Karma

[Jack Knave]

assertatron alert!

Hypocrite alert!!!!!!!!

[Jack Knave]

Activity of the brain does not show evidence of consciousness as some people sleep walk i.e. will perform tasks without even being awake, walk down stairs, navigate through the house to a room. I believe some have even got into cars to drive off and possibly used a gun to kill someone. No consciousness required but I'm sure all the necessary neurons were firing away, which a dumb scientist would use to say they were conscious at the time.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'm starting to think that what they are calling consciousness isn't consciousness at all but some technical fudge to redefine it in their favour.

Agreed. What they are talking about is intelligence or even processing power.
Bluehillside seams to suggest that if you increase the bit rate and you will attain consciousness.
Whatever else that is it is not emergence.
Plus he could just end up with a faster computer.

Torridon fails to distinguish between a conscious being and a machine that does everything but is not aware of it.IMHO.

[torridon]

No it's not, what a load of bollocks!!! Consciousness is about being self aware over and above these factors.

No, that is not really correct.  Self awareness is considered as part of the contents of consciousness and self awareness is only observed in a handful of species - humans, chimps, elephants, etc.

[torridon]

Activity of the brain does not show evidence of consciousness as some people sleep walk i.e. will perform tasks without even being awake, walk down stairs, navigate through the house to a room. I believe some have even got into cars to drive off and possibly used a gun to kill someone. No consciousness required but I'm sure all the necessary neurons were firing away, which a dumb scientist would use to say they were conscious at the time.

Dreaming is a form of conscious experience that happens during sleep.  It is a common mistake to confuse consciousness with wakefulness.  They often occur together but they are not the same thing.

[Sriram]

And where does the driver's desire to go faster come from ? Desires don't appear out of the blue, they are part of cause and effect. If I want to eat a hamburger, there is a reason, it is because I am hungry. It's in such insights that the notion of god runs into trouble; why would a god have wants, why would a god have preferences; these attributes would suggest too that god is party to cause and effect just like us.

torridon,

Please...! The driver's desire stems from a very different level...nothing to do with the mechanism of the car at all!   By referring to the pistons and the engine as reasons for the acceleration, you are saying 'how' the car accelerates..but not why'. The 'why' comes from the driver's desire which is completely outside the processes involving the car. That is my point.

Similarly, the mechanisms and processes in the human body can only tell us 'how' the body functions...not 'why'.  The 'why' comes from the 'driver' ...the spirit...which is  outside the processes in the human body.

The processes taking place in the spirit (if any) are irrelevant to us and we cannot know them...just as for a car mechanic, the processes taking place within the driver are completely irrelevant and outside his gamut.

Try to understand. There are two completely different systems involved. One is the car with its processes and mechanisms. The other is the driver who has a completely different set of processes working within him. The two systems meet when the driver sits in the car and drives it. Explaining the movement of the car only based on the mechanisms of the car, while true, is meaningless.

Saying ...'The car turns right because the wheels turn right, the car brakes because the brake pads stop the wheel'...is meaningless. While these are true statements they don't address the question of why the car turns or brakes.  That will be known only if the intentions of the driver are known.

It is very similar in a human. Explaining human emotions, desires and behavior purely based on chemicals and bodily processes is meaningless. The spirit is the driving force which uses the mind (software) to drive the body.

Cheers.

Sriram

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is in this matter an explanatory gap and I suppose in other matters of emergence too.
Bluehillside either hates emergence and or doesn't understand it. He uses the word emergence but is ruthlessly reductionist bidding us believe that the whole, the emergent property is merely the sum of the parts.
Torridon stops before the explanatory gap to create definitions which satisfy the profession of neuroscience. In his view we are all P zombies. His approach is a kind of neuroscientism.

[torridon]

There is in this matter an explanatory gap and I suppose in other matters of emergence too.
Bluehillside either hates emergence and or doesn't understand it. He uses the word emergence but is ruthlessly reductionist bidding us believe that the whole, the emergent property is merely the sum of the parts.
Torridon stops before the explanatory gap to create definitions which satisfy the profession of neuroscience. In his view we are all P zombies. His approach is a kind of neuroscientism.

