Searching for GOD...

[Outrider]

All computer programs are a reflection of the conscious awareness and conscious choices of the humans responsible for programming them.

That doesn't change the fact that consciousness isn't required for the ability to make choice - you are suggesting that choice itself requires consciousness, and this demonstrably isn't the case.

Whatever "decisions" a program makes will be a result of the conscious intentions derived from human choices.

That's the aim - I can promise you, from experience, it's not always the effect   And, way beyond my programming capacity, there are AI packages which aren't directly programmed, they are given capacity and they learn for themselves.  There is no direct conscious intent on the part of the programmer for a particular choice or outcome, there is simply the construction of a programme that can find its own way.

If you trace the cause and effect chains of physical reactions from the computer output back through time, you will inevitably come to whatever causes conscious choices to occur within the human brain of the programmer, so computer programs alone can offer no insight into the ability of material entities to make choices.

And if you trace the cause and effect chains of physical reactions from the programmer back through time, you will inevitably come to whatever caused them to be the person they were at that moment in time, so we still don't have an origin for 'choice'.

Any computer program is just a reaction to whatever actions were consciously made by the programmer.

Except that any programmer is just a reaction to whatever actions have impacted on the programmer.

O.

[Stranger]

All computer programs are a reflection of the conscious awareness and conscious choices of the humans responsible for programming them.  Whatever "decisions" a program makes will be a result of the conscious intentions derived from human choices.  If you trace the cause and effect chains of physical reactions from the computer output back through time, you will inevitably come to whatever causes conscious choices to occur within the human brain of the programmer, so computer programs alone can offer no insight into the ability of material entities to make choices.  Any computer program is just a reaction to whatever actions were consciously made by the programmer.

Yet again: you cannot redefine the word "choice" to suit your blind faith dogmas. Computers do make choices, as do non-human animals.

This has all been covered so many times before - how about you making a conscious choice to stop robotically repeating things that you already have answers for and actually engage with the arguments?

Two chances of that, eh? Fat and slim...

[Alan Burns]

That doesn't change the fact that consciousness isn't required for the ability to make choice - you are suggesting that choice itself requires consciousness, and this demonstrably isn't the case.

If you try to define choice without conscious awareness, it just becomes a reaction.  The concept of choice requires the conscious awareness of the alternative options available prior to a choice being performed.  Outside conscious awareness, everything is just unintended reactions.

[Outrider]

If you try to define choice without conscious awareness, it just becomes a reaction.

I really don't have a problem with that understanding.

The concept of choice requires the conscious awareness of the alternative options available prior to a choice being performed.  Outside conscious awareness, everything is just unintended reactions.

The classical concept of choice, perhaps, but the evidence suggests that we need to update that definition in light of modern understanding.  You suggest that there is some sort of logical difference between 'conscious awareness' and other decision making processes: what's that difference?  How is it, logically, that 'conscious awareness' can at once be free of prior inputs, but also not random? What is that 'consciousness' acting upon? Where are those influences coming from, and which of them are both not deterministic and not random?

O.

[Stranger]

If you try to define choice without conscious awareness, it just becomes a reaction.

Choices (obviously) are reactions.

The concept of choice requires the conscious awareness of the alternative options available prior to a choice being performed.

This is just a silly attempt to redefine the word - that isn't what it means. Doesn't it give you pause for thought when your argument is so desperately threadbare that you need to pretend a word means something that it doesn't?

All you have to do is use a more precise term like "conscious choice" - but then you'd have less inane and content-free answers to throw at people when they point out all the obvious flaws....

[torridon]

All computer programs are a reflection of the conscious awareness and conscious choices of the humans responsible for programming them.  Whatever "decisions" a program makes will be a result of the conscious intentions derived from human choices.  If you trace the cause and effect chains of physical reactions from the computer output back through time, you will inevitably come to whatever causes conscious choices to occur within the human brain of the programmer, so computer programs alone can offer no insight into the ability of material entities to make choices.  Any computer program is just a reaction to whatever actions were consciously made by the programmer.

So if the moves calculated by a chess program are not really choices, because the chess program is not conscious, then how come you keep claiming that non-human living creatures are 'programmed'. Robins don't make choices over where to build their nest whilst they are unconscious.  Notwithstanding subtleties around consciousness lag, complex decision making in living creatures clearly entails their consciousness, such as it is.  You seem very confused about this.

[ippy]

I loved the crispy noodles and watching them swell up in the pan. That might have been a god that produced them.

I hadn't thought of that, you must be right; they never did put enough rice in the pack though, would that have been the devil?

Regards ippy

[Alan Burns]

I really don't have a problem with that understanding.

