Searching for GOD...

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

No, your mind is you, your brain is just that lump between your ears, got it! if you have could you explain it to me

Gonnagle.

Hi Gonners,

To me there is no difference. My mind is the feeling of my brain operating.

[Alan Burns]

It's not "my way of thinking" - it's basic logic. When the conclusion does not follow from the premise, then you've committed a non sequitur. It's also basic logic by the way that logically fallacious arguments are always wrong, which is a problem for you because pretty much every argument you attempt relies on one or several logical fallacies.

The basic logic behind my conclusion was that there can be no control in a totally physical environment, since every event will be driven by previous events, so nothing can actually be in control.  Everything will be dictated by inevitable reactions - unless there is something non-physical which can intervene ....

[Stranger]

The basic logic behind my conclusion was that there can be no control in a totally physical environment, since every event will be driven by previous events, so nothing can actually be in control.  Everything will be dictated by inevitable reactions - unless there is something non-physical which can intervene ....

I suggest learning what logic means.

You still haven't said why it would be any different in a non-physical environment...

[Leonard James]

That we may not have free will sounds counter-intuitive, and for everyday purposes we operate as if we have, but that doesn't mean it is truly 'free' and while it seems that we really are 'willing' a particular outcome this is by no means certain even in everyday trivia.

For instance, since the sun is approaching the yard-arm, I might decide on a lunchtime beer and the fridge currently contains cans of both Guinness and Fosters, since I've no plans to go out right now the only options are what is in the fridge, which is a consequence of what was chosen when last buying - so my choice of drink this lunchtime is already limited to the constraints over the contents of the fridge, which was determined by my personal inclinations when shopping,on  what was available to be purchased, or if I was tempted by any special offers, and if so why was say the Fosters cheaper than usual  etc etc etc etc etc.

If I'm indecisive, this involves my thinking since I'm not expressing a preference today: why should I have a preference anyway, but then again why shouldn't I have one, I don't today but I did yesterday, so why not? Must be something to do with how my brain is working today, which doesn't seem the same as it was yesterday, so it isn't a steady state even when it comes down to choosing lunchtime drinks on different days.

If I try to resolve the dilemma by selecting a drink randomly by tossing a coin this is pseudo-random, since not only is the scope of my choice predetermined by the contents of the fridge, it would also be possible with enough information (height, weight speed etc) to predict which way the coin would fall. So, at the point I decide to toss a coin the result is already determined even though I'm not yet aware of it - so even when I think I'm making a random choice I'm not really since there are constraints and conditions that apply even before I consider approaching the fridge.     

This probably a clunky example but the point is that, as far as I can see, there are always factors that will influence how I choose even when I think I'm doing so freely on even mundane matters since I'm not divorced from any conditions that precede, influence or constrain my available choices, whether I'm aware of them or not. Thus my choices aren't really 'free' and I can't just 'will' certain outcomes: now which is is to be today Guinness or Fosters, that is the question!

My point is only that I can choose between available actions. I can always do so.

I have answered your long post (thank you for taking the trouble) because it is the polite thing to do, but I could have been rude and ignored it.

That is all I am trying to say.

[torridon]

The basic logic behind my conclusion was that there can be no control in a totally physical environment, since every event will be driven by previous events, so nothing can actually be in control.  Everything will be dictated by inevitable reactions - unless there is something non-physical which can intervene ....

Something non-physical is neither here nor there, your problem is a logic problem, logic transcends such mundane issues as physical/non-physical.  You might as well try to argue that 2 + 2 = 27 if we invoke something non-physical

[Leonard James]

The basic logic behind my conclusion was that there can be no control in a totally physical environment, since every event will be driven by previous events, so nothing can actually be in control.  Everything will be dictated by inevitable reactions - unless there is something non-physical which can intervene ....

Nonsense! I (my brain) is in complete control of my body, both in voluntary and involuntary actions. Somewhere in evolutionary history the ability to make choices arose, because it favoured survival.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

To me there is no difference. My mind is the feeling of my brain operating.

