Searching for GOD...

[torridon]

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.

Your incredulity getting in the way again.  Just because some concepts are hard should not licence us to regress back into ignorance and superstition, and that's all you are doing.   Brains are the body's thinking organ, we have no evidence for anything else capable of thought.  Must try harder, you are waaaay behind the curve in understanding life.

[Outrider]

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

It's not easy, but that doesn't speak to whether it's correct or not.

I find it impossible.

Which is about you, not about the argument itself.

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

Yes, there is.  Thought is a pattern in the neuroelectrical activity of a brain.

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.

See, you do understand... you just don't like the conclusion, and therefore reject the argument not on the merits but because it challenges the framework upon which you current understanding is built.

O.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

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.

This article has some information on how we can manipulate our thoughts and stop ourselves from retrieving thoughts that we do not want to think about.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-identify-mechanism-that-helps-us-inhibit-unwanted-thoughts

“Our ability to control our thoughts is fundamental to our wellbeing,” explains Professor Michael Anderson from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, which recently transferred to the University of Cambridge. “When this capacity breaks down, it causes some of the most debilitating symptoms of psychiatric diseases: intrusive memories, images, hallucinations, ruminations, and pathological and persistent worries. These are all key symptoms of mental illnesses such as PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.”.....

Professor Anderson, Dr Schmitz and colleagues showed that the ability to inhibit unwanted thoughts relies on a neurotransmitter – a chemical within the brain that allows messages to pass between nerve cells – known as GABA. GABA is the main ‘inhibitory’ neurotransmitter in the brain, and its release by one nerve cell can suppress activity in other cells to which it is connected. Anderson and colleagues discovered that GABA concentrations within the hippocampus – a key area of the brain involved in memory – predict people’s ability to block the retrieval process and prevent thoughts and memories from returning.



There is also an article on abstract thoughts - how abstract concepts seem to produce similar activity in the same regions in different people's brains

https://neurosciencenews.com/abstract-thought-processing-15141/

ETA: I'm fine with you believing in souls AB. I'm just sharing why it's just as easy to not believe in souls and to look to brain activity to try to understand thoughts.

[Stranger]

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

Personal incredulity.

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

Argument from ignorance.

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.

Utter drivel. I see we can now add 'manipulation' to the list of words Alan wants to redefine to suit his 'argument'.   

[Stranger]

Your concept of logic may well deem it to be impossible.

I do not have my own concept of logic, Alan. There is just logic.

But try looking at reality.

I have, it's you who seems to be scared to think about reality.

You're clinging desperately to the most simplistic, shallow first impression about "free will" without giving it a moment's logical thought or even bothered with any honest introspection. You've then dived head first into a contrived, fallacy ridden, stream of utter nonsense, that you mistake for "reasoning", to get you to a conclusion that you had decided on before you started.

The laughable part is that every stage of your "reasoning" is wrong. You continually confuse consciousness with your impossible version of "freedom", you totally refuse to accept that the contradiction is logical and not connected to the physical world, and to round it off, you then fail to acknowledge that even if you could overcome the contradiction, it wouldn't mean that minds couldn't be material (because we don't know everything about the material world).

There isn't a single valid logical step (that I can see) in the whole car crash.

You claimed you had a logical argument, and I've even shown you a free book you can read to find out how such arguments can be made and how to avoid fallacies, yet you're still posting your illogical nonsense.

And you haven't even got the basic honesty to admit you haven't provided the logic you claimed you had.

[Alan Burns]

Yes, there is.  Thought is a pattern in the neuroelectrical activity of a brain.

No.
Thought is conscious perception and interpretation of patterns of physical brain activity - not the material itself.

[Sebastian Toe]

No.
Thought is conscious perception and interpretation of patterns of physical brain activity - not the material itself.

Do explain how, once the perception has taken place, any subsequent physical actions are processed.
What does your, non-physical visiting from a timeless place outwith this universe soul, do to trigger those physical reactions?

[torridon]

No.
Thought is conscious perception and interpretation of patterns of physical brain activity - not the material itself.

Perception of the neural activity going on in perceptual systems would not be the same as the neural activity itself, what you describe would be one place removed from original perception.  What that would give would be something akin to brain scanning technology, giving a third person view on neural activity. You cannot, for instance, readily derive what a person is seeing by analysis of activity in the primary visual cortex.  In other words, to experience the perception first hand, you need to be those neural assemblages, not a separate entity observing their activity from a third person perspective.

[Outrider]

No.

Yes.

Thought is conscious perception and interpretation of patterns of physical brain activity - not the material itself.

