Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Oh dear. What “perceives” is consciousness, an emergent property of the physical stuff of your brain (specifically, the prefrontal cortex). Think about an ant colony – what “perceives” how to farm other creatures, or the construction of air-conditioning tubes to ventilate the mound? Nothing does, yet they emerge nonetheless.

But you can't claim consciousness as an emergent property until you can define how it works.  We know how the holes in the mound can provide ventilation, but we do not know how electro chemical activity in the brain can produce conscious awareness.  Correlation does not imply creation.

[Enki]

An interesting article, but it seems to pose more questions than answers.  Discovering where information resides in the brain, and how it gets transmitted to different parts does not explain how it gets perceived into what we know as our conscious awareness.  Information has no meaning in itself until is gets perceived.  And there is this sentence - "An interesting corollary of integrated information theory is that no computer simulation, no matter how faithfully it replicates a human mind, could ever become conscious. ", which highlights the problem in that the observation of external reactions, no matter how complex, can ever be used to identify internal consciousness.

Of course they don't answer the hard problem of consciousness, especially the binding problem, but they are useful pointers. The article you linked to in Message 14375 doesn't actually propose anything except conjecture.  However, consider this:

Synchronization of nerve firing by the brain's EM field is also very significant in the context in the puzzle of consciousness because it is one of the very few features of nerve activity that is known to correlate with consciousness.

and

The EM field, pulling together all those coherent ion channels in disparate parts of the brain to generate synchronous firing, could play a role in this transition between unconscious and conscious thoughts.

(P351/2 of 'Life on the Edge' by Al-Khalili/McFadden)

[Alan Burns]

Yet, according to your claim that it cannot possibly result from a purely physical system, you have managed to understand it!

I did not claim to understand it.
I just pointed out that conscious awareness can't be achieved solely by the activity of sub atomic particles, because there is no single entity of awareness available to perceive the information they contain.  You can't define a single entity of awareness by particle activity because you still need something to be able to perceive this particle activity.  This is a complex subject which is very difficult to elaborate on in a few lines, so I apologise for not being able to explain it fully.

[Gordon]

I did not claim to understand it.
I just pointed out that conscious awareness can't be achieved solely by the activity of sub atomic particles, because there is no single entity of awareness available to perceive the information they contain.  You can't define a single entity of awareness by particle activity because you still need something to be able to perceive this particle activity. 

Which reads like an example of the fallacy of composition.

[ekim]

ekim,

Then in what way should anyone else – or indeed you – distinguish it from just guessing about stuff?

You can't because it's an inner experience.  You might have to assess the extent to which you trust the initiator and whether the possible benefits of the method outweigh the risks and make your decision whether to proceed or not.

Happy to be open minded about anything you like. Absent any means of validation though, how would I know if I’d “found out” anything rather than just imagined it?

If you have that kind of imagination you would probably have to develop an inner stillness discrimination to distinguish between a continuous state of inner joy and enlivenment and a fake version that you dreamt up.

Very poetic. Trouble is, I might find that contemplating Colin the Nabob of the Leprechauns makes me feel blissful etc too – is he therefore real as well?

If that is the outcome perhaps it doesn't matter what name you give to the initiating process.  You could say that bliss is your gold at the end of the rainbow.  It's when you try to communicate your method to others that you might want to assess the language you use.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But you can't claim consciousness as an emergent property until you can define how it works.  We know how the holes in the mound can provide ventilation, but we do not know how electro chemical activity in the brain can produce conscious awareness.  Correlation does not imply creation.

Nope, nope and nope to the power of nope.

Squared.

Actually, make that cubed.

What we do know is that very complex emergent properties arise from simple component parts, none of which separately have any understanding at all of that complexity.

What we also know is that the brain is the most complicated thing in the known universe. The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections – equivalent by some estimates to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor. Have you any sense at all of how fantastically complex a bit of kit that is?

What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness that necessarily places it outside the possibility of being an emergent property of our brains, and moreover that it is consistent with the principles of emergence.

What we also know is that you have no argument at all to support your contention that consciousness as an emergent property is "physically impossible", and nor do you have one iota of evidence for an immaterial anything – let alone a “soul” - with which you could replace it.

What we also know is that your only reasoning here is very poor – the argument form personal incredulity in fact – and moreover that there’s no need of defining every aspect of consciousness to think that probabilistically emergence is the most likely explanation for it.

And even if that wasn't true, then you'd have to apply some major special pleading not to insist on exactly the same standard for "soul". And your problem there is that, while we don't know everything about how consciousness works, we do know quite a lot, whereas so far at least all you have to explain the workings of "soul" is the word "soul". 

Is any of this sinking in yet?

Anything?

