Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Maeght,

Why do you think asking that adds to the discussion in any way? All it does is restate the question we are talking about and you know what people's answer will be so can only concludevthat this is further avoidance. Hoabout trying t answ the question you've been aske instead.

I’ve been upbraided for this but I do think there’s a deep intellectual dishonesty about AB’s posts bordering on lying. He’s decided that not enough explanation for a phenomenon (ie, consciousness – albeit that he shows no understanding of the explanations we do have) gives him license to insert into the gaps an answer for which he has no explanation of any kind (ie, “soul”), and moreover an answer that’s logically impossible. Thus on the one hand we have an answer that’s reason and evidence-based but provides an incomplete explanation vs an answer with no reason or evidence to support it that’s completely void in explanatory terms.

The “not fully defined, therefore not naturalistic" argument is a very bad one on its own terms but, regardless, when you use the same argument about his conjecture he just pretends there’s nothing to address.

How is that not dishonest? 

[Enki]

I think I would leave that one up to my wife 

All you have done here is try to get around the question, but the question still remains:

Why would you choose to leave it to your wife?

Would that be a random decision, or would there be reasons for doing so?

[Enki]

Quote from Rhi's post 20007:

I'm sure you didn't mean to Alan, and you were genuinely wanting to help, but converting the vulnerable during times of distress is as old as the hills. It's basically what enables Alpha to be so successful.

Very true. When I attended an Alpha Course I found it quite revealing that so many claimed that they had found God in moments of personal distress.

[Alan Burns]

Maeght,

I’ve been upbraided for this but I do think there’s a deep intellectual dishonesty about AB’s posts bordering on lying. He’s decided that not enough explanation for a phenomenon (ie, consciousness – albeit that he shows no understanding of the explanations we do have) gives him license to insert into the gaps an answer for which he has no explanation of any kind (ie, “soul”), and moreover an answer that’s logically impossible. Thus on the one hand we have an answer that’s reason and evidence-based but provides an incomplete explanation vs an answer with no reason or evidence to support it that’s completely void in explanatory terms.

The “not fully defined, therefore not naturalistic" argument is a very bad one on its own terms but, regardless, when you use the same argument about his conjecture he just pretends there’s nothing to address.

How is that not dishonest?

You seem not to have fully understood my arguments.  Conscious awareness requires simultaneous perception of the physical state of many discrete brain cells.  I honestly believe that it is physically impossible to define a single material entity which can do this because any material entity will itself be composed of discrete elements which need to be perceived - so there is an infinite regression of the need to perceive the state of discrete physical elements.  I am not just saying it is difficult or undefined.  I am saying it is a physical impossibility.  I know you support the concept of emergent properties, but this does not take away the need for perception.  If a material entity can't do it, you need to consider a non material entity.

[Gordon]

You seem not to have fully understood my arguments.  Conscious awareness requires simultaneous perception of the physical state of many discrete brain cells.  I honestly believe that it is physically impossible to define a single material entity which can do this because any material entity will itself be composed of discrete elements which need to be perceived - so there is an infinite regression of the need to perceive the state of discrete physical elements.  I am not just saying it is difficult or undefined.  I am saying it is a physical impossibility.  I know you support the concept of emergent properties, but this does not take away the need for perception.  If a material entity can't do it, you need to consider a non material entity.

Looks like you've fallen head-first into the fallacy of composition - again.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You seem not to have fully understood my arguments.

Inasmuch as they are “arguments” at all (rather than assertions) yes I have – which is why it's so easy to falsify them.

Conscious awareness requires simultaneous perception of the physical state of many discrete brain cells.

Wrong again. “Brain cells” (by which presumably you mean “neurons”) don’t work “discretely” – they area interconnected by synapses in a neural network of huge complexity.

I honestly believe that…

Whether or not you “honestly believe” something is entirely irrelevant to the quality of the evidence that either supports or contradicts you.   

… it is physically impossible to define a single material entity…

No-one claims that any single neuron is conscious. You’re very confused about this.

