Searching for GOD...

[Outrider]

But there is no feasible explanation for how a single entity of conscious awareness can be generated solely from material reactions.

Your incredulity doesn't invalidate the evidence - the material brain is extremely strongly evidenced as being integral to the processes of thinking and consciousness and, as yet, nothing else is.

O.

[Outrider]

The conscious will of my human soul is certainly not random.  Neither is it shackled to the physically predetermined reactions of material elements.  We are all free to choose our own destiny.  Just try it.

Please, please, please explain to me what the third path is that isn't either a result of prior events or unrelated to prior events.  It seems, logically, to be an either/or decision, and yet you keep rejecting both - what is the, to me, invisible alternative?

O.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Oh dear. You do know that repeating a mistake doesn’t stop it from being a mistake right?

You seem to have given up even the pretence of an argument now. “Reactions” occur as electro-chemical phenomena in brains. What our knowledge of emergence as a generalised phenomenon tells us is that, given enough trillions upon trillions of these events, there is no inherent reason at all for sufficiently complex brains no give rise to self-aware minds.

I realise that you feel you must cling ever more desperately to asserting such a thing to be impossible, but endlessly asserting the same thing without ever bothering even to attempt to explain why you think it’s impossible just makes you look foolish.

Oh, and I notice that yet again you’ve just ignored my pointing out that an argument from personal incredulity is always a wrong argument. That you personally don’t understand how something could occur materially does not for one moment give you licence to insist that it's therefore impossible for it to occur materially.         

But no matter how many trillions of discrete material reactions occur, whatever emerges will still be a reaction.  You cannot just presume it to be an emergent property of material reactions unless you have a material definition for perception.

[Outrider]

But the simple logic that undoes your view (and many others} is that material elements, no matter how complex their arrangement is, can only produce reactions.  Our conscious awareness involves perception of reactions, not the reactions themselves.

Except that awareness is, itself a reaction.

Perception is something we all take for granted as a natural phenomenon because we all experience it, but it is not a natural property of material elements.

It's an emergent property of the pattern of activity within physical elements.

Trying to define perception in material terms can be likened to the efforts of the alchemists of old.

It can be. Wrongly, but it can be.  Alchemists were exploring reality with no real guiding principal, subject to as much intuition and emotionally reactive subjectivity as, say, arguments for free will and souls, in the absence of any sort of rigourous, systematic mode of investigation which was designed to minimise or eliminate subjectivity from the equation so far as possible.

O.

[Outrider]

But no matter how many trillions of discrete material reactions occur, whatever emerges will still be a reaction.

Yes.

You cannot just presume it to be an emergent property of material reactions unless you have a material definition for perception.

We do.  Perception is a particular feedback pattern of neural activity.

O.

(Edited to fix the quote)

[torridon]

The conscious will of my human soul is certainly not random.  Neither is it shackled to the physically predetermined reactions of material elements.  We are all free to choose our own destiny.  Just try it.

You can't have it both ways, it is one or the other.  Any desire arises either for a reason or it doesn't, in which case it is random.  We can't make this any simpler.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But no matter how many trillions of discrete material reactions occur, whatever emerges will still be a reaction.  You cannot just presume it to be an emergent property of material reactions unless you have a material definition for perception.

Your mistake here is thinking a priori that consciousness or self-awareness has some special, mystical status that’s somehow fundamentally different from all the other emergent properties we know of. Emergence as the explanation for all those phenomena is the same answer you get though when you apply exactly the same reasoning to “perception” as you put it.

That’s your problem (well that and your total indifference to the logic that falsifies your arguments): consciousness as an experience feels really special to you, so as an article of faith you decide that it must stand separate from all the other emergent properties that you don’t inhabit. That something feels a certain way though tells you nothing about what it actually is. You’ve had this bias explained to you countless times, but for some reason you just pretend that you still have a valid position. Why?     

[Alan Burns]

  Perception is a particular feedback pattern of neural activity.

Feedback pattern of neural activity? - feedback to where? What is it that can percieve neural activity?
What in material terms can comprise a single entity which simultaneosly perceives the state of millions of neural reactions?

