Searching for GOD...

[Outrider]

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.

You're confusing correlation with causation - if the activity in the brain is causing the life/consciousness, then of course the lack of brain activity correlates with a lack of life/consciousness.  There is a viable model for how brain activity produces consciousness - not a strongly evidenced one, but a logically consistent one with no obvious contra-indications currently.

Where is the evidence for consciousness without the brain activity to suggest that it could be somehow put into a brain to make it active?

O.

[torridon]

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.

The concept of a brain that would need a brain to operate it is inherently flawed.  That would not be so much evidence of intelligent design, more like a total design fail.

[Bramble]

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

It's not always obvious.

[Sebastian Toe]

It's not always obvious.

(Crying with laughter emoji).

[Sriram]

You're confusing correlation with causation - if the activity in the brain is causing the life/consciousness, then of course the lack of brain activity correlates with a lack of life/consciousness.  There is a viable model for how brain activity produces consciousness - not a strongly evidenced one, but a logically consistent one with no obvious contra-indications currently.

Where is the evidence for consciousness without the brain activity to suggest that it could be somehow put into a brain to make it active?

O.

It is something we learn from the fact that we are independent of the computer we use and that we have intelligence and consciousness independent of the computer intelligence.

An alien on the other side of this exchange could imagine that the computer is by itself communicating with it...when this is not really so.

So, our Consciousness also could be independent of our body and brain. And events like NDE's confirm precisely that.

 

[Sriram]

The concept of a brain that would need a brain to operate it is inherently flawed.  That would not be so much evidence of intelligent design, more like a total design fail.

What do you mean 'need a brain to operate a brain'??!!    You are so fixated with physicalism that you cannot imagine consciousness and intelligence independent of a physical brain.

We don't need a brain to operate a brain. We need an amorphous consciousness that can use the brain....that is all.  BTW, amorphous does not necessarily mean something formless, but something that is more fluid and plastic than the physical body. 

[torridon]

What do you mean 'need a brain to operate a brain'??!!    You are so fixated with physicalism that you cannot imagine consciousness and intelligence independent of a physical brain.

We don't need a brain to operate a brain. We need an amorphous consciousness that can use the brain....that is all.  BTW, amorphous does not necessarily mean something formless, but something that is more fluid and plastic than the physical body.

I'm not so much 'fixated with physicalism' as having a preference for logic and observation.  Brains exist to optimise choice at whatever levels of complexity the organism operates at.  A bumblebee's brain helps it make choices about where to fly for nectar and how to interact with other members of the colony. A Forex traders brain enables him/her to make smart choices over when to close his position. There'd be no point in having a brain if it was incapable of decision making at levels appropriate to the organism and the claim that must be some amorphous intelligence that knows better about social bee behaviour and better about forex markets such that it effectively tells the brain what choices to make is both unevidenced and bizarre.  If this was the case, then we wouldn't need brains.

[torridon]

So, our Consciousness also could be independent of our body and brain. And events like NDE's confirm precisely that.

No NDEs do not confirm that.  Some people suggest that, not the same thing at all.  There has never been any empirical justification that the experiences reported by dying patients are anything more than the phenomenology of a dying brain.

[Sriram]

I'm not so much 'fixated with physicalism' as having a preference for logic and observation.  Brains exist to optimise choice at whatever levels of complexity the organism operates at.  A bumblebee's brain helps it make choices about where to fly for nectar and how to interact with other members of the colony. A Forex traders brain enables him/her to make smart choices over when to close his position. There'd be no point in having a brain if it was incapable of decision making at levels appropriate to the organism and the claim that must be some amorphous intelligence that knows better about social bee behaviour and better about forex markets such that it effectively tells the brain what choices to make is both unevidenced and bizarre.  If this was the case, then we wouldn't need brains.

Not necessary that the amorphous entity should know better about anything. It is just experiencing the world through the body.

We don't know much about the under sea life forms. When we use a suitable pressurized suit or some vehicle to go to the sea bed.....we are not in our element but we still exist independent of the suit. 

