Searching for GOD...

[Gordon]

All I am claiming is that our power to consciously choose comes from God.

We know, but since we've seen that your 'god' hypothesis is wholly dependent on fallacious reasoning I don't think we need take you seriously.
 

Without this power, we can only comply with whatever is determined from physical reactions within us.

Simplistic pish.

[Alan Burns]

I am using my biological brain and emergent properties to tell you that you are wrong.

Any properties emerging from a material brain are derived entirely from physical reactions occurring in the brain, so you can have no personal control over these reactions.  Without this control, you have no claim whatever to presume that any outcome of your emergent property is logical.  To discern the truth, you need conscious freedom to control your thought patterns - otherwise you are just subject to whatever your uncontrolled physical reactions produce.

[Alan Burns]

    Without this power, we can only comply with whatever is determined from physical reactions within us.

Simplistic pish.

Why?

[Gordon]

Simplistic pish.


Why?

Two reasons primarily, albeit there are many others contained in the multitude of your posts on this:

1. Your claim of divine interference in our biology; regarding which you can say nothing meaningful about.

2. Aside from begging the question, your relentless attempts to misrepresent determinism.

[Alan Burns]

Two reasons primarily, albeit there are many others contained in the multitude of your posts on this:

1. Your claim of divine interference in our biology; regarding which you can say nothing meaningful about.

2. Aside from begging the question, your relentless attempts to misrepresent determinism.

But neither of these reasons can be used to deny the logic that without any supernatural intervention, we are all subject to the natural unguided consequences of physically determined events.  Which proffer no concept of conscious control or choice.

[torridon]

how do you know it is not instinctive reactive behaviour?

Whether it is 'instinctive reactive' or not it is still evaluating its options and making a choice, which you keep claiming is impossible for something 'entirely physical', whatever that means.

[Gordon]

But neither of these reasons can be used to deny the logic that without any supernatural intervention, we are all subject to the natural unguided consequences of physically determined events.  Which proffer no concept of conscious control or choice.

Waffle: you imply 'supernatural logic' here, which is a good an oxymoron as we've had lately: there is just 'logic'. 

[torridon]

Any properties emerging from a material brain are derived entirely from physical reactions occurring in the brain, so you can have no personal control over these reactions...

We cannot control reactions occurring in our brain, at least not in any simplistic sense as you imply.  Can you alter the sodium ion gradients in your precentral gyrus ?  Can you route a thought such that is passes through your parietal lobe before your anterior lobe ? Can you alter the myelination of neural pathways through your primary motor cortex so that you can become a world class tap dancer ? Can you call to mind something that you have forgotten ? We can do no such things in the simplistic sense you imply; our thoughts, intentions, feelings, hopes, these are the subjective experience of all these aspects of brain function.

[Shaker]

All I am claiming is that our power to consciously choose comes from God. 
Without this power, we can only comply with whatever is determined from physical reactions within us.

Still claiming yours is a logical argument, are you?

[Sebastian Toe]

Any properties emerging from a material brain are derived entirely from physical reactions occurring in the brain, so you can have no personal control over these reactions.  Without this control, you have no claim whatever to presume that any outcome of your emergent property is logical.  To discern the truth, you need conscious freedom to control your thought patterns - otherwise you are just subject to whatever your uncontrolled physical reactions produce.

I am using my biological brain and emergent properties to tell you that you are wrong.

[jeremyp]

the physical world works in a logically consistent manner.

Does it? How do you know that?

[Alan Burns]

Whether it is 'instinctive reactive' or not it is still evaluating its options and making a choice, which you keep claiming is impossible for something 'entirely physical', whatever that means.

An entirely physical system can be programmed react to situations without conscious awareness.  The programmed logic will be derived entirely from the instincts built up from an evolutionary process, together with programmed reactions built up from data held from previous experiences.  No conscious evaluation or consciously driven choice is needed.

[Alan Burns]

Still claiming yours is a logical argument, are you?

I could not claim this without my God given power of free will.

