Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: DonQuichotte on 28/08/2013 21:38:56

Title: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/08/2013 21:38:56
What ,on Earth, is The Human Consciousness ?

Source : My own Consciousness or Self-Awareness ,or whatever :

Humanity has been struggling with this almost impossible issue of human consciousness for so long now that there seems to be no end to that eternal struggle  in sight so far , science cannot , per definition, even approach as such , for obvious reasons .

The materialistic approach of human consciousness fails pathetically indeed .

If that materialistic approach of consciousness is true , how come we cannot "convert " thoughts to brain waves , and vice versa ,if human consciousness was indeed created by our evolved brains then ? ,to mention just that in fact .

If our consciousness was the product of the evolutionary complexity of our brains , human consciousness as a means or process to make any sense of reality , and the human brain as a tool to approach reality via our senses ,science , reason, logic ...the approach of reality via our senses thus as just a representation of reality in fact , then it's pretty logical to assume that all our knowledge , including the scientific one thus , including our knowledge of evolution itself , are just the products of evolution,via the natural selection = pragmatic survival strategies : it's pretty logical to question the very validity and truth of all that human knowledge and the sense of reality itself , not to mention the fact that evolution fails to explain human progress, for example , human progress as a meaningless notion or concept , in evolutionary terms at least .

 


What do you think about just that , dear folks ?.

Will humanity be ever able to know what the nature of human consciousness is ?

Human consciousness even science itself cannot exist , let alone function without  , even though scientists would be happy without it : a paradox indeed .

Human consciousness even religion or any other human activity for that matter ,cannot do without .

What is human consciousness in fact ?

Every definition existing out there on the subject falls too short to capture  such an extremely elusive , deceptive , dynamic and evolutionary process such as human consciousness : the latter is not an "entity"  indeed , it seems to me at least , even though human individual subjective  consciousness possesses some core relatively unchanging element in itself ,called the Self it refers constantly to,or some core unchanging element of the self at least   .

Subjective human consciousness that does have some universal elements ,in the sense that we are all, in principle at least , conscious beings .

Thanks, folks , appreciate indeed

All the best

If some wise guy here wanna collect that trillion dollars haha award , i do refer him / her to the Nobel prize jury  instead .

I do not understand why or how humans could / can ignore such a huge issue of human consciousness though, the latter as THE key to almost everything  .

Ciao

Title: Re: The Priceless -in -Fact or The Trillion Dollars Question :
Post by: alancalverd on 28/08/2013 22:45:15
Selfawareness is no big deal. It's essential for the survival of any animal and probably plants too. It's very difficult to define an abstract property directly, but we can say that an animal is selfaware if it responds to a stimulus in a manner particularly tuned to itself. I think this is most obvious where an animal assesses that a task is beyond its capability without actually trying it. This isn't a foolproof or absolute test: in the absence of any alternative, a dog will eventually turn and fight a bigger dog, but given the opportunity to run away or make an appeasing gesture, it will do so. For some reason that eludes me, some people prefer to say "posseses selfawareness" instead of "is selfaware", as though selfawareness exists outside and independent of living things. Such loose thinking has no place in science.     

The problem with consciousness is that nobody who uses the word ever says what they mean by it, and loose thinking is endemic to the subject. We can say that an animal is conscious if it responds other than autonomically to a stimulus. Shouting "what is your name?" may produce an autonomic cringe in a person who is by all definitions unconscious, but the measured response of "dunno" (or even a widening of the eyes)  to the whispered question is a conscious one. So by analogy, we might expect consciousness to be the abstract property "possessed by" conscious animals. But I don't get the impression that philosophers and other woolly-minded individuals would like to be pinned down to such a definition - there's no academic mileage in it!   

So I'm with you on one point at least. There is no entity of consciousness. Frankly, there are so many real, important and interesting entities in the world that I don't see any point in spending time discussing one that doesn't exist.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/08/2013 02:59:54
I disagree that we have failed pathetically to understand human consciousness. With no scientific tools at all human beings have managed to have great insights about their behavior and their own motivations, good and bad. Now with science, there is an accelerating rate of knowledge about how the brain works, involving perception, memory, learning, emotions, and the underlying biochemistry. Sometimes knowledge comes slowly in bits and pieces, and sometimes it comes in revolutionary insights, but either way, it comes. Before you jump to the conclusion that science has no answers to these important philosophical questions - are you even following the research these days? Here is my challenge to you: Subscribe to the journal "Nature" for one year. Read the neuroscience articles. Then tell me if you feel the same way.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 29/08/2013 20:57:57
If you program a machine to have the intelligence of a human, will it claim to experience anything in the way of consciousness? The answer is no, unless you program it to generate fictions about consciousness. Consciousness is all about feelings, ranging from a nebulous feeling of awareness through to more stark qualia such as pain, blueness, love, etc. Machines don't have feelings, and science has not identified any mechanism by which we can have them either.

You would think that if they were real it would be easy to propose a mechanism by which pain could be real, and this is important because without real pain (and similar unpleasant qualia) there can be no such thing as suffering, while without real suffering there can be no role for morality as no one can ever be harmed. It should be simple if it's real - you should be able to propose a mechanism by which something really simple like a worm can experience real pain when someone pokes it with something sharp. The same mechanism would then work for us as well, and we'd be able to pin down the actual thing in the system that does the suffering and label it as the sentience in the machine (a minimalist soul).

However, so such sentience can be found. It appears that we must be machines which report feelings that are nothing more than a fiction, but this fiction is part of an extraordinary illusion which enables the system to fool itself into creating a whole stack of information about a fake phenomenon and to believe that this information is true even though it cannot trace it back to the source to find out how it was generated.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/08/2013 21:58:48
Hi, dear folks :
Pardon me for not being able momentarily to respond to all those posts you were kind enough to write , simply because i spent too much time in another thread .
So, i will just say the following instead :
First of all : how can the unconscious matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness ? or how could the evolved brain "create " consciousness ? : you gotta try to come up with some explanation more serious and better than those materialistic so-called computation or emergence property theory mechanisms though ...

Seond : How could  the mechanisms of the biological evolution via the natural selection be applied to the non-biological ones ? ,and that  despite all the historic antecedents in that  regard as warnings from history : Eugenics , social Darwinism ...?

How can science approach a subjective "thing " or rather process such as consciousness ?
Science which , per definition, cannot prove neither the fact that we are conscious beings nor the fact as a result that we have inner lives ?

Finally : who can tell me what consciousness  exactly  is or rather what its nature or function are ?

I do not think any intelligent person can have any answer to the latter question at least , that's in fact a non-question ,simply because there is no answer to it .


P.S.: It would be also nice if someone would try to answer my questions and remarks in this thread's opening article : if someone already did , i thank him / her for that : i will read all your posts later on indeed .
Thanks, appeciate indeed .

Take care



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 30/08/2013 00:21:23
So, to summarise, you want someone to explain how consciousness has evolved, but you state that nobody knows what consciousness is.

I will give you a complete explanation in exchange for an accurate answer to a much simpler question: How long is this piece of string? 

Hint: the string may not exist, and that wasn't the piece I meant.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 30/08/2013 18:26:53
First of all : how can the unconscious matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness ? or how could the evolved brain "create " consciousness ? : you gotta try to come up with some explanation more serious and better than those materialistic so-called computation or emergence property theory mechanisms though ...

The standard answer is that consciousness emerges out of complexity. Nothing experiences pain other than something that emerges out of complexity while all the components of the system feel nothing. When you torture someone, you are torturing a complex arrangement of parts and not the parts themselves. Sentient geometrical arrangements!

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Finally : who can tell me what consciousness  exactly  is or rather what its nature or function are ?

The function appears to be to drive an animal to fight for survival and to do all manner of things that will make its survival more likely. The problem is that it appears to be impossible for it to be anything more than a fiction.

Take a simple case. Prod a worm with something sharp, it feels pain and tries to get away from the thing causing it pain. Now make a robot to display the same behaviour: a touch sensor is pressed with something sharp, the robot tries to get away from the thing that touched it. No pain in the robot. How can we add pain to the system? Let's hide the pain mechanism in a box and not worry about it. The input from the sensor goes into the box where pain is felt, then an output from the box goes on to trigger the robot into moving away from the sharp thing. That works, but the content of the box adds nothing to the functionality, and it's also impossible for the computer in charge of moving the robot to determine whether pain was felt in the box at all. That is the problem with consciousness - there is no way for an information system to interface with qualia in such a manner as to know anything about them. All it can do is map assertions of sensation to inputs which are supposedly sensations.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/08/2013 19:26:06
So, to summarise, you want someone to explain how consciousness has evolved, but you state that nobody knows what consciousness is.

