. In that case, the argument is that the brain evolved and consciousness was dragged along because it is linked to brain activity.[…] The problem with this epiphenomenal view of consciousness is that it renders the mind powerless. If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency — no power to cause anything — in itself.”

dhw: What does he mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

I'll agree so far as evolution produced our powerful brain which allows it to receive consciousness and mindfulness. But evolution did not produce consciousness which is Egnor's point.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, September 28, 2019, 10:55 (1634 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness, as described here:

QUOTE: "There is another possibility. Darwinian theory could account for non-physical consciousness if consciousness were caused by the brain [= MATERIALISM] — that is, if non-physical consciousness were a property of brain activity and thus inextricably linked to brain activity. In that case, the argument is that the brain evolved and consciousness was dragged along because it is linked to brain activity.[…] The problem with this epiphenomenal view of consciousness is that it renders the mind powerless. If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency — no power to cause anything — in itself.”

dhw: What does he mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

DAVID: I'll agree so far as evolution produced our powerful brain which allows it to receive consciousness and mindfulness. But evolution did not produce consciousness which is Egnor's point.

Is it? Then he is confusing evolution, which is Chapter 2 of life’s history, with origins, which is Chapter 1. Evolution is the process of development once life had begun. I doubt if Egnor shares your belief that your God programmed the very first cells with every undabbled change in evolution’s history, in which case perhaps he would consider the possibility that the very first cells – origin unknown – were sentient, intelligent, conscious, decision-making organisms, and in the course of life’s history that conscious intelligence (intelligent consciousness?) evolved/developed to its current level of awareness, power and agency.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 28, 2019, 16:09 (1634 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness, as described here:

QUOTE: "There is another possibility. Darwinian theory could account for non-physical consciousness if consciousness were caused by the brain [= MATERIALISM] — that is, if non-physical consciousness were a property of brain activity and thus inextricably linked to brain activity. In that case, the argument is that the brain evolved and consciousness was dragged along because it is linked to brain activity.[…] The problem with this epiphenomenal view of consciousness is that it renders the mind powerless. If consciousness is merely a property of the brain, it has no agency — no power to cause anything — in itself.”

dhw: What does he mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

DAVID: I'll agree so far as evolution produced our powerful brain which allows it to receive consciousness and mindfulness. But evolution did not produce consciousness which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Is it? Then he is confusing evolution, which is Chapter 2 of life’s history, with origins, which is Chapter 1. Evolution is the process of development once life had begun. I doubt if Egnor shares your belief that your God programmed the very first cells with every undabbled change in evolution’s history, in which case perhaps he would consider the possibility that the very first cells – origin unknown – were sentient, intelligent, conscious, decision-making organisms, and in the course of life’s history that conscious intelligence (intelligent consciousness?) evolved/developed to its current level of awareness, power and agency.

Egnor is a contributor to the ID site. He would agree with me if we had a discussion. Evolution only explains consciousness, if viewed as developing a complex brain that is capable of receiving consciousness, as above.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, September 29, 2019, 08:40 (1633 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: What does he [Egnor] mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

DAVID: I'll agree so far as evolution produced our powerful brain which allows it to receive consciousness and mindfulness. But evolution did not produce consciousness which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Is it? Then he is confusing evolution, which is Chapter 2 of life’s history, with origins, which is Chapter 1. Evolution is the process of development once life had begun. I doubt if Egnor shares your belief that your God programmed the very first cells with every undabbled change in evolution’s history, in which case perhaps he would consider the possibility that the very first cells – origin unknown – were sentient, intelligent, conscious, decision-making organisms, and in the course of life’s history that conscious intelligence (intelligent consciousness?) evolved/developed to its current level of awareness, power and agency.

DAVID: Egnor is a contributor to the ID site. He would agree with me if we had a discussion. Evolution only explains consciousness, if viewed as developing a complex brain that is capable of receiving consciousness, as above.

Evolution doesn’t explain consciousness full stop; it can only explain how consciousness may have developed from simple beginnings to its current levels of complexity – as with evolution from the comparatively simple first cells to the complexities of current bodies. Nobody knows its origin, just as nobody knows the origin of life, reproduction, or the mechanisms of evolution itself. If the source of consciousness is material, then it is inexplicable but I would suggest it goes back to the first cells, and evolution (Chapter 2 of life’s history) has enhanced it from bacterial level to human level. If it is immaterial, then you will claim it has come from God - also inexplicable – and the brain as a receiver provides no explanation of consciousness or of its evolution to its current level. As a receiver the brain would only respond to the demands of consciousness.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, September 29, 2019, 19:38 (1632 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: What does he [Egnor] mean, then, by the “mind”? It makes no difference whether you believe in a material or an immaterial source of consciousness – the mind is the ability to think, feel, make decisions etc., so in what sense is it powerless? Does Egnor really believe that human awareness, regardless of its source, has not advanced/changed/developed/evolved since the days of our ancestors? The mind is the conscious part of the self. We don’t know what generates it, but we do know that it causes the body to respond to its commands, and it causes the evolutionary changes to language, society, ideas and other immaterial features of life, not to mention our technology. Powerless? Unchanging? I suggest that the powerful ability to think developed/evolved just as the powerful ability to walk and talk developed/evolved.

DAVID: I'll agree so far as evolution produced our powerful brain which allows it to receive consciousness and mindfulness. But evolution did not produce consciousness which is Egnor's point.

dhw: Is it? Then he is confusing evolution, which is Chapter 2 of life’s history, with origins, which is Chapter 1. Evolution is the process of development once life had begun. I doubt if Egnor shares your belief that your God programmed the very first cells with every undabbled change in evolution’s history, in which case perhaps he would consider the possibility that the very first cells – origin unknown – were sentient, intelligent, conscious, decision-making organisms, and in the course of life’s history that conscious intelligence (intelligent consciousness?) evolved/developed to its current level of awareness, power and agency.

DAVID: Egnor is a contributor to the ID site. He would agree with me if we had a discussion. Evolution only explains consciousness, if viewed as developing a complex brain that is capable of receiving consciousness, as above.

dhw: Evolution doesn’t explain consciousness full stop; it can only explain how consciousness may have developed from simple beginnings to its current levels of complexity – as with evolution from the comparatively simple first cells to the complexities of current bodies. Nobody knows its origin, just as nobody knows the origin of life, reproduction, or the mechanisms of evolution itself. If the source of consciousness is material, then it is inexplicable but I would suggest it goes back to the first cells, and evolution (Chapter 2 of life’s history) has enhanced it from bacterial level to human level. If it is immaterial, then you will claim it has come from God - also inexplicable – and the brain as a receiver provides no explanation of consciousness or of its evolution to its current level. As a receiver the brain would only respond to the demands of consciousness.

I view totally differently. Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development. Therefore it takes a certain level of brain complexity to receive consciousness as shown by the NDE's studies. They have to be recognized as part of the evidence, and not ignored.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, September 30, 2019, 13:30 (1632 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Egnor is a contributor to the ID site. He would agree with me if we had a discussion. Evolution only explains consciousness, if viewed as developing a complex brain that is capable of receiving consciousness, as above.

dhw: Evolution doesn’t explain consciousness full stop; it can only explain how consciousness may have developed from simple beginnings to its current levels of complexity – as with evolution from the comparatively simple first cells to the complexities of current bodies. Nobody knows its origin, just as nobody knows the origin of life, reproduction, or the mechanisms of evolution itself. If the source of consciousness is material, then it is inexplicable but I would suggest it goes back to the first cells, and evolution (Chapter 2 of life’s history) has enhanced it from bacterial level to human level. If it is immaterial, then you will claim it has come from God - also inexplicable – and the brain as a receiver provides no explanation of consciousness or of its evolution to its current level. As a receiver the brain would only respond to the demands of consciousness.

DAVID: I view totally differently. Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development. Therefore it takes a certain level of brain complexity to receive consciousness as shown by the NDE's studies. They have to be recognized as part of the evidence, and not ignored.

Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite. Secondly, Egnor’s point was that “…if consciousness is not physical, how could it evolve? Darwininan natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” My point is that he is confusing evolving with originating. Evolution is Chapter 2 in life’s history: nobody knows how consciousness originated, but consciousness has evolved/developed - just as physical cells have developed – from comparatively simple beginnings to the complexities of the present. And that applies whether you are a materialist or a dualist. NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution. I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, September 30, 2019, 19:09 (1631 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Egnor is a contributor to the ID site. He would agree with me if we had a discussion. Evolution only explains consciousness, if viewed as developing a complex brain that is capable of receiving consciousness, as above.

dhw: Evolution doesn’t explain consciousness full stop; it can only explain how consciousness may have developed from simple beginnings to its current levels of complexity – as with evolution from the comparatively simple first cells to the complexities of current bodies. Nobody knows its origin, just as nobody knows the origin of life, reproduction, or the mechanisms of evolution itself. If the source of consciousness is material, then it is inexplicable but I would suggest it goes back to the first cells, and evolution (Chapter 2 of life’s history) has enhanced it from bacterial level to human level. If it is immaterial, then you will claim it has come from God - also inexplicable – and the brain as a receiver provides no explanation of consciousness or of its evolution to its current level. As a receiver the brain would only respond to the demands of consciousness.

DAVID: I view totally differently. Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development. Therefore it takes a certain level of brain complexity to receive consciousness as shown by the NDE's studies. They have to be recognized as part of the evidence, and not ignored.

dhw: Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite.

Of course organisms with a brain are conscious. Your few scientists are three or four in number.

dhw: Secondly, Egnor’s point was that “…if consciousness is not physical, how could it evolve? Darwininan natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” My point is that he is confusing evolving with originating. Evolution is Chapter 2 in life’s history: nobody knows how consciousness originated, but consciousness has evolved/developed - just as physical cells have developed – from comparatively simple beginnings to the complexities of the present. And that applies whether you are a materialist or a dualist. NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments.

I doubt natural selection did anything of the sort. You are back to Darwin and competition driving evolution naturally. Perhaps it is all driven by God. Natural selection in my view helps set up econiches and prime predators, nothing more.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, October 01, 2019, 09:49 (1631 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development. Therefore it takes a certain level of brain complexity to receive consciousness as shown by the NDE's studies. They have to be recognized as part of the evidence, and not ignored.

dhw: Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite.

David: Your few scientists are three or four in number.

Why don’t you just google “cellular intelligence” if you want to find more names? Wikipedia will help, and the article doesn’t even mention McClintock, Margulis, Buehler or Shapiro.
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence

dhw: Secondly, Egnor’s point was that “…if consciousness is not physical, how could it evolve? Darwininan natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” My point is that he is confusing evolving with originating. Evolution is Chapter 2 in life’s history: nobody knows how consciousness originated, but consciousness has evolved/developed - just as physical cells have developed – from comparatively simple beginnings to the complexities of the present. And that applies whether you are a materialist or a dualist. NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

DAVID: How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

You have missed the point. Egnor asks how consciousness could evolve. I can only repeat that evolve is not the same as originate. Consciousness has evolved, just like physical organisms, from the comparatively simple to the extremely complex, and that applies whether you are a dualist or a materialist.

dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments.

DAVID: I doubt natural selection did anything of the sort. You are back to Darwin and competition driving evolution naturally. Perhaps it is all driven by God. Natural selection in my view helps set up econiches and prime predators, nothing more.

Natural selection determines what survives and what doesn’t survive. Do you really doubt that our level of consciousness and intelligence has enabled us so far to survive better than many other species?

DAVID: (under “our unique speech mechanism”) […] My thought is that we were given such a complex brain, as words and their meanings developed brain plasticity developed the proper listening mechanism, basically learn by use.

Not sure about “given”, but otherwise I agree. Both the brain and the body learn and change by use. They do not change in advance of learning and use.

Under “Introducing the brain”:
QUOTE: "'All brain activity that does not (sufficiently) involve L5p neurons remains unconscious,' predicts Aru. Therein lies the key to testing this exciting theory."

DAVID: Note this discussion does not differentiate between awareness, the terribly difficult problem of consciousness self-awareness, and simple awareness of various stimuli.

Nor does it tell us anything about the origin of consciousness. All we have is certain neurons connecting different parts of the brain, and if they are not working, we are not conscious. For a layman, it’s like saying if the brain is functioning fully, we are conscious, but if some parts are not functioning fully, we are not conscious. I don’t know why this constitutes an exciting theory.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 02, 2019, 00:46 (1630 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development. Therefore it takes a certain level of brain complexity to receive consciousness as shown by the NDE's studies. They have to be recognized as part of the evidence, and not ignored.

dhw: Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite.

David: Your few scientists are three or four in number.

Why don’t you just google “cellular intelligence” if you want to find more names? Wikipedia will help, and the article doesn’t even mention McClintock, Margulis, Buehler or Shapiro.
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence

The Wikipedia article has a reference in Quanta to one author, nothing more in regard to single cells. He has simply presented his viewpoint. Remember Wikipedia is not authoritative since anyone can contribute, as the editors (with their biases) allow. Research articles are peer reviewed which also has had its problems, but are much more trustworthy .


dhw: Secondly, Egnor’s point was that “…if consciousness is not physical, how could it evolve? Darwininan natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” My point is that he is confusing evolving with originating. Evolution is Chapter 2 in life’s history: nobody knows how consciousness originated, but consciousness has evolved/developed - just as physical cells have developed – from comparatively simple beginnings to the complexities of the present. And that applies whether you are a materialist or a dualist. NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

DAVID: How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

dhw; You have missed the point. Egnor asks how consciousness could evolve. I can only repeat that evolve is not the same as originate. Consciousness has evolved, just like physical organisms, from the comparatively simple to the extremely complex, and that applies whether you are a dualist or a materialist.

How do you know evolution produced consciousness by a material mechanism? Consciousness is present only in humans, which make he problem of origin the 'hard' problem per Chalmers


dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments.

DAVID: I doubt natural selection did anything of the sort. You are back to Darwin and competition driving evolution naturally. Perhaps it is all driven by God. Natural selection in my view helps set up econiches and prime predators, nothing more.

dhw: Natural selection determines what survives and what doesn’t survive. Do you really doubt that our level of consciousness and intelligence has enabled us so far to survive better than many other species?

No, I agree we are best at survival, but natural selection did not create consciousness. Nor did environmental stresses do it.


DAVID: (under “our unique speech mechanism”) […] My thought is that we were given such a complex brain, as words and their meanings developed brain plasticity developed the proper listening mechanism, basically learn by use.

dhw: Not sure about “given”, but otherwise I agree. Both the brain and the body learn and change by use. They do not change in advance of learning and use.

And my God changes them in advance, which is why we disagree.


Under “Introducing the brain”:
QUOTE: "'All brain activity that does not (sufficiently) involve L5p neurons remains unconscious,' predicts Aru. Therein lies the key to testing this exciting theory."

DAVID: Note this discussion does not differentiate between awareness, the terribly difficult problem of consciousness self-awareness, and simple awareness of various stimuli.

dhw; Nor does it tell us anything about the origin of consciousness. All we have is certain neurons connecting different parts of the brain, and if they are not working, we are not conscious. For a layman, it’s like saying if the brain is functioning fully, we are conscious, but if some parts are not functioning fully, we are not conscious. I don’t know why this constitutes an exciting theory.

It just shows the innate complexity of our brain that computers cannot duplicate

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, October 02, 2019, 10:34 (1630 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Firstly, you repeat as if it were fact your fixed belief that organisms without a brain are not conscious, although you know perfectly well that many reputable scientists argue the opposite.

David: Your few scientists are three or four in number.

dhw: Why don’t you just google “cellular intelligence” if you want to find more names? Wikipedia will help, and the article doesn’t even mention McClintock, Margulis, Buehler or Shapiro.
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence

DAVID: The Wikipedia article has a reference in Quanta to one author, nothing more in regard to single cells. He has simply presented his viewpoint. Remember Wikipedia is not authoritative since anyone can contribute, as the editors (with their biases) allow. Research articles are peer reviewed which also has had its problems, but are much more trustworthy.

I referred you to the article because you claimed there were only three or four scientists who advocated cellular intelligence. Just google the subject, and you will find many more names. The Wikipedia article offers several under references and further reading.

dhw: NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

DAVID: How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

dhw: You have missed the point. Egnor asks how consciousness could evolve. I can only repeat that evolve is not the same as originate. Consciousness has evolved, just like physical organisms, from the comparatively simple to the extremely complex, and that applies whether you are a dualist or a materialist.

DAVID: How do you know evolution produced consciousness by a material mechanism? Consciousness is present only in humans, which make he problem of origin the 'hard' problem per Chalmers.

I keep telling you that evolution did NOT produce consciousness! The production or origin of consciousness is Chapter 1 of life, and we don’t know how it happened. Evolution is chapter 2, and we know that consciousness now is vastly more complex than it was in the first cells of 3.8 billion years ago. Consciousness is not present only in humans. You wrote: “Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development.” I’m sure most people would agree with you that consciousness is present in animals with a brain. Many would disagree with your second statement.

dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments. […]

DAVID: No, I agree we are best at survival, but natural selection did not create consciousness. Nor did environmental stresses do it.

Why no? I have just said (now bolded) that natural selection creates nothing: it only decides what will survive! Nor have I said that environmental stresses created consciousness. You are putting up straw men in order to knock them down! Nobody knows how consciousness first came into being – that is Chapter 1. Evolution is Chapter 2. And it is perfectly reasonable to argue that environmental stresses would have caused new developments in already existing consciousness, as organisms learned to cope with those stresses or to exploit new conditions. Hence the process whereby consciousness evolved from the comparatively simple (I would give bacteria as an example) to the extremely complex (ours).

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 02, 2019, 19:34 (1629 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The Wikipedia article has a reference in Quanta to one author, nothing more in regard to single cells. He has simply presented his viewpoint. Remember Wikipedia is not authoritative since anyone can contribute, as the editors (with their biases) allow. Research articles are peer reviewed which also has had its problems, but are much more trustworthy.

dhw: I referred you to the article because you claimed there were only three or four scientists who advocated cellular intelligence. Just google the subject, and you will find many more names. The Wikipedia article offers several under references and further reading.

You've ignored my discussion about the unreliability of Wikipedia, as a private unregulated publication..


dhw: NDEs are part of the evidence for dualism against materialism (I remain neutral on the subject), but they are irrelevant to the subject of consciousness and evolution.

DAVID: How can NDE's be irrelevant if they are evidence for dualism? You are ignoring (purposely?) the NDE receiver argument.

dhw: You have missed the point. Egnor asks how consciousness could evolve. I can only repeat that evolve is not the same as originate. Consciousness has evolved, just like physical organisms, from the comparatively simple to the extremely complex, and that applies whether you are a dualist or a materialist.

DAVID: How do you know evolution produced consciousness by a material mechanism? Consciousness is present only in humans, which make he problem of origin the 'hard' problem per Chalmers.

dhw: I keep telling you that evolution did NOT produce consciousness! The production or origin of consciousness is Chapter 1 of life, and we don’t know how it happened. Evolution is chapter 2, and we know that consciousness now is vastly more complex than it was in the first cells of 3.8 billion years ago. Consciousness is not present only in humans. You wrote: “Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development.” I’m sure most people would agree with you that consciousness is present in animals with a brain. Many would disagree with your second statement.

Animals do not have consciousness with self-awareness They are simply conscious. Why do you constantly ignore the point?


dhw: I would add, in response to Egnor, that natural selection (which of course creates nothing) has determined that the organism which has evolved/developed the highest level of consciousness has so far survived and also threatens to survive many other species, though these may be/may have been superior in other departments. […]

DAVID: No, I agree we are best at survival, but natural selection did not create consciousness. Nor did environmental stresses do it.

dhw: Why no? I have just said (now bolded) that natural selection creates nothing: it only decides what will survive! Nor have I said that environmental stresses created consciousness. You are putting up straw men in order to knock them down! Nobody knows how consciousness first came into being – that is Chapter 1. Evolution is Chapter 2. And it is perfectly reasonable to argue that environmental stresses would have caused new developments in already existing consciousness, as organisms learned to cope with those stresses or to exploit new conditions. Hence the process whereby consciousness evolved from the comparatively simple (I would give bacteria as an example) to the extremely complex (ours).

I'll repeat. Only humans have consciousness. it did not evolve from anything materialistic, Egnor's point.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Thursday, October 03, 2019, 13:11 (1629 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I referred you to the article because you claimed there were only three or four scientists who advocated cellular intelligence. Just google the subject, and you will find many more names. The Wikipedia article offers several under references and further reading.

DAVID: You've ignored my discussion about the unreliability of Wikipedia, as a private unregulated publication.

I only asked you to look at the list of names, and invited you also to look at other websites, just to show you that there are more than three or four scientists who advocate cellular intelligence. Do think the names and references and articles on other websites are all made up?

dhw: Consciousness is not present only in humans. You wrote: “Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development.”

DAVID: Animals do not have consciousness with self-awareness They are simply conscious. Why do you constantly ignore the point?

You wrote; “Consciousness is only present in humans”, thereby contradicting your statement: “I still view that animals with a brain are conscious”. If you had written “Self-awareness is only present in humans”, I would not have corrected you.

DAVID: [Consciousness] did not evolve from anything materialistic, Egnor's point.

Correct. This was the quote, with my answer following:

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."
dhw: Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness…

I keep pointing out that ‘evolve’ is not the same as ‘originate’. Nobody knows the origin of life, consciousness, reproduction or the mechanisms of evolution, all of which represent Chapter 1 in the history of life. Evolution is Chapter 2, the process whereby changes take place in what already exists, while natural selection determines what changes survive. This applies to consciousness just as it applies to physical organisms, which is why Egnor’s attempted analogy doesn’t work. If he had written “natural selection can only act on a physical attribute that already exists”, he would have realized his error, since evolution and natural selection can also act on non-physical attributes that already exist. In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 03, 2019, 16:27 (1628 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Consciousness is not present only in humans. You wrote: “Consciousness has appeared only when a brain evolved that was complex enough to accept it. I still view that animals with a brain are conscious; nothing is conscious at lower levels of development.”

DAVID: Animals do not have consciousness with self-awareness They are simply conscious. Why do you constantly ignore the point?

dhw: You wrote; “Consciousness is only present in humans”, thereby contradicting your statement: “I still view that animals with a brain are conscious”. If you had written “Self-awareness is only present in humans”, I would not have corrected you.

My definitions and yours are different. All animals are aware and therefore conscious. By definition only humans have consciousness which causes self-awareness.


DAVID: [Consciousness] did not evolve from anything materialistic, Egnor's point.

dhw: Correct. This was the quote, with my answer following:

QUOTE: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."
dhw: Evolution means change, and it is neither synonymous with natural selection (which does not create the changes necessary for evolution, but only decides which changes will survive) nor confined to physical attributes! If we accept the definition of consciousness as awareness (what else is it?) then just like biological organisms, it has evolved through an accumulation of factors from the past coupled with present innovations. That applies both to dualistic and materialistic consciousness…

dhw: I keep pointing out that ‘evolve’ is not the same as ‘originate’. Nobody knows the origin of life, consciousness, reproduction or the mechanisms of evolution, all of which represent Chapter 1 in the history of life. Evolution is Chapter 2, the process whereby changes take place in what already exists, while natural selection determines what changes survive. This applies to consciousness just as it applies to physical organisms, which is why Egnor’s attempted analogy doesn’t work. If he had written “natural selection can only act on a physical attribute that already exists”, he would have realized his error, since evolution and natural selection can also act on non-physical attributes that already exist. In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection. (n ote my bold)

I think you are wrong. I don't see evolution or natural selection acting on consciousness which is immaterial. Of course we do not know why or how it originated.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, October 04, 2019, 09:54 (1628 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Animals do not have consciousness with self-awareness They are simply conscious. Why do you constantly ignore the point?

dhw: You wrote: “Consciousness is only present in humans”, thereby contradicting your statement: “I still view that animals with a brain are conscious”. If you had written “Self-awareness is only present in humans”, I would not have corrected you.

DAVID: My definitions and yours are different. All animals are aware and therefore conscious.

And that is why I pointed out that it was wrong to say “consciousness is only present in humans.”

DAVID: By definition only humans have consciousness which causes self-awareness.

I don’t know why you’ve put in “by definition”, but you are merely repeating what I have said: “self awareness is only present in humans”. I don’t know why you insist on arguing when we agree! You simply made a mistake when you wrote that “consciousness is only present in humans.”

EGNOR: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: […] In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection.

DAVID: I think you are wrong. I don't see evolution or natural selection acting on consciousness which is immaterial. Of course we do not know why or how it originated.

You don’t see that there has been a progression in the level of consciousness from bacteria or, since you deny them consciousness, let’s say ants and monarch butterflies and weaverbirds to whales and dogs and apes, and finally to humans. You have already acknowledged earlier that human intelligence/consciousness is a major factor in the successful survival of our species – and natural selection, as we have agreed, explains why some attributes and organisms survive while others don’t. You can’t see that such immaterial things as language, social customs, religions, philosophy evolve as each generation builds on the work of its predecessors – and as evolution proceeds, some become extinct by a process of natural selection. How many people still believe in the gods who were supposed to live on Mount Olympus? In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, October 04, 2019, 15:29 (1628 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Animals do not have consciousness with self-awareness They are simply conscious. Why do you constantly ignore the point?

dhw: You wrote: “Consciousness is only present in humans”, thereby contradicting your statement: “I still view that animals with a brain are conscious”. If you had written “Self-awareness is only present in humans”, I would not have corrected you.

DAVID: My definitions and yours are different. All animals are aware and therefore conscious.

dhw: And that is why I pointed out that it was wrong to say “consciousness is only present in humans.”

DAVID: By definition only humans have consciousness which causes self-awareness.

dhw: I don’t know why you’ve put in “by definition”, but you are merely repeating what I have said: “self awareness is only present in humans”. I don’t know why you insist on arguing when we agree! You simply made a mistake when you wrote that “consciousness is only present in humans.”

EGNOR: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: […] In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection.

DAVID: I think you are wrong. I don't see evolution or natural selection acting on consciousness which is immaterial. Of course we do not know why or how it originated.

dhw: You don’t see that there has been a progression in the level of consciousness from bacteria or, since you deny them consciousness, let’s say ants and monarch butterflies and weaverbirds to whales and dogs and apes, and finally to humans. You have already acknowledged earlier that human intelligence/consciousness is a major factor in the successful survival of our species – and natural selection, as we have agreed, explains why some attributes and organisms survive while others don’t. You can’t see that such immaterial things as language, social customs, religions, philosophy evolve as each generation builds on the work of its predecessors – and as evolution proceeds, some become extinct by a process of natural selection. How many people still believe in the gods who were supposed to live on Mount Olympus? In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.

You still don not understand that our definitions differ. Yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain. But we also have the special attribute of consciousness, which is totally unexplained and creates self-awareness and conceptual thought as you describe above. The two differ and the separation must be recognized, especially as Adler uses it as proof God exists, as I do.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, October 05, 2019, 11:15 (1627 days ago) @ David Turell

EGNOR: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: […] In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection.

DAVID: I think you are wrong. I don't see evolution or natural selection acting on consciousness which is immaterial. Of course we do not know why or how it originated.

dhw: You don’t see that there has been a progression in the level of consciousness from bacteria or, since you deny them consciousness, let’s say ants and monarch butterflies and weaverbirds to whales and dogs and apes, and finally to humans. You have already acknowledged earlier that human intelligence/consciousness is a major factor in the successful survival of our species – and natural selection, as we have agreed, explains why some attributes and organisms survive while others don’t. You can’t see that such immaterial things as language, social customs, religions, philosophy evolve as each generation builds on the work of its predecessors – and as evolution proceeds, some become extinct by a process of natural selection. How many people still believe in the gods who were supposed to live on Mount Olympus? In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.

DAVID: You still don not understand that our definitions differ. Yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain. But we also have the special attribute of consciousness, which is totally unexplained and creates self-awareness and conceptual thought as you describe above. The two differ and the separation must be recognized, especially as Adler uses it as proof God exists, as I do.

You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain, and consciousness at all levels is totally unexplained. There is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness. Humans have an advance degree of consciousness which makes them self-aware. There is absolutely no disagreement here, and I don't have a problem if you and Adler use human self-awareness or indeed ANY level of consciousness or of design as evidence for your God's existence. So why don’t you just stick to the subject, which is Egnor’s claim, reproduced at the beginning of this post, and concerning which I have spent so much time and space arguing that he has mistakenly equated evolving with originating, as bolded above? If you agree with the bold, then let's move on.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 05, 2019, 18:17 (1626 days ago) @ dhw

EGNOR: "...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute."

dhw: […] In a nutshell: neither evolution nor natural selection can explain the origin of physical life or – if it exists – of immaterial “life”, including consciousness, but both the material and the immaterial can be changed by evolution, and the survival of the changes will be determined by natural selection.

DAVID: I think you are wrong. I don't see evolution or natural selection acting on consciousness which is immaterial. Of course we do not know why or how it originated.

dhw: You don’t see that there has been a progression in the level of consciousness from bacteria or, since you deny them consciousness, let’s say ants and monarch butterflies and weaverbirds to whales and dogs and apes, and finally to humans. You have already acknowledged earlier that human intelligence/consciousness is a major factor in the successful survival of our species – and natural selection, as we have agreed, explains why some attributes and organisms survive while others don’t. You can’t see that such immaterial things as language, social customs, religions, philosophy evolve as each generation builds on the work of its predecessors – and as evolution proceeds, some become extinct by a process of natural selection. How many people still believe in the gods who were supposed to live on Mount Olympus? In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.[/color]

DAVID: You still don not understand that our definitions differ. Yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain. But we also have the special attribute of consciousness, which is totally unexplained and creates self-awareness and conceptual thought as you describe above. The two differ and the separation must be recognized, especially as Adler uses it as proof God exists, as I do.

dhw: You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain, and consciousness at all levels is totally unexplained. There is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness. Humans have an advance degree of consciousness which makes them self-aware. There is absolutely no disagreement here, and I don't have a problem if you and Adler use human self-awareness or indeed ANY level of consciousness or of design as evidence for your God's existence. So why don’t you just stick to the subject, which is Egnor’s claim, reproduced at the beginning of this post, and concerning which I have spent so much time and space arguing that he has mistakenly equated evolving with originating, as bolded above? If you agree with the bold, then let's move on.

Note the colored phrases. The lower one shows our full disagreement: humans and other animals are conscious, but only humans have a special form called consciousness, which makes us very different. The upper one is a truism, which doesn't bridge our difference.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, October 06, 2019, 10:16 (1626 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.

DAVID: You still don not understand that our definitions differ. Yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain. But we also have the special attribute of consciousness, which is totally unexplained and creates self-awareness and conceptual thought as you describe above. The two differ and the separation must be recognized, especially as Adler uses it as proof God exists, as I do.

dhw: You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain, and consciousness at all levels is totally unexplained. There is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness. Humans have an advance degree of consciousness which makes them self-aware. There is absolutely no disagreement here, and I don't have a problem if you and Adler use human self-awareness or indeed ANY level of consciousness or of design as evidence for your God's existence. So why don’t you just stick to the subject, which is Egnor’s claim, reproduced at the beginning of this post, and concerning which I have spent so much time and space arguing that he has mistakenly equated evolving with originating, as bolded above? If you agree with the bold, then let's move on.

DAVID: Note the colored phrases. The lower one shows our full disagreement: humans and other animals are conscious, but only humans have a special form called consciousness, which makes us very different. The upper one is a truism, which doesn't bridge our difference.

If animals are conscious, what noun do you use for what they have? Once more: there is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness! The difference between other animals and humans is that our level of consciousness extends to self-awareness! As for the upper section in red, I am answering Egnor’s point: “...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute." I am not trying to “bridge our differences.” If my answer is a truism, then clearly you agree with me, and therefore you also disagree with Egnor. So why don’t you just say so?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 06, 2019, 19:28 (1625 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: In the context of our discussion on Egnor’s point above, he has wrongly equated evolving with originating, and whether you are a dualist or a materialist, the fact remains that we do not know the origin of physical life or of non-physical consciousness, but both have evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to their current levels, and natural selection has determined what has survived.

DAVID: You still don not understand that our definitions differ. Yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain. But we also have the special attribute of consciousness, which is totally unexplained and creates self-awareness and conceptual thought as you describe above. The two differ and the separation must be recognized, especially as Adler uses it as proof God exists, as I do.

dhw: You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain, and consciousness at all levels is totally unexplained. There is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness. Humans have an advance degree of consciousness which makes them self-aware. There is absolutely no disagreement here, and I don't have a problem if you and Adler use human self-awareness or indeed ANY level of consciousness or of design as evidence for your God's existence. So why don’t you just stick to the subject, which is Egnor’s claim, reproduced at the beginning of this post, and concerning which I have spent so much time and space arguing that he has mistakenly equated evolving with originating, as bolded above? If you agree with the bold, then let's move on.

DAVID: Note the colored phrases. The lower one shows our full disagreement: humans and other animals are conscious, but only humans have a special form called consciousness, which makes us very different. The upper one is a truism, which doesn't bridge our difference.

dhw: If animals are conscious, what noun do you use for what they have? Once more: there is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness! The difference between other animals and humans is that our level of consciousness extends to self-awareness! As for the upper section in red, I am answering Egnor’s point: “...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute." I am not trying to “bridge our differences.” If my answer is a truism, then clearly you agree with me, and therefore you also disagree with Egnor. So why don’t you just say so?

