Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

Oh, do stop being silly! A perception is a change in state - from not having perceived something to having done so and have it in memory. Of course a change in state can be perceived from that which changes state if it has memory.

I was talking from basic first principles.
Memory is not a natural phenomenon.  You cannot just presume it to exist.
The same is true of perception.
Reactions are a natural occurrence.
For a reaction to be recorded in some form of memory, you first need the reaction to be perceived as a reaction.
As I explained previously, reactions cannot perceive themselves.
Once an element changes state, its previous state does not exist.
For a reaction to be perceptible, the change from one state to another state needs to be detected from an outside agency which can have awareness of the previous state.

This is the conundrum:
When a reaction occurs in material elements, it will generate other reactions.
These chains of reactions will certainly produce end results, but at no point in the chain of reactions will previous states exist. Awareness of these previous states is needed for conscious perception to occur.  This is essentially the root of the hard problem of consciousness.

The only feasible way I envisage for conscious perception to occur is to have a time independent reference from which changes in state over time can be detected.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I was talking from basic first principles.

No you weren’t. You were actually talking from a frankly bizarre set of unqualified assertions you’ve crafted over the years to post-rationalise some superstitious beliefs you want to be true but cannot otherwise justify.

Memory is not a natural phenomenon.  You cannot just presume it to exist.

In the absence of any reason to think otherwise, yes you can to a degree of reasonable certainty. Why on earth would you assert otherwise?

The same is true of perception.

Wrong again - see above.

Reactions are a natural occurrence.

So far as reason and evidence indicates, everything is a natural occurrence. 

For a reaction to be recorded in some form of memory, you first need the reaction to be perceived as a reaction.

Not true. An event can be “recorded” as you put it whether or not it's perceived.

As I explained previously, reactions cannot perceive themselves.

You didn’t explain, you asserted – and with no supporting justification of any sort at all.

Once an element changes state, its previous state does not exist.

But the memory of it does.

For a reaction to be perceptible, the change from one state to another state needs to be detected from an outside agency which can have awareness of the previous state.

Depends what you mean by “outside”, but there’s no reason to presume perceiver and perceived aren’t part of the same deterministic continuum.

This is the conundrum:
When a reaction occurs in material elements, it will generate other reactions.
These chains of reactions will certainly produce end results, but at no point in the chain of reactions will previous states exist. Awareness of these previous states is needed for conscious perception to occur.  This is essentially the root of the hard problem of consciousness.

No it isn’t - the hard problem of consciousness means something else, and again you’re completely screwing up the relationship between a prior state of events and the memory of it. The sandwich I had for lunch is no longer a sandwich, but I can remember it as a sandwich; the banana a chimp had for lunch is no longer a banana, but the chimp can remember that bananas taste good.

The only feasible way I envisage for conscious perception to occur is to have a time independent reference from which changes in state over time can be detected.

Yes, that probably is the only way you can envisage it – presumably because your incredulity relies on various of the false premises you’ve tried here. Yet again though, that you can’t or won’t understand something that’s explicable with reason and evidence nonetheless just tells us about the limits of your cognitive ability, but not about the truth of the matter.

As you’ve had the argument from personal incredulity fallacy explained to you several times only recently by the way, why have you just collapsed back into it yet again?   

[Stranger]

I was talking from basic first principles.
Memory is not a natural phenomenon.  You cannot just presume it to exist.

Seriously? We know memory exists. In the literal sense, it evolved, although all sorts of natural phenomena record things about the past. We can make devices with memory - of course it exists.

As I explained previously, reactions cannot perceive themselves.

Once again, you don't seem to understand the difference between an explanation and an assertion based on nothing but incredulity.

Once an element changes state, its previous state does not exist.
For a reaction to be perceptible, the change from one state to another state needs to be detected from an outside agency which can have awareness of the previous state.

This is the conundrum:
When a reaction occurs in material elements, it will generate other reactions.
These chains of reactions will certainly produce end results, but at no point in the chain of reactions will previous states exist. Awareness of these previous states is needed for conscious perception to occur.

You really have gone down some mad rabbit hole of utter nonsense here. If part of the chains of reactions cause a record of the past to be made, then there is no need for any outside agency (not that it would do any good, anyway - see below). We are constantly reacting both to what is happening now and to what we remember.

