Searching for GOD...

[torridon]

I think you are confusing logical decisions with free will choices.  A computer makes logical decisions, based on data and programmed logic.  A free will choice can give us the ability to override whatever we see as logical and do something just because we want to, even if we perceive it as wrong or illogical.

This shows that you are still running with a trivial understanding of the nature of will.  We can all sometimes choose to do things that we percieve as wrong or illogical, we can all choose to do things that are somewhat out of character for us. If you want to call that 'free' then fair enough, but that is not a profound freedom, it is a limited freedom, the limitation is implied in your choice of words 'just because we want to'. This implicitly recognises that our choices are not profoundly free, our choices in fact manifest our will and we cannot choose what our will is, we can only express it through choice.

I'm guessing that you still haven't gotten around to taking my 'wanting to be gay for an afternoon' challenge. The point of that thought experiment is to bring home the realisation that although we can try to get what we want, we cannot choose what to want in the first place and this is why we are not free, and ultimately, why freedom in this context would be meaningless.  Choices made that are truly free of any rationale would be random, pointless,meaningless, and any creature that went around making random undirected choices would be dead in no time. You really wouldn't want true freedom if you really understood it. What we have is a sort of pseudo freedom and that is the best of both worlds.

[Leonard James]

Len
That was not my quote. If you read my post you will see that I was questioning Alan Burns' "I think it is generally accepted..."

Slow down a bit, mate.

My apologies, mate ... but as my old mum used to say "the man that never makes a mistake never makes anything". 

[torridon]

I think a living being in a sense as being rather like a wave crossing the ocean. A wave is not really defined by the seawater it is composed of; we too roll through the cosmos, constantly conscripting new material and leaving behind waste, so attempts to define us in terms of the material we are made of will always fall short.  However your idea of a 'soul' goes much farther than is justified by observation in explaining the nature of the driving force that animates the 'wave'. I would settle for a pattern of energy rippling through the cosmos changing its manifest form as it goes.  A 'soul' is a humungous anthropocentrism way above what the evidence suggests, it runs into all sorts of problems when you try to apply it to other life forms for instance.

Well....you have at least come out of the reductionist..'we are nothing but atoms'.. argument. Thank goodness for that!

Now its a 'pattern of energy'  that defines us. So far so good.

You've got a short memory Sriram, I've been arguing this analogy for years already.  That there is energy and matter is not going beyond what science reveals.  If you want to believe there is more than energy and matter then you need to justify that position.

But that sounds like pseudoscience.  What evidence do you have for your idea...?

The wave analogy is just that - it is an analogy, an analogy whose remit is to remind us that that the material we are made of is transient, passing through us.  All the particles of cosmos matter that are currently in the employ of being me today will go off and be part of something else in due course, unaware that they were ever part of me in the first place. So this begs the question, who or what is the employer here, and no doubt many will gleefully jump in with 'soul' or 'spirit'.  As a line of reasoning, I'd see that as a true child of anthropocentrism. A more cautious view that respects the fundamental value of learning and research is to view life forms as eddies of energy from the aftermath of the big bang. Whilst such complex beings might superficially appear to defy the entropy gradient, we are all in fact energy efficient agents of thermodynamic law. Whereas an ocean wave dissipates energy quite simply into seawater and seabed through friction and heat, life forms seek out highly ordered energy and dissipate it to low order energy by eating it and doing work. This is the one tune that everything without exception dances to, the second law of thermodynamics.

[Alan Burns]

This shows that you are still running with a trivial understanding of the nature of will.  We can all sometimes choose to do things that we percieve as wrong or illogical, we can all choose to do things that are somewhat out of character for us. If you want to call that 'free' then fair enough, but that is not a profound freedom, it is a limited freedom, the limitation is implied in your choice of words 'just because we want to'. This implicitly recognises that our choices are not profoundly free, our choices in fact manifest our will and we cannot choose what our will is, we can only express it through choice.

