Searching for GOD...

[Gordon]

If the soul does not invoke my conscious choice to press the "e" key on the keyboard, then what does invoke it?  And how is it determined within the sub conscious before I have even chosen to press it?

Tell me, Alan: when you decide to speak does your 'soul' decide what words you will utter, and in which order you will utter them?

[torridon]

Yet I continue to use my God given free will to refute the short sighted logic which you and Stranger keep postulating.

The fact that you keep repeating the same things over and over is hardly going to convince us that you are free; it suggests quite the opposite, it betrays fixededness, like someone uploaded to a vinyl disc and finds he has no option other than to repeat, repeat, repeat endlessly.

How many times have you gone to do your supermarket shopping dressed in a full length hijab this week ? I'm guessing none, so where has your freedom to choose gone ? There is no law against it, you are 'free' to do so if you wish. I think the real answer to this is that it is ourselves that deny ourselves this freedom.  Our choices reflect who we are and what we are, and we cannot just choose who we are.  Every time I go do my shopping I see other people make that choice, to wear their hijab; how come they make that choice and you don't ? Is it because they have a different soul, and if so why should one soul be different to another ?  What would account for that ? 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

What is your evidence for this? What method can be used to ascertain whether it is true?]

(I think I am correct in thinking that the quoted words are yours, but it was a bit difficult to sort out.)

No not me. I was actually quoting Alan’s reply #976 where he was asserting a soul to control his concept of free-will, which was an earlier assertion he made. I haven’t figured out what he means by free-will. It seems to be describing a process where he makes a choice or does something he wants to do, e.g. suppress his irritation and be civil in his answers or stand on one leg in the middle of walking or proclaim God when he could just keep quiet, I think.

So he asserted a soul to make those decisions but he didn’t explain why it couldn’t just be a part of his brain that became aware of a want or desire e.g. his. brain thinking it would be quirky and interesting to stand on one leg because the prevailing culture considers it an odd thing to do, or wanting to stand on one leg maybe because he was curious to test his sense of balance.

[SusanDoris]

No not me. I was actually quoting Alan’s reply #976

Ah, thank you. My apologies.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Whether the finger actually touches the key is totally irrelevant to the fact that I consciously chose that key to be pressed. 

The fact is that I chose to press the key, and it gets depressed, which confirms the choice I make.

The big question is : What invokes the conscious choice?

You've missed the point entirely. No matter what the reasoning or evidence that falsifies your assertions, you resort to "but my perception..." etc. You privilege your perception over everything, thinking that somehow it must be the most reliable source available to you (and apparently to the rest of us too). I was merely explaining that, as a generalised phenomenon, our perceptions very often give us false answers - you don't actually touch the computer key, the sun doesn't orbit the earth, we're not situated on a planet that's stationary in space etc. In fact our perceptions are among the least reliable means we have of establishing truths and causal explanations.

That's why any sentence you start with "but my perception..." fails right there. Your (and everyone else's) perceptions are epistemically close to worthless no matter how much you want to privilege and rely on them for your claims.

[Alan Burns]

Tell me, Alan: when you decide to speak does your 'soul' decide what words you will utter, and in which order you will utter them?

Yes, because the only alternative available in purely material terms is for my words to have been inevitably pre destined by all past events.  If I consciously choose my words, I have to conclude that the origin of this choice comes from me - not from the inevitable inescapable consequences to physical events controlled by natural, unguided laws of science.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

You’re never one to use six words when 60 will do, but briefly:

Nope. You got it wrong - I'm not shifting ground - you misunderstood what I said. My line before the one you quoted was about the distinction between being influenced and being determined. Deal with it or not – I really don’t care either way –but have the decency to stop pretending it was about something else so as to get off the hook.

I explained that AB’s "soul" wasn’t even at the table for discussions about decision-making, so your attempt at an equivalence was wrong. I’m not going to do it again. Childish accusations of your own tactics does you no credit.

I was having a discussion about free-will when you jumped in. Feel free to join in about how we don't know if free-will exists or not and if someone wants to postulate a ghost in the system, how there is no evidence for it. Whether it is called a ghost in the system or a soul is irrelevant to the discussion about how choices are made.

I only “jumped in” when you sought to draw a false epistemic equivalence between AB’s “soul” conjecture and reason-based discussion remember?

