Searching for GOD...

[Sebastian Toe]

You seriously underestimate the power of the human soul.  It does not need a controller - it is the controller.

You seriously overestimate the power of the human soul.  It does need a controller.

[ippy]

But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain?

That's no real explanation, all you're doing is asserting things that there is no way you or anyone else can know  whether you're right or wrong, can you prove the teapot is orbiting the sun or prove it isn't orbiting the sun, no, just to keep on asserting things in more or less the godidit syndrome/same way as the teapot, as you must be aware this isn't enough, yet again you really can't see it can you Alan?

I suspect if this god figure you have in your imagination, wouldn't be very impressed with your no need to think about it, switch off brain and say to yourself goddidit whatever the problem, insted of using the brain you think he gave you to work things out for yourself, bit lazy don't you think?

ippy

[wigginhall]

You seriously overestimate the power of the human soul.  It does need a controller.

I agree.  In fact, I think the soul is controlled by the evil genius Loki, which makes us think bad thoughts.    If you have good thoughts, that is because Loki is a shape-shifter.   This is TRUE, and sworn by me this day of Loki 23886, or something like that, and I hereby affirm it on the book 'Delia's Food for One'.   

Just making the point that this stuff is just as likely as AB's meanderings. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Wiggs,

I agree.  In fact, I think the soul is controlled by the evil genius Loki, which makes us think bad thoughts.    If you have good thoughts, that is because Loki is a shape-shifter.   This is TRUE, and sworn by me this day of Loki 23886, or something like that, and I hereby affirm it on the book 'Delia's Food for One'.   

Just making the point that this stuff is just as likely as AB's meanderings.

Just think: if we can find enough people to agree with you then, according to AB, that'd be "evidence" that Loki is real!

[ippy]

Wiggs,

Just think: if we can find enough people to agree with you then, according to AB, that'd be "evidence" that Loki is real!
[/quote

Loki?

 Which one of you is going to be the high priest and start collecting in he money?

ippy

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Homunculus Fallacy .....
 

I assume you misunderstood my post:
But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain

You and Torri have established that any concept of control of our thoughts is "just the way it seems" and there is no control other than natural deterministic forces.  So the idea that we can consciously drive the logical processes in our brains to determine anything must be an illusion.  Your ideas indicate that whatever we conclude must be pre determined by natural unguidable forces.  In this scenario there can be no way of determining truth when every thought we process is pre determined.

[Gordon]

I assume you misunderstood my post:
But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain

You and Torri have established that any concept of control of our thoughts is "just the way it seems" and there is no control other than natural deterministic forces.  So the idea that we can consciously drive the logical processes in our brains to determine anything must be an illusion.  Your ideas indicate that whatever we conclude must be pre determined by natural unguidable forces.  In this scenario there can be no way of determining truth when every thought we process is pre determined.

Another jumble of muddled thinking, Alan. First I'm not sure what you mean by 'truth': I'm assuming you don't mean facts that we accept as being true in an everyday sense, such as the names of my children, but something else and your form suggests this is likely to be something undefined and possibly another example of reification.

Then there is your suggestion that knowing something is true requires 'conscious control', which seems like code for thinking, and even then you could be either wrong or, of course, not even wrong if this 'truth' is an example of reification. 'Truth', other than perhaps commonly agreed facts, requires a more cautious approach than the one you adopt.

[torridon]

I assume you misunderstood my post:
But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain

You and Torri have established that any concept of control of our thoughts is "just the way it seems" and there is no control other than natural deterministic forces.  So the idea that we can consciously drive the logical processes in our brains to determine anything must be an illusion.  Your ideas indicate that whatever we conclude must be pre determined by natural unguidable forces.  In this scenario there can be no way of determining truth when every thought we process is pre determined.

The Met Office uses vast computing power to come up with weather forecasts and climate models.  The results they come up with may not be perfect, clearly, they are as good as the programming and the data allows.  Critical to this is the fundamental concept that the software takes faithful account of climate processes.  In your scenario, there needs to another level of control over the running of a forecast, one that is free of all prior influences and determining factors to 'guide' the running of the software.  I put it to you that such a scenario would lead to ruined forecasts; the quality of a resulting forecast is only as good as the software's faithfulness to all the determining factors; breaking that faithfulness would lead to random results. Similarly, a brain is an organic computing device of vast complexity that produces optimal responses to external change.  If we introduce some element of external control over this computing and this element of control is free of all the considerations that the brain takes into account, then it would produce suboptimal, random, responses. We cannot produce meaningful decisions if we are free of the determining factors; rather, we have be faithful to them.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I assume you misunderstood my post:
But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain

You and Torri have established that any concept of control of our thoughts is "just the way it seems" and there is no control other than natural deterministic forces. 

