Searching for GOD...

[Maeght]

Torri has suggested that the way round this is to assume that all particles must have a property of awareness, but this then leads to the bizzar scenario where
 everthing we see has awareness - rocks, water, air, effluent ....

Where has he suggested that?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I dismiss it on the grounds that any emegent property is derived entirely from the physical reactions of sub atomic particles to events, and it is not possible to define perception in terms of reactions alone.

First, that’s not true. What you actually said – several times in fact – is that emergence cannot be correct because consciousness isn’t “fully understood”.

Many phenomena for which we have robust explanations are not fully understood, and if you want to use that specious argument nonetheless then you shoot yourself in the foot when you tell us that you know nothing about your conjecture “soul”.

Second, you continue fundamentally to misunderstand the character of emergence. The point is that emergent properties rest on component parts that individually do not have the properties of the emergent phenomenon. Conceptually, there is no reason at all for self-awareness not to emerge from neurons that are individually not self-aware.

You seem to revel in your ignorance about this. Why?

As I have said before, perception requires a perceiver, and you can't define a perceiver with material particles.

Yes you have said it before, and you were wrong then too. The clue is in the “self” of “self aware”. You seem to think that computers are a useful analog for brains, apparently oblivious to the greater magnitudes of complexity of brains and to the relationship between complexity and emergence.

Torri has suggested that the way round this is to assume that all particles must have a property of awareness…

Why have you just lied again? He’s suggested no such thing.

, but this then leads to the bizzar scenario where everthing we see has awareness - rocks, water, air, effluent ....

It would do if anyone had actually said that.

Why is telling lies for Jesus a good thing do you think?

[Stranger]

You are implying that the spiritual soul must have the same constraints for making a choice as a computer or dumb animal.

Logically, it must have. There is no alternative to determined or not determined (random).

But the soul has an extra feature - conscious awareness.  Can you not see that our conscious awareness can interact with our body to implement conscious choices?

Why are you dishonestly ignoring the fact that we've already been through all this?

A conscious choice has to work somehow and you have already admitted that you have no alternative to determined or not determined and that you don't know how it works.

If you don't know, how are we supposed to "see" it?

You may not agree with the content of my post, but can you honestly believe that the content is derived entirely by historical events over which I have no control?

You have provided no alternative. Just, effectively: "I dunno, it must be magic".

[Stranger]

Can you not contemplate the possibility of the human soul being able to make real time choices which are not constrained or defined by previous history?  Do you honestly believe that all your thoughts and imagination are defined entirely before they occur?

To the extent they are not, they can only be random (and you keep denying that).

I do not know how the human soul works, but I do know that it frees me from the constraints of a biological machine derived and driven entirely by the natural unguided forces of nature.

Even if it frees you from all that, it cannot free you from the logic of the situation. How about actually answering the points I made before, that you kept on evading?

When will you honestly face up the the counterarguments that clearly demonstrate that what you are suggesting makes no logical sense? If you think they are wrong, say how they are wrong. Just going back to making the same "arguments" that have already been tackled, as if the counterarguments had never been made, is incredibly dishonest.

[wigginhall]

As blue said, AB wants the comforting narrative of a soul that is free both from the constraints of a material world, and the constraints of logic.   Of course, he can't actually describe this in any shape or form, but this does not trouble him, just as the tooth fairy need not be described in detail.   

[torridon]

I dismiss it on the grounds that any emegent property is derived entirely from the physical reactions of sub atomic particles to events, and it is not possible to define perception in terms of reactions alone.  As I have said before, perception requires a perceiver, and you can't define a perceiver with material particles.  Torri has suggested that the way round this is to assume that all particles must have a property of awareness, but this then leads to the bizzar scenario where everthing we see has awareness - rocks, water, air, effluent ....