Nope. He came up with a soul to explain his notion of free-will. Free-will was the main thrust of the discussion apart from the bits where AB tried to convince posters that he knows the existence of God. Read #276 on page 8 where AB first mentions free-will. Everyone discusses that for some time and AB doesn't get onto the subject of a soul until #976 when he says in response to Shaker's post that AB's arrangement of genetic material makes AB human "My God given soul makes me human.  It gives me perception of my brain activity and enables me to acts of free will.  Yes you can label this as assertion, but I am certain that you will eventually discover that it is an assertion of the truth."

Wrong again. AB has consistently inserted “soul” as a mechanism to explain away his (false as it happens) perception of free will as requiring a supervening agent. His whole ontology relies on it. He’s never once engaged in or addressed the discussion about reason- and evidence-based explanations for consciousness, decision-making, free will etc. 

Yes I agree that he says he doesn't know. In #1025 Torridon asks for a meaning of soul. Ekim also asks the same question in #1028. AB provides a dictionary definition and then doesn't elaborate on souls again until he says in #1085 "The point I was making about predictable behaviour is that it is an indication that the animal may not have free will, and all behaviour is generated by physical reactions.  If animal behaviour is predictable, it does not need a soul to explain its behaviour.  So we know the goose reacts on a predictable way which does not require a soul."

And then the discussion moved back to free-will. When I jumped in a t #26933 about what AB was actually claiming I said "If i’ve understood him correctly, he believes that electrochemical activity taking place in his mind - producing his thoughts - are influenced by some other unseen part of him related to something spiritual or supernatural he calls his soul."

Torridon says in #26952 "Your free will is not a reality it is an assertion. The logic that Stranger and others offer demonstrates that your assertions about it are wrong.  The deterministic framework of understanding makes complete sense, yours is nonsense."

And the discussion continues about free-will, with Alan asserting it exists because he feels it and other people arguing that feelings are not evidence for free-will.

I don’t know what point you’re attempting here, but it seems to have nothing to do with mine – namely that when asked for information about this supposed “soul” all AB has is effectively, “it’s magic”. That’s why the conjecture has nothing to say to discussions about free will etc.
 

That's a sweeping generalisation, Some posters might be frustrated. Some posters might find the discussions it throws up interesting.

Not really. “The discussion” is essentially repetitions of the same arguments that AB is unwilling or unable to address. You may have noticed how often a post here will begin with, "You've had this explained over and over again..." and similar.   

#27054 you said to me "You do this a lot I’ve noticed – when you get out of your depth you lash out, playground style. Once I would have responded in kind but it seems to me that this behaviour suggests someone more damaged than bad so I’m a lot more sympathetic. If you want to try to respond to the actual points and without the dummy spitting go right ahead. I’m here for you."

I originally assumed that you were trying to portray yourself as being superior by not being bad or not being damaged and offering your sympathy. But when you clarified that you don't think of yourself as superior, I assumed that meant that you thought yourself as more damaged than bad, similar to other posters you label more damaged than bad but were still offering your sympathy to me. You also have my sympathy.

By the way Susan - did you notice any hint of disdain or patronisation in BHS's post #27054? You did say in #27071 that you only had admiration for the rational posts which do not disdain or patronise and I am concerned that BHS might feel hurt that you did not have admiration for his post. Or alternatively, like me, he might not give a toss.

Then you have strange reasoning processes, and any tone you don’t like comes only eventually in frustration at posters who dissemble, insult, prevaricate, obfuscate, shift ground, duck and weave rather than address the arguments etc. Stick to the arguments though and I’m a delight 

[Alan Burns]

AB,

You've missed the point entirely. No matter what the reasoning or evidence that falsifies your assertions, you resort to "but my perception..." etc. You privilege your perception over everything, thinking that somehow it must be the most reliable source available to you (and apparently to the rest of us too). I was merely explaining that, as a generalised phenomenon, our perceptions very often give us false answers - you don't actually touch the computer key, the sun doesn't orbit the earth, we're not situated on a planet that's stationary in space etc. In fact our perceptions are among the least reliable means we have of establishing truths and causal explanations.

That's why any sentence you start with "but my perception..." fails right there. Your (and everyone else's) perceptions are epistemically close to worthless no matter how much you want to privilege and rely on them for your claims.

I know that some things are not as they they seem at first sight.  But ultimately everything we will ever know comes through our conscious perception, and we use whatever means we have available to us to discern the truth from what we consciously perceive.  The point I was making is that what we consciously choose to do can be easily verified by perceiving what has been physically achieved.  I know this seems a bit obvious, but it was a reply to Torri's conclusion that all our conscious choices are pre determined by our subconscious before we are aware of making the choice.  My point was how can you possibly explain the logic behind my choice to press a key on the keyboard being physically pre determined before my conscious choice to do it?