…which can do this because any material entity will itself be composed of discrete elements which need to be perceived…

And now you’ve descended into gibberish. What the evidence suggests is that consciousness is an emergent property of the huge complexity of intra-connected brains. No separate “perceiver” is required for that to be the case, and even if it was the same objection would also then arise. What would “perceive” what the perceiver perceives? 

- so there is an infinite regression of the need to perceive the state of discrete physical elements.

No there isn’t. See above.

I am not just saying it is difficult or undefined.

You have consistently said that the problem with a naturalistic explanation is that consciousness is not “fully defined”.

I am saying it is a physical impossibility.

Then you need to explain why given that the evidence is all against you, and moreover given that the actual “physical impossibility” would be a “soul” that is itself neither deterministic nor random. Personal incredulity alone is just another of the logical fallacies on which you rely.

I know you support the concept of emergent properties…

What I "support" is the outcomes of cogent logic and evidence. Whether the outcome happens to be emergent properties, gravity or anything else is a secondary matter.

…but this does not take away the need for perception.

Of course it does. That’s the “self-“ of “self-aware” – consciousness is aware of itself and requires no little man at the controls to make it so. Worse still, that little man would present you with exactly the same problem you mis-perceive for minds, namely that it too would (according to you) need a “perceiver” of its own.

And that’s the real infinite regression here. 

If a material entity can't do it, you need to consider a non material entity.

First, you would need to demonstrate rather than just assert that “a material entity can’t do it”; second you would need to tell us what “non-material” would even mean; and third you’d need to show how a non-material anything would itself be free of the binary deterministic vs random options without just claiming magic.

Apart from all that though... 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not sure why you think there is a problem here. Past performance is not a cast iron guide to the future, but learning systems use retained memory to help guide future decision making.  The present moment always brings with it some degree of novelty but stored memory can be used to guide responses.  Right now you are having a novel experience;  web browsers are capable of displaying 16,777,216 colours and I picked one at random for this text so in all likelihood you have never in your entire lifetime encountered this exact colour before. However it is similar to previous colours you have encountered and it does not present an insurmountable challenge to your visual system to process it

And absolutely, yes, memory retention, or preprogramming, as you put it, is key to the success of any learning system. We make decisions in response to change and we retain trace memory of the outcome, be it good or bad, and these memories form the basis of emotions that guide similar decisions next time around.  Memories, in a fundamental sense, are also intergenerational; when a baby duckling follows its mother into the water for the first time, it has never encountered wetness, or buoyancy, and yet it immediately knows what to do on hitting the water and this is because a form of memory is passed through inheritance in that the duckling's neurological pathways for processing the experience of paddling the water are already built from birth so it will seem to the duckling as if it already knew what to do with water all along.

We also often make the sloppy analogy of the brain being like a digital computer whereas it bears significant similarities to the principles of analogue computing.  A synapse is not equivalent to a digital bit, either on or off, as synapses have a gradient, or variable strength, and this allows for fuzzy comparisons and intuitive solving of differential equations - when you race to return a serve in tennis for instance you are solving the equations of motion on the run by analogue methods which are far faster than digital methods.  Nature has already solved many of the computational problems that we are now trying to replicate in machine learning systems and I don't see that a deterministic substrate is a problem to this in principle, in fact, any indeterminacy, or randomness in the workings of logic would weaken the effectiveness of learning systems.

An entertaining and informative piece of writing. Although use of a single colour which you have to bank on being unseen is maybe not analogous to the examples of novelty I gave, but your points are  extremely thought stimulating and scientifically fertile. Good job.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Inasmuch as they are “arguments” at all (rather than assertions) yes I have – which is why it's so easy to falsify them.

Wrong again. “Brain cells” (by which presumably you mean “neurons”) don’t work “discretely” – they area interconnected by synapses in a neural network.

Whether or not you “honestly believe” something is entirely irrelevant to the quality of the evidence that either supports or contradicts you.   