It's not my view that we are all p-zombies.  A p-zombie would be a person that looks and acts apparently like a regular person but lacks any inner experience.  I've never known anyone fitting that description.  The nearest we have are sufferers of Cotard's syndrome but they do still have inner experiences of pain and pleasure et, it is just their sense of self that is underperforming or degraded in some way leading to the mistaken belief that they are dead.

The difference between my view and your view boils down to this : you identify the self with the traditional idea of a soul. I would say that the same thing, the self, is a phenomenological projection created in real time by a living working awake body; well its not so much my view, more what the evidence from science suggests.

[torridon]

torridon,

Please...! The driver's desire stems from a very different level...nothing to do with the mechanism of the car at all!   By referring to the pistons and the engine as reasons for the acceleration, you are saying 'how' the car accelerates..but not why'. The 'why' comes from the driver's desire which is completely outside the processes involving the car. That is my point.

Similarly, the mechanisms and processes in the human body can only tell us 'how' the body functions...not 'why'.  The 'why' comes from the 'driver' ...the spirit...which is  outside the processes in the human body.

The processes taking place in the spirit (if any) are irrelevant to us and we cannot know them...just as for a car mechanic, the processes taking place within the driver are completely irrelevant and outside his gamut.

Try to understand. There are two completely different systems involved. One is the car with its processes and mechanisms. The other is the driver who has a completely different set of processes working within him. The two systems meet when the driver sits in the car and drives it. Explaining the movement of the car only based on the mechanisms of the car, while true, is meaningless.

Saying ...'The car turns right because the wheels turn right, the car brakes because the brake pads stop the wheel'...is meaningless. While these are true statements they don't address the question of why the car turns or brakes.  That will be known only if the intentions of the driver are known.

It is very similar in a human. Explaining human emotions, desires and behavior purely based on chemicals and bodily processes is meaningless. The spirit is the driving force which uses the mind (software) to drive the body.

Cheers.

Sriram

I don't see how any of that addressed the previous question, of where the driver's (in your analogy) desires come from.  In fact the telling phrase was The processes taking place in the spirit (if any) are irrelevant to us and we cannot know them.  In mainstream science we have explanations of where desires and intentions come from.  In your scheme of things, if a person is suffering from depression, say, is that a malady of the spirit or of the body ?

[Sriram]

I don't see how any of that addressed the previous question, of where the driver's (in your analogy) desires come from.  In fact the telling phrase was The processes taking place in the spirit (if any) are irrelevant to us and we cannot know them.  In mainstream science we have explanations of where desires and intentions come from.  In your scheme of things, if a person is suffering from depression, say, is that a malady of the spirit or of the body ?

torridon,

That is where Karma comes into the picture.

You try to explain all human behavior only in terms of the chemical processes going on in the body. (Like a machine/car starting itself up and performing all functions by itself ...with no external Intelligence involved).  I am not disputing the chemical processes that take place in the body. I am saying that the chemical processes do not and cannot take place by themselves.

It is the spirit that decides (through the Unconsciousness mind) what needs to be done and the conscious mind follows. Then the chemical/electrical processes happen and the body performs the actions. It could all happen instantaneously one after the other with hardly any time gap that we can notice. (Scientists have identified a time gap between the unconscious mind deciding and the conscious mind becoming aware of the decision).   

The spirit decides based on the karmic influences that are present in it.

About depression or any other ailment....the spirit never suffers. It is only trying to free/clean itself.  Nothing more.  It is always the conscious mind that actually suffers (not the body...though it is the body that induces the suffering).   This suffering produces suitable erosion in the individuality that is connected to the conscious mind and thereby the spirit cleanses itself.

(Not easy for an atheist and materialist to digest....but there you are  ).

cheers.

Sriram

[torridon]

torridon,

That is where Karma comes into the picture.

