Searching for GOD...

[torridon]

If you can't even imagine the power of your own conscious will, I despair of ever convincing you of the reality of God's existence.

You haven't presented any methodology by which you think the 'conscious self' resolves choices.  Just insisting it is a reality that we all experience is not a coherent description of how it works. I'm quite happy with my own understanding of how I resolve choice.

[Alan Burns]

To walk across a tightrope clearly it would be a good idea to be fully awake and alert.  That doesn't amount to a challenge to the observation that consciousness derives from non-conscious mental processes. We don't have control over how we perceive the world, why, because our conscious self is a product of non conscious processes.  I don't get any say in whether to see the sky as blue or not. Any good optical illusion is evidence that 'we' are the product of processes over which we have no control.  Even when we 'know', intellectually, that our senses are being fooled, we cannot force ourselves to see correctly.  Our conscious self has no control over its own provenance.  If our conscious self in a strict sense really was the driver of choice as Alan likes to claim, then we would be able to choose to experience the world as is, we would be able to see past illusions, choosing to experience things correctly.  But we cannot do this, having no control over subliminal processes of mind.

It is a pity that you cannot comprehend the obvious control you must have used within your conscious mind to compose this thoughtful post.

[Stranger]

It is a pity that you cannot comprehend the obvious control you must have used within your conscious mind to compose this thoughtful post.

All that is obvious is that we can think and express ourselves. There is nothing at all obvious about your contradictory assertions about how that works. Just repeating that it's obvious, or demonstrable, when it clearly isn't, will not change that fact.

[ekim]

(1)  To walk across a tightrope clearly it would be a good idea to be fully awake and alert.  That doesn't amount to a challenge to the observation that consciousness derives from non-conscious mental processes.
(2)  We don't have control over how we perceive the world, why, because our conscious self is a product of non conscious processes.  I don't get any say in whether to see the sky as blue or not. Any good optical illusion is evidence that 'we' are the product of processes over which we have no control.  Even when we 'know', intellectually, that our senses are being fooled, we cannot force ourselves to see correctly.  Our conscious self has no control over its own provenance.  If our conscious self in a strict sense really was the driver of choice as Alan likes to claim, then we would be able to choose to experience the world as is, we would be able to see past illusions, choosing to experience things correctly.  But we cannot do this, having no control over subliminal processes of mind.

(1) I doubt whether anybody really knows what consciousness is.  It could be said that the observer of non-conscious processes is 'consciousness' which is capable of observing mental processes but cannot observe its own nature.
(2)As I said in a post to enki, I don't  subscribe to the view that consciousness is a controlling mechanism.  It appears to have something of a receptive nature and maybe the end product of what it receives is dependant upon the processes responsible for that end product.  If, to coin a Biblical phrase, it sees through a glass darkly, it is the medium which distorts rather than the consciousness.

[torridon]

It is a pity that you cannot comprehend the obvious control you must have used within your conscious mind to compose this thoughtful post.

What makes you think I cannot comprehend that ?  Of course I can understand these things at the everyday common sense level. I can control my fingers as they type on the keyboard, an elephant can control its trunk.  I can push two apples together to make them touch.  Oh, hang on a minute.... you see, there is always a subtler understanding of these things to be had for those curious to a dig a little deeper.  Do I really control which words come into my mind as I work my way along this sentence ? I rather think my subconscious mind is opaque; there are tens of thousands of words, down there, not always in conscious mind, so looking for the next word in the sentence is something like a vague pull request, and 'I' gratefully receive the words that lower levels of mind choose to yield up to me.  And when a selection of possible words have arrived in working memory, I still have to resolve the choice of best wording, and we evaluate each word against an inner cognitive mapping that we have built up over time to see which combination is a best fit to requirement.

Much of this is not really under conscious control.  If you don't believe that, then try this experiment : at 2pm this afternoon, for 10 minutes, forget which country London is in.  Or conversely, remember something that you cannot remember.  Bet you can't do it, why, because the conscious 'you' is not really in control at all.

[Outrider]

As I said previously,  I fully agree that conscious choices are determined.  If the determination involves a solely physical process, then a choice will be an entirely predetermined reaction defined by chains of physical cause and effect. 

However, in considering what I perceive to be the spiritual nature of our conscious awareness, such awareness will by definition be consciously aware of reasons prior to invoking a choice.  Such a scenario leads to the choice being determined in real time rather than being predetermined by past events - hence defining the difference between choice and reaction, which most people would agree to reflect reality.

