Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

Yes, and this is how human free will works.  Our conscious perception allows us to choose how to react.  It is not automated.

See you've gone round the loop again: assert, assert, pretend to discuss for a few posts, misrepresent, express incredulity, assert, assert, forget all previous answers, repeat...

 

[Stranger]

Try this.....watch till the end to what scientists like Michio Kaku have to say. Only about 17 minutes..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

-sigh-

This is a propaganda video from Inspiring Philosophy, a Christian apologetic organisation. At least some of the material is lifted from the widely criticised pseudoscience film What The 'Bleep' Do We Know?

Yet again, there is nothing in the formalism of quantum mechanics that is about consciousness - nothing, zilch, nada, zip, nil, zero, fuck all. Reading consciousness into it is an (unpopular) interpretation.

[Sriram]

-sigh-

This is a propaganda video from Inspiring Philosophy, a Christian apologetic organisation. At least some of the material is lifted from the widely criticised pseudoscience film What The 'Bleep' Do We Know?

Yet again, there is nothing in the formalism of quantum mechanics that is about consciousness - nothing, zilch, nada, zip, nil, zero, fuck all. Reading consciousness into it is an (unpopular) interpretation.

You are trying to convince yourself it appears.....

[torridon]

Try this.....watch till the end to what scientists like Michio Kaku have to say. Only about 17 minutes..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

You do realise that video was made by a christian apologist ministry ?  I mean, such an outfit clearly has an agenda to prove god, and they are not above splicing some headline scientists quoted out of context mingled in with a splash of quantum weirdness to carve out a place for God as ultimate observer, without which reality could not collapse out of a wave of potentiality.  Hmmm.

[Stranger]

You are trying to convince yourself it appears.....

     I was furnishing you with some facts Sriram, in the hope you might be interested in them, or a least take some notice - crazy optimist that I am.

[Sriram]

You do realise that video was made by a christian apologist ministry ?  I mean, such an outfit clearly has an agenda to prove god, and they are not above splicing some headline scientists quoted out of context mingled in with a splash of quantum weirdness to carve out a place for God as ultimate observer, without which reality could not collapse out of a wave of potentiality.  Hmmm.

How does that matter?  You are clutching at straws.

No one rejects ideas simply because the proponents are atheists or materialists or are friends of Dawkins or whatever. Why should the  proponents being Christian or theists be the reason to reject their views? 

They are not presenting Christian mythology or biblical thoughts. They are presenting science...and fairly well I should think.  Most of the people in the video are leading scientists.    People like Donald Hoffman and many others have presented similar ideas.

Don't look for reasons to get back to your comfort zone....

[torridon]

How does that matter?  You are clutching at straws.

No one rejects ideas simply because the proponents are atheists or materialists or are friends of Dawkins or whatever. Why should the  proponents being Christian or theists be the reason to reject their views? 

They are not presenting Christian mythology or biblical thoughts. They are presenting science...and fairly well I should think.  Most of the people in the video are leading scientists.    People like Donald Hoffman and many others have presented similar ideas.

Don't look for reasons to get back to your comfort zone....

I don't have any issues with Michio Kaku or Donald Hoffman.  But I would have issues with people taking their pronouncements out of context in the furtherance of their particular agenda, making it appear as if high profile scientists are fully signed up supporters.  There is sleight of hand and misdirections going on there.

[Stranger]

They are presenting science...

No, they aren't. This is classic propaganda. They have spliced together bits of science with opinion, conjecture, and interpretation in order to give the false impression that their favourite conjectures and interpretations are actually what the science says.

In other words, they are being dishonest.

It is a fact that there are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, all of which are consistent with the formalism, and most of which have nothing to do with consciousness.

[Sriram]

I don't have any issues with Michio Kaku or Donald Hoffman.  But I would have issues with people taking their pronouncements out of context in the furtherance of their particular agenda, making it appear as if high profile scientists are fully signed up supporters.  There is sleight of hand and misdirections going on there.

'Signed up supporters' of what exactly?!!  I don't see any Christian agenda here. Many people from Galileo to Max Planck to many others today are saying that Consciousness is fundamental.  It is not just a philosophical point any more...scientists are seriously saying that.