[wigginhall]

I did not claim to understand it.
I just pointed out that conscious awareness can't be achieved solely by the activity of sub atomic particles, because there is no single entity of awareness available to perceive the information they contain.  You can't define a single entity of awareness by particle activity because you still need something to be able to perceive this particle activity.  This is a complex subject which is very difficult to elaborate on in a few lines, so I apologise for not being able to explain it fully.

You are still claiming an awful lot of knowledge here.  For example, you claim that you need something to perceive something else, i.e. particles.   How do you know this?   The brain may have self-referential abilities, that is, its constructs or representations are not dualistic.   I don't see how you can claim that dualism is inevitable, and as others have pointed out, it seems to require a regress, that is, another little man to perceive the first little man, and so on.

[Stranger]

I did not claim to understand it.

If you are not making this claim than the rest of your post is drivel:-

I just pointed out that conscious awareness can't be achieved solely by the activity of sub atomic particles, because there is no single entity of awareness available to perceive the information they contain.

Unless you understand how awareness works, you cannot claim that it can't be made of physical particles. You also cannot make the claim unless you know all the ways in which particles (or more accurately, all quantum fields) can possibly interact to make more complex systems.

You can't define a single entity of awareness by particle activity because you still need something to be able to perceive this particle activity.

Again: unless you know how an "entity of awareness" works, you cannot possibly know what it can or cannot be made out of.

This is a complex subject which is very difficult to elaborate on in a few lines, so I apologise for not being able to explain it fully.

Given your repeated failure to grasp the simple logic of what is needed to make your claims, I doubt very much that you have the first hint of any real understanding.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Wiggs,

...as others have pointed out, it seems to require a regress, that is, another little man to perceive the first little man, and so on.

Unless that is you just make the first little man magic - which is essentially what AB attempts.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Ekim,

You can't because it's an inner experience.  You might have to assess the extent to which you trust the initiator and whether the possible benefits of the method outweigh the risks and make your decision whether to proceed or not.

Inner experience – of anything - is fine. It’s a subjective belief, and it’s no-one’s business but that of the person who holds it. What it doesn’t do though is to provide any logical path at all to a ”true for you too” claim, which is where those who would demand special respect for their subjective beliefs in the public square – or indeed would proselytise for them – crash and burn.

If you have that kind of imagination you would probably have to develop an inner stillness discrimination to distinguish between a continuous state of inner joy and enlivenment and a fake version that you dreamt up.

But how? How for example would you know that you hadn’t “made up” your particular God in the absence of a method to do so? Would the “continuous” bit help maybe: five minutes = made up; 24 hours = the real deal? Seems a bit arbitrary, even if you could find a path from "blissful" to "true".

If that is the outcome perhaps it doesn't matter what name you give to the initiating process.  You could say that bliss is your gold at the end of the rainbow.  It's when you try to communicate your method to others that you might want to assess the language you use.

Which is lovely, and no doubt “bliss” can be obtained by all sorts of meditative practices. The problem though is that those who claim “God” do so not as a meditative aid, but rather as a fact. Moreover, they then attribute various characteristics to that “fact” – loving, wrathful etc.

And that’s the problems. If theists didn’t overreach and settled for god as a useful technique to feeling blissful, all well and good; when they try to assert “God” as an objectively real phenomenon that’s also true for me though, then it all falls apart. 

[Alan Burns]

What we do know is that very complex emergent properties arise from simple component parts, none of which separately have any understanding at all of that complexity.

In all the examples given for emergence, the human perceiver of the emergent property can understand what the complexity is and how it operates.

This is not the case in consciousness, because our conscious awareness can't work out how our conscious awareness actually works.

What we also know is that the brain is the most complicated thing in the known universe. The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections – equivalent by some estimates to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor. Have you any sense at all of how fantastically complex a bit of kit that is?

A complex network of particles physically reacting with each other does not define conscious awareness.

What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness that necessarily places it outside the possibility of being an emergent property of our brains, and moreover that it is consistent with the principles of emergence.

What we also know is that you have no argument at all to support your contention that consciousness as an emergent property is "physically impossible", and nor do you have one iota of evidence for an immaterial anything – let alone a “soul” - with which you could replace it.

What we also know is that your only reasoning here is very poor – the argument form personal incredulity in fact – and moreover that there’s no need of defining every aspect of consciousness to think that probabilistically emergence is the most likely explanation for it.

If it can't be defined in material terms, emergence is not a likely explanation.

And even if that wasn't true, then you'd have to apply some major special pleading not to insist on exactly the same standard for "soul". And your problem there is that, while we don't know everything about how consciousness works, we do know quite a lot, whereas so far at least all you have to explain the workings of "soul" is the word "soul". 

The human soul as described in the revelations of the Christian bible is a good explanation in my estimation.