To be clear, I don't buy the idea of panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental ubiquitous property of matter, that seems overkill, a sledge hammer to crack the nutshell of the hard problem of consciousness.  However physics does suggest that all matter influences, and is influenced by, all other matter via many mechanisms - via gravity, via nuclear and electromagnetic forces, via the Pauli exclusion principle, via entanglement etc, these are all fundamental ways in which matter is 'aware' of other matter, so it should not be so surprising that mechanisms should arise in biological systems to harness and focus and enrich the natural inherent 'awareness' of fundamental matter, and this is in part what brains do, in principle, giving rise eventually to a stream of unified information flow, or enriched multi-modal awareness.

[Alan Burns]

To the extent they are not, they can only be random (and you keep denying that).

Even if it frees you from all that, it cannot free you from the logic of the situation. How about actually answering the points I made before, that you kept on evading?

When will you honestly face up the the counterarguments that clearly demonstrate that what you are suggesting makes no logical sense? If you think they are wrong, say how they are wrong. Just going back to making the same "arguments" that have already been tackled, as if the counterarguments had never been made, is incredibly dishonest.

I have claimed that the content of my posts offers ample evidence for the fact that they are NOT entirely defined and driven by the historic events of the past.  There is a "me" involved which is not an automated biological robot.  If you disagree with this scenario, what do you suggest can be the ultimate cause of what I am posting?

[Stranger]

I have claimed that the content of my posts offers ample evidence for the fact that they are NOT entirely defined and driven by the historic events of the past.  There is a "me" involved which is not an automated biological robot.

You have made that claim and myself and others have shown it to be illogical. You have not answered these counterarguments and you have admitted that you don't know how conscious choice works.

To continue your claims, as if these exchanges had not taken place, is dishonest in the extreme. You need to say why you think them wrong.

Here is my argument again, perhaps you would be honest enough to acknowledge it and respond?

At last! Okay, so you don't know.

The problem with that is that you started all this out by saying that a physical explanation for our conscious awareness and "free will" was not possible because of physical determinism and now you are saying you haven't a clue what the alternative is.

Further, there aren't many places for you to go from that. Either you have to ask us to accept an unknown that is illogical (presumably on the basis that it's beyond "human logic" or a "mystery"), which undermines the whole idea of a logical argument for it in the first place. Or you have to accept that "free will" can only be made up of deterministic (and possible random) processes in the soul, which undermines the argument that it can't be physical.

Either way, your whole argument for god on the basis of the necessity of the soul has collapsed in a heap of contradictions...

If you disagree with this scenario, what do you suggest can be the ultimate cause of what I am posting?

Enough of the dishonest distraction. Your scenario is fundamentally illogical so we can dismiss it without considering any alternatives...

[SusanDoris]

AB

The phrase ' revel in your ignorance' has been used about you. I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone could be so proud of the level of  dishonest misunderstanding  your posts show.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Just thinking about AB's approach here of demanding that people at least consider the possibility of his conjecture about "soul".

It give him two problems I think:

First, by positing a conjecture that's inherently contradictory (not determinative, not random but, um, well, you know, kind of...it's a mystery innit, oh is that time already? etc) he's asking us to entertain the possibility of the equivalent of a four-sided triangle. That is, no-one can consider the possibility of a claim that's inherently incoherent - it's just white noise, so there's nothing to consider.

Second, if ever he could manage to make the claim "soul" coherent though then in principle at least he'd be pushing at an open door in any case. "Soul", unicorns, leprechauns, whatever are all possibilities. His mountain to climb though would be to to find a way to elevate one of these from possible to probable.

[SusanDoris]

I think if AB had demonstrated a willingness really to consider other, and opposing, views and then presented some sort of argument to back himself up, it would be much more interesting, but unless I've missed a whole set of posts where he did this, I wonder what the likelihood is.

[Alan Burns]

Enough of the dishonest distraction. Your scenario is fundamentally illogical so we can dismiss it without considering any alternatives...