Its your 'God phobia' acting up again.... 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

How does that matter?  You are clutching at straws.

No one rejects ideas simply because the proponents are atheists or materialists or are friends of Dawkins or whatever. Why should the  proponents being Christian or theists be the reason to reject their views?

They are not presenting Christian mythology or biblical thoughts. They are presenting science...and fairly well I should think.  Most of the people in the video are leading scientists.    People like Donald Hoffman and many others have presented similar ideas.

Don't look for reasons to get back to your comfort zone....

You're cheating again. "Ideas" and "science" are not the same thing. Anyone can have ideas about anything they like. To be science though those ideas have to be investigated and shown to be more likely to be correct than not correct. Just eliding the two as you just did is dishonest.

Oh, and "comfort zones" are called that for a reason - it's more "comfortable" to proceed on the basis of claims of fact have been validated rather than on the basis of those that haven't. That's why most take the stairs rather than leap out of a window in the belief that a unicorn will catch you part way down and will ferry you safely to the ground. For "stairs" read "science"; for "optimistic window jumping" read "auras", "biofields" and any of other faith claims of fact that take your fancy.     
     

[Outrider]

Outside the human mind, evidence indicates that all that can be generated by electro chemical activity is externally observed reactions - there is no evidence of it generating internal conscious perception.

No, by talking to people whilst they're undergoing the process of being conscious we can correlate specific elements of brain activity with specific types of sensation and subjective feeling to build a map of what types of brain activity are involved with which parts of thinking and feeling.

The only evidence you have is the absence of anything else which can be detected by human senses or man made equipment in examination of human brains.  In reality there is no definition of what comprises "conscious doubt" in material terms.  You are presuming a material explanation with no evidence other than being unable to detect anything but electro chemical activity.  If there is a specific pattern of electro chemical activity which can be associated with conscious doubt, you still have the problem of how this activity gets interpreted into what we perceive within our human awareness.

No, we also have a viable model which does not require any additional pieces in order to explain the observed phenomena.  I can't guarantee that mass alone actually accounts for gravitational effects, but we have a reliable model of gravity which matches the actual and experimental data accurately and therefore doesn't need anything more.  Similarly we've developed a model of brain activity which doesn't have unexplained phenomena in it - it has explanations that you, personally, don't appear to accept, but that's not the same thing.

O.

[Alan Burns]

No, by talking to people whilst they're undergoing the process of being conscious we can correlate specific elements of brain activity with specific types of sensation and subjective feeling to build a map of what types of brain activity are involved with which parts of thinking and feeling.

Bur correlation alone does not prove causation.
If electro chemical activity can generate conscious awareness, it would in theory be possible to reproduce such conscious awareness outside the human brain, but the truth is that we have no idea what comprises conscious awareness, or how it can work in material terms.

[Alan Burns]

One thing which has become apparent in recent posts is the undeniable fact that there is much more to reality than human scientific investigation has discovered.  A particular mystery is how the predictable, logical stability we perceive at the molecular level can be derived from the apparent indeterminacy found in the underlying quantum behaviour.

So why do some people try to redefine the reality of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".  Can you not accept the obvious truth that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

[Gordon]

One thing which has become apparent in recent posts is the undeniable fact that there is much more to reality than human scientific investigation has discovered.

There may well be unknown unknowns and aspects where current knowledge is incomplete - so what! 

A particular mystery is how the predictable, logical stability we perceive at the molecular level can be derived from the apparent indeterminacy found in the underlying quantum behaviour.

I always find it amusing when you religious chappies reach for 'quantum', and pepper your statements with words like 'mystery' when the going gets tough, but that would be a consequence of the mix of both ignorance and incredulity. Perhaps you should start by explaining the method(s) you've used to demonstrate that 'souls' and real and how they interact with our biology.

So why do some people try to redefine the reality of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".

You do like misrepresenting, Alan: who else here, aside from you, has said that 'free will' is any sort of 'reality'.

Can you not accept the obvious truth that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

No, because your description, above, is incoherent and illogical and is the product of your fallacious thinking.

[Stranger]

So why do some people try to redefine the reality of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".  Can you not accept the obvious truth that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

Back to pointless repetition and preaching, I see.