You try to explain all human behavior only in terms of the chemical processes going on in the body. (Like a machine/car starting itself up and performing all functions by itself ...with no external Intelligence involved).  I am not disputing the chemical processes that take place in the body. I am saying that the chemical processes do not and cannot take place by themselves.

It is the spirit that decides (through the Unconsciousness mind) what needs to be done and the conscious mind follows. Then the chemical/electrical processes happen and the body performs the actions. It could all happen instantaneously one after the other with hardly any time gap that we can notice. (Scientists have identified a time gap between the unconscious mind deciding and the conscious mind becoming aware of the decision).   

The spirit decides based on the karmic influences that are present in it.

About depression or any other ailment....the spirit never suffers. It is only trying to free/clean itself.  Nothing more.  It is always the conscious mind that actually suffers (not the body...though it is the body that induces the suffering).   This suffering produces suitable erosion in the individuality that is connected to the conscious mind and thereby the spirit cleanses itself.

(Not easy for an atheist and materialist to digest....but there you are  ).

cheers.

Sriram

If the spirit does not suffer then how can it be the spirit that decides ?  If the patient suffers depression because his wife left him, is that circumstance a 'karmic influence' in your terms ? If it is the conscious mind that is at the sharp end of all this and the spirit remains aloof from the suffering why would it be the spirit that decides on a course of action when surely the conscious mind is in a better position to know what needs to be done.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

#349

Pretty good, thanks for asking! Here's some more ...

Really? So having tried a diversionary tactic of suggesting that people don’t use the NPF ...

where in my #303 did I say that?

...and having then had someone attempt the NPF just two posts after you did it

He did not!

...you still feel pretty good about things do you?

Really really?

Considering you cannot be bothered to quote what someone has said, instead pharaphrasing, then yes!
e.g.

As Sriram did me the service of trying an NPF just two posts after yours though, your irrelevant “no-one uses the NPF anyway” lies at your feet now in any case.

Show me where in my #303 your quote “no-one uses the NPF anyway” comes from

When Sriram said, “How does it 'fly in the face of evidence'?  What evidence do you have that conflicts with or negates what I have written?” he was asking for evidence to negate his unfalsifiable conjecture; that’s what the NPF means!

unfalsifiable conjecture? Ahh...having difficulty falsifying the idea of karma then? Bluehillside does not know how to falsify karma, therefore karma is unfalsifiable? WOW!! Bluehillside doesn’t know how to falsify religious beliefs so religious beliefs are unfalsifiable? Double WOW!!

This is what I meant when I said that your arguments are not based on properties of truth. If they were, you would have realised by now that something that is clearly made up (teapots in space, your dancing pixies, my orbiting onion conjecture) doesn’t need falsifying, for obvious reasons!

One day, you may realise that you are doing precisely what you are accusing others of. It is your position that is unfalsifiable, that’s why you have to keep on shifting the burden of proof, which should always lie with the one making the claim. That's how truth works!

[Gordon]

This is what I meant when I said that your arguments are not based on properties of truth. If they were, you would have realised by now that something that is clearly made up (teapots in space, your dancing pixies, my orbiting onion conjecture) doesn’t need falsifying, for obvious reasons!

How do you know 'God' isn't similarly made up?

Since you clearly don't appreciate the pixies example let's use the example of one of the Hindu deities, Brahma, which many people currently believe in on a similar basis, presumably, to how you view the Christian god - as being in some sense 'real'.

So, if they say to you that you can't falsify Brahma does this mean that you must then concede that their belief in Brahma is justified and that you too must, therefore, accept the reality of Brahma? 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spoof,

I'm not against emergence....just your complete misunderstanding of it and your following confusions.

Well that took a turn. You made a series of posts that betrayed your misunderstanding of emergence. I corrected you, and gave you an example of how it actually works. You just ignored that, and accused me of misunderstanding it!

Classic Vladism – just ignore the argument and keep on lying.

Firstly your confusion between processing power and consciousness.

