Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

Can you not rely on your own ability to perceive the reality of our freedom...

I do not perceive "freedom" in the way you define it because it doesn't even make sense.

I fully agree that we are not free from cause and effect...

You're contradicting yourself again. Every time you claim that we could have done differently, you are claiming that some part of our choices are free from cause and effect.

Any chance of you engaging in a bit of honesty yet?

Will you admit your version of freedom is not demonstrable?

Will you admit you cannot produce a logical argument as you claimed?

[Alan Burns]

...and how exactly do you act upon them?
How, precisely does your non-physical soul make your physical body, act?

How does my power to consciously interact work within this otherwise physically controlled world?
I do not know - but that does not take away the reality of my ability to consciously interact.
Neither do I know how the power of gravity works, but that does not take away my awareness of the reality of that power.

[torridon]

I fully agree that we are not free from cause and effect, but we are more than just an insignificant link in the endless chain of cause and effect.  We have the ability to wilfully interact within these chains rather than just act as a transmitter with nothing to add to the messages we react to.  Our conscious ability to wilfully interact opens up endless opportunities to seek and fulfil our true purpose in life.

But our will is a consequence of those same chains of cause and effect.  If you want something, there must be a reason for that, hence 'will' only makes sense when located within and part of those chains of cause and effect. How could we 'interact with' them as if we were something separate when our will is derived from them ?  Have you ever experienced a desire that was not due to a reason ? If so, then your desire was random. 'Will' only makes sense in the light of cause and effect.

[Sebastian Toe]

We have the ability to wilfully interact within these chains

What does that mean?
Interact.....how?

[Alan Burns]

Ok. I am just trying to clarify if in your beliefs on the subject of souls you think your soul is all-knowing?

Do you think the reasons and consequences that you are consciously aware of and are contemplating are reasons and consequences that your brain has come up with based on its nature/ nurture? By "nurture" I mean environmental influences eg. based on your brain's perceptions of experiences, knowledge, ideas it has previously encountered or been exposed to e.g Bible passages, this forum etc.

Or if you believe the soul is all-knowing then you would presumably believe that it has access to all knowledge and experiences everywhere that ever existed even if your brain has never been exposed to those ideas or experiences or knowledge?

The way I see it is this:

I interact with this material world through my conscious awareness.  It is a two way process.  I perceive information from the sensory organs in my biologically controlled body.  My conscious awareness of this information allows me the freedom to contemplate and choose what to do with it rather than just react - so from my conscious awareness I am able to selectively send information back into my biologically controlled body to do whatever is needed carry out my consciously chosen action.

In this scenario, I look upon my conscious awareness to be the spiritual property of my human soul which is essential to free me from being just an inevitable, irrelevant link in the chains of cause and effect within this otherwise physically controlled world.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

The way I see it is this:

I interact with this material world through my conscious awareness.  It is a two way process.  I perceive information from the sensory organs in my biologically controlled body.  My conscious awareness of this information allows me the freedom to contemplate and choose what to do with it rather than just react - so from my conscious awareness I am able to selectively send information back into my biologically controlled body to do whatever is needed carry out my consciously chosen action.

In this scenario, I look upon my conscious awareness to be the spiritual property of my human soul which is essential to free me from being just an inevitable, irrelevant link in the chains of cause and effect within this otherwise physically controlled world.

Ok so your conscious awareness is dependent on inputs from your sensory organs or from abstract ideas that you have previously encountered and uses these inputs to reason and emotionally react to arrive at the selection between 2 or more choices. As far as I can tell, that is what people mean by your selection of how to act is determined.

Presumably you agree that you cannot form a selection based on sensory input you have not experienced or abstract ideas you have not encountered? The discussion seems to be around the idea that our choices are rarely pure reason so emotional reactions, likes, dislikes are not considered to be determined by your conscious brain exercising reason.   

[SusanDoris]

Ok so your conscious awareness is dependent on inputs from your sensory organs or from abstract ideas that you have previously encountered and uses these inputs to reason and emotionally react to arrive at the selection between 2 or more choices. As far as I can tell, that is what people mean by your selection of how to act is determined.

Presumably you agree that you cannot form a selection based on sensory input you have not experienced or abstract ideas you have not encountered? The discussion seems to be around the idea that our choices are rarely pure reason so emotional reactions, likes, dislikes are not considered to be determined by your conscious brain exercising reason.
t.