I don 't disagree with Egnor, and absolutely disagree with you. What I agree with in your statement about evolving is that the physical (material) evolution of organisms reached a point where self-awareness and conceptualization appear solely in the human brain, either received or created within that special brain. I believe, since consciousness is totally immaterial, based on NDE research, it is a received function, so that evolution allowed it to appear. Both the human brain and the animal brains have a conscious state, and nothing more at that level. The human brain is vastly different with that extra attribute, and as Adler points out, acts as a proof of God, which of course you won't accept. I view your effort to try to equate a conscious state with consciousness as totally wrong and an attempt to fudge the obvious difference.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, October 07, 2019, 08:43 (1625 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] humans and other animals are conscious, but only humans have a special form called consciousness, which makes us very different. The upper one is a truism, which doesn't bridge our difference.

dhw: If animals are conscious, what noun do you use for what they have? Once more: there is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness! The difference between other animals and humans is that our level of consciousness extends to self-awareness! As for the upper section in red, I am answering Egnor’s point: “...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute." I am not trying to “bridge our differences.” If my answer is a truism, then clearly you agree with me, and therefore you also disagree with Egnor. So why don’t you just say so?

DAVID: I don't disagree with Egnor, and absolutely disagree with you. What I agree with in your statement about evolving is that the physical (material) evolution of organisms reached a point where self-awareness and conceptualization appear solely in the human brain, either received or created within that special brain. I believe, since consciousness is totally immaterial, based on NDE research, it is a received function, so that evolution allowed it to appear. Both the human brain and the animal brains have a conscious state, and nothing more at that level. The human brain is vastly different with that extra attribute, and as Adler points out, acts as a proof of God, which of course you won't accept. I view your effort to try to equate a conscious state with consciousness as totally wrong and an attempt to fudge the obvious difference.

I view your efforts to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness as totally wrong to the point of absurdity. The difference is between being conscious/having consciousness and being self-conscious in the sense of self-aware/having self-awareness. I have always accepted the logic of design as evidence that God exists, and human self-awareness is one of thousands of examples, as listed and argued in all your posts on life’s complexities. You agreed on Saturday that we do not know the origin of consciousness, but it has evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to its current levels, and natural selection has been demonstrated by its survival (you called it a “truism”). Therefore you clearly disagree with the Egnor quote, which you keep on ignoring and in which he appears to think that evolving means originating: “…if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” Whether we believe the original source of consciousness is immaterial (God) or material (the brain) makes no difference to the truth of the truism.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, October 07, 2019, 15:42 (1625 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] humans and other animals are conscious, but only humans have a special form called consciousness, which makes us very different. The upper one is a truism, which doesn't bridge our difference.

dhw: If animals are conscious, what noun do you use for what they have? Once more: there is no difference between being conscious and having consciousness! The difference between other animals and humans is that our level of consciousness extends to self-awareness! As for the upper section in red, I am answering Egnor’s point: “...if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute." I am not trying to “bridge our differences.” If my answer is a truism, then clearly you agree with me, and therefore you also disagree with Egnor. So why don’t you just say so?

DAVID: I don't disagree with Egnor, and absolutely disagree with you. What I agree with in your statement about evolving is that the physical (material) evolution of organisms reached a point where self-awareness and conceptualization appear solely in the human brain, either received or created within that special brain. I believe, since consciousness is totally immaterial, based on NDE research, it is a received function, so that evolution allowed it to appear. Both the human brain and the animal brains have a conscious state, and nothing more at that level. The human brain is vastly different with that extra attribute, and as Adler points out, acts as a proof of God, which of course you won't accept. I view your effort to try to equate a conscious state with consciousness as totally wrong and an attempt to fudge the obvious difference.

dhw: I view your efforts to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness as totally wrong to the point of absurdity. The difference is between being conscious/having consciousness and being self-conscious in the sense of self-aware/having self-awareness.

Why have you ignored the attribute that consciousness allows conceptualization and the invention of imagined realities as in your plays? It is more than self-awareness.

dhw: I have always accepted the logic of design as evidence that God exists, and human self-awareness is one of thousands of examples, as listed and argued in all your posts on life’s complexities. You agreed on Saturday that we do not know the origin of consciousness, but it has evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to its current levels,

Nonsense! Consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans. Again ignoring Adler's 'difference'.

dhw: and natural selection has been demonstrated by its survival (you called it a “truism”). Therefore you clearly disagree with the Egnor quote, which you keep on ignoring and in which he appears to think that evolving means originating: “…if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” Whether we believe the original source of consciousness is immaterial (God) or material (the brain) makes no difference to the truth of the truism.

Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. Material evolution produced our brain, as I know you believe. I believe through God's direction consciousness appeared within that brain.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, October 08, 2019, 13:25 (1624 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I view your effort to try to equate a conscious state with consciousness as totally wrong and an attempt to fudge the obvious difference.

dhw: I view your efforts to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness as totally wrong to the point of absurdity. The difference is between being conscious/having consciousness and being self-conscious in the sense of self-aware/having self-awareness.

DAVID: Why have you ignored the attribute that consciousness allows conceptualization and the invention of imagined realities as in your plays? It is more than self-awareness.

You keep agreeing that our fellow animals are conscious, but their consciousness is such that it does not “allow conceptualization and the invention of imagined realities”. Our consciousness does because it is far more advanced than theirs. I don’t have a problem if you want to list all the products of our advanced consciousness – they still won’t alter the fact that consciousness is the state of being conscious!

dhw: I have always accepted the logic of design as evidence that God exists, and human self-awareness is one of thousands of examples, as listed and argued in all your posts on life’s complexities.You agreed on Saturday that we do not know the origin of consciousness, but it has evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to its current levels. (now bolded by dhw – see below)

DAVID: Nonsense! Consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans. Again ignoring Adler's 'difference'.

I trust it's you and not Adler making a mockery of language. You believe in common descent, you agree that animals are conscious, and so since many of them preceded H. sapiens, how can you possibly argue that there was no consciousness until the arrival of humans? We have inherited all the attributes of consciousness possessed by our ancestors: awareness of the world outside, of ways in which to acquire food, of courtship, home-building, self-protection etc. – but our human consciousness has uniquely progressed beyond that to include self-awareness, conceptualisation etc.

dhw: …and natural selection has been demonstrated by its survival (you called it a “truism”). Therefore you clearly disagree with the Egnor quote, which you keep on ignoring and in which he appears to think that evolving means originating: “…if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” Whether we believe the original source of consciousness is immaterial (God) or material (the brain) makes no difference to the truth of the truism.

DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. Material evolution produced our brain, as I know you believe. I believe through God's direction consciousness appeared within that brain.

We have agreed (as now bolded above) that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”. Yes, material evolution produced our brain, as well as the brains of our fellow animals, and our eyes and ears and noses etc. etc., as the first living cells did not have brains etc. Materialists believe that materials are the SOURCE of consciousness, in which case it may have begun with the first cells (my proposal), or with the first brains (your proposal), and if it’s the latter, you could come up with the argument that evolution produced the brain, the brain produced consciousness, therefore evolution did produce consciousness and Egnor is wrong. And if as a dualist you believe the brain to be a receiver and consciousness to come from some other immaterial source, then evolution did not produce consciousness. But since nobody knows the truth, we are simply stuck with conflicting beliefs. However, no matter what might be the source, and whenever consciousness began, I cannot believe anyone would argue that it did not evolve from comparatively simple beginnings (the first cells, or the first brainy life forms) to the complexities of larger organisms culminating (so far) in ourselves, and I find it perfectly logical that increasingly complex consciousness would result in its owners having a natural advantage in the struggle to survive (which Egnor rightly calls Darwinian natural selection).

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 08, 2019, 15:47 (1624 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I view your efforts to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness as totally wrong to the point of absurdity. The difference is between being conscious/having consciousness and being self-conscious in the sense of self-aware/having self-awareness.

DAVID: Why have you ignored the attribute that consciousness allows conceptualization and the invention of imagined realities as in your plays? It is more than self-awareness.

dhw: You keep agreeing that our fellow animals are conscious, but their consciousness is such that it does not “allow conceptualization and the invention of imagined realities”. Our consciousness does because it is far more advanced than theirs. I don’t have a problem if you want to list all the products of our advanced consciousness – they still won’t alter the fact that consciousness is the state of being conscious!

dhw: I have always accepted the logic of design as evidence that God exists, and human self-awareness is one of thousands of examples, as listed and argued in all your posts on life’s complexities.You agreed on Saturday that we do not know the origin of consciousness, but it has evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to its current levels. (now bolded by dhw – see below)

DAVID: Nonsense! Consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans. Again ignoring Adler's 'difference'.

dhw: I trust it's you and not Adler making a mockery of language. You believe in common descent, you agree that animals are conscious, and so since many of them preceded H. sapiens, how can you possibly argue that there was no consciousness until the arrival of humans? We have inherited all the attributes of consciousness possessed by our ancestors: awareness of the world outside, of ways in which to acquire food, of courtship, home-building, self-protection etc. – but our human consciousness has uniquely progressed beyond that to include self-awareness, conceptualisation etc.

Again ignoring the vast difference. Our ancestors before the appearance of bipedalism were simply conscious, nothing more. Adler's long book pounds home the significance of the difference. Tell me how a monkey does any more than obviously expects the responses of other monkeys, as in theory of mind research. They are not self-aware and don't conceptualize, vastly different.


dhw: …and natural selection has been demonstrated by its survival (you called it a “truism”). Therefore you clearly disagree with the Egnor quote, which you keep on ignoring and in which he appears to think that evolving means originating: “…if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute.” Whether we believe the original source of consciousness is immaterial (God) or material (the brain) makes no difference to the truth of the truism.

DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. Material evolution produced our brain, as I know you believe. I believe through God's direction consciousness appeared within that brain.

dhw: We have agreed (as now bolded above) that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”.

By definition you have gotten rid of the hard problem of consciousness! We are different and most folks would disagree with how you are trying to smudge to difference.

dhw: Yes, material evolution produced our brain, as well as the brains of our fellow animals, and our eyes and ears and noses etc. etc., as the first living cells did not have brains etc. Materialists believe that materials are the SOURCE of consciousness, in which case it may have begun with the first cells (my proposal), or with the first brains (your proposal), and if it’s the latter, you could come up with the argument that evolution produced the brain, the brain produced consciousness, therefore evolution did produce consciousness and Egnor is wrong. And if as a dualist you believe the brain to be a receiver and consciousness to come from some other immaterial source, then evolution did not produce consciousness. But since nobody knows the truth, we are simply stuck with conflicting beliefs. However, no matter what might be the source, and whenever consciousness began, I cannot believe anyone would argue that it did not evolve from comparatively simple beginnings (the first cells, or the first brainy life forms) to the complexities of larger organisms culminating (so far) in ourselves, and I find it perfectly logical that increasingly complex consciousness would result in its owners having a natural advantage in the struggle to survive (which Egnor rightly calls Darwinian natural selection).

Yes we differ. The first cells didn't think, don't think, and individual cells in our bodies don't think either. Single neurons don't think, but a bunch can receive consciousness and create thought. It requires a team of neurons.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, October 09, 2019, 11:54 (1623 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans. Again ignoring Adler's 'difference'.

dhw: I trust it's you and not Adler making a mockery of language. You believe in common descent, you agree that animals are conscious, and so since many of them preceded H. sapiens, how can you possibly argue that there was no consciousness until the arrival of humans? We have inherited all the attributes of consciousness possessed by our ancestors: awareness of the world outside, of ways in which to acquire food, of courtship, home-building, self-protection etc. – but our human consciousness has uniquely progressed beyond that to include self-awareness, conceptualisation etc.

DAVID: Again ignoring the vast difference. Our ancestors before the appearance of bipedalism were simply conscious, nothing more. Adler's long book pounds home the significance of the difference. Tell me how a monkey does any more than obviously expects the responses of other monkeys, as in theory of mind research. They are not self-aware and don't conceptualize, vastly different.

You continue to pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. There is a vast difference, which I have always acknowledged, between other animals’ level of consciousness and our own. That does not mean “consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans.” On the contrary, your contrast between monkey consciousness and our own makes it crystal clear that ours was preceded by simpler forms, and your comment is doubly absurd coming from someone who believes in common descent.

DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. […]

dhw: We have agreed […] that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”.

DAVID: By definition you have gotten rid of the hard problem of consciousness! We are different and most folks would disagree with how you are trying to smudge to difference.

How on earth does my statement “nobody knows the origin of consciousness” get rid of the hard problem, and how on earth am I “smudging the difference” when I categorically state that “our human consciousness has uniquely progressed beyond that to include self-awareness, conceptualisation etc.”? This subject has been settled a hundred times between us, and we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: […] since nobody knows the truth, we are simply stuck with conflicting beliefs. However, no matter what might be the source, and whenever consciousness began, I cannot believe anyone would argue that it did not evolve from comparatively simple beginnings (the first cells, or the first brainy life forms) to the complexities of larger organisms culminating (so far) in ourselves, and I find it perfectly logical that increasingly complex consciousness would result in its owners having a natural advantage in the struggle to survive (which Egnor rightly calls Darwinian natural selection).

DAVID: Yes we differ. The first cells didn't think, don't think, and individual cells in our bodies don't think either. Single neurons don't think, but a bunch can receive consciousness and create thought. It requires a team of neurons.

I’ve allowed for this belief of yours in all of the above, which summarizes my objection to Egnor’s question. You have forgotten what we are discussing.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 09, 2019, 15:44 (1623 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You continue to pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. There is a vast difference, which I have always acknowledged, between other animals’ level of consciousness and our own. That does not mean “consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans.” On the contrary, your contrast between monkey consciousness and our own makes it crystal clear that ours was preceded by simpler forms, and your comment is doubly absurd coming from someone who believes in common descent.

You forget I believe in common descent as controlled by God. And now you admit to consciousness as an enormous difference while still implying to deny it. See the bold below that says we do not know " how consciousness appeared". Stop smudging the conscious/consciousness difference.


DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. […]

dhw: We have agreed […] that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”.

DAVID: By definition you have gotten rid of the hard problem of consciousness! We are different and most folks would disagree with how you are trying to smudge to difference.

dhw: How on earth does my statement “nobody knows the origin of consciousness” get rid of the hard problem, and how on earth am I “smudging the difference” when I categorically state that “our human consciousness has uniquely progressed beyond that to include self-awareness, conceptualisation etc.”? This subject has been settled a hundred times between us, and we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

I view Egnor as asking where did immaterial consciousness come from, since material evolution cannot create it. A reasonable point, hence my answer that the brain develops to a point where it can receive it from God.


dhw: […] since nobody knows the truth, we are simply stuck with conflicting beliefs. However, no matter what might be the source, and whenever consciousness began, I cannot believe anyone would argue that it did not evolve from comparatively simple beginnings (the first cells, or the first brainy life forms) to the complexities of larger organisms culminating (so far) in ourselves, and I find it perfectly logical that increasingly complex consciousness would result in its owners having a natural advantage in the struggle to survive (which Egnor rightly calls Darwinian natural selection).

DAVID: Yes we differ. The first cells didn't think, don't think, and individual cells in our bodies don't think either. Single neurons don't think, but a bunch can receive consciousness and create thought. It requires a team of neurons.

dhw; I’ve allowed for this belief of yours in all of the above, which summarizes my objection to Egnor’s question. You have forgotten what we are discussing.

No. I haven't. I don't believe consciousness evolved but was received, remember?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Thursday, October 10, 2019, 10:03 (1622 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You continue to pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. There is a vast difference, which I have always acknowledged, between other animals’ level of consciousness and our own. That does not mean “consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans.” On the contrary, your contrast between monkey consciousness and our own makes it crystal clear that ours was preceded by simpler forms, and your comment is doubly absurd coming from someone who believes in common descent.

DAVID: You forget I believe in common descent as controlled by God. And now you admit to consciousness as an enormous difference while still implying to deny it. See the bold below that says we do not know "how consciousness appeared". Stop smudging the conscious/consciousness difference.

“As controlled by God” has nothing to do with it, since conscious animals preceded conscious humans anyway, and it is therefore absurd to say that “consciousness appeared all by itself in humans.” Please stop pretending that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. The difference lies in levels of consciousness between our fellow animals and ourselves.

DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. […]

dhw: We have agreed […] that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

DAVID: I view Egnor as asking where did immaterial consciousness come from, since material evolution cannot create it. A reasonable point, hence my answer that the brain develops to a point where it can receive it from God.

And I keep pointing out that nobody knows the origin of consciousness. However if the SOURCE is the material brain, then we can say the source of consciousness evolved because the first cells did not have brains. If the SOURCE is immaterial, then the source did not evolve. Regardless of which belief you hold – materialist or dualist – consciousness itself HAS evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. And clearly human complexities of consciousness have increased our ability to survive, which means that Darwinian natural selection applies just as much to immaterial elements of existence as to physical. You can hardly deny that immaterial language, moral and social codes, philosophies, religions all evolve, so why claim that consciousness itself has not done so, since even you agree that animals are conscious but not as conscious as us!

DAVID: […] I don't believe consciousness evolved but was received.

Your beliefs are subsumed under dualism, as above.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 10, 2019, 15:41 (1622 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You continue to pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. There is a vast difference, which I have always acknowledged, between other animals’ level of consciousness and our own. That does not mean “consciousness did not have simple beginnings, but appeared all by itself in humans.” On the contrary, your contrast between monkey consciousness and our own makes it crystal clear that ours was preceded by simpler forms, and your comment is doubly absurd coming from someone who believes in common descent.

DAVID: You forget I believe in common descent as controlled by God. And now you admit to consciousness as an enormous difference while still implying to deny it. See the bold below that says we do not know "how consciousness appeared". Stop smudging the conscious/consciousness difference.

dhw: “As controlled by God” has nothing to do with it, since conscious animals preceded conscious humans anyway, and it is therefore absurd to say that “consciousness appeared all by itself in humans.” Please stop pretending that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. The difference lies in levels of consciousness between our fellow animals and ourselves.

I do not accept that consciousness exists in animals below humans. They do not have self-awareness or do they conceptualize. There is no gradation as you try tp imply. Why is ehre a hard problem to understand it?


DAVID: Egnor is correct. Evolution does not explain how or why consciousness appeared, and only in our brain. […]

dhw: We have agreed […] that nobody knows the origin of consciousness, and so of course evolution does not explain how consciousness appeared. That is what I told you, and you said it was a truism. I didn't know Egnor believed that no animal with a brain was conscious/had consciousness. You yourself have said repeatedly that animals ARE conscious, so consciousness did not appear “only in our brain”.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

DAVID: I view Egnor as asking where did immaterial consciousness come from, since material evolution cannot create it. A reasonable point, hence my answer that the brain develops to a point where it can receive it from God.

dhw: And I keep pointing out that nobody knows the origin of consciousness. However if the SOURCE is the material brain, then we can say the source of consciousness evolved because the first cells did not have brains. If the SOURCE is immaterial, then the source did not evolve. Regardless of which belief you hold – materialist or dualist – consciousness itself HAS evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. And clearly human complexities of consciousness have increased our ability to survive, which means that Darwinian natural selection applies just as much to immaterial elements of existence as to physical. You can hardly deny that immaterial language, moral and social codes, philosophies, religions all evolve, so why claim that consciousness itself has not done so, since even you agree that animals are conscious but not as conscious as us!

The bold above is how you smudge the problem of how consciousness appeared. The fact that consciousness evolves in its abilities does not mean it evolved materially. It only means we learned how to use it.


DAVID: […] I don't believe consciousness evolved but was received.

dhw: Your beliefs are subsumed under dualism, as above.

OK. You claim you are caught between materialism and dualism without a choice. Evolving consciousness as you try to do is pure materialism. That is the side you argue from.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, October 11, 2019, 13:13 (1621 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Please stop pretending that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. The difference lies in levels of consciousness between our fellow animals and ourselves. [dhw's despairing bold]

DAVID: I do not accept that consciousness exists in animals below humans. They do not have self-awareness or do they conceptualize. There is no gradation as you try tp imply. Why is ehre a hard problem to understand it?

You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain” they are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. I have not used the word “gradation”, which implies small changes. I have repeatedly agreed that there is a vast difference between animal levels and our own.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Regardless of which belief you hold – materialist or dualist – consciousness itself HAS evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities.

DAVID: The bold above is how you smudge the problem of how consciousness appeared. The fact that consciousness evolves in its abilities does not mean it evolved materially. It only means we learned how to use it.
And later:
DAVID: You claim you are caught between materialism and dualism without a choice. Evolving consciousness as you try to do is pure materialism. That is the side you argue from.

When I say nobody knows the origin of consciousness, I mean nobody knows how consciousness appeared. We agree. Thank you for acknowledging that consciousness evolves in its abilities. We agree. I listed other examples of non-material evolution, which I presume you also accept, and which have also evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. Of course something immaterial cannot evolve materially (we agree), which is why I have distinguished between the two schools of thought: 1) materialism, in which the SOURCE of consciousness (the brain, if we are to discount brainless organisms, though I do not) came about through evolution, since the earliest life forms did not have brains, and 2) dualism, in which the SOURCE of consciousness is an unknown, immaterial being we call God, and which did not evolve. I do not support or oppose either of these theories, so I don’t know why you think I am supporting materialism. Nor do I know why you think, say, ant consciousness and human consciousness do not represent evolution from the comparatively simple to the comparatively complex, no matter how consciousness originated. Nor do I know why you think ant consciousness (an awareness of problems and how to set about trying to solve them) as well as our own complex consciousness have not been aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, October 11, 2019, 19:19 (1620 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Please stop pretending that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness. The difference lies in levels of consciousness between our fellow animals and ourselves. [dhw's despairing bold]

DAVID: I do not accept that consciousness exists in animals below humans. They do not have self-awareness or do they conceptualize. There is no gradation as you try to imply. Why is there a hard problem to understand it?

You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain” they are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. I have not used the word “gradation”, which implies small changes. I have repeatedly agreed that there is a vast difference between animal levels and our own.

Thank you. You finally agree to the vast difference, the key to Adler's religious philosophy that makes us very special and is a proof of God's actions.


dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Regardless of which belief you hold – materialist or dualist – consciousness itself HAS evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities.

DAVID: The bold above is how you smudge the problem of how consciousness appeared. The fact that consciousness evolves in its abilities does not mean it evolved materially. It only means we learned how to use it.
And later:
DAVID: You claim you are caught between materialism and dualism without a choice. Evolving consciousness as you try to do is pure materialism. That is the side you argue from.

dhw: When I say nobody knows the origin of consciousness, I mean nobody knows how consciousness appeared. We agree. Thank you for acknowledging that consciousness evolves in its abilities. We agree. I listed other examples of non-material evolution, which I presume you also accept, and which have also evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. Of course something immaterial cannot evolve materially (we agree), which is why I have distinguished between the two schools of thought: 1) materialism, in which the SOURCE of consciousness (the brain, if we are to discount brainless organisms, though I do not) came about through evolution, since the earliest life forms did not have brains, and 2) dualism, in which the SOURCE of consciousness is an unknown, immaterial being we call God, and which did not evolve. I do not support or oppose either of these theories, so I don’t know why you think I am supporting materialism. Nor do I know why you think, say, ant consciousness and human consciousness do not represent evolution from the comparatively simple to the comparatively complex, no matter how consciousness originated. Nor do I know why you think ant consciousness (an awareness of problems and how to set about trying to solve them) as well as our own complex consciousness have not been aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

There you go again. In the bold you have ants with consciousness. We continue to disagree as you smudge the differences. Ants are conscious and have no consciousness, I will continue to insist. We can go no further in this specific difference.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, October 12, 2019, 12:17 (1620 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain” they are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. I have not used the word “gradation”, which implies small changes. I have repeatedly agreed that there is a vast difference between animal levels and our own.

DAVID: Thank you. You finally agree to the vast difference, the key to Adler's religious philosophy that makes us very special and is a proof of God's actions.

Not finally. I have always agreed that there is a vast difference, and I doubt if there is anyone on earth who would not agree that human consciousness is vastly more complex than that of our fellow animals, and we are not arguing about Adler’s proof of God’s existence. I also doubt if there is anyone on earth apart from you who would insist that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw […] Nor do I know why you think, say, ant consciousness and human consciousness do not represent evolution from the comparatively simple to the comparatively complex, no matter how consciousness originated. Nor do I know why you think ant consciousness (an awareness of problems and how to set about trying to solve them) as well as our own complex consciousness have not been aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.[David’s bold]

DAVID: There you go again. In the bold you have ants with consciousness. We continue to disagree as you smudge the differences. Ants are conscious and have no consciousness, I will continue to insist. We can go no further in this specific difference.

And so you totally ignore the whole discussion on Egnor’s question, and simply go on insisting that organisms can be conscious and yet have no consciousness (the meaning of which you confine to all those additional attributes of consciousness which are special to humans)! Once more, in answer to Egnor, and ignoring this linguistic absurdity: Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 12, 2019, 15:55 (1620 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain” they are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. I have not used the word “gradation”, which implies small changes. I have repeatedly agreed that there is a vast difference between animal levels and our own.

DAVID: Thank you. You finally agree to the vast difference, the key to Adler's religious philosophy that makes us very special and is a proof of God's actions.

dhw: Not finally. I have always agreed that there is a vast difference, and I doubt if there is anyone on earth who would not agree that human consciousness is vastly more complex than that of our fellow animals, and we are not arguing about Adler’s proof of God’s existence. I also doubt if there is anyone on earth apart from you who would insist that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness.

I made the distinction between being conscious and having consciousness as a separate state from the readings I have done, especially the NDE studies. I will always view it as special and different. To be conscious is simply to be aware of and sense environment and self. We cannot sense consciousness.


dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw […] Nor do I know why you think, say, ant consciousness and human consciousness do not represent evolution from the comparatively simple to the comparatively complex, no matter how consciousness originated. Nor do I know why you think ant consciousness (an awareness of problems and how to set about trying to solve them) as well as our own complex consciousness have not been aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.[David’s bold]

DAVID: There you go again. In the bold you have ants with consciousness. We continue to disagree as you smudge the differences. Ants are conscious and have no consciousness, I will continue to insist. We can go no further in this specific difference.

dhw: And so you totally ignore the whole discussion on Egnor’s question, and simply go on insisting that organisms can be conscious and yet have no consciousness (the meaning of which you confine to all those additional attributes of consciousness which are special to humans)! Once more, in answer to Egnor, and ignoring this linguistic absurdity: Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness, as you believe, but I agree it fits Darwin's idea of natural selection as our consciousness gives us special survival attribute s

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, October 13, 2019, 10:51 (1619 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain”, [other animals] are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. […]

DAVID: I made the distinction between being conscious and having consciousness as a separate state from the readings I have done, especially the NDE studies. I will always view it as special and different. To be conscious is simply to be aware of and sense environment and self. We cannot sense consciousness.

NDEs suggest that there is a “soul” which survives the death of the body. The soul is conscious/has consciousness. Now instead of playing with those two words, you’ve found another word to play with: “sense”. Please stop playing language games. Being conscious and having consciousness are the same, and they entail awareness of some kind. Our fellow animals’ awareness is mainly confined to the direct necessities of life in their immediate environment, whereas our own awareness extends to ourselves and to an ability to imagine, conceptualize, philosophize etc. We don’t need your linguistic contortions to obscure what is obvious to all of us.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Once more, in answer to Egnor, and ignoring this linguistic absurdity: Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

DAVID: And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness as you believe ….

What on earth does that mean? Back you go to the absurdity of evolving from the adjective to the noun!

DAVID… but I agree it fits Darwin's idea of natural selection as our consciousness gives us special survival attributes.

Thank you for agreeing with me that Egnor got that wrong. Your belief that the brain receives (rather than produces) consciousness is covered by dualism in the above answer to Egnor, but I am surprised that you think there has been no evolutionary progression from, for example, the consciousness level of ants and worms and butterflies to whales and dogs and apes, and from them to ourselves.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 13, 2019, 15:54 (1619 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain”, [other animals] are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. […]

DAVID: I made the distinction between being conscious and having consciousness as a separate state from the readings I have done, especially the NDE studies. I will always view it as special and different. To be conscious is simply to be aware of and sense environment and self. We cannot sense consciousness.

dhw: NDEs suggest that there is a “soul” which survives the death of the body. The soul is conscious/has consciousness. Now instead of playing with those two words, you’ve found another word to play with: “sense”. Please stop playing language games. Being conscious and having consciousness are the same, and they entail awareness of some kind. Our fellow animals’ awareness is mainly confined to the direct necessities of life in their immediate environment, whereas our own awareness extends to ourselves and to an ability to imagine, conceptualize, philosophize etc. We don’t need your linguistic contortions to obscure what is obvious to all of us.

We are playing word games. The point is you do not recognize Adler's view of the difference and the difference it makes in a view of whether God exists.


dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Once more, in answer to Egnor, and ignoring this linguistic absurdity: Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

DAVID: And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness as you believe ….

dhw: What on earth does that mean? Back you go to the absurdity of evolving from the adjective to the noun!

Simple, I believe the brain evolved to the point of being capable of receiving consciousness. Consciousness did not evolve from being conscious.


DAVID… but I agree it fits Darwin's idea of natural selection as our consciousness gives us special survival attributes.

dhw: Thank you for agreeing with me that Egnor got that wrong. Your belief that the brain receives (rather than produces) consciousness is covered by dualism in the above answer to Egnor, but I am surprised that you think there has been no evolutionary progression from, for example, the consciousness level of ants and worms and butterflies to whales and dogs and apes, and from them to ourselves.

Explained as above. The Conscious state did not evolve into consciousness. That is purematerialism.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, October 14, 2019, 12:46 (1618 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You continue to argue that although you agree that “yes, humans are conscious like all other animals with a brain”, [other animals] are not conscious, because consciousness means having self-awareness and the ability to conceptualize. No it doesn’t. Self-awareness and conceptualization etc. are attributes of human consciousness, and you are making a mockery of language. […]

DAVID: We are playing word games. The point is you do not recognize Adler's view of the difference and the difference it makes in a view of whether God exists.

Aw shucks, David, you know that is not the point at all! This dispute is not over Adler’s use of human consciousness as evidence that God exists, but over the absurdity of your attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness and over the incongruities created by your anthropocentric interpretation of God’s mind and the process of evolution.

dhw: […] we are now discussing Egnor’s question: “..if consciousness is non-physical, how could it evolve? Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute”.

dhw: Once more, in answer to Egnor […[ : Nobody knows the origin of consciousness and there are disagreements as to its source (materialism = the source is the material brain, which evolved; David’s form of dualism = the source is God, who didn’t evolve). Ants are conscious but do not have all the attributes of consciousness that humans have. This illustrates the evolution of consciousness from comparatively simple levels to extremely complex. However, these different degrees of consciousness have proved to be aids to survival, in keeping with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

DAVID: And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness as you believe ….

dhw: What on earth does that mean? Back you go to the absurdity of evolving from the adjective to the noun!

DAVID: Simple, I believe the brain evolved to the point of being capable of receiving consciousness. Consciousness did not evolve from being conscious.
And:
DAVID: The Conscious state did not evolve into consciousness. That is pure materialism

Materialism claims that the brain is the source of consciousness. I don’t know of anyone on this planet who claims that being conscious evolved into consciousness. Consciousness IS the state of being conscious, so of course it didn’t evolve from itself! More silly word games. Once more: your belief that the brain is a receiver of consciousness is covered by dualism. That makes no difference to what to me is the obvious fact that whatever the origin and source of consciousness, once it existed it evolved – just like physical organisms – from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities. Do you disagree? Thank you again for conceding that consciousness is an aid to survival, in keeping with Darwinian natural selection and in opposition to Egnor.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, October 14, 2019, 16:07 (1618 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We are playing word games. The point is you do not recognize Adler's view of the difference and the difference it makes in a view of whether God exists.

dhw: Aw shucks, David, you know that is not the point at all! This dispute is not over Adler’s use of human consciousness as evidence that God exists, but over the absurdity of your attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness and over the incongruities created by your anthropocentric interpretation of God’s mind and the process of evolution.

My point agrees with you that we and animals are all conscious, but humans separately have the phenomenon of consciousness, which is unexplained, and keep trying to smudge the separateness..


DAVID: And I will still disagree. As before, I view the brain as having evolved to receive consciousness as separate from Darwin evolution of conscious to consciousness as you believe ….

dhw: What on earth does that mean? Back you go to the absurdity of evolving from the adjective to the noun!

DAVID: Simple, I believe the brain evolved to the point of being capable of receiving consciousness. Consciousness did not evolve from being conscious.
And:
DAVID: The Conscious state did not evolve into consciousness. That is pure materialism

dhw: Materialism claims that the brain is the source of consciousness. I don’t know of anyone on this planet who claims that being conscious evolved into consciousness. Consciousness IS the state of being conscious, so of course it didn’t evolve from itself! More silly word games. Once more: your belief that the brain is a receiver of consciousness is covered by dualism. That makes no difference to what to me is the obvious fact that whatever the origin and source of consciousness, once it existed it evolved – just like physical organisms – from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities. Do you disagree? Thank you again for conceding that consciousness is an aid to survival, in keeping with Darwinian natural selection and in opposition to Egnor.'

