Causes and mechanisms

[Stranger]

Repetitive quoting of your short sighted logic...

Staggering hypocrisy about repetition and another unsupported assertion that my logic is "short sighted" despite the fact that you've never once been able to point out any actual flaws.

...which presumes that everything must happen within the time dependent...

Like it or not, your mind is something that changes its state over time (as must anything that makes choices) and it is therefore subject to the logic I (and many others) have put forward.

..."cause and effect" scenario found in material reactions...

It's still got nothing to do with "material reactions" - please stop lying about it.

...can never take away my conscious freedom.

There is nothing at all about what humans do that you have been able to point to that would require your nonsensical, self-contradictory notion of "freedom". The "conscious freedom" you actually have is fully consistent with determinism (not being able to have done differently in exactly the same circumstances).

Do you honestly believe that in every choice I make I could not possibly have chosen anything different?

If you could have done differently in exactly the same situation, there cannot possibly have been a reason for that difference, so it would be random.

If so why bother trying to point out my apparent "faults" which in your logical scenario are beyond my control?

There is nothing about determinism that stops you from learning from your mistakes.

And you didn't even attempt to answer the question I asked and you quoted: If you're not afraid you may be wrong, why won't you even try to learn some basic logic? Why does it never bother you when your fallacies (poor reasoning) are pointed out?

[Alan Burns]

If you could have chosen differently, that would mean your actual choice was random, then ...

No.
It just means that I have the freedom to consciously choose, rather than react.
The source which determines my conscious choice cannot be subject to the pre determined cause and effect scenario I am constantly being quoted, because that would mean that it was not my choice, but just a reaction determined by past events over which I have no control.  You seem unable to accept the profound difference between choice and reaction.

[Alan Burns]

And you didn't even attempt to answer the question I asked and you quoted: If you're not afraid you may be wrong, why won't you even try to learn some basic logic? Why does it never bother you when your fallacies (poor reasoning) are pointed out?

If I am wrong, I would not have the conscious freedom to try to learn anything, because whatever invokes the action needed to learn would be dictated by past events - not by my present state of conscious self.
So I cannot be possibly be afraid of admitting to something which would be impossible.
I can claim full accountability for all my conscious choices, because they are invoked by the ever present state of conscious awareness which defines "me", not by the inevitable consequences to past events beyond my control.

[Stranger]

The AB fallacy-fest continues unabated....

It just means that I have the freedom to consciously choose, rather than react.
The source which determines my conscious choice cannot be subject to the pre determined cause and effect scenario I am constantly being quoted, because that would mean that it was not my choice, but just a reaction determined by past events over which I have no control.

An appeal to consequences, cunningly combined with a false dilemma.

If I am wrong, I would not have the conscious freedom to try to learn anything...

Baseless assertion.

I'll ask you again the question you seem too terrified to even think about: what is it about anything that humans do that requires the ability to have done differently in exactly the same situation without randomness?

And, if every we had that ability, it would mean we could do differently for absolutely no possible reason, which means randomness, not freedom.

...invoked by the ever present state of conscious awareness...

No matter how many times you repeat this gibberish, it is still utterly devoid of any logical meaning.

You have never once faced up to the actual logic that you keep on calling "flawed" and "short-sighted" and been able to point to any flaws. You have never once been able to construct anything remotely like the "sound logic" you claimed to have. All we get is the endless repetition of baseless assertion, meaningless gibberish, and your usual selection of logical fallacies.

[Alan Burns]

I'll ask you again the question you seem too terrified to even think about: what is it about anything that humans do that requires the ability to have done differently in exactly the same situation without randomness?

To think about it requires a consciously driven act of will - not an inevitable reaction to past events.
I do choose to think about it - and the fact that I am able to think about it reveals that I have the conscious freedom to do so.
If I try to think about such action being entirely dictated as a reaction to past events I will inevitably conclude that such a scenario is impossible because it fails to comply with the reality needed for me to consciously invoke my thought process.

And, if every we had that ability, it would mean we could do differently for absolutely no possible reason, which means randomness, not freedom.

Reasons exist in our conscious awareness - we are free to use them as we wish.

No matter how many times you repeat this gibberish, it is still utterly devoid of any logical meaning.

You have never once faced up to the actual logic that you keep on calling "flawed" and "short-sighted" and been able to point to any flaws. You have never once been able to construct anything remotely like the "sound logic" you claimed to have. All we get is the endless repetition of baseless assertion, meaningless gibberish, and your usual selection of logical fallacies.

Logic is meaningless if it contradicts reality.
The reality is that I have the freedom to repeatedly witness to what I sincerely believe to be the truth behind our existence.
Just as you have the freedom to repeatedly choose to contradict my claims about the reality of our human free will.