[Gordon]

Feedback pattern of neural activity? - feedback to where? What is it that can percieve neural activity?
What in material terms can comprise a single entity which simultaneosly perceives the state of millions of neural reactions?

Brains, Alan: just common or garden biology.

[Alan Burns]

Please, please, please explain to me what the third path is that isn't either a result of prior events or unrelated to prior events.  It seems, logically, to be an either/or decision, and yet you keep rejecting both - what is the, to me, invisible alternative?

It is the conscious will of my human soul, which I believe is a reflection of God's will which brought us into existence.  My conscious awareness can perceive many different options at any moment in time, and my conscious will has the power to choose which, if any, of these options to invoke.  A power which defies any material definition.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Feedback pattern of neural activity? - feedback to where? What is it that can percieve neural activity?
What in material terms can comprise a single entity which simultaneosly perceives the state of millions of neural reactions?

Gee whizz but you struggle. The "single entity" as you call it doesn't need to "simultaneosly perceives the state of millions of neural reactions" for consciousness to be an entirely material, emergent property. Consciousness exists separate to its constituent parts, and cannot be found in any of them individually - just like all other emergent properties do.

It would really, really help you if you bothered to find out something about emergence before you're tempted to commit howlers like this again. Really it would,   

[Alan Burns]

Brains, Alan: just common or garden biology.

A material brain is just a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.
If we had the ability to zap the sub atomic particles in a rock to replicate you, would it become another Gordon? Or would it just be a complex machine without a driver?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

A material brain is just a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.

There's no "just", but yes. And DNA has just four base pairs but just look at the astonishing complexity they produce when they're in the right order.

If we had the ability to zap the sub atomic particles in a rock to replicate you, would it become another Gordon?

Effectively yes. That's what "replicate" means. Of course the clone would have to have exactly the same life experiences too to be identical, but you're on the right lines finally.

Or would it just be a complex machine without a driver?

No. "The driver" as you put it is unnecessary, no matter how much you invoke magic and call it "soul". 

[Gordon]

A material brain is just a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.

So there are, but then again everything material is just a collection of sub-atomic particles - so what?
 

If we had the ability to zap the sub atomic particles in a rock to replicate you, would it become another Gordon?

More or less, though it wouldn't have had the same practical experiences.

Or would it just be a complex machine without a driver?

It would just be a similar chunk of biology, and trying to sneak a 'driver' in is naughty, Alan, since this version of Gordon makes do with a brain (such as it is) with not a 'driver' in sight.

[Outrider]

It is the conscious will of my human soul, which I believe is a reflection of God's will which brought us into existence.

That's lovely, but how does it operate in a way that is neither dependent upon prior events nor independent of prior events?

My conscious awareness can perceive many different options at any moment in time, and my conscious will has the power to choose which, if any, of these options to invoke.

And, again, although you keep saying this, the evidence suggests that you are quite, quite wrong.  Your conscious awareness can indeed many different options at any moment in time, and it has the power to realise, after the fact, what your subconscious has already decided is the choice that you will invoke.

A power which defies any material definition.

Defies material definition - so it does not manifest in any physical way, and has no measurable effect on the physical world?  So a power for which you have no evidence, and which has no demonstrable effect from which you could deduce its existence?  In which case, why do you think that something undetectable with no effects is actually something?

O.

[Outrider]

Feedback pattern of neural activity? - feedback to where?

To the neural network, that's what feedback means.

What is it that can percieve neural activity?

Nothing - perception is the neural activity, there isn't something perceiving it.

What in material terms can comprise a single entity which simultaneosly perceives the state of millions of neural reactions?

Nothing, the sense of perception is an emergent property of a particular 'resonance' in the feedback pattern of the neural activity.

O.

[Sebastian Toe]

A material brain is just a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.

My dog is a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.
Can a rock fetch a ball, can a rock bark, can a rock wake me up on the morning by sticking a tongue up my nose?