Well put. I do hopeAB will answer that directly... ...

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

This article might have been posted here before but it explains some of the current thinking on how beliefs are determined:

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1773296/beliefs-why-do-we-have-them-and-how-did-we-get-them

[Sebastian Toe]

The way I see it is this:

so from my conscious awareness I am able to selectively send information back into my biologically controlled body to do whatever is needed carry out my consciously chosen action.

All very nice.
Now, how does your non-material soul, visiting this material universe from non-material soul-universe, send the information to your physical body (brain?) , what is it that it is doing?

[Alan Burns]

Ok so your conscious awareness is dependent on inputs from your sensory organs or from abstract ideas that you have previously encountered and uses these inputs to reason and emotionally react to arrive at the selection between 2 or more choices. As far as I can tell, that is what people mean by your selection of how to act is determined.

Presumably you agree that you cannot form a selection based on sensory input you have not experienced or abstract ideas you have not encountered? The discussion seems to be around the idea that our choices are rarely pure reason so emotional reactions, likes, dislikes are not considered to be determined by your conscious brain exercising reason.

What happens within our conscious awareness is an ability to manipulate our thought processes.  This ability to consciously manipulate is key to our freedom to generate our own choices rather than just mechanically react to the data produced from our sensory input.  I believe conscious manipulation of thought processes - and thoughts themselves, are beyond what can be defined by physical reactions alone.  This is not just personal incredulity - it is based upon the impossibility of material reactions alone being able to define conscious awareness and thoughts.  I refer you to Leibniz Mill argument:

[W]e must confess that perception, and what depends upon it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons, that is through shapes, size, and motions. If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions, we could conceive it enlarged, keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter into it, as one enters a mill. Assuming that, when inspecting its interior, we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception. And so, one should seek perception in the simple substance and not in the composite or in the machine.

Gottfried Leibniz - Monadology

Four centuries on and the scientific world is still not able to define conscious perception:

"The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology"   -  Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

In 2004, eight neuroscientists felt it was too soon for a definition of consciousness. They wrote an apology in "Human Brain Function":

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers ... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

No doubt the atheist community will have faith that a scientific definition will be found, but I do not think it will be in our lifetime (or any other lifetime).

[torridon]

What happens within our conscious awareness is an ability to manipulate our thought processes. .. 

I don't buy that, we cannot 'manipulate our thought processes'.  I've asked you to explain this phrase before, and all you could come up with was the equivalent of having thoughts.  Your brain is your thinking organ; your heart pumps blood, your liver filters it, your skin keeps invasive infections out, your brain has thoughts.  Thoughts happen in a brain, just as involuntarily as our hearts beat and our fingernails grow. We cannot voluntarily manipulate our brain function any more than we can manipulate our kidney function or direct the operation of our immune system.

[Nearly Sane]

I don't buy that, we cannot 'manipulate our thought processes'.  I've asked you to explain this phrase before, and all you could come up with was the equivalent of having thoughts.  Your brain is your thinking organ; your heart pumps blood, your liver filters it, your skin keeps invasive infections out, your brain has thoughts.  Thoughts happen in a brain, just as involuntarily as our hearts beat and our fingernails grow. We cannot manipulate our brain function any more than we can manipulate our kidney function or control the rate at which our hair grows.

And of course since they would be thoughts would need by Alan's 'model's need to be manipulated by thoughts which would need to be manipulated by thoughts.... And so as so often Alan has ended up.with an infinite regress.

[Gordon]

What happens within our conscious awareness is an ability to manipulate our thought processes.

I feel we can cut Liebniz some slack, given he is long dead and as such isn't much of an authority on matters neurological, and since these various scientists are in effect saying 'we don't know' then that isn't really that much of an issue either, and of course matters neurological may well have moved on since your 2004 quote. More worrying for you is that these scientists presumably haven't mentioned whether or not 'the human soul' is a possible explanation for consciousness: if they had I'm sure you would have mentioned it, and if they had I suspect by now they would be ex-scientists.

So, since you think you can manipulate your thought processes, where do these thought processes originate since they must exist prior to your attempts at manipulation? By the way, you'll need to be wary about having thoughts about thoughts since you'd be in turtles territory.