I will give you a complete explanation in exchange for an accurate answer to a much simpler question: How long is this piece of string? 

Hint: the string may not exist, and that wasn't the piece I meant.

God ...

Simply put , once again : that materialistic approach of life as just biological or material processes is not only dangerous and incorrect , but it is also a matter of a world view of materialism ,which has nothing to do with science itself .

The immaterial human consciousness is therefore no biological process , even though it relies on the brain mainly ,and vice versa ....= the evolved biological or physical material brain did not produce the immaterial consciousness .
When you will get that , we can go further from there .
In other words :
You are not talking science here , you are just confusing materialism  as a world view with science : see the difference ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/08/2013 19:47:40
First of all : how can the unconscious matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness ? or how could the evolved brain "create " consciousness ? : you gotta try to come up with some explanation more serious and better than those materialistic so-called computation or emergence property theory mechanisms though ...

The standard answer is that consciousness emerges out of complexity. Nothing experiences pain other than something that emerges out of complexity while all the components of the system feel nothing. When you torture someone, you are torturing a complex arrangement of parts and not the parts themselves. Sentient geometrical arrangements!

Emergent property theory regarding consciousness at least is just a materialistic world view or a materialistic interpretation of human consciousness , not a scientific fact , a fact i must remind you of .

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Finally : who can tell me what consciousness  exactly  is or rather what its nature or function are ?

The function appears to be to drive an animal to fight for survival and to do all manner of things that will make its survival more likely. The problem is that it appears to be impossible for it to be anything more than a fiction.

I am talking here about the human consciousness ...exclusively though .
That said : if human consciousness as a process which tries to make any sense of reality was produced by the evolved human brain as a tool to approach reality via our senses by creating a certain representation of reality , if human consciousness is just an illusion as you put it ,then it's pretty logical to assume indeed that the human consciousness was / is just a survival pragmatic strategy ,  then it's pretty logical to question the very validity or truth of all our senses of reality , of all our knowledge, including the scientific one, including our knowledge regarding evolution itself = a real paradox .

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Take a simple case. Prod a worm with something sharp, it feels pain and tries to get away from the thing causing it pain. Now make a robot to display the same behaviour: a touch sensor is pressed with something sharp, the robot tries to get away from the thing that touched it. No pain in the robot. How can we add pain to the system? Let's hide the pain mechanism in a box and not worry about it. The input from the sensor goes into the box where pain is felt, then an output from the box goes on to trigger the robot into moving away from the sharp thing. That works, but the content of the box adds nothing to the functionality, and it's also impossible for the computer in charge of moving the robot to determine whether pain was felt in the box at all. That is the problem with consciousness - there is no way for an information system to interface with qualia in such a manner as to know anything about them. All it can do is map assertions of sensation to inputs which are supposedly sensations.

Well, that should convince you of the obvious fact that the living   organisms and machines or robots are 2 different things :
Pain is real to the living   organisms , it's not an illusion , try to explain it then ,if you can : you cannot do that just via biology neurology ...
The living  organisms are therefore conscious , robots are not , robots can only simulate consciousness maybe ..

But , only humans are self-aware though : why is that ? there is no need or "purpose " for evolution to make humans self-aware,for example  ...= evolution cannot explain the unique human consciousness or the unique human self-awarness ,not just via biology at least, and certainly not via that emergent property theory as a materialistic world view ,which has nothing to do with science  .
Come on, get real sir , please .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/08/2013 00:07:07
The immaterial human consciousness is therefore no biological process

Never mind what it isn't. Just tell us what it is, and we'll discuss its origins. Or if you can't say what it is, tell us what it does.

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You are not talking science here , you are just confusing materialism  as a world view with science : see the difference ?

Where on earth did you get the idea that you can read and interpret thoughts I haven't expressed? All I have done is to consistently ask you what you mean by consciousness, and all you do is to ignore the question.

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But , only humans are self-aware though

That is demonstrably - indeed obviously - untrue. If you start from an untrue premise, you will end up with a theology at best, via insanity, to an appalling political philosophy at worst. Or do you have some personal definition of awareness that only applies to hairless apes?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/08/2013 21:16:29
The immaterial human consciousness is therefore no biological process

Never mind what it isn't. Just tell us what it is, and we'll discuss its origins. Or if you can't say what it is, tell us what it does.

You should try to read the article of this thread carefully instead : do not be silly .

Every definition of human consciousness at least ,out there   fails to "capture " it , so , nobody has an exact defintion of our elusive deceptive consciousness, simply because there are many  levels of human consciousness,simply because human consciousness is mainly  an immmaterial dynamic process ,despite the fact that it relies partly on the brain and vice versa and despite what materialists would say about human consciousness  ,and simply because the study of consciousness is no exact science , it's mainly an art though, even though neuro-science  can shed some light on  how the brain functions, relatively speaking , because there is still a lot to know about an extremely  complex organ such as the human brain ...because , because , because ... = you might be the only one on this tiny planet to know the very nature of consciousness nobodyelse knows , who knows ?

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You are not talking science here , you are just confusing materialism  as a world view with science : see the difference ?

Where on earth did you get the idea that you can read and interpret thoughts I haven't expressed? All I have done is to consistently ask you what you mean by consciousness, and all you do is to ignore the question.

See above :
Well, you said on this thread that human consciousness does not exist as such , and other similar things i do not recall right now , mainly  a materialist would say , so .

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But , only humans are self-aware though
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That is demonstrably - indeed obviously - untrue. If you start from an untrue premise, you will end up with a theology at best, via insanity, to an appalling political philosophy at worst. Or do you have some personal definition of awareness that only applies to hairless apes?

You'are talking crazy here ........restrain your wild imagination...
(Prior note : in Islam , there is the assumption that non-human species or non-human organisms, including plants , animals .....do glorify and praise God in a way we do not know : how that happens and what it means exactly , we do not know either ,so , i am not gonna go into that ...i am  just responding via this example to your wild speculations as displayed here above .)

That put aside :

Bombastic talk again : did you ever meet a dog , cat , chimp ....who is or rather which is self-aware ? in the sense that it is aware of its existence , of itself ? that it is aware of its inner life or at least has one ?
A dog might have dreams ,for example ,but when even humans dream (i am not talking here about day dreaming of humans at least  ) , they are unconscious , let alone that they would be self-aware while sleeping and dreaming  at least .
The fact that some chimps might "recognize" themselves in the mirror , apparently it seems , or maybe that's just our human interpretation of their behavior in front of the mirror, does not prove conclusively that they might have or experience some degree of self-awarness, i guess, i do not know for sure thus either, but i do not think any non-human living organism for that matter is self-aware , simply because any degree of self-awarness implies some corresponding degree of intellectual process at least  .
Animals are "conscious" (a reduced form of consciousness , compared to that extended one  of man = there is no comparison between the 2 in fact ) : they experience feel pain, experience feel hunger , anger , sadness, joy ....but animals or any other non-human  living organism can never be self-aware in the above mentioned sense at least .I do not know for sure .
That said , this thread is mainly about human consciousness though , even though studying other living species might shed some sort of light on our consciousness, ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/08/2013 23:19:30
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Well, you said on this thread that human consciousness does not exist as such

On the contrary, you suggested it might not. I still have no idea what it is or what it does, as you refuse to tell me,  so I can't possibly say whether it exists or not. 

I think I've had enough of this drivel. From what you say, Islam offers a collection of wholly unsubstantiated assertions of human vanity and no insight into the workings of nature. Either you are doing it a disservice, or it is stultifying your obvious intellect. Your problem, not mine.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/09/2013 18:04:49
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Well, you said on this thread that human consciousness does not exist as such

On the contrary, you suggested it might not. I still have no idea what it is or what it does, as you refuse to tell me,  so I can't possibly say whether it exists or not.
 

I think I've had enough of this drivel. From what you say, Islam offers a collection of wholly unsubstantiated assertions of human vanity and no insight into the workings of nature. Either you are doing it a disservice, or it is stultifying your obvious intellect. Your problem, not mine.