[torridon]

A material brain is just a collection of the same sub atomic particles which you find in a rock.
If we had the ability to zap the sub atomic particles in a rock to replicate you, would it become another Gordon? Or would it just be a complex machine without a driver?

A brain does not need a separate 'driver'; a brain is a driver, that is why brains evolved, to process inputs and produce suitable responses creating a sense of self and agency along the way as part of its modus operandii. 

You fall for the same simplistic analogy that Sriram likes. as if a human body is like a car that needs a driver to get into it; in reality a better analogy is the self-driving car which learns how to drive itself.

[Stranger]

It is the conscious will of my human soul, which I believe is a reflection of God's will which brought us into existence.  My conscious awareness can perceive many different options at any moment in time, and my conscious will has the power to choose which, if any, of these options to invoke.

And if you add together every single antecedent to that choice, either they could only possibly result on one outcome or not. If not, then the choice between the possible outcomes must be for no reason at all and therefore random.

[Alan Burns]

Consciousness exists separate to its constituent parts, and cannot be found in any of them individually - just like all other emergent properties do.

It would really, really help you if you bothered to find out something about emergence before you're tempted to commit howlers like this again. Really it would,

An emergent property is not a separate entity.  It is just a perceived pattern or behavior made up from constituent parts.  Unless you can define conscious awareness in material terms, you can't just presume that it is an emergent property of material.  You are just using the term "emergent property" as a label with no justification.

[Alan Burns]

And if you add together every single antecedent to that choice, either they could only possibly result on one outcome or not. If not, then the choice between the possible outcomes must be for no reason at all and therefore random.

My choice is determined by my conscious will at the time I make the choice.  Where we seem to differ is in what comprises conscious will, and how it works.  Your scenario seems to presume that our conscious will is entirely predetermined by previous chains of cause and effect with no definitive causal event - which renders no possibility for the conscious freedom we all enjoy.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

An emergent property is not a separate entity.

Wrong again. I meant "separate" as in distinct from rather than unconnected. Emergent properties are discrete phenomena that arise from the interactions of constituents that themselves do not have the characteristics of the emergent property. A queen bee for example doesn't have a set of blueprints for a hive that it tells the other bees to construct - these things emerge from repeated, consistent and relatively simple actions.   

It is just a perceived pattern or behavior made up from constituent parts.

Wrong again. Whether it's perceived or not makes no difference to its existence. On a planet with no people to do the perceiving but lots of bees there would still be bee hives.

Unless you can define conscious awareness in material terms, you can't just presume that it is an emergent property of material.  You are just using the term "emergent property" as a label with no justification.

Wrong again. No-one presumes that. Rather based on all we do know about consciousness (which is quite a lot) we can deduce that it aligns perfectly well with other properties we know to be emergent. The much bigger presumptions would be to presume that it's somehow fundamentally so different in its character from those other properties that it cannot be explained by emergence, that your incredulity is a logically sound argument rather than a logically false one, that a "driver" is therefore necessary, and that this driver is actually an invisible little man at the controls for which you have no evidence whatever and that's fundamentally irrational in its proposition because of the determined vs random problem. Now that would be "just presuming" - multiple times in fact.

As I said before, if you bothered to find out something about emergence it really would help you avoid future howlers of this type. Some time ago I even recommended a book to you about it to get you started, but I'm guessing you didn't bother with that either. Oh well.   

[torridon]

My choice is determined by my conscious will at the time I make the choice.  Where we seem to differ is in what comprises conscious will, and how it works.  Your scenario seems to presume that our conscious will is entirely predetermined by previous chains of cause and effect with no definitive causal event - which renders no possibility for the conscious freedom we all enjoy.

And if your 'conscious will' is not the outcome of previous chains of cause and effect, then it is random.  You can't have it both ways.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Torri,

And if your 'conscious will' is not the outcome of previous chains of cause and effect, then it is random.  You can't have it both ways.

You can if you think "magic" is a sensible explanation for something. You can also have round triangles, tap dancing unicorns and Boris Johnson with a moral compass though so I'm not sure that helps him at all.   

[torridon]