Searching for GOD...

[torridon]

I speak up for the obvious truth (to most people) that we have freedom to choose what we want to do.  A freedom which can't be explained in physical terms unless we can convince ourselves that this obvious freedom is some form of illusion.But we are obviously free to choose how, when and where (or if) to indulge in eating chocolate.Of course we cant choose our desires, but we have freedom to choose how to indulge in them, and it certainly ain't random...

Have you not been paying attention at all ? You are still churning out the same robotic shallow thinking quite as if nobody had been along to to deepen the discussion.  If we have no control over our desires, then also we have no control ultimately over how and when to indulge them as such things are also desires in themselves. We have control in a superficial sense clearly, I can choose which chocolate bar to buy and when to eat it or not to eat it at all with an eye on my waistline.  But these are all still choices and all choices are resolved by some method of valuing competing options against each other and if we have no control over how much something appeals or how strongly a belief is held, then we have no fundamental control ultimately over the outcome of the process at the moment of making a choice. 

I like Scarborough, I like Whitby. If I plan a weekend away I can think long and hard about which seaside town to go to.  If, at the end of my deliberations I form the belief that Scarborough is going to be the better option, I cannot just choose to that believe that Whitby is the better option.  I could go to Whitby, of course, but for that to occur, something must have happened to make me change my mind. I cannot change my mind for no reason, as this means that I am making random choices.  Think it through Alan.

[torridon]

But to follow your logic, any rapist, murderer or paedophile would have no freedom of choice in what they do because whatever they do is entirely predetermined by past events.  Is this what you honestly believe?

We all do what we want, ultimately.  If your desire to be a child rapist outweighs your desire to be a thoughtful moral citizen then you will end up raping children.  I don't want to do that, but it is not because I chose not to want it, it is because I don't want to. I never met a bouncing baby boy whose hope and ambition was to grow up to be a serial killer. And yet such people continue to occur.  Why do you think that is ? No doubt you will content yourself with trotting out some or other facile explanation such as 'the devil', but by being facile you are underselling yourself.  Nothing happens for no reason, except in the case of random occurrences, if they exist.  For every person that turns out a criminal there will reasons that led up to him becoming such and it is no credit to us that we blind ourselves to reason, preferring ignorance over understanding.  To fix problems, we first need to understand them.

[Alan Burns]

Have you not been paying attention at all ? You are still churning out the same robotic shallow thinking quite as if nobody had been along to to deepen the discussion.  If we have no control over our desires, then also we have no control ultimately over how and when to indulge them as such things are also desires in themselves. We have control in a superficial sense clearly, I can choose which chocolate bar to buy and when to eat it or not to eat it at all with an eye on my waistline.  But these are all still choices and all choices are resolved by some method of valuing competing options against each other and if we have no control over how much something appeals or how strongly a belief is held, then we have no fundamental control ultimately over the outcome of the process at the moment of making a choice. 

I like Scarborough, I like Whitby. If I plan a weekend away I can think long and hard about which seaside town to go to.  If, at the end of my deliberations I form the belief that Scarborough is going to be the better option, I cannot just choose to that believe that Whitby is the better option.  I could go to Whitby, of course, but for that to occur, something must have happened to make me change my mind. I cannot change my mind for no reason, as this means that I am making random choices.  Think it through Alan.

This last paragraph betrays the fundamental error in your thinking.   You refer to "deliberations" and "thinking things through".  What is the ultimate causal source for any deliberation?  What is it that drives the process of "thinking things through"?  It is "you", Torri, not the uncontrollable predefined physical reactions in your brain cells.  You are God's amazing creation with your own creative powers - not just a mere blob of reconstituted star debris controlled by nothing but the meaningless, physically predefined reactions of material elements.

[Alan Burns]

I never met a bouncing baby boy whose hope and ambition was to grow up to be a serial killer. And yet such people continue to occur.  Why do you think that is ?

In a word, freewill.

[Stranger]

This last paragraph betrays the fundamental error in your thinking.   You refer to "deliberations" and "thinking things through".  What is the ultimate causal source for any deliberation?  What is it that drives the process of "thinking things through"?

