Searching for GOD...

[Sriram]

You seem to be suggesting that 'wanting' is necessarily bound up with material things, although I might have you wrong on this. To 'want' something is far more than this. You might 'want' to 'let go and go with the flow'. This is no less a want than to be a millionaire. Wanting something that is not naturally possible is not an aberration at all, it is a perfectly natural reaction in all sorts of situations. To want to fly is not naturally possible, but it led to the invention of aeroplanes. To want to speak to someone or to be able to see someone a thousand miles away is not naturally possible, but it led to the invention of radio and television.

You are not understanding what I am saying.

If the world is deterministic and moving in line with natural laws...then we have no freedom at all.  Even those actions and reactions that we assume to be 'free' are in reality mere natural outcomes of the circumstances and the relevant laws of nature. Like a ball rolling down a hill.

But if there is any freedom at all...like in Will and mental aspects...we can assume that there are influences and interactions from some external sources that act upon us making us act or react against natural limitations. In this case the ball doesn't just roll down a hill. It chooses how to roll or even whether it should or not.

In other words there are two aspects to life. The natural one where we are bound to Nature and its laws...and the second one where we seek freedom and liberation from this bondage.

This is what spirituality and religion teach us. Makes perfect sense because this is what we find in our lives.

From this it follows that the more we are subjected to instinctive need/desire based tendencies the more we are bound to Nature and the more deterministic our life becomes.  However, the more we free ourselves from these tendencies, the more we become liberated.

[Alan Burns]

How many times do you need this explained?

You do what you want but that says nothing about how what you want at any moment was arrived at. Your entire personality, your hopes and wants and fears - everything that is you and drives your choices, is the product of the past (your nature and nurture).

You make choices for reasons and either those reasons fully determine your choices (you are deterministic) or not, and if not, then the choice between the possible outcomes from those reasons must be for no reason - which is random.

And the reason emanates from our conscious awareness.  It is not random.  If you insist on our awareness comprising entirely of material reactions, then whatever we do will have been pre determined from the beginning of time.  Can you not see the obvious difference between conscious choice and reaction?  Are we not accountable for our own actions? Or can we just blame everything we do on the laws of nature?

[torridon]

And the reason emanates from our conscious awareness.  It is not random... 

And how does it get into our conscious awareness ?

[Stranger]

And the reason emanates from our conscious awareness.  It is not random.

I really don't see why you can't grasp this. When your "conscious awareness" decides something does it do so for no reason at all, or does it have reasons for its choices?

Can you not see the obvious difference between conscious choice and reaction?

There is no difference. A conscious choice is a reaction to a given circumstance and a given state of mind. The state of mind is a result of a conscious human's lifetime of experience (nurture) and initial condition (nature).

That must be the case, even if you assume a non-material soul - it must still have had an initial state and a lifetime of experience, what else could it use to make choices?

[Sebastian Toe]

....

what else could it use to make choices?

....spirity-wirity stuff of course!
All done with a spirity-wirity process, following spirity-wirity logic rules.
What is that process and what are those rules?
Well, you will have to trust Alan on that one!

Haven't you been paying attention at all?

[torridon]

You are not understanding what I am saying.

If the world is deterministic and moving in line with natural laws...then we have no freedom at all.  Even those actions and reactions that we assume to be 'free' are in reality mere natural outcomes of the circumstances and the relevant laws of nature. Like a ball rolling down a hill.

But if there is any freedom at all...like in Will and mental aspects...we can assume that there are influences and interactions from some external sources that act upon us making us act or react against natural limitations. In this case the ball doesn't just roll down a hill. It chooses how to roll or even whether it should or not.

In other words there are two aspects to life. The natural one where we are bound to Nature and its laws...and the second one where we seek freedom and liberation from this bondage.

This is what spirituality and religion teach us. Makes perfect sense because this is what we find in our lives.

From this it follows that the more we are subjected to instinctive need/desire based tendencies the more we are bound to Nature and the more deterministic our life becomes.  However, the more we free ourselves from these tendencies, the more we become liberated.

I think for all practical purposes we can take it that the universe is deterministic.  If that were not the case, stars and planets could not form, life could not arise, we could not be here to wonder at it.  If there is any genuine randomness in the universe, would could never prove it.  It would only remain a speculation.  Any extent to which the universe is not deterministic, is the extent to which it is random.  People commonly make the mistake of thinking that 'will' escapes us from determinism; this makes no sense as 'will' is pretty much the opposite of 'random'.

[Enki]

You are not understanding what I am saying.