I didn't say it was the material, I said it was a pattern of activity within the material - that 'conscious perception and interpretation' is also a pattern, as it's yet another thought.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Yes.

I didn't say it was the material, I said it was a pattern of activity within the material - that 'conscious perception and interpretation' is also a pattern, as it's yet another thought.

O.

And therein lies the mystery of perception - what is it that recognises and interprets meaning from patterns of physical brain activity associated with conscious thought?

A thought may well be represented by a pattern of neurological activity, and the meaning of a word may be represented by a pattern of ink stains on paper,   But neither the ink stains nor the neurological pattern are actual meanings - the meanings and thoughts only exist in human conscious awareness.  And what comprises human conscious awareness?

[SusanDoris]

And therein lies the mystery of perception - what is it that recognises and interprets meaning from patterns of physical brain activity associated with conscious thought.

A thought may well be represented by a pattern of neurological activity, and the meaning of a word may be represented by a pattern of ink stains on paper,   But neither the ink stains nor the neurological pattern are actual meanings - the meanings and thoughts only exist in human conscious awareness.  And what comprises human conscious awareness?

Drivel added to drivel multiplied by … well, let's say 100 for starters!

[Stranger]

And what comprises human conscious awareness?

Something that isn't fundamentally self-contradictory and doesn't rely on meaningless gibberish and an endless stream of fallacies.

[torridon]

And therein lies the mystery of perception - what is it that recognises and interprets meaning from patterns of physical brain activity associated with conscious thought?

A thought may well be represented by a pattern of neurological activity, and the meaning of a word may be represented by a pattern of ink stains on paper,   But neither the ink stains nor the neurological pattern are actual meanings - the meanings and thoughts only exist in human conscious awareness.  And what comprises human conscious awareness?

A variant on whatever it is that comprises penguin awareness and shark awareness and hedgehog awareness, clearly

[Outrider]

And therein lies the mystery of perception - what is it that recognises and interprets meaning from patterns of physical brain activity associated with conscious thought?

The pattern of activity is recognition - we are that pattern, that's what makes us who and what we are.  That's why, when we die and the pattern stops, we stop too.

A thought may well be represented by a pattern of neurological activity, and the meaning of a word may be represented by a pattern of ink stains on paper,   But neither the ink stains nor the neurological pattern are actual meanings - the meanings and thoughts only exist in human conscious awareness.  And what comprises human conscious awareness?

I disagree, your analogy between ink on paper and patterns of activity in a brain doesn't parse.  Ink doesn't reintegrate into itself to give layer upon layer of recursive, immersive, self-referential feedback.  That's why we don't get consciousness emerging from words on a page, but we do from thoughts in a brain.

O.

[Gordon]

And therein lies the mystery of perception - what is it that recognises and interprets meaning from patterns of physical brain activity associated with conscious thought?

Easy peasy: brains.

A thought may well be represented by a pattern of neurological activity, and the meaning of a word may be represented by a pattern of ink stains on paper,   But neither the ink stains nor the neurological pattern are actual meanings - the meanings and thoughts only exist in human conscious awareness.  And what comprises human conscious awareness?

Nope - words on a page can't think so your comparison fails there, and it may well be that neurological patterns (to use your term) are what we experience as consciousness, thoughts, meanings, memories, dreams and so on. Mental experiences of all sorts seem to be the result of biological activity, since as far as is known you don't get mental experiences unless you have functioning biology - that you don't like the implications of this is your problem. 

 

[Alan Burns]

A variant on whatever it is that comprises penguin awareness and shark awareness and hedgehog awareness, clearly

do penguins, sharks, hedgehogs etc perceive meaning from their sensory data - or do they just react to it in an instinctive, programmed manner?

Just glibly quoting these examples does nothing to explain what comprises human conscious awareness.
How do you get from patterns of neurological brain activity to perception of conscious thought?
What is perception?
What is thought?
What is conscious awareness?
You can't explain these fundamental questions by pointing to observations of animal behaviour.

[torridon]

do penguins, sharks, hedgehogs etc perceive meaning from their sensory data - or do they just react to it in an instinctive, programmed manner?