No-one claims that any single neuron is conscious. You’re very confused about this.

And now you’ve descended into gibberish. What the evidence suggests is that consciousness is an emergent property of the huge complexity of intra-connected brains. No separate “perceiver” is required for that to be the case, and even if it was the same objection would also then arise. What would “perceive” what the perceiver perceives? 

No there isn’t. See above.

You have consistently said that the problem with a naturalistic explanation is that consciousness is not “fully defined”.

Then you need to explain why given that the evidence is all against you, and moreover given that the actual “physical impossibility” would be a “soul” that is itself neither deterministic nor random. Personal incredulity alone is just another of the logical fallacies on which you rely.

What I "support" is the outcomes of cogent logic and evidence. Whether the outcome happens to be emergent properties, gravity or anything else is a secondary matter.

Of course it does. That’s the “self-“ of “self-aware” – consciousness is aware of itself and requires no little man at the controls to make it so. Worse still, that little man would present you with exactly the same problem you mis-perceive for minds, namely that it too would (according to you) need a “perceiver” of its own.

And that’s the real infinite regression here. 

First, you would need to demonstrate rather than just assert that “a material entity can’t do it”; second you would need to tell us what “non-material” would even mean; and third you’d need to show how a non-material anything would itself be free of the binary deterministic vs random options without just claiming magic.

Apart from all that though...

Well thank you for your detailed response, but at the heart of this is the properties of a neural network.  The complex interconnectivity can process data, generate reactions, exert control, store and retrieve data .... but none of these functions define perception.  Conscious perception is not an activity in itself, just an awareness of what is there at any one time.  And it is not defined by information flowing through complex networks.

[Nearly Sane]

Well thank you for your detailed response, but at the heart of this is the properties of a neural network.  The complex interconnectivity can process data, generate reactions, exert control, store and retrieve data .... but none of these functions define perception.  Conscious perception is not an activity in itself, just an awareness of what is there at any one time.  And it is not defined by information flowing through complex networks.

Thank you for your call, you are in a queue of a million and nine, we will respond to you in an entirely random and perfunctory manner which will show we have listened to nothing you have said ASAP.


'This bot is broken'

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Well thank you for your detailed response, but at the heart of this is the properties of a neural network.

Yes, and there’s no “but” about it. It’s the answer to your personal incredulity and it renders unnecessary your alternative that is itself fundamentally logically broken in any case. 

The complex interconnectivity can process data, generate reactions, exert control, store and retrieve data ....

So far, so good..

…but none of these functions define perception.

Again you use the wrong word here because “definition” is not a synonym for "explanation".

Perception is not an activity in itself, just an awareness of what is there at any one time.  And it is not defined by information flowing through complex networks.

But is it explained by reference to emergent properties, both as a generalised phenomenon and from the specific findings of neuroscience in particular. You might not like that answer, you might not want it to be true, but your personal incredulity about it is a logically hopeless response – as for that matter is the conjecture of “soul” you would use to plug the gap that itself has neither cogent logic nor evidence of any kind to support it.

I notice too by the way that you just ignored the various rebuttals and falsifications that undid you.

Look, here’s what seems to me actually to have happened to you. Many years ago you hit upon a narrative that made sense to you so you adopted it. Since then you’ve invested so heavily in it that you tell us that you’re now “absolutely certain” about your beliefs. Your problem though is that is was a bad answer to start with, and it’s become an even worse one since as the logic and evidence that undo you has mounted.

I can see that it would be painful for you to be honest about this – possibly unbearably so – but nonetheless the strength of your convictions doesn’t change the fact that anyone with a reasoning and enquiring mind will find you to be almost certainly wrong. Flat wrong.

Sorry, but there it is.     

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Yes, and there’s no “but” about it. It’s the answer to your personal incredulity and it renders unnecessary your alternative that is itself fundamentally logically broken in any case. 

So far, so good..

Again you use the wrong word here because “definition” is not a synonym for "explanation".