But let's not step away from the fact that they don't know that for sure.
The pathological reductionist wants decent working people to forget the gulf between their theory and actual evidence.

Watch out for flip flopping and attempting interleaving between philosophy and science and hoping for some persistence of perception on their part.

[Alan Burns]

Another jumble of muddled thinking, Alan. First I'm not sure what you mean by 'truth': I'm assuming you don't mean facts that we accept as being true in an everyday sense, such as the names of my children, but something else and your form suggests this is likely to be something undefined and possibly another example of reification.

Then there is your suggestion that knowing something is true requires 'conscious control', which seems like code for thinking, and even then you could be either wrong or, of course, not even wrong if this 'truth' is an example of reification. 'Truth', other than perhaps commonly agreed facts, requires a more cautious approach than the one you adopt.

The brain functions such as those described in Torri's posts adequately describe our perception of animal behaviour, where they have fairly predictable reactions to events, but show no evidence of being able to contemplate ideas such as the concept of truth.  The point I am making is that we humans have the ability to consciously drive thought processes in order to reach any conclusions.  If the conclusions were simply the inevitable result of deterministic events in our brains we would have no concept of any logical processes needed to reach these conclusions - the conclusions would be reached automatically with no need to consciously drive though the logic.  So in order to reach any conclusion, whether it is deemed to be correct or not, we need the freedom to drive our thought processes, and the source of this driving process comes from within our conscious awareness- the spiritually driven will of the human soul.

[torridon]

The brain functions such as those described in Torri's posts adequately describe our perception of animal behaviour, where they have fairly predictable reactions to events, but show no evidence of being able to contemplate ideas such as the concept of truth.  The point I am making is that we humans have the ability to consciously drive thought processes in order to reach any conclusions.  If the conclusions were simply the inevitable result of deterministic events in our brains we would have no concept of any logical processes needed to reach these conclusions - the conclusions would be reached automatically with no need to consciously drive though the logic.  So in order to reach any conclusion, whether it is deemed to be correct or not, we need the freedom to drive our thought processes, and the source of this driving process comes from within our conscious awareness- the spiritually driven will of the human soul.

I see you still haven't grasped the fact that conscious awareness is the end product of thought processes not the driver of them.  Even since Freud we have been coming to understand that it is subconscious mind that is the real driver of behaviours, conscious awareness merely follows on in its wake.

I see you still haven't grasped the fact that adding in 'spiritually driven' before 'will' makes no difference to the logic of the situation.  Its just wordplay to avoid the logic of the situation.  A spiritually driven will that is free of relevant influences still produces random responses just as would a biologically driven will that is free of relevant considerations. A meaningful choice has to be a function of its determining factors or it is just a random event.  Adding in meaningless words like 'spiritual' does not buy us a free pass out of this base logic.

[floo]

the spiritually driven will of the human soul.

A phrase which has no logical basis.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I assume you misunderstood my post:
But how can we determine truth if we have no conscious control over the internal workings of our brain

Actually I understood it better you do. Your problem here is your casual use of “truth” as if it were an absolute rather than a probabilistic description. In short it’s a truth, not the truth.

You and Torri have established that any concept of control of our thoughts is "just the way it seems" and there is no control other than natural deterministic forces.

Actually that’s where the evidence leads, but ok.

So the idea that we can consciously drive the logical processes in our brains to determine anything must be an illusion.

You have your terminology wrong but if you’re trying to describe something like, “the idea that consciousness cannot step outside the constraints of cause and effect” then yes. Conjectures that propose something else ("spirit" etc) are incoherent, and moreover have no known model to frame them. 

Your ideas indicate that whatever we conclude must be pre determined by natural unguidable forces.  In this scenario there can be no way of determining truth when every thought we process is pre determined.