The fact that we don't understand everything does not make totally baseless, evidence- and reasoning-free fantasies any more believable and it certainly doesn't justify your totally illogical and self-contradictory version of "freedom".

The reality we all experience is just being able to act without outside constraint - it has nothing to do with your self-contradictory version of "freedom" which isn't even imaginable, let alone obvious.

[Outrider]

Bur correlation alone does not prove causation.

No, it doesn't, but a significant body of evidence showing the tightness of the correlation, a conceptual framework in which the phenomena could conceivably result from the correlate, and no unevidenced phenomena or inexplicable elements is as close to proof as it's possible to get.  Any scientific finding is always provisional, but the 'it's just a theory' argument fails to appreciate the level of specificity involved in demonstrating the coincidence of those correlating elements.

If electro chemical activity can generate conscious awareness, it would in theory be possible to reproduce such conscious awareness outside the human brain, but the truth is that we have no idea what comprises conscious awareness, or how it can work in material terms.

That conclusion doesn't follow from that predicate - it is, in theory, possible to reproduce a conscious awareness outside of the human brain, but we'd need a processor approaching that level of complexity which we just don't appear to have access to.   We do have an idea what comprises conscious awareness, which is that it's an emergent property of an extremely complex processor.  That idea might be wrong, but it fits the available evidence and is awaiting sufficient processing power to be able to adequately test it.

O.

[torridon]

So why do some people try to redefine the reality of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".  Can you not accept the obvious truth that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

Despite umpteen requests, we still haven't seen an explanation from you as to how you or indeed anyone could want something they don't want, or prefer something they don't prefer, which is an implication of your notion of freedom.

[Outrider]

One thing which has become apparent in recent posts is the undeniable fact that there is much more to reality than human scientific investigation has discovered.  A particular mystery is how the predictable, logical stability we perceive at the molecular level can be derived from the apparent indeterminacy found in the underlying quantum behaviour.

That's not that much of a mystery - whilst we currently see a random element in exactly how individual quantum phenomena occur, there is a tendency towards particular probabilities over time. Therefore, when billions of quantum interactions are occuring, the variation of randomness tends to even out towards the mean of the underlying probability which makes them virtually indistinguishable at the macroscopic level.

So why do some people try to redefine the reality of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".

It's not 'redefine' it's 'define'.  Science isn't overwriting folklore, it's creating its own body of evidence.  It also isn't concluding 'that's just the way it seems' any more than Christian apologetics is actually going 'yeah, but, magic innit.'

Can you not accept the obvious truth that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

Does the fact that so many people who have obviously spent a considerable amount of time looking at this conclude differently to you at least not make you realise that this is by no means 'obvious'?  It may be that there is some element of consciousness that is complete unseen by current science, that's a possibility - it's not 'obvious', certainly, or we've have seen the evidence of it by now.

Can you not accept:
a) the available evidence does not support your presupposition?
b) the concept of something being both 'will' (i.e. a conscious act based upon prior learning) and 'free' (i.e. independent of prior learning) has inherent self-contradictions that appear to be irreconcilable?

O.
[/quote]

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

One thing which has become apparent in recent posts is the undeniable fact that there is much more to reality than human scientific investigation has discovered.

One of your favourite straw men that. Does it not occur to you that the reason all those scientists do science is precisely because they know already that “there is much more to reality than human scientific investigation has discovered”? If they thought otherwise, what would be the point? 

A particular mystery is how the predictable, logical stability we perceive at the molecular level can be derived from the apparent indeterminacy found in the underlying quantum behaviour.

No it isn’t. Over very large numbers of events the variances in small numbers will tend to produce consistent outcomes. 

So why do some people try to redefine…

It’s not “redefine”, just define. 

…the reality…

Yet again, you’ve simply reified your personal opinion on what “the” reality is despite that faith position being logically impossible . 

…of human free will to fit in with this limited knowledge of reality by concluding that "it is just the way it seems".

For the fairly obvious reasons I’d have thought that just assuming the experience of something must also provide the explanation for it is poor thinking, and that in this case the explanation for it that’s supported by reason and evidence is axiomatically more likely to be correct than your folk-belief that’s logically impossible and that has no evidence whatever to support it.   