I agree with your statement in bold. Humans have it, and we have evolved to learn how to use it. Our issue seems settled.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 10:07 (1617 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This dispute is not over Adler’s use of human consciousness as evidence that God exists, but over the absurdity of your attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness and over the incongruities created by your anthropocentric interpretation of God’s mind and the process of evolution.

DAVID: My point agrees with you that we and animals are all conscious, but humans separately have the phenomenon of consciousness, which is unexplained, and keep trying to smudge the separateness.

There is no smudging except when you pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness! All levels of consciousness are unexplained, and humans have the same levels as their fellow animals, plus additional levels of self-awareness, conceptualization etc. which make them special. Once more, please stop messing about with language.

DAVID: The Conscious state did not evolve into consciousness. That is pure materialism

dhw: Materialism claims that the brain is the source of consciousness. I don’t know of anyone on this planet who claims that being conscious evolved into consciousness. Consciousness IS the state of being conscious, so of course it didn’t evolve from itself! More silly word games. Once more: your belief that the brain is a receiver of consciousness is covered by dualism. That makes no difference to what to me is the obvious fact that whatever the origin and source of consciousness, once it existed it evolved – just like physical organisms – from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities. Do you disagree? Thank you again for conceding that consciousness is an aid to survival, in keeping with Darwinian natural selection and in opposition to Egnor.'

DAVID: I agree with your statement in bold. Humans have it, and we have evolved to learn how to use it. Our issue seems settled.

All animals are conscious/have consciousness, and all animals have learned how to use it, but humans have additional attributes such as self-awareness and conceptualization which create a vast difference between us and them. Meanwhile, you have not said whether, in opposition to Egnor, you agree that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.
Our issue will not be settled until you stop playing word games. For some reason, you have even tried to smuggle this into the article on mucus, but with a subtle difference which I can accept with a slight modification:

DAVID: Mucus represents the purpose of invention in evolution. This is another aspect of how immunity is designed to protect us. We share this with all animals, but not our special form of consciousness.

I agree with your first two statements. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that no matter how such inventions originated – through your God’s individual dabbles or 3.8-billion-year-old programmes, or through the possibly God-given intelligence of cells, they are the product of purposeful design. As for consciousness, as above, we share many aspects of it with our fellow animals, but we also have special forms of it (e.g. self-awareness, conceptualization) which they do not have.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 15:02 (1617 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My point agrees with you that we and animals are all conscious, but humans separately have the phenomenon of consciousness, which is unexplained, and keep trying to smudge the separateness.

dhw: There is no smudging except when you pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness! All levels of consciousness are unexplained, and humans have the same levels as their fellow animals, plus additional levels of self-awareness, conceptualization etc. which make them special. Once more, please stop messing about with language.

Adler and I consider the additional form of consciousness humans have as something very special. You have agreed. That is all i want.


DAVID: The Conscious state did not evolve into consciousness. That is pure materialism

dhw: Materialism claims that the brain is the source of consciousness. I don’t know of anyone on this planet who claims that being conscious evolved into consciousness. Consciousness IS the state of being conscious, so of course it didn’t evolve from itself! More silly word games. Once more: your belief that the brain is a receiver of consciousness is covered by dualism. That makes no difference to what to me is the obvious fact that whatever the origin and source of consciousness, once it existed it evolved – just like physical organisms – from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities. Do you disagree? Thank you again for conceding that consciousness is an aid to survival, in keeping with Darwinian natural selection and in opposition to Egnor.'

DAVID: I agree with your statement in bold. Humans have it, and we have evolved to learn how to use it. Our issue seems settled.

dhw; All animals are conscious/have consciousness, and all animals have learned how to use it, but humans have additional attributes such as self-awareness and conceptualization which create a vast difference between us and them. Meanwhile, you have not said whether, in opposition to Egnor, you agree that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.
Our issue will not be settled until you stop playing word games. For some reason, you have even tried to smuggle this into the article on mucus, but with a subtle difference which I can accept with a slight modification:

Not word games but noting the philosophic import of our special consciousness.


DAVID: Mucus represents the purpose of invention in evolution. This is another aspect of how immunity is designed to protect us. We share this with all animals, but not our special form of consciousness.

dhw: I agree with your first two statements. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that no matter how such inventions originated – through your God’s individual dabbles or 3.8-billion-year-old programmes, or through the possibly God-given intelligence of cells, they are the product of purposeful design. As for consciousness, as above, we share many aspects of it with our fellow animals, but we also have special forms of it (e.g. self-awareness, conceptualization) which they do not have.

You and I really agree. But you don't accept the theological importance I place on human consciousness as I do to reach my acceptance of God.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 10:01 (1616 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My point agrees with you that we and animals are all conscious, but humans separately have the phenomenon of consciousness, which is unexplained, and keep trying to smudge the separateness.

dhw: There is no smudging except when you pretend that there is a difference between being conscious and having consciousness! All levels of consciousness are unexplained, and humans have the same levels as their fellow animals, plus additional levels of self-awareness, conceptualization etc. which make them special. Once more, please stop messing about with language.

DAVID: Adler and I consider the additional form of consciousness humans have as something very special. You have agreed. That is all i want.

I have never disagreed, and I accept the logic of the argument that our consciousness, like every other complexity in life’s designs, can be viewed as evidence for the existence of God. You have acknowledged that the rest of your theory requires the abandonment of human reason, and I am delighted to see that in this post you have not once tried to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness. Thank you. That is all I want.

dhw: All animals are conscious/have consciousness, and all animals have learned how to use it, but humans have additional attributes such as self-awareness and conceptualization which create a vast difference between us and them. Meanwhile, you have not said whether, in opposition to Egnor, you agree that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.
Our issue will not be settled until you stop playing word games.

DAVID: Not word games but noting the philosophic import of our special consciousness.

Already acknowledged a thousand times. Now would you please tell us whether you agree with me (in opposition to Egnor) that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.

DAVID: Mucus represents the purpose of invention in evolution. This is another aspect of how immunity is designed to protect us. We share this with all animals, but not our special form of consciousness.

dhw: I agree with your first two statements. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that no matter how such inventions originated – through your God’s individual dabbles or 3.8-billion-year-old programmes, or through the possibly God-given intelligence of cells, they are the product of purposeful design. As for consciousness, as above, we share many aspects of it with our fellow animals, but we also have special forms of it (e.g. self-awareness, conceptualization) which they do not have.

DAVID: You and I really agree. But you don't accept the theological importance I place on human consciousness as I do to reach my acceptance of God.

As above, I have always agreed not only to the importance of human consciousness but also to the complexity of all organisms as evidence for your God’s existence (your “acceptance”). They are not, however, evidence for all the incongruities of your theory which I keep repeating because you keep leaving them out (summarized yet again under “David’s theory of evolution”).

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 18:20 (1615 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Adler and I consider the additional form of consciousness humans have as something very special. You have agreed. That is all i want.

dhw: I have never disagreed, and I accept the logic of the argument that our consciousness, like every other complexity in life’s designs, can be viewed as evidence for the existence of God. You have acknowledged that the rest of your theory requires the abandonment of human reason, and I am delighted to see that in this post you have not once tried to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness. Thank you. That is all I want.

The bold is a distortion of my views. All I've said is that I don't question God's choices of methods. since I simply assume God is in charge of all that happens.


dhw: All animals are conscious/have consciousness, and all animals have learned how to use it, but humans have additional attributes such as self-awareness and conceptualization which create a vast difference between us and them. Meanwhile, you have not said whether, in opposition to Egnor, you agree that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.
Our issue will not be settled until you stop playing word games.

DAVID: Not word games but noting the philosophic import of our special consciousness.

dhw: Already acknowledged a thousand times. Now would you please tell us whether you agree with me (in opposition to Egnor) that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.

I don't know that at all. I believe, as you well know, that the brain evolved to reach a state when it could receive human style consciousness. Our consciousness did not evolve by itself from earlier stages.


DAVID: Mucus represents the purpose of invention in evolution. This is another aspect of how immunity is designed to protect us. We share this with all animals, but not our special form of consciousness.

dhw: I agree with your first two statements. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that no matter how such inventions originated – through your God’s individual dabbles or 3.8-billion-year-old programmes, or through the possibly God-given intelligence of cells, they are the product of purposeful design. As for consciousness, as above, we share many aspects of it with our fellow animals, but we also have special forms of it (e.g. self-awareness, conceptualization) which they do not have.

DAVID: You and I really agree. But you don't accept the theological importance I place on human consciousness as I do to reach my acceptance of God.

dhw: As above, I have always agreed not only to the importance of human consciousness but also to the complexity of all organisms as evidence for your God’s existence (your “acceptance”). They are not, however, evidence for all the incongruities of your theory which I keep repeating because you keep leaving them out (summarized yet again under “David’s theory of evolution”).

Nothing is incongruous if you accept God is in charge of evolution.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Thursday, October 17, 2019, 12:49 (1615 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Adler and I consider the additional form of consciousness humans have as something very special. You have agreed. That is all i want.

dhw: I have never disagreed, and I accept the logic of the argument that our consciousness, like every other complexity in life’s designs, can be viewed as evidence for the existence of God. You have acknowledged that the rest of your theory requires the abandonment of human reason, and I am delighted to see that in this post you have not once tried to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness. Thank you. That is all I want.

DAVID: The bold is a distortion of my views. All I've said is that I don't question God's choices of methods. since I simply assume God is in charge of all that happens.

That is not all you have said! I keep reminding you of your own comments when answering my critique of the incongruous sections of your theory, which you keep leaving out. Your words: “Nothing illogical required if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history” and “You try to make God logical to fit your human thinking. It doesn’t work.” And “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time?”[/i] I don’t know why you keep ignoring your own clear statements.

DAVID: Nothing is incongruous if you accept God is in charge of evolution.

Once again you force me to repeat the incongruities. If by “in charge” you mean he specially designed every single innovation, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, the incongruity lies in your insistence that the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens but for reasons you cannot fathom, he decided not to do so for 3.X billion years, and therefore “had to” design the rest in order to “cover” the time he had decided to spend before beginning to tackle the one project he wanted to tackle.

dhw: Now would you please tell us whether you agree with me (in opposition to Egnor) that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.

DAVID: I don't know that at all. I believe, as you well know, that the brain evolved to reach a state when it could receive human style consciousness. Our consciousness did not evolve by itself from earlier stages.

Again you refuse to answer my question, which does not concern the evolution of the brain or your dualistic concept of the brain as receiver and not producer of consciousness. Do you or do you not accept (in opposition to Egnor) that there has been a progression from simple beginnings to current complexities? Even if you try to confine the subject to humans and their ancestors, do you not accept that we have many simple areas of consciousness in common with our ancestors (including apes), but have acquired more complex areas, while they in turn have more complex areas than, say, worms and ants?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 17, 2019, 22:43 (1614 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Adler and I consider the additional form of consciousness humans have as something very special. You have agreed. That is all i want.

dhw: I have never disagreed, and I accept the logic of the argument that our consciousness, like every other complexity in life’s designs, can be viewed as evidence for the existence of God. You have acknowledged that the rest of your theory requires the abandonment of human reason, and I am delighted to see that in this post you have not once tried to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness. Thank you. That is all I want.

DAVID: The bold is a distortion of my views. All I've said is that I don't question God's choices of methods. since I simply assume God is in charge of all that happens.

dhw; That is not all you have said! I keep reminding you of your own comments when answering my critique of the incongruous sections of your theory, which you keep leaving out. Your words: “Nothing illogical required if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history” and “You try to make God logical to fit your human thinking. It doesn’t work.” And “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time?”[/i] I don’t know why you keep ignoring your own clear statements.

DAVID: Nothing is incongruous if you accept God is in charge of evolution.

dhw: Once again you force me to repeat the incongruities. If by “in charge” you mean he specially designed every single innovation, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, the incongruity lies in your insistence that the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens but for reasons you cannot fathom, he decided not to do so for 3.X billion years, and therefore “had to” design the rest in order to “cover” the time he had decided to spend before beginning to tackle the one project he wanted to tackle.

You are repeating your mantra again. What you are suggesting is God made the universe and Earth and then you want Him to skip to humans with nothing else created on Earth for humans to work with. How do the humans survive? Pure silliness and not a real argument.


dhw: Now would you please tell us whether you agree with me (in opposition to Egnor) that once consciousness existed, it evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities.

DAVID: I don't know that at all. I believe, as you well know, that the brain evolved to reach a state when it could receive human style consciousness. Our consciousness did not evolve by itself from earlier stages.

dhW: Again you refuse to answer my question, which does not concern the evolution of the brain or your dualistic concept of the brain as receiver and not producer of consciousness. Do you or do you not accept (in opposition to Egnor) that there has been a progression from simple beginnings to current complexities? Even if you try to confine the subject to humans and their ancestors, do you not accept that we have many simple areas of consciousness in common with our ancestors (including apes), but have acquired more complex areas, while they in turn have more complex areas than, say, worms and ants?

Egnor and I are discussing pure human consciousness and how it possibly appeared. We do not think it evolved from earlier conscious states. Quite clear.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, October 18, 2019, 10:35 (1614 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Nothing is incongruous if you accept God is in charge of evolution.

dhw: Once again you force me to repeat the incongruities. If by “in charge” you mean he specially designed every single innovation, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, the incongruity lies in your insistence that the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens but for reasons you cannot fathom, he decided not to do so for 3.X billion years, and therefore “had to” design the rest in order to “cover” the time he had decided to spend before beginning to tackle the one project he wanted to tackle.

DAVID: You are repeating your mantra again. What you are suggesting is God made the universe and Earth and then you want Him to skip to humans with nothing else created on Earth for humans to work with. How do the humans survive? Pure silliness and not a real argument.

I have not presented any such theory! Of course there is a vast range of necessities if humans are to survive! But you can’t find a logical explanation for the vast range of galaxies and of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders that have no conceivable connection to the special design of humans which, according to you, was your God’s sole purpose right from the start. Hence your cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time” – i.e. why he decided to spend 3.X billion years designing anything but what he wanted to design.

dhw: Do you or do you not accept (in opposition to Egnor) that there has been a progression from simple beginnings to current complexities? Even if you try to confine the subject to humans and their ancestors, do you not accept that we have many simple areas of consciousness in common with our ancestors (including apes), but have acquired more complex areas, while they in turn have more complex areas than, say, worms and ants?

DAVID: Egnor and I are discussing pure human consciousness and how it possibly appeared. We do not think it evolved from earlier conscious states. Quite clear.

Egnor says “only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations.” Do you believe, for instance, that language cannot evolve? And do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states? Nobody knows the origin of consciousness at any level, but that does not mean that once it existed, it could not evolve. You (and Egnor) may believe your God popped in to dabble with the brains of our ancestors to make them more receptive to a different form of consciousness, but that still doesn't mean that "only something physical can evolve", and so that argument goes out of the window along with the bit about natural selection.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, October 18, 2019, 17:26 (1613 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Nothing is incongruous if you accept God is in charge of evolution.

dhw: Once again you force me to repeat the incongruities. If by “in charge” you mean he specially designed every single innovation, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, the incongruity lies in your insistence that the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens but for reasons you cannot fathom, he decided not to do so for 3.X billion years, and therefore “had to” design the rest in order to “cover” the time he had decided to spend before beginning to tackle the one project he wanted to tackle.

DAVID: You are repeating your mantra again. What you are suggesting is God made the universe and Earth and then you want Him to skip to humans with nothing else created on Earth for humans to work with. How do the humans survive? Pure silliness and not a real argument.

dhw: I have not presented any such theory! Of course there is a vast range of necessities if humans are to survive! But you can’t find a logical explanation for the vast range of galaxies and of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders that have no conceivable connection to the special design of humans which, according to you, was your God’s sole purpose right from the start. Hence your cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time” – i.e. why he decided to spend 3.X billion years designing anything but what he wanted to design.

So you deny the history that a universe appeared and then had to evolve into current form, fine-tuned for life, the Earth evolved and finally humans appeared? We know that happened and if God is in charge, He did it that way. Like all humans you love to guess about God while studying His works. The works tell the story, but not His reasons, and He is not talking .


dhw: Do you or do you not accept (in opposition to Egnor) that there has been a progression from simple beginnings to current complexities? Even if you try to confine the subject to humans and their ancestors, do you not accept that we have many simple areas of consciousness in common with our ancestors (including apes), but have acquired more complex areas, while they in turn have more complex areas than, say, worms and ants?

DAVID: Egnor and I are discussing pure human consciousness and how it possibly appeared. We do not think it evolved from earlier conscious states. Quite clear.

dhw: [/i]
Egnor says “only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations.” Do you believe, for instance, that language cannot evolve? And do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states? Nobody knows the origin of consciousness at any level, but that does not mean that once it existed, it could not evolve. You (and Egnor) may believe your God popped in to dabble with the brains of our ancestors to make them more receptive to a different form of consciousness, but that still doesn't mean that "only something physical can evolve", and so that argument goes out of the window along with the bit about natural selection.

You want an immaterial consciousness to evolve. You have solved the hard problem, like no one else has been able to do. Awareness morphed into true consciousness over time. Language is not the same and offers no comparison. Language is sound with meaning and requires an awareness of what one hears and grunts, based on an evolv ed com plex brain. It cones from us learning how to use our God-given brain.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, October 19, 2019, 10:20 (1613 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Of course there is a vast range of necessities if humans are to survive! But you can’t find a logical explanation for the vast range of galaxies and of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders that have no conceivable connection to the special design of humans which, according to you, was your God’s sole purpose right from the start. Hence your cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time” – i.e. why he decided to spend 3.X billion years designing anything but what he wanted to design.

DAVID: So you deny the history that a universe appeared and then had to evolve into current form, fine-tuned for life, the Earth evolved and finally humans appeared? We know that happened and if God is in charge, He did it that way. Like all humans you love to guess about God while studying His works. The works tell the story, but not His reasons, and He is not talking.

Where have you seen this denial? Certainly not in any of my posts! You are presenting the history which is undeniable! But as usual you leave out your own guess about God, which is that he did all this with the sole purpose of creating humans, but delayed implementing his one and only purpose and therefore “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to “cover the time” he had decided to take before doing the only thing he wanted to do! And you have no idea why he would have adopted this procedure.


dhw: Egnor says “only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations.” Do you believe, for instance, that language cannot evolve? And do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states?

DAVID: You want an immaterial consciousness to evolve. You have solved the hard problem, like no one else has been able to do. Awareness morphed into true consciousness over time.

The hard problem is the origin and source of consciousness, and how it all works. I have specifically said we do not know. I have no idea what you mean by “awareness morphed into true consciousness”. Awareness IS consciousness. But the course of evolution and the theory of common descent suggest that once consciousness existed, it evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. That is the sense in which it evolved. Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above?

DAVID: Language is not the same and offers no comparison. Language is sound with meaning and requires an awareness of what one hears and grunts, based on an evolv ed complex brain. It cones from us learning how to use our God-given brain.

Egnor says categorically that “only something physical can evolve”. I have used language as one example of something immaterial that evolves. You have forgotten the starting point of this discussion. Once more, please answer the bolded question above.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 19, 2019, 19:10 (1612 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Of course there is a vast range of necessities if humans are to survive! But you can’t find a logical explanation for the vast range of galaxies and of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders that have no conceivable connection to the special design of humans which, according to you, was your God’s sole purpose right from the start. Hence your cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time” – i.e. why he decided to spend 3.X billion years designing anything but what he wanted to design.

DAVID: So you deny the history that a universe appeared and then had to evolve into current form, fine-tuned for life, the Earth evolved and finally humans appeared? We know that happened and if God is in charge, He did it that way. Like all humans you love to guess about God while studying His works. The works tell the story, but not His reasons, and He is not talking.

dhw: Where have you seen this denial? Certainly not in any of my posts! You are presenting the history which is undeniable! But as usual you leave out your own guess about God, which is that he did all this with the sole purpose of creating humans, but delayed implementing his one and only purpose and therefore “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to “cover the time” he had decided to take before doing the only thing he wanted to do! And you have no idea why he would have adopted this procedure.

Haven't you realized by now I have no intent to puzzle out Gods reasons for the methods He used. The works show what God did, and we are so unusual compared to all other creatures we have to be a prime purpose, as per Adler.

dhw: Egnor says “only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations.” Do you believe, for instance, that language cannot evolve? And do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states?

DAVID: You want an immaterial consciousness to evolve. You have solved the hard problem, like no one else has been able to do. Awareness morphed into true consciousness over time.

dhw: The hard problem is the origin and source of consciousness, and how it all works. I have specifically said we do not know. I have no idea what you mean by “awareness morphed into true consciousness”. Awareness IS consciousness. But the course of evolution and the theory of common descent suggest that once consciousness existed, it evolved from comparatively simple beginnings to current complexities. That is the sense in which it evolved. Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above?

I have answered it. Brains involved enough complexity to receive consciousness, of which awareness is a very small portion compared to the ideation which full human consciousness allows, present in no other organism .


DAVID: Language is not the same and offers no comparison. Language is sound with meaning and requires an awareness of what one hears and grunts, based on an evolved complex brain. It cones from us learning how to use our God-given brain.

dhw: Egnor says categorically that “only something physical can evolve”. I have used language as one example of something immaterial that evolves. You have forgotten the starting point of this discussion. Once more, please answer the bolded question above.

I've answered with my theory. The idea carried by language are immaterial . I view language with its sounds and symbols as material productions of our anatomy. What sounds mean is the immaterial part. Language is a result of anatomic changes and brain complexity, all material. We were given those gifts and had to learn how to use them.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, October 20, 2019, 10:08 (1612 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You are presenting the history which is undeniable! But as usual you leave out your own guess about God, which is that he did all this with the sole purpose of creating humans, but delayed implementing his one and only purpose and therefore “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to “cover the time” he had decided to take before doing the only thing he wanted to do! And you have no idea why he would have adopted this procedure.

DAVID: Haven't you realized by now I have no intent to puzzle out Gods reasons for the methods He used. The works show what God did, and we are so unusual compared to all other creatures we have to be a prime purpose, as per Adler.

You have no intent to puzzle out possible reasons for your INTERPRETATION of God’s methods, because you know they require the abandonment of human reason: “Nothing illogical required if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history”. I have no problem with the argument that humans might have been A prime purpose, but you have consistently argued that H. sapiens was God’s one and only purpose, and that 3.X billion years of non-human designs were simply interim goals to keep life going until he started to fulfil that one and only purpose. And you have no idea why he did it that way.

DAVID (under “glass eels”): More evidence about the use of our magnetic field, which is created by our iron-nickel core, in our special planet for life to appear and survive. protected from the nasty cosmic rays that are out here. God protects what He creates.

dhw: Just to restore the balance, you have omitted the fact that if he exists, he also created the nasty things that are out there, not to mention the nasty things that are in here!

DAVID: Theodicy again. I think it is a challenge for our consciousness to solve by recognizing the problems created. God didn't just create us. He tested us.

You have no intent to puzzle out God’s reasons for his methods, and yet here you inform us that the reason for his creating the nasties was to test us. When challenged to provide reasons for his creating life, you have also offered his desire for a relationship with us, and to have his work admired, and to enjoy his creations as a painter enjoys his paintings. I reckon you have done your fair share of puzzling out reasons (and all very feasible at that), but unfortunately you just cannot find a reason for the incongruities I have listed above, and so you fall back on the claim that God’s logic is not human logic.

dhw: Egnor says “only something physical can evolve. Natural selection can only select attributes that have physical manifestations.” Do you believe, for instance, that language cannot evolve? And do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states?

dhw: Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above?

DAVID: I have answered it. Brains involved enough complexity to receive consciousness, of which awareness is a very small portion compared to the ideation which full human consciousness allows, present in no other organism.

A statement of your beliefs concerning human consciousness is no answer to the question whether you believe that more complex forms of consciousness, as in apes, evolved from less complex forms, as in houseflies.

dhw: Egnor says categorically that “only something physical can evolve”. I have used language as one example of something immaterial that evolves. You have forgotten the starting point of this discussion. Once more, please answer the bolded question above.

DAVID: I've answered with my theory. The idea carried by language are immaterial . I view language with its sounds and symbols as material productions of our anatomy. What sounds mean is the immaterial part. Language is a result of anatomic changes and brain complexity, all material. We were given those gifts and had to learn how to use them.

So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 20, 2019, 19:38 (1611 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You are presenting the history which is undeniable! But as usual you leave out your own guess about God, which is that he did all this with the sole purpose of creating humans, but delayed implementing his one and only purpose and therefore “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to “cover the time” he had decided to take before doing the only thing he wanted to do! And you have no idea why he would have adopted this procedure.

DAVID: Haven't you realized by now I have no intent to puzzle out Gods reasons for the methods He used. The works show what God did, and we are so unusual compared to all other creatures we have to be a prime purpose, as per Adler.

dhw: You have no intent to puzzle out possible reasons for your INTERPRETATION of God’s methods, because you know they require the abandonment of human reason: “Nothing illogical required if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history”. I have no problem with the argument that humans might have been A prime purpose, but you have consistently argued that H. sapiens was God’s one and only purpose, and that 3.X billion years of non-human designs were simply interim goals to keep life going until he started to fulfil that one and only purpose. And you have no idea why he did it that way.

I have idea because I don't try to suppose what I can only guess about.


DAVID (under “glass eels”): More evidence about the use of our magnetic field, which is created by our iron-nickel core, in our special planet for life to appear and survive. protected from the nasty cosmic rays that are out here. God protects what He creates.

dhw: Just to restore the balance, you have omitted the fact that if he exists, he also created the nasty things that are out there, not to mention the nasty things that are in here!

DAVID: Theodicy again. I think it is a challenge for our consciousness to solve by recognizing the problems created. God didn't just create us. He tested us.

dhw: You have no intent to puzzle out God’s reasons for his methods, and yet here you inform us that the reason for his creating the nasties was to test us.

Not a reason, just a guess whi8ch is all you do.

dhw: Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above?

DAVID: I have answered it. Brains involved enough complexity to receive consciousness, of which awareness is a very small portion compared to the ideation which full human consciousness allows, present in no other organism.

dhw: A statement of your beliefs concerning human consciousness is no answer to the question whether you believe that more complex forms of consciousness, as in apes, evolved from less complex forms, as in houseflies.

Complex consciousness requires a complex brain. That is what evolved, the material brain, not consciousness


dhw: Egnor says categorically that “only something physical can evolve”. I have used language as one example of something immaterial that evolves. You have forgotten the starting point of this discussion. Once more, please answer the bolded question above.

DAVID: I've answered with my theory. The idea carried by language are immaterial . I view language with its sounds and symbols as material productions of our anatomy. What sounds mean is the immaterial part. Language is a result of anatomic changes and brain complexity, all material. We were given those gifts and had to learn how to use them.

dhw: So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

No language is improved as we learn to use our brain. The key is what the brain can allow us to create. The complexity of the brain allows us to create language. Brain first, language second, something you refuse to see or accept.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, October 21, 2019, 14:10 (1611 days ago) @ David Turell

The first part of David’s post repeats the discussion under “David’s theory of evolution”, where it really belongs. Even this post has left its original subject behind, since we are dealing with Egnor, not Dennett,but we may as well carry on now.

dhw: Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above? [“Do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states”?]

DAVID: I have answered it. Brains involved enough complexity to receive consciousness, of which awareness is a very small portion compared to the ideation which full human consciousness allows, present in no other organism.

dhw: A statement of your beliefs concerning human consciousness is no answer to the question whether you believe that more complex forms of consciousness, as in apes, evolved from less complex forms, as in houseflies.

DAVID: Complex consciousness requires a complex brain. That is what evolved, the material brain, not consciousness.

I think most people would agree that our own consciousness is more complex than that of the apes. You don’t tell us that the “difference” is the more complex brain, but you pin-point major advances, such as self-awareness and conceptualization. I think most people would also assume that ape consciousness is more complex than, for example, housefly consciousness – or, if you like, that apes are more conscious than houseflies. Of course the brain has evolved, but regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness (materialism) or its receiver (dualism), do you deny that consciousness has developed from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities? That, if you believe in common descent, = evolution.

dhw: So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

DAVID: No language is improved as we learn to use our brain. The key is what the brain can allow us to create. The complexity of the brain allows us to create language. Brain first, language second, something you refuse to see or accept.

You are missing the point. Language evolves, as do social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions, even though they are all immaterial products of our consciousness, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver. That is why I am disputing Egnor’s claim, also bolded above.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, October 21, 2019, 17:38 (1610 days ago) @ dhw

The first part of David’s post repeats the discussion under “David’s theory of evolution”, where it really belongs. Even this post has left its original subject behind, since we are dealing with Egnor, not Dennett,but we may as well carry on now.

dhw: Why don’t you answer the question I have bolded above? [“Do you believe that ape consciousness, which is manifestly more complex than, say, that of earthworms or houseflies, did not evolve from earlier conscious states”?]

DAVID: I have answered it. Brains involved enough complexity to receive consciousness, of which awareness is a very small portion compared to the ideation which full human consciousness allows, present in no other organism.

dhw: A statement of your beliefs concerning human consciousness is no answer to the question whether you believe that more complex forms of consciousness, as in apes, evolved from less complex forms, as in houseflies.

DAVID: Complex consciousness requires a complex brain. That is what evolved, the material brain, not consciousness.

dhw: I think most people would agree that our own consciousness is more complex than that of the apes. You don’t tell us that the “difference” is the more complex brain, but you pin-point major advances, such as self-awareness and conceptualization. I think most people would also assume that ape consciousness is more complex than, for example, housefly consciousness – or, if you like, that apes are more conscious than houseflies. Of course the brain has evolved, but regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness (materialism) or its receiver (dualism), do you deny that consciousness has developed from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities? That, if you believe in common descent, = evolution.

Of course consciousness has evolved from very simple beginnings to our extremely complex one, but it is based on a material side, the enlargement and complexity of brains from Cambrians to humans, and probably as as receiver in my theory.


dhw: So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

DAVID: No language is improved as we learn to use our brain. The key is what the brain can allow us to create. The complexity of the brain allows us to create language. Brain first, language second, something you refuse to see or accept.

dhw: You are missing the point. Language evolves, as do social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions, even though they are all immaterial products of our consciousness, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver. That is why I am disputing Egnor’s claim, also bolded above.

The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances. Do you accept brain first?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 10:52 (1610 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Of course the brain has evolved, but regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness (materialism) or its receiver (dualism), do you deny that consciousness has developed from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities? That, if you believe in common descent, = evolution.

DAVID: Of course consciousness has evolved from very simple beginnings to our extremely complex one, but it is based on a material side, the enlargement and complexity of brains from Cambrians to humans, and probably as as receiver in my theory.

You keep forgetting that the point of this discussion is Egnor’s claim that “only something physical can evolve”. Thank you for agreeing that he is wrong. Nobody could possibly question that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the brain, but nobody knows what that link is! As a dualist you think your God manipulated the brain so that in some mysterious way it could “receive” a smidgen of his consciousness. Materialists believe that the brain changed itself and in some mysterious way the cells generated their own consciousness. Either way, Egnor’s statement is manifestly untrue, as is his claim that “Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute” (which you have already rejected).

dhw: So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

DAVID: No language is improved as we learn to use our brain. The key is what the brain can allow us to create. The complexity of the brain allows us to create language. Brain first, language second, something you refuse to see or accept.

dhw: You are missing the point. Language evolves, as do social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions, even though they are all immaterial products of our consciousness, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver. That is why I am disputing Egnor’s claim, also bolded above.

DAVID: The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.

Thank you.

DAVID: Do you accept brain first?

Evolution can only work on something that exists. The brain evolved once it existed, and language evolved once it existed. I see no reason at all to suppose that our non-sapiens ancestors had no language of their own, and of course they had brains. My proposal is that the need for an enhanced range of communication caused the cells of the brain to make the necessary changes, much as the need to swim would have caused pre-whale legs to become flippers. We know that new uses of the brain cause it to change (think of the illiterate people who learn to read, taxi-drivers, musicians etc., whose brains change through the manner in which they are used). So your question should relate not to the prior existence of the brain but to the reason why an existing brain changed. You think your God dabbled with it, and I propose that the cell communities of which it is composed made changes in response to new demands, as is demonstrably the case with cell communities that adapt to new conditions.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 15:04 (1610 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Of course the brain has evolved, but regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness (materialism) or its receiver (dualism), do you deny that consciousness has developed from comparatively simple beginnings to its current complexities? That, if you believe in common descent, = evolution.

DAVID: Of course consciousness has evolved from very simple beginnings to our extremely complex one, but it is based on a material side, the enlargement and complexity of brains from Cambrians to humans, and probably as as receiver in my theory.

dhw: You keep forgetting that the point of this discussion is Egnor’s claim that “only something physical can evolve”. Thank you for agreeing that he is wrong. Nobody could possibly question that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the brain, but nobody knows what that link is! As a dualist you think your God manipulated the brain so that in some mysterious way it could “receive” a smidgen of his consciousness. Materialists believe that the brain changed itself and in some mysterious way the cells generated their own consciousness. Either way, Egnor’s statement is manifestly untrue, as is his claim that “Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute” (which you have already rejected).