[wigginhall]

Wiggs,

Unless that is you just make the first little man magic - which is essentially what AB attempts.

I just realized that when I said that the brain may be self-referential, I was vaguely remembering some of Tegmark's ideas, that experience may be what information feels like, when it's being processed.   There is a little film of him, damn, he's good looking.

https://youtu.be/GzCvlFRISIM

[torridon]

I just pointed out that conscious awareness can't be achieved solely by the activity of sub atomic particles, because there is no single entity of awareness available to perceive the information they contain.  You can't define a single entity of awareness by particle activity because you still need something to be able to perceive this particle activity.  This is a complex subject which is very difficult to elaborate on in a few lines, so I apologise for not being able to explain it fully.

Research suggests that the 'single entity' is itself part and parcel of consciousness.  That might sound counterintuitive, but you can easily demonstrate the truth of this for yourself tonight with the following experiment : go to sleep. What you will find is that the 'single entity', ie that which is the 'recipient' of awareness no longer exists. There is no longer a sense of 'me' within the body. Occasionally dreams might flicker into life, that is conscious experience during sleep and during those moments, an 'experiencer' of sorts also springs back into existence, and when the dream finishes, the experiencer dissolves again. The phenomenological feeling of being a 'me', of having experience and having agency, is itself an ephemeral product of consciousness.  This is what the evidence suggests.

[ekim]

Ekim,

Inner experience – of anything - is fine. It’s a subjective belief, and it’s no-one’s business but that of the person who holds it. What it doesn’t do though is to provide any logical path at all to a ”true for you too” claim, which is where those who would demand special respect for their subjective beliefs in the public square – or indeed would proselytise for them – crash and burn.

Agreed.  It would also seem impossible to compare the alleged experience of somebody who lived 2000 years ago with a personal experience of somebody living in the present and claim they are identical.

But how? How for example would you know that you hadn’t “made up” your particular God in the absence of a method to do so? Would the “continuous” bit help maybe: five minutes = made up; 24 hours = the real deal? Seems a bit arbitrary, even if you could find a path from "blissful" to "true".

Well, I wasn't talking about a God, more about an inner state of being.  For some it might be called heaven, nirvana, ananda.  I don't think the name matters unless it is an attempt to vocalise that state to others.

Which is lovely, and no doubt “bliss” can be obtained by all sorts of meditative practices. The problem though is that those who claim “God” do so not as a meditative aid, but rather as a fact. Moreover, they then attribute various characteristics to that “fact” – loving, wrathful etc.

And that’s the problems. If theists didn’t overreach and settled for god as a useful technique to feeling blissful, all well and good; when they try to assert “God” as an objectively real phenomenon that’s also true for me though, then it all falls apart. 

Agreed, and worse than that it is often used by a hierarchy to dominate and manipulate others.

[Alan Burns]

What we do know is that very complex emergent properties arise from simple component parts, none of which separately have any understanding at all of that complexity.

Just going back to this snippet, the only thing which has any understanding of anything on this planet is the awareness of the human brain.  Component parts do not understand anything at all - they just react.

[Stranger]

...our conscious awareness can't work out how our conscious awareness actually works.

A complex network of particles physically reacting with each other does not define conscious awareness.

If the first statement is true, how can you possibly know that the second statement is true - that is, unless you claim to know absolutely everything about what complex networks of particles can do (something nobody seriously claims to know)?

Why do you just keep on mindlessly repeating this daft assertion without ever addressing the basic, simple logical problem that you do not understand consciousness and you do not fully understand the physical world?

[Alan Burns]

What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness ...

Another comment -
If we do not know what comprises consciousness, how can you possibly make such a statement?

[wigginhall]

I call a foul here.  That is definitely quote-mining, that is, you have chopped off blue's post, thus changing the meaning.

This is the original: "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness that necessarily places it outside the possibility of being an emergent property of our brains, and moreover that it is consistent with the principles of emergence."

This is AB's version:   "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness ..."

I wouldn't normally bother, but there was a long discussion about AB's methods, and I certainly see this as dishonest.  Maybe others don't.

[ippy]

I can appreciate feeling a need to knock down, shoot it or bury A B's blind faith/belief in the supernatural even though it has absolutely no foundation in fact, he has no way of substantiating his stance, he is totally unable to separate these faiths/beliefs from reality or nonsense and it's extremely unlikely he ever will.

The point I'm trying to make is that when someone is so determined to lock out reason to replace it with blind faith or belief it doesn't strike me as a worthwhile subject for discussion at the apparent level it's being taken at on this thread; purely on the basis that A B hasn't been able, so far, to elevate his beloved religion out of the nonsense, waffle zone.

Apart from the fact there are so many believe in these religions, the sort of faith stuff that A B does, considered against where the Zeus belief, example of faith ended up, it's not a subject that has earned itself the over elevated position that makes it worthy of any kind of really deep consideration or deep meaningful discussion.