You're also giving us another fallacy-fest: incredulity (as usual), authority, consequences and composition - well done you!

[Stranger]

No doubt the atheist community will have faith that a scientific definition will be found, but I do not think it will be in our lifetime (or any other lifetime).

No matter whether science comes up an answer or not, your own idea about "freedom" is still self-contradictory and therefore logically impossible.

Still waiting for the first hint of any reasoning or logic from you...

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

What happens within our conscious awareness is an ability to manipulate our thought processes.  This ability to consciously manipulate is key to our freedom to generate our own choices rather than just mechanically react to the data produced from our sensory input.  I believe conscious manipulation of thought processes - and thoughts themselves, are beyond what can be defined by physical reactions alone.  This is not just personal incredulity - it is based upon the impossibility of material reactions alone being able to define conscious awareness and thoughts.  I refer you to Leibniz Mill argument:

[W]e must confess that perception, and what depends upon it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons, that is through shapes, size, and motions. If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions, we could conceive it enlarged, keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter into it, as one enters a mill. Assuming that, when inspecting its interior, we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception. And so, one should seek perception in the simple substance and not in the composite or in the machine.

Gottfried Leibniz - Monadology

Four centuries on and the scientific world is still not able to define conscious perception:

"The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology"   -  Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

In 2004, eight neuroscientists felt it was too soon for a definition of consciousness. They wrote an apology in "Human Brain Function":

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers ... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

No doubt the atheist community will have faith that a scientific definition will be found, but I do not think it will be in our lifetime (or any other lifetime).

Yes I agree with you that we do not have an agreed definition of consciousness in the scientific community and only limited attempts at explanation as much of the brain is still a mystery.

I agree that we can manipulate our thoughts if you mean in the sense of, for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, where you learn to identify particular thoughts that may lead to emotions or beliefs that sabotage your life and you are taught to change them to different thoughts in your brain in order to change the feelings being generated by your thoughts and change the behaviour that follows on from those thoughts. So yes that is certainly a form of freedom I agree.

I meant that the manipulation i.e. the thoughts that you replace them with, are determined by your environment so you are not completely free of determinants, but yes it seems to be a form of freedom to learn to manipulate your thoughts. The negative thoughts that you might replace with different (more positive) thoughts are ideas you have been exposed to or received based on your nurture.

[Nearly Sane]

Yes I agree with you that we do not have an agreed definition of consciousness in the scientific community and only limited attempts at explanation as much of the brain is still a mystery.

I agree that we can manipulate our thoughts if you mean in the sense of, for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, where you learn to identify particular thoughts that may lead to emotions or beliefs that sabotage your life and you are taught to change them to different thoughts in your brain in order to change the feelings being generated by your thoughts and change the behaviour that follows on from those thoughts. So yes that is certainly a form of freedom I agree.

I meant that the manipulation i.e. the thoughts that you replace them with, are determined by your environment so you are not completely free of determinants, but yes it seems to be a form of freedom to learn to manipulate your thoughts. The negative thoughts that you might replace with different (more positive) thoughts are ideas you have been exposed to or received based on your nurture.

What does 'not completely free from determinants' mean? In what sense can you be in any sense free from determinants?

[Alan Burns]

More worrying for you is that these scientists presumably haven't mentioned whether or not 'the human soul' is a possible explanation for consciousness: if they had I'm sure you would have mentioned it, and if they had I suspect by now they would be ex-scientists.

You appear to be suggesting that scientists would be unable to believe in the power of the human soul.
I find it hard to believe that you could be so arrogant or ignorant.
Would you like me to give you a list of prominent Christian scientists?

[Alan Burns]

No matter whether science comes up an answer or not, your own idea about "freedom" is still self-contradictory and therefore logically impossible.

Your concept of logic may well deem it to be impossible.
But try looking at reality.

[Alan Burns]

Yes I agree with you that we do not have an agreed definition of consciousness in the scientific community and only limited attempts at explanation as much of the brain is still a mystery.

I agree that we can manipulate our thoughts if you mean in the sense of, for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, where you learn to identify particular thoughts that may lead to emotions or beliefs that sabotage your life and you are taught to change them to different thoughts in your brain in order to change the feelings being generated by your thoughts and change the behaviour that follows on from those thoughts. So yes that is certainly a form of freedom I agree.