I never implied , let alone that i ever said , that consciousness does not exist : learn to read , bombastic wild guy ;

Here is your own statement below , i was referring to :

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So I'm with you on one point at least. There is no entity of consciousness. Frankly, there are so many real, important and interesting entities in the world that I don't see any point in spending time discussing one that doesn't exist.

As for the rest of your gibberish : irrelevent .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/09/2013 18:22:38
The key to approaching human consciousness is by acknowledging its immaterial  nature , and by acknowledging the fact that it could not/ cannot  be a product of the evolved brain :

Materialists cannot but consider human consciousness ,life itself , and the rest of the universe or reality as just material processes , in order to validate materialism as a world view , otherwise they would be contradicting their own materialism in the process :

In short and in other words :

The reality of the universe , life ....is not only material,and therefore the biological evolution cannot be applied to the whole reality or to the non-biological sides  of human consciousness, life , the universe ...  .

Human consciousness and life in general , do have biological sides , but also immaterial ones , in the sense that life has both a biological and immaterial side , and human consciousness has a biological side represented by its mutual interaction with the brain ,but human consciousness is in fact immaterial .

Therefore, to reduce man, life , the universe  to just material or biological processes is a false assumption that's inherent and intrinsic to materialism as a world view .

  Get that , folks ? Hope so indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 01/09/2013 18:31:34
Some right, some wrong, but doesn't take things on board.

Solution?

Unfollow.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/09/2013 20:11:49
Some right, some wrong, but doesn't take things on board.

Solution?

Unfollow.

Why is that and how ?

Narrow-minded materialistic exclusive reductionistic mechanical outdated refuted and largely discredited attitude and world view .

The assumption that life is just a matter of material biological processes ,and therefore human consciousness is just a biological process or illusion , or that reality ie exclusively material ...are just : assumptions : materialistic assumptions, to be more precize , materialism as a world view, philosophy , paradigm... which can be traced back to its Eurocentric cultural philosophical ...historic context as a rebellion against the medieval church : materialism as a world view which has not much to do with ...science proper ,despite the great achievements of materialism at the level of  exact sciences at least , and even at that level modern physics or quantum physics , the theory of chaos of maths ......do refute that deterministic materialism .
It's pretty logical therefore to understand how and why materialism fails pathetically at the level of human sciences, ....no wonder .

Sweet dreams in your materialictic wonderland, Alice .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/09/2013 21:31:35
Narrow-minded materialistic exclusive reductionistic mechanical outdated refuted and largely discredited attitude and world view .
sounds familiar...

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..., the theory of chaos of maths ......do refute that deterministic materialism .
Not really, no. As I explained to you in another thread, the mathematical theory of chaos is explicitly deterministic.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 02/09/2013 17:35:48
Of course, I'm not actually that good at unfollowing things, so I looked in to see what you'd say.

You can build your idea of consciousness using any kind of magic you like, but the problem you need to face up to is that it still has to interface with a mechanical information system at some point, because it's a mechanical information system that constructs all our thoughts and which expresses them both internally and externally (in the latter case through speech). Read the logical argument at http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html (http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html). Start with the conclusions at the end so that you can see where it's going. If you can propose a serious mechanism for getting past this problem, the whole world will be interested. Consciousness feels too real to be an illusion, but reason appears to show that it must be an illusion, no matter how much we dislike that idea. Our brains as information systems produce data which makes extraordinary claims about consciousness, but we should not trust it unless we can see how those claims are created and what they are based on. There appears to be no possible way for information systems to access sensations of any kind, so they are almost certainly making mere assertions which go beyond their competence. Alternatively, reason itself may be fundamentally wrong, in which case you need to work out which bit of reason is wrong so that we can ditch it.

Most people are unable to get to the point where they even understand the problem, so I won't hold my breath.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/09/2013 18:11:03
... Consciousness feels too real to be an illusion, but reason appears to show that it must be an illusion, no matter how much we dislike that idea.

While I agree with what you say, there are semantic problems with calling consciousness an illusion, because it implies that consciousness doesn't 'really' exist, yet we obviously are 'conscious' and have a sense of self, and awareness, etc., and there's a whole bunch of objective observations we can make to determine whether someone is conscious or not; so consciousness is a real phenomenon of some kind. It's just that it isn't what it subjectively seems to be; i.e. it is a misleading experience. In an illusionist analogy, consciousness is the trick, and the illusion is that it's content and/or activities aren't what they appear to be. Unfortunately, 'consciousness' is used somewhat ambiguously to mean both the objective state (of awareness, etc.), and the subjective experience (what it's like), which confuses things.

Hmm... not the epitome of clarity, I'm afraid. I may have to revise or withdraw it when I'm not so frazzled.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 03/09/2013 18:14:32
While I agree with what you say, there are semantic problems with calling consciousness an illusion, because it implies that consciousness doesn't 'really' exist, yet we obviously are 'conscious' and have a sense of self, and awareness, etc., and there's a whole bunch of objective observations we can make to determine whether someone is conscious or not; so consciousness is a real phenomenon of some kind.

It isn't that simple. You can have a deluded inteligent computer system which makes incorrect judgements which lead to the generation of data which asserts that feelings are felt in the system without any feelings actually being felt in the system at all. These data making assertions that feelings are felt are then used within the thinking of the system as proof that feelings are felt, but they're all based on untruths. There is no consciousness in such a system, but it continually asserts both to us and to itself that there is.

We may be the same as that deluded system. It doesn't feel as if that is the case, of course, because we can stick pins in ourselves and imagine that we feel the pain, but is there really any pain there or are we just being fooled into thinking that there is? And where is the "I" in the machine that is feeling this pain? In a computer, no matter how intelligent the software becomes, there will never be an "I" in it capable of feeling anything. Science has failed to find an "I" in us too - all we have to go on are the pronouncements of the information systems within us which assert that there is an "I" inside us somewhere feeling feelings, and yet the information systems which create the data that documents this phenomenon cannot be trusted as it should be impossible for them to access such knowledge. That is the formidible barrier we are up against.

Science may some day be able to trace back the path by which this data is generated to see what it is actually based on, at which point we will either be able to see the point at which it is created as a fiction (which will show that there is no such thing as consciousness other than as a fiction), or it will lead us to something extraordinary which takes us far beyond our current understanding of science and reason. It seems most likely that all that's happening is that assertions are being mapped to inputs such that an input signal which may represent damage being done has the idea of "pain" mapped to it by the information system, and then that fiction of pain is never questioned. There cannot be a transmission of knowledge of actual pain in the input signal itself unless it comes ready packaged as data which speaks of pain, but if it came in that form it would have to be written in the same language as used by the information system collecting that data, which either means that part of the information system is on the other end of the input signal line or another information system that happens to speak the same language is at that other end, but either way the problem is merely transferred - the data system at the far end would still have to know that the pain is real, and yet it can't. All it can do is make an assumption that pain is involved and then assert as much in the data.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/09/2013 19:58:59
It isn't that simple. You can have a deluded inteligent computer system which makes incorrect judgements which lead to the generation of data which asserts that feelings are felt in the system without any feelings actually being felt in the system at all. These data making assertions that feelings are felt are then used within the thinking of the system as proof that feelings are felt, but they're all based on untruths. There is no consciousness in such a system, but it continually asserts both to us and to itself that there is.
This sounds a bit like the philosophical zombies. Personally, I'd say that if an intelligent computer system can really be deluded (i.e. be able hold a belief in the face of contradictory evidence), that's pretty good evidence for consciousness ;) But seriously, if such a system displays all the behavioural characteristics of consciousness appropriately, how can we say it is not conscious? after all, that's how we judge consciousness, even subjectively. Yes, we could program a system to superficially appear conscious when it isn't, but I would suggest that there would be differences that would be distinguishable. If it was not possible to tell, I'd say it is conscious. This is what Ayer proposed in the 1930's: "The only ground I can have for asserting that an object which appears to be conscious is not really a conscious being, but only a dummy or a machine, is that it fails to satisfy one of the empirical tests by which the presence or absence of consciousness is determined."