[Stranger]

Yes, because the only alternative available in purely material terms is for my words to have been inevitably pre destined by all past events.

Argumentum ad consequentiam.

If I consciously choose my words, I have to conclude that the origin of this choice comes from me - not from the inevitable inescapable consequences to physical events controlled by natural, unguided laws of science.

False dichotomy.

Where is the evidence and logic you spoke of?

[Alan Burns]

No not me. I was actually quoting Alan’s reply #976 where he was asserting a soul to control his concept of free-will, which was an earlier assertion he made. I haven’t figured out what he means by free-will. It seems to be describing a process where he makes a choice or does something he wants to do, e.g. suppress his irritation and be civil in his answers or stand on one leg in the middle of walking or proclaim God when he could just keep quiet, I think.

So he asserted a soul to make those decisions but he didn’t explain why it couldn’t just be a part of his brain that became aware of a want or desire e.g. his. brain thinking it would be quirky and interesting to stand on one leg because the prevailing culture considers it an odd thing to do, or wanting to stand on one leg maybe because he was curious to test his sense of balance.

Just to clarify my own thoughts, your brain (conscious awareness) may well become aware of a desire to do something, but ultimately we have the freedom to choose whether or not to do it, how to do it and when to do it - a freedom which can't be fully derived from the physically determined chains of cause and effect which would be the only driving forces in a purely material brain.  The questions I put to the non believers are: What is conscious perception? How can a conscious entity of perception exist within a purely material object comprising nothing but elementary sub atomic particles? How can any form of consciously driven choice derive from material which can only produce scientifically pre determined reactions to previous events?

Many people take conscious perception for granted, as if it were a perfectly natural aspect of nature, but it still remains a mystery as to how it works.  Blues' favourite explanation of it being an emergent property of material elements does not come near to explaining how conscious perception works.  Conscious perception needs a recipient of information, but how can a recipient of information be defined by material reactions alone?

[Stranger]

Many people take conscious perception for granted, as if it were a perfectly natural aspect of nature, but it still remains a mystery as to how it works.  Blues' favourite explanation of it being an emergent property of material elements does not come near to explaining how conscious perception works.

Such double standards! You have absolutely no explanation of how consciousness works and what you do say about it is logically impossible. Then you have the audacity to criticise others, who are relying on evidence and logic, of not having a full explanation.

[Stranger]

Just to clarify my own thoughts, your brain (conscious awareness) may well become aware of a desire to do something, but ultimately we have the freedom to choose whether or not to do it, how to do it and when to do it...

Which once again simply ignores the problem of how 'we' make that choice.

Either all the factors that go into making the choice, fully determine just one choice or not. If so, it's a deterministic choice and if not, there are no more reasons to choose between the remaining options, so that part of the choice must be random.

Having a non-material 'soul' cannot change that logic.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I know that some things are not as they they seem at first sight.  But ultimately everything we will ever know comes through our conscious perception, and we use whatever means we have available to us to discern the truth from what we consciously perceive.

But the point here was that when presented with logic and reason that undoes your assertions routinely you resort to, “But my perception…” as if that had anything to say to the logic and reason that undoes you. I was merely explaining that “but my perception…” doesn’t address the problem, it avoids it with irrelevance.   

The point I was making is that what we consciously choose to do can be easily verified by perceiving what has been physically achieved.  I know this seems a bit obvious, but it was a reply to Torri's conclusion that all our conscious choices are pre determined by our subconscious before we are aware of making the choice.  My point was how can you possibly explain the logic behind my choice to press a key on the keyboard being physically pre determined before my conscious choice to do it?

But it’s not a point at all – it’s just avoidance of the argument. That is how consciousness works – we can even measure the lag between the process occurring in the limbic system and the pre-frontal cortex becoming aware of it. You might really, really not want it to be true (presumably because it makes your little man at the controls conjecture “soul” redundant) but that doesn’t stop it from being true.

Why is this so difficult for you?

[Alan Burns]

Such double standards! You have absolutely no explanation of how consciousness works and what you do say about it is logically impossible. Then you have the audacity to criticise others, who are relying on evidence and logic, of not having a full explanation.

My explanation is quite simple
The human soul (ie you or me) can consciously perceive the physical state of our brain cells and interact with them at will.

[Stranger]

My explanation is quite simple
The human soul (ie you or me) can consciously perceive the physical state of our brain cells and interact with them at will.