Same as it was last time you asked, and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that...

It is "you", Torri, not the uncontrollable predefined physical reactions in your brain cells.

Same old false dichotomy.

Note to the Alan-bot coders: you really need to introduce some more variety in the responses.

In a word, freewill.

Which (using your definition) is impossible for all the reasons you seem too afraid to even think about.

[torridon]

In a word, freewill.

A non answer. Is that the best you can do to address deep questions, a flippant, one word answer ?  Thank goodness there are others capable of doing better than that.

[Sriram]

If there are external influences on the system, they too must either be the result of randomness or determinism (in some other system).

You are making the same mistake as Alan. Consciousness has to come to a choice somehow. The logic of the situation is that any event (including the result of a conscious choices) must either happen entirely due to its logical antecedents or not. If not, then to some part of why it happened is not due to anything that led up to it, which means that it must be random.

Either conscious minds are deterministic systems or not, and if not, they involve randomness.

As people keep on telling Alan, this has nothing to do with physical laws - it's just logic.

Saying something is random doesn't explain anything. It is like 'emergence'.....'just something that happens'.  This 'something' could be happening because of some external influence. 

Whether this external influence is due to unknown deterministic factors or some other external influence beyond that, we cannot know. It could be something completely outside out natural laws and the scope of our logic.  Arguing about that is futile.     

Assuming my philosophy of panpsychism, Consciousness could be operating at different levels and influencing life on earth in various ways that we quickly dub as 'random'.  My point is that what we call 'random' could be a deliberate influence exerted by Consciousness in some unknown way.

[Alan Burns]

And if we follow your logic....  but wait, you haven't got any logic, what you are suggesting is self-contradictory for the reasons stated in the post you quoted.

It may seem illogical to you, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I have freedom to choose what I do.
A freedom which can't be derived from physically predetermined reactions.
A freedom which enables me to choose to follow Jesus and accept Him as my Lord and Saviour.

[Alan Burns]

Which (using your definition) is impossible for all the reasons you seem too afraid to even think about.

Why on earth should I be afraid of thinking about my consciously driven freedom?
The act of thinking about it verifies my freedom to think.
Are you seriously suggesting that I can deduce that I have no freedom to choose what I think by actually thinking about it?
Seriously?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

It may seem illogical to you, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I have freedom to choose what I do.
A freedom which can't be derived from physically predetermined reactions.
A freedom which enables me to choose to follow Jesus and accept Him as my Lord and Saviour.

And provided you keep it to yourself, that's no-one's business but your own. The moment though to assert these things to be facts for the rest of us too, then you must expect the disastrous reasoning on which they rest to be exposed. That you just ignore it when it's done so as to repeat endlessly the same mistakes doesn't change that.

To put it another way, what makes "perfect sense" to you makes no sense at all to people capable of thinking about it more deeply than you can.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB,

And provided you keep it to yourself, that's no-one's business but your own. The moment though to assert these things to be facts for the rest of us too, then you must expect the disastrous reasoning on which they rest to be exposed. That you just ignore it when it's done so as to repeat endlessly the same mistakes doesn't change that.

To put it another way, what makes "perfect sense" to you makes no sense at all to people capable of thinking about it more deeply than you can.

This suggests that the free will issue is settled with you as the victor......that may be true for you.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Why on earth should I be afraid of thinking about my consciously driven freedom?

Because if ever you did think about it beyond the superficial level you demonstrate here you'd risk finding out that the reasoning on which your certainties rest are sand - and you cannot allow even one grain of that sand to be removed for fear that the whole edifice would topple. At heart that's why your uneducable - the cost of finding out that your faith beliefs are wrong is too high.   

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Because if ever you did think about it beyond the superficial level you demonstrate here you'd risk finding out that the reasoning on which your certainties rest are sand - and you cannot allow even one grain of that sand to be removed for fear that the whole edifice would topple. At heart that's why your uneducable - the cost of finding out that your faith beliefs are wrong is too high.   

So you too are suggesting that deeper thinking should enable me to discover the truth that I have no freedom to choose what I think about.