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We may be the same as that deluded system. It doesn't feel as if that is the case, of course, because we can stick pins in ourselves and imagine that we feel the pain, but is there really any pain there or are we just being fooled into thinking that there is? And where is the "I" in the machine that is feeling this pain?
There is pain if we feel pain; a headache, or even phantom limb pain is 'real' pain; that feeling of hurting is what we mean by 'pain'. So, I say, for consciousness - that sense of feeling aware, or of self-awareness. That sensation is what consciousness is, and it is accompanied by neurophysiological, and, usually, by physiological and behavioural indicators. The 'I' is an emergent construct, a collaboration of neurological processes. Strictly, its location is in the brain, as it's generated by brain processes, but its subjective location (where it feels it is located) may not be.

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In a computer, no matter how intelligent the software becomes, there will never be an "I" in it capable of feeling anything.
That's arguable. Consciousness isn't intelligence. If we built a neural network similar to the brain (architecturally and connectedly) and trained it appropriately, there's no reason why it should not have a subjective sense of self. It won't happen unless it's structured appropriately; we know certain structures are essential to generate various aspects of self & self image. There are various ventures in progress, of which Blue Brain Project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/) looks like the best bet, but their objective is neurological disease research rather than consciousness, so unless diseases of consciousness come under that remit, we may not see it.

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Science has failed to find an "I" in us too - all we have to go on are the pronouncements of the information systems within us which assert that there is an "I" inside us somewhere feeling feelings, and yet the information systems which create the data that documents this phenomenon cannot be trusted as it should be impossible for them to access such knowledge.
That's not entirely true; there are many examples of sensory manipulations, or drugs, or damage through disease or injury, that cause faulty construction of self-image, sense of self, and 'I'. The locations, connections, and functions of many of the affected areas that contribute are known to varying degrees, so we're not completely in the dark. Of course, although we know some of the requirements, we're still some way from identifying precisely how that subjective sense of self is generated.

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It seems most likely that all that's happening is that assertions are being mapped to inputs such that an input signal which may represent damage being done has the idea of "pain" mapped to it by the information system, and then that fiction of pain is never questioned.
That's pretty much how it seems to work. Pain is generated by and in the brain; it doesn't exist outside it. There are mappings that trigger a bunch of dispositional activity that can include sensations of pain. That's how brain in general seems to work - mappings overlaying dispositions (simple or 'primitive' responses). Pain is triggered usually in response to sensory inputs (which are just pulses of membrane depolarizations like most neural activity), but sometimes just from internal neural 'noise' or spontaneous firings. Damasio's 'Self Comes to Mind (http://www.amazon.com/Self-Comes-Mind-Constructing-Conscious/dp/030747495X)' has some interesting information about how these systems work (some of it a bit technical).

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There cannot be a transmission of knowledge of actual pain in the input signal itself unless it comes ready packaged as data which speaks of pain, but if it came in that form it would have to be written in the same language as used by the information system collecting that data, which either means that part of the information system is on the other end of the input signal line or another information system that happens to speak the same language is at that other end, but either way the problem is merely transferred - the data system at the far end would still have to know that the pain is real, and yet it can't. All it can do is make an assumption that pain is involved and then assert as much in the data.
Yes; the knowledge or awareness of pain comes last. To start with, it's just a pattern of afferent nerve impulses like any other. The brain processes these signals and various others that provide a context (for example, you may cut yourself but not feel any pain until you see the damage), and [the sensation of] pain may (or may not) be generated (fight-or-flight stress hormones & neurotransmitters, etc., may suppress it).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/09/2013 20:35:57
Hi, folks :

I will try to respond to the above , later on .

I will just say the following , for the time being at least though :

Thanks for your interesting insights i do appreciate indeed , althought they are just materialistic ones, once again...no wonder  :

The assumption that life is just a biological process ,for example, has more to do with materialism as a world view , than with science proper : take a look back at the past to find out about the roots of such assumption , and regarding the birth of materialism itself .

We are much more than just physical bodies : materialists , per definition, think otherwise of course ,but to say that human consciousness is just an illusion ,for instance ,  how "real " ( dlorde )that illusion might ever be , is the very negation of the validity or truth of all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that concerning evolution itself, once again ..

Once again, just tell me how can the human consciousness as such , as a means to make any sense of reality , be the product of our evolved brain , that's just a tool to approach reality via our senses , via representations of reality ?  : don't you see the inherent intrinsic paradox or contradiction contained in the materialistic assumption that human consciousness is just a biological process  created by the evolved brain ?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/09/2013 22:23:56
Who says reality makes sense? Why should it? To whom? Our entire existence is due tot he fact that it doesn't.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/09/2013 04:44:54
I honestly cannot understand how one can attack materialism and reductionism, blithely dismiss things like emergent properties and offer absolutely nothing better in terms of explanation of phenomena.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/09/2013 09:08:56
I honestly cannot understand how one can attack materialism and reductionism, blithely dismiss things like emergent properties and offer absolutely nothing better in terms of explanation of phenomena.
You don't need such explanations if you have faith. Apparently it's beyond logic, reason, and science...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 04/09/2013 19:23:06
I honestly cannot understand how one can attack materialism and reductionism, blithely dismiss things like emergent properties and offer absolutely nothing better in terms of explanation of phenomena.

Emergent properties are well worth dismissing. Nothing ever emerges that isn't 100% rooted in the components, even if it's hard to recognise them until they emerge. When it comes to consciousness, you can't have something emerge out of a system to be sentient (which is what consciousness is really all about) without any of the components being sentient unless your explanation is based on magic. Sentient geometry with no sentient components is not a scientific explanation of anything.

We're up against the biggest puzzle of them all here, and there is nothing close to a satisfactory explanation on the table. All proposed solutions involve either a large injection of magic or the removal of consciousness altogether, which goes completely against what we directly feel, so none of us can claim to be arguing from a good position. It is important though that we recognise where we are injecting magic into our explanations and don't pretend it isn't there.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 04/09/2013 20:13:16
This sounds a bit like the philosophical zombies. Personally, I'd say that if an intelligent computer system can really be deluded (i.e. be able hold a belief in the face of contradictory evidence), that's pretty good evidence for consciousness ;)

Not when you can examine the workings and see exactly where the fictions are being generated. A fiction of consciousness is simply not consciousness. Writing a program which sends the word "Ouch!" to the screen does not mean there is any actual pain experienced in the system, and the same principle applies to a more complex program which creates other fictions about feelings which it is supposedly feeling. The intelligent machine may be fooled into generating fictional claims about feelings and to mark them as true, but it is plain wrong - there is no consciousness involved.

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But seriously, if such a system displays all the behavioural characteristics of consciousness appropriately, how can we say it is not conscious? after all, that's how we judge consciousness, even subjectively.

A simple program printing "Ouch!" to the screen whenever a key is pressed would pass your test, but it would be lying about the existence of pain.

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Yes, we could program a system to superficially appear conscious when it isn't, but I would suggest that there would be differences that would be distinguishable. If it was not possible to tell, I'd say it is conscious.

No, it would be wise to treat it as if it is conscious so as not to harm it just in case it is, but you should not label it as conscious unless you can see the whole mechanism and identify where the feelings are being experienced and what it is that is experiencing them.

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There is pain if we feel pain; a headache, or even phantom limb pain is 'real' pain; that feeling of hurting is what we mean by 'pain'. So, I say, for consciousness - that sense of feeling aware, or of self-awareness. That sensation is what consciousness is, and it is accompanied by neurophysiological, and, usually, by physiological and behavioural indicators. The 'I' is an emergent construct, a collaboration of neurological processes. Strictly, its location is in the brain, as it's generated by brain processes, but its subjective location (where it feels it is located) may not be.

When you torture someone, what is it that's suffering? Imagine that you can make a brain out of a few thousand atoms. None of those atoms is able to feel pain, but pain is felt somewhere when they are connected together in a particular arrangement and a certain input is fed into them. What feels the pain? The atoms don't feel it, so is it the geometrical arrangement itself that you are torturing and causing to suffer? Or is it something else that doesn't exist which is emerging to suffer? Does that not strike you as being rather magical?

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In a computer, no matter how intelligent the software becomes, there will never be an "I" in it capable of feeling anything.
That's arguable. Consciousness isn't intelligence.

Indeed it isn't, but the claims we have about its existence come from intelligent information systems in our brains. If we didn't have the claims about things like pain coming out of such intelligent systems, we would know nothing of it.