There is a difference. What I am saying and you are ignoring is the difference in the 'evolution' we are discussing. Evolution of consciousness and language is within a material brain that must evolve to a point of complexity that allows the immaterial evolution of those two immaterial abilities.


dhw: So do you think the English language is the same as it was a few hundred years ago? Of course it isn’t. Our anatomy hasn’t changed, but our language has evolved – and that is an example of something non-physical that can evolve. Egnor’s basic premise “only something physical can evolve” is manifestly untrue. And if you would kindly answer my bolded question, I’m sure you will agree.

DAVID: No language is improved as we learn to use our brain. The key is what the brain can allow us to create. The complexity of the brain allows us to create language. Brain first, language second, something you refuse to see or accept.

dhw: You are missing the point. Language evolves, as do social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions, even though they are all immaterial products of our consciousness, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver. That is why I am disputing Egnor’s claim, also bolded above.

DAVID: The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.

dhw: Thank you.

No thanks. You are missing my point bolded above. Material evolution of brain must precede any immaterial evolution of use of the brain, as in language development.


DAVID: Do you accept brain first?

dhw: Evolution can only work on something that exists. The brain evolved once it existed, and language evolved once it existed. I see no reason at all to suppose that our non-sapiens ancestors had no language of their own, and of course they had brains. My proposal is that the need for an enhanced range of communication caused the cells of the brain to make the necessary changes, much as the need to swim would have caused pre-whale legs to become flippers. We know that new uses of the brain cause it to change (think of the illiterate people who learn to read, taxi-drivers, musicians etc., whose brains change through the manner in which they are used). So your question should relate not to the prior existence of the brain but to the reason why an existing brain changed. You think your God dabbled with it, and I propose that the cell communities of which it is composed made changes in response to new demands, as is demonstrably the case with cell communities that adapt to new conditions.

We know your theory that somehow cells have this innate intelligence to design new complexity. And you have no idea where that capacity came from, but you slyly admit God might have implanted the information. You are 'agnostic very lite', overwhelmed by my evidence for design.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 21:10 (1609 days ago) @ David Turell

The evolution of language requires a complex brain ready for it:

https://inference-review.com/letter/tough-luck

"A major difficulty here is that, as an abstract quality, language does not preserve directly in any material historical record. As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology. The range of proxies for language that scientists have been willing to accept has been remarkably broad, adding to the confusion. Berwick and Chomsky sensibly settle on evidence for modern symbolic behavior patterns as the most reliable indicator of linguistic skill among extinct hominids. This conclusion allows them to situate the acquisition of this behavioral property about 100,000 years ago—within the tenure of our own species, Homo sapiens...Wherever in Africa language may have been invented, all that was required for its spread was that recipient populations had the potential to acquire and exhibit the new behavior. That potential had probably arisen in the neural rewiring that occurred as part of the radical developmental reorganization that produced anatomically modern Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. Language acquisition would almost certainly have been biologically possible for members of any structurally recognizable Homo sapiens population.

***

"In our view, as well as in Berwick and Chomsky’s, the potential for modern human cognition was almost certainly born some 200,000 years ago with anatomical Homo sapiens. The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.9 The evolutionary phenomenon involved here is a routine one. The most plausible cultural stimulus was the spontaneous invention of language, which would then have been readily passed on among individuals and populations of this species that was already biologically enabled for it.

***

"There can be little doubt that Berwick and Chomsky are correct in viewing language as an essential portal to symbolic reasoning, as we think of it today; but to see its externalization as no more than a later afterthought deprives us of the incomparably best candidate we have for the cultural stimulus that incited a brain that was already structurally modern to switch from using the ancestral intuitive algorithm to operating in the modern symbolic one. Much more likely is that mutual reinforcement occurred between symbolic thought and spoken language as, amid the climatic rigors of late Pleistocene Africa, members of a small isolate of Homo sapiens possessing language-ready brains spontaneously began to attach specific meanings to strings of sounds, and to combine them into organized thoughts and utterances."

Comment: Full support for my view. When the material brain evolved to the proper complex form, humans could then learn to use it for language creation. Evolution of language is done by humans who are brain capable. The process of evolution did not evolve immaterial language.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 12:15 (1609 days ago) @ David Turell

I hope you won’t mind, but I have changed the title of this thread, as we have left Dennett and Egnor far behind us.

DAVID: The evolution of language requires a complex brain ready for it:
https://inference-review.com/letter/tough-luck
QUOTE: "A major difficulty here is that, as an abstract quality, language does not preserve directly in any material historical record. As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology.

It is indeed a major difficulty. The basic assumption seems to be that for 100,000 years, our immediate ancestors communicated with grunts and arm wavings, even though they had the anatomy to create the same variety of sounds we use today. I don’t buy it.

QUOTE: That potential had probably arisen in the neural rewiring that occurred as part of the radical developmental reorganization that produced anatomically modern Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. Language acquisition would almost certainly have been biologically possible for members of any structurally recognizable Homo sapiens population.

Precisely. So why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago? Obviously to nothing like the extent that it is used today, because language evolves. Indirect proxy evidence does not explain why the anatomy changed in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t provide one jot of evidence that 150,000 years ago our ancestors were not already using sounds we use today in order to communicate with one another.

QUOTE: "In our view, as well as in Berwick and Chomsky’s, the potential for modern human cognition was almost certainly born some 200,000 years ago with anatomical Homo sapiens. The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind. The evolutionary phenomenon involved here is a routine one. The most plausible cultural stimulus was the spontaneous invention of language, which would then have been readily passed on among individuals and populations of this species that was already biologically enabled for it".

I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

QUOTE: Much more likely is that mutual reinforcement occurred between symbolic thought and spoken language as, amid the climatic rigors of late Pleistocene Africa, members of a small isolate of Homo sapiens possessing language-ready brains spontaneously began to attach specific meanings to strings of sounds, and to combine them into organized thoughts and utterances.

All forms of “language” entail attaching specific meanings to sounds, gestures, chemical excretions, even if the organized thoughts and utterances are vastly more rudimentary than our own. The question is whether the brain, larynx etc originally complexified as a result of our ancestors endeavouring to organize their thoughts and utterances, or the changes took place beforehand via a number of random mutations, or via the hand of your God. I would say the first of these is at least as likely as the second and third.

DAVID: Full support for my view. When the material brain evolved to the proper complex form, humans could then learn to use it for language creation. Evolution of language is done by humans who are brain capable. The process of evolution did not evolve immaterial language.

Once the apparatus is there, of course humans will learn to use it – use is what leads to evolution, both material and immaterial. The pre-whale’s leg exists for walking, is used for swimming, and evolves into the flipper. The brain exists, pre-humans use it and other existing elements (larynx, tongue etc.) to communicate, and new demands lead to all the evolutionary changes that finally allow for human speech. Human speech exists, and produces language which evolves from comparatively simple utterances to increasingly complex structures as required by an ever expanding range of thought. (This process is of course mirrored by language learning itself, as children progress from the simple to the complex.)

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 20:23 (1608 days ago) @ dhw

I hope you won’t mind, but I have changed the title of this thread, as we have left Dennett and Egnor far behind us.

DAVID: The evolution of language requires a complex brain ready for it:
https://inference-review.com/letter/tough-luck
QUOTE: "A major difficulty here is that, as an abstract quality, language does not preserve directly in any material historical record. As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology.

dhw: It is indeed a major difficulty. The basic assumption seems to be that for 100,000 years, our immediate ancestors communicated with grunts and arm wavings, even though they had the anatomy to create the same variety of sounds we use today. I don’t buy it.

OK. I'm sure they had brief sounds and arm motions, but had to learn how to use the new brain.


QUOTE: That potential had probably arisen in the neural rewiring that occurred as part of the radical developmental reorganization that produced anatomically modern Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. Language acquisition would almost certainly have been biologically possible for members of any structurally recognizable Homo sapiens population.

Precisely. So why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago?

Precisely, but it took time to learn to use it.

dhw: Obviously to nothing like the extent that it is used today, because language evolves. Indirect proxy evidence does not explain why the anatomy changed in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t provide one jot of evidence that 150,000 years ago our ancestors were not already using sounds we use today in order to communicate with one another.

Some sounds, yes, but not language as we know it.


QUOTE: "In our view, as well as in Berwick and Chomsky’s, the potential for modern human cognition was almost certainly born some 200,000 years ago with anatomical Homo sapiens. The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind. The evolutionary phenomenon involved here is a routine one. The most plausible cultural stimulus was the spontaneous invention of language, which would then have been readily passed on among individuals and populations of this species that was already biologically enabled for it".

dhw: I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

Read the article. They use signs of conceptualization.


QUOTE: Much more likely is that mutual reinforcement occurred between symbolic thought and spoken language as, amid the climatic rigors of late Pleistocene Africa, members of a small isolate of Homo sapiens possessing language-ready brains spontaneously began to attach specific meanings to strings of sounds, and to combine them into organized thoughts and utterances.

dhw: All forms of “language” entail attaching specific meanings to sounds, gestures, chemical excretions, even if the organized thoughts and utterances are vastly more rudimentary than our own. The question is whether the brain, larynx etc originally complexified as a result of our ancestors endeavouring to organize their thoughts and utterances, or the changes took place beforehand via a number of random mutations, or via the hand of your God. I would say the first of these is at least as likely as the second and third.

And of course I fully disagree. Larynx and brain changes first from god.


DAVID: Full support for my view. When the material brain evolved to the proper complex form, humans could then learn to use it for language creation. Evolution of language is done by humans who are brain capable. The process of evolution did not evolve immaterial language.

dhw: Once the apparatus is there, of course humans will learn to use it – use is what leads to evolution, both material and immaterial. The pre-whale’s leg exists for walking, is used for swimming, and evolves into the flipper. The brain exists, pre-humans use it and other existing elements (larynx, tongue etc.) to communicate, and new demands lead to all the evolutionary changes that finally allow for human speech. Human speech exists, and produces language which evolves from comparatively simple utterances to increasingly complex structures as required by an ever expanding range of thought. (This process is of course mirrored by language learning itself, as children progress from the simple to the complex.)

But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Thursday, October 24, 2019, 10:45 (1608 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "A major difficulty here is that, as an abstract quality, language does not preserve directly in any material historical record. As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology.

dhw: It is indeed a major difficulty. The basic assumption seems to be that for 100,000 years, our immediate ancestors communicated with grunts and arm wavings, even though they had the anatomy to create the same variety of sounds we use today. I don’t buy it.

DAVID: OK. I'm sure they had brief sounds and arm motions, but had to learn how to use the new brain.

We have no idea what sounds they used. But of course once the apparatus was in place (I suggest it came into being because there was a need for it), its use evolved as humans continued to build on the work of their predecessors. That is how all the immaterial products of our consciousness evolve.

dhw: Why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago?

DAVID: Precisely, but it took time to learn to use it.

Yes, evolution takes time, but that does not mean there was no progress for 100,000 years. We have no way of knowing!

dhw: Indirect proxy evidence does not explain why the anatomy changed in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t provide one jot of evidence that 150,000 years ago our ancestors were not already using sounds we use today in order to communicate with one another.

DAVID: Some sounds, yes, but not language as we know it.

Just like material evolution, we can assume that language as we know it has evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities. We have absolutely no idea what level it had reached 150,000 or 100,000 years ago, but of course it is perfectly reasonable to assume that it was not as complex as it is now.

QUOTE: "The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.“

dhw: I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

DAVID: Read the article. They use signs of conceptualization.

I have now read it. There is no mention of specific “archaeological indications”. Or perhaps you have spotted something I missed.

dhw: The question is whether the brain, larynx etc originally complexified as a result of our ancestors endeavouring to organize their thoughts and utterances, or the changes took place beforehand via a number of random mutations, or via the hand of your God. I would say the first of these is at least as likely as the second and third.

DAVID: And of course I fully disagree. Larynx and brain changes first from god.

I know that is your guess. As a good and true agnostic, I am presenting the alternatives.

dhw: Once the apparatus is there, of course humans will learn to use it – use is what leads to evolution, both material and immaterial. […] Human speech exists, and produces language which evolves from comparatively simple utterances to increasingly complex structures as required by an ever expanding range of thought. (This process is of course mirrored by language learning itself, as children progress from the simple to the complex.)

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 24, 2019, 19:12 (1607 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: OK. I'm sure they had brief sounds and arm motions, but had to learn how to use the new brain.

dhw: We have no idea what sounds they used. But of course once the apparatus was in place (I suggest it came into being because there was a need for it), its use evolved as humans continued to build on the work of their predecessors. That is how all the immaterial products of our consciousness evolve.

I'm sure they used onomatopoeia mimicking sounds, like our word bark.


dhw: Why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago?

DAVID: Precisely, but it took time to learn to use it.

dhw: Yes, evolution takes time, but that does not mean there was no progress for 100,000 years. We have no way of knowing!

Probably minor progress.


dhw: Indirect proxy evidence does not explain why the anatomy changed in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t provide one jot of evidence that 150,000 years ago our ancestors were not already using sounds we use today in order to communicate with one another.

DAVID: Some sounds, yes, but not language as we know it.

dhw: Just like material evolution, we can assume that language as we know it has evolved from simple beginnings to current complexities. We have absolutely no idea what level it had reached 150,000 or 100,000 years ago, but of course it is perfectly reasonable to assume that it was not as complex as it is now.

I agree. Language development needed time once our complex brain appeared


QUOTE: "The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.“

dhw: I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

DAVID: Read the article. They use signs of conceptualization.

dhw: I have now read it. There is no mention of specific “archaeological indications”. Or perhaps you have spotted something I missed.

In paragraph two:

"As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology."

I infer tool design and other findings.


dhw: Once the apparatus is there, of course humans will learn to use it – use is what leads to evolution, both material and immaterial. […] Human speech exists, and produces language which evolves from comparatively simple utterances to increasingly complex structures as required by an ever expanding range of thought. (This process is of course mirrored by language learning itself, as children progress from the simple to the complex.)

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

Needs do not automatically design answers. That is your leftover from Darwin.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Friday, October 25, 2019, 11:24 (1607 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: OK. I'm sure they had brief sounds and arm motions, but had to learn how to use the new brain.

dhw: We have no idea what sounds they used. But of course once the apparatus was in place (I suggest it came into being because there was a need for it), its use evolved as humans continued to build on the work of their predecessors. That is how all the immaterial products of our consciousness evolve.

DAVID: I'm sure they used onomatopoeia mimicking sounds, like our word bark.

Well, good for you, being so sure. Even animal languages are made up of sounds that carry meaning, but their range depends on the apparatus at their disposal. If early sapiens had the apparatus, why do you assume they were unable to make sounds that conveyed meanings other than woof woof? Do you honestly believe they were incapable of using sounds to organize themselves for all their activities, pass information to one another, make comments, communicate generally?

dhw: Why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago?

DAVID: Precisely, but it took time to learn to use it.

dhw: Yes, evolution takes time, but that does not mean there was no progress for 100,000 years. We have no way of knowing!

DAVID: Probably minor progress.

Progress is progress. I find it absurd to state that the apparatus must have lain “fallow” (see below) for 100,000 years when there is not one iota of evidence to call on.

QUOTE: "The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.

dhw: I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

DAVID: In paragraph two:
"As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology."

DAVID: I infer tool design and other findings.

Tool design preceded sapiens by thousands and thousands of years! I’d like to know what the “other findings” were, but in any case, they will prove nothing. I don’t for one minute imagine that Mr Ug said to his neighbour: “I say, old chap, that’s a damn fine axe you’ve just made”, but I have no doubt he would have had a special sound for “axe”, just as we probably have at least 5000 special sounds, depending on what language we speak. And I have no doubt that language evolves in accordance with an ever increasing range of things to be expressed. We have no way of knowing what the range was 200,000, 175,000,150,000, or 100,000 years ago, and this "major difficulty" is not resolved by "inferences from indirect proxy evidence".

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: Needs do not automatically design answers. That is your leftover from Darwin.

Of course needs don’t design anything! I propose that it is the organism which designs its response to a need! And to anticipate your usual objection, it may have been your God who gave organisms the autonomous ability to design their own responses.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Friday, October 25, 2019, 23:13 (1606 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm sure they used onomatopoeia mimicking sounds, like our word bark.

dhw: Well, good for you, being so sure. Even animal languages are made up of sounds that carry meaning, but their range depends on the apparatus at their disposal. If early sapiens had the apparatus, why do you assume they were unable to make sounds that conveyed meanings other than woof woof? Do you honestly believe they were incapable of using sounds to organize themselves for all their activities, pass information to one another, make comments, communicate generally?

The expert linguists think it took lots of time to develop rules of grammar. I'm sure they used sound-alike 'words' and gestures and slowly dev eloped, never all at once, which is impossible.


dhw: Why assume that the potential was not already in use 200,000 years ago?

DAVID: Precisely, but it took time to learn to use it.

dhw: Yes, evolution takes time, but that does not mean there was no progress for 100,000 years. We have no way of knowing!

DAVID: Probably minor progress.

dhw:Progress is progress. I find it absurd to state that the apparatus must have lain “fallow” (see below) for 100,000 years when there is not one iota of evidence to call on.

QUOTE: "The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.

It progressed as above.


dhw: I wish they would be more specific about the “archaeological indications” (perhaps they are - I don't have time to read the whole article) but whatever these are, why should we not assume that they themselves were a “cultural stimulus” resulting from new ideas. It is new ideas that demand new language, not the other way around.

DAVID: In paragraph two:
"As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology."

DAVID: I infer tool design and other findings.

dhw: Tool design preceded sapiens by thousands and thousands of years! I’d like to know what the “other findings” were, but in any case, they will prove nothing. I don’t for one minute imagine that Mr Ug said to his neighbour: “I say, old chap, that’s a damn fine axe you’ve just made”, but I have no doubt he would have had a special sound for “axe”, just as we probably have at least 5000 special sounds, depending on what language we speak. And I have no doubt that language evolves in accordance with an ever increasing range of things to be expressed. We have no way of knowing what the range was 200,000, 175,000,150,000, or 100,000 years ago, and this "major difficulty" is not resolved by "inferences from indirect proxy evidence".

But that is what the linguists write! They may have used sound-alike, like mimicking the sound of an ax striking. Our word 'chop' sounds like that.


DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all teh new complexity.


DAVID: Needs do not automatically design answers. That is your leftover from Darwin.

dhw: Of course needs don’t design anything! I propose that it is the organism which designs its response to a need! And to anticipate your usual objection, it may have been your God who gave organisms the autonomous ability to design their own responses.

Your usual neutral answer since you are not willing to explain design.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 12:58 (1606 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Do you honestly believe they were incapable of using sounds to organize themselves for all their activities, pass information to one another, make comments, communicate generally?

DAVID: The expert linguists think it took lots of time to develop rules of grammar. I'm sure they used sound-alike 'words' and gestures and slowly dev eloped, never all at once, which is impossible.

You don’t need to be an expert to know that it took lots of time to develop grammar! And who on earth has ever said that language developed all at once????

dhw: Yes, evolution takes time, but that does not mean there was no progress for 100,000 years. We have no way of knowing!

DAVID: Probably minor progress.

dhw:Progress is progress. I find it absurd to state that the apparatus must have lain “fallow” (see below) for 100,000 years when there is not one iota of evidence to call on.

QUOTE: "The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.“

DAVID: It progressed as above.

I am asking how anyone can possibly know that it did NOT progress (i.e. “lay fallow”) for 100,000 years. I presume you now agree with me. Thank you.

QUOTE: "As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology."

dhw: […] I have no doubt that language evolves in accordance with an ever increasing range of things to be expressed. We have no way of knowing what the range was 200,000, 175,000,150,000, or 100,000 years ago, and this "major difficulty" is not resolved by "inferences from indirect proxy evidence".

DAVID: But that is what the linguists write! They may have used sound-alike, like mimicking the sound of an ax striking. Our word 'chop' sounds like that.

Of course they “may” have used onomatopoeic words, but there is no linguist on earth who can tell you that they didn’t use other sounds as well to communicate ideas, feelings, intentions, decisions etc.

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all teh new complexity.

I have suggested that there must have been a stage at which the capacity of the existing brain was not great enough to fulfil all the demands being made on it. Additional cells were required – hence expansion. And just to anticipate your usual comment, as endless expansion would not have been possible, the cells improved their efficiency to such a degree that there has even been a small contraction in modern man.

DAVID: Needs do not automatically design answers. That is your leftover from Darwin.

dhw: Of course needs don’t design anything! I propose that it is the organism which designs its response to a need! And to anticipate your usual objection, it may have been your God who gave organisms the autonomous ability to design their own responses.

DAVID: Your usual neutral answer since you are not willing to explain design.

I would dearly love to be able to explain design. I am not willing to accept either the theory that the first cells that formed the basis of all subsequent life were designed by chance (I am not an atheist), or the theory that they were designed by an unknown, sourceless, eternal, immaterial conscious mind (I am not a theist). One way or the other, I must be wrong, but that does not mean you are right. Yes, agnostics are neutral.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 15:38 (1606 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "As a result, the use of language and of any of its putative precursors has to be inferred from indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology."

dhw: […] I have no doubt that language evolves in accordance with an ever increasing range of things to be expressed. We have no way of knowing what the range was 200,000, 175,000,150,000, or 100,000 years ago, and this "major difficulty" is not resolved by "inferences from indirect proxy evidence".

DAVID: But that is what the linguists write! They may have used sound-alike, like mimicking the sound of an ax striking. Our word 'chop' sounds like that.

Of course they “may” have used onomatopoeic words, but there is no linguist on earth who can tell you that they didn’t use other sounds as well to communicate ideas, feelings, intentions, decisions etc.

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all the new complexity.

dhw; I have suggested that there must have been a stage at which the capacity of the existing brain was not great enough to fulfil all the demands being made on it. Additional cells were required – hence expansion. And just to anticipate your usual comment, as endless expansion would not have been possible, the cells improved their efficiency to such a degree that there has even been a small contraction in modern man.

What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.


DAVID: Needs do not automatically design answers. That is your leftover from Darwin.

dhw: Of course needs don’t design anything! I propose that it is the organism which designs its response to a need! And to anticipate your usual objection, it may have been your God who gave organisms the autonomous ability to design their own responses.

DAVID: Your usual neutral answer since you are not willing to explain design.

dhw: I would dearly love to be able to explain design. I am not willing to accept either the theory that the first cells that formed the basis of all subsequent life were designed by chance (I am not an atheist), or the theory that they were designed by an unknown, sourceless, eternal, immaterial conscious mind (I am not a theist). One way or the other, I must be wrong, but that does not mean you are right. Yes, agnostics are neutral.

No surprise.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 09:06 (1605 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all the new complexity.

dhw: I have suggested that there must have been a stage at which the capacity of the existing brain was not great enough to fulfil all the demands being made on it. Additional cells were required – hence expansion. And just to anticipate your usual comment, as endless expansion would not have been possible, the cells improved their efficiency to such a degree that there has even been a small contraction in modern man.

DAVID: What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.

We have covered this before, but there's no harm in repeating the argument. Earlier you mentioned tools as possible examples of the authors’ “indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology”. Then imagine a smaller-brained pre-sapiens out hunting. In order to kill his prey with a sharpened piece of stone, he has to get close up, and this is dangerous, so he suddenly has an idea (formulated in his own “language”, of course): “Maybe me can throw sharp thing from distance.” And so he invents the spear – but as we know from our modern studies, any new task requires adjustments within the brain, and in this case there are unprecedented concepts to be put into practice: attaching the sharpened stone to a shaft, getting the weapon properly balanced, learning to throw with accuracy etc. The implementation of the concept is what expands the brain – and this same process continues for thousands of years until the brain can expand no more (H. sapiens), and then complexification takes over. In brief, the brain does not expand until new concepts demand expansion. And of course the skull must expand once the brain demands more space. This is how cell communities work together – whether your God preprogrammed them to do so, or (theistic version) gave them the autonomous ability to do so (remember what you said: “from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses”). Is this not a more logical progression than the brain expanding for no particular reason (chance mutations) or your God adding a bunch of extra cells to enable my guy to receive His (God’s) brilliant idea?

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 17:28 (1604 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all the new complexity.

dhw: I have suggested that there must have been a stage at which the capacity of the existing brain was not great enough to fulfil all the demands being made on it. Additional cells were required – hence expansion. And just to anticipate your usual comment, as endless expansion would not have been possible, the cells improved their efficiency to such a degree that there has even been a small contraction in modern man.

DAVID: What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.

dhw: We have covered this before, but there's no harm in repeating the argument. Earlier you mentioned tools as possible examples of the authors’ “indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology”. Then imagine a smaller-brained pre-sapiens out hunting. In order to kill his prey with a sharpened piece of stone, he has to get close up, and this is dangerous, so he suddenly has an idea (formulated in his own “language”, of course): “Maybe me can throw sharp thing from distance.” And so he invents the spear – but as we know from our modern studies, any new task requires adjustments within the brain, and in this case there are unprecedented concepts to be put into practice: attaching the sharpened stone to a shaft, getting the weapon properly balanced, learning to throw with accuracy etc. The implementation of the concept is what expands the brain – and this same process continues for thousands of years until the brain can expand no more (H. sapiens), and then complexification takes over. In brief, the brain does not expand until new concepts demand expansion.

Same argument: the brain expansion jumped 200 cc with each new fossil development in the homo line, Complexification in the only brain we know caused shrinkage!

dhw: And of course the skull must expand once the brain demands more space. This is how cell communities work together – whether your God preprogrammed them to do so, or (theistic version) gave them the autonomous ability to do so (remember what you said: “from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses”). Is this not a more logical progression than the brain expanding for no particular reason (chance mutations) or your God adding a bunch of extra cells to enable my guy to receive His (God’s) brilliant idea?

Good idea! You have brain cell committees telling skull bone cell committees what to do in unison. Just like the birth problems of bigger brains by 200 cc, requiring the committee
cells of the father, the mother and the baby to cooperate. Only a designer in full control, and you have no answer.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Monday, October 28, 2019, 10:34 (1604 days ago) @ David Turell

Sadly we have now digressed from the evolution of language to the evolution of the brain, but I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

DAVID: What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.

dhw: We have covered this before, but there's no harm in repeating the argument. Earlier you mentioned tools as possible examples of the authors’ “indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology”. Then imagine a smaller-brained pre-sapiens out hunting. In order to kill his prey with a sharpened piece of stone, he has to get close up, and this is dangerous, so he suddenly has an idea (formulated in his own “language”, of course): “Maybe me can throw sharp thing from distance.” And so he invents the spear – but as we know from our modern studies, any new task requires adjustments within the brain, and in this case there are unprecedented concepts to be put into practice: attaching the sharpened stone to a shaft, getting the weapon properly balanced, learning to throw with accuracy etc. The implementation of the concept is what expands the brain – and this same process continues for thousands of years until the brain can expand no more (H. sapiens), and then complexification takes over. In brief, the brain does not expand until new concepts demand expansion.

DAVID: Same argument: the brain expansion jumped 200 cc with each new fossil development in the homo line, Complexification in the only brain we know caused shrinkage!

I have suggested that each jump was due to new demands which exceeded the capacity of the existing brains, and I have explained that complexification would have taken over completely when the brain had reached optimum size, and it proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk. What is it that you object to?

dhw: And of course the skull must expand once the brain demands more space. This is how cell communities work together – whether your God preprogrammed them to do so, or (theistic version) gave them the autonomous ability to do so (remember what you said: “from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses”). Is this not a more logical progression than the brain expanding for no particular reason (chance mutations) or your God adding a bunch of extra cells to enable my guy to receive His (God’s) brilliant idea?

DAVID: Good idea! You have brain cell committees telling skull bone cell committees what to do in unison. Just like the birth problems of bigger brains by 200 cc, requiring the committee cells of the father, the mother and the baby to cooperate. Only a designer in full control, and you have no answer.

Of course they must all work in unison, as above and regardless of whether your God preprogrammed or dabbled them, or gave them the ability to organize themselves! I haven’t read James Tour, but I like what you say about him: “Read James Tour and recognize the extreme difficulty of creating something new in organic chemistry, a job cells do easily all the time.” I am quite prepared to acknowledge the possibility that your God designed these innovative, intelligent cells, but as always I acknowledge that this is an unproven theory, as is your own.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Monday, October 28, 2019, 14:22 (1604 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Sadly we have now digressed from the evolution of language to the evolution of the brain, but I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

Language appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution. Learning to use it took time and simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization which slowly developed. i agree.


DAVID: What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.

dhw: We have covered this before, but there's no harm in repeating the argument. Earlier you mentioned tools as possible examples of the authors’ “indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology”. Then imagine a smaller-brained pre-sapiens out hunting. In order to kill his prey with a sharpened piece of stone, he has to get close up, and this is dangerous, so he suddenly has an idea (formulated in his own “language”, of course): “Maybe me can throw sharp thing from distance.” And so he invents the spear – but as we know from our modern studies, any new task requires adjustments within the brain, and in this case there are unprecedented concepts to be put into practice: attaching the sharpened stone to a shaft, getting the weapon properly balanced, learning to throw with accuracy etc. The implementation of the concept is what expands the brain – and this same process continues for thousands of years until the brain can expand no more (H. sapiens), and then complexification takes over. In brief, the brain does not expand until new concepts demand expansion.

DAVID: Same argument: the brain expansion jumped 200 cc with each new fossil development in the homo line, Complexification in the only brain we know caused shrinkage!

dhw: I have suggested that each jump was due to new demands which exceeded the capacity of the existing brains, and I have explained that complexification would have taken over completely when the brain had reached optimum size, and it proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk. What is it that you object to?

The same opposite point. Bigger brain first, then use of it learned over time.


dhw: And of course the skull must expand once the brain demands more space. This is how cell communities work together – whether your God preprogrammed them to do so, or (theistic version) gave them the autonomous ability to do so (remember what you said: “from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses”). Is this not a more logical progression than the brain expanding for no particular reason (chance mutations) or your God adding a bunch of extra cells to enable my guy to receive His (God’s) brilliant idea?

DAVID: Good idea! You have brain cell committees telling skull bone cell committees what to do in unison. Just like the birth problems of bigger brains by 200 cc, requiring the committee cells of the father, the mother and the baby to cooperate. Only a designer in full control, and you have no answer.

dhw: Of course they must all work in unison, as above and regardless of whether your God preprogrammed or dabbled them, or gave them the ability to organize themselves! I haven’t read James Tour, but I like what you say about him: “Read James Tour and recognize the extreme difficulty of creating something new in organic chemistry, a job cells do easily all the time.” I am quite prepared to acknowledge the possibility that your God designed these innovative, intelligent cells, but as always I acknowledge that this is an unproven theory, as is your own.

We are only arguing theory. Absolute proof is not available.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 10:49 (1603 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Sadly we have now digressed from the evolution of language to the evolution of the brain, but I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

DAVID: Language appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution. Learning to use it took time and simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization which slowly developed. i agree.

Thank you. If I had to make such a general statement, I would be a little more cautious, and I would certainly not say “learning to use” language took time, as that seems to presuppose its prior existence. Human language as we know it probably appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution, accompanied by other anatomical changes. Its development took time, and it is likely that simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization. It has continued to evolve, and will no doubt do so as long as humans survive.

dhw: I have suggested that each jump was due to new demands which exceeded the capacity of the existing brains, and I have explained that complexification would have taken over completely when the brain had reached optimum size, and it proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk. What is it that you object to?

DAVID: The same opposite point. Bigger brain first, then use of it learned over time.

There is no “opposite” here. After each expansion (which in my hypothesis was caused by demands that exceeded the existing capacity) of course the owner of the new sized brain would use it to implement new concepts until once more its capacity was exceeded and another expansion became necessary. Eventually there came the final expansion (same cause) and from then on complexification had to take over. So we have small brain to start with, then bigger brain which is used over time until the next bigger brain. The difference between us is that you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion in anticipation of new demands, whereas I propose a natural sequence of brain responding to new demands - which I see as one logical cause of all evolutionary change, the other being exploitation of new opportunities.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 14:05 (1603 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Sadly we have now digressed from the evolution of language to the evolution of the brain, but I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

DAVID: Language appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution. Learning to use it took time and simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization which slowly developed. i agree.

dhw: Thank you. If I had to make such a general statement, I would be a little more cautious, and I would certainly not say “learning to use” language took time, as that seems to presuppose its prior existence. Human language as we know it probably appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution, accompanied by other anatomical changes. Its development took time, and it is likely that simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization. It has continued to evolve, and will no doubt do so as long as humans survive.

You seem to be supporting my approach. We had the brain to develop language with grammar rules, and then they developed by usage of word sounds.


dhw: I have suggested that each jump was due to new demands which exceeded the capacity of the existing brains, and I have explained that complexification would have taken over completely when the brain had reached optimum size, and it proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk. What is it that you object to?