But is it explained by reference to emergent properties, both as a generalised phenomenon and from the specific findings of neuroscience in particular. You might not like that answer, you might not want it to be true, but your personal incredulity about it is a logically hopeless response – as for that matter is the conjecture of “soul” you would use to plug the gap that itself has neither cogent logic nor evidence of any kind to support it.

I notice too by the way that you just ignored the various rebuttals and falsifications that undid you.

Look, here’s what seems to me actually to have happened to you. Many years ago you hit upon a narrative that made sense to you so you adopted it. Since then you’ve invested so heavily in it that you tell us that you’re now “absolutely certain” about your beliefs. Your problem though is that is was a bad answer to start with, and it’s become an even worse one since as the logic and evidence that undo you has mounted.

I can see that it would be painful for you to be honest about this – possibly unbearably so – but nonetheless the strength of your convictions doesn’t change the fact that anyone with a reasoning and enquiring mind will find you to be almost certainly wrong. Flat wrong.

Sorry, but there it is.     

And I am sorry that you can't see the limitations of emergent properties entirely defined by the uncontrollable deterministic action of material elements.  Perhaps you will one day - I live in hope.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

And I am sorry that you can't see the limitations of emergent properties entirely defined by the uncontrollable deterministic action of material elements.

Except you have no idea what those “limitations” might be, no idea why consciousness wouldn’t be an emergent property of mind, and no idea why your entirely un-argued and un-evidenced conjecture “soul” is fundamentally logically hopeless.

Perhaps you will one day - I live in hope.

And the same to you.

[Nearly Sane]

And I am sorry that you can't see the limitations of emergent properties entirely defined by the uncontrollable deterministic action of material elements.  Perhaps you will one day - I live in hope.

See your god, that helps you avoid parking tickets, while children die in pain, can you get it to give you a logical argument and not rely on your incredulity?

[floo]

Why is it god is praised for answering positively prayers for trivia, like a nice day for the church fete, but not blamed if it fails to cure a sick child? The 'god knows best' assertion is pathetic, imo. I bet plenty of prayers have been said for Charlie Gard, just as they have for AB's friend who has been in a coma for nearly two years. Yet they have been left in limbo.

Where Are You God?


Where are you God when we need you?
Where are you God when we pray?
Where are you God in our darkness?
Where are you God in our day?

Where are you God in grief’s anguish?
Where are you God in our despair?
Where are you God in our torment?
Where are you God, are you there?

Where are you God when we’re hurting?
Where are you God in our pain?
Where are you God in our crying?
Where are you God, please explain?

RJG

[Maeght]

Alan, how about answering the question about how the soul makes a decision?

[torridon]

An entertaining and informative piece of writing. Although use of a single colour which you have to bank on being unseen is maybe not analogous to the examples of novelty I gave, but your points are  extremely thought stimulating and scientifically fertile. Good job.

Thanks Vlad 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Thanks Vlad 

You're welcome.
Actually, I did have a bit of a job with that colour and had to concentrate.

[Alan Burns]

Alan, how about answering the question about how the soul makes a decision?

I have already indicated that I do not know how the soul's interaction works with the brain.  But I have gone into some detail about why a conscious choice can't be derived from the uncontrollable chain reactions of physical elements.  If there was such an explanation it would not be a conscious choice, just an inevitable reaction.  This leads to the logical conclusion that conscious freedom of choice (and freedom to drive conscious thought) can't be derived from a purely material source.

To deny this logic is to deny the existence of freedom itself.

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

See your god, that helps you avoid parking tickets, while children die in pain, can you get it to give you a logical argument and not rely on your incredulity?

I think his personal incredulity is only half the story. What it gives him is a means to dismiss all that logic and evidence and stuff he knows nothing about but that nonetheless
provides a cogent naturalistic explanation for consciousness.

The other half though is a huge dose of wishful thinking: he really, really wants “God”, ‘soul” etc to be true because he’s so invested in these beliefs. He’s told us that they define and provide meaning for his life, so any critique of them is impossible to process. How could it be otherwise when he’s “absolutely certain” of his position?