If the world is deterministic and moving in line with natural laws...then we have no freedom at all.  Even those actions and reactions that we assume to be 'free' are in reality mere natural outcomes of the circumstances and the relevant laws of nature. Like a ball rolling down a hill.

But if there is any freedom at all...like in Will and mental aspects...we can assume that there are influences and interactions from some external sources that act upon us making us act or react against natural limitations. In this case the ball doesn't just roll down a hill. It chooses how to roll or even whether it should or not.

In other words there are two aspects to life. The natural one where we are bound to Nature and its laws...and the second one where we seek freedom and liberation from this bondage.

This is what spirituality and religion teach us. Makes perfect sense because this is what we find in our lives.

From this it follows that the more we are subjected to instinctive need/desire based tendencies the more we are bound to Nature and the more deterministic our life becomes.  However, the more we free ourselves from these tendencies, the more we become liberated.

No, it's not that I don't understand, it is that I simply disagree. I suggest that we do have the freedom to choose the things that we want, given that they are achievable, of course. For me, whatever we choose, be it a 'spiritual' path or be it one wedded to our more basic desires, they all come from the same source, which is the interaction of relevant past and present physical events within our mind, which is totally dependent on our brain state at any given moment in time. Hence to have a 'spiritual' state  of mind is just as natural as any other natural state.

I think you probably knew my thoughts on this already, given our previous discussions on the  relative merits of NDEs. We will simply have to agree to disagree.   Hope you have a good new year.

[Sriram]

No, it's not that I don't understand, it is that I simply disagree. I suggest that we do have the freedom to choose the things that we want, given that they are achievable, of course. For me, whatever we choose, be it a 'spiritual' path or be it one wedded to our more basic desires, they all come from the same source, which is the interaction of relevant past and present physical events within our mind, which is totally dependent on our brain state at any given moment in time. Hence to have a 'spiritual' state  of mind is just as natural as any other natural state.

I think you probably knew my thoughts on this already, given our previous discussions on the  relative merits of NDEs. We will simply have to agree to disagree.   Hope you have a good new year.

Nature is deterministic. Initial conditions determine final outcomes.

So....'freedom' is either an illusion with everything including our thoughts and reactions being determined and inevitable.....or.... freedom comes from an external source that is independent of Nature.

That is all I am saying.

Happy New Year enki!    

[Maeght]

So the same question to you. How does this external source reach a decision of what to do? Is the process random, predetermined by previous events or what?

[Stranger]

So....'freedom' is either an illusion with everything including our thoughts and reactions being determined and inevitable.....or.... freedom comes from an external source that is independent of Nature.

Good grief, do the religious have some sort of mandatory logic bypass when it comes to this sort of thing?

Adding 'external' sources cannot change the basic logic - to the extent things are not deterministic, they are random. Things happen because of other things or not, and if they happen because of nothing, they are random.

[wigginhall]

These arguments about the soul and freedom baffle me.   Maybe I am being thick.   But if I have conscious choice, that doesn't mean that I am a spirit or a soul (non-material).   I may experience freedom of a kind, but again that doesn't mean that my choices have no causes.   The brain is capable of constructing sound images, visual images and so on, and I would think, also an image of myself, in a kind of self-reflexive way, hence, I can experience that I am writing this. 

So I am not seeing what the problem is.  Granted, studies of consciousness are in their infancy - so what?  Why would we jump to spirity-wirity stuff as a solution - we don't do that with gravity, which is also poorly understood. 

[ekim]

I think for all practical purposes we can take it that the universe is deterministic.

Yes, that's what commonsense would tell us.  For 'spiritual' purposes though, a motionless mover or immutable being is introduced as the cause of determination, often referred to as God.

If that were not the case, stars and planets could not form, life could not arise, we could not be here to wonder at it.

Again, from the 'spiritual' perspective, 'life' does not arise as the stars and planets have but 'life forms' have.  'Life' is often seen as part of the 'immutable being'.

If there is any genuine randomness in the universe, we could never prove it.  It would only remain a speculation.

Yes, as you would need to know every event that has ever occurred before you could be sure that one event had no determining cause, in a word or two,omniscience and omnipresence.

People commonly make the mistake of thinking that 'will' escapes us from determinism; this makes no sense as 'will' is pretty much the opposite of 'random'.

From the 'spiritual' aspect it is often a question of what is meant by 'us' or 'I'.  If I am identified with the life 'form' then what you say is probably correct. 'Life' itself is often referred to as divine or the breath of God, which is what 'spirit' means and is the source of determination rather than an object of determinism, hence the struggle to be free from 'self' will and to be in tune with divine will.