Wait!! waaiiit!! Hows this sound, the brain is the hardware the mind is the software, yes someone argue against that please, I could be on to a Nobel here

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

Wait!! waaiiit!! Hows this sound, the brain is the hardware the mind is the software, yes someone argue against that please, I could be on to a Nobel here

Gonnagle.

Before you collect your prize, Gonners, just describe to me what your 'software' is and does. Alan says it's your soul.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

The software is life, every deed, action, interaction we have ever made or are going to make, as for a soul, well I think we all have one, but what it is, next question

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

The software is life, every deed, action, interaction we have ever made or are going to make, as for a soul, well I think we all have one, but what it is, next question

Gonnagle.

We are saying the same thing! My brain (me) simply deals with the business of survival (life). It doesn't need a soul (whatever that is) to do so.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

What the software does is shape us into who we are, but then that is nurture, so I suppose it also depends on the hardware installed, how the software interacts with the hardware or ( and I am getting bloody good at this ) how life interacts with your genes.

Haud the bus, haud the bus!! If the hardware already installed is fixed and we have no choice in where we are born or choice of parents then our freewill is limited.

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

What the software does is shape us into who we are, but then that is nurture, so I suppose it also depends on the hardware installed, how the software interacts with the hardware or ( and I am getting bloody good at this ) how life interacts with your genes.

Haud the bus, haud the bus!! If the hardware already installed is fixed and we have no choice in where we are born or choice of parents then our freewill is limited.

Gonnagle.

Of course it is limited! We can't choose options we haven't got. But we CAN choose between the available options.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

We agree, great minds and all that, we are the only two sane people on this whole forum, well apart from the Wigs but then he is a Saint and gets special dispensation from the Vatican.

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

We agree, great minds and all that, we are the only two sane people on this whole forum, well apart from the Wigs but then he is a Saint and gets special dispensation from the Vatican.

Gonnagle.

Don't forget that NS is almost with us. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Alan,

The basic logic behind my conclusion was that there can be no control in a totally physical environment, since every event will be driven by previous events, so nothing can actually be in control.  Everything will be dictated by inevitable reactions - unless there is something non-physical which can intervene ....

That's not logic, its the negation of it because you replace reasoned thinking towards a conclusion with an unargued and unevidenced assumption, namely that you must have a separate something to exercise this "control". A biological system of such complexity that it becomes self-aware is entirely capable of making decisions with every appearance of exercising "free" will while all the while having only the illusion of it, and instead operating within the paradigm of unfathomably long chains of cause and effect. Now to get off that hook you could I suppose try pointing to apparently non-determinative outcomes at the quantum level, but that'd be a long way from your medieval ontology of a "soul".

Your problem too by the way in addition to being demonstrably flat wrong is that you cannot allow yourself to concede that you're flat wrong because your religious faith rests on that mistaken thinking, and losing that would I suspect would be a price too high for you to pay.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

Don't forget that NS is almost with us.

Ah yes! But the clue is in the name, Nearlysane, me and you are completely, how do you feel about invading Poland this weekend, you bring the picnic I will bring the weapons of mass destruction

Gonnagle.

[Alan Burns]

A biological system of such complexity that it becomes self-aware is entirely capable of making decisions with every appearance of exercising "free" will while all the while having only the illusion of it, and instead operating within the paradigm of unfathomably long chains of cause and effect.

So in effect you are conceding that there is nothing in control but long chains of cause and effect whose complexity can give the illusion of control.  So my original logic was correct in implying that in order to exercise real control over events we need to have something non physical to implement that control.

So we have two possible scenarios.

We exist in a world in which every event is pre determined by scientifically defined laws and our conscious perception of such things as manipulation, control and choice are all illusions.

Or we exist in a world in which entities of conscious awareness (such as us) can wilfully interact with this universe by some means which has not yet been discovered and can't be explained by current scientific knowledge.  This means of interaction would necessarily have to be non physical in order to escape the laws of cause and effect which apply to physical entities.