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If we built a neural network similar to the brain (architecturally and connectedly) and trained it appropriately, there's no reason why it should not have a subjective sense of self. It won't happen unless it's structured appropriately; we know certain structures are essential to generate various aspects of self & self image. There are various ventures in progress, of which Blue Brain Project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/) looks like the best bet, but their objective is neurological disease research rather than consciousness, so unless diseases of consciousness come under that remit, we may not see it.

If we make such a system and it claims to be able to feel qualia, we won't know whether to believe it or not, and it will be programmed in the same way as our minds, hiding all the fine working in complex networks which are practically impossible to untangle. Even a simple neural network can be so complex in the way it functions that no one can work out how it does what it does.

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Science has failed to find an "I" in us too - all we have to go on are the pronouncements of the information systems within us which assert that there is an "I" inside us somewhere feeling feelings, and yet the information systems which create the data that documents this phenomenon cannot be trusted as it should be impossible for them to access such knowledge.
That's not entirely true; there are many examples of sensory manipulations, or drugs, or damage through disease or injury, that cause faulty construction of self-image, sense of self, and 'I'. The locations, connections, and functions of many of the affected areas that contribute are known to varying degrees, so we're not completely in the dark. Of course, although we know some of the requirements, we're still some way from identifying precisely how that subjective sense of self is generated.

All we have done so far is find ways to stop and restore the reporting of the experience of sensations - we rely 100% on the individual being studied reporting to us whether they were conscious or not. That may allow us to rule out the possibility of the "I" being in certain places, so we may in time track it down to a small location or set of locations, but even then we'll have a hard time trying to find it within those.

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It seems most likely that all that's happening is that assertions are being mapped to inputs such that an input signal which may represent damage being done has the idea of "pain" mapped to it by the information system, and then that fiction of pain is never questioned.
That's pretty much how it seems to work. Pain is generated by and in the brain; it doesn't exist outside it. There are mappings that trigger a bunch of dispositional activity that can include sensations of pain. That's how brain in general seems to work - mappings overlaying dispositions (simple or 'primitive' responses). Pain is triggered usually in response to sensory inputs (which are just pulses of membrane depolarizations like most neural activity), but sometimes just from internal neural 'noise' or spontaneous firings. Damasio's 'Self Comes to Mind (http://www.amazon.com/Self-Comes-Mind-Constructing-Conscious/dp/030747495X)' has some interesting information about how these systems work (some of it a bit technical).

I wasn't referring to the inputs from nerves interfacing with the brain, but to the inputs to the information system from the places where the experiences of pain and other qualia supposedly occur. For the information system to be informed that pain has been experienced, there needs to be an input to signal that, but the input signal cannot transmit actual knowledge of pain to the information system, so the information system has to map an assertion that there was pain to the input, an assertion which it cannot back up because it is nothing more than a mapping. The information system has no means to know anything about the pain - all it can know is that there is an input from something which relates to a warning of potential damage being done.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/09/2013 20:55:26
Important note :

I personally think that human consciousness is simply the "I" , or "me"  through which  we interpret or perceive the representation of reality created by our brain   via our senses .

But then again, you would ask me what that "I" or "me" exactly is : i would say : it's the soul : what is the soul ? one would ask ...

That would bring us back to square zero again ...so .

Besides, and regardless of what the soul might be , i think that the soul "resides " in our whole beings , in every cell , atom or organ of ours , not just in the brain : the soul is "located " within and without in fact (Extended sense of reality or the extended consciousness via the "reading" of peoples ' minds,via some sort of telepathy ...)   ,and has no specific "location " ,due to its immaterial nature which escapes space -time= that's no contradiction in fact  .

I also think that human consciousness is a dynamic ever-changing process as well , but the core "I" or "me " in it is unchanging ..., and there are also many levels of consciousness as well ...I dunno .


In other words :

Feelings , emotions ....(There are some scientifc studies such as the one here below which confirms the fact that behavior , emotions, feelings ...are not always required for  consciousness , as some other scientific studies had shown that the brain is not always needed for  consciousness as well sometimes..... ...  ...) , feelings , emotions ...thus are  in fact no built-in illusions in our systems we get fooled by ,or we confuse with reality : they are as real as we are,but the materialistic interpretation of the biological evolution , via the natural selection ,can only logically conclude otherwise,logically in the materialistic sense at least , to be more precize  : that the evolved brain created consciousness , and therefore the latter is just a sophisticated survival strategy built-in illusion in our systems we perceive as real while it is not as such  :materialists do not even realise or detect the inherent intrinsic paradox or contradiction contained in their latter assumption ,ironically enough .

My own alternative explanation for pain , emotions, feelings ...is as follows :This is just an attempt of mine on the subject : i might be wrong of course : I dunno :

"We" (what we can call our consciousness,relatively speaking then  )  get informed  by our sensory "inputs " about a given representation of reality created by our brain in the process as a result , our consciousness acts up on , by trying to make sense of that given representation of reality by "translating " it into some sort of conscious representation of reality , the latter causes our biological system to act accordingly :

Example : when i hear some bad news on the phone, for example , the sound waves of the voice of speaker via the phone ( the sound waves of the voice of  the speaker at the other end of the phone gets converted to electro-magnetic signals , which get , in their turn , converted to sound waves again hitting my ears ' nerves ...), the sound waves of the speaker's voice hit my ears' nerves which send them to particular areas of my brain : my consciousness or "me " gets informed by those sensory "inputs " and therefore tries to make sense of them , which triggers a conscious feeling of sadness by my consciousness as a result that can even bring tears to my eyes afterwards :

My consciousness gets informed by my sensory "inputs " transmitted to my brain by the sound waves of the speaker's voice  via my ears' nerves , my consciousness then generates the sad feeling as a result , which causes my biological system to trigger tears in my eyes ...= consciousness is not generated by the brain : the latter merely informs it of that given representation of reality corresponding to those sound waves of the voice of the speaker ,my consciousness or "me " acts upon by triggering the feeling of sadness which results in the biological process of tears flowing from my eyes ,I dunno .

In short : the brain does not generate feelings , emotions, pain,consciousness  ....via triggering the alleged biological processes resulting in the feeling of pain, emotions, feelings ....which trigger tears in my eyes = it's exactly the other way around : feelings , emotions , pain ...are triggered by my own consciousness which results in the feedback leading to the biological process resulting in triggering tears in my eyes , after the fact that my sensory inputs inform my consciousness of that particular representation of reality created by my own brain via my own senses .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/09/2013 21:32:45
Materialism is just that n fact , once again : a world view most of people , including people here , do confuse with science itself ,unfortunately enough :
You have been indoctrinated and brainwashed by materialism for more than 5 centuries now that you cannot but confuse it with science ,thanks to all those scientific great huge advances in the last centuries .
No wonder when we take into consideration that dominating materialistic paradigm in science stating the " fact " that the reality out there is  exclusively material : a materialistic "fact " or paradigm which has been largely refuted by quantum physics at least .
The materialistic assumption that life itself as a result is just a matter , so to speak, of just material biological processes does not hold much water either = no wonder that materialism fails pathetically at the level of human sciences mainly and elsewhere , and even at the level of inorganic  matter itself , and even at the level of quantum physics ...despite the great achievements of materialism at the level of exact -sciences at least , relatively speaking .

In short :

It is only a matter of time before that materialistic  deterministic mechanical reductionistic paradigm becomes ...history , and there are many non-materialistic  alternative approaches of human consciousness,life ... as well out there :

So, materialists just behave as if they do not exist as such, otherwise they would be refuting their own materialism as a world view in the process , as a result= they set a lethal trap for themselves they cannot escape , unless they reject materialism itself  .


P.S.: "The evolved brain created consciousness as a so-called emergent property " is yet another materialistic assumption though = not a scientific fact = not even remotely close . especially when we take into consideration the fact that we still do not know much about the extremely complex human brain, despite all those neurological advances ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/09/2013 21:36:28
Who says reality makes sense? Why should it? To whom? Our entire existence is due tot he fact that it doesn't.

That's just your own opinion on the subject , you "extracted " from or you got made to believe in through materialism as a world view = logical, in the materialistic sense at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/09/2013 21:53:22
I honestly cannot understand how one can attack materialism and reductionism, blithely dismiss things like emergent properties and offer absolutely nothing better in terms of explanation of phenomena.
You don't need such explanations if you have faith. Apparently it's beyond logic, reason, and science...