DAVID: The same opposite point. Bigger brain first, then use of it learned over time.

dhw: There is no “opposite” here. After each expansion (which in my hypothesis was caused by demands that exceeded the existing capacity) of course the owner of the new sized brain would use it to implement new concepts until once more its capacity was exceeded and another expansion became necessary. Eventually there came the final expansion (same cause) and from then on complexification had to take over. So we have small brain to start with, then bigger brain which is used over time until the next bigger brain. The difference between us is that you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion in anticipation of new demands, whereas I propose a natural sequence of brain responding to new demands - which I see as one logical cause of all evolutionary change, the other being exploitation of new opportunities.

You always use Darwin in your thinking: Nature's demands drive evolution. See below:

https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/moths-ears-developed-millions-of-years-before-bat...

"From ScienceDaily:
"Butterflies and moths rank among the most diverse groups in the animal kingdom, with nearly 160,000 known species, ranging from the iconic blue morpho to the crop-devouring armyworm.
Scientists have long attributed these insects’ rich variety to their close connections with other organisms. Butterflies, they hypothesized, evolved in tandem with the plants they fed on, and moths developed sophisticated defense mechanisms in response to bats, their main predators.
"Now, a new study examines these classic hypotheses by shining a light on the early history of Lepidoptera, the order that includes moths and butterflies. Using the largest-ever data set assembled for the group, an international team of researchers created an evolutionary family tree for Lepidoptera and used fossils to estimate when moths and butterflies evolved key traits.
"Their findings show that flowering plants did drive much of these insects’ diversity. In a surprise twist, however, multiple moth lineages evolved “ears” millions of years before the existence of bats, previously credited with triggering moths’ development of hearing organs.
“Having a fossil-dated family tree gives us our most detailed look yet at the evolutionary history of moths and butterflies,” said the study’s lead author Akito Kawahara, University of Florida associate professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. “We’ve thought for a long time that flowering plants must have contributed to the extraordinary number of moth and butterfly species we see today, but we haven’t been able to test that. This study helps us see if prior hypotheses line up, and what we find is that the plant hypothesis does, but the bat hypothesis does not.”
"The research also suggests lepidopterans are much older than previously thought, with the shared ancestor of today’s butterflies and moths likely appearing about 300 million years ago — roughly 100 years earlier than previous estimates.
"A seminal 1964 paper by Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven used the tightly interwoven relationships between butterflies and flowering plants as the foundation for the theory of coevolution — the idea that different organism groups evolve in response to one another. "

Comment: Note God's pre-programming moth's ears for the later coming of bats! See paper:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1907847116 in next entry.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 14:14 (1603 days ago) @ David Turell

Preparing for the future problems in evolution:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1907847116

"Abstract

"Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are one of the major superradiations of insects, comprising nearly 160,000 described extant species. As herbivores, pollinators, and prey, Lepidoptera play a fundamental role in almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Lepidoptera are also indicators of environmental change and serve as models for research on mimicry and genetics. They have been central to the development of coevolutionary hypotheses, such as butterflies with flowering plants and moths’ evolutionary arms race with echolocating bats. However, these hypotheses have not been rigorously tested, because a robust lepidopteran phylogeny and timing of evolutionary novelties are lacking. To address these issues, we inferred a comprehensive phylogeny of Lepidoptera, using the largest dataset assembled for the order (2,098 orthologous protein-coding genes from transcriptomes of 186 species, representing nearly all superfamilies), and dated it with carefully evaluated synapomorphy-based fossils. The oldest members of the Lepidoptera crown group appeared in the Late Carboniferous (∼300 Ma) and fed on nonvascular land plants. Lepidoptera evolved the tube-like proboscis in the Middle Triassic (∼241 Ma), which allowed them to acquire nectar from flowering plants. This morphological innovation, along with other traits, likely promoted the extraordinary diversification of superfamily-level lepidopteran crown groups. The ancestor of butterflies was likely nocturnal, and our results indicate that butterflies became day-flying in the Late Cretaceous (∼98 Ma). Moth hearing organs arose multiple times before the evolutionary arms race between moths and bats, perhaps initially detecting a wide range of sound frequencies before being co-opted to specifically detect bat sonar. Our study provides an essential framework for future comparative studies on butterfly and moth evolution." (my bold)

Comment: Note my bold! This shows what can be present before its use by God's design of evolution. Brain first, use second, as in the development of language. Demands of evolution drive adaptations, not giant steps in evolution as in speciation, which are much more than accumulations of adaptations. I still say Darwin is dead except for our evolutionary descent from common ancestors.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 11:51 (1602 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

DAVID: Language appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution. Learning to use it took time and simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization which slowly developed. i agree.

dhw: Thank you. If I had to make such a general statement, I would be a little more cautious, and I would certainly not say “learning to use” language took time, as that seems to presuppose its prior existence. Human language as we know it probably appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution, accompanied by other anatomical changes. Its development took time, and it is likely that simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization. It has continued to evolve, and will no doubt do so as long as humans survive.

DAVID: You seem to be supporting my approach. We had the brain to develop language with grammar rules, and then they developed by usage of word sounds.

I have refined your own statement, which ended with you agreeing with my statement! There is no disagreement between us on the above. The disagreement is as follows, though this again takes us away from language in particular to evolution in general:

dhw: The difference between us is that you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion in anticipation of new demands, whereas I propose a natural sequence of brain responding to new demands - which I see as one logical cause of all evolutionary change, the other being exploitation of new opportunities.

DAVID: You always use Darwin in your thinking: Nature's demands drive evolution.

You’ve left out exploitation of new conditions, and I will remind you that I also subscribe to Margulis’s theory of cooperation as a crucial factor in evolutionary development. You seem to think that the very mention of Darwin somehow eradicates the logic of the thinking. I wish you would consider the argument itself. You now digress from language altogether and try to find a butterfly/moth example to prove that your God makes changes in anticipation of demand. I admire your research, but this is a very time-consuming exercise which, as it turns out, provides confirmation of my own view anyway. Here are the relevant quotes:

"Their findings show that flowering plants did drive much of these insects’ diversity. In a surprise twist, however, multiple moth lineages evolved “ears” millions of years before the existence of bats, previously credited with triggering moths’ development of hearing organs.
This study helps us see if prior hypotheses line up, and what we find is that the plant hypothesis does [dhw: one up for cooperation], but the bat hypothesis does not.”

This is the point at which you think the example supports you. It doesn’t.

The ancestor of butterflies was likely nocturnal, and our results indicate that butterflies became day-flying in the Late Cretaceous (∼98 Ma). Moth hearing organs arose multiple times before the evolutionary arms race between moths and bats, perhaps initially detecting a wide range of sound frequencies before being co-opted to specifically detect bat sonar. (David's bold)

And there is your answer, kindly bolded by yourself. Moths are nocturnal. It’s therefore perfectly logical to assume that they needed “ears” if they were to function smoothly in the darkness. When bats came on the scene, their already existing ears (previously used to help them work in the dark) had to find ways of dealing with the new threat, or they would perish.

DAVID: […] This shows what can be present before its use by God's design of evolution.

No it doesn't. Your authors explicitly (and perfectly logically) allow for the possibility that moths used their ears before bats came on the scene, to detect a wide range of sound frequencies to help them in their nocturnal way of life, and then they adapted their “ears” to combat the new threat.

DAVID: Brain first, use second, as in the development of language. Demands of evolution drive adaptations, not giant steps in evolution as in speciation, which are much more than accumulations of adaptations. I still say Darwin is dead except for our evolutionary descent from common ancestors.

I have already agreed many times over that we do not know to what extent cell communities are capable of the innovations required for speciation. (You told us, however, that James Tour says cells easily create something new all the time.) But you were trying to prove that your God made changes in anticipation of new problems, whereas the example shows quite clearly that this was simply an adaptation of an already functioning organ in response to a new problem.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 14:53 (1602 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You seem to be supporting my approach. We had the brain to develop language with grammar rules, and then they developed by usage of word sounds.

dhw: I have refined your own statement, which ended with you agreeing with my statement! There is no disagreement between us on the above. The disagreement is as follows, though this again takes us away from language in particular to evolution in general:

dhw: The difference between us is that you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion in anticipation of new demands, whereas I propose a natural sequence of brain responding to new demands - which I see as one logical cause of all evolutionary change, the other being exploitation of new opportunities.

DAVID: You always use Darwin in your thinking: Nature's demands drive evolution.

dhw: You’ve left out exploitation of new conditions, and I will remind you that I also subscribe to Margulis’s theory of cooperation as a crucial factor in evolutionary development. You seem to think that the very mention of Darwin somehow eradicates the logic of the thinking. I wish you would consider the argument itself. You now digress from language altogether and try to find a butterfly/moth example to prove that your God makes changes in anticipation of demand. I admire your research, but this is a very time-consuming exercise which, as it turns out, provides confirmation of my own view anyway. Here are the relevant quotes:

"Their findings show that flowering plants did drive much of these insects’ diversity. In a surprise twist, however, multiple moth lineages evolved “ears” millions of years before the existence of bats, previously credited with triggering moths’ development of hearing organs.
This study helps us see if prior hypotheses line up, and what we find is that the plant hypothesis does [dhw: one up for cooperation], but the bat hypothesis does not.”

This is the point at which you think the example supports you. It doesn’t.

The ancestor of butterflies was likely nocturnal, and our results indicate that butterflies became day-flying in the Late Cretaceous (∼98 Ma). Moth hearing organs arose multiple times before the evolutionary arms race between moths and bats, perhaps initially detecting a wide range of sound frequencies before being co-opted to specifically detect bat sonar. (David's bold)

dhw: And there is your answer, kindly bolded by yourself. Moths are nocturnal. It’s therefore perfectly logical to assume that they needed “ears” if they were to function smoothly in the darkness. When bats came on the scene, their already existing ears (previously used to help them work in the dark) had to find ways of dealing with the new threat, or they would perish.

DAVID: […] This shows what can be present before its use by God's design of evolution.

dhw: No it doesn't. Your authors explicitly (and perfectly logically) allow for the possibility that moths used their ears before bats came on the scene, to detect a wide range of sound frequencies to help them in their nocturnal way of life, and then they adapted their “ears” to combat the new threat.

And what provided an original species of moths and later bats with ears at the start? Assuming needed ears requires anticipatory design, doesn't it?


DAVID: Brain first, use second, as in the development of language. Demands of evolution drive adaptations, not giant steps in evolution as in speciation, which are much more than accumulations of adaptations. I still say Darwin is dead except for our evolutionary descent from common ancestors.

dhw: I have already agreed many times over that we do not know to what extent cell communities are capable of the innovations required for speciation. (You told us, however, that James Tour says cells easily create something new all the time.) But you were trying to prove that your God made changes in anticipation of new problems, whereas the example shows quite clearly that this was simply an adaptation of an already functioning organ in response to a new problem.

I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Thursday, October 31, 2019, 11:54 (1601 days ago) @ David Turell

David has now left language behind and in order to prove that his God invents new organs (or changes existing organs) in advance of any need, he has cited the example of moths’ ears preceding their use in the war against bats.

QUOTE: “The ancestor of butterflies was likely nocturnal, and our results indicate that butterflies became day-flying in the Late Cretaceous (∼98 Ma). Moth hearing organs arose multiple times before the evolutionary arms race between moths and bats, perhaps initially detecting a wide range of sound frequencies before being co-opted to specifically detect bat sonar. (David's bold)

dhw: And there is your answer, kindly bolded by yourself. Moths are nocturnal. It’s therefore perfectly logical to assume that they needed “ears” if they were to function smoothly in the darkness. When bats came on the scene, their already existing ears (previously used to help them work in the dark) had to find ways of dealing with the new threat, or they would perish.

DAVID: […] This shows what can be present before its use by God's design of evolution.

dhw: No it doesn't. Your authors explicitly (and perfectly logically) allow for the possibility that moths used their ears before bats came on the scene, to detect a wide range of sound frequencies to help them in their nocturnal way of life, and then they adapted their “ears” to combat the new threat.

DAVID: And what provided an original species of moths and later bats with ears at the start? Assuming needed ears requires anticipatory design, doesn't it?

You were trying to prove that moth ears were invented before they were needed for the fight against bats. The article shows quite clearly that they had other uses and were then adapted to meet the new demands. So now you switch the argument to the origin of ears. Nobody can possibly know the circumstances in which every new organ, lifestyle and natural wonder first came into existence. The article itself is naturally vague on the subject: “Moth hearing organs arose multiple times...” (my bold).

DAVID: I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

They didn’t know ears would be needed! New species/organisms would be the RESULT of their immediate ancestors RESPONDING to new conditions! Common descent means that new organisms descend from earlier organisms. So an earlier organism for reasons unknown began to hunt by night, just as a pre-whale began to hunt in the water. A change of environment requires a change in the anatomy. Ability to hear becomes more important than ability to see, just as ability to swim becomes more important than ability to walk. There is no “analysis of future needs”. The analysis concerns how best to meet present needs (hunting in the dark, or swimming in the water). There is no “magic”. We know for a fact that cell communities cooperate and are able to adapt to changing conditions. What we don’t know is the extent to which they are able to innovate – although the borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear. I have always accepted that this ability may have been designed by your God, but the “magic” jibe is far better directed at your own theory: the unknown being called God forecast the future, and somehow provided programmes for every future undabbled organ and strategy etc., to be magically passed down and then switched on in advance of every future change in the environment over billions of years to come. But “you don’t recognize the problem.”

Under “Bacterial gut role”:
QUOTE: "The human gut is rife with bacteria. Feces contains about 100 billion bacterial cells per gram, and gut bacteria outnumber human cells 10 to 1. These microbes, collectively called the gut microbiome, take on all sorts of maintenance-type work, Mougous says. They digest food, keep the gut's surface intact, provide vitamins, and kick bad bacteria out.""

DAVID: Bacteria have been around ever since life started. Previous articles and this one show the important roles they still play. Start life and continue to help it.

You could hardly have a better example of cooperation. Here we have single cells – bacteria – all busily combining into communities fulfilling different roles within the great big community of communities that make up the single organism. We are not even conscious of the fact that they’re there, let alone of what they are doing for us. And what they do for us is what keeps them alive. But you like to sneer at Margulis, who emphasized the role of cooperation in evolution and was a firm believer in cellular intelligence.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 31, 2019, 19:10 (1600 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] This shows what can be present before its use by God's design of evolution.

dhw: No it doesn't. Your authors explicitly (and perfectly logically) allow for the possibility that moths used their ears before bats came on the scene, to detect a wide range of sound frequencies to help them in their nocturnal way of life, and then they adapted their “ears” to combat the new threat.

DAVID: And what provided an original species of moths and later bats with ears at the start? Assuming needed ears requires anticipatory design, doesn't it?

dhw: You were trying to prove that moth ears were invented before they were needed for the fight against bats. The article shows quite clearly that they had other uses and were then adapted to meet the new demands. So now you switch the argument to the origin of ears. Nobody can possibly know the circumstances in which every new organ, lifestyle and natural wonder first came into existence. The article itself is naturally vague on the subject: “Moth hearing organs arose multiple times...” (my bold).

You are still with Darwin-think, as the author's are. The designer recognized ears would be useful if flying in the dark. Who new when moths would fly before the appearance of the moths? The design requires recognition of the future for the moth's style of living.


DAVID: I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

dhw: They didn’t know ears would be needed! New species/organisms would be the RESULT of their immediate ancestors RESPONDING to new conditions! Common descent means that new organisms descend from earlier organisms. So an earlier organism for reasons unknown began to hunt by night, just as a pre-whale began to hunt in the water. A change of environment requires a change in the anatomy. Ability to hear becomes more important than ability to see, just as ability to swim becomes more important than ability to walk. There is no “analysis of future needs”. The analysis concerns how best to meet present needs (hunting in the dark, or swimming in the water). There is no “magic”. We know for a fact that cell communities cooperate and are able to adapt to changing conditions. What we don’t know is the extent to which they are able to innovate – although the borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear. I have always accepted that this ability may have been designed by your God, but the “magic” jibe is far better directed at your own theory: the unknown being called God forecast the future, and somehow provided programmes for every future undabbled organ and strategy etc., to be magically passed down and then switched on in advance of every future change in the environment over billions of years to come. But “you don’t recognize the problem.”

Typical Darwin think. It doesn't explain the gaps before new well-designed competent species appear. Even Gould recognized they appeared with no itty-bitty steps and invented punc-inc to gloss over the problem. David Berlinski describes Darwin theory as 'smudge evolution', things morphing into each new step in tiny hardly noticeable steps.


Under “Bacterial gut role”:
QUOTE: "The human gut is rife with bacteria. Feces contains about 100 billion bacterial cells per gram, and gut bacteria outnumber human cells 10 to 1. These microbes, collectively called the gut microbiome, take on all sorts of maintenance-type work, Mougous says. They digest food, keep the gut's surface intact, provide vitamins, and kick bad bacteria out.""

DAVID: Bacteria have been around ever since life started. Previous articles and this one show the important roles they still play. Start life and continue to help it.

dhw: You could hardly have a better example of cooperation. Here we have single cells – bacteria – all busily combining into communities fulfilling different roles within the great big community of communities that make up the single organism. We are not even conscious of the fact that they’re there, let alone of what they are doing for us. And what they do for us is what keeps them alive. But you like to sneer at Margulis, who emphasized the role of cooperation in evolution and was a firm believer in cellular intelligence.

A good stretch of Margulis' view of related cells. Bacteria help us but they are not us.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2019, 10:44 (1600 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You were trying to prove that moth ears were invented before they were needed for the fight against bats. The article shows quite clearly that they had other uses and were then adapted to meet the new demands. So now you switch the argument to the origin of ears. Nobody can possibly know the circumstances in which every new organ, lifestyle and natural wonder first came into existence. The article itself is naturally vague on the subject: “Moth hearing organs arose multiple times...” (my bold).

DAVID: You are still with Darwin-think, as the author's are. The designer recognized ears would be useful if flying in the dark. Who new when moths would fly before the appearance of the moths? The design requires recognition of the future for the moth's style of living.

More Darwinophobia. You say you believe in common descent. Your moths now seem to have no antecedents. See the next exchange for a full response.

DAVID: I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

dhw: They didn’t know ears would be needed! New species/organisms would be the RESULT of their immediate ancestors RESPONDING to new conditions! Common descent means that new organisms descend from earlier organisms. So an earlier organism for reasons unknown began to hunt by night, just as a pre-whale began to hunt in the water. A change of environment requires a change in the anatomy. Ability to hear becomes more important than ability to see, just as ability to swim becomes more important than ability to walk. There is no “analysis of future needs”. The analysis concerns how best to meet present needs (hunting in the dark, or swimming in the water). There is no “magic”. We know for a fact that cell communities cooperate and are able to adapt to changing conditions. What we don’t know is the extent to which they are able to innovate – although the borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear. I have always accepted that this ability may have been designed by your God, but the “magic” jibe is far better directed at your own theory: the unknown being called God forecast the future, and somehow provided programmes for every future undabbled organ and strategy etc., to be magically passed down and then switched on in advance of every future change in the environment over billions of years to come. But “you don’t recognize the problem.”

DAVID: Typical Darwin think. It doesn't explain the gaps before new well-designed competent species appear. Even Gould recognized they appeared with no itty-bitty steps and invented punc-inc to gloss over the problem. David Berlinski describes Darwin theory as 'smudge evolution', things morphing into each new step in tiny hardly noticeable steps.

Your obsessive hatred of Darwin has you lashing out in all directions. You began by telling us that moth ears were designed in advance of any need. I pointed out that the article showed the opposite. You then asked how cell communities knew in advance what they would need. I explained that they didn’t, and that they RESPONDED to current needs. And so now, for no reason whatsoever, and once again totally ignoring my response to your claims about clairvoyance, you have switched to gaps and itty bitty steps. You do not even bother to defend the “magic” you believe in. We have already agreed that Darwin was wrong when he claimed that natura non facit saltum, and even his faithful bulldog Huxley disagreed with him. Perhaps you will now respond to my post.

dhw: (under “bacterial gut role”): You could hardly have a better example of cooperation. Here we have single cells – bacteria – all busily combining into communities fulfilling different roles within the great big community of communities that make up the single organism. We are not even conscious of the fact that they’re there, let alone of what they are doing for us. And what they do for us is what keeps them alive. But you like to sneer at Margulis, who emphasized the role of cooperation in evolution and was a firm believer in cellular intelligence.

DAVID: A good stretch of Margulis' view of related cells. Bacteria help us but they are not us.
DAVID (summarizing the article): Each person has his own biome in his gut.

No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Friday, November 01, 2019, 20:24 (1599 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

dhw: They didn’t know ears would be needed! New species/organisms would be the RESULT of their immediate ancestors RESPONDING to new conditions! Common descent means that new organisms descend from earlier organisms. So an earlier organism for reasons unknown began to hunt by night, just as a pre-whale began to hunt in the water. A change of environment requires a change in the anatomy. Ability to hear becomes more important than ability to see, just as ability to swim becomes more important than ability to walk. There is no “analysis of future needs”. The analysis concerns how best to meet present needs (hunting in the dark, or swimming in the water). There is no “magic”. We know for a fact that cell communities cooperate and are able to adapt to changing conditions. What we don’t know is the extent to which they are able to innovate – although the borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear. I have always accepted that this ability may have been designed by your God, but the “magic” jibe is far better directed at your own theory: the unknown being called God forecast the future, and somehow provided programmes for every future undabbled organ and strategy etc., to be magically passed down and then switched on in advance of every future change in the environment over billions of years to come. But “you don’t recognize the problem.”

DAVID: Typical Darwin think. It doesn't explain the gaps before new well-designed competent species appear. Even Gould recognized they appeared with no itty-bitty steps and invented punc-inc to gloss over the problem. David Berlinski describes Darwin theory as 'smudge evolution', things morphing into each new step in tiny hardly noticeable steps.

dhw: Your obsessive hatred of Darwin has you lashing out in all directions. You began by telling us that moth ears were designed in advance of any need. I pointed out that the article showed the opposite. You then asked how cell communities knew in advance what they would need. I explained that they didn’t, and that they RESPONDED to current needs. And so now, for no reason whatsoever, and once again totally ignoring my response to your claims about clairvoyance, you have switched to gaps and itty bitty steps. You do not even bother to defend the “magic” you believe in. We have already agreed that Darwin was wrong when he claimed that natura non facit saltum, and even his faithful bulldog Huxley disagreed with him. Perhaps you will now respond to my post.

I don't hate Darwin. He didn't know enough to reach the right conclusions about evolution's methods. I think his followers are totally wrong. You are skipping over my point that the needs of a new species have to be anticipated in planning for the design of the species. The designer had to know in advance ears were necessary for the moth's like style. If moths had arrived without ears and couldn't pick up evidence of predators, they would not have survived. Survival needs have to be planned in advance. Species appear abruptly after gaps, no time given for modifications, remember Gould's point.


dhw: (under “bacterial gut role”): You could hardly have a better example of cooperation. Here we have single cells – bacteria – all busily combining into communities fulfilling different roles within the great big community of communities that make up the single organism. We are not even conscious of the fact that they’re there, let alone of what they are doing for us. And what they do for us is what keeps them alive. But you like to sneer at Margulis, who emphasized the role of cooperation in evolution and was a firm believer in cellular intelligence.

DAVID: A good stretch of Margulis' view of related cells. Bacteria help us but they are not us.
DAVID (summarizing the article): Each person has his own biome in his gut.

dhw: No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.

You interpretation is from the outside of any organism. Significance is that everything looks designed, so by your lights, 'maybe' it is designed. Dawkins says we must ignore that obvious point.

Evolution of Language

by dhw, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 12:24 (1599 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your obsessive hatred of Darwin has you lashing out in all directions. You began by telling us that moth ears were designed in advance of any need. I pointed out that the article showed the opposite. You then asked how cell communities knew in advance what they would need. I explained that they didn’t, and that they RESPONDED to current needs. And so now, for no reason whatsoever, and once again totally ignoring my response to your claims about clairvoyance, you have switched to gaps and itty bitty steps. You do not even bother to defend the “magic” you believe in. We have already agreed that Darwin was wrong when he claimed that natura non facit saltum, and even his faithful bulldog Huxley disagreed with him. Perhaps you will now respond to my post.

DAVID: I don't hate Darwin. He didn't know enough to reach the right conclusions about evolution's methods. I think his followers are totally wrong.

Just to clarify: we have agreed that common descent, the main thrust of his theory, is correct (so he and his followers are not “totally wrong”), but we do not accept his theory of random mutations and gradualism. There was absolutely no need for you to bring him into our discussion, which concerns your own theory that your God knows about every future change in environmental conditions and has either preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation in advance of those changes.

DAVID: You are skipping over my point that the needs of a new species have to be anticipated in planning for the design of the species. The designer had to know in advance ears were necessary for the moth's like style. If moths had arrived without ears and couldn't pick up evidence of predators, they would not have survived. Survival needs have to be planned in advance. Species appear abruptly after gaps, no time given for modifications, remember Gould's point.

I have repeatedly answered this point on this thread and elsewhere! If you accept common descent, then moths with ears did not appear out of the blue – moths with ears descended from pre-moths without ears, just as whales descended from pre-whales without flippers. We do not know why pre-moths took to nocturnal life, or why pre-whales took to marine life, but in both cases their adaptation to new conditions required the changes which ultimately led to speciation*** (see below for a perfect example). We are lucky enough to have evidence of transitional forms in the history of the whale. Survival does not have to be “planned in advance”. When conditions change, either existing species find new ways of coping with the changes, or they do NOT survive (= natural selection). No doubt many pre-eared moths did NOT survive either. That was why ears became necessary. Pure common sense, illustrated millions of times over by the history of life. No need for your “magic” - though highly selective (because most species have died out) - crystal ball process which you are so fixated on.

***DAVID (under “echolocation”): A very clever adaptation using land-based air breathing. Note the illustrated mechanism diagram. Another complex adaptation which makes me wonder, why bother to enter the water.

A perfect example of how organisms adapt to new conditions and thereby become new species. You don’t have to have a reverse crystal ball to guess that both pre-moths without ears and pre-whales without echolocation may have hunted by night/entered the water because by doing so they improved their chances of survival (e.g. by escaping from predators, or by gaining access to more plentiful food.)


DAVID (summarizing the article on “bacterial gut role”): ): Bacteria help us but they are not us.

dhw: No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.

DAVID: Your interpretation is from the outside of any organism. Significance is that everything looks designed, so by your lights, 'maybe' it is designed. Dawkins says we must ignore that obvious point.

I keep agreeing that it IS designed! And my proposal is that the cells/bacteria do their own designing, and the theistic version of this theory is that your God designed the mechanisms that enable the cells/bacteria to do their own designing. We are not discussing Dawkins any more than we are discussing Darwin.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 19:48 (1598 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are skipping over my point that the needs of a new species have to be anticipated in planning for the design of the species. The designer had to know in advance ears were necessary for the moth's like style. If moths had arrived without ears and couldn't pick up evidence of predators, they would not have survived. Survival needs have to be planned in advance. Species appear abruptly after gaps, no time given for modifications, remember Gould's point.

dhw: I have repeatedly answered this point on this thread and elsewhere! If you accept common descent, then moths with ears did not appear out of the blue – moths with ears descended from pre-moths without ears, just as whales descended from pre-whales without flippers.

And what we are arguing is how did the adaptations happen. Speciation is a black box. You want the nebulous idea of cell committees with the ability to design. I know only minds design.

dhw: We do not know why pre-moths took to nocturnal life, or why pre-whales took to marine life, but in both cases their adaptation to new conditions required the changes which ultimately led to speciation*** (see below for a perfect example). We are lucky enough to have evidence of transitional forms in the history of the whale. Survival does not have to be “planned in advance”. When conditions change, either existing species find new ways of coping with the changes, or they do NOT survive (= natural selection).

Of course they must adapt or die. That statement proves nothing. We are arguing the point of how adaptation to new species occurs. It requires design. In our experience only minds design.

dhw : No doubt many pre-eared moths did NOT survive either. That was why ears became necessary. Pure common sense, illustrated millions of times over by the history of life. No need for your “magic” - though highly selective (because most species have died out) - crystal ball process which you are so fixated on.

Total non sequitur! Of course ears became necessary. The issue between us remains. How did that happen? Moths with ears are a slightly different new species, which requires design. Your answer for speciation is not my answer. As you have kindly noted my 'Atheist Delusion' book is a very strong argument for design.


***DAVID (under “echolocation”): A very clever adaptation using land-based air breathing. Note the illustrated mechanism diagram. Another complex adaptation which makes me wonder, why bother to enter the water.

dhw: A perfect example of how organisms adapt to new conditions and thereby become new species. You don’t have to have a reverse crystal ball to guess that both pre-moths without ears and pre-whales without echolocation may have hunted by night/entered the water because by doing so they improved their chances of survival (e.g. by escaping from predators, or by gaining access to more plentiful food.)

Of course the adaptations had to happen to allow survival. Stating a truism still gives us no answer for the mechanism as to how the adaptations occurred in a new species. This is the point you totally miss by simply saying it had to happen! Of course it did. We each have a theory. Your's is a nebulous idea that cell committees have the ability to design complex changes. Only a mind can design; at least this is what we know at our human level.


DAVID (summarizing the article on “bacterial gut role”): ): Bacteria help us but they are not us.

dhw: No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.

DAVID: Your interpretation is from the outside of any organism. Significance is that everything looks designed, so by your lights, 'maybe' it is designed. Dawkins says we must ignore that obvious point.

dhw: I keep agreeing that it IS designed! And my proposal is that the cells/bacteria do their own designing, and the theistic version of this theory is that your God designed the mechanisms that enable the cells/bacteria to do their own designing. We are not discussing Dawkins any more than we are discussing Darwin.

We are discussing design, and Dawkins is on point. Design is so obvious he must warn us not to get sucked in. As for bacteria, they are not us but they are extremely helpful to us. No need to wonder why they survived from the beginning. God could have evolved away from them, but they started life and God purposely kept them around to help us. God has lots of interim purposes, which you constantly tell me are illogical, such as a bush of life for energy so evolution of life has the energy to cover the time involved to finally reach our evolution, as history shows. You are so Darwinist you keep telling us necessity explains the species adaptations, and conjure up cell committees as the originating source of the new designs. Only minds design.

Evolution of Language

by David Turell @, Sunday, June 28, 2020, 22:54 (1359 days ago) @ David Turell

A new discussion:

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/06/how-do-sounds-contain-ideas/

"Human language differs from animal and plant communication systems in that it enables the transmission of ideas, which are abstractions. Think of the Pythagorean theorem or tripartite government.

"Many explanations of how human language came to exist seem to be stabbing in the dark. (my bold)

"Here are some of the current theories: Could language have arisen from hand gestures? We are told that “Wild chimpanzees, for example, have been seen to use at least 66 different hand signals and movements to communicate with each other. Lifting a foot towards another chimp, for example, means ‘climb on me’, while stroking their mouth can mean ‘give me the object’” (Horizon August 20, 2019). But these aren’t ideas, just requests. A variety of such theories of language have been termed the Bow wow, the Ding dong, the La la, the Pooh pooh and the Yo he Yo theory theory, gives us some idea how seriously they are taken.

"Part of the problem is that most common words in any language have a huge number of meanings, bandied back and forth, and sometimes failing to communicate as intended:

"If words are to keep the world at arm’s length, they must also be uninvolved in what they mean – they must designate it arbitrarily. But if words fail to completely detach, that failure should tell us something about the peculiar – and humble – position we occupy ‘between gods and beasts’, as Plotinus put it.

"And yet meaning seems inexhaustible:
Human language is amazingly creative. If you make up a sentence of any complexity, and search for that exact sentence on the Internet, it’s almost never there. Virtually everything we say is novel. Yet at the heart of this capacity of ours lies an incredibly simple piece of mental technology: Merge. Merge takes two bits of language, say two words, and creates out of them another bit of language. It builds the hierarchical structures of language.

***

"Kolodny points out what might seem like a contradiction in this notion: Many species of ape use tools in sequence-dependent ways and also have highly developed levels of communication. But the order in which those apes produce their utterances doesn’t make much difference to their meaning, Kolodny explains. “The question becomes not ‘How did language arise only in humans?’ but ‘Why did it not arise in other apes as well?’ And the answer is, the qualitative difference between us and other apes is they don’t have the communication system coupled to those temporal sequencing structural capabilities.”

"Well, the only thing that’s obvious is that the apes don’t have language. And that we have it, for better or worse.

"The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly"

Comment: This doesn't help us know exactly how language was created as in the bold. It was not taught. It had to learned. We do know through evolution of our bodies (mouth, tongue, laryngeal position) and brain we worked out the ability. It is a perfect example of learning to use what we were given through evolution.

Evolution of Language: nonsense word meanings

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 14:23 (854 days ago) @ David Turell

A study across many languages:

https://www.science.org/content/article/nonsense-words-make-people-around-world-think-s...

"Now, the most extensive study of this finding yet—testing 917 speakers of 25 languages that use 10 different writing systems—has found that 72% of participants across languages associate the word “bouba” with a blobby shape and “kiki” with a sharp one.

