Searching for GOD...

[Outrider]

But how can you presume that conscious human will is entirely predefined by past events.

Or has random elements... because there doesn't seem to be anything else.  This 'conscious free will' that you're looking to introduce seems like some sort of uncaused but not random element, which just makes no sense to me.

As I have repeatedly said, we are consciously aware of past events in our present state of mind, and they can have influence on our conscious choices, but they do not dictate - we are free to choose by an act of human will emanating from the conscious awareness which is "you".

You keep saying it, but you don't justify the claim and don't undermine any of the problems that have been pointed out.  How do you square this with the evidence that what you think are conscious decisions seem to be you consciously becoming aware of a decision that's already been subconsciously made?

You imply that our conscious awareness and associated thoughts are restricted to the mechanistic chains of cause and effect we perceive in material reactions - but without knowing what comprises our consciousness and how it manifests within our material brain you can't make such presuptions, particularly when we have the conscious ability to consider the nature of our own thoughts.

I conclude that our conscious awareness and thoughts are probably restricted to mechanistic chains of cause and effect because:
- all the parts of the system that we're aware of are mechanistic in that sense; and
- the model does not need anything else to make it work; and
- there are no observed phenomena that model does not currently explain.

To an extent that's an Occam's Razor argument, I appreciate, which isn't strong except when put up against the entirely unevidenced 'spiritual' explanations which seem to be maintained as a response to a distaste for the implications of the deterministic model.

O.

[torridon]

You continue to ignore the role of conscious awareness in our human behaviour.
Microprocessors have no conscious awareness and just behave in accordance with physically predetermined reactions within the machine.
Conscious awareness is not a tangible entity in itself - it is awareness of the tangible entities contained within our human brain.  Our conscious awareness always exists within its own present state.  It perceives time and events from the state of neuron activity in our brain.  In effect it is a spectator of time, not necessarily an intergral part of our time dependent material universe.

This makes no sense.  Brains procure perceptions, brains experience perception, this is what they do, amongst other things.  If there were some secondary entity perceiving the brain, then they would be perceiving a tangle of axons, dendrites, synapses, neurons etc.  To experience what a brain is experiencing, you have to be that brain, not view it from a third person aspect.

[Outrider]

'Brain is deciding'...??!!  Really?!    You guys seriously think that the brain is the deciding agency?

Unbelievable!

I know, how ridiculous to rely on the demonstrable strong correlation between a measurable activity and the observed phenomenon when you could hypothesis untestable non-dimensional divine contributions with no apparent mechanism of activation instead.

What was I thinking... oh, that's right, I was actually thinking rather than uncritically accepting pre-scientific folklore and then trying to wrap it in pseudo-scientific woo to give it a 21st century vajazzle of technobabble.

Yes, I think the brain is 'deciding'.  I think the brain is a deterministic organic machine and 'we' are a feedback mechanism within the software running on that machine.

O.

O.

[Sriram]

I know, how ridiculous to rely on the demonstrable strong correlation between a measurable activity and the observed phenomenon when you could hypothesis untestable non-dimensional divine contributions with no apparent mechanism of activation instead.

What was I thinking... oh, that's right, I was actually thinking rather than uncritically accepting pre-scientific folklore and then trying to wrap it in pseudo-scientific woo to give it a 21st century vajazzle of technobabble.

Yes, I think the brain is 'deciding'.  I think the brain is a deterministic organic machine and 'we' are a feedback mechanism within the software running on that machine.

O.


O.

I am not questioning how the brain works etc.etc.  That is fine.

It is like asserting that a car 'decides' where to go just because you see the car going here to there and you know the mechanism  by which it works.  'Oh...the car goes here and there because of the wheels and engine and crankshaft '.

There is actually a human driving it ...you know (yes...even in a driver less car)! 

 

[torridon]

I am not questioning how the brain works etc.etc.  That is fine.

It is like asserting that a car 'decides' where to go just because you see the car going here to there and you know the mechanism  by which it works.  'Oh...the car goes here and there because of the wheels and engine and crankshaft '.