Come on : if that was the case : how ,on earth , was it possible then that the early muslims "invented " and practiced science ,mainly thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology on the subject .?
You should know better than saying such a stupid thing , sorry .

Science , reason, logic ...have limits , but that does not mean we should "discard " them , who said that ?

Try to detect the context of the statements of people ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/09/2013 00:04:51
Emergent properties are well worth dismissing. Nothing ever emerges that isn't 100% rooted in the components, even if it's hard to recognise them until they emerge. When it comes to consciousness, you can't have something emerge out of a system to be sentient (which is what consciousness is really all about) without any of the components being sentient unless your explanation is based on magic.
Of course emergent properties are rooted in the components, that's the point; they are properties of the components interacting together that are not properties of the components individually. So water is wet, but a water molecule isn't; there's nothing about an individual water molecule that is wet. In Conway's Game of Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), there's nothing in the simple rules of a grid square's life & death that predicts a glider gun, that's an emergent phenomenon of multiple iterations of multiple grid squares. Tin and copper are soft metals, but mix them together and the alloy is harder than either; an emergent property of the interaction of copper and tin atoms, not predictable from examining a tin atom and a copper atom.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/09/2013 07:48:28
Come on : if that was the case : how ,on earth , was it possible then that the early muslims "invented " and practiced science ,mainly thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology on the subject .?


"Thanks to" or "despite"?

The essence of science is that there is no supernatural or revealed authority: the very opposite of all religions.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/09/2013 12:00:24
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if such a system displays all the behavioural characteristics of consciousness appropriately, how can we say it is not conscious? after all, that's how we judge consciousness
A simple program printing "Ouch!" to the screen whenever a key is pressed would pass your test, but it would be lying about the existence of pain.
Well no, no it wouldn't. All the behavioural characteristics of consciousness is not 'Ouch!' when a key is pressed; I'm thinking along the lines of an extended Turing Test, an in-depth examination. Of course, the criteria for establishing consciousness would need to be defined first. What must any system be able to do for us to judge it conscious?

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When you torture someone, what is it that's suffering?
They are; their body and mind.

Their body suffers physical damage, triggering a flood of neural signals to the brainstem, the evolutionarily ancient part, where the nucleus tractus solitarius & the parabrachial nucleus generate activity maps that are the felt body states. These areas have feed-forward and feeback links to many other parts of the brain, but the essence of the experience is generated there.

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Imagine that you can make a brain out of a few thousand atoms. ... <fantasy> ... Does that not strike you as being rather magical?
It would have to be magical, because you can't make a brain out of a few thousand atoms. You need around a million neurons to make a cockroach brain, and it's not clear whether they feel pain at all.

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If we make such a system and it claims to be able to feel qualia, we won't know whether to believe it or not, and it will be programmed in the same way as our minds, hiding all the fine working in complex networks which are practically impossible to untangle.
That's why we'd have to judge it the same way we judge consciousness in ourselves and others - by how it behaves, what it says and does.

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All we have done so far is find ways to stop and restore the reporting of the experience of sensations - we rely 100% on the individual being studied reporting to us whether they were conscious or not. That may allow us to rule out the possibility of the "I" being in certain places, so we may in time track it down to a small location or set of locations, but even then we'll have a hard time trying to find it within those.
Not quite sure what you're saying here; I was referring to the thousands of examples of faulty construction of the self, or sense of self, in various ways; the sort of peculiarities covered by V. S. Ramachandran in his research and books (http://www.amazon.co.uk/V.-S.-Ramachandran/e/B001IGHMGU). Here's a link to some of his videos (http://thesciencenetwork.org/search?speakers=V.S.+Ramachandran) you may find interesting.

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I wasn't referring to the inputs from nerves interfacing with the brain, but to the inputs to the information system from the places where the experiences of pain and other qualia supposedly occur. For the information system to be informed that pain has been experienced, there needs to be an input to signal that, but the input signal cannot transmit actual knowledge of pain to the information system, so the information system has to map an assertion that there was pain to the input, an assertion which it cannot back up because it is nothing more than a mapping. The information system has no means to know anything about the pain - all it can know is that there is an input from something which relates to a warning of potential damage being done.
I explained that the brainstem nuclei generate the felt body states, the foundational feelings of pain or pleasure, etc., by mapping the afferent sensory flow from internal and external body senses. From these nuclei, the emotional and hormonal responses are mediated, via signals to the insular cortex and thalamic nuclei. The insular cortex refines and differentiates those basal feelings, relating them to contextual activity elsewhere in the brain. It also feeds forwards to higher cortical areas. This is all described in more detail in Damasio's 'Self Comes To Mind' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Comes-Mind-Constructing-Conscious/dp/0099498022/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378378387&sr=1-1&keywords=self+comes+to+mind) (chapter 3 onwards).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 05/09/2013 17:51:23
Besides, and regardless of what the soul might be , i think that the soul "resides " in our whole beings , in every cell , atom or organ of ours , not just in the brain : the soul is "located " within and without in fact (Extended sense of reality or the extended consciousness via the "reading" of peoples ' minds,via some sort of telepathy ...)   ,and has no specific "location " ,due to its immaterial nature which escapes space -time= that's no contradiction in fact  .

That's lovely, but it still has to interact with the information system of the brain which does all the thinking mechanically. When you damage the structure of the brain, you can see the thinking go wrong. When you look at a species with inferior wiring, you see a reduction in thinking ability. If the "soul" is to think, it is tied to a mechanical system which does all the work for it and without which the soul can do nothing. This mechanical thinking system, the information system, constructs information about the soul and the feelings that are experienced by it, so it needs to be able to get that knowledge from the soul somehow. All matter and energy may be conscious, as may a fabric of space or something outside of space entirely, but you still have to propose a means by which this consciousness can interface with the information system of the brain which asserts that consciousness is real. How can the mechanical information system ever know? The way to try to find out is to try to follow back the claims generated by the information system to see how they are formed and what they're based on; to see on what basis they are labelled as true.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 05/09/2013 17:58:54
Emergent properties are well worth dismissing. Nothing ever emerges that isn't 100% rooted in the components, even if it's hard to recognise them until they emerge. When it comes to consciousness, you can't have something emerge out of a system to be sentient (which is what consciousness is really all about) without any of the components being sentient unless your explanation is based on magic.
Of course emergent properties are rooted in the components, that's the point; they are properties of the components interacting together that are not properties of the components individually. So water is wet, but a water molecule isn't; there's nothing about an individual water molecule that is wet. In Conway's Game of Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), there's nothing in the simple rules of a grid square's life & death that predicts a glider gun, that's an emergent phenomenon of multiple iterations of multiple grid squares. Tin and copper are soft metals, but mix them together and the alloy is harder than either; an emergent property of the interaction of copper and tin atoms, not predictable from examining a tin atom and a copper atom.

You're missing the point. Nothing emerges that can't be accounted for by the components (which include the fabric and geometry of space in which the components are able to act). Emergent properties such as "wet" are compound ideas which can themselves be broken down. There is nothing extra that pings into existence to be conscious when lots of things are stuck together in a complex arrangement. The point is that nothing can ping into existence out of complexity to do such things as suffer which cannot also be identified in the components. A plurality cannot suffer without at least one of the singularities within it suffering. A complex geometrical arrangement cannot be tortured without at least one of the components suffering. If none of the components suffer, the imagined emerged thing that supposedly suffers cannot exist.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 05/09/2013 18:24:49
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A simple program printing "Ouch!" to the screen whenever a key is pressed would pass your test, but it would be lying about the existence of pain.
Well no, no it wouldn't. All the behavioural characteristics of consciousness is not 'Ouch!' when a key is pressed; I'm thinking along the lines of an extended Turing Test, an in-depth examination. Of course, the criteria for establishing consciousness would need to be defined first. What must any system be able to do for us to judge it conscious?

Any more complex case where you add all manner of extra functionality to confuse the situation will still at root work in the same way. A signal comes in, an assertion that pain is experienced is mapped to that input, and then that assertion is made in some way, but it is nothing more than an assertion. There was no pain in the system. You could have a robot that behaves exactly like a human when you interact with it, but every claim it makes about feelings will be achieved by mapping assertions to imputs.

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When you torture someone, what is it that's suffering?
They are; their body and mind.