Can I suggest to you that you try thinking a bit more deeply about the limitations of what can be achieved by physically predetermined reactions in a material brain?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

An argument for determinism is not the same as an argument against God. Therefore how can Alan's edifice be torn down or collapse?
Determinism can never be demonstrated since what could compute all factors involved.
Wither non repeatability?........and therefore novelty and emergence?
What on earth does superficial mean? In other words what depth and manner of depth are we talking about here?

I think you haven't quite made complete causal chains that conclusively demonstrate determinism.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So you too are suggesting that deeper thinking should enable me to discover the truth that I have no freedom to choose what I think about.

Why are you so dishonest about this? You've had explained countless times that you do have an experience of freedom (and indeed that societies depend on it), but that that experience tells you nothing at all about the explanation of what that "freedom" actually entails. In other words, shallow thinking just gives you shallow answers - that's your problem. 

Can I suggest to you that you try thinking a bit more deeply about the limitations of what can be achieved by physically predetermined reactions in a material brain?

You of all people telling someone else to think more deeply is very funny, albeit unintentionally so. "The limitations of what can be achieved by physically predetermined reactions in a material brain" as you put it is just something you've asserted to be the case, but you've never once even attempted to explain why you think those "limitations" apply.

What we know about the emergent properties though is that no such boundaries to what's possible must exist - it's just one more claim you've made up and asserted to be true. 

[Stranger]

It may seem illogical to you, but it makes perfect sense to me.

It is illogical for the reasons you never even try to address. Are you actually deluded enough to think that the rest of your post contained logic?

I have freedom to choose what I do.

Stop pretending this disputed.

A freedom which can't be derived from physically predetermined reactions.

Baseless assertion again.

Why on earth should I be afraid of thinking about my consciously driven freedom?

So why won't you address the logic presented to you?

The act of thinking about it verifies my freedom to think.
Are you seriously suggesting that I can deduce that I have no freedom to choose what I think by actually thinking about it?
Seriously?

Dishonest misrepresentation (again).

Note to Alan-bot coders: this is silly, surely you can make it more convincing and less repetitive than this!

[Stranger]

Saying something is random doesn't explain anything.

That's a pretty meaningless thing to say. There may or may not be genuine randomness in nature. If there is then there is, nature doesn't have to conform to how you want it to be.

It is like 'emergence'.....'just something that happens'.

It's nothing like emergence.

This 'something' could be happening because of some external influence. 

Yes, I guess it could (whatever it is).

Whether this external influence is due to unknown deterministic factors or some other external influence beyond that, we cannot know. It could be something completely outside out natural laws and the scope of our logic.  Arguing about that is futile.     

If it doesn't conform to logic, then there is no way to argue for it or say anything about it at all. All pretence at reasoning would have to be given up by anybody suggesting it.

Assuming my philosophy of panpsychism, Consciousness could be operating at different levels and influencing life on earth in various ways that we quickly dub as 'random'.  My point is that what we call 'random' could be a deliberate influence exerted by Consciousness in some unknown way.

That's totally irrelevant to the discussion, which is that however it operates, whether it's physical or not, or whether it's been mistaken for randomness or not, it has to operate deterministically unless there is some genuine randomness (or it isn't logically self-consistent).

[Stranger]

Can I suggest to you that you try thinking a bit more deeply...

Note to Alan-bot coders: this was a joke, yes?

[Alan Burns]

Quote from:

from Alan Burns on Today at 10:15:07 AM

    A freedom which can't be derived from physically predetermined reactions.

Baseless assertion again.

Not a baseless assertion.  It is a logical deduction based upon the freedom I, and others, exhibit in being able to consciously compose posts on this forum.

The only freedom which can be derived from physically predetermined reactions is effectively the same type of freedom as that of a boulder rolling down a hill.  Predetermined physical reactions cannot be controlled.  They cannot be altered.  They cannot be manipulated.  Because they are predetermined by the laws of physics.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Not a baseless assertion.  It is a logical deduction based upon the freedom I, and others, exhibit in being able to consciously compose posts on this forum.