This is essentially the root of the hard problem of consciousness.

No, it isn't. It isn't even a problem; it has a blindingly obvious and trivially simple solution (see above).

The only feasible way I envisage for conscious perception to occur is to have a time independent reference from which changes in state over time can be detected.

If something is time-independent (not embedded in time), it can't do anything at all, let alone detect anything. A detection is a change in state that requires time.

I'm honestly finding it hard to take you seriously with this line of madness. I'm actually asking myself if you're having a laugh or have completely lost your mind.

[Enki]

Observation of animal behaviour shows predictable reactions to sensory data based on instinct and past experience with no role for conscious awareness.  In contrast, observation of human behaviour shows evidence of a profound ability to consciously override the instinctive behaviour needed for evolutionary survival.

Thanks for your above statement/assertion, Alan. Perhaps you might get in touch with the 'prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists' who were party to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness 2012.

The Declaration said:

The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. 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.

You need to show them the error of their ways, especially as you have the necessary Mensa backed expertise to impress them with. I await their abject apologies with anticipation.

[Alan Burns]

£46.95 (95.46 - 1.56 = 93.90; 93.90/2 = 46.95).

You got the same answer as me - well done 

Though how you managed this without the conscious freedom to drive your own thought processes remains a mystery 

[Alan Burns]

"humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness"

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.
All there is is an observed correlation.
But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

[torridon]

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.
All there is is an observed correlation.
But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

That is just pleading the case for ignorance on the grounds of 'incomplete knowledge'.  We will always live with the fact of incomplete knowledge but that does not mean that the knowledge we have amassed to date is completely useless. What reasonable people do, is follow the evidence to see where it leads.  You are simply in denial of what the evidence says. Denial is not a good place to be.

[Gordon]

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.
All there is is an observed correlation.
But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

This is a breathtakingly stupid statement, Alan: especially since you advance the notion of a 'human soul' that you can't 'define' or even provide evidence for (fallacious arguments don't count as evidence).

Even if consciousness is not fully understood there is sufficient evidence to show that it is the result of neurological activity, and variable activity at that since it isn't a steady state, and changes when we sleep. It's just biology doing its thing, Alan, and maybe you need to just accept that and drop your bespoke God/soul nonsense. 

[Stranger]

Though how you managed this without the conscious freedom to drive your own thought processes remains a mystery 

Yet again, you are misrepresenting the argument against you to be about the role of consciousness. This is simply not true. The logic that undoes your ideas about freedom is entirely independent of what consciousness does and how much (or little) it 'drives' things.

We have some evidence that it lags choice-making in some circumstances and the multiple drafts model seems credible, but even if it could be shown that consciousness is fully in control, the argument against your version of 'freedom' would be unchanged and just as sound.

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.
All there is is an observed correlation.
But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

Neither does impossible, self-contradictory magic.

If you try to draw a conclusion from something we don't know or don't understand yet, for example, by arguing that because we don't fully understand how consciousness emerges from neurological activity it therefore can't or doesn't, that is called an argument from ignorance fallacy.

[Gordon]

Alan

As regards your, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'animals just react' position, you might find this interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/18/octopuses-and-lobsters-have-feelings-include-them-in-sentience-bill-urge-mps

[Alan Burns]

Not true. An event can be “recorded” as you put it whether or not it's perceived.

So please explain how a material reaction becomes a memory of a previous reaction.

[Stranger]

So please explain how a material reaction becomes a memory of a previous reaction.

This is just mad. What do you think is the problem? We know non-human animals and human-made devices have memories; neither of which, according to you, have this magic soul nonsense.

It's perfectly obvious that a 'reaction' can store something in memory and that a 'reaction' could also retrieve something from memory. This whole line of non-reasoning is beyond silly. Even things without memories can detect changes in their environment (plants, for example).

[ProfessorDavey]

So please explain how a material reaction becomes a memory of a previous reaction.

By making a temporary or permanent change in the state of the material in question.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.

Of course there’s a “definition” of that – just look it up. What you’re trying to say here is that the explanation is incomplete – which is true, but doesn’t help you at all.

All there is is an observed correlation.
But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

Even for you this is depressingly dim-witted. What you’re groping toward here is Hume’s problem of induction, codified as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: no matter how many times we observe that B follows A, we cannot with certainty know that B is caused by A.