There is actually a human driving it ...you know (yes...even in a driver less car)!

No, in a driverless car, there is no human driver, it is the car that makes the choices itself.  There'd be no point in designing a driverless car that needed a human to make its choices for it.

[Stranger]

(yes...even in a driver less car)!

Err no. And there is no evidence that the brain needs anything to drive it either.

[Alan Burns]

That does not present a problem for a deterministic account of mind.  You would have had some reason to force yourself to eat it, otherwise your behaviour would be random.  If you don't accept that 'conscious will' is random, then that means implicitly that you believe you had a reason, and that reason/desire supervened over your dislike of the food.  We make such compromise choices all the time, it does not require supernatural abilities, we are still just identifying the course of action with the greatest overall appeal and we cannot choose how much something appeals to us.

But what does require supernatural ability is your convoluted attempt to explain what determines your conscious will.  Reasons certainly exist in your conscious awareness, but your attempts to explain how they just bubble up into your conscious awareness from predetermined subconscious brain activity shows substantial evidence that your reasoning is consciously driven - not predetermined from beyond your conscious awareness.

[Sriram]

No, in a driverless car, there is no human driver, it is the car that makes the choices itself.  There'd be no point in designing a driverless car that needed a human to make its choices for it.

The software, the hardware, GPS are all the human factors. The car did not create itself..!!   

We have discussed all this before...!!  If someone is killed, they will not arrest the car...for heavens sake!

[Stranger]

But what does require supernatural ability is your convoluted attempt to explain what determines your conscious will.  Reasons certainly exist in your conscious awareness, but your attempts to explain how they just bubble up into your conscious awareness from predetermined subconscious brain activity shows substantial evidence that your reasoning is consciously driven - not predetermined from beyond your conscious awareness.

Yet again: nobody disputes our abilities, so they are simply not evidence for your explanation of them. It is a lie to claim that they are.

[Sriram]

Err no. And there is no evidence that the brain needs anything to drive it either.

It is common sense. The brain of a living person and that of a dead one are different. A dead brain is just a piece of rotting flesh.

Life (or Consciousness) makes the difference.

[Stranger]

The software, the hardware, GPS are all the human factors. The car did not create itself..!!   

Neither did you create your brain or your body.   

[Sriram]

Neither did you create your brain or your body.   

Yes....good point..! So, what does that tell you?

Let me spell it out.  We are created just as the car is also created. 

[Stranger]

It is common sense.

Well that's really reliable, isn't it?  Not.

The brain of a living person and that of a dead one are different.

Yes - physically different.

Life (or Consciousness) makes the difference.

Life is the functioning state of an organic system. Conciousness is not the same as life and the evidence tells us that it is produced by functioning brains.

[Stranger]

Yes....good point..! So, what does that tell you?

Let me spell it out.  We are created just as the car is also created.

Yes - the car was designed and built by humans and humans were "designed" and built by evolution.

[torridon]

The software, the hardware, GPS are all the human factors. The car did not create itself..!!   

We have discussed all this before...!!  If someone is killed, they will not arrest the car...for heavens sake!

That's largely irrelevant.  The designers of a self driving car set broad design parameters and boundaries in the initial software but they are not making detail decisions out on the road.  The car does that on its own, its software having evolved sufficiently through machine learning for it to be let out on the highway unaccompanied.

A bit like me, in fact.

[Sriram]

Exactly...! The car has evolved...through intelligent intervention. So have we!

[Alan Burns]

I am not questioning how the brain works etc.etc.  That is fine.

It is like asserting that a car 'decides' where to go just because you see the car going here to there and you know the mechanism  by which it works.  'Oh...the car goes here and there because of the wheels and engine and crankshaft '.

There is actually a human driving it ...you know (yes...even in a driver less car)!