There is no confusion. Everything we observe in nature that’s complex comes from simpler components. There’s no reason to think that consciousness does not follow the same paradigm as the rest of nature.

Secondly your confusion between reductionism and emergence.

The confusion is all yours. You introduce “reductionism” as the twin ugly sister of “dodging” – both charges that rely on there being something to reduce from or to dodge in the first place, but you make no effort to demonstrate that something.

So tell me – do you also think midwifery to be "reductionist" and "dodging" because it fails to take into account stork theory, or you do apply special pleading to your bad thinking such that it applies only to the conjecture in which you happen to believe? 
 

Lastly your almost universal Darwinian idea that emergence evolves from the previous layer rather than appearing as a novel property which has no analogue at the previous layer.

Darwinian evolution is by far the best evidenced explanation we have for the complexity of speciation – where exactly do you think a “novel property” would come from but for the species that precede it? The moon? The Soup Dragon? The wibble monsters of Alpha Centauri? Where?   

Actually it gladdens me that your posts turn out to be predictable and lightweight and masterworks in gussying up the bleeding obvious.

Actually it saddens me that your posts continue to be exercises in deep ignorance, bad thinking and dishonesty. ‘Twas ever thus I guess though.

[Sriram]

If the spirit does not suffer then how can it be the spirit that decides ?  If the patient suffers depression because his wife left him, is that circumstance a 'karmic influence' in your terms ? If it is the conscious mind that is at the sharp end of all this and the spirit remains aloof from the suffering why would it be the spirit that decides on a course of action when surely the conscious mind is in a better position to know what needs to be done.

Who decides to clean the dirt from your hand, who decides to get rid of ignorance and gain knowledge?  You! 

Similarly, the dirt/ignorance/negativity is enveloping the spirit. It is the spirit that decides how to get rid of it. The conscious mind is a product of ignorance/individuality and that is the means by which the knowledge is gained and the dirt is cleaned.  Development happens through the conscious mind but it is the unconsciousness mind that decides how to go about it.

It has been found by scientists that the unconscious mind takes decisions and the conscious mind only follows a little later.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm

[Brownie]

Sririam (taken a bit out of context, I'll come back later if I have further comments:
...It is always the conscious mind that actually suffers (not the body...) ).

Depression does cause bodily suffering, it has a knock on effect on physical health.

[bluehillside Retd.]

JK,

I ignored it because I had already explained that you can't just make an empty assertion that it is some fallacy without explaining why, and so I wasn't going to repeat myself!

First, the assertion wasn't “empty” at all – you did attempt an argument from personal incredulity! Second though, the point rather was that – empty or not – the one thing it certainly wasn’t was an ad hom, as you’d know if you’d read my explanation of what ad hom actually means.

No it is not. But I'll try it with in future and see if you just say, "Ok, you win."

Why would I say “you win” when you rely on a logical fallacy for your argument?

So yes I want you to engage in the point of what an argument and discussion is for and substantiate your position and unfounded assertions.

Again, there’s nothing “unfounded” about them, and I can’t engage with an argument when it’s logically false. All I can do is to tell you why it’s logically false. It’s up to you then either to amend it, or to withdraw it and to try something else.

This assertion of yours, about consciousness, is totally without merit. It beholds your arrogance in stating something as a fact when it is not. You and science have no idea where consciousness comes from or what it is.

Priceless! Actually “science” has lots of clues about that but, even if it didn’t, this statement is itself an argument from personal incredulity: “Science can’t explain it, therefore I can’t believe that it occurs because of the natural processes that science does understand”.

By all means try again, but you should try to avoid fallacious reasoning in future if you want to make an argument worth considering.

[Sriram]

Sririam (taken a bit out of context, I'll come back later if I have further comments:
...It is always the conscious mind that actually suffers (not the body...) ).

Depression does cause bodily suffering, it has a knock on effect on physical health.