There is nothing bizarre about it. That is the only hypothesis that explains Life. Explaining everything through chance and determinism is bizarre. 

[Stranger]

So, our Consciousness also could be independent of our body and brain.

Yes - and the world's governments could be being run by alien lizard people and gravity could be caused by subatomic gravity fairies. The problem being that we have no reason to think that any of these possibilities are actually the case (yours included).

And events like NDE's confirm precisely that.

No, they don't.

[Stranger]

That is the only hypothesis that explains Life.

I'm sorry but your hand-waving, baseless assertions are not a hypothesis, and they don't explain life at all. What's more we have perfectly good and well tested theories about life, backed up by plentiful evidence, and no evidence that anything else is required.

Explaining everything through chance and determinism is bizarre.

 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

What do you mean 'need a brain to operate a brain'??!!    You are so fixated with physicalism that you cannot imagine consciousness and intelligence independent of a physical brain.

I know that you don't know what a straw man argument is, but I can't tell whether you genuinely can't tell the difference between possible and probable either. People can imagine anything you like. What that doesn't do though is give you licence to assert the imagined thing to be therefore real.   

We don't need a brain to operate a brain. We need an amorphous consciousness that can use the brain....that is all.  BTW, amorphous does not necessarily mean something formless, but something that is more fluid and plastic than the physical body.

It's called consciousness - an emergent property of brains. It's not difficult to grasp.

[torridon]

Not necessary that the amorphous entity should know better about anything. It is just experiencing the world through the body.

We don't know much about the under sea life forms. When we use a suitable pressurized suit or some vehicle to go to the sea bed.....we are not in our element but we still exist independent of the suit. 

There is nothing bizarre about it. That is the only hypothesis that explains Life. Explaining everything through chance and determinism is bizarre.

Well you seem to be backtracking now, earlier you were claiming that brains don't make choices implying that this amorphous being inside is doing the choosing.  If this amorphous entity is just sitting there, experiencing the world, but not doing anything about it, what is the point ? Does a bumble bee have an amorphous invisible bumble bee inside it, doing nothing other than enjoying the being of being a bee ?  Where did this amorphous entity come from before the bee was alive ?

This thinking manifests the confusion arising out of trying to shoehorn scientific speculation around the fundamental nature of consciousness into your ideas around spiritual evolution, reincarnation etc.  There's a big conceptual gap between ideas like panpsychism or Hoffman's conscious realism, both of which are monist accounts of reality,  and your ideas, which are fundamentally duallist. You need to find a way to bridge that gap.

[Alan Burns]

It's called consciousness - an emergent property of brains. It's not difficult to grasp.

So you keep saying, but without any evidence other than correlation it is not easy to grasp, because there is nothing which can define how material reactions alone can generate an entity of conscious awareness.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So you keep saying, but without any evidence other than correlation it is not easy to grasp, because there is nothing which can define how material reactions alone can generate an entity of conscious awareness.

You’ve had this mistake explained to you many times. Why do you keep repeating it?

1. Ultimately all causal explanations are correlations. If I hit a nail with a hammer and it goes into the wood that correlates with the explanation that the hammer drove the nail into the wood. That doesn’t however eliminate the possibility that invisible elves did it instead. 

2. The “correlation” of consciousness as an emergent property of brains is substantial because that’s what all the evidence and reasoning to hand tells us. That’s not to say that “souls”, magic dust or mind-controlling unicorns for which there’s no evidence at all necessarily might not be in play, but absent evidence or logic for any of these things there’s no reason to doubt the explanation that best fits the facts.

3. Consciousness is “defined”. Just look it up. What you’re trying to say here is that the explanation for it is incomplete. No-one denies that though. The explanation for gravity is incomplete too. Should we just revert to pixie theory for gravity instead then? 

4. If ever, ever you bothered to find out even the slightest thing about the phenomenon of emergence you’d see why you fundamentally misunderstand what it entails. That though would be a terrifying prospect for you given your decades long investment in some very bad ideas, so dishonesty is the better option isn’t it.