I'm guessing that you still haven't gotten around to taking my 'wanting to be gay for an afternoon' challenge. The point of that thought experiment is to bring home the realisation that although we can try to get what we want, we cannot choose what to want in the first place and this is why we are not free, and ultimately, why freedom in this context would be meaningless.  Choices made that are truly free of any rationale would be random, pointless,meaningless, and any creature that went around making random undirected choices would be dead in no time. You really wouldn't want true freedom if you really understood it. What we have is a sort of pseudo freedom and that is the best of both worlds.

I think it is you who does not understand what I mean my free will.  The Gay experiment is not relevant because we can't change our own nature.  Free will is simply the ability to make a conscious choice as opposed to an automated decision driven by previous events.  What occurs in the brain when we make a conscious choice?  Is it the inevitable consequence of everything event which has gone before or is it an event invoked by whatever comprises our conscious awareness?  If it is the latter, then our conscious awareness has the capacity to generate a physical event in our brain which is not determined by past events.  If you try to insist that every conscious choice is driven by past events, then there is no such thing as will, just consequences.

[Alan Burns]

The wave analogy is just that - it is an analogy, an analogy whose remit is to remind us that that the material we are made of is transient, passing through us.  All the particles of cosmos matter that are currently in the employ of being me today will go off and be part of something else in due course, unaware that they were ever part of me in the first place. So this begs the question, who or what is the employer here, and no doubt many will gleefully jump in with 'soul' or 'spirit'.  As a line of reasoning, I'd see that as a true child of anthropocentrism. A more cautious view that respects the fundamental value of learning and research is to view life forms as eddies of energy from the aftermath of the big bang. Whilst such complex beings might superficially appear to defy the entropy gradient, we are all in fact energy efficient agents of thermodynamic law. Whereas an ocean wave dissipates energy quite simply into seawater and seabed through friction and heat, life forms seek out highly ordered energy and dissipate it to low order energy by eating it and doing work. This is the one tune that everything without exception dances to, the second law of thermodynamics.

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

[Alien]

Len
That was not my quote. If you read my post you will see that I was questioning Alan Burns' "I think it is generally accepted..."

Slow down a bit, mate.

My apologies, mate ... but as my old mum used to say "the man that never makes a mistake never makes anything". 

Your mum's right. No problem.

Looking forward to hear from Shaker.

[Leonard James]

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

Clearly the part of our brain concerned with self-awareness and which thinks about everything outside of itself. It's that part of the brain which is the "I/me" as opposed to everything else.

[floo]

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

Clearly the part of our brain concerned with self-awareness and which thinks about everything outside of itself. It's that part of the brain which is the "I/me" as opposed to everything else.

Exactly. Goodness knows why AB tries to make it so complicated! 

[ippy]

The wave analogy is just that - it is an analogy, an analogy whose remit is to remind us that that the material we are made of is transient, passing through us.  All the particles of cosmos matter that are currently in the employ of being me today will go off and be part of something else in due course, unaware that they were ever part of me in the first place. So this begs the question, who or what is the employer here, and no doubt many will gleefully jump in with 'soul' or 'spirit'.  As a line of reasoning, I'd see that as a true child of anthropocentrism. A more cautious view that respects the fundamental value of learning and research is to view life forms as eddies of energy from the aftermath of the big bang. Whilst such complex beings might superficially appear to defy the entropy gradient, we are all in fact energy efficient agents of thermodynamic law. Whereas an ocean wave dissipates energy quite simply into seawater and seabed through friction and heat, life forms seek out highly ordered energy and dissipate it to low order energy by eating it and doing work. This is the one tune that everything without exception dances to, the second law of thermodynamics.

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

Take up a course in psychology Alan it'll soon bring you round, well it would bring round most people, into a more realistic frame of mind and it would help clear out so much of the dross you have in your mind at the moment.

The religious have a lot in common with people that smoke where they keep making up more and more complicated excuses, excuses to themselves in a effort to justify a totally inexcusable unjustifiable habit, the psychologists refer to this convoluted thinking as cognitive dissonance.

Have a look into the cognitive dissonance parts of psychology, you will probably see yourself there it might do you some good, hopefully.

ippy


   

[Alan Burns]

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

Clearly the part of our brain concerned with self-awareness and which thinks about everything outside of itself. It's that part of the brain which is the "I/me" as opposed to everything else.

