Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What do you think it does say about consciousness then? Why did John Searle invent it? Why did you bring him up in relation to a post about the physical nature of consciousness?
No I didn't. I speculated that it could be a byproduct of a mechanism for providing analysis and reflection. Please look up the word "speculated" in a dictionary - I'm not asserting anything.
No, the reason I asked you to give your understanding is that it is pointless for me to demolish something if you don't agree with me what that something means.

Searle is more than the originator of the Chinese box thought experiment. He is also a critic of the likes of Dennett.

Where is the demolition of the Chinese room experiment? We are now two posts in since you started to threaten it's demolition.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

In every post on this forum

Just out of interest, why do you think you lie so much? You've had this blatant untruth explained many times yet you repeat it as if nothing had been said. The principle of charity allows for thinking initially that you just make genuine mistakes, but when you repeat them over and over again how can we conclude that you're doing something other than lying?

I'm pretty sure that you realise that behaving with even a scrap of integrity and intellectual honesty would risk the possibility of finding that your decades-old suite of faith beliefs are wrong, and that terrifies you so at some level you think behaving disgracefully is the safer bet. I find it hard to imagine wanting something to be true so much that I'd abandon all self-respect to protect that wish, but that's the difference between us I guess.     

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Just out of interest, why do you think you lie so much? You've had this blatant untruth explained many times yet you repeat it as if nothing had been said. The principle of charity allows for thinking initially that you just make genuine mistakes, but when you repeat them over and over again how can we conclude that you're doing something other than lying?

I'm pretty sure that you realise that behaving with even a scrap of integrity and intellectual honesty would risk the possibility of finding that your decades-old suite of faith beliefs are wrong, and that terrifies you so at some level you think behaving disgracefully is the safer bet. I find it hard to imagine wanting something to be true so much that I'd abandon all self-respect to protect that wish, but that's the difference between us I guess.     

Is it a lie to presume that you are personally responsible for consciously choosing to compose the content of your posts? 

[Stranger]

Is it a lie to presume that you are personally responsible for consciously choosing to compose the content of your posts?

That has nothing to do with it.

I really am puzzled as to why you go on doing this because it suggests further jaw-dropping dishonesty, stupidity (you simply can't understand the point being made), or you simply not reading and taking the time to understand the replies you get (something you keep claiming you are doing). Presumably your faith frowns on dishonesty and you don't seem that stupid, so why?

If you just disagree with the point being made, why not say so and say why?

Yet again: it is claiming that our experience of being able to contemplate issues and  post what we want is evidence of your 'explanation' of it, that is effectively a lie.

[Alan Burns]

That has nothing to do with it.

I really am puzzled as to why you go on doing this because it suggests further jaw-dropping dishonesty, stupidity (you simply can't understand the point being made), or you simply not reading and taking the time to understand the replies you get (something you keep claiming you are doing). Presumably your faith frowns on dishonesty and you don't seem that stupid, so why?

If you just disagree with the point being made, why not say so and say why?

Yet again: it is claiming that our experience of being able to contemplate issues and  post what we want is evidence of your 'explanation' of it, that is effectively a lie.

So how should I have responded?
Let's try this:

Oh, of course, I have seen the light now.
Yes, none of my posts were done of my own freewill - my agent did it (or was it my agency?) - no matter.  How could I have been so silly not to have realised that I am nothing more than a blob of material entirely controlled by my agent.  So sorry.

[Stranger]

So how should I have responded?
Let's try this:

Oh, of course, I have seen the light now.
Yes, none of my posts were done of my own freewill - my agent did it (or was it my agency?) - no matter.  How could I have been so silly not to have realised that I am nothing more than a blob of material entirely controlled by my agent.  So sorry.

This looks like more idiocy, dishonesty, or evasion. Why won't you respond to what is actually being said to you? The simple fact is that you do not have a monopoly of explanations* for our abilities and experiences, so claiming that they are evidence for your 'explanation' is, effectively, a lie.

What part of that is confusing you? Do you not understand that there are other explanations (even if you disagree with them)?

And yet again: nobody is suggesting that you cannot do as you wish or that you are under the control of something else. Your silly caricature of what others are saying does not constitute an argument against it.

* You actually don't have an explanation at all because your proposal is self-contradictory.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Is it a lie to presume that you are personally responsible for consciously choosing to compose the content of your posts?