Can you not accept the obvious truth…

No doubt this will be one of your personal “obvious truths” that collapse into incoherence as soon as anyone capable of doing so actually thinks about it right?

… that we are free to drive our own thoughts and consciously choose between good and evil, and that this freedom is as yet unexplained by scientific discovery to date?

Yep, thought so. Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself like this?

[Alan Burns]

Can you not accept:
a) the available evidence does not support your presupposition?

The substantial time effort used to deliberately compile such evidence makes it even more obvious that we have the conscious freedom needed to reach these flawed conclusions.

b) the concept of something being both 'will' (i.e. a conscious act based upon prior learning) and 'free' (i.e. independent of prior learning) has inherent self-contradictions that appear to be irreconcilable?

"free" in this instance does not imply independence of prior leaning, which would indeed be self contradictory.  The meaning of "free" in this context is simply the freedom to consciously choose between two or more viable options in thought, word or deed.  My choices are determined by my conscious will at the time I make them - not by prior chains of physically determined cause and effect over which I have no control.

[Stranger]

The substantial time effort used to deliberately compile such evidence makes it even more obvious that we have the conscious freedom needed to reach these flawed conclusions.

Unadulterated drivel. "Freedom" in the way you have defined it is self-contradictory and hence impossible. It is therefore impossible for anything to be evidence for it, let alone just people being able to think and reason, which is compatible with every explanation.

"free" in this instance does not imply independence of prior leaning, which would indeed be self contradictory.  The meaning of "free" in this context is simply the freedom to consciously choose between two or more viable options in thought, word or deed.

And that choice is either entirely due to all the reasons that led up to it or not (and therefore involves randomness). FFS Alan - how many times do you need this repeating before it sinks in? To "consciously choose" makes no difference to the logic - it is entirely consistent with that choice being fully determined by the past events that led to it.

My choices are determined by my conscious will at the time I make them - not by prior chains of physically determined cause and effect over which I have no control.

[irrelevant nonsense deleted]

Thought-free false dichotomy.

What is the point of this mindless, repetition as if nobody had ever addressed your points?

[torridon]

The meaning of "free" in this context is simply the freedom to consciously choose between two or more viable options in thought, word or deed.  My choices are determined by my conscious will at the time I make them - not by prior chains of physically determined cause and effect over which I have no control.

 .. and what your will is at that moment, must be a consequence of the things (in the past) that gave rise to it; if your will has no such derivation then it must be random.

Time for that penny to drop Alan, this is not that difficult, surely ?

[Alan Burns]

No, it doesn't, but a significant body of evidence showing the tightness of the correlation, a conceptual framework in which the phenomena could conceivably result from the correlate, and no unevidenced phenomena or inexplicable elements is as close to proof as it's possible to get.  Any scientific finding is always provisional, but the 'it's just a theory' argument fails to appreciate the level of specificity involved in demonstrating the coincidence of those correlating elements.

Such evidence certainly leads to a conclusion that specific, detectable brain activity is associated with consciously driven choices.  But the limiting factor in this is that we only have means to detect physical activity.  If there is also some none physical element involved in our conscious choices we have no means of detecting it.  We are still left with the problem of how conscious awareness can exist within physical reactions. Using the term "complex" does not explain how conscious awareness can be produced by physical reactions of material elements.

[torridon]

Such evidence certainly leads to a conclusion that specific, detectable brain activity is associated with consciously driven choices.  But the limiting factor in this is that we only have means to detect physical activity.  If there is also some none physical element involved in our conscious choices we have no means of detecting it.  We are still left with the problem of how conscious awareness can exist within physical reactions. Using the term "complex" does not explain how conscious awareness can be produced by physical reactions of material elements.

Suppose your will was 'undetectable', then your motor neurons would be unable to detect your will and you would be paralysed.  That scenario doesn't cut it, you are just clutching at desperate straws.

[Alan Burns]

.. and what your will is at that moment, must be a consequence of the things (in the past) that gave rise to it; if your will has no such derivation then it must be random.

Time for that penny to drop Alan, this is not that difficult, surely ?

But you do not know the true nature of conscious will, or how it works, so you can't just presume it is entirely driven by the past.  My will is certainly influenced by the past, but this influence exists within my present state conscious awareness, and there is much more involved in my conscious choice than memories of past events.