Their body suffers physical damage, triggering a flood of neural signals to the brainstem, the evolutionarily ancient part, where the nucleus tractus solitarius & the parabrachial nucleus generate activity maps that are the felt body states. These areas have feed-forward and feeback links to many other parts of the brain, but the essence of the experience is generated there.

With a robot that behaves like a human, you can break its arm off and it will not suffer. With the right anaesthetics, you can do the same with a human. The body does not suffer. The suffering, if there is any, takes place in the brain (or perhaps outside of this virtual universe entirely). Don't mix up the other meaning of "suffer" as in "the car suffered an accident" where it merely means it is the object of the hidden verb "damaged".

The suffering relevant to a discussion of consciousness is restricted to unpleasant qualia such as pain. If nothing exists that actually experiences such qualia, there can be no suffering. Something complex that experiences qualia without any of the components experiencing qualia will not do - that is a magical solution and not a scientific one.

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Imagine that you can make a brain out of a few thousand atoms. ... <fantasy> ... Does that not strike you as being rather magical?
It would have to be magical, because you can't make a brain out of a few thousand atoms. You need around a million neurons to make a cockroach brain, and it's not clear whether they feel pain at all.

You're missing the point. It's just a matter of number. If you make it quintillions instead of a thousand, it makes no difference to the thought experiment other than hiding the problem in greater complexity. The thought experiment can be done with any number down to two atoms. If you can have a system of two atoms in which pain is experienced but no pain is experienced by either atom, what the heck was it that experienced the pain?

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If we make such a system and it claims to be able to feel qualia, we won't know whether to believe it or not, and it will be programmed in the same way as our minds, hiding all the fine working in complex networks which are practically impossible to untangle.
That's why we'd have to judge it the same way we judge consciousness in ourselves and others - by how it behaves, what it says and does.

But we don't even know that we have consciousness ourselves. Our brains generate data that claim we have it, and then we believe those claims. But the claims are generated by an information system which is not competent to make such a judgement.

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All we have done so far is find ways to stop and restore the reporting of the experience of sensations - we rely 100% on the individual being studied reporting to us whether they were conscious or not. That may allow us to rule out the possibility of the "I" being in certain places, so we may in time track it down to a small location or set of locations, but even then we'll have a hard time trying to find it within those.
Not quite sure what you're saying here; I was referring to the thousands of examples of faulty construction of the self, or sense of self, in various ways; the sort of peculiarities covered by V. S. Ramachandran in his research and books (http://www.amazon.co.uk/V.-S.-Ramachandran/e/B001IGHMGU). Here's a link to some of his videos (http://thesciencenetwork.org/search?speakers=V.S.+Ramachandran) you may find interesting.

My internet connection is too slow to view videos.

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I wasn't referring to the inputs from nerves interfacing with the brain, but to the inputs to the information system from the places where the experiences of pain and other qualia supposedly occur. For the information system to be informed that pain has been experienced, there needs to be an input to signal that, but the input signal cannot transmit actual knowledge of pain to the information system, so the information system has to map an assertion that there was pain to the input, an assertion which it cannot back up because it is nothing more than a mapping. The information system has no means to know anything about the pain - all it can know is that there is an input from something which relates to a warning of potential damage being done.
I explained that the brainstem nuclei generate the felt body states, the foundational feelings of pain or pleasure, etc., by mapping the afferent sensory flow from internal and external body senses. From these nuclei, the emotional and hormonal responses are mediated, via signals to the insular cortex and thalamic nuclei. The insular cortex refines and differentiates those basal feelings, relating them to contextual activity elsewhere in the brain. It also feeds forwards to higher cortical areas. This is all described in more detail in Damasio's 'Self Comes To Mind' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Comes-Mind-Constructing-Conscious/dp/0099498022/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378378387&sr=1-1&keywords=self+comes+to+mind) (chapter 3 onwards).

You can describe all that in as much detail as you like, but it never gets to the point where feelings interface with the information system of the brain. The processor of a computer could be feeling all manner of sensations as it crunches through the code of an AGI system which matches the intelligence of a human (such programs will soon exist - my work is to build one), but there is no way for those feelings to be read by the program running in the machine. There is no "read qualia" machine code instruction, and even if there was one, it would be impossible to test the truth of any information supplied through it because they would be nothing more than assertions that there are feelings being experienced.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/09/2013 18:43:58
Come on : if that was the case : how ,on earth , was it possible then that the early muslims "invented " and practiced science ,mainly thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology on the subject .?


"Thanks to" or "despite"?

The essence of science is that there is no supernatural or revealed authority: the very opposite of all religions.

I thought you could read well .Did you understand what i said here above at least ? That was so simple though .
You are asking me about an issue which was largely debatted in that other thread " What's the real origin of the scientific method ?" you even happened to participate in , ironically enough .
So, be serious and stop this uninformed non-sense of yours ,please , if you wanna be taken seriously at least
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/09/2013 19:09:28
Besides, and regardless of what the soul might be , i think that the soul "resides " in our whole beings , in every cell , atom or organ of ours , not just in the brain : the soul is "located " within and without in fact (Extended sense of reality or the extended consciousness via the "reading" of peoples ' minds,via some sort of telepathy ...)   ,and has no specific "location " ,due to its immaterial nature which escapes space -time= that's no contradiction in fact  .

That's lovely, but it still has to interact with the information system of the brain which does all the thinking mechanically. When you damage the structure of the brain, you can see the thinking go wrong. When you look at a species with inferior wiring, you see a reduction in thinking ability. If the "soul" is to think, it is tied to a mechanical system which does all the work for it and without which the soul can do nothing. This mechanical thinking system, the information system, constructs information about the soul and the feelings that are experienced by it, so it needs to be able to get that knowledge from the soul somehow. All matter and energy may be conscious, as may a fabric of space or something outside of space entirely, but you still have to propose a means by which this consciousness can interface with the information system of the brain which asserts that consciousness is real. How can the mechanical information system ever know? The way to try to find out is to try to follow back the claims generated by the information system to see how they are formed and what they're based on; to see on what basis they are labelled as true.

(I am well aware of some  silly childish games you have been playing here = irrelevent though =Grow up )

A mechanical thinking system ? Come on,be serious  .Is the thought process mechanical ?If it is  mechanical, how would you explain human creativity, innovations, imagination,progress   ...?
You seem to confuse the correlations or interactions between the 2 different "systems " : brain and mind ,with causation : i think that mind (mind is not just semantics, not just a word we invented ) and brain are 2 totally different "things" which do work together as one = a combination of dualism and monism then .
The brain  does not cause the mind  ; they just correlate or interacte with each other : how ? Beat me : i dunno .
The mind is the one which is doing the most important work : thinking , feeling , experiencing , seeing ....= even seeing is not done by the brain, it's in fact done by the mind .
How can a  biological or mechanical system for that matter ever be able to think ,feel , experience or even see  things ....the developers of the so-called artificial intelligence have been having a hard time to make "sentient " machines that can at least "see " ...They will never be able to make those machines think, feel, experience or see things ...the way we do at least = machines can only simulate that .to some degree at least = they can never be conscious, ever .
I think that our biological neurological system is just a tool to report sensory "inputs " ( I do reject this materialistic mechanical reductionistic computer analogy )or  stimuli to our mind which acts upon that by sending ,somehow, feedbacks to the biological system to make it take action ...I dunno .

Don't you realise the fact that  your childish materialistic interpretations of scientific studies are just that = materialistic  childish  interpretations ?

When i was a child , i also used to 'think " that verything was  made of matter (not to mention that quantum physics have proven the fact that "matter is not really made of solid matter :) , i am way beyond that childish stage you are still stuck in .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/09/2013 21:51:41
But we don't even know that we have consciousness ourselves. Our brains generate data that claim we have it, and then we believe those claims. But the claims are generated by an information system which is not competent to make such a judgement.
I think here we have the point where we differ, and it looks purely semantic. I'm simply saying that the sensation we have, that feeling, of awareness and self, is what we call consciousness. Whatever it's provenance, whether based on valid or invalid data (and I don't think it is at all what it subjectively feels like, so I agree it doesn't exist as what it feels like), whether you call it an illusion or a fabrication, that feeling or sensation is consciousness. Like many human concepts, it has an emergent quality itself, a kind of uncertainty principle, so that the closer you look at it, the more you try to define it, the vaguer it gets - because it's just a feeling associated with a set of brain states.