[Stranger]

To think about it requires a consciously driven act of will - not an inevitable reaction to past events.
I do choose to think about it - and the fact that I am able to think about it reveals that I have the conscious freedom to do so.
If I try to think about such action being entirely dictated as a reaction to past events I will inevitably conclude that such a scenario is impossible because it fails to comply with the reality needed for me to consciously invoke my thought process.

How do you know that a "consciously driven act of will" isn't also an "inevitable reaction to past events"?

All you're doing is assuming that if you will it via your conscious mind it must somehow not be entirely the result of chains of cause and effect. This is begging the question on an epic scale. Where is the actual reasoning?

Logic is meaningless if it contradicts reality.

You have yet to show any contradiction whatsoever with reality and your simplistic, reasoning-free intuitions and blind faith are meaningless if they contradict logic.

[Enki]

To think about it requires a consciously driven act of will - not an inevitable reaction to past events.
I do choose to think about it - and the fact that I am able to think about it reveals that I have the conscious freedom to do so.
If I try to think about such action being entirely dictated as a reaction to past events I will inevitably conclude that such a scenario is impossible because it fails to comply with the reality needed for me to consciously invoke my thought process.


Reasons exist in our conscious awareness - we are free to use them as we wish.

Logic is meaningless if it contradicts reality.
The reality is that I have the freedom to repeatedly witness to what I sincerely believe to be the truth behind our existence.
Just as you have the freedom to repeatedly choose to contradict my claims about the reality of our human free will.

All that shows is that you think that logic is meaningless if it contradicts what you see as reality.
Given that the logic is correct then it must follow that it is your sense of reality which is at fault.

[Alan Burns]

All that shows is that you think that logic is meaningless if it contradicts what you see as reality.
Given that the logic is correct then it must follow that it is your sense of reality which is at fault.

I assume that my sense of reality is the same as for any other human being.
A sense in which our freedom to choose is a reality rather than an illusion.
So do you put your faith in a presumed logic which denies this freedom?
Or can you accept that this sense of freedom is a reality which is beyond human understanding?

[Stranger]

I assume that my sense of reality is he same as any other human being.
A sense in which our freedom to choose is a reality rather than an illusion.
So do you put your faith in a presumed logic which denies this freedom?

Nowhere in all your countless posts on the subject (that I've seen, anyway) have you ever been able to point to a solid contradiction between anything we experience and the logic you keep on denying.

Not once.

We all experience being able to do as we wish but nobody experiences being able to change the way they think or choose their wants, desires, and motivations. If we override a want, it's because we want something else more. More specifically, nobody has ever experienced doing something different in exactly the same circumstances, let alone done so while knowing that it wasn't random.

We all experience the same reality, the difference seems to be that other people have actually applied some rationality and honest introspection, while you have gone with the most superficial, intuitive first impression and elevated it to an Unquestionable Truth, without giving it a moment's thought, because doing so supported your pre-existing superstitions.

Or can you accept that this sense of freedom is a reality which is beyond human understanding?

If it was "beyond human understanding", then firstly, you couldn't have a logical argument for it (it would just be an unknown), and secondly, you couldn't conclude that the explanation wasn't natural without claiming omniscience about nature.

[Gordon]

I assume that my sense of reality is he same as any other human being.

Then you assume wrongly: do you see red as I do?

A sense in which our freedom to choose is a reality rather than an illusion.

It is the feeling that we have freedom to choose that we experience, Alan, and that feeling certainly feels very real: but it is just a feeling nonetheless.

So do you put your faith in a presumed logic which denies this freedom?

Logic isn't "presumed", Alan, and it doesn't lose it's force because you don't understand it, or won't understand it for fear of the implications for your religious beliefs.

Or can you accept that this sense of freedom is a reality which is beyond human understanding?

What you do presume thought is that you have some profound knowledge of something you also claim is "beyond human understanding", which is a very silly position to adopt.

[Nearly Sane]

I assume that my sense of reality is he same as any other human being.
A sense in which our freedom to choose is a reality rather than an illusion.
So do you put your faith in a presumed logic which denies this freedom?
Or can you accept that this sense of freedom is a reality which is beyond human understanding?

I've commented fairly frequently that I don't think my sense of reality is the same as yours, not sure whether you are unable to comprehend that .

Anyway after one time of writing about it, I wrote a reasonably long OP about it - link below. So your assumption that you have been using here as part of your approach is incorrect. Please think about that and them explain what adjustments it has necessitated for you.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=13903.msg673968#msg673968

[jeremyp]

No higher animals exhibit automated learning.  There is a difference between artificially intelligent machines and living creatures.  Artificially intelligent bots are not conscious and learn without consciousness. Living creatures are different, they learn whilst conscious.  Have you ever seen a bear refining its hunting skills whilst in hibernation ?  Of course you haven't.