The classical concept of choice, perhaps, but the evidence suggests that we need to update that definition in light of modern understanding.  You suggest that there is some sort of logical difference between 'conscious awareness' and other decision making processes: what's that difference?  How is it, logically, that 'conscious awareness' can at once be free of prior inputs, but also not random? What is that 'consciousness' acting upon? Where are those influences coming from, and which of them are both not deterministic and not random?

O.

Our conscious awareness is not free of prior inputs.  It is aware of prior inputs, and they can influence a conscious choice - but not dictate it, and that is what differentiates a choice from an automated reaction.  All the influences exist in our awareness prior to consciously invoking the choice.

[torridon]

Our conscious awareness is not free of prior inputs.  It is aware of prior inputs, and they can influence a conscious choice - but not dictate it, and that is what differentiates a choice from an automated reaction.  All the influences exist in our awareness prior to consciously invoking the choice.

So, think it through, how do you make your mind up ?

[Alan Burns]

So, think it through, how do you make your mind up ?

Qualitative values exist in conscious awareness, not in subconscious reactions.

[torridon]

Qualitative values exist in conscious awareness, not in subconscious reactions.

So, think it through, how do you make your mind up ?

[Alan Burns]

So if the moves calculated by a chess program are not really choices, because the chess program is not conscious, then how come you keep claiming that non-human living creatures are 'programmed'. Robins don't make choices over where to build their nest whilst they are unconscious.  Notwithstanding subtleties around consciousness lag, complex decision making in living creatures clearly entails their consciousness, such as it is.  You seem very confused about this.

You are still confusing instinctive reactions with conscious choices.  A supporter of the TOE should realise that instinctive reactions to sensory data can be programmed by the evolutionary need for survival.  Conscious awareness is needed for choice, not for reaction.

[Alan Burns]

So, think it through, how do you make your mind up ?

By thinking it through 

[Stranger]

Our conscious awareness is not free of prior inputs.  It is aware of prior inputs, and they can influence a conscious choice - but not dictate it, and that is what differentiates a choice from an automated reaction.  All the influences exist in our awareness prior to consciously invoking the choice.

Yet again: So if all the influences don't dictate it, then something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the inputs (including the person making the choice) is involved, which means that ingredient is unconnected to the person or the choice (random).

You keep on running away from tackling that simple logic....

[Stranger]

By thinking it through 

Evasion. Is all that thinking entirely dictated by the prior inputs (including the person who is making the choice) or is some part of it unconnected to the choice or the person?

[torridon]

You are still confusing instinctive reactions with conscious choices.  A supporter of the TOE should realise that instinctive reactions to sensory data can be programmed by the evolutionary need for survival.  Conscious awareness is needed for choice, not for reaction.

Am orangutan does not instinctively know how to prepare its nest.  It takes years of practice watching how its mother does it and by its own trial and error.  Consiousness is needed for this.  Breathing air is instinctive; building a nest isn't, it takes skill.  You don't get to do complex stuff whilst unconscious.  Can you not understand this ?

[torridon]

By thinking it through 

SO, how do you make your mind up when you think things through ?

[ippy]

Evasion. Is all that thinking entirely dictated by the prior inputs (including the person who is making the choice) or is some part of it unconnected to the choice or the person?

No I don't think so Stranger, I think he's socially dogmatically ham strung.

The whole of his life revolves around this imaginary little control man sitting inside his head and the shared knowing looks that pass between his collection of fellow travellers, it seems to me he does understand but can't bear the thought of parting company with his deluded companions and the whole life rejig that would naturally have to follow.

Regards, ippy.

[Outrider]

Our conscious awareness is not free of prior inputs.  It is aware of prior inputs, and they can influence a conscious choice - but not dictate it, and that is what differentiates a choice from an automated reaction.  All the influences exist in our awareness prior to consciously invoking the choice.

Fair enough, prior events have an influence.  What is the rest of the 'choice' process, how is it freed from the constraints of those prior events?

O.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Hello. I thought I would look in as I had missed this place. Glad to see this thread is still going strong  and still seems to be covering the same ground as when I was last here. The continuity is very reassuring - and it appears that no one has changed their position. Or have I missed something and a poster has lost/found a theistic belief? Apologies in advance for the long post.

AB - I heard on a Radio 4 philosophy podcast on free will that Catholic belief includes belief in divine intervention / grace in a person's conscious decision-making process - people are only saved by the grace of God? I was wondering how you thought divine intervention worked in relation to personal accountability for decisions and heaven and hell - e.g. if God does not intervene sufficiently so that the person makes the "right" moral decision where does that leave them - do we view that person as solely responsible for their decision or assume that factors we are not aware of meant they could not make any other decision than the one they made? 