Brownie...I meant that it s only the conscious mind that suffers in the sense that, if the conscious mind is absent (as in unconscious or under anesthesia) there will be no suffering even if the body is in pain.  Without the conscious mind there is no suffering ...and no pleasure either!

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spoof,

There is in this matter an explanatory gap and I suppose in other matters of emergence too.

Ah the god of the gaps – we haven’t had one of those for while.

Bluehillside either hates emergence and or doesn't understand it.

Neither is true of course, so why even bother lying about it?

He uses the word emergence but is ruthlessly reductionist bidding us believe that the whole, the emergent property is merely the sum of the parts.

So few words, so many mistakes:

1. Again, you can’t be “reductionist” unless you first demonstrate that there’s something to reduce from. Your really struggle with this don’t you.

2. The emergent property is precisely not the sum of the parts, as you’d know if you’d bothered to read anything about the subject. I’m happy to educate you about it, but there’s no point trying if you insist on remaining uneducable.

Torridon stops before the explanatory gap to create definitions which satisfy the profession of neuroscience. In his view we are all P zombies. His approach is a kind of neuroscientism.

There is no explanatory gap – the basic principles are there – and as neuroscience gives us the best evidenced we have so far for the working of the mind I don’t see why you dismiss it favour of – well, what? Your bad reasoning, superstitious beliefs and un-evidenced wishful thinking? 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Just been thinking about why some here have such a visceral objection to consciousness being an emergent property of the brain. Absent an argument of any kind to suggest where it could come from but for the brain, it seems they rely a series a bad arguments – “science doesn’t know everything”, “I can’t believe that something so complex could occur naturally”, “I’ve decided first that there’s another source (albeit one that I can’t demonstrate), so your attempts to explain it bottom up as the rest of nature works must be “reductionist”” etc.
   
But why though? Why this refusal to accept evidence and argument? Dunno, but there seems to me to be several possible reasons:

- It squeezes out a gap that “God” currently occupies

- It offends the solipsistic sense of being special, unique

- It contradicts the illusion of being a separate something that happens to live in a body, or it contradicts the conjecture “soul”

Doubtless there are more, but it’s all a bit rum I find.

Ah well.   

[torridon]

Who decides to clean the dirt from your hand, who decides to get rid of ignorance and gain knowledge?  You! 

Similarly, the dirt/ignorance/negativity is enveloping the spirit. It is the spirit that decides how to get rid of it. The conscious mind is a product of ignorance/individuality and that is the means by which the knowledge is gained and the dirt is cleaned.  Development happens through the conscious mind but it is the unconsciousness mind that decides how to go about it.

It has been found by scientists that the unconscious mind takes decisions and the conscious mind only follows a little later.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm

Did that really address the previous question ? In addition to a taste for avoiding straight answers I note also your taste for quoting cherry picked findings from science wherever you think it supports your ideas    But when science doesn't support your ideas, then it is a case of 'not proved', as in the case of your car/driver analogy, where science says the driver is an emergent property of the car.

When playing chess, is it the spirit that ponders and then chooses the next move, or is it the unconscious mind, or what ?

[bluehillside Retd.]

SOTS,

He did not!

Can I suggest that if you want to come here to tell lies you try to be a bit less obvious about it? Anyone can read Sriram's attempt at an NPF just two posts after yours (by demanding evidence to negate his un-evidenced conjectures) so why pretend that it didn’t happen?
 

Considering you cannot be bothered to quote what someone has said, instead pharaphrasing, then yes!

Then you shouldn’t – for reasons that have been explained to you but that you continue to ignore.

Show me where in my #303 your quote “no-one uses the NPF anyway” comes from

Your entire diversionary tactic has involved the (supposed) lack of use of the NPF. It’s actually used a lot but, as you’ve been told several times now, even if it wasn’t that doesn’t make it a good argument – which is actually the point you keep trying to deflect us from with irrelevancies.

unfalsifiable conjecture? Ahh...having difficulty falsifying the idea of karma then? Bluehillside does not know how to falsify karma, therefore karma is unfalsifiable? WOW!! Bluehillside doesn’t know how to falsify religious beliefs so religious beliefs are unfalsifiable? Double WOW!!