I didn’t suggest that that was a lie. To the contrary it’s a reasonable initial presumption to make and, provided you don't think about it, it gives you a functional, workaday concept of free will, albeit a superficial one. If you do think about it though you’ll quickly see that it provides no explanation at all because a non-deterministic and non-random model is self-contradictory and thus impossible.

The lying part is to do with something else – your posting of a mistake (for example when an explanation is given to you and you reply with “but my perception tells me” etc), that failure of thinking is explained (because your perception of something has no epistemic value for explanatory purposes), and you just ignore the correction only to return later with the same original mistake (“but my perception tells me” etc).   

That’s the dishonest part – just ignoring the arguments that undo you and repeating endlessly the same mistakes. If just once you actually engaged (eg, with either “OK, I see where I went wrong now and I won’t do it again” or with, “actually I think my perception does provide reliable explanations for the phenomena I experience and here’s why…” etc) then while you’d still be wrong at least you wouldn't be dishonestly wrong.

That’s your problem – because you’re absolutely convinced of your absolute rightness you either cannot or will not ever consider where you might go wrong. You’re on a discussion board but have no intention ever of actually discussing anything.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So how should I have responded?

At all would have been a good start, rather than just ignoring everything that’s said to you.

Let's try this:

Oh, of course, I have seen the light now.
Yes, none of my posts were done of my own freewill - my agent did it (or was it my agency?) - no matter.  How could I have been so silly not to have realised that I am nothing more than a blob of material entirely controlled by my agent.  So sorry.

Aside from the clunky sarcasm and misuse of terms, that would have been one possible reply, yes. More appropriately, you could perhaps have said something like, “OK, I can see now that my perception of experiences has no value as a reliable explanation for those experiences, and so I won’t again make the mistake of responding to an explanation I’ve been given with, “but my perception tells me…” etc

Alternatively, if you seriously think that your perception of experiences must also explain them, then instead you could have said something like, “ah, but my perception does reliably explain the phenomena I experience AND HERE’S WHY…." and that would have been fine too.

The problem though is that you never do either of those things – what you actually do is just ignore what people say and repeat endlessly the same mindless and logically impossible mantras as if nothing had been said to you.

Why do you that?       

[Alan Burns]

That’s the dishonest part – just ignoring the arguments that undo you and repeating endlessly the same mistakes. If just once you actually engaged (eg, with either “OK, I see where I went wrong now and I won’t do it again” or with, “actually I think my perception does provide reliable explanations for the phenomena I experience and here’s why…” etc) then while you’d still be wrong at least you wouldn't be dishonestly wrong.

That’s your problem – because you’re absolutely convinced of your absolute rightness you either cannot or will not ever consider where you might go wrong. You’re on a discussion board but have no intention ever of actually discussing anything.

It would appear that I am not the only one to be absolutely convinced of their absolute rightness.

[Alan Burns]

What part of that is confusing you? Do you not understand that there are other explanations (even if you disagree with them)?

And yet again: nobody is suggesting that you cannot do as you wish or that you are under the control of something else. Your silly caricature of what others are saying does not constitute an argument against it.

But your alternative explanation is self contradictory.
You claim that I have freedom to choose whatever I wish.
But you also claim that my wish is entirely predetermined by past events.
So no freedom
No choice.
Just inevitable reaction to past events.

[Stranger]

It would appear that I am not the only one to be absolutely convinced of their absolute rightness.

There is being convinced you're right but listening to and responding to what other people say, and there's being convinced you're right and thinking that makes it OK to ignore counterarguments while endlessly repeating the same things that have been answered countless times, and engaging in transparent evasion tactics rather than honestly addressing the answers you are getting.

[Stranger]

But your alternative explanation is self contradictory.
You claim that I have freedom to choose whatever I wish.
But you also claim that my wish is entirely predetermined by past events.

So no contradiction at all.    You can do whatever you wish to do but you can't change what you wish to do most (even overriding a wish is because of a greater one). It wouldn't make sense to be able to choose what you wish for most, you'd have to know what wished to wish for most, and so on into an infinite regress.

You can't be free from being yourself - it's utter nonsense to think you can (what would you be setting free?) - and you are what nature, nurture, and experience has made you.

So no freedom
No choice.
Just inevitable reaction to past events.

Yet again you try to redefine English words. Your version of 'freedom' and 'choice' are simply incoherent - and you will not address the arguments that show that is the case.