[Stranger]

So you keep saying, but without any evidence other than correlation it is not easy to grasp, because there is nothing which can define how material reactions alone can generate an entity of conscious awareness.

Whereas you have a full definition of how an entity of conscious awareness is generated.



Oh.... hang on.... you don't, do you? Just self-contradictory blind faith without a hint of a shred of evidence or logic.     

[Sriram]

Well you seem to be backtracking now, earlier you were claiming that brains don't make choices implying that this amorphous being inside is doing the choosing.  If this amorphous entity is just sitting there, experiencing the world, but not doing anything about it, what is the point ? Does a bumble bee have an amorphous invisible bumble bee inside it, doing nothing other than enjoying the being of being a bee ?  Where did this amorphous entity come from before the bee was alive ?

This thinking manifests the confusion arising out of trying to shoehorn scientific speculation around the fundamental nature of consciousness into your ideas around spiritual evolution, reincarnation etc.  There's a big conceptual gap between ideas like panpsychism or Hoffman's conscious realism, both of which are monist accounts of reality,  and your ideas, which are fundamentally duallist. You need to find a way to bridge that gap.

How backtracking?  I still say that brains don't make decisions....just as computer hardware don't make decisions. They only facilitate decisions and communications and so on.  The actual decision maker in the user or the Consciousness.

[torridon]

How backtracking?  I still say that brains don't make decisions....just as computer hardware don't make decisions. They only facilitate decisions and communications and so on.  The actual decision maker in the user or the Consciousness.

Now you are backtracking on your backtracking.  So where does knowledge reside, in the brain, or in the amorphous entity or both ?  On what basis would the amorphous entity make choices ?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

How backtracking?  I still say that brains don't make decisions....just as computer hardware don't make decisions. They only facilitate decisions and communications and so on.  The actual decision maker in the user or the Consciousness.

Consciousness being an emergent property of brains. So?

Oh, and any progress yet on your (false) claim that people can't imagine certain things and those things therefore being true?

Something?

Anything?

[Sriram]

Now you are backtracking on your backtracking.  So where does knowledge reside, in the brain, or in the amorphous entity or both ?  On what basis would the amorphous entity make choices ?

When you use a computer...where does the knowledge reside?  This is not very difficult, torridon...!

[Nearly Sane]

When you use a computer...where does the knowledge reside?  This is not very difficult, torridon...!

Using analogy as an argument has a number of problems. It's worth looking at the short wiki summary here. It's the sort of thing people do when they describe DNA as a 'code' which is an analogy to help understand DNA and someone then goes 'Oh, so there must be a coder!' which the analogy does not support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

[Sriram]

Using analogy as an argument has a number of problems. It's worth looking at the short wiki summary here. It's the sort of thing people do when they describe DNA as a 'code' which is an analogy to help understand DNA and someone then goes 'Oh, so there must be a coder!' which the analogy does not support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

Oh..oh....!  Yet another fallacy then...!?     

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Oh..oh....!  Yet another fallacy then...!?     

Your posts here are littered with fallacies. Fallacious arguments are wrong arguments. What make you think they cease to be wrong when you attempt them?

[Nearly Sane]

Oh..oh....!  Yet another fallacy then...!?     

Not really a fallacy as such as you would have seen if you had read the link, rather it's a bad argument because the analogy doesn't support the argument. And even twere it to have been a fallacy, simply throwing your hands up and refusing to point out where your argument isn't a fallacy makes your post worthless.

[torridon]

So you keep saying, but without any evidence other than correlation it is not easy to grasp, because there is nothing which can define how material reactions alone can generate an entity of conscious awareness.

Even if we don't fully know how mind arises from matter, or matter arises from mind, clearly it happens somehow, and declaring it magic is a cheap way out of trying to understand it.  Which is all you are doing.  And if I am conscious, and I seem to be, and my son is conscious, as he seems to be, and my dog is conscious, as he appears to be, then whatever explanation we have for consciousness, must apply across the board to all creatures with sense organs and not just humans.