I don't see how moving the process away from the purely physical, though, removes the fundamental issue that any individual decision is at best a composite of deterministic or random elements - which still undermines the claim towards free will.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Much of this is not really under conscious control.  If you don't believe that, then try this experiment : at 2pm this afternoon, for 10 minutes, forget which country London is in.  Or conversely, remember something that you cannot remember.  Bet you can't do it, why, because the conscious 'you' is not really in control at all.

Of course the conscious "me" is in control of what I choose to do, think or say.  It would be impossible for me to try any experiment if I did not have the conscious control to "try" it.  We cannot control the contents of our memory, but we do have conscious control of memory recall.  And we do have control of our imagination - which is what you used to think up this hypothetical experiment. It was you who chose to think up this experiment, and thus aptly demonstrate your conscious ability to exert control.

[Stranger]

Of course the conscious "me" is in control of what I choose to do, think or say.
...
It was you who chose to think up this experiment, and thus aptly demonstrate your conscious ability to exert control.

Actually Alan, it matters not one jot to what extent the conscious "me" is in control, your assertions about how it makes choices (not fully determined by their antecedents and not involving randomness) are still contradictory and they are certainly not obvious or demonstrable.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You still do not seem to understand, Blue.

Perhaps if you finally managed to set out a method to take you from how things feel at an experiential level to how things are at an explanatory level there’d actually be something to understand.
 

You are the cause, not the effect - no magic involved.

The “magic” is you just dropping “soul” into your claims while failing to provide any means at all of investigating that claim.

Perhaps you do nor realise just how powerful you are!

I did open a jar of pickled onions for Mrs B this Christmas – is that powerful enough for you?

If you can't even imagine the power of your own conscious will, I despair of ever convincing you of the reality of God's existence.

You should despair of that because so far at least you’ve never managed an argument to justify your claim “god” that isn’t flat wrong. If you want others to take you seriously, why not start with finding some arguments to validate your beliefs that aren’t abjectly, disastrously false? Surely you must have at least one such in the locker mustn’t you, if only to justify your beliefs to yourself?

Mustn’t you?

[torridon]

Of course the conscious "me" is in control of what I choose to do, think or say.  It would be impossible for me to try any experiment if I did not have the conscious control to "try" it.  We cannot control the contents of our memory, but we do have conscious control of memory recall.  And we do have control of our imagination - which is what you used to think up this hypothetical experiment. It was you who chose to think up this experiment, and thus aptly demonstrate your conscious ability to exert control.

All very well, but that fails to take account of my reply #38170.  Clearly to walk a tightrope would require us to be conscious; similarly to engage in a thought experiment as in trying to forget something to order, also requires us to be conscious. But these thing do not constitute a challenge to our understanding that consciousness derives from non-conscious processes.  Somehow we have to square those two seemingly irreconcilable observations. We feel like our conscious self is in control, yet it cannot be if it is derived from preconscious processes of which we have no direct knowledge and over which we have no control. 

[ekim]

All very well, but that fails to take account of my reply #38170.  Clearly to walk a tightrope would require us to be conscious; similarly to engage in a thought experiment as in trying to forget something to order, also requires us to be conscious. But these thing do not constitute a challenge to our understanding that consciousness derives from non-conscious processes.  Somehow we have to square those two seemingly irreconcilable observations. We feel like our conscious self is in control, yet it cannot be if it is derived from preconscious processes of which we have no direct knowledge and over which we have no control.

I think that you will both have to accept that there is unlikely to be a reconciliation of the 'spiritual' interpretation and the scientific interpretation.  The scientific one  suggests that consciousness is an evolved property of matter/energy systems and the spiritual one that it is, was and always will be present and is analogically named as 'spirit'.   The scientific method is to analytically investigate it objectively and the spiritual approach is to seek communion with it as subject and ultimately is a way of living rather than a way of investigating.

[Sriram]

I think that you will both have to accept that there is unlikely to be a reconciliation of the 'spiritual' interpretation and the scientific interpretation.  The scientific one  suggests that consciousness is an evolved property of matter/energy systems and the spiritual one that it is, was and always will be present and is analogically named as 'spirit'.   The scientific method is to analytically investigate it objectively and the spiritual approach is to seek communion with it as subject and ultimately is a way of living rather than a way of investigating.

There is no reason why the spiritual view and the scientific view cannot be reconciled.  The reality is the same.  It is just about a difference in perspective.

One view is that the Singularity came first and then the universe, then the earth, the chemical compounds and then Life, leading to....complex life forms and then consciousness.  Objective reality comes first from which subjective aspects arise.

On the other hand, some scientists themselves take the view that it is Consciousness that comes first from which other things get created. Subjectivity come first from which objective reality gets generated. 