I have simply claimed that the conscious will of my soul is responsible for the posts I make on this forum, because I can't envisage any other feasible explanation.

You claim that if my spiritual soul exists, whatever it does will be deterministic in the same way as physical brain activity.  But if my free will actions are derived from my soul, you must at least admit that they will have a different origin (being spiritual) to anything produced from physical brain activity.  So can I repeat my request for you to say what defines the ultimate source of my posts (and yours).  This is not a distraction, but a fundamental issue concerning what drives the conscious free will of human beings.

[ekim]

If you ever discover the love of God through the Christian faith you too will know it as a fact.

If you are claiming that you have discovered the love of God, perhaps you could explain how this validates, as a fact, that 'God revealed himself in the form of Jesus', which was what my question was about.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have simply claimed that the conscious will of my soul is responsible for the posts I make on this forum, because I can't envisage any other feasible explanation.

Exactly! Your "because I can't envisage any other feasible explanation" is precisely the fallacy of personal incredulity. That you personally can't envisage something tells you nothing about the evidence from those who can.

You claim that if my spiritual soul exists, whatever it does will be deterministic in the same way as physical brain activity.

No he doesn't. What he says is that it would be either deterministic or random: the choice is binary, so there is no other option.

But if my free will actions are derived from my soul, you must at least admit that they will have a different origin (being spiritual) to anything produced from physical brain activity.

And if unicorns like Wall's Cornettos then you must admit that...etc. Focus on your "if" for a minute - if "soul", then anything. Logic, evidence, reason, consistency, coherence are all out of the window. Conjure up "soul" as your answer and anything goes.

So can I repeat my request for you to say what defines the ultimate source of my posts (and yours).  This is not a distraction, but a fundamental issue concerning what drives the conscious free will of human beings.

It's not so much a "distraction" as a logical fallacy. Whether the answer is a specific or a "don't know" tells you nothing whatever about the validity of the conjecture you propose instead. As has been explained to you many times, this line is equivalent to Ug saying to Sven, "If not Thor, how then do you explain thunder?". Do you really think that Sven saying "don't know" would validate Ug's Thor-ism?

This is just more of the very bad thinking on which you consistently rely.

[Stranger]

I have simply claimed that the will of my soul is responsible for the posts I make on this forum, because I can't envisage any other feasible explanation.

But what you have suggested isn't a feasible explanation because it's either self-contradictory (not deterministic and not random soul) or it's a needless speculation because it doesn't offer anything fundamentally different from a physical explanation (deterministic soul).

You claim that if my spiritual soul exists, whatever it does will be deterministic in the same way as physical brain activity.  But if my free will actions are derived from my soul, you must at least admit that they will have a different origin (being spoiritual) to anything produced from physical brain activity.

Yes, but we would still be deterministic decision making systems (souls). Hence all your arguments about how conscious awareness cannot be physical because of determinism are undermined.

If our conscious awareness and "free will" are deterministic, then they are deterministic. How does moving the deterministic system out of the brain and into the "spiritual" make any significant difference?

So can I repeat my request for you to say what defines the ultimate source of my posts (and yours).  This is not a distraction, but a fundamental issue concerning what drives the conscious free will of human beings.

Our minds are (according to all the evidence) evolved, highly complex information gathering and decision making systems. In my opinion (others would disagree), we have "free will" in the sense that I cited in #15824 - which is actually the only definition of the term, that I have encountered, that makes logical sense.

[Rhiannon]

Alan,

Why when I lost my faith did God leave me feeling betrayed and why did he ignore my prayers to make me feel his presence so I would believe again?

[Alan Burns]

Our minds are (according to all the evidence) evolved, highly complex information gathering and decision making systems. In my opinion (others would disagree), we have "free will" in the sense that I cited in #15824 - which is actually the only definition of the term, that I have encountered, that makes logical sense.

But in the reference you gave to compatibilism there is Kant's criticism:
... reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.