Yet again: no choice can possibly be entirely due to its antecedents (no randomness) and not entirely due to its antecedents (not "pre"determined). The statement "entirely due to its antecedents" must be either true or false.

Yet again: think about the rewind time thought experiment, either you think you could make a different choice or not.

[Alan Burns]

So no contradiction at all.    You can do whatever you wish to do but you can't change what you wish to do most (even overriding a wish is because of a greater one). It wouldn't make sense to be able to choose what you wish for most, you'd have to know what wished to wish for most, and so on into an infinite regress.

You can't be free from being yourself - it's utter nonsense to think you can (what would you be setting free?) - and you are what nature, nurture, and experience has made you.

Yet again you try to redefine English words. Your version of 'freedom' and 'choice' are simply incoherent - and you will not address the arguments that show that is the case.

Yet again: no choice can possibly be entirely due to its antecedents (no randomness) and not entirely due to its antecedents (not "pre"determined). The statement "entirely due to its antecedents" must be either true or false.

Yet again: think about the rewind time thought experiment, either you think you could make a different choice or not.

In your arguments, I feel that you are confusing reasons with causes.  Causes are physically defined.  Reasons are not - they are formed within our conscious awareness, so are not predefined in the same manner as is applicable to causes.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

It would appear that I am not the only one to be absolutely convinced of their absolute rightness.

Dear god but you struggle. Right and wrong aren’t absolute universal values that we tap into – they’re probabilistic (and therefore tentative) judgments we make on the basis of the reasoning that supports them. For the most part you abandon reason entirely and go straight for assertions. When on rare occasions you do attempt reason though you’re invariably catastrophically wrong – mostly because your efforts are always fallacious (argumentum ad consequentiam etc). That's why you're wrong.

By contrast I don’t claim to be certain about anything – I treat as more probably true propositions with robust reasoning to support them, and as less probably true propositions with no or broken reasoning to support them. If the quality of the reasoning changes though, I will change my mind. You on the other hand don’t give a damn about reason – you proudly tell us that nothing could ever change your mind, which exits you immediately from meaningful conversation.

Second, yet again you’ve just ignored the actual argument you were supposed to be replying to. Why are you so evasive and slippery when confronted with arguments you cannot or will not address do you think?     

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But your alternative explanation is self contradictory.

Seems unlikely, but let’s see shall we…

You claim that I have freedom to choose whatever I wish.
But you also claim that my wish is entirely predetermined by past events.
So no freedom
No choice.
Just inevitable reaction to past events.

Thought so. You’ve just collapsed back into the same idiocy you’ve had explained perhaps 100 times or more now. Does it ever occur to you that if just once you felt a rush of honesty and actually read the argument correctly you wouldn’t keep repeating this nonsense?

Yet again… yes you CAN choose, yes you DO have freedom, yes you DO have choice. Got that? Good.

BUT this freedom, choice etc cannot be somehow cast adrift from logic – that would be chaotic – so it’s bounded by it and sits on an underlying determinism. That you lack the wit or imagination to grasp that “freedom” cannot be unfettered and outside of logical constraints but is nonetheless a useful functional construction is a failure of your ability to think, not of the argument that continues to undo you (and that you just ignore).   

Just this once could you finally indicate that you’ve at least bothered to read this rather than just ignore it entirely? Just this once maybe?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

In your arguments, I feel that you are confusing reasons with causes.  Causes are physically defined.  Reasons are not - they are formed within our conscious awareness, so are not predefined in the same manner as is applicable to causes.

Then, as always, your feeling has let you down.

I could tell you why this dishonest idiocy is wrong, just as I (and various others) have done many times already. As you resolutely just ignore the explanation though, can you think of any reason at all to bother?

[torridon]

In your arguments, I feel that you are confusing reasons with causes.  Causes are physically defined.  Reasons are not - they are formed within our conscious awareness, so are not predefined in the same manner as is applicable to causes.

Within the broader philosophical framing of cause and effect, reasons are causes.  "Cause" might be the more generic term. Reasoning tends to apply to minds.  If a thief, under cross examination, claims he stole that loaf of bread because his children are hungry, that is his reasoning, but it is still a cause in terms of cause and effect.  His theft derives from his children's hunger; any internal reasoning he engages in, is merely the more proximate cause.

[SusanDoris]

One of the things that really is annoying is AB's constant use of the word 'inevitable',  also consequences - often used together.
I often start typing - and delete - a response; but of course any words I use he'll ignore.