I meant that the manipulation i.e. the thoughts that you replace them with, are determined by your environment so you are not completely free of determinants, but yes it seems to be a form of freedom to learn to manipulate your thoughts. The negative thoughts that you might replace with different (more positive) thoughts are ideas you have been exposed to or received based on your nurture.

You aptly demonstrate your own substantial ability to think things out, Gabriella.

My take on our human lifetime would be as a blank canvas which on which we can paint the picture of our life - paints and brushes provided by nature, and you are the artist.

[Gordon]

You appear to be suggesting that scientists would be unable to believe in the power of the human soul.

People, including scientists, can believe in all sorts of things: the issue here is whether any scientists, since you mention them as an example, are able to justify their beliefs using the methods associated with science. I'd say that as things stand 'the power of the human soul' that you claim is simply out of scope as regards science, and as such your point is a spurious one   

I find it hard to believe that you could be so arrogant or ignorant.

Believe what you like, Alan, but there is nothing arrogant or ignorant about pointing out that the likes of 'the power of the human soul' just isn't a serious proposition, especially given your hopeless attempts to provide justification for the notion. 

Would you like me to give you a list of prominent Christian scientists?

Only if you can cite one who in addition to their personal faith can also provide a scientific methodology that can be used to investigate this 'power of the human soul' you mention and other supernatural claims associated with religious beliefs.

Bear in mind too what the great scientist Richard Feynman once observed "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." - it seems to me that 'the power of the human soul' is a nonscientific claim and as such your appeal to these prominent Christian scientists is a fallacious argument from authority.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

What does 'not completely free from determinants' mean? In what sense can you be in any sense free from determinants?

I don't think you can be free from determinants. That's why what AB seemed to be arguing made no logical sense to me, but if he is actually arguing that his thoughts are determined by nature/ nurture and he can manipulate his thoughts to replace them with other thoughts that are also determined by nature/nurture, then I could see that as possible. Or rather AB seems to be saying his soul is manipulating his thoughts and I assume that AB thinks his soul's manipulation (ie. choice of thoughts) is determined by the soul's nurture alone and no genetics involved?

I did ask if he thought in his concept of a soul it was all-knowing / had perfect knowledge - he did not answer that question so I assume that's a no and the soul's choices are determined by input from the environment i.e. nurture.

But given there is no evidence of a soul being involved in this process, it is just as easy to think a brain could produce conscious thought and manipulate its thoughts.

[Alan Burns]

But given there is no evidence of a soul being involved in this process, it is just as easy to think a brain could produce conscious thought and manipulate its thoughts.

You find it easy to to think a brain could produce conscious thought and manipulate its thoughts.
I find it impossible.
A human brain is material, and there is no material definition for thought.  Also within the physically determined scenario, there can be no concept of manipulation, because there is no source, (no "manipulator"),  within the endless chains of physically determined cause and effect - only inevitable reactions.

[Gordon]

You find it easy to to think a brain could produce conscious thought and manipulate its thoughts.
I find it impossible.

That is due to your personal incredulity getting in the way again.

A human brain is material, and there is no material definition for thought.

You're using the fallacy of composition again, and why can't thought be defined as being the result of our neurological activity?
 

Also within the physically determined scenario, there can be no concept of manipulation, because there is no source, (no "manipulator"),  within the endless chains of physically determined cause and effect - only inevitable reactions.

Now you're adding consequences into the mix: 'concepts' are surely just another aspect of our neurological activity, so there is your source. 

[Sebastian Toe]

You find it easy to to think a brain could produce conscious thought and manipulate its thoughts.
I find it impossible.
A human brain is material, and there is no material definition for thought.  Also within the physically determined scenario, there can be no concept of manipulation, because there is no source, (no "manipulator"),  within the endless chains of physically determined cause and effect - only inevitable reactions.

So, explain how, a non-material soul can physically manipulate a material being.
What is the process, how does it work?

[torridon]

You aptly demonstrate your own substantial ability to think things out, Gabriella.

My take on our human lifetime would be as a blank canvas which on which we can paint the picture of our life - paints and brushes provided by nature, and you are the artist.

So why do we all paint different pictures ?