[Alan Burns]

I really don't see why you can't grasp this. When your "conscious awareness" decides something does it do so for no reason at all, or does it have reasons for its choices?

Of course there is a reason, but is still a conscious choice, not an automated reaction.

There is no difference. A conscious choice is a reaction to a given circumstance and a given state of mind. The state of mind is a result of a conscious human's lifetime of experience (nurture) and initial condition (nature).

There can be no half measures.  Our choices are either entirely dictated by physically induced reactions or there is something which can intervene with the otherwise uncontrollable chains of cause and effect.  Our ability to consciously muse over past experiences then invoke a conscious choice is evidence of interaction rather than reaction.

That must be the case, even if you assume a non-material soul - it must still have had an initial state and a lifetime of experience, what else could it use to make choices?

Will

[torridon]

If you insist on our awareness comprising entirely of material reactions....

This is what the evidence suggests though, and this is the only rationale that is capable of making sense of the bigger picture.  Anything else, souls, gods, for instance, is just an irrational appeal to magic.  That is OK for people not interested in really understanding life; it is simple, facile, and good enough to get us through the day but it doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.  Coming to terms with the implications of scientific findings may be hard for some, but they aren't going away any time soon; our choice is simple, do we try to understand and accept reality like grown ups or do we close our minds to learning and lead lives of endless rounds of apologetics and denial.  No matter how much we invest in surrogate fantasies, reality bites us all sooner or later.

[Sebastian Toe]

Will

...you ever join everyone who lives in the real world? 

[Alan Burns]

And how does it get into our conscious awareness ?

Our conscious awareness perceives information contained in many parts of the brain [and please do not confuse it with reaction to information, or information flow - neither of which define conscious perception].  How this information gets drawn into a single entity of awareness is still a mystery, but it is clear that this awareness is intricately involved with the conscious choices we make, and ultimately it is the definitive definition of what comprises the identity of each human being.  All the material bits of our bodies are replaceable, just as in a machine.  It is this single entity of awareness which gives us continuity and defines who we are, and which continues to defy any form of material definition.

[Stranger]

Will

How does will decide?

[Stranger]

Of course there is a reason, but is still a conscious choice, not an automated reaction.

Either the reasons fully decide the issue (what you call an automated reaction) or not. If not, there are no more reasons left, so any remaining choice has to be for no reason at all (random).

There simply isn't a third option.

[Sebastian Toe]

How this information gets drawn into a single entity of awareness is still a mystery,

..haven't you just described emergence? 

[Alan Burns]

Either the reasons fully decide the issue (what you call an automated reaction) or not. If not, there are no more reasons left, so any remaining choice has to be for no reason at all (random).

There simply isn't a third option.

Random is not an option in deliberate human choice
There are only two options:
Entirely pre determined from when time began
Or consciously controlled by an entity which is not constrained by previous physical events.

[Alan Burns]

..haven't you just described emergence? 

Emergence does not exist outside human perception.  Any emergent property is just an externally observed functionality of particles obeying natural laws - it can't be used to describe the inner quality of perception.

[Sebastian Toe]

Random is not an option in deliberate human choice

Choice implies a decision between more than one option. How can you choose without options? (Other than randomly)

[Sebastian Toe]

Emergence does not exist outside human perception.  Any emergent property is just an externally observed functionality of particles obeying natural laws - it can't be used to describe the inner quality of perception.

Emergence is the inner quality of perception.

There, I just described it!

[Enki]

Random is not an option in deliberate human choice
There are only two options:
Entirely pre determined from when time began
Or consciously controlled by an entity which is not constrained by previous physical events.

And not constrained by logic, it seems, either.

[Stranger]

Either the reasons fully decide the issue (what you call an automated reaction) or not. If not, there are no more reasons left, so any remaining choice has to be for no reason at all (random).

There simply isn't a third option.

Random is not an option in deliberate human choice
There are only two options:
Entirely pre determined from when time began
Or consciously controlled by an entity which is not constrained by previous physical events.

You (once again) completely ignored the argument I presented.

Saying "consciously controlled by an entity" is just avoiding the point. A conscious entity is a complex system that must have internal decision making processes to which the same logic has to apply.

An entity either decides based entirely on reasons (its nature and the situation at hand, which means predetermined) or it doesn't decide based on all the reasons available and therefore has to decide on the remaining options for no reasons at all (random).

A decision is either entirely due to the reasons why it was made or it isn't - it really is that simple.