That’s called a non sequitur, one of the various fallacies of which you're so fond.. Clearly we do discover truths – the speed of light in a vacuum for example – albeit that those “truths” are limited by the abilities of the meat computers in our skulls to identify them.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But let's not step away from the fact that they don't know that for sure.

And let’s not step away from the fact that that’s a red herring. No-one claims to know anything “for sure” (except that it for the religious). What is being said though is that that’s where the only evidence we have points.

The pathological reductionist wants decent working people to forget the gulf between their theory and actual evidence.

And let’s not forget that trying an argument that’s actually somewhere between an ad hom and judgmental language (a version of the red herring) just exits you from the conversation a priori. I can see why you’re such a fan of Feser.

And let’s not for get too that when the “actual evidence” we do have is plugged into the model of emergence we observe pretty much everywhere we look it provides a rational working explanation for the phenomenon of consciousness.   

Watch out for flip flopping and attempting interleaving between philosophy and science and hoping for some persistence of perception on their part.

And another red herring to finish – the triumvirate of fishy reasoning!

Good effort.

[Gordon]

The brain functions such as those described in Torri's posts adequately describe our perception of animal behaviour, where they have fairly predictable reactions to events, but show no evidence of being able to contemplate ideas such as the concept of truth.

We are animals too: you seem fond of referring to 'truth', so what is it exactly?
 

The point I am making is that we humans have the ability to consciously drive thought processes in order to reach any conclusions.

We have, compared to other species, relatively good thinking equipment: so what?

If the conclusions were simply the inevitable result of deterministic events in our brains we would have no concept of any logical processes needed to reach these conclusions - the conclusions would be reached automatically with no need to consciously drive though the logic.

More theobabble, since we know 'God' is your conclusion to everything: using hyperbolic phrases like 'consciously drive though the logic' is just silly when it seems you're just noting that people are capable of thinking.

So in order to reach any conclusion, whether it is deemed to be correct or not, we need the freedom to drive our thought processes, and the source of this driving process comes from within our conscious awareness- the spiritually driven will of the human soul.

More fallacious reification, Alan - we just use our biological equipment in order to think, albeit some do so better than others.

[wigginhall]

I don't get this 'freedom to drive our thought processes'.   What does it mean?  That before I think, 'good, it's breakfast, get the bacon on', I have to have a soul which tells  my brain to think that?   As torridon often says, what's the point in having a brain then?

[floo]

Some theists don't seem to understand that humans are a species of animal too, albeit further up the food chain than others.

 

[wigginhall]

Some theists don't seem to understand that humans are a species of animal too, albeit further up the food chain than others.

That's it.  We're speshul,  cos God gave us a speshul soul-thingy which goes around telling the brain what to think.   Errm, come again. 

[floo]

That's it.  We're speshul,  cos God gave us a speshul soul-thingy which goes around telling the brain what to think.   Errm, come again.

And where does this soul thingy reside, some think it separate to the human mind?

[ippy]

And where does this soul thingy reside, some think it separate to the human mind?

A B will be unable to tell you where but I'm sure he will imagine something up for you, Floo.

I doubt whatever he invents will be very interesting.

ippy

[floo]

Maybe good Catholic's souls are housed in the halos around their heads.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's it.  We're speshul,  cos God gave us a speshul soul-thingy which goes around telling the brain what to think.   Errm, come again.

Wigginhall's lost it!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Maybe good Catholic's souls are housed in the halos around their heads.

We know which ring the New Atheists are housed in.

[SusanDoris]

Maybe good Catholic's souls are housed in the halos around their heads.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Wigginhall's lost it!

No, he just parodied AB’s position is all. AB’s modus operandi is the same as yours: he misrepresents the arguments against him, and then having created an imaginary explanatory gap he just inserts a superstitious belief he happens to have with no a supporting argument for it of any kind.

Oddly too one of his various mistakes is to assert that consciousness cannot be an emergent property because it’s not “fully defined” (even though lots of explanatory models are used for other phenomena that aren’t full defined – gravity for example), but then posits in the alternative a conjecture (“soul”) for which he has no definition of any kind. When this is pointed out to him though he just ignores the problem – something else he and you have in common.

Oh well. So long as he’s not free to peddle his guff to those who lack the critical faculties to see through it, I guess we should just write him off as uneducable come what may.