I think this statement is completely unsupportable.

What is the difference between automated learning and learning? What do you mean by "higher animals"? Do you mean animals that exhibit sophisticated learning skills? How do you know that all animals that learn are conscious? Maybe you are just attributing consciousness to those animals that demonstrate learning skills.

I've never seen a bear or any other animal demonstrate learning skills while asleep, but then I've never seen an AI demonstrate learning skills while not running.

[Enki]

Alan, in response to your post 107:

I assume that my sense of reality is he same as any other human being.

That's a strange statement to make. It seems that my sense of reality is very much different to yours, which, of course, by itself, doesn't make either of us correct. For instance, when I was younger, my sense of reality was that I was almost invincible. That changed as I became older. I have never had any feeling that there is any god. That has not changed as I became older, rather it strengthened.

A sense in which our freedom to choose is a reality rather than an illusion.

My sense of reality is that it is my brain doing all the work and any decision I make has to made for reasons, whether they are conscious or not and whether they are trivial or not. I have never got any sense whatever of a 'soul' which controls/helps in this decision making process. Does this tally with your 'sense of reality' or have you 'assumed' too much?

So do you put your faith in a presumed logic which denies this freedom?

Logic stands or falls by its own parameters. If you mean do I reject logic(and therefore run the risk of becoming illogical), no, I don't think I do. To 'presume' something is to accept something on the basis of probability, so, I suppose that I do accept logic as a much more sensible method than illogic/lack of logic.

Or can you accept that this sense of freedom is a reality which is beyond human understanding?

Although not completely understood, there is a great deal of evidence that this is a complex brain process which involves the unconscious as well as the conscious, that the same or similar process is present in many other animals and that there is no evidence at all of a 'soul'. Also, the 'sense' of freedom, as I have already explained, doesn't necessarily relate to how reality is. So, I wouldn't agree with your statement.

Finally, as I have said before, I have complete freedom to choose except when constrained by external factors and with the understanding that the word 'choice' does not describe how that process is made.

[Outrider]

And do you honestly presume that your conscious choice to proclaim your disagreement was an inevitable reaction to past events, which you could not possibly have avoided?

No, I don't presume.  I conclude, based on the available evidence: brain activity correlates strongly with consciousness; there is no evidence of consciousness separate from brain activity; there is no evidence of elements of brain activity which are not attributable to known physical stimuli.  From that I conclude that consciousness emerges from brain activity, there is no presumption.

And if you do claim this to be an honest presumption - what precisely is the source which can define such a claim of honesty?  The evidence you continue to take for granted is your existence and your own capabilities.

My existence, for which I also do not need to fall back on a supernatural creator story.

What is that comes to this realisation? Is it definable by nothing but electrons buzzing round in your material brain?

That's the way the evidence leads me,yes.  Do you have any evidence of anything else, or just that continued, persistent need to cleave to unvalidated, and arguably unvalidatable, dream of a 'spirit'?

O.

[Alan Burns]

there is no evidence of elements of brain activity which are not attributable to known physical stimuli.  From that I conclude that consciousness emerges from brain activity, there is no presumption.

You need more than correlation to make the presumption that conscious awareness emerges from nothing but physical brain activity.
We have no feasible theory for how conscious awareness can be defined by physical reactions in material elements.
You have what appears to be an insurmountable problem - how can many discrete reactions be able to form a single entity of internal conscious awareness?

I put it to you that conscious awareness comprises perception of reactions - notthe reactions themselves.

[Gordon]

You need more than correlation to make the presumption that conscious awareness emerges from nothing but physical brain activity.
We have no feasible theory for how conscious awareness can be defined by physical reactions in material elements.
You have what appears to be an insurmountable problem - how can many discrete reactions be able to form a single entity of internal conscious awareness?

I put it to you that conscious awareness comprises perception of reactions - notthe reactions themselves.

I put it to you that you are using the fallacy of composition yet again.

[torridon]

You need more than correlation to make the presumption that conscious awareness emerges from nothing but physical brain activity.
We have no feasible theory for how conscious awareness can be defined by physical reactions in material elements.
You have what appears to be an insurmountable problem - how can many discrete reactions be able to form a single entity of internal conscious awareness?

I put it to you that conscious awareness comprises perception of reactions - notthe reactions themselves.

There is no reason to see that as an insurmountable problem; clearly it happens, and so it falls to us to figure out how evolution solved that trick.

I'm looking at my monitor now to read that post. I am not aware of the billions of tiny biochemical reactions that comprise the transduction chain from retina to visual cortex.  What I am aware of is the monitor and that is thanks to all those reactions going on under the hood. We don't perceive the individual reactions but rather our perception is what emerges from them.