Which is as much of an explanation as "it's magic innit". Again this is breathtaking double standards - when you are criticising others for calling it an emergent phenomenon.

Specifically it ignores the problem of how choices get made and how meaningful choices can be anything but deterministic.

[Alan Burns]

Which is as much of an explanation as "it's magic innit". Again this is breathtaking double standards - when you are criticising others for calling it an emergent phenomenon.

Specifically it ignores the problem of how choices get made and how meaningful choices can be anything but deterministic.

As I have previously said, you do not understand the God given gift of free will.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just to clarify my own thoughts, your brain (conscious awareness) may well become aware of a desire to do something, but ultimately we have the freedom to choose whether or not to do it, how to do it and when to do it…

As ever, you fail to understand what “freedom” would actually have to entail for it not to collapse into incoherence. Freedom that’s contextualised and bounded by logically cogent phenomena is fine; freedom that somehow floats free of that is random. And randomness would be functionally impossible. 

- a freedom which can't be fully derived from the physically determined chains of cause and effect which would be the only driving forces in a purely material brain.

That’s one of your favourite fallacies – the argumentum ad consequentiam. Why do you keep making this mistake despite having it explained to you many, many times?

The questions I put to the non believers are: What is conscious perception? How can a conscious entity of perception exist within a purely material object comprising nothing but elementary sub atomic particles? How can any form of consciously driven choice derive from material which can only produce scientifically pre determined reactions to previous events?

First, if you’re attempting an argument in logic what have “non believers” got to do with it?

Second, you’re attempting (yet again) an argument from personal incredulity – another of your various bad arguments. The answers are substantially understood already, but there are still gaps in the data that people from several disciplines are working hard to close. So what?

Third, if you want to posit “God”, “soul” etc do you not think you should at least attempt to answer the same sorts of questions about them too? What are they exactly, how do they operate, how do they interact with and control “us” etc? 

And no, “it’s magic” is not a good answer.

Many people take conscious perception for granted, as if it were a perfectly natural aspect of nature, but it still remains a mystery as to how it works.

Actually it’s a partial mystery, which is why people are working on the problem and – so far at least – there’s no reason at all to think it not to be a natural phenomenon. Gaps in an explanation does not thereby remove the partial explanation we do have from a naturalistic framework. 

Blues' favourite explanation of it being an emergent property of material elements does not come near to explaining how conscious perception works.

Oh dear. Emergence as the most likely phenomenological explanation doesn’t claim to explain how “conscious perception works”. What it does tell us that is that consciousness is entirely consistent with emergence inasmuch as complexity arises naturally from interacting component parts that individually are less complex than the emergent phenomenon.

Conscious perception needs a recipient of information, but how can a recipient of information be defined by material reactions alone?

You’ve had this nonsense detonated many times now, so why return to it? You’re trying the Cartesian dualism of an immaterial mind interacting with the material body, only you’ve decided to call “mind” in this case “soul”. It’s long since been dismissed for many reasons, not least that the “immaterial” bit is both unnecessary and entirely non-investigable as a conjecture.

Essentially all you have here is, “I don’t understand something, therefore it’s not natural, therefore I can just insert an explanation about which I have no information of any kind”.

Can you really not see how desperately poor your thinking is here?

[Stranger]

As I have previously said, you do not understand the God given gift of free will.

Neither do you it would seem, from your total inability to explain it, which doesn't excuse your breathtaking double standards.

Now - where is the evidence and logic you spoke of, that supports your claims, or was that claim simply untrue?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

As I have previously said, you do not understand the God given gift of free will.

That's because neither you nor anyone else has ever managed to explain it. Why not finally set out your working so the rest of us can consider it?

Surely "it's magic" isn't all you've got it is?

Is it?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

That's because neither you nor anyone else has ever managed to explain it. Why not finally set out your working so the rest of us can consider it?

Surely "it's magic" isn't all you've got it is?

Is it?

God Himself has the explanation.  All we have to do is use this amazing gift.

[Stranger]

God Himself has the explanation.  All we have to do is use this amazing gift.

So basically all you have is "it's magic innit", your previous claims of having supporting evidence and logic were untrue, and you are guilty blatant double standards when criticising others for not having a full explanation of consciousness.

Is that about right?

[Gordon]

Yes, because the only alternative available in purely material terms is for my words to have been inevitably pre destined by all past events.  If I consciously choose my words, I have to conclude that the origin of this choice comes from me - not from the inevitable inescapable consequences to physical events controlled by natural, unguided laws of science.