[Stranger]

In your arguments, I feel that you are confusing reasons with causes.  Causes are physically defined.  Reasons are not - they are formed within our conscious awareness, so are not predefined in the same manner as is applicable to causes.

You really couldn't make it up. You accused me of self contradiction. In reply, I pointed out that it wasn't a contradiction, identified (not for the first time) two logical reasons why your view was impossible, and invited you (again) to consider a thought experiment that illustrates one of the problems.

Do you attempt to engage with an argument about any of the three substantive points I made or consider the thought experiment? No, you totally ignore all of them and start wittering on about language.

Anything but engage with the substance of the arguments.

I had half a mind to totally ignore your 'point' but... As torridon has already pointed out, in this context, reasons are causes. As for them being "formed within our conscious awareness"; yet again: locating something in our conscious awareness (or out of the physical world) makes no difference to the logic that it had to happen entirely because of its causes/reasons or not. That applies just as much to a "reason" "formed within our conscious awareness" as it does to everything else that isn't random.

Now you can totally ignore all that...       

[Gordon]

In your arguments, I feel that you are confusing reasons with causes.  Causes are physically defined.  Reasons are not - they are formed within our conscious awareness, so are not predefined in the same manner as is applicable to causes.

Reasons are causes too, and to claim that the former are purely conscious doesn't fit with how things seem to be.

The reason I detest all forms of dancing isn't a matter of 'conscious awareness', whereby every time I encounter dancing I have to consciously decide that I don't like it: it seems to me like an inherent trait of mine that influences my behaviour with regard to dancing without any mental processes in my 'conscious awareness'. 

[Alan Burns]

You really couldn't make it up. You accused me of self contradiction. In reply, I pointed out that it wasn't a contradiction, identified (not for the first time) two logical reasons why your view was impossible, and invited you (again) to consider a thought experiment that illustrates one of the problems.

But in the thought experiment, you are making a presumption that it is possible to replicate any situation in purely physical terms.  But if a spiritual entity such as the human soul exists, it would be impossible to define such an entity in physical terms, therefore it would be impossible to replicate it in the imaginary scenario.

[Stranger]

But in the thought experiment, you are making a presumption that it is possible to replicate any situation in purely physical terms.

This appears to be another of your evasion tactics: pretend that the argument assumes the physical. The thought experiment makes no presumption of a physical mind and it's not possible anyway - it's a thought experiment.

But if a spiritual entity such as the human soul exists, it would be impossible to define such an entity in physical terms...

Totally irrelevant.

...therefore it would be impossible to replicate it in the imaginary scenario.

What!?? You seem to be saying that you lack the imagination. It's a thought experiment, it's supposed to get you to properly think through your position - which is no doubt why you won't consider it.

And you continue to ignore the arguments that show that your version of freedom is contradictory...

[Gordon]

But if a spiritual entity such as the human soul exists, it would be impossible to define such an entity in physical terms, therefore it would be impossible to replicate it in the imaginary scenario.

So, if we exclude the physical, how do you know that this 'human soul' exists: in terms other than your personal belief that is does?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But in the thought experiment, you are making a presumption that it is possible to replicate any situation in purely physical terms.

So now we know that "thought experiment" is another of the various terms you don't understand. Do you think the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment can't be a thought experiment either because no actual cats are involved?

Slowly now: if your magic soul conjecture was faced with precisely identical circumstances, would it act the same way in each case (ie, on the basis of antecedents) or differently (ie, randomly)? See, whether material or magic, you're still stuck with a question in logic no matter how much you keep avoiding it.

But...

Oh dear...

...if a spiritual entity such as the human soul exists, it would be impossible to define such an entity in physical terms, therefore it would be impossible to replicate it in the imaginary scenario.

Translation: "If magic, then anything at all".

Magic or non-magic though, the question is the same: determined by prior events, or random? You choose.

[Alan Burns]

Within the broader philosophical framing of cause and effect, reasons are causes.  "Cause" might be the more generic term. Reasoning tends to apply to minds.  If a thief, under cross examination, claims he stole that loaf of bread because his children are hungry, that is his reasoning, but it is still a cause in terms of cause and effect.  His theft derives from his children's hunger; any internal reasoning he engages in, is merely the more proximate cause.

Your example clearly illustrates the difference between a cause and a reason.  The thief's hungry children are not an inevitable cause - they are a reason perceived by the conscious awareness of the thief, but the ultimate cause of the theft will be the thief's consciously driven choice