[Stranger]

We have no feasible theory for how conscious awareness can be defined by physical reactions in material elements.
You have what appears to be an insurmountable problem - how can many discrete reactions be able to form a single entity of internal conscious awareness?

Firstly, (among other problems) this is an argument from ignorance fallacy and, secondly, we are a great deal closer to an explanation than impossible, self-contradictory magic and blind faith.

On the subject of fallacies, I'll ask yet again: why don't you seem to care that you are falling into mistakes in reasoning that have been identified and named over millennia of human thought? Do you think the Great Alan Burns is so superior to the rest of mortal humans? Do you think they don't apply (if so, why don't you ever challenge them)? Don't you care because all you really want to do is preach and logic just doesn't matter? What is it?

[Outrider]

You need more than correlation to make the presumption that conscious awareness emerges from nothing but physical brain activity.

And I showed more - we also have nothing missing from the explanation, and no activity that still requires an explanation.

We have no feasible theory for how conscious awareness can be defined by physical reactions in material elements.

Which 'we' is this? I do, you just don't like it because it doesn't have magic in it.

You have what appears to be an insurmountable problem - how can many discrete reactions be able to form a single entity of internal conscious awareness?

Have you ever seen a cloud?  Have you ever seen a cloud particle?

I put it to you that conscious awareness comprises perception of reactions - not the reactions themselves.

And I put it to you that the perception is another reaction.  You have this need to make something else the perceiver, but where's the signal going to this receiver, what's the nature of this perceiver, how is the response of the perceiver coming back to the brain to be manifested in a response that diverts through particular centres of the brain for interaction then being directed back to the perceiver... where are the signals?  Where is the brain activity happening in response to these signals?

If this model was right we'd have brain activity in apparent response to nothing, and that's not a feature that we see.

O.

[Alan Burns]

There is no reason to see that as an insurmountable problem; clearly it happens, and so it falls to us to figure out how evolution solved that trick.

Yes, it is seen to happen, but seeing it happening is not an explanation for how it happens.  The basic problem is that physical reactions do not define perception.

I'm looking at my monitor now to read that post. I am not aware of the billions of tiny biochemical reactions that comprise the transduction chain from retina to visual cortex.  What I am aware of is the monitor and that is thanks to all those reactions going on under the hood. We don't perceive the individual reactions but rather our perception is what emerges from them.

What happens is that your conscious awareness can perceive information contained within your brain cells - information produced by reactions from your sensory organs,
Nothing actually emerges from physical reactions other than more physical reactions.  Science has yet to define how conscious perception actually works in any material sense.  It is obviously "you" doing the perceiving, but what comprises "you"?

[torridon]

Yes, it is seen to happen, but seeing it happening is not an explanation for how it happens.  The basic problem is that physical reactions do not define perception.What happens is that your conscious awareness can perceive information contained within your brain cells - information produced by reactions from your sensory organs,
Nothing actually emerges from physical reactions other than more physical reactions.  Science has yet to define how conscious perception actually works in any material sense.  It is obviously "you" doing the perceiving, but what comprises "you"?

You cannot explain perception in terms of yet more perception, that is circular. And anyway, if you were to look at brain cells, all you would see is a tangle of white matter and grey matter.  For perception to emerge, you have to be those brain cells; a third party look at them would not reveal the experience of being them.  This is the nature of experience, you can only have human experience by being human, not by inhabiting a human.  Likewise, a hedgehog's experience derives from its being a hedgehog.

[Alan Burns]

Have you ever seen a cloud?  Have you ever seen a cloud particle?

A cloud is the human label given to a collection of individual water particles suspended in air.  The human label does not make the cloud into a single entity - it is still a collection of individual particles.

[Outrider]

A cloud is the human label given to a collection of individual water particles suspended in air.  The human label does not make the cloud into a single entity - it is still a collection of individual particles.

Consciousness is the name given to the sensation of mental feedback within humans by humans - it does not make consciousness some ephemeral 'other' sort of though, it is still neuroelectrical activity within a brain.

O.

[Stranger]

Yes, it is seen to happen, but seeing it happening is not an explanation for how it happens.

Neither is impossible, self-contradictory magic. Presuming that no current explanation means that an explanation is impossible is a fallacy (aka a stupid mistake in reasoning). The rest of your post is reasoning-free assertion.

[Alan Burns]

Neither is impossible, self-contradictory magic. Presuming that no current explanation means that an explanation is impossible is a fallacy (aka a stupid mistake in reasoning). The rest of your post is reasoning-free assertion.

I am not just presuming that conscious perception can't be defined by physical reactions alone.
I am postulating the impossibility of material reactions alone being able to perceive themselves.
Conscious perception necessitates awareness of material reactions and properties.
The question is this - How can a set of material reactions represent a conscious perception of other material reactions?
What is capable of perception in an entirely material environment?