Here’s where you go wrong though: all truths are probabilistic. The evidence that women give birth to babies for example is substantial, but we cannot know absolutely that it’s not invisible hypnotising storks that do it. Nonetheless, the statement “women have babies” is sufficiently true enough to be useful.     

Still with me? Good. Now consider the axiom, “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” Can you see how that works? If the only evidence available to you implies “duck”, then it’s reasonable to proceed on the basis that you’re looking at a duck.

Now here’s what’s happening here: the evidence for consciousness as an emergent property of neurological activity is the "women have babies"/“if it looks like a duck” etc type. It’s substantial, cogent and coherent and, absent any evidence of any sort for any other explanation, it’s reasonable therefore to proceed on that basis. You on the other hand just dismiss all the “looks like a duck” evidence for consciousness (or attempt solecisms like, “there’s no definition of how a quacking thing could be a duck”), and tell us it’s the equivalent of a gryphon instead.     

I have no confidence you will understand or engage honestly with any of this, but it remains your problem nonetheless.   

[Alan Burns]

By making a temporary or permanent change in the state of the material in question.

That does not explain how a current material reaction can somehow represent a past material reaction.
When a change in state occurs, the previous state no longer exists.
To remind you, I was commenting on Bluehillside's post which he claimed:
"An event can be “recorded” as you put it whether or not it's perceived."
I fail to see how any previous event can be recorded outside conscious awareness.

[Enki]

There is no definition of how consciousness can emerge from neurological activity.
All there is is an observed correlation.

Granted that our ideas of what consciousness entails are not complete(including, and especially, the hard problem of consciousness, which you have misrepresented, by the way), but the significance of the Cambridge Declaration seems to have been lost on you. It was to the effect that The same or similar correlations applies to other animal species too.

Here are two extracts from the Declaration which support this point:

Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).
 

Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots.

.

But correlation alone does not define conscious awareness.

The Declaration doesn't seek to define consciousness, only to show the strong correlations between human and non human neurological activity, especially in the light of recent research and data. As regards correlation. this does not prove a linkage to causation, but it can provide strong evidence, as was the case between incidences of lung cancer and smoking habits.

And what have you got? Your correlation seems to be of the order of linking consciousness with some sort of 'soul' idea, where there is plenty of evidence that consciousness exists but zero evidence that a 'soul' exists. And the only way you seem to be able to back this up is by pure assertion and incredulity, always seeking to insert your imaginative conjectures into the gaps in our knowledge without any evidential or logical support.

[torridon]

So please explain how a material reaction becomes a memory of a previous reaction.

A memory is merely a change in state with some or other degree of persistence. The Vostok ice core represents a 800,000 year long memory of Siberian climate conditions; extremely long persistence because the state change is cryogenically frozen. At the other end of the scale, the structure of a snowflake records the particular passage of one water droplet as it descends though the atmosphere; however the memory is lost when the snowflake melts. Similarly, what I had for dinner last night is represented in a state change in my hippocampus - this will have a certain persistence, perhaps a day or two, but it will be gone within a week or so as my brain recycles memory cortex to retain more recent memories.

[Stranger]

I fail to see how any previous event can be recorded outside conscious awareness.

So computer and non-human animal memories are impossible (as, of course, are tree rings, ice layers, and so on).   

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

That does not explain how a current material reaction can somehow represent a past material reaction.
When a change in state occurs, the previous state no longer exists.
To remind you, I was commenting on Bluehillside's post which he claimed:
"An event can be “recorded” as you put it whether or not it's perceived."

What on earth is wrong with you? NTtS took the trouble to post a link for you that explains it. Here’s another one:

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-memory-2795006

Do you not know how to click on a link? Are you afraid of what you’d learn if you did? What?
 

I fail to see how any previous event can be recorded outside conscious awareness.

Yes, we know you fail to see lot of things. Fortunately though lots of other people who understand their subject don’t fail to see that, and what’s more they set out their findings in publicly available sources you can link to if you can be bothered. Just collapsing again into your personal hall of mirrors reasoning (in this case the argument from personal incredulity) is the avoidance of knowledge, not the seeking of it.   

[Enki]

So please explain how a material reaction becomes a memory of a previous reaction.