Just taking this analogy a little further, imagine an alien intelligence analysing what is observed on a car production line.  They would correctly verify that every element in the car's manufacture had a physically predetermined cause.  And each of these predetermined causes can be traced back through cause and effect over many hundreds or thousands of events to come to the justifiable conclusion that cars are just a natural product of this universe.  But if you were able to trace the cause and effect chains far enough back you would inevitably come across events deep within human brains which were the ultimate cause  - not only of the car's original conception but of the ongoing tweeks and improvements in the later models.  All ultimately derived from acts of human will.  So in examining the evolution of life on this planet, we correctly see that naturally occurring events are responsible for every stage of the development of life, but what we can't see is the trace of these events through pre determined cause and effect to an ultimate cause. We can of course presume that the ultimate cause goes all the way back to an immense explosion of energy.  But the evidence of human free will being able to produce and develop cars gives rise to the possibility of God's free will being able to nurture and develop life as we know it by intelligent intervention.

[Outrider]

I am not questioning how the brain works etc.etc.  That is fine.

It is like asserting that a car 'decides' where to go just because you see the car going here to there and you know the mechanism  by which it works.  'Oh...the car goes here and there because of the wheels and engine and crankshaft '.

There is actually a human driving it ...you know (yes...even in a driver less car)!

A measurable, definable, testable, demonstrable human, yes.  As opposed to an alleged 'spiritual' consciousness-input which exists outside of any dimension we can test and which interacts somehow in not currently but theoretically undetectable ways leaving no trace of the act...

Your suggestion isn't that there's a human driving the car, it's there's a hobgoblin in the nth dimension telekinetically guiding the car by manipulating the human without the human being aware of it and without creating any measurable forces on any of the equipment involved...

O.

[torridon]

It is common sense. The brain of a living person and that of a dead one are different. A dead brain is just a piece of rotting flesh.

Life (or Consciousness) makes the difference.

What doesn't make sense is the claim that a brain needs in effect another brain to 'drive' it.  That would be a pointless design concept which would entail another brain required to drive the driving brain and then another one to drive that. As a design paradigm, it is fatally flawed

[torridon]

Exactly...! The car has evolved...through intelligent intervention. So have we!

I came about through entirely natural processes.  My mum and dad did not have supernatural powers.

[torridon]

But what does require supernatural ability is your convoluted attempt to explain what determines your conscious will.  Reasons certainly exist in your conscious awareness, but your attempts to explain how they just bubble up into your conscious awareness from predetermined subconscious brain activity shows substantial evidence that your reasoning is consciously driven - not predetermined from beyond your conscious awareness.

That doesn't make sense.  That things 'bubble up' from subconscious to conscious is just a colloquial observation of how mind works and this view is supported by the relevant available research.  Trying to claim the opposite is to imply a form of downward or backward causation wherein the effect drives the cause, or the derived alters that which it is derived from.  That is an irrational position.

[Stranger]

Exactly...! The car has evolved...through intelligent intervention. So have we!

So you assert. However, there is no actual evidence for intelligence in evolution, and it doesn't need it. The process of evolution by natural selection explains the complexities beautifully and simply.

[Stranger]

But the evidence of human free will being able to produce and develop cars gives rise to the possibility of God's free will being able to nurture and develop life as we know it by intelligent intervention.

Or the intervention of multi-dimensional purple pixies called Eric. The problem is that the pixies have exactly as much supporting evidence and reasoning as your god (none at all).

[Sriram]

I came about through entirely natural processes.  My mum and dad did not have supernatural powers.

You are unable to get out of the 'supernatural' idea...aren't you?!

Why couldn't we have evolved through intelligent intervention also through 'natural' powers. Just because you understand only certain things as 'natural' doesn't mean that's all it is.
 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Why couldn't we have evolved through intelligent intervention also through 'natural' powers. Just because you understand only certain things as 'natural' doesn't mean that's all it is.

Still digging then. No-one says we couldn't, any more than they say that there couldn't be leprechauns leaving pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. What thinking people actually say though is that there's no evidence for "intelligent intervention" and no gap in the perfectly adequate naturalistic explanation of evolution that such a thing would be required to fill.

It's not difficult. Really.