The difference is not in what we see or experience. It is about which aspect of reality generates which.

[Outrider]

There is no reason why the spiritual view and the scientific view cannot be reconciled.  The reality is the same.  It is just about a difference in perspective.

Assuming that they are both individually valid, of course.

One view is that the Singularity came first and then the universe, then the earth, the chemical compounds and then Life, leading to....complex life forms and then consciousness.  Objective reality comes first from which subjective aspects arise.

By 'the Singularity' are you meaning the intense energy/matter rich state that was present immediately before the Big Bang?  That's my take on this, and that broadly lines up with my understanding of the conventional scientific consensus on the early universe - of course, that manifestly fails to say anything (because we lack any information) on what existed 'before' (perhaps 'outside'?) that as an arena for that event to occur in.  That 'singularity' marks the beginning of our universe, but we have no way to say what reality might or might not exist outside of our universe.

On the other hand, some scientists themselves take the view that it is Consciousness that comes first from which other things get created. Subjectivity come first from which objective reality gets generated.

Some scientists might take that view, but I've not seen any reputable scientific papers that suggest when they are doing so it's a judgement based upon the evidence and experimentation - at best it's highly conjectural hypotheses, but more often it's either a personal spiritual stance or it's the sort of quackery that we get from the Deepak Chopra's of the world misrepresenting actual science.

O.

The difference is not in what we see or experience. It is about which aspect of reality generates which.
[/quote]

[Sriram]

Some scientists might take that view, but I've not seen any reputable scientific papers that suggest when they are doing so it's a judgement based upon the evidence and experimentation - at best it's highly conjectural hypotheses, but more often it's either a personal spiritual stance or it's the sort of quackery that we get from the Deepak Chopra's of the world misrepresenting actual science.

O.

But that's so easy isn't it.  Just keep dismissing ideas as this and that.....

Try this...

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/08/why-some-scientists-believe-the-universe-is-conscious/

**********

in a universe governed by uncertainty principles rather than hard facts, what is the “material” in materialism? There is no good materialist theory of consciousness; far from it, an article in Chronicles of Higher Education last year labeled the current research a “bizarre” field of science.

Consciousness depends on the brain, yes. But one may as well say that a student’s essay depends on her laptop. The laptop enables an essay that it does not create. Her ideas start elsewhere but where, exactly, do they start? What space do they inhabit?

Some prominent physicists and neuroscientists who cannot accept the idea of a separate immaterial reality (dualism) turn to the simplest alternative, that the whole universe participates in consciousness (panpsychism). Perry notes that this general approach is a staple of Hindu and Buddhist thought but a number of scientists whom one might expect to be materialists also favor it in various ways.

Theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008), a “giant of 20th century physics,” believed that “reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself: it is “participatory.” Perry also cites Roger Penrose who, while not strictly a panpsychist, nonetheless says “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.”

Koch and Tononi write cautiously but in an open-access research paper they acknowledge that their work “vindicates some panpsychist intuitions – consciousness is an intrinsic, fundamental property, is graded, is common among biological organisms, and even some very simple systems have some” (2014).

The main thing to see is that these prominent thinkers are driven to panpsychism because materialism about the mind doesn’t really work. So if panpsychism ends up seeming absurd, dualism—there really is an immaterial world—is also worth considering.

**********

[Outrider]

But that's so easy isn't it.  Just keep dismissing ideas as this and that.....

Try this...

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/08/why-some-scientists-believe-the-universe-is-conscious/

**********

in a universe governed by uncertainty principles rather than hard facts, what is the “material” in materialism? There is no good materialist theory of consciousness; far from it, an article in Chronicles of Higher Education last year labeled the current research a “bizarre” field of science.

Consciousness depends on the brain, yes. But one may as well say that a student’s essay depends on her laptop. The laptop enables an essay that it does not create. Her ideas start elsewhere but where, exactly, do they start? What space do they inhabit?

Some prominent physicists and neuroscientists who cannot accept the idea of a separate immaterial reality (dualism) turn to the simplest alternative, that the whole universe participates in consciousness (panpsychism). Perry notes that this general approach is a staple of Hindu and Buddhist thought but a number of scientists whom one might expect to be materialists also favor it in various ways.

Theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008), a “giant of 20th century physics,” believed that “reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself: it is “participatory.” Perry also cites Roger Penrose who, while not strictly a panpsychist, nonetheless says “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.”