Exactly. Goodness knows why AB tries to make it so complicated! 

But how do electrons buzzing about in your brain actually get perceived as thoughts?

[Alan Burns]

Take up a course in psychology Alan it'll soon bring you round, well it would bring round most people, into a more realistic frame of mind and it would help clear out so much of the dross you have in your mind at the moment.

The religious have a lot in common with people that smoke where they keep making up more and more complicated excuses, excuses to themselves in a effort to justify a totally inexcusable unjustifiable habit, the psychologists refer to this convoluted thinking as cognitive dissonance.

Have a look into the cognitive dissonance parts of psychology, you will probably see yourself there it might do you some good, hopefully.

ippy
   

But just labelling things and saying "thats what it does" does not get to the root of how the physical brain actually becomes "you"

[ippy]

Take up a course in psychology Alan it'll soon bring you round, well it would bring round most people, into a more realistic frame of mind and it would help clear out so much of the dross you have in your mind at the moment.

The religious have a lot in common with people that smoke where they keep making up more and more complicated excuses, excuses to themselves in a effort to justify a totally inexcusable unjustifiable habit, the psychologists refer to this convoluted thinking as cognitive dissonance.

Have a look into the cognitive dissonance parts of psychology, you will probably see yourself there it might do you some good, hopefully.

ippy
   

But just labelling things and saying "thats what it does" does not get to the root of how the physical brain actually becomes "you"

Just do some sort of psychology course, it's not just a case of "thats what it does"; I think it would really give you something to think about, it'll broaden your outlook considerably, seriously take it up.

My wife started with child psychology and went on from there, don't think it wouldn't change you, well you can if you like but if you were to take it up I think it would do you a lot of good.

Whatever it is where you're at the moment, I think is a large bit of a dead end.

ippy     

[jjohnjil]

You have given a very good description of how our material body fits in with the rest of the cosmos, but the mysterious thing is this:  What is it within you which has this deep awareness of the world around you?  What drives your interest?  Where do your ideas emanate from?  What comprises the physical representation of our thoughts and ideas within our brain?  What perceives all of these thoughts?

Clearly the part of our brain concerned with self-awareness and which thinks about everything outside of itself. It's that part of the brain which is the "I/me" as opposed to everything else.

Exactly. Goodness knows why AB tries to make it so complicated! 

But how do electrons buzzing about in your brain actually get perceived as thoughts?

It s amazing, Alan, but you are doing what the ancients did when they couldn't fathom out what caused earthquakes and volcanoes to erupt -  you're saying it must be God!  If you were to go back a couple of thousand years, you'd find countless examples of 'Goddidit' for what we now call natural occurrences.

You ask how electrons buzzing about can do such wonders, well think of the electrons buzzing about in your computer and try to work out how amazingly it works to enable you talk and see people thousands of miles away.

Your brain is a very complex computer and it's wrong to say it cannot do things because you can't see how it works.

[Leonard James]

But how do electrons buzzing about in your brain actually get perceived as thoughts?

I can't improve on JJ's excellent response, Alan, although I appreciate that it will not satisfy you because you want the answer to be "God".

[ippy]

But how do electrons buzzing about in your brain actually get perceived as thoughts?

I can't improve on JJ's excellent response, Alan, although I appreciate that it will not satisfy you because you want the answer to be "God".

Hi Len, my wife's encounter with psychology was very enlightening as was my niece's study of the subject my wife got as far as her A level  GCSE my niece has had her doctorate for a long time now and the both have commented about the struggle the religious believing students have with the various courses, some pack up doing the courses because of these beliefs and a lot drop their connection with religion, even then if they hang on to their religion, some do, it visibly shakes them.

Not that I'm calling them horses but that's straight from the horses mouth, so to speak.

ippy

     

[Alan Burns]

You ask how electrons buzzing about can do such wonders, well think of the electrons buzzing about in your computer and try to work out how amazingly it works to enable you talk and see people thousands of miles away.

Your brain is a very complex computer and it's wrong to say it cannot do things because you can't see how it works.