Are you feeling unwell? The people who propose these various conjectures structure them to be unfalsifiable. If you want to make such a claim and to have it taken seriously, then it’s for you to provide a method to falsify it. If he wanted to be taken seriously, Sriram's job for example having asserted "karma" would be to say, "but if X were shown to be the case, then my assertion would be falsified".
 
Perhaps if you had a lie down and tried thinking before you post again that would help?

This is what I meant when I said that your arguments are not based on properties of truth. If they were, you would have realised by now that something that is clearly made up (teapots in space, your dancing pixies, my orbiting onion conjecture) doesn’t need falsifying, for obvious reasons!

Way to miss the point. What “obvious reasons” would they be, and what sliding scale of “clearly” would you propose before a falsification test becomes necessary? Ra? Zeus? Thor? Allah? Your god?

And why more to the point would you think the made up-ness or otherwise of the outcome would have anything whatever to say to whether or not the NPF is a bad argument in any case?

One day, you may realise that you are doing precisely what you are accusing others of. It is your position that is unfalsifiable, that’s why you have to keep on shifting the burden of proof, which should always lie with the one making the claim. That's how truth works!

Perhaps a basic primer in epistemology would help you here? My “position” inasmuch as I have one is precisely falsifiable because it relies on arguments that are falsification apt. If there’s a flaw in the reasoning, then the argument falls away. You on the other hand turn up here with an overweening confidence and a kit bag full of very bad arguments, keep getting found out but can’t process the invalidation of your position.
 
If you think I’ve ever shifted the burden of proof then demonstrate where (though I caution you to look up what the term means before you do given your misunderstanding of it so far). Once you have looked it up by the way, you may also want to review the various times you’ve tried it here and been caught out doing it.

Good luck with it though!

[Bramble]

Just been thinking about why some here have such a visceral objection to consciousness being an emergent property of the brain. Absent an argument of any kind to suggest where it could come from but for the brain, it seems they rely a series a bad arguments – “science doesn’t know everything”, “I can’t believe that something so complex could occur naturally”, “I’ve decided first that there’s another source (albeit one that I can’t demonstrate), so your attempts to explain it bottom up as the rest of nature works must be “reductionist”” etc.
   
But why though? Why this refusal to accept evidence and argument? Dunno, but there seems to me to be several possible reasons:

- It squeezes out a gap that “God” currently occupies

- It offends the solipsistic sense of being special, unique

- It contradicts the illusion of being a separate something that happens to live in a body, or it contradicts the conjecture “soul”

Doubtless there are more, but it’s all a bit rum I find.

Ah well.

I have been pondering the same thing, along with the apparent futility of these debates. Clearly emergence is devastating to core religious beliefs that centre on the survival of identity post mortem. Sriram hasn't, as far as I'm aware, ventured to suggest why his beliefs are so important to him. If it's all about the denial of death then reincarnation fails on its own terms since there would seem not to be any meaningful continuity of identity involved. If it's about something else I'd like to know what it is. Religious folk often claim that secular views divest life of 'meaning' but this only seems to be so for them. When I read all this stuff about spirits and so on I just think, why does it all have to be so bloody complicated?

[Udayana]

People don't throw out their world views, paradigms, just on speculation or probabilities. There's a long way to go before we understand any of these things in depth.

Why is it at all important to you (bramble, bhs, ... ) that they should?

[ekim]

Just been thinking about why some here have such a visceral objection to consciousness being an emergent property of the brain.

Another reason might be that it is a reaction to your passionate way of presenting your case, as if it were 100% certainty rather than a %age probability.  I would have thought that scientific pronouncements, especially of the human body and mind, are tentative rather than definitive and conclusive.  In the meantime, perhaps it makes your opponents happier to see consciousness as arising from a greater source than the brain, just as moonlight is not an emergent property of the moon but is a reflection from the sun.