It was only a couple of days back I pointed you to the Wiki page on the meaning of perception.  Seems you never read it.  A penguin's ability to recognise its chick or its partner is a classic example of perception.  There is a difference between merely having visual experience and having meaningful visual experience.  The sight of its chick carries meaning for the parent, it is the recognition reigniting maternal bonds.  We can be sure this is happening because unrecognised, all penguin chicks would starve to death.  This much may be mostly instinctive limbic responses but it does happen throughout the natural world and humans also have perception because of our shared ancestry with all other vertebrates.  A human mother seeing her baby experiences similar bonding emotions as that between penguin and chick. You like to quote the ink on paper as an example of meaning, well yes, that is a more abstract example of meaning that goes beyond what penguins and hedgehogs do but this does not mean that parent / child emotional bonds are not meaningful, whatever the species.

[Stranger]

Just glibly quoting these examples does nothing to explain what comprises human conscious awareness.
How do you get from patterns of neurological brain activity to perception of conscious thought?
What is perception?
What is thought?
What is conscious awareness?
You can't explain these fundamental questions by pointing to observations of animal behaviour.

When you have some answers to those questions that isn't blind faith in self-contradictory magic, you will have some basis to criticise the partial answers that science has produced. Until then it's just staggeringly hypocritical.

3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

-- Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)

[Alan Burns]

Easy peasy: brains.

Yes, of course - brains.  That explains it all.
Why didn't I think of that!

Nope - words on a page can't think so your comparison fails there, and it may well be that neurological patterns (to use your term) are what we experience as consciousness, thoughts, meanings, memories, dreams and so on. Mental experiences of all sorts seem to be the result of biological activity, since as far as is known you don't get mental experiences unless you have functioning biology - that you don't like the implications of this is your problem. 

As pointed out numerous times before - correlation is not necessarily causation.
Perceived physical brain is certainly part of it, but can you presume that is all there is to our consciously perceived thoughts?
Your brain is a complex arrangement of sub atomic particles - all of which are replaceable - and indeed do get replaced over a lifetime.  But where are you in all of this?  Do you get replaced?  Or are you the custodian of this complex machine?

[Stranger]

Yes, of course - brains.  That explains it all.
Why didn't I think of that!

It's a great deal better at explaining it than self-contradictory magic backup by nothing but blind faith, empty assertions, logical fallacies, and dishonesty.

[Gordon]

Yes, of course - brains.  That explains it all.
Why didn't I think of that!

Maybe you should try using your own more effectively (reading the PDF Stranger posted recently would be a good start).

As pointed out numerous times before - correlation is not necessarily causation.

There is a strong association here: dead brains can't think,

Perceived physical brain is certainly part of it, but can you presume that is all there is to our consciously perceived thoughts?
Your brain is a complex arrangement of sub atomic particles - all of which are replaceable - and indeed do get replaced over a lifetime.  But where are you in all of this?  Do you get replaced?

You seem to be thrashing about in the fallacy of composition rather a lot these days (mixed with your default incredulity of course).

Or are you the custodian of this complex machine?

You are the complex machine, Alan.

[Sebastian Toe]

Yes, of course - brains.  That explains it all.
Why didn't I think of that!
As pointed out numerous times before - correlation is not necessarily causation.

Correlating conciousness .....
to an entity which resides in a timeless somewhere outwith the spacetime universe in which we physically reside, which selectively tunes into one and only one brain, reads its neural activity, makes real time decisions based on that and then somehow (never been described how) sends controlling information back to said brain in order to fulfil those decisions.......
...is not necessarily causation.

[Alan Burns]

You're clinging desperately to the most simplistic, shallow first impression about "free will" without giving it a moment's logical thought or even bothered with any honest introspection.

My own perception is that my thought processes go deeper than yours.
Have you stopped to think just where your freedom to think things out originates?
You seem to be obsessed with proclaiming the initial conclusions of your thought processes without considering how your ability to reach such conclusions can possibly take place within the scenario dictated by your initial conclusions.

[Alan Burns]

The pattern of activity is recognition - we are that pattern, that's what makes us who and what we are.  That's why, when we die and the pattern stops, we stop too.

I disagree, your analogy between ink on paper and patterns of activity in a brain doesn't parse.  Ink doesn't reintegrate into itself to give layer upon layer of recursive, immersive, self-referential feedback.  That's why we don't get consciousness emerging from words on a page, but we do from thoughts in a brain.

O.

No matter how much terminology and technical jargon you use to try to describe the emergence of conscious awareness from material reactions, the end result will always be another set of reactions with no real explanation for how they comprise conscious awareness.

[Sebastian Toe]

no real explanation for how they comprise conscious awareness.

...which would amount to exactly the same amount of explanation for how a non-physical soul, visiting from a timeless place, outwith this universe can read  the neural patterns of an individual's brain, process that information, make decisions and then somehow invoke physical reactions, all in real time.