I am fully aware of what electrons buzzing round in a computer are capable of.  I have been developing computer software since 1968 and I am still doing it.  Computers are just machines programmed to respond to data which can be input from various sources.  But I can assure you that self awareness is not possible within a computer.  It is certainly capable of mimicking self awareness with a bit of clever programming, but essentially it is just a complex machine made from bits and pieces which each react according to scientific laws.  It may interest you to realise that the only thing which is capable of being aware of what goes on in a computer is a human being.  Self awareness, indeed awareness of any sort, does not exist in nature.  Atoms and molecules react - they do not perceive.

[torridon]

I am fully aware of what electrons buzzing round in a computer are capable of.  I have been developing computer software since 1968 and I am still doing it.  Computers are just machines programmed to respond to data which can be input from various sources.  But I can assure you that self awareness is not possible within a computer.  It is certainly capable of mimicking self awareness with a bit of clever programming, but essentially it is just a complex machine made from bits and pieces which each react according to scientific laws.  It may interest you to realise that the only thing which is capable of being aware of what goes on in a computer is a human being.  Self awareness, indeed awareness of any sort, does not exist in nature.  Atoms and molecules react - they do not perceive.

Of course awareness exists in nature. An antelope that was not aware of the lion creeping up on it will end up as lunch. That is why eyes and ears evolved, so that we are aware of what is happening around us. 

[SusanDoris]

I can't improve on JJ's excellent response, Alan, although I appreciate that it will not satisfy you because you want the answer to be "God".

Seconded. If only AB would realise that the cage he is in isn't locked and that he can step outside. It should be obvious that those of us without belief in God lead full lives without fear of any mythical, humanly imagined God/god.
 

[Alan Burns]

Hi Len, my wife's encounter with psychology was very enlightening as was my niece's study of the subject my wife got as far as her A level  GCSE my niece has had her doctorate for a long time now and the both have commented about the struggle the religious believing students have with the various courses, some pack up doing the courses because of these beliefs and a lot drop their connection with religion, even then if they hang on to their religion, some do, it visibly shakes them.

Not that I'm calling them horses but that's straight from the horses mouth, so to speak.

ippy
     

One of my closest friends from our local church is a professor of psychology employed by the NHS.  He is a very devout Christian with a strong faith which has certainly not been dented by his knowledge of psychology.  There is no incompatibility with Christian faith.

[Alan Burns]

Of course awareness exists in nature. An antelope that was not aware of the lion creeping up on it will end up as lunch. That is why eyes and ears evolved, so that we are aware of what is happening around us.

But the irony is that the antelope's reaction is derived purely from the material within its brain and body, which is what you are trying to apply to humans.  The antelope's reaction is just that - a reaction, based upon the chain of events passing through its senses, brain and body.  As I have indicated earlier, there is no need for self awareness to produce these reactions in animals.  Self awareness is only required if free will choices are to be invoked.

[torridon]

This shows that you are still running with a trivial understanding of the nature of will.  We can all sometimes choose to do things that we percieve as wrong or illogical, we can all choose to do things that are somewhat out of character for us. If you want to call that 'free' then fair enough, but that is not a profound freedom, it is a limited freedom, the limitation is implied in your choice of words 'just because we want to'. This implicitly recognises that our choices are not profoundly free, our choices in fact manifest our will and we cannot choose what our will is, we can only express it through choice.

I'm guessing that you still haven't gotten around to taking my 'wanting to be gay for an afternoon' challenge. The point of that thought experiment is to bring home the realisation that although we can try to get what we want, we cannot choose what to want in the first place and this is why we are not free, and ultimately, why freedom in this context would be meaningless.  Choices made that are truly free of any rationale would be random, pointless,meaningless, and any creature that went around making random undirected choices would be dead in no time. You really wouldn't want true freedom if you really understood it. What we have is a sort of pseudo freedom and that is the best of both worlds.