A B's particularly intransigent position with religion on the forum says more about the power of indoctrination than it does about A B's devotional clinging on to religious belief, or religion itself. 

ippy

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

In all the examples given for emergence, the human perceiver of the emergent property can understand what the complexity is and how it operates.

This is not the case in consciousness, because our conscious awareness can't work out how our conscious awareness actually works.

Yes, we can’t step outside out consciousness to see how it works. That though doesn’t help you a jot – the argument is just that the consciousness we do experience is consistent with the phenomenon of emergence. Have a look at the Max Tegmark talk that Wiggs linked to – he’s saying pretty much exactly what I’m saying here re consciousness and emergence. (Not sure how good looking he is though.)

A complex network of particles physically reacting with each other does not define conscious awareness.

Lots of ants interacting with each other doesn’t “define” a colony either. Yet the colony exists nonetheless and at a greater level of complexity than that of any of the ant behaviours from which it emerges.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

If it can't be defined in material terms, emergence is not a likely explanation.

That’s called a non sequitur. Lots of things aren’t fully understood, but we’re pretty sure of the mechanisms by which they come about.  Fluid dynamics for example is astonishingly complicated and not fully understood, yet we know that wetness is an emergent property of the interactions of water molecules. 

The human soul as described in the revelations of the Christian bible is a good explanation in my estimation.

Then you’re cheating again – there is no explanation for “soul” worthy of that term, and there’s certainly much less explanation for it than there is for consciousness.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Wiggs,

I call a foul here.  That is definitely quote-mining, that is, you have chopped off blue's post, thus changing the meaning.

This is the original: "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness that necessarily places it outside the possibility of being an emergent property of our brains, and moreover that it is consistent with the principles of emergence."

This is AB's version:   "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness ..."

I wouldn't normally bother, but there was a long discussion about AB's methods, and I certainly see this as dishonest.  Maybe others don't

Thanks, yes. I was upbraided a while back for saying that AB exhibits a type of dishonesty, but this is the kind of thing I meant.

I also find his, "we can't define everything about consciousness, therefore we can't call it an emergent property but I can define enough about "soul" to mean I can use it as a replacement explanation" to be heading in the same direction. What possible definition of "soul" can he think he has that's greater than the libraries of data we have already about consciousness?

What we actually have is knowledge about consciousness that's incomplete vs knowledge about "soul" that non-existent. Why pretend otherwise?   

[Enki]

Wiggs,

Thanks yes. I was upbraided a while back for saying that AB exhibits a type of dishonesty, but this is the kind of thing I meant.

I also find his, "we can't define everything about consciousness, therefore we can't call it an emergent property but I can define enough about "soul" to mean I can use it as a replacement explanation" to be heading in the same direction. What possible definition of "soul" can he think he has that's greater than the libraries of data we have already about consciousness?

What we actually have is knowledge about consciousness that's incomplete vs knowledge about "soul" that non-existent. Why pretend otherwise?

Yes, I too noticed this by going back to your original post. I was perhaps being rather naive in thinking that AB had simply fixated on the part that he quoted, and that he had not fully appreciated or understood the rest of the sentence. However I am beginning to think that you and Wiggs have a point here, in that it comes over as blatant quote mining.

[Alan Burns]

I call a foul here.  That is definitely quote-mining, that is, you have chopped off blue's post, thus changing the meaning.

This is the original: "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness that necessarily places it outside the possibility of being an emergent property of our brains, and moreover that it is consistent with the principles of emergence."

This is AB's version:   "What we also know is that there’s nothing inherently different about consciousness ..."

I wouldn't normally bother, but there was a long discussion about AB's methods, and I certainly see this as dishonest.  Maybe others don't.

Apologies for this.
Looking back on it the curtailed quote does make it look worse than I intended.
The point I was trying to make was that if we do not know what consciousness is, we can't draw such conclusions as are made in the extended quote.

However from the opposite side of the fence I could say it was all down to the uncontrollable deterministic events which drive my brain. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The point I was trying to make was that if we do not know what consciousness is, we can't draw such conclusions as are made in the extended quote.

A point that's been rebutted several times now. Why not address the rebuttals rather than repeat the assertion that's been rebutted?

Again - we don't yet understand fully fluid dynamics. We do know that wetness is an emergent property of water molecules (none of which are individually wet). Therefore it's not necessary to know everything about something to know something about it. QED

[Shaker]

Apologies for this.
Looking back on it the curtailed quote does make it look worse than I intended.
The point I was trying to make was that if we do not know what consciousness is, we can't draw such conclusions as are made in the extended quote.

Although you seem quite happy to draw the conclusion 'soul.'