"Such “cross-sensory” links—here, between speech and vision—show people can use nonsense words and other vocal noises to evoke concepts without using actual language. That could help explain how language evolved in the first place, says Aleksandra Ćwiek, a linguistics doctoral researcher at the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics who led the new study.

***

"Past research has pointed to the spikiness of the letter K, and roundness of the letter B, as the primary reason for the effect of “kiki” and “bouba” on English speakers. But other work has found that children who haven’t yet learned to read also make the association, as do Himba people in Namibia, who have limited contact with Westerners and don’t use written language.

***

"The volunteers overwhelmingly matched “bouba” with the round shape and “kiki” with the spiky one, the authors report today in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The finding suggests people make a genuine link between the sounds and the shape. It also adds to a growing pile of evidence that challenges an old linguistic dogma: the belief that the sounds that make up a word have no relationship to its meaning.

"But there were important differences across languages. Whereas 75% of speakers whose languages use the Roman alphabet—including English and other European languages—made the link, only 63% of speakers of other languages such as Georgian and Japanese did. And three languages—Romanian, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese—didn’t show the effect at all.

***

"Some evolutionary linguists have suggested language may have started not with speech, but with gesture, because it’s so much easier to illustrate an idea with hands—like miming the shape of a tree, Ćwiek says. But that explanation just raises a new question: Why did speech emerge at all? The growing evidence that vocal noises can also evoke ideas like shape or size helps close that gap, she says, hinting that both gesture and speech “have played a significant role at the very core of language.”

Comment: An interesting approach as how language began.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 11:43 (1609 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You keep forgetting that the point of this discussion is Egnor’s claim that “only something physical can evolve”. Thank you for agreeing that he is wrong. Nobody could possibly question that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the brain, but nobody knows what that link is! As a dualist you think your God manipulated the brain so that in some mysterious way it could “receive” a smidgen of his consciousness. Materialists believe that the brain changed itself and in some mysterious way the cells generated their own consciousness. Either way, Egnor’s statement is manifestly untrue, as is his claim that “Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute” (which you have already rejected).

DAVID: There is a difference. What I am saying and you are ignoring is the difference in the 'evolution' we are discussing. Evolution of consciousness and language is within a material brain that must evolve to a point of complexity that allows the immaterial evolution of those two immaterial abilities.

I have not ignored it at all! I have now bolded that very point. But what you are ignoring is the rest of my post. We do not know the CAUSE of the material brain’s complexification! Darwinians claim it was random mutations, you claim it was a divine dabble, and I suggest that the cells themselves caused it by responding to new demands. Regardless of which of these is the truth, you have now accepted that Egnor was wrong: evolution is not confined to the physical.

DAVID: Do you accept brain first?

dhw: Evolution can only work on something that exists. The brain evolved once it existed, and language evolved once it existed. I see no reason at all to suppose that our non-sapiens ancestors had no language of their own, and of course they had brains. My proposal is that the need for an enhanced range of communication caused the cells of the brain to make the necessary changes, much as the need to swim would have caused pre-whale legs to become flippers. We know that new uses of the brain cause it to change (think of the illiterate people who learn to read, taxi-drivers, musicians etc., whose brains change through the manner in which they are used). So your question should relate not to the prior existence of the brain but to the reason why an existing brain changed. You think your God dabbled with it, and I propose that the cell communities of which it is composed made changes in response to new demands, as is demonstrably the case with cell communities that adapt to new conditions. (See “Evolution of Language”)

DAVID: We know your theory that somehow cells have this innate intelligence to design new complexity. And you have no idea where that capacity came from, but you slyly admit God might have implanted the information. You are 'agnostic very lite', overwhelmed by my evidence for design.

There is nothing “sly” about it. And “we know” your anthropocentric theory of 3.8-billion-year-old programmes and/or divine dabblings, which only makes sense if we do not apply human reason to the history of life.

I have always balanced my acceptance of your logical design argument with the argument that we do not solve one mystery by creating another. I find your eternal, sourceless, immaterial conscious mind just as difficult to believe in as the ability of chance to assemble the first living cells.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 18:43 (1608 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You keep forgetting that the point of this discussion is Egnor’s claim that “only something physical can evolve”. Thank you for agreeing that he is wrong. Nobody could possibly question that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the brain, but nobody knows what that link is! ... Either way, Egnor’s statement is manifestly untrue, as is his claim that “Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute” (which you have already rejected).

DAVID: There is a difference. What I am saying and you are ignoring is the difference in the 'evolution' we are discussing. Evolution of consciousness and language is within a material brain that must evolve to a point of complexity that allows the immaterial evolution of those two immaterial abilities.

dhw: I have not ignored it at all! I have now bolded that very point. But what you are ignoring is the rest of my post. We do not know the CAUSE of the material brain’s complexification! Darwinians claim it was random mutations, you claim it was a divine dabble, and I suggest that the cells themselves caused it by responding to new demands. Regardless of which of these is the truth, you have now accepted that Egnor was wrong: evolution is not confined to the physical.

We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived..

DAVID: Do you accept brain first?


dhw: Evolution can only work on something that exists. The brain evolved once it existed, and language evolved once it existed. I see no reason at all to suppose that our non-sapiens ancestors had no language of their own, and of course they had brains. My proposal is that the need for an enhanced range of communication caused the cells of the brain to make the necessary changes, much as the need to swim would have caused pre-whale legs to become flippers. We know that new uses of the brain cause it to change (think of the illiterate people who learn to read, taxi-drivers, musicians etc., whose brains change through the manner in which they are used). So your question should relate not to the prior existence of the brain but to the reason why an existing brain changed. You think your God dabbled with it, and I propose that the cell communities of which it is composed made changes in response to new demands, as is demonstrably the case with cell communities that adapt to new conditions. (See “Evolution of Language”)

DAVID: We know your theory that somehow cells have this innate intelligence to design new complexity. And you have no idea where that capacity came from, but you slyly admit God might have implanted the information. You are 'agnostic very lite', overwhelmed by my evidence for design.

dhw: There is nothing “sly” about it. And “we know” your anthropocentric theory of 3.8-billion-year-old programmes and/or divine dabblings, which only makes sense if we do not apply human reason to the history of life.

You constantly refuse to follow logical reasoning. If God is in charge, history shows us what He did, not why. Guessing why is pure guessing. What does your guessing prove. Nothing!


dhw: I have always balanced my acceptance of your logical design argument with the argument that we do not solve one mystery by creating another. I find your eternal, sourceless, immaterial conscious mind just as difficult to believe in as the ability of chance to assemble the first living cells.

You have a right to this position, and the right to guess, but guessing in worthless, whether you accept God or not.

Consciousness: and self-awareness

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 19:06 (1608 days ago) @ David Turell

An article on the subject involving the mirror test:

https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-the-mirror-test-say-about-self-awareness-in-animals?utm...

"Self-awareness is not, however, the same as being conscious – which is commonly defined as being aware of one’s body and surrounding environment, a mental trait many animals share with us. Indeed in 2012, a prominent international group of neuroscientists, ethologists and psychologists issued what’s been called ‘The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness’. It asserted that:

"Convergent evidence indicates that nonhuman animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

"But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

***

"How can we test for this mental ability? Is there a way to glimpse self-awareness in our minds and those of other animals? Perhaps. Using the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, scientists have established that chimpanzees and orangutans, at least, are self-aware.

***

" And while some contend that certain species, such as dolphins, elephants and European magpies, have passed, Gallup disagrees. ‘I do have an open mind, and am not against other species, but none has succeeded so far,’ he says. To him, this is an indication that the test reveals a clear dividing line between animals with minds and those that are mindless.

***

"‘Honestly, the test sucks,’ says Alex Jordan, an evolutionary biologist and principle investigator at the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Jordan is a co-author of a recent study in PLOS Biology evaluating the behaviours of the cleaner wrasse, a small fish that took the test. Jordan and his colleagues argue that the fish passed the test, but that this doesn’t mean that cleaner wrasses are self-aware. ‘It [the mirror test] may be testing for other things, such as associated learning and conflict resolution. But is it testing for self-awareness?’ Jordan asks. ‘No – that’s a stretch.’

***

"We also still have much to learn about how human children perceive their reflected images. Scientists have recently discovered that children in Fiji and Kenya don’t recognise their mirrored selves at age two, as Western children normally do, or even at age six. (But even Western children who do recognise themselves in mirrors don’t recognise their images in videos that were made a few months before they took the mirror test.) When told they were looking at themselves, the Kenyan and Fijian children reacted with silence, researchers reported in 2010.

***

"Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure.

***

"...is it worthwhile to continue testing other species; can we learn anything by doing so? Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy in Utah – who was one of Gallup’s students, and also participated on some of the first mirror tests with dolphins – thinks so, and remains an advocate. Since ‘self-awareness is not a very tractable phenomenon’, it’s difficult for us to ‘create probes and tests’ that are easy to administer and understand, says Marino. The mirror test ‘does capture something that is related to self-awareness and may be the best “objective” measure we have. But I don’t think it’s tapping into some overly romanticised property present in some animals and absent in others.’" (my bold)

Comment: This article provides some clarity about the relationship of self-awareness as part of consciousness. My dog recognizes me in a mirror, but obviously not himself. Animals have some bodily self-awareness, but do not conceptualize about it. We do.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Thursday, October 24, 2019, 10:28 (1608 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We do not know the CAUSE of the material brain’s complexification! Darwinians claim it was random mutations, you claim it was a divine dabble, and I suggest that the cells themselves caused it by responding to new demands. Regardless of which of these is the truth, you have now accepted that Egnor was wrong: evolution is not confined to the physical.

DAVID: We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived.

On 21 October I wrote that immaterial things such as “language, social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions evolve, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver.” You replied: “The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.” But on 23 October you agree with Egnor that “only material organisms and organs evolve”. Regardless of circumstances, either something evolves or it doesn’t.

QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

This whole article is devoted to the question of whether our fellow animals are self-aware, and the above quote could hardly be clearer (or more self-evident). Our fellow creatures are conscious, but that does not mean they are self-aware. It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure.

A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 24, 2019, 18:38 (1607 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: We do not know the CAUSE of the material brain’s complexification! Darwinians claim it was random mutations, you claim it was a divine dabble, and I suggest that the cells themselves caused it by responding to new demands. Regardless of which of these is the truth, you have now accepted that Egnor was wrong: evolution is not confined to the physical.

DAVID: We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived.

dhw: On 21 October I wrote that immaterial things such as “language, social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions evolve, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver.” You replied: “The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.” But on 23 October you agree with Egnor that “only material organisms and organs evolve”. Regardless of circumstances, either something evolves or it doesn’t.

We are agreeing to the point that the brain can evolve immaterial language. Evolution is still evolution, material or immaterial.


QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

dhw: This whole article is devoted to the question of whether our fellow animals are self-aware, and the above quote could hardly be clearer (or more self-evident). Our fellow creatures are conscious, but that does not mean they are self-aware. It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure.

dhw: A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

Why should they? It's my theory to explain god's role. They are not discussing God.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, October 25, 2019, 10:55 (1607 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived.

dhw: On 21 October I wrote that immaterial things such as “language, social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions evolve, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver.” You replied: “The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.” But on 23 October you agree with Egnor that “only material organisms and organs evolve”. Regardless of circumstances, either something evolves or it doesn’t.

DAVID: We are agreeing to the point that the brain can evolve immaterial language. Evolution is still evolution, material or immaterial.

Thank you for now agreeing that Egnor is wrong to claim that “only material organisms and organs evolve.”

QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

dhw: It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

You have not commented on this, and so may I assume you agree?

QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

DAVID: Why should they? It's my theory to explain god's role. They are not discussing God.

I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, October 25, 2019, 22:58 (1606 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived.

dhw: On 21 October I wrote that immaterial things such as “language, social norms, moral codes, philosophies, religions evolve, regardless of whether the brain is the producer of consciousness or its receiver.” You replied: “The nuance of our difference is that the brain must be complex enough to allow humans to learn to use it and create language, which, yes, does evolve under those circumstances.” But on 23 October you agree with Egnor that “only material organisms and organs evolve”. Regardless of circumstances, either something evolves or it doesn’t.

DAVID: We are agreeing to the point that the brain can evolve immaterial language. Evolution is still evolution, material or immaterial.

dhw: Thank you for now agreeing that Egnor is wrong to claim that “only material organisms and organs evolve.”

QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

dhw: It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

dhw: You have not commented on this, and so may I assume you agree?

Our special degree of consciousness does not exist in any other organism. It is neurological substrates which in humans receives their own special form of consciousness.


QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

DAVID: Why should they? It's my theory to explain God's role. They are not discussing God.

dhw; I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 12:48 (1606 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

dhw: It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

dhw: You have not commented on this, and so may I assume you agree?

DAVID: Our special degree of consciousness does not exist in any other organism. It is neurological substrates which in humans receives their own special form of consciousness.

Thank you for at last agreeing that we have a special degree of consciousness. Whether the brain is the receiver or the generator of consciousness we do not know - hence the dichotomy between materialism and dualism.

QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

DAVID: Why should they? It's my theory to explain God's role. They are not discussing God.

dhw; I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

All organisms including humans have automatic responses. Many experts in the field, however, believe that all organisms, including cells, also have the autonomous ability to take in information, make decisions based on this, and then act on it. But I know you have a fixed belief that your God preprogrammed all their undabbled decisions and actions 3.8 billion years ago in the very first cells.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 15:24 (1606 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: (UNDER “CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS”) "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.But being conscious of one’s body does not mean that an animal also has a capacity for introspection – a key part of being self-aware. While consciousness is being aware of one’s body, self-awareness takes the sensation one step further – you recognise that you are aware of your awareness. (David: my bold which entirely fits my thoughts)

dhw: It does not “entirely fit your thoughts”! Inexplicably, you attempt to distinguish between being conscious and having consciousness, and you argue that human self-awareness makes our consciousness different in kind and not in degree. “One step further” = an advanced degree of consciousness, and according to this article, there are even experts in the field who believe that some animals have taken that step, though of course their degree of consciousness still does not extend anywhere near to the extent of our own.

dhw: You have not commented on this, and so may I assume you agree?

DAVID: Our special degree of consciousness does not exist in any other organism. It is neurological substrates which in humans receives their own special form of consciousness.

Thank you for at last agreeing that we have a special degree of consciousness. Whether the brain is the receiver or the generator of consciousness we do not know - hence the dichotomy between materialism and dualism.

QUOTE: Yet comparative cognition scientists largely agree that most animals are conscious and thinking beings, capable of taking in information, making decisions based on this, and then acting on it. It’s simply that next step – the ability to think about their own thoughts – that remains elusive, something we have not yet been able to capture or measure. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: A good summary. Most scientists agree that our fellow animals are conscious, but whether they have a degree of self-awareness remains open to question. No mention here of your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled all the different lifestyles and natural wonders that are the products of animal consciousness.

DAVID: Why should they? It's my theory to explain God's role. They are not discussing God.

dhw; I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

dhw: All organisms including humans have automatic responses. Many experts in the field, however, believe that all organisms, including cells, also have the autonomous ability to take in information, make decisions based on this, and then act on it. But I know you have a fixed belief that your God preprogrammed all their undabbled decisions and actions 3.8 billion years ago in the very first cells.

You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

Consciousness: not explained by materialism

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 26, 2019, 18:54 (1605 days ago) @ David Turell

A physicist uses the confusion of quantum theories to explain we do not know what matter really is:

https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness?utm...

"It is as simple as it is undeniable: after more than a century of profound explorations into the subatomic world, our best theory for how matter behaves still tells us very little about what matter is. Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself.

***

"Molecular biologists, geneticists, and many other types of researchers – as well as the nonscientist public – have been similarly drawn to materialism’s seeming finality. But this conviction is out of step with what we physicists know about the material world – or rather, what we don’t know.

***

"As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for. The closer you look, the more it appears that the materialist (or ‘physicalist’) position is not the safe harbor of metaphysical sobriety that many desire.

***

"When calculations are done with the Schrödinger equation, what’s left is not the Newtonian state of exact position and velocity. Instead, you get what is called the wave function (physicists refer to it as psi after the Greek symbol Ψ used to denote it). Unlike the Newtonian state, which can be clearly imagined in a commonsense way, the wave function is an epistemological and ontological mess. The wave function does not give you a specific measurement of location and velocity for a particle; it gives you only probabilities at the root level of reality.

***

"For a hundred years now, physicists and philosophers have been beating the crap out of each other (and themselves) trying to figure out how to interpret the wave function and its associated measurement problem. What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter?

***

"The real problem is that, in each case, proponents are free to single out one interpretation over others because … well … they like it. Everyone, on all sides, is in the same boat. There can be no appeal to the authority of ‘what quantum mechanics says’, because quantum mechanics doesn’t say much of anything with regard to its own interpretation.

***

"Some consciousness researchers might think that they are being hard-nosed and concrete when they appeal to the authority of physics. When pressed on this issue, though, we physicists are often left looking at our feet, smiling sheepishly and mumbling something about ‘it’s complicated’. We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained.

***

"It’s been more than 20 years since the Australian philosopher David Chalmers introduced the idea of a ‘hard problem of consciousness’...Chalmers’s position struck a nerve with many philosophers, articulating the sense that there was fundamentally something more occurring in consciousness than just computing with meat. But what is that ‘more’?

"Some consciousness researchers see the hard problem as real but inherently unsolvable; others posit a range of options for its account. Those solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. Regardless of the direction ‘more’ might take, the unresolved democracy of quantum interpretations means that our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case."

Comment: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

Consciousness: more support for free will

by David Turell @, Friday, December 06, 2019, 20:30 (1564 days ago) @ David Turell

Well reasoned retort to Labet:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-f...


"However, if we look more closely, Libet’s experiment is full of problematic issues. For example, it relies on the participants’ own recording of when they feel the intention to move. One issue here is that there may be a delay between the impulse to act and their recording of it—after all, this means shifting their attention from their own intention to the clock. In addition, it is debatable whether people are able to accurately record the moment of their decision to move. Our subjective awareness of decisions is very unreliable.

***

"In a modified version of Libet’s experiment (in which participants were asked to press one of two buttons in response to images on a computer screen), participants showed “readiness potential” even before the images came up on the screen, suggesting that it was not related to deciding which button to press.

"Still others have suggested that the area of the brain where the "readiness potential" occurs—the supplementary motor area, or SMA—is usually associated with imagining movements rather than actually performing them. The experience of willing is usually associated with other areas of the brain (the parietal areas). And finally, in another modified version of Libet’s experiment, participants showed readiness potential even when they made a decision not to move, which again casts doubt on the assumption that the readiness potential is actually registering the brain’s “decision” to move.

"A further, more subtle, issue has been suggested by psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist. Libet's experiment seems to assume that the act of volition consists of clear-cut decisions, made by a conscious, rational mind. But McGilchrist points out that decisions are often made in a more fuzzy, ambiguous way. They can be made on a partly intuitive, impulsive level, without clear conscious awareness. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't made the decision.

"As McGilchrist puts it, Libet’s apparent findings are only problematic "if one imagines that, for me to decide something, I have to have willed it with the conscious part of my mind. Perhaps my unconscious is every bit as much 'me.'" Why shouldn't your will be associated with deeper, less conscious areas of your mind (which are still you)? You might sense this if, while trying Libet’s experiment, you find your wrist just seeming to move of its own accord. You feel that you have somehow made the decision, even if not wholly consciously.

"Because of issues such as these—and others that I don’t have space to mention—it seems strange that such a flawed experiment has become so influential, and has been (mis)used so frequently as evidence against the idea of free will. You might ask: why are so many intellectuals so intent on proving that they have no free will? (As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pointed out ironically, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”)"

Comment: I've published other refutations of Libet. This is the strongest. That throws Libet finally out the window. EEG results are v a secondary electrical glimpse as to exactly what the brain is doing

Consciousness: no free will says Hossenfelder

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 11, 2020, 23:22 (1254 days ago) @ David Turell

She is totally confused as you will see:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/10/you-dont-have-free-will-but-dont-worry.html

"...in a nutshell that the whole story of the universe in every single detail was determined already at the big bang. We are just watching it play out.

***

"These deterministic laws of nature apply to you and your brain because you are made of particles, and what happens with you is a consequence of what happens with those particles.

***

"So, the trouble with free will is that according to the laws of nature that we know describe humans on the fundamental level, the future is determined by the present. That the system – in this case, your brain – might be partly chaotic does not make a difference for this conclusion, because chaos is still deterministic. Chaos makes predictions difficult, but the future still follows from the initial condition.

***

"You see, that thing you call “free will” should in some sense allow you to choose what you want. But then it’s either determined by what you want, in which case it’s not free, or it’s not determined, in which case it’s not a will.

***

"So, yeah, if you want you can redefine “free will” to mean “no one was able to predict your decision.” But of course your decision was still determined or random regardless of whether someone predicted it. Others have tried to argue that free will means some of your decisions are dominated by processes internal to your brain and not by external influences. But of course your decision was still determined or random, regardless of whether it was dominated by internal or external influences. I find it silly to speak of “free will” in these cases."

Comment: Entirely deterministic and nuts. Mind and consciousness are immaterial states that arise from an intact brain, which is more than just its initial particles that appeared/ originated in the Big Bang. She is totally concentrated on the brain as meat. This demonstrates why theoretical physicists are not philosophers of biology. Frankly, I enjoy her blogsite, as her explanations are very clear, concise and fully understandable.

Consciousness: no free will says Hossenfelder

by dhw, Monday, October 12, 2020, 14:37 (1254 days ago) @ David Turell

HOSSENFELDER: "These deterministic laws of nature apply to you and your brain because you are made of particles, and what happens with you is a consequence of what happens with those particles.”

It is totally impossible to discuss “free will” without discussing consciousness. Free will depends on conscious decisions, and nowhere in this article does she even begin to tackle the mystery of how particles can combine to create consciousness. Of course there are folk like Susan Blackwell who tell us that consciousness is an illusion, but as far as I can see from this article, Hossenfelder doesn’t even take its existence into consideration. The word itself is only mentioned in passing at the very beginning. The implication is that physics holds the answer to everything. Let physics explain consciousness, and then we can discuss free will. (I am not championing free will. I am agnostic on the subject, as on so many of our mysteries, but I object to one-sided arguments.)

HOSSENFELDER: "You see, that thing you call “free will” should in some sense allow you to choose what you want. But then it’s either determined by what you want, in which case it’s not free, or it’s not determined, in which case it’s not a will.”

Why is it not free if it is determined by what you want? The very essence of the concept is that our decisions ARE determined by what we want, but opponents will argue that what we want is determined by factors beyond our control (e.g. heredity, upbringing, chance events etc.). Our view on the subject will be determined by our definition of free will and by our understanding of our own identity. In a previous discussion I defined free will neutrally as "an entity's conscious ability to control its decision-making process within given constraints" (such as the given situation, or our physical and mental capabilities). As regards identity, we can then argue that either all the influences on our identity, both internal and external, deprive us of our “freedom”, or that these influences are part of the unique entity that is “us”, and so it is “we” and “we” alone who consciously make the decisions. No one and nothing else makes them for us.

DAVID: Entirely deterministic and nuts. Mind and consciousness are immaterial states that arise from an intact brain, which is more than just its initial particles that appeared/ originated in the Big Bang. She is totally concentrated on the brain as meat. This demonstrates why theoretical physicists are not philosophers of biology. Frankly, I enjoy her blogsite, as her explanations are very clear, concise and fully understandable.

I agree with your criticisms, but am slightly surprised at your statement that mind etc. “arises” from the brain. That is indeed the essence of my own attempt to reconcile materialism and dualism, but I thought you believed in an immaterial soul which used the brain, as opposed to being its product.

Consciousness: no free will says Hossenfelder

by David Turell @, Monday, October 12, 2020, 16:21 (1253 days ago) @ dhw

HOSSENFELDER: "These deterministic laws of nature apply to you and your brain because you are made of particles, and what happens with you is a consequence of what happens with those particles.”

dhw: It is totally impossible to discuss “free will” without discussing consciousness. Free will depends on conscious decisions, and nowhere in this article does she even begin to tackle the mystery of how particles can combine to create consciousness. Of course there are folk like Susan Blackwell who tell us that consciousness is an illusion, but as far as I can see from this article, Hossenfelder doesn’t even take its existence into consideration. The word itself is only mentioned in passing at the very beginning. The implication is that physics holds the answer to everything. Let physics explain consciousness, and then we can discuss free will. (I am not championing free will. I am agnostic on the subject, as on so many of our mysteries, but I object to one-sided arguments.)

HOSSENFELDER: "You see, that thing you call “free will” should in some sense allow you to choose what you want. But then it’s either determined by what you want, in which case it’s not free, or it’s not determined, in which case it’s not a will.”

dhw: Why is it not free if it is determined by what you want? The very essence of the concept is that our decisions ARE determined by what we want, but opponents will argue that what we want is determined by factors beyond our control (e.g. heredity, upbringing, chance events etc.). Our view on the subject will be determined by our definition of free will and by our understanding of our own identity. In a previous discussion I defined free will neutrally as "an entity's conscious ability to control its decision-making process within given constraints" (such as the given situation, or our physical and mental capabilities). As regards identity, we can then argue that either all the influences on our identity, both internal and external, deprive us of our “freedom”, or that these influences are part of the unique entity that is “us”, and so it is “we” and “we” alone who consciously make the decisions. No one and nothing else makes them for us.

DAVID: Entirely deterministic and nuts. Mind and consciousness are immaterial states that arise from an intact brain, which is more than just its initial particles that appeared/ originated in the Big Bang. She is totally concentrated on the brain as meat. This demonstrates why theoretical physicists are not philosophers of biology. Frankly, I enjoy her blogsite, as her explanations are very clear, concise and fully understandable.

dhw: I agree with your criticisms, but am slightly surprised at your statement that mind etc. “arises” from the brain. That is indeed the essence of my own attempt to reconcile materialism and dualism, but I thought you believed in an immaterial soul which used the brain, as opposed to being its product.

By 'arising' I do not try to explain the phenomenon that we have mind and consciousness that appear when there is a living human brain. Yes, our soul must use the brain to think, during life.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 08:57 (1605 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

dhw: All organisms including humans have automatic responses. Many experts in the field, however, believe that all organisms, including cells, also have the autonomous ability to take in information, make decisions based on this, and then act on it. But I know you have a fixed belief that your God preprogrammed all their undabbled decisions and actions 3.8 billion years ago in the very first cells.

DAVID: You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

The same applies to all organisms, including humans. Indeed some humans believe that all our decisions are programmed by forces beyond our control. In any case, your mantra allows the autonomous decision-making theory a 50% chance of being right!

Under: “Consciousness: not explained by materialism
QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

I don’t understand your first comment. The quote shows clearly that quantum mechanics (which I take to be a branch of quantum physics) is NOT directly related to mind and consciousness and in fact represents the materialist position. But of course materialism doesn’t explain consciousness – we do not have an explanation. One section of the article clearly refers to panpsychism, though it doesn’t say so explicitly and we needn’t delve into it here. The theory that there is some superconsciousness which has simply been there forever and shoves different degrees of its consciousness into the different life forms it has specially designed is just as nebulous as the theory that consciousness is generated by little globules of matter. There is no shame in admitting that we are in a state of complete ignorance!

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 17:12 (1604 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

dhw: All organisms including humans have automatic responses. Many experts in the field, however, believe that all organisms, including cells, also have the autonomous ability to take in information, make decisions based on this, and then act on it. But I know you have a fixed belief that your God preprogrammed all their undabbled decisions and actions 3.8 billion years ago in the very first cells.

DAVID: You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

dhw: The same applies to all organisms, including humans. Indeed some humans believe that all our decisions are programmed by forces beyond our control. In any case, your mantra allows the autonomous decision-making theory a 50% chance of being right!

But that 50% allows for the fact that it is really either/or, that is, one of the two is 100% correct.


Under: “Consciousness: not explained by materialism
QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

dhw: The quote shows clearly that quantum mechanics (which I take to be a branch of quantum physics) is NOT directly related to mind and consciousness and in fact represents the materialist position. But of course materialism doesn’t explain consciousness – we do not have an explanation. One section of the article clearly refers to panpsychism, though it doesn’t say so explicitly and we needn’t delve into it here. The theory that there is some superconsciousness which has simply been there forever and shoves different degrees of its consciousness into the different life forms it has specially designed is just as nebulous as the theory that consciousness is generated by little globules of matter. There is no shame in admitting that we are in a state of complete ignorance!

God created the universe based on quantum mechanics, which only He understands. God's existence explains the design required.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, October 28, 2019, 10:25 (1604 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

dhw: The same applies to all organisms, including humans. Indeed some humans believe that all our decisions are programmed by forces beyond our control. In any case, your mantra allows the autonomous decision-making theory a 50% chance of being right!

DAVID: But that 50% allows for the fact that it is really either/or, that is, one of the two is 100% correct.

Precisely. You are beginning to grasp the essence of agnosticism, and in relation to the theory of cellular intelligence, you are acknowledging that it has a 50% chance of being correct, which gives it the right to be taken just as seriously as the possibility that cells are mere automatons switching on divine, 3.8-billion-year old computer programmes for every move they make.

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

DAVID: Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

Right. Nothing whatsoever to do with the source of consciousness.

dhw: The quote shows clearly that quantum mechanics (which I take to be a branch of quantum physics) is NOT directly related to mind and consciousness and in fact represents the materialist position. But of course materialism doesn’t explain consciousness – we do not have an explanation. One section of the article clearly refers to panpsychism, though it doesn’t say so explicitly and we needn’t delve into it here. The theory that there is some superconsciousness which has simply been there forever and shoves different degrees of its consciousness into the different life forms it has specially designed is just as nebulous as the theory that consciousness is generated by little globules of matter. There is no shame in admitting that we are in a state of complete ignorance!

DAVID: God created the universe based on quantum mechanics, which only He understands. God's existence explains the design required.

The article is all about the source of consciousness, not about how he might have created the universe. But even if that was the subject, it’s not much of an explanation if you tell us the universe was designed by a hidden designer whose nature is unknown to us, whose existence cannot be proved, and who has always been there and has no source.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, October 28, 2019, 13:55 (1604 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

dhw: The same applies to all organisms, including humans. Indeed some humans believe that all our decisions are programmed by forces beyond our control. In any case, your mantra allows the autonomous decision-making theory a 50% chance of being right!

DAVID: But that 50% allows for the fact that it is really either/or, that is, one of the two is 100% correct.

dhw: Precisely. You are beginning to grasp the essence of agnosticism, and in relation to the theory of cellular intelligence, you are acknowledging that it has a 50% chance of being correct, which gives it the right to be taken just as seriously as the possibility that cells are mere automatons switching on divine, 3.8-billion-year old computer programmes for every move they make.

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

DAVID: Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

dhw: Right. Nothing whatsoever to do with the source of consciousness.

If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.


dhw: The quote shows clearly that quantum mechanics (which I take to be a branch of quantum physics) is NOT directly related to mind and consciousness and in fact represents the materialist position. But of course materialism doesn’t explain consciousness – we do not have an explanation. One section of the article clearly refers to panpsychism, though it doesn’t say so explicitly and we needn’t delve into it here. The theory that there is some superconsciousness which has simply been there forever and shoves different degrees of its consciousness into the different life forms it has specially designed is just as nebulous as the theory that consciousness is generated by little globules of matter. There is no shame in admitting that we are in a state of complete ignorance!

DAVID: God created the universe based on quantum mechanics, which only He understands. God's existence explains the design required.

dhw: The article is all about the source of consciousness, not about how he might have created the universe. But even if that was the subject, it’s not much of an explanation if you tell us the universe was designed by a hidden designer whose nature is unknown to us, whose existence cannot be proved, and who has always been there and has no source.

How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 10:32 (1603 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

DAVID: Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

dhw: Right. Nothing whatsoever to do with the source of consciousness.

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

dhw: The article is all about the source of consciousness, not about how he might have created the universe. But even if that was the subject, it’s not much of an explanation if you tell us the universe was designed by a hidden designer whose nature is unknown to us, whose existence cannot be proved, and who has always been there and has no source.

DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 13:49 (1603 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

DAVID: Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

dhw: Right. Nothing whatsoever to do with the source of consciousness.

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

dhw: And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.


dhw: The article is all about the source of consciousness, not about how he might have created the universe. But even if that was the subject, it’s not much of an explanation if you tell us the universe was designed by a hidden designer whose nature is unknown to us, whose existence cannot be proved, and who has always been there and has no source.

DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

dhw: I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

In that case we are here totally by the luck of the mindless process. What odds are those?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 11:28 (1602 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

dhw: And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

Under “Far out cosmology
DAVID: Note that quantum mechanics are at the basis of this early universe research. It supports my statements that this universe is based on quantum particles.

And quantum particles are material, which means that the basis of everything in the universe is material, and that must include consciousness.

QUOTE: “We live in a very special place,” he said." (David’s bold)
DAVID: Our unusual status is noted in the bolded statement. All indications of design.

When you say “our”, I presume you mean Planet Earth, since “we” humans are not a very special place. Just making sure!

DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

dhw: I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

DAVID: In that case we are here totally by the luck of the mindless process. What odds are those?