I think it is you who does not understand what I mean my free will.  The Gay experiment is not relevant because we can't change our own nature.  Free will is simply the ability to make a conscious choice as opposed to an automated decision driven by previous events.  What occurs in the brain when we make a conscious choice?  Is it the inevitable consequence of everything event which has gone before or is it an event invoked by whatever comprises our conscious awareness?  If it is the latter, then our conscious awareness has the capacity to generate a physical event in our brain which is not determined by past events.  If you try to insist that every conscious choice is driven by past events, then there is no such thing as will, just consequences.

Consciousness is a retrospective phenomenon - our stream of conscious experience lags behind reality, so, understanding that,  it makes no sense to claim that we make decisions in conscious mind. All experience (and this includes decisions we make internally) starts out subliminally and then over a period of time, typically half a second in a human brain, knowledge of that event spreads through cortex becoming melded into our stream of conscious experience. Having said that it is bound to be the case I would have thought, that conscious experience does play a part in decision making, particularly in humans, it is probably a significant factor in feedback mechanisms when we make longer and more complex decisions and in these scenarios it is probably more accurate to view the conscious element as a facilitating mechanism rather than an executive mechanism.

[Maeght]

I am fully aware of what electrons buzzing round in a computer are capable of.  I have been developing computer software since 1968 and I am still doing it.  Computers are just machines programmed to respond to data which can be input from various sources.  But I can assure you that self awareness is not possible within a computer.

Yet - but you can't rule it out in the future.

It is certainly capable of mimicking self awareness with a bit of clever programming, but essentially it is just a complex machine made from bits and pieces which each react according to scientific laws.

Probably much like us then but on a simpler level.

[torridon]

Of course awareness exists in nature. An antelope that was not aware of the lion creeping up on it will end up as lunch. That is why eyes and ears evolved, so that we are aware of what is happening around us.

But the irony is that the antelope's reaction is derived purely from the material within its brain and body, which is what you are trying to apply to humans.  The antelope's reaction is just that - a reaction, based upon the chain of events passing through its senses, brain and body.  As I have indicated earlier, there is no need for self awareness to produce these reactions in animals.  Self awareness is only required if free will choices are to be invoked.

Crunch crunch; the sound of goal posts being moved.

OK so now you agree animals are aware, but now you are pinning your position on self awareness.  Well,,, small human children are not self aware; on the other hand adult chimps, elephants, dolphins and a number of other species do develop self awareness.  You are tying yourself in knots trying to prove that humans are fundamentally different to other species.  What is unique about humans is our language skills, our ability to ponder abstract problems over extended time periods; we are the chatting ape, the contemplative ape, the problem solving ape.

[torridon]

I am fully aware of what electrons buzzing round in a computer are capable of.  I have been developing computer software since 1968 and I am still doing it.  Computers are just machines programmed to respond to data which can be input from various sources.  But I can assure you that self awareness is not possible within a computer.

I am guessing you haven't been following Humans on Sunday evening TV.  Fiction, I know, concerning life like domestic robot servants. I think it will come though, our robots will become ever more life-like until the point comes where we can scarcely tell the difference between a synth and a real human. Not a betting man myself, but I would put money on us developing machine consciousness by the end of this century, perhaps in a rather hit and miss primitive form at first, but improving thereafter. As to whether it will be a good thing or not, that's a harder call. Also, it will be controversial as to whether they really do have real consciousness experience or just give the outward the appearance of having it; perhaps we would never be able to prove that they are really conscious.

[Leonard James]

Hi Len, my wife's encounter with psychology was very enlightening as was my niece's study of the subject my wife got as far as her A level  GCSE my niece has had her doctorate for a long time now and the both have commented about the struggle the religious believing students have with the various courses, some pack up doing the courses because of these beliefs and a lot drop their connection with religion, even then if they hang on to their religion, some do, it visibly shakes them.

Not that I'm calling them horses but that's straight from the horses mouth, so to speak.

ippy

     

Which is exactly what I would expect. The attraction of religious belief is very compelling in many more ways than one.

It completely removes the onus of working out a moral code for yourself, it presents a father figure who is always going to be there to help you in times of difficulty, and in the case of many religions it offers an escape from accepting that death is final. Not many people are strong enough to resist the call of all those pluses.