[Sebastian Toe]

I could not claim this without my God given power of free will.

You could and you have.

[Shaker]

I could not claim this without my God given power of free will.

That's a no, then.

[torridon]

An entirely physical system can be programmed react to situations without conscious awareness.  The programmed logic will be derived entirely from the instincts built up from an evolutionary process, together with programmed reactions built up from data held from previous experiences.  No conscious evaluation or consciously driven choice is needed.

Have you ever seen a peahen eyeing up the peacocks whilst unconscious ?

[Stranger]

But neither of these reasons can be used to deny the logic that without any supernatural intervention, we are all subject to the natural unguided consequences of physically determined events.

Appeal to consequences - together with the continued pretence that determinism is a physical rather than a logical problem.

It's totally daft to say that people are denying your (non-existent) logic when your conclusion is logically impossible.

Which proffer no concept of conscious control or choice.

He asserted. Unless our actions are determined entirely due to who we are and the situation, we (who we are) cannot be in control.

Your version of control meaningless as well as self-contradictory.

I could not claim this without my God given power of free will.

Baseless assertion that is also dishonest as you are again implying that only your impossible, contradictory version of consciousness can explain our experience, when that is what every single idea about consciousness seeks to do.

[Alan Burns]

Have you ever seen a peahen eyeing up the peacocks whilst unconscious ?

A conscious state just infers that the sensory organs are active and the peahen is able to react to the data produced.  Outwardly perceived activity is not proof of internal conscious awareness.

[Alan Burns]

I am using my biological brain and emergent properties to tell you that you are wrong.

That is what you think.
But in coming to this conclusion you need more than uncontrollable deterministic physical activity of the electrochemical activity in your brain cells.  You need the conscious freedom to guide this activity to produce the conclusion you perceive - a freedom which can't be derived from uncontrollable deterministic electrochemical brain activity.

[Stranger]

But in coming to this conclusion you need more than uncontrollable deterministic physical activity of the electrochemical activity in your brain cells.

Baseless and illogical assertion.

You need the conscious freedom to guide this activity to produce the conclusion you perceive...

A freedom that is incompatible with your nonsense and entirely compatible with deterministic systems.

...a freedom which can't be derived from uncontrollable deterministic electrochemical brain activity.

Baseless and illogical assertion.

[Alan Burns]

Appeal to consequences - together with the continued pretence that determinism is a physical rather than a logical problem.

An appeal to consequences and continued pretence are both deliberate actions which need to be initiated by some determining event.  If I am guilty of these actions, this implies that I must have the conscious ability to deliberately invoke these actions.  And my freedom to do this comes from what? ....

[Alan Burns]

A freedom that is incompatible with your nonsense and entirely compatible with deterministic systems.

Freedom and physical determinism are incompatible.  Try looking up their definitions.

[Gordon]

And my freedom to do this comes from what? ....

Your biology, Alan: you need to get used to this and stop all the silly fannying around.

[Stranger]

An appeal to consequences and continued pretence are both deliberate actions which need to be initiated by some determining event.  If I am guilty of these actions, this implies that I must have the conscious ability to deliberately invoke these actions.  And my freedom to do this comes from what? ....

A functioning mind.

If your assertions and pretence were not the direct result of the person you are, all that you know and believe, applied to the situation (the arguments presented to you), then it wouldn't be you that was responsible.

What you seem unable to grasp is that for you to be a choice-maker and responsible for anything, you must actually be something and your choices have to be the result of that something applied to the circumstances.

Demanding that choice-making is some illogical non-"predetermined", non-random contradiction that excludes everything from fully determining the choice wouldn't make anything free or responsible even if it wasn't obviously impossible.

[Stranger]

Freedom and determinism are incompatible.  Try looking up their definitions.

I did and you are wrong. Freedom is The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. That is not only compatible with determinism it requires determinism - there needs to be a you that wants something for some reasons and is then able to act on those wants.

The only alternative to determinism is randomness because determinism means the absence of randomness and randomness can't make anybody or anything free.