In an eternal material universe with an infinite number of possible material combinations, there are no “odds”. Sooner or later anything should be possible. But I still find it just as hard to believe as an unknown, superconscious mind simply being there for ever and ever. Funny, you never seem to challenge that equally inexplicable hypothesis!

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 14:17 (1602 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.


dhw: And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles


Under “Far out cosmology
DAVID: Note that quantum mechanics are at the basis of this early universe research. It supports my statements that this universe is based on quantum particles.

dhw: And quantum particles are material, which means that the basis of everything in the universe is material, and that must include consciousness.

See 'plasma' above.


QUOTE: “We live in a very special place,” he said." (David’s bold)
DAVID: Our unusual status is noted in the bolded statement. All indications of design.

dhw: When you say “our”, I presume you mean Planet Earth, since “we” humans are not a very special place. Just making sure!

You know we only live here.


DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

dhw: I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

DAVID: In that case we are here totally by the luck of the mindless process. What odds are those?

dhw: In an eternal material universe with an infinite number of possible material combinations, there are no “odds”. Sooner or later anything should be possible. But I still find it just as hard to believe as an unknown, superconscious mind simply being there for ever and ever. Funny, you never seem to challenge that equally inexplicable hypothesis!

There MU ST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Thursday, October 31, 2019, 11:08 (1601 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materia,ist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

dhw: And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

DAVID: An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles.

But plasma is still matter.
https://www.conservationinstitute.org/what-is-plasma-energy
"Plasma is the fourth state of matter, a gas in which a sufficient amount of energy is present to enable ions and electrons to coexist." And my science dictionary: “a state of matter in which almost all the atoms present are fully ionized.
So please explain how “everything is material at the basis of the universe” and yet according to you the basis of the universe is an immaterial God and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness.

DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

dhw: I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

DAVID: In that case we are here totally by the luck of the mindless process. What odds are those?

dhw: In an eternal material universe with an infinite number of possible material combinations, there are no “odds”. Sooner or later anything should be possible. But I still find it just as hard to believe as an unknown, superconscious mind simply being there for ever and ever. Funny, you never seem to challenge that equally inexplicable hypothesis!

DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 31, 2019, 14:18 (1601 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materia,ist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

dhw: And according to the above quote (bolded) that means it has a MATERIAL basis, the exact opposite of your beliefs.

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

DAVID: An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles.

But plasma is still matter.
https://www.conservationinstitute.org/what-is-plasma-energy
"Plasma is the fourth state of matter, a gas in which a sufficient amount of energy is present to enable ions and electrons to coexist." And my science dictionary: “a state of matter in which almost all the atoms present are fully ionized.
So please explain how “everything is material at the basis of the universe” and yet according to you the basis of the universe is an immaterial God and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness.

I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.


DAVID: How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?

dhw: I have told you over and over again! The alternative to your immaterial, sourceless, superconscious mind which has been there for ever and ever is a mindless universe of constantly changing matter and energy which has been there for ever and ever, creating an infinity of combinations, and maybe a big bang, and then the combination which eventually led to the beginnings of life and consciousness. No more and no less feasible than your own First Cause.

DAVID: In that case we are here totally by the luck of the mindless process. What odds are those?

dhw: In an eternal material universe with an infinite number of possible material combinations, there are no “odds”. Sooner or later anything should be possible. But I still find it just as hard to believe as an unknown, superconscious mind simply being there for ever and ever. Funny, you never seem to challenge that equally inexplicable hypothesis!

DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

d hw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2019, 10:24 (1600 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

DAVID: An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles.

dhw: But plasma is still matter. […]

DAVID: I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.

Regardless of what plasma is or isn’t, you say that everything is material at the basis of the universe, and yet you think that the basis of the universe is an immaterial God, and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness. Are you now saying you think God and consciousness are made of plasma?

DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

dhw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Friday, November 01, 2019, 14:54 (1600 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

DAVID: An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles.

dhw: But plasma is still matter. […]

DAVID: I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.

dhw: Regardless of what plasma is or isn’t, you say that everything is material at the basis of the universe, and yet you think that the basis of the universe is an immaterial God, and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness. Are you now saying you think God and consciousness are made of plasma?

No, I can only say plasma is the closest thing we know to pure energy. And I view God a pure energy some of which He put into the origin of the universe.


DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

dhw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

dhw: It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

Does 'closer to the truth'mean here might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 12:02 (1599 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.

dhw: Regardless of what plasma is or isn’t, you say that everything is material at the basis of the universe, and yet you think that the basis of the universe is an immaterial God, and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness. Are you now saying you think God and consciousness are made of plasma?

DAVID: No, I can only say plasma is the closest thing we know to pure energy. And I view God a pure energy some of which He put into the origin of the universe.

So if plasma is not pure energy, what is its relevance to your belief that both God and consciousness are immaterial? And I still don’t understand how this belief squares with your statement that “everything is material at the basis of the universe” - which can only mean that among other things consciousness must have a material basis.

DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

dhw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

dhw: It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: Does 'closer to the truth' mean here might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 18:35 (1598 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.

dhw: Regardless of what plasma is or isn’t, you say that everything is material at the basis of the universe, and yet you think that the basis of the universe is an immaterial God, and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness. Are you now saying you think God and consciousness are made of plasma?

DAVID: No, I can only say plasma is the closest thing we know to pure energy. And I view God a pure energy some of which He put into the origin of the universe.

dhw: So if plasma is not pure energy, what is its relevance to your belief that both God and consciousness are immaterial? And I still don’t understand how this belief squares with your statement that “everything is material at the basis of the universe” - which can only mean that among other things consciousness must have a material basis.

You've misinterpreted. I believe God is pure energy, as is his consciousness. Plasma is closest thing I know to pure energy, is all I have said. I know we live in a material world which energy creates under God's guidance.


DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

dhw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

dhw: It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: Does 'closer to the truth' mean there might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Sunday, November 03, 2019, 11:10 (1598 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So if plasma is not pure energy, what is its relevance to your belief that both God and consciousness are immaterial? And I still don’t understand how this belief squares with your statement that “everything is material at the basis of the universe” - which can only mean that among other things consciousness must have a material basis.

DAVID: You've misinterpreted. I believe God is pure energy, as is his consciousness. Plasma is closest thing I know to pure energy, is all I have said. I know we live in a material world which energy creates under God's guidance.

According to the article, quantum mechanics represents the materialist view of consciousness, and is therefore an inadequate explanation. You wrote that consciousness “may have a quantum basis”, which = the materialist view, but then wrote:”I’m thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.” The second sentence can only mean that the basis of consciousness is material, and as regards the first, I asked if there was any such thing as “pure energy particles”. Your response to both points was “An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles”. Since plasma is matter, no matter how “close” it is to pure energy, neither my question nor my comment has been answered! May I suggest possible answers? 1) We do not know any form of “pure energy”, but you think that is what your God and consciousness are made of. 2) You reject the idea that everything at the basis of the universe is material, because you believe in an immaterial God and immaterial consciousness. If these answers are correct, wouldn’t they mean that since quantum mechanics can only relate to the material world, it is irrelevant to a discussion of God’s existence and the nature of consciousness? (This a genuine question, because I find your statements confusing.)

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

dhw: It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: Does 'closer to the truth' mean there might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. Your theory is bolded above.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 03, 2019, 15:28 (1597 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So if plasma is not pure energy, what is its relevance to your belief that both God and consciousness are immaterial? And I still don’t understand how this belief squares with your statement that “everything is material at the basis of the universe” - which can only mean that among other things consciousness must have a material basis.

DAVID: You've misinterpreted. I believe God is pure energy, as is his consciousness. Plasma is closest thing I know to pure energy, is all I have said. I know we live in a material world which energy creates under God's guidance.

dhw: According to the article, quantum mechanics represents the materialist view of consciousness, and is therefore an inadequate explanation. You wrote that consciousness “may have a quantum basis”, which = the materialist view, but then wrote:”I’m thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.” The second sentence can only mean that the basis of consciousness is material, and as regards the first, I asked if there was any such thing as “pure energy particles”. Your response to both points was “An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles”. Since plasma is matter, no matter how “close” it is to pure energy, neither my question nor my comment has been answered! May I suggest possible answers? 1) We do not know any form of “pure energy”, but you think that is what your God and consciousness are made of. 2) You reject the idea that everything at the basis of the universe is material, because you believe in an immaterial God and immaterial consciousness. If these answers are correct, wouldn’t they mean that since quantum mechanics can only relate to the material world, it is irrelevant to a discussion of God’s existence and the nature of consciousness? (This a genuine question, because I find your statements confusing.)

You've made an excellent analysis of my position. I would add my thought: quantum mechanics is how pure energy becomes the material world in which we live.


DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

dhw: It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: Does 'closer to the truth' mean there might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. Your theory is bolded above.

I view panpsychism as a distorted view of God's consciousness

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Monday, November 04, 2019, 11:12 (1597 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: According to the article, quantum mechanics represents the materialist view of consciousness, and is therefore an inadequate explanation. You wrote that consciousness “may have a quantum basis”, which = the materialist view, but then wrote:”I’m thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.” The second sentence can only mean that the basis of consciousness is material, and as regards the first, I asked if there was any such thing as “pure energy particles”. Your response to both points was “An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles”. Since plasma is matter, no matter how “close” it is to pure energy, neither my question nor my comment has been answered! May I suggest possible answers? 1) We do not know any form of “pure energy”, but you think that is what your God and consciousness are made of. 2) You reject the idea that everything at the basis of the universe is material, because you believe in an immaterial God and immaterial consciousness. If these answers are correct, wouldn’t they mean that since quantum mechanics can only relate to the material world, it is irrelevant to a discussion of God’s existence and the nature of consciousness? (This a genuine question, because I find your statements confusing.)

DAVID: You've made an excellent analysis of my position. I would add my thought: quantum mechanics is how pure energy becomes the material world in which we live.

Then everything is not material at the basis of the universe. The basis of the universe is what you call pure energy. But you believe that this pure energy is conscious. (Again, I’m not arguing but am trying to clarify.) This ties in rather neatly with our next exchange. I am an agnostic because I find pure conscious energy as impossible to believe in as unconscious materials somehow creating life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option.

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. […]

DAVID: I view panpsychism as a distorted view of God's consciousness.

I see your panentheism as a form of panpsychism. You believe – correct me if I am wrong – that your God is both within and without the material world (= immanent and transcendent). His immanence can be the equivalent of the panpsychist view that there is some form of consciousness within all matter. Many panpsychists are also theists. On the other hand, panpsychism also lends itself to the idea that materials have rudimentary consciousness which in time has led to all the complexities of life as we know it, i.e. there is no need for a God.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Monday, November 04, 2019, 15:11 (1597 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: According to the article, quantum mechanics represents the materialist view of consciousness, and is therefore an inadequate explanation. You wrote that consciousness “may have a quantum basis”, which = the materialist view, but then wrote:”I’m thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.” The second sentence can only mean that the basis of consciousness is material, and as regards the first, I asked if there was any such thing as “pure energy particles”. Your response to both points was “An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles”. Since plasma is matter, no matter how “close” it is to pure energy, neither my question nor my comment has been answered! May I suggest possible answers? 1) We do not know any form of “pure energy”, but you think that is what your God and consciousness are made of. 2) You reject the idea that everything at the basis of the universe is material, because you believe in an immaterial God and immaterial consciousness. If these answers are correct, wouldn’t they mean that since quantum mechanics can only relate to the material world, it is irrelevant to a discussion of God’s existence and the nature of consciousness? (This a genuine question, because I find your statements confusing.)

DAVID: You've made an excellent analysis of my position. I would add my thought: quantum mechanics is how pure energy becomes the material world in which we live.

dhw: Then everything is not material at the basis of the universe. The basis of the universe is what you call pure energy. But you believe that this pure energy is conscious. (Again, I’m not arguing but am trying to clarify.) This ties in rather neatly with our next exchange. I am an agnostic because I find pure conscious energy as impossible to believe in as unconscious materials somehow creating life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option.

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. […]

DAVID: I view panpsychism as a distorted view of God's consciousness.

dhw: I see your panentheism as a form of panpsychism. You believe – correct me if I am wrong – that your God is both within and without the material world (= immanent and transcendent). His immanence can be the equivalent of the panpsychist view that there is some form of consciousness within all matter. Many panpsychists are also theists. On the other hand, panpsychism also lends itself to the idea that materials have rudimentary consciousness which in time has led to all the complexities of life as we know it, i.e. there is no need for a God.

It is your 'rudimentary' consciousness that bothers me. Only an organized consciousness which can really design ( therefore a thinking mind) can make the designs of new species. Key: new specie always have attribute that fit their new circumstances and appear after gaps that show large changes in form and function. Even transitional forms require major changes.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Tuesday, November 05, 2019, 12:18 (1596 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You've made an excellent analysis of my position. I would add my thought: quantum mechanics is how pure energy becomes the material world in which we live.

dhw: Then everything is not material at the basis of the universe. The basis of the universe is what you call pure energy. But you believe that this pure energy is conscious. (Again, I’m not arguing but am trying to clarify.) This ties in rather neatly with our next exchange. I am an agnostic because I find pure conscious energy as impossible to believe in as unconscious materials somehow creating life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option.

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. […]

DAVID: I view panpsychism as a distorted view of God's consciousness.

dhw: I see your panentheism as a form of panpsychism. You believe – correct me if I am wrong – that your God is both within and without the material world (= immanent and transcendent). His immanence can be the equivalent of the panpsychist view that there is some form of consciousness within all matter. Many panpsychists are also theists. On the other hand, panpsychism also lends itself to the idea that materials have rudimentary consciousness which in time has led to all the complexities of life as we know it, i.e. there is no need for a God.

DAVID: It is your 'rudimentary' consciousness that bothers me. Only an organized consciousness which can really design (therefore a thinking mind) can make the designs of new species. Key: new species always have attributes that fit their new circumstances and appear after gaps that show large changes in form and function. Even transitional forms require major changes.

I don’t know why you have now decided to switch this discussion to your theory of evolution. The subject is consciousness and its possible origin: 1) pure energy which is already fully conscious (theism); 2) materials combining by chance (atheism); 3) some form of consciousness already present in all materials (panpsychism). I have already said that I find all three equally difficult to believe in. On the subject of evolution, please see “David’s Theory of Evolution”.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 05, 2019, 15:33 (1595 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You've made an excellent analysis of my position. I would add my thought: quantum mechanics is how pure energy becomes the material world in which we live.

dhw: Then everything is not material at the basis of the universe. The basis of the universe is what you call pure energy. But you believe that this pure energy is conscious. (Again, I’m not arguing but am trying to clarify.) This ties in rather neatly with our next exchange. I am an agnostic because I find pure conscious energy as impossible to believe in as unconscious materials somehow creating life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option.

dhw: The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.

DAVID: You've simply come back to my theory that our universe is a creation of God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know how you can reach that conclusion when I have explicitly stated that this third option can be used to support either theism or atheism. […]

DAVID: I view panpsychism as a distorted view of God's consciousness.

dhw: I see your panentheism as a form of panpsychism. You believe – correct me if I am wrong – that your God is both within and without the material world (= immanent and transcendent). His immanence can be the equivalent of the panpsychist view that there is some form of consciousness within all matter. Many panpsychists are also theists. On the other hand, panpsychism also lends itself to the idea that materials have rudimentary consciousness which in time has led to all the complexities of life as we know it, i.e. there is no need for a God.

DAVID: It is your 'rudimentary' consciousness that bothers me. Only an organized consciousness which can really design (therefore a thinking mind) can make the designs of new species. Key: new species always have attributes that fit their new circumstances and appear after gaps that show large changes in form and function. Even transitional forms require major changes.

dhw: I don’t know why you have now decided to switch this discussion to your theory of evolution. The subject is consciousness and its possible origin: 1) pure energy which is already fully conscious (theism); 2) materials combining by chance (atheism); 3) some form of consciousness already present in all materials (panpsychism). I have already said that I find all three equally difficult to believe in. On the subject of evolution, please see “David’s Theory of Evolution”.

But it is you who look to pantheism as a form of consciousness which can cause new species, or is my interpretation of your thoughts wrong.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by dhw, Wednesday, November 06, 2019, 08:20 (1595 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don’t know why you have now decided to switch this discussion to your theory of evolution. The subject is consciousness and its possible origin: 1) pure energy which is already fully conscious (theism); 2) materials combining by chance (atheism); 3) some form of consciousness already present in all materials (panpsychism). I have already said that I find all three equally difficult to believe in. On the subject of evolution, please see “David’s Theory of Evolution”.

DAVID: But it is you who look to pantheism [dhw: sic: you meant panpsychism] as a form of consciousness which can cause new species, or is my interpretation of your thoughts wrong.

We are discussing the origin of consciousness and your proposal that “everything is material at the basis of the universe”, whereas in fact you believe that the basis of the universe and of consciousness is immaterial, in the form of “pure energy”. I went on to say I found both concepts equally difficult to believe in as the source of life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option, and I said this was panpsychism, but this can be used to support atheism as well as theism. I do not support or “look to” any of these three options as credible solutions to life’s mysteries, which is why I remain agnostic, while acknowledging that at least one of them must be nearer the truth than the others.

Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 07, 2019, 00:20 (1594 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I don’t know why you have now decided to switch this discussion to your theory of evolution. The subject is consciousness and its possible origin: 1) pure energy which is already fully conscious (theism); 2) materials combining by chance (atheism); 3) some form of consciousness already present in all materials (panpsychism). I have already said that I find all three equally difficult to believe in. On the subject of evolution, please see “David’s Theory of Evolution”.

DAVID: But it is you who look to panpsychism as a form of consciousness which can cause new species {corrected].

dhw: We are discussing the origin of consciousness and your proposal that “everything is material at the basis of the universe”, whereas in fact you believe that the basis of the universe and of consciousness is immaterial, in the form of “pure energy”. I went on to say I found both concepts equally difficult to believe in as the source of life, consciousness and the ability to reproduce and evolve. You asked if there was a third option, and I said this was panpsychism, but this can be used to support atheism as well as theism. I do not support or “look to” any of these three options as credible solutions to life’s mysteries, which is why I remain agnostic, while acknowledging that at least one of them must be nearer the truth than the others.

I think my supposition of of an eternal pure energy as the source of everything is a reasonable possibility. we don't know what is on the other side of quantum uncertainty.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real

by David Turell @, Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 05:17 (1554 days ago) @ David Turell

And argues it well:

https://aeon.co/essays/consciousness-is-neither-a-spooky-mystery-nor-an-illusory-belief...

"A lot of the confusion, as we shall see, hinges on what exactly we mean by both ‘consciousness’ and ‘illusion’. In order to usefully fix our ideas instead of meandering across a huge literature in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, consider a fascinating essay for Aeon by Keith Frankish. He begins by making a distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is what produces the subjective quality of experience, what philosophers call ‘qualia’. This is what makes it possible for us (and, presumably, for a number of other animal species) to experience what it is like, for example, to see red, or taste a persimmon, or write essays on philosophy of mind.

"By contrast, access consciousness makes it possible for us to perceive things in the first place. As Frankish puts it, access consciousness is what ‘makes sensory information accessible to the rest of the mind, and thus to “you” – the person constituted by these embodied mental systems’. Before you can experience what it is like to see red, you have to be able to actually see red. Frankish agrees that access consciousness is a real thing, not an illusion, though he correctly adds that we are still very early on in our quest to understand it scientifically.

***

"But, argues Frankish, a number of philosophers would say that, even if we had a complete description of access consciousness, there would still be something fundamentally amiss from our picture of consciousness as a whole. That part – phenomenal consciousness – is what underpins what it is like to feel something or, as Thomas Nagel put it in his classic paper, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ (1974).

***

"Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (my view is this alternative)

***

"It is certainly true, as the illusionists maintain, that we do not have access to our own neural mechanisms. But we don’t need to, just like a computer user doesn’t need to know machine-language – and, in fact, is far better off for that. This does not at all imply that we are somehow mistaken about our thoughts and feelings. No more than I as a computer user might be mistaken about which ‘folder’ contains the ‘file’ on which I have been ‘writing’ this essay.

"This illusion talk can be triggered by what I think of as the reductionist temptation, the notion that lower levels of description – in this case, the neurobiological one – are somehow more true, or even the only true ones. The fallaciousness of this kind of thinking can be brought to light in a couple of ways. First of all, and most obviously, why stop at the neurobiological level? Why not say that neurons are themselves illusions, since they are actually made of molecules? But wait! Molecules too are illusions, as they are really made of quarks. Or strings. Or fields. Or whatever the latest from fundamental physics says.

***

"When illusionists argue that what we experience as qualia are ‘nothing like’ our actual internal mental mechanisms, they are, in a sense, right. But they also seem to forget that everything we perceive about the outside world is a representation and not the thing-in-itself. Take the visual system, which as I mentioned above is one of the best-understood instances of access consciousness, and which makes phenomenal consciousness possible. Our eyes in reality perceive a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, determined by the specific environment in which we have evolved as social primates, as well as by the type of radiation that comes from the Sun and passes through the filters of Earth’s atmosphere. There is, in other words, a hell of a lot that we don’t see. At all.

***

"Following John Searle, I think that consciousness is an evolved biological mechanism with adaptive value, and that treating it as an illusion is, in a big sense, denying the data that need to be explained. In his book The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992), Searle writes:
What I want to insist on, ceaselessly, is that one can accept the obvious facts of physics – for example, that the world is made up entirely of physical particles in fields of force – without at the same time denying the obvious facts about our own experiences – for example, that we are all conscious and that our conscious states have quite specific irreducible phenomenological properties.

"'Irreducibility’ here is not a mystical concept, and it can be cashed out in a number of ways. I’m not sure which way Searle himself leans, but I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon,"

Comment: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real

by dhw, Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 08:58 (1554 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (DAVID: my view is this alternative)

QUOTE: “I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon."

DAVID: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

Yes, this is a rejigging of the emergence theory (emergence was the “in” word not so long ago), and of course nobody knows how materials can produce immaterial thought. However, here the material basis of consciousness remains (“quarks and so forth”). This “property dualism” is a far cry from your form of dualism, which has immaterial thought stemming from an immaterial soul (the material brain functioning only as a “receiver”), which in turn stems from your immaterial God and – if memory serves me correctly – returns to your God in an afterlife. Property dualism excludes the possibility of an afterlife, because the mind dies with the body.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real

by David Turell @, Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 15:00 (1554 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (DAVID: my view is this alternative)

QUOTE: “I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon."

DAVID: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

dhw: Yes, this is a rejigging of the emergence theory (emergence was the “in” word not so long ago), and of course nobody knows how materials can produce immaterial thought. However, here the material basis of consciousness remains (“quarks and so forth”). This “property dualism” is a far cry from your form of dualism, which has immaterial thought stemming from an immaterial soul (the material brain functioning only as a “receiver”), which in turn stems from your immaterial God and – if memory serves me correctly – returns to your God in an afterlife. Property dualism excludes the possibility of an afterlife, because the mind dies with the body.

I don't think so. The soul is controlling those 'quarks and so forth'. I still believe in soul and afterlife which use the brain to produce consciousness as my version of how it all works.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real:quantum controls

by David Turell @, Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 18:14 (1553 days ago) @ David Turell

How quantum interactions control protein folding and therefore protein functions:

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-surfing-quantum-protein-revisited.html

"Quantum wavelike behaviour plays a key role in modern science and technology, with applications of quantum mechanics ranging from lasers and high-speed fiber communications, to quantum computers and photosynthesis in plants. A natural question is whether quantum wave phenomena could also be relevant for structure formation and dynamical processes in biological systems in living cells. This question has not been addressed convincingly up to now due to the lack of efficient quantum methods that are applicable to systems as large as whole proteins under physiological conditions (i.e. solvated in water and at room temperature).

***

"Prof. Alexandre Tkatchenko and doctoral researcher Martin Stöhr from the Department of Physics and Materials Science at the University of Luxembourg have investigated the folding process of proteins in water using a fully quantum-mechanical treatment for the first time. Protein folding is the physical process by which a chain of amino acids acquires its native biologically functional structure due to interactions between amino acids and the influence of surrounding water. A key novel finding of the present study is that the interaction between the protein and the surrounding water has to be described by quantum-mechanical wavelike behavior, which also turns out to be critical in the dynamics of the protein folding process.

"'The persistence of quantum wavelike behavior in biomolecular systems opens up a new paradigm for explaining some of the fundamental processes in biology," says Martin Stöhr, the first author of the study. A correct microscopic understanding of biological processes is key to specifically target the function and dysfunction in cells as desired in modern medicine, for instance.

"'Going ahead, we foresee a major role of quantum interactions for the biomolecular machinery ranging from protein assembly to the function of enzymes," explains Prof. Alexandre Tkatchenko, the corresponding author of the study.

"As part of various national and international collaborations, the results of this study have already motivated further comprehensive investigations of how quantum effects can shape a variety of biological phenomena."

Comment: This study exactly fits my concept that quantum mechanics is at the basis of our reality and that the soul exists at a quantum level as it provides for and controls the presence of consciousness.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real

by dhw, Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 10:08 (1553 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. (dhw's bold) The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (DAVID: my view is this alternative)

QUOTE: “I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon."

DAVID: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

dhw: Yes, this is a rejigging of the emergence theory (emergence was the “in” word not so long ago), and of course nobody knows how materials can produce immaterial thought. However, here the material basis of consciousness remains (“quarks and so forth”). This “property dualism” is a far cry from your form of dualism, which has immaterial thought stemming from an immaterial soul (the material brain functioning only as a “receiver”), which in turn stems from your immaterial God and – if memory serves me correctly – returns to your God in an afterlife. Property dualism excludes the possibility of an afterlife, because the mind dies with the body.

DAVID: I don't think so. The soul is controlling those 'quarks and so forth'. I still believe in soul and afterlife which use the brain to produce consciousness as my version of how it all works.

I was only pointing out that you were not a property dualist, although you said in the first paragraph that you identified with that view. You are in fact a substance dualist, and the first sentence of the quote (I have bolded it now) is highly contentious.

DAVID (under “quantum controls”): This study exactly fits my concept that quantum mechanics is at the basis of our reality and that the soul exists at a quantum level as it provides for and controls the presence of consciousness.

I see absolutely nothing here about an immaterial soul. The whole article is geared to the behaviour of quanta, which are material, and there is nothing in it to even remotely suggest anything other than property dualism, as opposed to the substance dualism which you embrace.

Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real

by David Turell @, Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 14:44 (1553 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. (dhw's bold) The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (DAVID: my view is this alternative)

QUOTE: “I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon."

DAVID: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

dhw: Yes, this is a rejigging of the emergence theory (emergence was the “in” word not so long ago), and of course nobody knows how materials can produce immaterial thought. However, here the material basis of consciousness remains (“quarks and so forth”). This “property dualism” is a far cry from your form of dualism, which has immaterial thought stemming from an immaterial soul (the material brain functioning only as a “receiver”), which in turn stems from your immaterial God and – if memory serves me correctly – returns to your God in an afterlife. Property dualism excludes the possibility of an afterlife, because the mind dies with the body.

DAVID: I don't think so. The soul is controlling those 'quarks and so forth'. I still believe in soul and afterlife which use the brain to produce consciousness as my version of how it all works.

dhw: I was only pointing out that you were not a property dualist, although you said in the first paragraph that you identified with that view. You are in fact a substance dualist, and the first sentence of the quote (I have bolded it now) is highly contentious.

DAVID (under “quantum controls”): This study exactly fits my concept that quantum mechanics is at the basis of our reality and that the soul exists at a quantum level as it provides for and controls the presence of consciousness.

dhw: I see absolutely nothing here about an immaterial soul. The whole article is geared to the behaviour of quanta, which are material, and there is nothing in it to even remotely suggest anything other than property dualism, as opposed to the substance dualism which you embrace.

Yes, it is confusing. The 'special properties appearing' is vague and my explanation of how it happens is what I think.

Consciousness: Horgan says it is real

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 09, 2020, 01:30 (1531 days ago) @ David Turell

With a practical approach:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/my-go-to-arguments-for-free-will/?utm_...

"Free-will deniers tend to be hard-core materialists, who think reality, ultimately, consists of particles pushed and pulled by fundamental forces. This hyper-reductive worldview can’t account for choice. Or consciousness, for that matter, or beauty, morality, meaning and other trappings of the human condition. That doesn’t mean these things are somehow illusory. It just means materialistic science, which does a splendid job explaining protons and planets, remains baffled by us.

***

" Free will is an idea, a packet of meaning, that cannot be reduced to mere physics. The idea of free will, not its instantiation in my brain, provoked me, my physical self, to type this column. I’m not compelled to write it. .

***

"You chose to read this column, didn’t you? That’s proof of free will.

"By free will, I mean a capacity for deliberate, conscious decisions. Choices. Free will is variable. The more choices you have, the more free will you have. Our choices are constrained by all sorts of factors, physical, biological, social, economic, political, even romantic. My choices, for example, are often overruled by those of my willful girlfriend “Emily,” but that’s okay, because I’m with her by choice. Choices are never entirely free, but that doesn’t mean we lack them.

"I’m not going to invoke quantum mechanics, information theory or arcane philosophical reasoning. I find slick, technical defenses of free will almost as unpersuasive as slick, technical denials. My arguments will leave many questions unanswered. Did we discover free will or invent it? I don’t know, both, perhaps. Do non-human animals possess it? Maybe, maybe not, but I know we have it. All right, enough throat-clearing, here are my arguments:

"No, I choose to write this column, because I want others to share my belief in free will. It matters to me. Once I decide to write the column, then I must decide how to write it. That process entails countless choices. They are constrained, limited, by factors such as time, my verbal skills and knowledge, my sense of what readers will like and so on. Like I said, just because free will is never entirely free doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

"Libet’s Experiments Are Bogus. Decades ago, psychologist Benjamin Libet monitored subjects’ neural activity while they chose to hit a button, and he discovered a burst of activity preceding the conscious decision to push the button by a split second. Free-will deniers seized upon Libet’s experiments as evidence that our brains make decisions, and our conscious choices are mere afterthoughts. Hence, no free will.

"First of all, deciding when to push a button is not remotely analogous to genuine choices, like whether to get married, have kids, get divorced. The Libet experiments are profoundly flawed, as psychologist Steve Taylor points out in a recent Scientific American column. The question is, why did anyone ever take seriously the claim that Libet had disproved free will? Why do smart people accept such flimsy evidence?

***

"Just Because Physics Can’t Account for Free Will Doesn’t Mean It Doesn’t Exist. Free-will deniers tend to be hard-core materialists, who think reality, ultimately, consists of particles pushed and pulled by fundamental forces. This hyper-reductive worldview can’t account for choice. Or consciousness, for that matter, or beauty, morality, meaning and other trappings of the human condition. That doesn’t mean these things are somehow illusory. It just means materialistic science, which does a splendid job explaining protons and planets, remains baffled by us.

"Don’t let mean reductionists bully you into agreeing with them. They’re not as smart as they think they are. In fact, anyone who argues strenuously against free will is a walking, talking contradiction. Their disbelief, like my belief, is a choice stemming from (in their case, faulty) reason, another mind-based capacity irreducible to physics and chemistry.

"You Reading This Sentence Is Proof Too. You don’t have to read this column, do you? Of course not. You choose to read it, freely. More proof of free will! If you’re irritated by the substance or style of this column, and you jump to Twitter to find something more amusing, that’s another choice! More proof!

***

"This is my best, slam-dunk argument for free will. That doesn’t mean it always or even usually works. My students can be so stubborn! But I feel good making this argument, it convinces me. Usually. To be honest, I have doubts about free willnow and then. Sometimes I feel like I’m sleepwalking through life. I’m a confabulating somnambulist, a bundle of reflexes, twitches and compulsions with no self-knowledge, let alone self-control.

Comment: A natural straight forward no nonsense view. The brain works in mysterious ways.

Consciousness: Horgan says it is real

by dhw, Thursday, January 09, 2020, 11:14 (1531 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: This is my best, slam-dunk argument for free will. That doesn’t mean it always or even usually works. My students can be so stubborn! But I feel good making this argument, it convinces me. Usually. To be honest, I have doubts about free willnow and then. Sometimes I feel like I’m sleepwalking through life. I’m a confabulating somnambulist, a bundle of reflexes, twitches and compulsions with no self-knowledge, let alone self-control.

DAVID: A natural straight forward no nonsense view. The brain works in mysterious ways.

Natural perhaps, straightforward, no. We all think we have a choice. Some people think our choices are dictated by circumstances beyond our control (the endless chain of cause and effect) so our choice is predetermined by that chain – no free will. Alternatively, we can argue that the chain has made us what we are, but all our decisions are still our decisions and no one else’s – free will. I’m not surprised that his students are stubborn, especially after reading his conclusion. (Without self-control, how can you possibly have free will?) Maybe it would help him first to define what he means by “free will”. We had this discussion a few times with Romansh, who managed to define free will out of existence: “The ability to act or to make choices independently of the environment or of the universe.” My own definition was: “An entity's conscious ability to control its decision-making process within given constraints.

I don’t understand why you have headed this thread “consciousness” when the subject is free will. May I please have your permission to change it?