[Nearly Sane]

But in the reference you gave to compatibilism there is Kant's criticism:
... reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.

(A) that isn't a criticism, it is an assertion, and that it is by Kant cuts no ice, (B) it then makes the choice random so doesn't help

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But in the reference you gave to compatibilism there is Kant's criticism:
... reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.

In colloquial terms that seems sensible, but in epistemic terms it isn’t. Chess for example has relatively few rules, yet produces outcomes of huge complexity. If a game ended after 50 moves and each move had ten possible outcomes, you’d have 10 to the power 50 ways of playing the game – more than the number of atoms that make up the Earth.

Each outcome would be as near as makes no difference unique, yet would still rely fundamentally on the original few rules. However much you struggle with it, that’s the point of emergence – complex properties appear apparently spontaneously when the component parts follow consistently some basic rules. 

The complexity of the brain is such that conceiving of consciousness as an emergent property of the its neurons following relatively simple rules is no great stretch.

[Stranger]

But in the reference you gave to compatibilism there is Kant's criticism:
... reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.

As NS has already said, if it isn't determined by anything, then it's random. The full quote however, seems to centre on our ability to distinguish is from ought, which would simply suggest that we can build models of how things might be and make value judgements about them. Value judgements, to be truly ours, must be based on our character, which is based on our life experience... all of which requires determinism. What good would randomness be?

Now, back to your soul: deterministic and a pointless speculation, or neither deterministic nor random and logically impossible?

[Alan Burns]

As NS has already said, if it isn't determined by anything, then it's random. The full quote however, seems to centre on our ability to distinguish is from ought, which would simply suggest that we can build models of how things might be and make value judgements about them. Value judgements, to be truly ours, must be based on our character, which is based on our life experience... all of which requires determinism. What good would randomness be?

Now, back to your soul: deterministic and a pointless speculation, or neither deterministic nor random and logically impossible?

But Kant suggests that our ability to use our imagination to think of ideals which may never happen shows that we are not entirely controlled by past experiences. 

And if you insist that all our apparent free will actions and thoughts are determined by the logical processes in our brains, why would my logic be wrong and yours be right when it is the same form of electro chemical processes which determine what we post?

[Stranger]

And if you insist that all our apparent free will actions and thoughts are determined by the logical processes in our brains, why would my logic be wrong and yours be right when it is the same form of electro chemical processes which determine what we post?

This is either crass stupidity or a dishonest attempt to twist what has been said. Either way, I suggest you take some time to consider the matter...

[torridon]

But Kant suggests that our ability to use our imagination to think of ideals which may never happen shows that we are not entirely controlled by past experiences. 

Kant was a brilliant thinker, but we are talking over two hundred years since then and things have moved on.  The concept of determinism did not become widespread until Newton.

And if you insist that all our apparent free will actions and thoughts are determined by the logical processes in our brains, why would my logic be wrong and yours be right when it is the same form of electro chemical processes which determine what we post?

Just as each thumbprint is unique, so is each brain, even more so. And whereas thumbprints are more or less fixed for life, brains are highly plastic, constantly 'rewiring' themselves as they encounter new inputs.

[Alan Burns]

As NS has already said, if it isn't determined by anything, then it's random. The full quote however, seems to centre on our ability to distinguish is from ought, which would simply suggest that we can build models of how things might be and make value judgements about them. Value judgements, to be truly ours, must be based on our character, which is based on our life experience... all of which requires determinism. What good would randomness be?

Value judgements are not purely deterministic.  They need to be driven by active thought processes, and the driver of these thought processes must have conscious awareness as well as the ability to drive - it is not an automated sequence of pre determined events, and it is not random.

[Nearly Sane]

Value judgements are not purely deterministic.  They need to be driven by active thought processes, and the driver of these thought processes must have conscious awareness as well as the ability to drive - it is not an automated sequence of pre determined events, and it is not random.

back with the logical incoherence of something that is neither A nor not A