Searching for GOD...

[SusanDoris]

But what happens to our self awareness when the physical body dies?

It ends at the same time. I'll just say that again in case you missed it: our self-awareness ends at the same time as our life ends - with the end of the brain functioning. Life will end. I'll probably be the first of our current membership to die and there wil not be any way, any way at all, in which my self-awareness will remain, or exist, or function. It will cease.  It will be dead - just like the Monty Python parrot. I will have had more than 82 years of life and that is something I am so extremely lucky to have had.

In the meantime, I'm slowly acquiring a new understanding of how to do cryptic crosswords. But don't take that as a lightening of the tone, my first paragraph is 100% serious.

[Maeght]

But what happens to our self awareness when the physical body dies?

It ends.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It ends at the same time. I'll just say that again in case you missed it: our self-awareness ends at the same time as our life ends - with the end of the brain functioning.

Then if we are a machine why should we have awareness as well?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It ends.

I'm afraid we can only be sure of that once a mechanistic explanation of awareness and consciousness has been proved.

[wigginhall]

I'm afraid we can only be sure of that once a mechanistic explanation of awareness and consciousness has been proved.

 Come on, you know that things aren't proved, except in maths.   

[Stranger]

A conscious choice is definitively caused by human willpower.
It is not random

Once again that is just avoiding the point, which is: how does the "human willpower" make its choice? It is the choice making process that must be either fully deterministic (completely defined by its logical antecedents) or have some random element to it.

We've been round this endless times! Why are you pretending that this hasn't been answered before?

What's the point of the endless, mindless repetition of the same points that have been answered multiple times?

It is illogical to presume that it is caused by uncontrollable physically defined reactions, because it will not be a choice, but an inevitable reaction.

Once again trying to redefine the English language ('choice') to suit your dogma.

You started the sentence with "It is illogical to presume..." but nothing that followed contained any logical problems with the presumption.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Come on, you know that things aren't proved, except in maths.   

I would settle for demonstrated.

[Gordon]

Basically if beliefs are biological Gordon direct me to a stuffed one in a museum.

Tell me how much one weighs, or the spin number of one, or one on a microscope slide. Play me a recording of one that is interpretable.

How does one idea which is biological get from brain to brain? Does it have wings or are they spores like dandelions.


Problems eh, Gordy...yes...but your problems.

You'll find it next to the display cabinet that contains a small slice of love.

[ippy]

Doesn't Yoga involve tying yourself up into impossible positions where help can be necessary at times, that is if the exponent has become that bit too adventurous?

Just a thought.

ippy.

[Maeght]

I'm afraid we can only be sure of that once a mechanistic explanation of awareness and consciousness has been proved.

That's true, with the proviso of demonstrated rather than proved.

[wigginhall]

I don't think we have to be sure, do we?   Occam is helpful.

[Nearly Sane]

I don't think we have to be sure, do we?   Occam is helpful.

Well we don't have to be sure of anything. It's the probable case based on the lack of evidence to the contrary. It's the same reason why I expect the sun to rise tomorrow. Further until there is a logical coherent definition of the non natural, the alternative is, in the classic terms, not even wrong.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't think we have to be sure, do we?   Occam is helpful.

Then you are taking what is known as a punt.


How do you think Occam helps in a situation that because you cannot analyse the ontology of one thing you shoehorn it into being something else.


The trouble is that you can have intelligence without self awareness.

[wigginhall]

Then you are taking what is known as a punt.


How do you think Occam helps in a situation that because you cannot analyse the ontology of one thing you shoehorn it into being something else.


The trouble is that you can have intelligence without self awareness.

I'm sure of very few things.  As NS said, the sun will probably rise tomorrow.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'm sure of very few things. 

How few? 2......3......3 and a half?

[torridon]

Then if we are a machine why should we have awareness as well?

Same as any other characteristic - survival benefit. A creature with well prioritised and heightened awareness will survive better than one without. A creature with poor or low level awareness would be much more likely to end up as somebody else's lunch.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Same as any other characteristic - survival benefit. A creature with well prioritised and heightened awareness will survive better than one without. A creature with poor or low level awareness would be much more likely to end up as somebody else's lunch.

Not everything is survival benefited since if they were would would all, er survive.....see Darwin awards. I think you maybe conflating intelligent awareness with self awareness as it is experienced.

Why would having that make us more survivable than an intelligence such as ours without the added self awareness?


Plants survive without either intelligence beyond mechanical or self awareness.