So there we have it. No matter how compelling the case against him, it simply must be dismissed out of hand because he personally can’t imagine such an explanation and because he personally just loves his alternative. Job done!   

[Gordon]

I have already indicated that I do not know how the soul's interaction works with the brain.  But I have gone into some detail about why a conscious choice can't be derived from the uncontrollable chain reactions of physical elements.  If there was such an explanation it would not be a conscious choice, just an inevitable reaction.  This leads to the logical conclusion that conscious freedom of choice (and freedom to drive conscious thought) can't be derived from a purely material source.

To deny this logic is to deny the existence of freedom itself.

Not logic, Alan: just your personal incredulity at play yet again.

[Rhiannon]

Alan,

When you consciously choose something, what are the factors that you take into account when making that choice?

This might help:

Factor: a circumstance, fact, or influence that contributes to a result.

(Giving you another chance to answer not evade here).

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have already indicated that I do not know how the soul's interaction works with the brain.

Your silence on the matter also indicates that you don’t know anything at all about this supposed “soul”, let alone how it would interact with anything. Your choice then is between a naturalistic explanation for consciousness that’s heavily populated with reason and evidence but is incomplete vs a conjecture “soul” for which there’s neither cogent reason nor evidence of any kind.   

Why then would anyone opt for the latter?
 

But I have gone into some detail about why a conscious choice can't be derived from the uncontrollable chain reactions of physical elements.

No you haven’t. All you’ve done is to assert it as a matter of your personal incredulity. Not once have you come close to an explanation to support that incredulity. “There must be a perceiver” doesn’t even get its trousers off as an argument.

If there was such an explanation it would not be a conscious choice, just an inevitable reaction.

Which we would perceive as a “conscious choice”. The only alternative is randomness, which would be chaotic.

This leads to the logical conclusion that conscious freedom of choice (and freedom to drive conscious thought) can't be derived from a purely material source.

It does no such thing because your premise (that your personal incredulity is a reliable guide to anything) continues to be wrong. Flat wrong.

To deny this logic is to deny the existence of freedom itself.

No, it’s just to deny your personal definition of freedom as “free from prior cause and effect”, which is a different matter.

If you continue to repeat this mistake despite having it explained to you and then continue to ignore the explanations, at what point do you cross the line into deliberate lying?

[Maeght]

I have already indicated that I do not know how the soul's interaction works with the brain.

I know you are no stupid Alan, so why can you not understand that I am not asking about the mechanism of the soul interacting with the brain. I am asking how the soul makes a decision which it then transmits to the brain. Is it random or based on previous events?

But I have gone into some detail about why a conscious choice can't be derived from the uncontrollable chain reactions of physical elements.  If there was such an explanation it would not be a conscious choice, just an inevitable reaction.  This leads to the logical conclusion that conscious freedom of choice (and freedom to drive conscious thought) can't be derived from a purely material source.

Not what I askedb about of course. However what yyou have done is too go in detail about your beliefs about conscious choice but what you have posted are not facts no matter how many tims yoou repeat it.

To deny this logic is to deny the existence of freedom itself.

And you just can't accept that possiibility can you.

[Alan Burns]

No, it’s just to deny your personal definition of freedom as “free from prior cause and effect”, which is a different matter.

I have never claimed freedom of choice to be free from cause and effect - just that it is free from inevitable cause and effect, otherwise freedom does not exist.  So please consider the option of a spiritually caused choice.

[floo]

I have already indicated that I do not know how the soul's interaction works with the brain.  But I have gone into some detail about why a conscious choice can't be derived from the uncontrollable chain reactions of physical elements.  If there was such an explanation it would not be a conscious choice, just an inevitable reaction.  This leads to the logical conclusion that conscious freedom of choice (and freedom to drive conscious thought) can't be derived from a purely material source.

To deny this logic is to deny the existence of freedom itself.

It might be logic to you AB, but not to many other posters.