[Stranger]

We exist in a world in which every event is pre determined by scientifically defined laws and our conscious perception of such things as manipulation, control and choice are all illusions.

FFS: YET AGAIN!:-

It isn't science that is your problem, it's logic:

EITHER "every event is pre determined by scientifically defined laws"
OR every event is pre determined by some other laws of causation
OR some random element in addition to one of the above.

You can't have non-random and non-deterministic - even in your magic la la land fantasy world of the "non-physical".

It has nothing to do with science or the physical world - it's just logic.

[ekim]

Three cheers for the irrational, the illogical and the spontaneous which allows such as joy and love to arise without the threat of it being sterilised out of existence by the aridity of reason, rationality and logic.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Alan,

So in effect you are conceding that there is nothing in control but long chains of cause and effect whose complexity can give the illusion of control.

I'm not "conceding" it, I'm just telling you where the reason and science leads to.

So my original logic was correct in implying that in order to exercise real control over events we need to have something non physical to implement that control.

Flatly no, because you have no idea what you mean by "real" control. For reasons known only to yourself (but I suspect to prop up your religious beliefs) it seems to be important to you to assert some quality you call "real" and by which you actually mean in some unexplained way independent of cause and effect. As no such thing is required however in order for us to function with the everyday appearance of "free" will we can safely carry on acting as we do without that assumption being necessary at all.     

So we have two possible scenarios.

We exist in a world in which every event is pre determined by scientifically defined laws and our conscious perception of such things as manipulation, control and choice are all illusions.

Not quite, but close enough for this purpose. Those "laws" may or may not be scientifically defined, but there's no evidence whatever to suggest that we possess (or are possessed by in your world?) little men at the controls who tell our bodies what to do, but who are also in some way independent both of our bodies and of the constraints of cause and effect.

Or we exist in a world in which entities of conscious awareness (such as us) can wilfully interact with this universe by some means which has not yet been discovered and can't be explained by current scientific knowledge.  This means of interaction would necessarily have to be non physical in order to escape the laws of cause and effect which apply to physical entities.

It would mean no such thing - that a conjecture cannot as yet be explained "by current scientific knowledge" says nothing to the possibility of the "non physical". You're just trying a variant of the god of the gaps fallacy here. In any case, as such a conjecture has neither reason nor evidence to support it and the current state of scientific knowledge tells us that the universe is determinative despite any appearances to the contrary, fun as the speculation may be you have all your work ahead of you still to demonstrate that it's anything more than that.

[Alan Burns]

Three cheers for the irrational, the illogical and the spontaneous which allows such as joy and love to arise without the threat of it being sterilised out of existence by the aridity of reason, rationality and logic.

Well said 

[floo]

We need our brains in order to function.

[bluehillside Retd.]

ekim,

Three cheers for the irrational, the illogical and the spontaneous which allows such as joy and love to arise without the threat of it being sterilised out of existence by the aridity of reason, rationality and logic.

Three cheers indeed (and I'd add "faith" to that list too) provided of course that those who rely on these things confine themselves to beliefs that are personal to them, subjective. The problem comes though when the Alans of this world insist that his deeply irrational beliefs lead to truths for the rest of us too - an objectively true "soul" for example.

[ekim]

We need our brains in order to function.

... and for it all to function harmoniously rather than one aspect e.g. intellect, seeking to form a dictatorship.

[ekim]

ekim,

Three cheers indeed (and I'd add "faith" to that list too) provided of course that those who rely on these things confine themselves to beliefs that are personal to them, subjective. The problem comes though when the Alans of this world insist that his deeply irrational beliefs lead to truths for the rest of us too - an objectively true "soul" for example.

Yes, I know what you mean.  It's getting to be like the irresistible force meeting the immoveable object.  However, it fuels this discussion site and for those who read without partaking it demonstrates both view points.  You must remember that Alan has God on his side and perhaps God doesn't do your kind of logic, even though 'In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God'.