Koch and Tononi write cautiously but in an open-access research paper they acknowledge that their work “vindicates some panpsychist intuitions – consciousness is an intrinsic, fundamental property, is graded, is common among biological organisms, and even some very simple systems have some” (2014).

The main thing to see is that these prominent thinkers are driven to panpsychism because materialism about the mind doesn’t really work. So if panpsychism ends up seeming absurd, dualism—there really is an immaterial world—is also worth considering.

**********

It really doesn't matter how eminent a scientist someone is, if the fundamental basis of their argument is that they can't see how a material brain can be the source of consciousness then they are perpetrating an argument from incredulity - they don't have evidence of something else, they have a reluctance to accept the possibility that the evidence we have all points in a direction they don't like.

If a case is to be made for an underlying consciousness to reality, some evidence for that underlying consciousness needs to be presented, or it's just another claim of 'magic'.

O.

[Stranger]

But that's so easy isn't it. 

Not quite as easy as posting anything by scientists who think about consciousness differently, even when many of the ideas contradict each other, and none of them actually have any supporting evidence, just because you want to cling to your own ideas about it.

It's not impossible for one of the ideas about consciousness that you've posted here may be true (or at least on the right track), and that would be fascinating, but they can't all be true and they are still nothing more than conjectures without evidence.

[ippy]

But that's so easy isn't it.  Just keep dismissing ideas as this and that.....

Try this...

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/08/why-some-scientists-believe-the-universe-is-conscious/

**********

in a universe governed by uncertainty principles rather than hard facts, what is the “material” in materialism? There is no good materialist theory of consciousness; far from it, an article in Chronicles of Higher Education last year labeled the current research a “bizarre” field of science.

Consciousness depends on the brain, yes. But one may as well say that a student’s essay depends on her laptop. The laptop enables an essay that it does not create. Her ideas start elsewhere but where, exactly, do they start? What space do they inhabit?

Some prominent physicists and neuroscientists who cannot accept the idea of a separate immaterial reality (dualism) turn to the simplest alternative, that the whole universe participates in consciousness (panpsychism). Perry notes that this general approach is a staple of Hindu and Buddhist thought but a number of scientists whom one might expect to be materialists also favor it in various ways.

Theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008), a “giant of 20th century physics,” believed that “reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself: it is “participatory.” Perry also cites Roger Penrose who, while not strictly a panpsychist, nonetheless says “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.”

Koch and Tononi write cautiously but in an open-access research paper they acknowledge that their work “vindicates some panpsychist intuitions – consciousness is an intrinsic, fundamental property, is graded, is common among biological organisms, and even some very simple systems have some” (2014).

The main thing to see is that these prominent thinkers are driven to panpsychism because materialism about the mind doesn’t really work. So if panpsychism ends up seeming absurd, dualism—there really is an immaterial world—is also worth considering.

**********

I can't think of any good reason why anyone scientist or priest, whatever shouldn't have a hypothesis O K, and then what?

I'm sure you know Sriram?

Regards, ippy.

[Alan Burns]

It really doesn't matter how eminent a scientist someone is, if the fundamental basis of their argument is that they can't see how a material brain can be the source of consciousness then they are perpetrating an argument from incredulity - they don't have evidence of something else, they have a reluctance to accept the possibility that the evidence we have all points in a direction they don't like.

If a case is to be made for an underlying consciousness to reality, some evidence for that underlying consciousness needs to be presented, or it's just another claim of 'magic'.

O.

The problem with attempting a scientific investigation of consciousness lies in the fact that current scientific methods are restricted to investigating material behaviour, because there is no means at present to directly detect anything not related to material.  So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions, scientific investigators will dismiss this impossibility and presume that it can simply be labelled as an emergent property without any knowledge of how it works in material terms.

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

[Outrider]

The problem with attempting a scientific investigation of consciousness lies in the fact that current scientific methods are restricted to investigating material behaviour, because there is no means at present to directly detect anything not related to material.

If we have no means to detect anything non-material, then we have no evidence for the non-material, so why are we including it in a scientific depiction?  That's not a problem with scientific investigation, it's the current state of our understanding which may or may not be due to the limitations of reality being a purely material thing.

So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions, scientific investigators will dismiss this impossibility and presume that it can simply be labelled as an emergent property without any knowledge of how it works in material terms.

Coming into the discussion with the preconceived notion that consciousness cannot possibly be an entirely material phenomenon whilst at the same time conceding that we have no evidence for anything non-material is fundamentally failing to understand science.  We have a phenomenon - consciousness - and we look at all the various sundry things that appear to influence that consciousness (hormones, blood-sugar, brain and body temperature, physical damage to the brain etc.) and build a model from that evidence for how consciousness works.  Then we try to design experiments to either validate or refute those models.