In fact if you are using blindsight as an argument we survive through systems we are not aware of so self awareness for survival argument cuts less ice.

[Alan Burns]

We've been round this endless times! Why are you pretending that this hasn't been answered before?

I am not pretending.
You have not answered the problem.
You have just asserted that our consciously driven choices are entirely pre determined by past events.  But this does not reflect the reality which I and most of humanity perceive, an no amount of your flawed logic about pre determination can change this.  Conscious human will has the capacity to initiate a choice - not an inevitable reaction.

[Stranger]

I am not pretending.
You have not answered the problem.
You have just asserted that our consciously driven choices are entirely pre determined by past events.

That isn't what I was referring to. Are you paying any attention at all to this?

You once again avoided answering the question of how a choice can be "not a consequence of causes without therefore being random" by just saying what (you think) makes the choice (in this case " human willpower"), not how the choice is made. You've done this countless times with different phrases.

It's a tactic you use to avoid the point when people point out that the only alternative to determinism is randomness.

Which brings me back to your comment above.

I have not just asserted "that our consciously driven choices are entirely pre determined" I have pointed out (with lengthy explanations before now) that the only logical alternative to that is that there is some random element to them (and, for the record, I have no idea if there actually is or not but I suspect our choices are at least chaotic [mathematical sense]).

You have studiously ignored, evaded, and avoided addressing that problem.

But this does not reflect the reality which I and most of humanity perceive...

Another question that you repeatedly ignored is: how would you know? How would your perception be different if you were entirely deterministic?

I see no contradiction at all between my position and what we perceive.

...an no amount of your flawed logic about pre determination can change this.

Where are the flaws? You keep saying  'flawed logic' but you've never once been able to point to a flaw.

Conscious human will has the capacity to initiate a choice - not an inevitable reaction.

This is both a baseless, unargued and unevidenced assertion and is also another instance of you sidestepping the how the choice is made by saying what you think initiates it.

[Alan Burns]

Same as any other characteristic - survival benefit. A creature with well prioritised and heightened awareness will survive better than one without. A creature with poor or low level awareness would be much more likely to end up as somebody else's lunch.

A survival machine does not need conscious awareness.  Just programmed reactions to sensory data.

[Alan Burns]

That isn't what I was referring to. Are you paying any attention at all to this?

You once again avoided answering the question of how a choice can be "not a consequence of causes without therefore being random"

The cause is your conscious will, which has the obvious capacity to invoke a choice which is not entirely pre determined by past events.

[Stranger]

That isn't what I was referring to. Are you paying any attention at all to this?

You once again avoided answering the question of how a choice can be "not a consequence of causes without therefore being random"

The cause is your conscious will, which has the obvious capacity to invoke a choice.

So you didn't even bother to read the rest of my post - where I address that non-answer and point out why it is nothing but avoidance.

You seem to be afraid of thinking about this - afraid even to read the answers you're getting.

[Stranger]

...which is not entirely pre determined by past events.

As I have explained multiple times: to the extent any choice is not fully determined by past events and current state, that is to say, all of your nature, nurture, and life of experience applied to the current situation, it must be random - because there can be no other factors left to base any remaining choice on and a choice based on nothing is, by definition, random.

That is the logic I have presented multiple times and you have never once found the courage and honesty to face up to. You won't even admit that you have no answer but believe I'm wrong because of your faith - you just keep avoiding it or (as you've just done again) pretending that saying what makes a choice is an answer to the question of how it is arrived at.

[Gordon]

The cause is your conscious will, which has the obvious capacity to invoke a choice which is not entirely pre determined by past events.

I suspect you are in denial, Alan, and well-practised denial at that in order to preserve your particular faith position.

Does it not worry you that the RCC, of which you are an active member, isn't (as far as I know) funding research to discover how these 'souls' interact with our biology and in doing so quantify this 'spiritual determinism' you've so often mentioned? You seem to be ploughing a lone furrow! 

[torridon]

A survival machine does not need conscious awareness.  Just programmed reactions to sensory data.

Clearly conscious awareness does confer advantage or it would not have evolved and it would not have been conserved. If you are less aware of potential threats you are more likely to become a victim.  If you are less aware of resource opportunities, rivals will exploit all the best food.  If you really cannot see the benefit of conscious awareness try this simple experiment - go put yourself in a dangerous unpredictable environment and then put on a blindfold and ear mufflers and see how long you survive. Maybe then you will start to understand the survival benefit of conscious awareness.