How bizarre: rather than consider the issue on which you wish to speak using the biological equipment in your head, in order to formulate what you intend to say as a consequence of you mental deliberations before you speak, you think that your 'soul' decides how to reply. Since this implies that your soul must do all the considering, and in doing so have access to all your experiences, knowledge and preferences - plus of course your personal language abilities - I suspect that you are mistaking your 'soul' for your brain.

The real irony here though is that you've often bleated along the lines that people aren't 'biological robots' while you cheerful portray yourself as a 'spiritual robot' without seeing the irony in your own argument. However, since brains do what you think 'souls' do, and we do know we all have brains, then you 'soul' notion is clearly redundant (as well as incoherent).   

[torridon]

I know that some things are not as they they seem at first sight.  But ultimately everything we will ever know comes through our conscious perception, and we use whatever means we have available to us to discern the truth from what we consciously perceive.  The point I was making is that what we consciously choose to do can be easily verified by perceiving what has been physically achieved.  I know this seems a bit obvious, but it was a reply to Torri's conclusion that all our conscious choices are pre determined by our subconscious before we are aware of making the choice.  My point was how can you possibly explain the logic behind my choice to press a key on the keyboard being physically pre determined before my conscious choice to do it?

This shows clearly that you did not read the previous post.  The point was that it wasn't a conscious choice.  The more subtle insight from cognitive science, is that it is actually a subconscious choice that you become aware of having made shortly afterwards.

[ippy]

My explanation is quite simple
The human soul (ie you or me) can consciously perceive the physical state of our brain cells and interact with them at will.

How can you or anyone else possibly know this Alan? Surly you can see this is a baseless assertion you're making? If you can't see this and perhaps supply something to support your words, why are you taking the bother to make statements like this? Statements you've never offered anything either logical or rational to back them up, perhaps it's loss of face in a similar way to how the Chinese have, in common with you, difficulty dealing with their individual short comings?

Necessarily good wishes to you Alan, you need them, ippy

[Enki]

Hi  Gabby,

In response to your post 27101,

Len did indeed argue for the existence of free will. If I remember rightly it was on the basis that he could decide what choice he was going to make. In a way, I don't think he was wrong in that, as I see it, we do make the choice. My argument, of course, is on what grounds do we make our choices, and I can only come up with the idea that we make our choices on the basis of a complex mix of reasons, which include our nature, nurture etc. Our brains evaluate all the factors which are in this complex mix to come up with a decision, which is then acted upon. To me, this is a deterministic process.

Instinctive reactions might well take priority in certain situations, whereas in others, they are overridden or not applicable according to other priorities that the brain decides are the deciding factors. Either way, this still does not stop them being deterministic in nature.

One of the best ways I can illustrate my idea of a lack of free will, as Alan seems to understand the term, is to imagine an act that one may carry out(e.g. Alan's pressing the 'e' key on the computer) and then consider that if one were able to rewind time to the exact point that the original decision was made, could the decision this time be any different? My contention is that it could not be any different because the decision is an end result of the complex mixture of deterministic influences that had defined the original.
If one considers that the decision might be not to press the 'e' key this time, then surely one would have to give reasons for this change. If no reasons can be given, then surely the only recourse for an alternative decision is to say that it was a random result.

As far as Alan's idea of 'determined' or 'influenced' is concerned, it seems to me that he is trying to have his cake and eat it, as they say. He cannot but accept that there are deterministic influences on whatever 'free' choices we make, but his loyalty to his idea of 'free will' and his adherence to his religion means he has to create some sort of entity, which he calls the 'soul' which is integral to the human being and which has a major part to play on how we make our choices. The trouble is, he never answers the question, on what grounds does this 'soul' decide on the way it influences our decisions? He usually fills this vacuum with lots of assertions about 'perception' and 'conscious awareness' being properties of this 'soul', but still leaves the questions that people ask, totally unanswered.

As far as your last paragraph goes, my stance is that we can only go by probabilities rather than certainties, and, because Alan cannot answer where his 'soul' is located , how it actually links to the physical body or even produce any evidence whatever that it exists at all, I am inclined to provisionally dismiss his idea of a 'soul' unless or until such evidence becomes available. Yes, I am interested enough in such ideas as free will to take part in these discussions from time to time, and especially interested in the ideas and views of many of the posters posting on this thread. You might, if you are interested, find this book, which I am reading at the moment, to be of further interest. It tries to give an overview of the whole situation, and attempts to bring the two opposing sides(free will/determinism) together in what seems to me a rather uncomfortable liaison.

The book is:
'Freedom regained' by Julian Baggini