Try looking at these articles on the plant, mimosa pudica:

http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/can-a-plant-remember-this-one-seems-to-heres-the-evidence

[Alan Burns]

A memory is merely a change in state with some or other degree of persistence. The Vostok ice core represents a 800,000 year long memory of Siberian climate conditions; extremely long persistence because the state change is cryogenically frozen. At the other end of the scale, the structure of a snowflake records the particular passage of one water droplet as it descends though the atmosphere; however the memory is lost when the snowflake melts. Similarly, what I had for dinner last night is represented in a state change in my hippocampus - this will have a certain persistence, perhaps a day or two, but it will be gone within a week or so as my brain recycles memory cortex to retain more recent memories.

All of this entirely depends on our conscious ability to make deductions about what we perceive from the observation of current states
None of this explains how a change in state can be used to detect a previous change in state which no longer exists.
I am sorry if I am not communicating my thoughts very well.
By "change in state" I am referring to what is presumed to be the material reactions involved in human conscious perception.
For conscious perception to attain meaning, we need a means of being aware of a change in state from a previous state.  Without this awareness, any change in state is just another reaction which obliterates the state of previous reactions.  I am postulating the concept that material reactions alone can never define conscious awareness.  This is not just personal incredulity based upon a religious bias - it is a logical deduction based upon the limitations of what can be achieved by physical reactions alone.

It boins down to the profound difference between awareness of reactions and consequences of reactions

[Stranger]

All of this entirely depends on our conscious ability to make deductions about what we perceive from the observation of current states

No, it obviously doesn't. The effects of past events are there regardless. In non-human animals, they are also accessed and used without (according to your view) consciousness.

None of this explains how a change in state can be used to detect a previous change in state which no longer exists.

Of course it does - you simply compare the current state to memory.

I am sorry if I am not communicating my thoughts very well.

If there's anything remotely like rational thought behind all this, you're not communicating it at all. What you're actually posting is obvious nonsense.

By "change in state" I am referring to what is presumed to be the material reactions involved in human conscious perception.
For conscious perception to attain meaning, we need a means of being aware of a change in state from a previous state.  Without this awareness, any change in state is just another reaction which obliterates the state of previous reactions.

It is trivially easy to see how a reaction can be generated by a change in state if there is memory involved, so this appears to be nothing but a reworking of your argument from incredulity about reactions and awareness and has nothing at all to do with detecting changes of state.

I am postulating the concept that material reactions alone can never define conscious awareness.  This is not just personal incredulity based upon a religious bias - it is a logical deduction based upon the limitations of what can be achieved by physical reactions alone.

So where is the actual logic? A logical deduction starts with some premises, follows valid steps in reasoning (such as categorical logic or truth-functional logic) and arrives at a conclusion. It also avoids obvious fallacies.

You have never once posted anything like that.

[ProfessorDavey]

I fail to see how any previous event can be recorded outside conscious awareness.

Then you aren't thinking hard enough.

There are all sorts of previous events that are recorded without conscious awareness. So for example evidence in the nature of forest growth that provides a record that there was a major fire perhaps decades ago. Evidence in the shape of valleys that provides a record that they were formed from glacial action and therefore that the area was once covered in ice.

The examples are almost endless.

[Alan Burns]

Of course it does - you simply compare the current state to memory.

There is nothing simple about the consciously driven act of comparing.
For a memory of a previous state to exist, It has to have been consciously perceived in a meaningful way and there has to me a means of storing the conceived meaning in a format which can be recalled at will into a current state of consciousness.  Then there is the process of consciously manipulating the awareness of the current state with the recalled awareness of the previous state in order to achieve the desired comparison.  And you seriously believe that all this can be achieved by the inevitable consequences to physically defined material reactions to past events?

[Stranger]

There is nothing simple about the consciously driven act of comparing.

The principle of what you were questioning (how we can detect a change of state) is very, very simple. You still haven't addressed the obvious fact that this happens in non-human animals, which you assert do not have consciousness (at least in the way you are attempting to argue for in humans).

And you seriously believe that all this can be achieved by the inevitable consequences to physically defined material reactions to past events?

Yes. That is what the evidence is telling us and you've given us no reason (your own incredulity aside) to think it is wrong. In fact, your comical and obviously desperate attempts to argue against it only serve to emphasis that you have no credible objection or alternative.

And yet again, the argument against your version of freedom does not depend on minds being entirely material.