Of course it's a baseless assertion, and the non sequitur you just attempted to justify it has nothing to do with it. If you think that consciousness cannot have emerged naturally, then - finally - you need to demonstrate the claim rather than just asset it. 

The only freedom which can be derived from physically predetermined reactions is effectively the same type of freedom as that of a boulder rolling down a hill.

You've been corrected on this already (it's yet another argumentum ad consequentiam and a false analogy too) but as ever you just ignored that and have now repeated your mistake. What does this dishonesty say about you do you think?

(Predetermined physical reactions cannot be controlled.  They cannot be altered.  They cannot be manipulated.  Because they are predetermined by the laws of physics.

A piece of deep misunderstanding you've also had corrected many times only to ignore the correction and them to repeat the mistake. Still lying for Jesus then eh?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Because if ever you did think about it beyond the superficial level you demonstrate here you'd risk finding out that the reasoning on which your certainties rest are sand - and you cannot allow even one grain of that sand to be removed for fear that the whole edifice would topple. At heart that's why your uneducable - the cost of finding out that your faith beliefs are wrong is too high.   

Just contemplating why you, and others, seem to be in denial of your obvious freedom to consciously choose what you want to do.

Could it be that you are afraid of the implications of admitting to the reality of the existence of human freewill?

Implications which would mean that you are personally accountable for what you choose to do?
And that you would have to admit that the ultimate source of your freedom to consciously choose is beyond anything which can be defined in material terms?
And that it would open up the probability of your own spiritual nature?
And that it would lead you to admit the probability of God's existence?

But you should not be afraid of these implications.
You should rejoice in your God given freedom.
Because the truth really does set us free.

[Stranger]

Not a baseless assertion.  It is a logical deduction based upon the freedom I, and others, exhibit in being able to consciously compose posts on this forum.

So where is the logic and where is your logical answer to the logic that says you are wrong?

The only freedom which can be derived from physically predetermined reactions is effectively the same type of freedom as that of a boulder rolling down a hill.  Predetermined physical reactions cannot be controlled.  They cannot be altered.  They cannot be manipulated.  Because they are predetermined by the laws of physics.

As has been explained to you countless times, this applies just as much (or as little) to any non-physical soul you suggest. Your problem isn't the laws of physics, it's just logic.

[Stranger]

Just contemplating why you, and others, seem to be in denial of your obvious freedom to consciously choose what you want to do.

Back to the blatant dishonesty. 

Nobody denies the freedom to do as we want that we all experience, and it's only that freedom that is obvious. Your notion of "freedom" is as impossible as a square circle, for reasons you seem unable or unwilling to even try to think about.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just contemplating why you, and others, seem to be in denial of your obvious freedom to consciously choose what you want to do.

That’s easy. People more capable of thinking than you are are “in denial” of it because at an explanatory level it’s impossible.

Could it be that you are afraid of the implications of admitting to the reality of the existence of human freewill?

No – there are no “implications”.

Implications which would mean that you are personally accountable for what you choose to do?

I already am personally accountable – more than you are in fact if you think you can dump the consequences of your “sins” onto a a long-dead middle eastern mystic.

And that you would have to admit that the ultimate source of your freedom to consciously choose is beyond anything which can be defined in material terms?

You can’t “admit” to something there’s no good reason to think to be true.

And that it would open up the probability of your own spiritual nature?

Baseless idiocy opens up nothing at all.

And that it would lead you to admit the probability of God's existence?

No it wouldn’t. It would just lead to a "don’t know".

But you should not be afraid of these implications.

The only fear here is your terror of finding out that you’ve been wrong all these years – that’s why you just ignore the arguments that falsify you.

You should rejoice in your God given freedom.
Because the truth really does set us free.

I’ll put down “irony” as yet another word you don’t understand.

[Alan Burns]

If you think that consciousness cannot have emerged naturally, then - finally - you need to demonstrate the claim rather than just asset it. 

In the absence of any feasible definition for what comprises our conscious awareness or how it works, I would say the onus is on you to demonstrate how conscious awareness emerges from physically predefined reactions of material elements.