Consciousness: Horgan says it is real

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 09, 2020, 15:33 (1530 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: This is my best, slam-dunk argument for free will. That doesn’t mean it always or even usually works. My students can be so stubborn! But I feel good making this argument, it convinces me. Usually. To be honest, I have doubts about free willnow and then. Sometimes I feel like I’m sleepwalking through life. I’m a confabulating somnambulist, a bundle of reflexes, twitches and compulsions with no self-knowledge, let alone self-control.

DAVID: A natural straight forward no nonsense view. The brain works in mysterious ways.

dhw: Natural perhaps, straightforward, no. We all think we have a choice. Some people think our choices are dictated by circumstances beyond our control (the endless chain of cause and effect) so our choice is predetermined by that chain – no free will. Alternatively, we can argue that the chain has made us what we are, but all our decisions are still our decisions and no one else’s – free will. I’m not surprised that his students are stubborn, especially after reading his conclusion. (Without self-control, how can you possibly have free will?) Maybe it would help him first to define what he means by “free will”. We had this discussion a few times with Romansh, who managed to define free will out of existence: “The ability to act or to make choices independently of the environment or of the universe.” My own definition was: “An entity's conscious ability to control its decision-making process within given constraints.

I don’t understand why you have headed this thread “consciousness” when the subject is free will. May I please have your permission to change it?

Free will is part of consciousness and the search mechanism is not straightforward in discovering headings. Ask Neil.

Consciousness: computer scientist says it is real

by David Turell @, Monday, January 20, 2020, 19:00 (1519 days ago) @ David Turell

The opinion of Bernardo Kastrup:

https://iai.tv/articles/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-consciousness-auid-1296

"...the intractability of the problem has led some to even claim that consciousness doesn’t exist at all: Daniel Dennett and his followers famously argue that it is an illusion, whereas neuroscientist Michael Graziano proclaims that “consciousness doesn’t happen. It is a mistaken construct.” Really?

***

"Don’t get me wrong, the motivation behind the denial is obvious enough: it is to tackle a vexing problem by magically wishing it out of existence. As a matter of fact, the ‘whoa-factor’ of this magic gets eliminativists and illusionists a lot of media attention. But still, what kind of conscious inner dialogue do these people engage in so as to convince themselves that they have no conscious inner dialogue? Short of assuming that they are insane, fantastically stupid or dishonest—none of which is plausible—we have an authentic and rather baffling mystery in our hands.

***

"Consciousness seems immaterial—his argument goes—simply because, in order to focus attention on survival-relevant tasks, the model fails to incorporate superfluous details of brain anatomy and physiology. In Graziano’s words, “the brain describes a simplified version of itself, then reports this as a ghostly, non-physical essence.”

"This is all very reasonable. The problem is that it has nothing to do with phenomenal consciousness. Graziano’s authoritative prose disguises a sleight of hand: he implicitly changes the meaning he attributes to the term ‘consciousness’ as he develops the argument. He starts by talking about subjective experience—i.e. phenomenal consciousness, which is what science can’t explain—just to end up explaining something else entirely: our ability to cognize ourselves as agents and metacognitively represent our own mental contents.

"...what is meant by phenomenal consciousness [is] what it feels like to lift a heavy bag, have your tongue burned by hot tea or hit your head against a wall isn’t “ethereal” at all (try the wall if you doubt me). There is remarkably little in Graziano’s argument to justify the rather ambitious title of his essay.

***
"Keith Frankish—an illusionist—published an essay on Aeon making the case that consciousness is, well, an illusion. Never mind the fact that illusions are experiential and therefore presuppose consciousness; the subtitle of his essay—“Phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains” (emphasis added)—gave me hope that he would face the core issue head-on, instead of throwing a smokescreen of conceptual obfuscation.

"Disappointingly, however, Frankish already starts out by conflating science with the metaphysics of materialism and then weaving a blatantly circular argument:

“It is phenomenal consciousness that I believe is illusory. For science finds nothing qualitative in our brains, any more than in the world outside. The atoms in your brain aren’t coloured and they don’t compose a colourful inner image.”

***

“'it is not only illusionists who must address this problem. The notion of mental representation is a central one in modern cognitive science, and explaining how the brain represents things is a task on which all sides are engaged.”

"I regard this as outright misdirection. Yes, the mechanisms of mental representation in general aren’t fully understood, but that’s not the salient issue here. What is salient is this: only illusionists have to account for the experience of ‘seeming’—i.e. illusion—while denying experience to begin with. That’s the point, not mental representation in general.

***

"If Frankish and Graziano’s arguments are based on question-begging, conceptual obfuscation and sleights of hand, where does this leave us regarding the mystery I originally set out to elucidate?

"My present opinion is that illusionists and eliminativists are sincere, but also so fanatically committed to a particular metaphysics—materialism—that they inadvertently conjure up, and then tie themselves in, perplexing webs of conceptual indirection, ultimately deceiving themselves.

"They defer tackling the salient questions with layer upon layer of smoke and mirrors just to admit, at the very end, that the questions haven’t actually been addressed. However, by adding and then wrestling with all those artificial in-between layers, they get the impression that progress has been made, only one step being left at the end.

"But in fact nothing has been accomplished, nothing at all. The ‘problems’ they solve aren’t real problems to begin with, just conjured-up artifacts of conceptual fog. There is nothing of any substance or relevance prior to the “tough question” of “how does a brain state represent a phenomenal property” if experience—as they allege—doesn’t exist.

"Despite all this, here we are, discussing eliminativism and illusionism because—bewilderingly—these views have acquired a degree of academic respectability. Such is the state in which we find Western philosophy."

Comment: Saying it is an illusion solves nothing. What we experience is real enough to us and works.

Consciousness: computer scientist says it is real

by dhw, Tuesday, January 21, 2020, 11:58 (1519 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Despite all this, here we are, discussing eliminativism and illusionism because—bewilderingly—these views have acquired a degree of academic respectability. Such is the state in which we find Western philosophy."

DAVID: Saying it is an illusion solves nothing. What we experience is real enough to us and works.

It’s nice to record that you and I are in agreement!

Consciousness: computer scientist says it is real

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 21, 2020, 18:18 (1518 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: Despite all this, here we are, discussing eliminativism and illusionism because—bewilderingly—these views have acquired a degree of academic respectability. Such is the state in which we find Western philosophy."

DAVID: Saying it is an illusion solves nothing. What we experience is real enough to us and works.

dhw: It’s nice to record that you and I are in agreement!

Yes, many times

Consciousness: is it in the brain's electromagnetic field

by David Turell @, Saturday, April 17, 2021, 18:57 (1066 days ago) @ David Turell

This researcher thinks so:

https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field?ut...

"Whether neurons are firing synchronously should make no difference to their information-processing operations. Synchrony makes no sense for a consciousness located in neurons – but if we place consciousness in the brain’s EM field, then its association with synchrony becomes inevitable...when those same neurons fire synchronously, then their waves will line up to cause constructive interference to project a strong EM signal into my brain’s EM field, what I now call the conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field.

***

"...experiments by David McCormick at Yale University School of Medicine in 2010 and Christof Koch at Caltech in 2011 have demonstrated that neurons can indeed be perturbed by weak, brain-strength, EM fields. At the very least, their experiments suggest the plausibility of a wifi component of neuronal information processing, which I claim is experienced as ‘free will’.

"The cemi field theory also accounts for why our non-conscious and conscious minds operate differently. One of the most striking differences between the two is that our non-conscious mind can do many things at once, but we are able to engage in only one conscious task at a time. For example, Katumuwa [historical figure wo imagined a soul] wouldn’t have had any problem chatting to a friend while chewing on his roast duck, but he wouldn’t have been able to divide a number such as 1,357 by seven while concentrating on a game of chess. Our non-conscious mind appears to be a parallel processor, whereas our conscious mind is a serial processor that can operate only one task at a time.

***

"Different ideas dropped into the brain’s cemi field similarly interfere with one another. Our conscious cemi-field mind inevitably became a serial computer that can do only one thing at a time. (my bold)

***

"The cemi field theory predicts that conventional computers will never gain general intelligence, because it’s a skill enabled by the cemi field’s ability to compute with cbits, ideas, rather than binary digits. Conventional AI lacks this capability because computer engineers take great pains to prevent EM fields interfering with their computations. Without EM field interactions, AI will remain forever dumb and non-conscious.

"Yet the cemi field theory also provides the exciting and potentially world-changing prospect of building artificial conscious minds. It will require a different kind of computer architecture that, like our own brain, computes with fields as well as conventional logic gates that encode only bits. The architecture of our own EM field-sensitive brains provides lots of clues as to how these revolutionary artificial brains of the future could be built. Transforming those clues into a new form of computing could finally deliver the dream of conscious, general intelligence-enabled AI."

Comment: Note my bold. This researcher is using his knowledge that our frontal lobe's cortex have five layers of neurons wired in series. It is a highly complex arrangement that somehow arranges for us to have consciousness and do abstract thinking. Perhaps the EM field is part of it. After all I think God's consciousness pervades this universe. As for the brain's unconscious activity just think of any sports player in action, hitting a tennis ball coming at him at over 100 miles an hour, instantly calculating his swing accurately.

Consciousness & other science mysteries

by David Turell @, Friday, August 06, 2021, 15:43 (956 days ago) @ David Turell

Delayed decomposition in dead monks:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/thukdam-study

"The bodies of some Tibetan monks remain "fresh" after what appears to be their death.
Their fellow monks say they're not dead yet but in a deep, final meditative state called "thukdam."

"Science has not found any evidence of lingering EEG activity after death in thukdam monks.
It's definitely happening, and it's definitely weird. After the apparent death of some monks, their bodies remain in a meditating position without decaying for an extraordinary length of time, often as long as two or three weeks.

"Tibetan Buddhists, who view death as a process rather than an event, might assert that the spirit has not yet finished with the physical body. For them, thukdam begins with a "clear light" meditation that allows the mind to gradually unspool, eventually dissipating into a state of universal consciousness no longer attached to the body. Only at that time is the body free to die.

***

"There have been a handful of other unexplained instances of delayed decomposition elsewhere in the world.

***

"The most serious study of the phenomenon so far is being undertaken by The Thukdam Project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is one of the founders of the center and has published hundreds of articles about mindfulness.

"Davidson first encountered thukdam after his Tibetan monk friend Geshe Lhundub Sopa died, officially on August 28, 2014. Davidson last saw him five days later: "There was absolutely no change. It was really quite remarkable."

"The Thukdam Project published its first annual report this winter. It discussed a recent study in which electroencephalograms failed to detect any brain activity in 13 monks who had practiced thukdam and had been dead for at least 26 hours. Davidson was senior author of the study.

"While some might be inclined to say, well, that's that, Davidson sees the research as just a first step on a longer road. Philosopher Evan Thompson, who is not involved in The Thukdam Project, tells Tricycle, "If the thinking was that thukdam is something we can measure in the brain, this study suggests that's not the right place to look."

"In any event, the question remains: why are these apparently deceased monks so slow to begin decomposition? While environmental factors can slow or speed up the process a bit, usually decomposition begins about four minutes after death and becomes quite obvious over the course of the next day or so.

"As the Dalai Lama said:

"'What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter. An example is consciousness itself. Although sentient beings, including humans, have experienced consciousness for centuries, we still do not know what consciousness actually is: its complete nature and how it functions."

***

"As thukdam researchers continue to seek a signal of post-mortem consciousness of some sort, it's fair to ask what — and where — consciousness is in the first place. It is a question with which Big Think readers are familiar. We write about new theories all the time: consciousness happens on a quantum level; consciousness is everywhere."

Comment: It seems the body maintains some control over bacteria that can decompose, while the brain has ceased activity. The decomposing bugs are in the gut, and generally once the heart stops pumping, immunity defense disappears. A real puzzle.

Consciousness: a universal mind?

by David Turell @, Monday, September 13, 2021, 21:52 (917 days ago) @ David Turell

Related to panpsychism as described and advocated:

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/08/bernardo-kastrup-argues-for-a-universal-mind-as-a-reason...

"Bernardo Kastrup: Panpsychism, well, to be more accurately called constitutive panpsychism, it’s the notion that at least some of the elementary particles that constitutes the universe, at least some of them, are fundamentally conscious. In other words, they have experiential states, fundamental experiential states, next to having fundamental physical properties, like mass, charge, spin, momentum, spacetime position, and so on. So, next to all of those physical properties, there is a fundamental experiential property to at least some of the elementary building blocks of the physical universe.

***

"Bernardo Kastrup: I would say, elementary subatomic particles don’t exist. They are an epistemic tool, and physicists know this. An elementary subatomic particle is a particular pattern of excitation of a quantum field. That quantum field, that thing, although it’s entirely abstract, it exists. And to use an analogy to explain this, if you see a ripple moving on the surface of an otherwise very calm lake, you can point to the ripple and say, “It’s here. Now it’s here. And now it’s there.” Presumably, you can measure it. You can say it’s this high, it’s this long, it’s this large, it’s moving with that speed. You can characterize that ripple with all kinds of physical constants, or not constants, but physical quantities that characterize the ripple as a physical entity. Yet, there is nothing to the ripple but the water of the lake. The ripple is just a pattern of excitation of the water. The water isn’t even moving from left to right, it’s moving only up and down. But the ripple moves from left to right.

"So, a subatomic particle is just like the ripple. It is a ripple in the quantum field and as such, it doesn’t really exist. It’s just a way of talking about the pattern of excitation of the quantum field. But if the panpsychists bite this bullet, then you would have to concede that the consciousness that they want to put in at that level of nature, as a fundamental aspect of nature, would be spatially unbound, because the quantum field is spatially unbound. You cannot say that the ripple is conscious because the ripple doesn’t exist. There is only the quantum field. So, you have to say the quantum field is conscious.

"But now, you end up with universal consciousness because the quantum field, this is spatially unbound. It exists everywhere at the same time. And that makes it impossible for panpsychists to explain why you and I seem to have separate conscious in their lives. I can’t read your thoughts. Presumably, you can’t read mine. I do not know what’s happening in the galaxy of Andromeda. So, I think that’s a very strong argument against panpsychism.

"But the problem that separate consciousnesses creates for panpsychism (even elementary particles are conscious) does not, he says, exist in the same way for cosmopsychism (there is one universal consciousness), the view he holds:

"So, to avoid this combination problem, some philosophers have moved to the exact opposite end of the scale. They say, “Well, you know what? There is only one universal consciousness.” And by the way, that’s much more consistent with physics as we know. It’s much more consistent with quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics and… Well, quantum field theory is the broader theory. But then, that’s called cosmopsychism. There is only one universal consciousness.

***

"Bernardo Kastrup: And the challenge that you have to face then, as a cosmopsychist, is to say, how does this one mind seemingly break up or decomposes into a number of individual subjectivities? Like you, me, my cats, the bacteria swimming on the lake. How does the one ground the many? This is called then the decomposition problem.

"In Kastrup’s view, we all have separate consciousnesses because we are dissociated from the universal consciousness, in a way that a person with multiple personality disorder might have separate consciousnesses all in one mind:

"Bernardo Kastrup: My claim is, at least on empirical grounds, disassociation provides us a very good analogy, a very good metaphor for what might be happening at a universal level. Leading this one universal consciousness that we hypothesize to becoming many, to becoming you, me, and my girlfriend downstairs, and my cats, and so on."

Comment: And my approach is we receive the mechanism of consciousness from the universal consciousness for our brains to use. There is an article that the brain does this as a transducer, an interesting comment.

Consciousness: another approach

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 30, 2021, 18:52 (900 days ago) @ David Turell

It also fails:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/anil-seth-finds-consciousness-in-lifes-push-against-entr...

"Anil Seth wants to understand how minds work. As a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex in England, Seth has seen firsthand how neurons do what they do — but he knows that the puzzle of consciousness spills over from neuroscience into other branches of science, and even into philosophy.

"As he puts it near the start of his new book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (available October 19): “Somehow, within each of our brains, the combined activity of billions of neurons, each one a tiny biological machine, is giving rise to a conscious experience. And not just any conscious experience, your conscious experience, right here, right now. How does this happen? Why do we experience life in the first person?”

***

"When we think about consciousness or experience, it just doesn’t seem to us to be the sort of thing that admits an explanation in terms of physics and chemistry and biology. There’s a suspicion that scientific explanation — by which I mean broadly materialist, reductive explanations, which have been so successful in other branches of physics and chemistry — just might not be up to the job, because consciousness is intrinsically private.

***

"How is consciousness related to our nature as living machines, in a way that’s continuous between humans and other animals? In my work — and in the book — I eventually get to the point that consciousness is not there in spite of our nature as flesh-and-blood machines, as Descartes might have said; rather, it’s because of this nature. It is because we are flesh-and-blood living machines that our experiences of the world and of “self” arise.

***

"The promising bit comes from what Gerald Edelman and Tononi together observed, in the late ’90s, which is that conscious experiences are highly “informative” and always “integrated.”

"They meant information in a technical, formal sense — not the informal sense in which reading a newspaper is informative. Rather, conscious experiences are informative because every conscious experience is different from every other experience you ever have had, ever could have, or ever will have. Each one rules out the occurrence of a very, very large repertoire of alternative possible conscious experiences. When I look out of the window right now, I have never experienced this precise visual scene. It’s an experience even more distinctive when combined with all my thoughts, background emotions and so on. And this is what information, in information theory, measures: It’s the reduction of uncertainty among a repertoire of alternative possibilities.

"As well as being informative, every conscious experience is also integrated. It’s experienced “all of a piece”: Every conscious scene appears as a unified whole. We don’t experience the colors of objects separately from their shapes, nor do we experience objects independently of whatever else is going on. The many different elements of my conscious experience right now all seem tied together in a fundamental and inescapable way.

"So at the level of experience, at the level of phenomenology, consciousness has these two properties that coexist. Well, if that’s the case, then what Tononi and Edelman argued was that the mechanisms that underlie conscious experiences in the brain or in the body should also co-express these properties of information and integration.

***

"One thing that immediately follows from this is that you have a nice post hoc explanation for certain things we know about consciousness. For instance, that the cerebellum — the “little brain” in the back of our head — doesn’t seem to have much to do with consciousness. That’s just a matter of empirical fact; the cerebellum doesn’t seem much involved. Yet it has three-quarters of all the neurons in the brain. Why isn’t the cerebellum involved? You can make up many reasons. But the IIT reason is a very convincing one: The cerebellum’s wiring is not the right sort of wiring to generate co-expressed information and integration, whereas the cortex is, and the cortex is intimately related to consciousness.

***

"The key to unlocking life was to recognize that it is not just one thing. Life is a constellation concept — a cluster of related properties that come together in different ways in different organisms. There’s homeostasis, there’s reproduction, there’s metabolism, and so on. With life there are also gray areas, things that from some perspectives we would describe as being alive, and from others not — like viruses and oil droplets, and now synthetic organisms. But by accounting for its diverse properties, the suspicion that we still needed an élan vital, a spark of life — some sort of vitalistic resonance — to explain it went away. The problem of life wasn’t solved; it was “dissolved.”

***

"I don’t go all the way to what in philosophy you might call some version of idealism — that everything is a property of the mental. Some people do. This is where I diverge a little bit from people like [the cognitive scientist] Donald Hoffman....But he goes further, ending up in a kind of panpsychist idealism that some degree of consciousness inheres in everything. I just don’t buy it, frankly, and I don’t think you need to go there."

Comment: he has no answer, but interesting concepts., especially explaining cerebellar and cerebral wiring differences.

Consciousness: free will exists in this essay

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 11, 2021, 15:40 (858 days ago) @ David Turell

Marcelo Gleiser opines:

https://bigthink.com/13-8/physics-neuroscience-free-will/

"Are we free to make choices or are we automatons in a giant and invisible cosmic machinery, cogs and wheels turning about, not knowing why we make the choices we make? This is a thorny question that has important consequences, and not just for law enforcement.

***

"...the point is that choices come with consequences. If there is no free will, if we are indeed automatons of sorts, then to what extent are we really choosing when we think we are? And if we are not choosing, what or who is? And if we are not choosing, why do we have this notion or feeling that we are?

***

"Fortunately, the mind is not a solar system with strict deterministic laws. We have no clue what kinds of laws it follows, apart from very simplistic empirical laws about nerve impulses and their propagation, which already reveal complex nonlinear dynamics. Still, work in neuroscience has prompted a reconsideration of free will, even to the point of questioning our freedom to choose. Many neuroscientists and some philosophers consider free will to be an illusion. Sam Harris, for example, wrote a short book arguing the case.

"This shocking conclusion comes from a series of experiments that revealed something quite remarkable: Our brains decide a course of action before we know it. Benjamin Libet’s pioneering experiments in the 1980s using EEG and more recent ones using fMRI or implants directly into neurons found that the motor region responsible for making a motion in response to a question fired up seven seconds before the subject was aware of it. The brain seems to be deciding before the mind knows about it. But is it really?

"The experiment has been debunked, which actually is far from surprising. But what was surprising was the huge amount of noise that the claims against free will emerging from this type of experiment generated. To base the hefty issue of free will on experiments that measure neuronal activity when people move fingers to push a button should hardly count as decisive. Most of the choices we make in life are complex, multi-layered decisions that often take a long time."

Comment: All I can say is I agree. Libet was refuted long ago. Marcelo Gleiser is a professor of natural philosophy, physics, and astronomy at Dartmouth College.

Consciousness: Damasio's approach

by David Turell @, Wednesday, January 05, 2022, 20:37 (803 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, January 05, 2022, 20:53

It has to do with bodily awareness:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/feeling-knowing-book-consciousness-origin-evolution

"Consciousness is what gives an individual a sense of self; it helps one stay in the present, remember the past and plan for the future. Many scientists have argued that consciousness is created by vast networks of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. While it’s clear that the brain plays a major role in conscious experiences, it doesn’t act alone, argues Damasio, director of the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute.

"Instead, he argues, consciousness is generated by a variety of structures within an organism, some neural, some not. What’s more, feelings — mental experiences of body states — help connect the brain to the rest of the body. “The feelings that we have of, say, hunger or thirst, or pain, or well-being, or desire, etc. — these are the foundation of our mind,” Damasio says. In his view, feelings have played a central role in the life-regulating processes of animals throughout the history of life.

"In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio suggests that consciousness evolved as a way to keep essential bodily systems steady. This concept is also known as homeostasis, a self-regulating process that maintains stability amid ever-changing conditions. Consciousness emerged as an extension of homeostasis, Damasio argues, allowing for flexibility and planning in complex and unpredictable environments.

***

"SN: You argue that consciousness is unlikely to be exclusive to humans.

"Damasio: Right. We have different lineages in evolution, but it doesn’t mean that other creatures don’t have the possibility of getting to consciousness. Take, for example, the octopus. They have extremely complex behaviors. I would be flabbergasted if someone said they are not conscious. They have all the hallmarks of creatures that were able to develop a mind and have a sense of who they are and an awareness of how to protect themselves."

Comment: So the octopus can do calculus? Yes animals are aware of bodily functions, but that doesn't mean they have the degree of consciousness we have. Our degree is very special, and Damasio's atheistic guesswork is just that.

Consciousness: refuting Penrose Hammeroff theory

by David Turell @, Monday, June 13, 2022, 20:07 (644 days ago) @ David Turell

An expermental gravity quantum study eliminates it:

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-collapsing-theory-quantum-consciousness.html

"The origin of consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of science. One proposed solution, first suggested by Nobel Laureate and Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hammeroff, at Arizona State University, in Tucson, attributes consciousness to quantum computations in the brain. This in turn hinges on the notion that gravity could play a role in how quantum effects disappear, or "collapse." But a series of experiments in a lab deep under the Gran Sasso mountains, in Italy, has failed to find evidence in support of a gravity-related quantum collapse model, undermining the feasibility of this explanation for consciousness.

***

"'What I loved about this theory was that it is in principle testable and I decided to search for evidence that might help confirm or falsify it."

"At the heart of the theory is the idea that gravity is related to quantum wavefunction collapse and that this collapse is faster in systems with more mass. This concept was developed in a number of models by various physicists in the 1980s. One of those was Lajos Diósi, at the Wigner Research Center for Physics and at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, who has co-authored the new paper with Curceanu, Maaneli Derakhshani of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Matthias Laubenstein also at INFN, and Kristian Piscicchia of CREF and INFN. Penrose independently approached this idea a few years later and it became the core of his consciousness theory with Hammeroff.

"The two theories are often referred to by the umbrella term, the "Diósi-Penrose theory." But behind the joint name there is an important difference, notes Curceanu. Diósi's approach predicts that collapse would be accompanied by the spontaneous emission of a small amount of radiation, just large enough to be detected by cutting edge experiments.

***

"After running the experiment for two months the team did not measure spontaneous radiation signals, constraining the feasibility of gravity-related collapse. In 2020, the team reported in Nature Physics that their negative result had helped them rule out the simplest version of the Diósi-Penrose model.

"In their new paper they have explicitly examined the repercussions of their finding for Penrose and Hammeroff's Orch OR theory of consciousness. After reanalyzing the most plausible scenarios set out by Hammeroff and Penrose, in light of their recent experimental constraints on quantum collapse, they were led to conclude that almost none of the scenarios are plausible. "This is the first experimental investigation of the gravity-related quantum collapse pillar of the Orch OR consciousness model, which we hope will be followed by many others," says Curceanu. "I am very proud of our achievement.'"

Comment: this paper rules out a theory, which is what studies like this do. However, findings like the 410,000-year Cambrian/Ediacaran will stand until/or if another study refutes their method. The method they used is well-established. dhw hopes in vain.

Consciousness: a skeptic defends free will

by David Turell @, Monday, April 03, 2023, 16:19 (351 days ago) @ David Turell

He says at the molecular scale arguments are wrong.

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/free-will-is-real/

"If we keep our analysis in the scale where the individual agent exists,...then the primary and ultimate cause of my actions is me. The will emerges from the complex interactions of many small parts. It’s literally not true to say that it’s caused by any particular small part. It is caused by many small parts, but only when taken together all at once. And that’s the same thing as the whole person. So my thoughts and actions are deterministically caused by me. The molecules of which my brain is made are simply irrelevant to this fact. So I am the true source of my own actions, and there are no other “ultimate” causes. My mind does not exist as a molecule nor as a historical epoch, nor as a socioeconomic class. Yet my mind does exist. René Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” convinces me of this. In order to claim that my choices are really caused by a molecule or a historical epoch, one must refer to the dynamics of a scale where I (that is, my mind) cannot be found. Eliminating the mind from the analysis is not a valid way to answer a question about the mind.

***

"The question must ask whether or not I can do something other than what I’m expected to do, not other than what I will do.

"Human choice is temporally asymmetric and must be analyzed as such. This point could be missed without properly situating our analysis at the correct scale.

***

"In analyzing the ability to do otherwise, we should consider only a forward-looking ability because choices, by their nature, are forward-looking. We don’t deliberate or make choices about the past. Choices are always about something, and those objects of choice always lie in the future, thus choices are always forward-looking...If my choices are in principle not predictable, given total knowledge of the present world, then I do have the ability to do otherwise in a forward-looking sense, which is the only sense that makes any sense. Given the different dynamics found at different scales, the ability to do otherwise needs to be understood as temporally asymmetric; that is, as always forward-looking; as the ability to do something which is in principle not predictable. We do have that ability, and it derives from our self-referential nature.

"The fact that I am the relevant cause of my own actions comes with another important implication: I am a causally self-referencing entity. If a molecule were the relevant cause of my action, this would not be true in the same way. The molecule has no capacity for self-reflection, but I do. I can ask myself, “What will I do? What could I do? What should I do? What do I want to do? What would I do if I wanted to do X and should do Y?” Self-referential questions like these affect the choices that I make; and those choices change the self-referential questions that I ask.

***

"I am an output of and an input for my own processing. Framing the human self-referential nature in this way brings us to the concept of undecidability.

***

"If humans can exhibit undecidability, then we meet the second main criterion for free will: the forward-looking ability to do otherwise.

***

"Mikhail Prokopenko and his colleagues conducted a comparative formal analysis of recursive mathematical systems, Turing machines, and cellular automata. They come to a clear conclusion:

"As we have shown, the capacity to generate undecidable dynamics is based upon three underlying factors: (1) the program-data duality; (2) the potential to access an infinite computational medium; and (3) the ability to implement negation.19

"If humans do have these three properties, then we meet the criteria for undecidable dynamics, which means we can take actions that are fundamentally unpredictable, which means we have the ability to do otherwise in a forward-looking sense, which means we have free will.

***

"The last element required for undecidability is the ability to implement negation. Negation in this context refers to the ability of a logical system to produce an output which is exactly contrary to the processing which led to the output...If humans can implement this paradoxical logic into their thinking, then humans meet this requirement for producing undecidability. The fact that humans came up with the liar paradox thousands of years ago is evidence that humans can perform the logical operation of negation.

"All three factors underlying the capacity to generate undecidable dynamics are present in humans

***

"The resulting total picture is that we (humans) meet two criteria for real free will: the forward-looking ability to do otherwise and being the source of one’s own actions.

"Viewing human agents as whole humans instead of as molecules makes it clear that humans are the cause of their own actions, and also leads to a focus on the human features such as self-reference, that generate undecidable dynamics. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was right. Neither Zeus, Bertrand Russell, nor the scientists recapitulating the latter’s argument 77 years later can diminish our free wills."

Comment: Egnor and I agree. we have free will.

Consciousness: is sentience everywhere?

by David Turell @, Friday, March 15, 2024, 18:01 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

A review of a book:

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/15_march_2024/41803...

"Since the early 2000s, the world of plant science has been ruffled by a spirited debate about whether plants are sentient. For proponents of “plant neurobiology,” plant behaviors such as learning, habituation, and responsiveness to touch or wounding are evidence of a conscious mind. For the naysayers, these are mere stimulus-response phenomena lacking mental mediation. ( my bold)

"It is not a new idea. Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis wrote an article titled “The conscious cell” in 2001, and philosopher Evan Thompson has been a prominent advocate of this “biopsychist” position. In some ways, the putative universality of mind can be traced back to the German Naturphilosophie of the late 18th century.

***

"If that argument sometimes seemed tendentious, The Sentient Cell may provoke much more. In it, cognitive psychologist Arthur Reber, plant biologist František Baluška, and medical scientist William Miller claim that consciousness is everywhere in life, even down to the level of single cells. “Life and mind are co-terminous,” they say.

***

"To debate that proposition, should we first clarify what we mean by sentience, consciousness, and mind? Reber and colleagues decline to offer definitions beyond saying that they use the terms more or less synonymously and “in a folk psychology fashion.” Given the lack, and perhaps impossibility, of precise formal definitions, their approach is understandable but makes it harder to see what is at stake.

"It is a measure of the permissiveness of the authors’ view that they are willing to entertain a flicker of sentience even in individual proteins, such as the kinase mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin). This protein has so many different roles in the cell—in motility, cell division, protein synthesis, transcription, and more—that Reber and colleagues want to ascribe to it a kind of agency. “Is mTOR independently alive? Does it have ‘mind’?” they ask. Only, I think, if one is willing to risk making those words so vague as to be useless.

***

"The Sentient Cell comes perilously close to making its proposal of consciousness in all living things axiomatic rather than a hypothesis to be demonstrated. What starts as a postulate morphs into a statement of fact (“we securely know…all cells are conscious”) without having demonstrably earned that status.

"Reber and colleagues might reasonably respond that the position of “mindless until proved mindful” has proved not only flawed but also damaging in the study of animal behavior. Human exceptionalism might seem to be the sensible null hypothesis, but there comes a point where it is simply a more economical explanation to attribute mind than to suppose that some complex behavior is the result of an intricate stimulus-response mechanism that just so happens to closely resemble what we humans do. ( my bold)

"That is all very well for a chimpanzee or a bird—but really, is anything a bacterium does so smart as to warrant the benefit of the doubt? Reber and colleagues make a compelling case that prokaryotes and even individual cells of our own body regularly display behaviors that we should call, at the very least, intelligent. Nominally identical cells can show different responses to identical stimuli, in part because their internal states differ: They have memories of a kind, and so history matters.

***

"What is more, it is useful to talk about such behavior using those quasi-taboo words in biology: purpose, goals, meaning. In such ways, The Sentient Cell adds to the growing argument that the proper language for discussing the properties of living systems is not that of machines or computers but of cognition. (my bold)

"Yet cognition is not consciousness. Feeling pain, say, is a very different matter to possessing an electrical system for signaling stress and damage, as plants do. For humans, pain is constructed in neural circuits. Where in the plant are the equivalent? For this reviewer, the authors’ “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” theory seems mostly to reflect the fact that we lack appropriate words to talk about the complex competencies and agency of living things without anthropomorphizing.

"But if its thesis fails to persuade, The Sentient Cell might nonetheless provoke a long-overdue conversation. To understand life, we need to find alternative models besides “automata” at one pole and “sentient beings” at the other. We need more-sophisticated views of mindedness and intelligence, in which consciousness does not feature as a sauce with a single flavor that spices life with awareness and experience." (my bold)

Comment: my bolds simply reflect my position. Just because they act 'intelligently' doesn't mean they are intelligent, since it can all be explained by coding in their genome from the designer. Thus, all actions are automatic. Or alternately, the designer's mind is actively running the processes. 'Purpose, goals and meaning' are so obvious in biology, they cannot be ignored. Every action, every reaction has obvious purpose.

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