For example this article identified that religious beliefs of theist patients or their surrogate decision-makers was a key influence in decisions about end-of-life care. It says "A study of cancer patients found that both patients and their caregivers rank faith in God as the second most important factor in decision making after the physician’s recommendation".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779068/   

So if someone decides they no longer want treatment - this could be due to God's intervention or God's lack of intervention? If someone decides they want to choose the manner of their death, this could be due to God's intervention or it could be God's lack of intervention? What's your view? Or the view of any other theist.

I am assuming an atheist would dismiss the idea of a divine intervention. But in the process of the brain contemplating its possible choices eg. in the above scenario of end of life decisions I imagine there would be conflicting feelings about the decision and quite possibly theists and atheists may change their minds on their decision many times - any views on how the cognitive, conscious process of the brain contemplating itself trying to make a decision is resolved?

Is the brain's desire for a particular choice over other choices mainly an emotional decision based on conflicting emotions such as how much someone is afraid to die/ afraid to linger suffering in pain or loss of dignity or loss of independence; will miss their loved ones, wants to put off the pain of bereavement to loved ones/ doesn't want to prolong the pain of loved ones through a prolonged terminal illness etc

My daughter is in her second year of a French and Philosophy degree, which has resulted in me discovering a lot more about philosophy than I knew before - it's all very interesting.

[Aruntraveller]

Breaking one of my flexible rules as I don't usually post on the SfG thread, but just to say Hi! to Gabriella, I've missed you!

[Outrider]

I am assuming an atheist would dismiss the idea of a divine intervention. But in the process of the brain contemplating its possible choices eg. in the above scenario of end of life decisions I imagine there would be conflicting feelings about the decision and quite possibly theists and atheists may change their minds on their decision many times - any views on how the cognitive, conscious process of the brain contemplating itself trying to make a decision is resolved?

The way it seems to me, our conscious awareness is a particular form of 'feedback loop' from our subconscious - the bits that we're aware of are a partial echo of things that are happening deeper in our brain, in advance of us becoming conscious of them.  If, therefore, we become aware of a conflict within our thinking, it's because those concepts are being balanced somewhere in our subconscious; once that process is finished, we become aware of what we've decided, but it's still happening at a subconscious level.  It might be that the conscious feedback element of it somehow tips a balance somewhere, but that conscious element is another deterministic piece of brain activity, it's no more free of the laws of physics than any other part of our thinking.

Is the brain's desire for a particular choice over other choices mainly an emotional decision based on conflicting emotions such as how much someone is afraid to die/ afraid to linger suffering in pain or loss of dignity or loss of independence; will miss their loved ones, wants to put off the pain of bereavement to loved ones/ doesn't want to prolong the pain of loved ones through a prolonged terminal illness etc

What differentiates an emotional thought from others?

My daughter is in her second year of a French and Philosophy degree, which has resulted in me discovering a lot more about philosophy than I knew before - it's all very interesting.

My eldest finished Philosophy and Ethics at Chichester - all it seemed to do for him was reinforce his need for specificity in definitions of words and expand his vocabulary a little more  As for the 'Ethics' part, I'm not saying that he failed, or it's not fit for purpose, but he seems intent on voting Tory in December... 

O.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Breaking one of my flexible rules as I don't usually post on the SfG thread, but just to say Hi! to Gabriella, I've missed you!

Thank you TV - I've missed you too - though have been popping in to read sometimes 

[Alan Burns]

SO, how do you make your mind up when you think things through ?

As you have stated many times, your choice will be dictated by what most appeals to you.
But the quantity of and quality of appeal is a consciously perceived value.  It is not just a subconscious reaction which pops into your conscious awareness.  You along with others on this forum have concluded that subconscious brain activity must dictate our choices before we are consciously aware of them.  You can't reconcile these two views.

[ekim]

I am assuming an atheist would dismiss the idea of a divine intervention. But in the process of the brain contemplating its possible choices eg. in the above scenario of end of life decisions I imagine there would be conflicting feelings about the decision and quite possibly theists and atheists may change their minds on their decision many times - any views on how the cognitive, conscious process of the brain contemplating itself trying to make a decision is resolved?

Is the brain's desire for a particular choice over other choices mainly an emotional decision based on conflicting emotions such as how much someone is afraid to die/ afraid to linger suffering in pain or loss of dignity or loss of independence; will miss their loved ones, wants to put off the pain of bereavement to loved ones/ doesn't want to prolong the pain of loved ones through a prolonged terminal illness etc

Well, Jesus was a theist and was said to be sorrow stricken at the thought of his death.  He asked his God for his particular destiny to be averted but only if it conforms to God's will.  The decision was resolved by his God and a painful death followed.  Contemplation in the older sense of the word was more about sustaining an inner space of stillness rather than engaging in thought and emotional activity.  Such peace is not easy to attain.