What we don't do is say 'well that seems really complicated, therefore it must be magic' and posit unverifiable, untestable, unevidenced possibilities as though they were the equal of the actual science.  They aren't definitively wrong, but they don't form even an hypothesis, they are somewhere between dreaming and outright conjecture, and should be given that much weight until some reason is offered to think they are something more.

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

And I'm reminded that neither Old nor New Testament are works of science - it's arguable whether they even constitute non-fiction.

O.

[Stranger]

So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions...

What impossibility? You haven't given the slightest hint of any reason to think it's impossible (argument from ignorance/personal incredulity fallacies aside).

On the other hand, your assertions about how conscious choice-making works (not fully determined by all the antecedents and no randomness), do logically (which has nothing to do with any assumption about minds being material) contradict each other and so both of them being true actually is impossible.

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

Every time you quote the bible, I am reminded of your unreasoning blind faith that seems to be so insecure that you can't even bring yourself to think about the actual logic of the situation.

[Gordon]

The problem with attempting a scientific investigation of consciousness lies in the fact that current scientific methods are restricted to investigating material behaviour, because there is no means at present to directly detect anything not related to material.

So those, like you, who propose something other than 'the material' need to back this is up with a method that is suited to investigating the immaterial - without that you may as well be making stuff up (and begging the question along the way) - you need to demonstrate this 'anything' as your starter for ten before presuming it is real.

So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions,...

Who says this is impossible? If it is you then we can just dismiss your thoughts on such matters since you have no basis to substantiate them. 
 

...scientific investigators will dismiss this impossibility and presume that it can simply be labelled as an emergent property without any knowledge of how it works in material terms.

Oh the irony - you don't have a clue yourself yet in your ignorance you castigate scientists.

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

A nice spot of reification there, Alan, and I'm reminded of the profound first words of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' - 'Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.', which is as irrelevant to the matter in hand as is your quote, since neither James nor this John fella were competent to opine on consciousness.

[ippy]

The problem with attempting a scientific investigation of consciousness lies in the fact that current scientific methods are restricted to investigating material behaviour, because there is no means at present to directly detect anything not related to material.  So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions, scientific investigators will dismiss this impossibility and presume that it can simply be labelled as an emergent property without any knowledge of how it works in material terms.

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

"In the beginning was the word and the word was magic"

It might as well have been magic!

Commiserations to you Alan, ippy

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The problem with attempting a scientific investigation of consciousness lies in the fact that current scientific methods are restricted to investigating material behaviour, because there is no means at present to directly detect anything not related to material.

No, that’s not the problem at all. Rather the problem – ie, your problem – is to demonstrate that there’s such a thing as a non-material to begin with. And if you find the tools and methods of science not to be up to the job then propose a different set of tools and methods that can do it. Absent that all you have is unqualified assertions – ie, white noise.   

So when confronted by the impossibility of a single entity of consciousness being generated from discrete material reactions…

There’s no good reason to think that to be impossible at all. Just asserting it to be so because that fits with some faith beliefs you happen to have does not make it so.

…scientific investigators will dismiss this impossibility and presume that it can simply be labelled as an emergent property without any knowledge of how it works in material terms.

First, “scientific investigators” are actually indifferent to such claims (ie, they’re “not even wrong” to use the parlance). Second, there’s a lot of knowledge about how consciousness works but the explanation is incomplete. Citing those gaps in knowledge and exploiting them to insert conjectures for which you have no evidence whatever is – yet again – the fallacy of the argument from personal incredulity.     

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

No doubt you are. So anyway, do you have any arguments at all that aren’t plain wrong to justify your belief “god”?

Anything?

[Sriram]

Concerning the question of what came first - material or consciousness, I am reminded of the profound opening words of St John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the word"

About the 'word'...even in Hinduism we believe in a primeval sound 'Om' that is said to have started creation.  Maybe this refers to some kind of a primeval vibration.

[Sriram]

It really doesn't matter how eminent a scientist someone is, if the fundamental basis of their argument is that they can't see how a material brain can be the source of consciousness then they are perpetrating an argument from incredulity - they don't have evidence of something else, they have a reluctance to accept the possibility that the evidence we have all points in a direction they don't like.

If a case is to be made for an underlying consciousness to reality, some evidence for that underlying consciousness needs to be presented, or it's just another claim of 'magic'.

O.

Why should it be 'magic'?  We know that what we experience as the objective world is actually a subjective experience created by our mind within our brain.

We have already discussed all this...

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=16814.0