I've encountered much the same problem with free will. At a macro scale, events are pretty much causal and deterministic (although often unpredictable), so a dualistic definition or explanation is untenable. To me, free will is the feeling that we have a choice, that we could have done something different. It's a real sensation, but it's not what it seems to be (what you do is causal, you can't 'go back' and do it differently; that unique set of circumstances can only happen once). But we are each unique in our genetics, development, and experiences, so, if unconstrained and uncoerced, our actions, though deterministic, are uniquely the product of our individuality - it seems to me that's as 'free' as it gets, and 'will' is just a subjective sense of personal agency. The common usage is just a social convenience, to cover our ignorance of the detailed causality of our actions and provide a hook for the similarly vague concept of moral responsibility. But I guess that's a whole other story, off topic.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/09/2013 23:07:01

You are asking me about an issue which was largely debatted in that other thread " What's the real origin of the scientific method ?" you even happened to participate in , ironically enough .
So, be serious and stop this uninformed non-sense of yours ,please , if you wanna be taken seriously at least

For as long as you argue by assertion, refer to supernatural authority, or refuse to define the subject you want to discuss, that won't happen. At least not in a science forum.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 19:05:00
(I am well aware of some  silly childish games you have been playing here = irrelevent though =Grow up )

What games? Where is any of it irrelevant? What has growing up got to do with the price of fish?

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A mechanical thinking system ? Come on,be serious  .Is the thought process mechanical ?If it is  mechanical, how would you explain human creativity, innovations, imagination,progress   ...?

Have you heard of the invention of the computer? Have you seen what a calculator can do for arithmetic and mathematics? The damn thing can outthink us in many calculations. What do you suppose happens when you take the same idea of mechanical computation and extend it into linguistics and general thought? We will have machines some day that can outthink us in any discussion on any subject, and all the thinking they do will be cause-and-effect mechanical. The alternative to a mechanical thinking machine would be a magical one. You clearly believe that the brain is a magical computer which therefore doesn't depend on mechanisms, but whenever the brain makes mistakes it displays the mechanical nature of the functionality within.

Creativity and innovations - problem solving. A machine needs to identify a problem and then calculate potential solutions. It took half a billion years for our brains to evolve to the point where they could do innovative and creative things, but we will program machines to match our abilities within a mere hundred years of the building of the first computers. Some creativity is guided by feelings, so when it comes to the arts it will be hard for machines to create things that satisfy us until we can find out what the algorithms of human aesthetics are. Some of these are known - we know that the golden ratio makes things better looking, so machines can already create arrangements of things that look more pleasing than random arrangements on that basis.

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You seem to confuse the correlations or interactions between the 2 different "systems " : brain and mind ,with causation : i think that mind (mind is not just semantics, not just a word we invented ) and brain are 2 totally different "things" which do work together as one = a combination of dualism and monism then .
The brain  does not cause the mind  ; they just correlate or interacte with each other : how ? Beat me : i dunno .

Here you are trying to tell me about the workings of a system which you don't understand. I at least come to this with an understanding of the mechanisms of computation, but all you have to offer is "dont know"/magic. Who is the one playing a childish game here?

Quote
The mind is the one which is doing the most important work : thinking , feeling , experiencing , seeing ....= even seeing is not done by the brain, it's in fact done by the mind .

Is that a fact! Wow - you're good!

Quote
How can a  biological or mechanical system for that matter ever be able to think ,feel , experience or even see  things ....the developers of the so-called artificial intelligence have been having a hard time to make "sentient " machines that can at least "see " ...They will never be able to make those machines think, feel, experience or see things ...the way we do at least = machines can only simulate that .to some degree at least = they can never be conscious, ever .

I am one of the developers of artificial intelligence and my aim is not to make machines sentient. It appears to be impossible to make machines sentient, and it also appears to be impossible for us to be sentient because we are machines. It will be possible to make machines think though, and they already do. Thinking is just mechanical calculation. Machines can see too, and cameras are able to take photographs automatically whenever the subject smiles. That is machine vision.

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I think that our biological neurological system is just a tool to report sensory "inputs " ( I do reject this materialistic mechanical reductionistic computer analogy )or  stimuli to our mind which acts upon that by sending ,somehow, feedbacks to the biological system to make it take action ...I dunno .

You can reject it all you like, but you're not qualified to make such a judgement (and when I say qualified, I'm not talking about certificates, but knowledge of the subject). You aren't interested in doing the work to learn about how computation works because you already have an answer that satisfies you, and that is belief in magic.

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Don't you realise the fact that  your childish materialistic interpretations of scientific studies are just that = materialistic  childish  interpretations ?

Belief in magic is childish. Science is about the elimination of magic in order to understand how things really work.

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When i was a child , i also used to 'think " that verything was  made of matter (not to mention that quantum physics have proven the fact that "matter is not really made of solid matter :) , i am way beyond that childish stage you are still stuck in .

That is hilarious. I'm going to print that out and put it up on the wall.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/09/2013 19:07:32
Strong Refutation of materialism in science ,materialism as a dogmatic conservative belief or "religion" , especially concerning that materialistic dogmatic magical approach of consciousness , the latter as a so-called emergent property from the complexity of the evolved brain : Enjoy,folks :

Just try to read the following strong refutation of materialism in science which gets confused with science by many people  ,  especially concerning the materialistic dogmatic magical approach of consciousness, the latter  as a so-called emergent property from the complexity of the evolved brain  ....written by a physicist :

http://www.superconsciousness.com/topics/science/why-consciousness-not-brain
   
Why Consciousness is Not the Brain
 FALL 2010


 
The Science of Premonitions
Author: Larry Dossey

Excerpted from The Science of Premonition: How Knowing the Future Can Help Us Avoid Danger, Maximize Opportunities and Create a Better Life by Larry Dossey. Copyright 2009 by Larry Dossey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Physicist Freeman Dyson believes the cosmos is suffused with consciousness, from the grandest level to the most minute dimensions. If it is, why aren’t we aware of it?
For more articles about "Science", Click Here

“We don’t know who first discovered water, but we can be sure that it wasn’t a fish,” the old saw reminds us. Continual exposure to something reduces our awareness of its presence. Over time, we become blind to the obvious. We swim in a sea of consciousness, like a fish swims in water. And like a fish that has become oblivious to his aqueous environment, we have become dulled to the ubiquity of consciousness.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined. The polite term for this trick is “emergence.” At a certain stage of biological complexity, evolutionary biologists claim, consciousness pops out of the brain like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. Yet this claim rests on no direct evidence whatsoever. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

In spite of the complete absence of evidence, the belief that the brain produces consciousness endures and has ossified into dogma. Many scientists realize the limitations of this belief. One way of getting around the lack of evidence is simply to declare that what we call consciousness is the brain itself. That way, nothing is produced, and the magic of “emergence” is avoided. As astronomer Carl Sagan expressed his position, “My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call mind – are a consequence of anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.” Nobelist Francis Crick agreed, saying “[A] person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them.”

This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

Consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

Others suggest that there are no mental states at all, such as love, courage, or patriotism, but only electrochemical brain fluxes that should not be described with such inflated language. They dismiss thoughts and beliefs for the same reasons. This led Nobel neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles to remark that “professional philosophers and psychologists think up the notion that there are no thoughts, come to believe that there are no beliefs, and feel strongly that there are no feelings.” Eccles was emphasizing the absurdities that have crept into the debates about consciousness. They are not hard to spot. Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

The arguments about the origins and nature of consciousness are central to premonitions. For if the promissory materialists are correct – if consciousness is indeed identical with the brain – the curtain closes on premonitions. The reason is that the brain is a local phenomenon – i.e., it is localized to the brain and body, and to the present. This prohibits premonitions in principle, because accordingly the brain cannot operate outside the body and the here-and-now. But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined.

These assertions are not hyperbolic, but conservative. They are consistent with the entire span of human history, throughout which all cultures of which we have record believed that human perception extends beyond the reach of the senses. This belief might be dismissed as superstition but for the fact that modern research has established its validity beyond reasonable doubt to anyone whose reasoning has not clotted into hardened skepticism. To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

One of the first modern thinkers to endorse an outside-the-brain view of consciousness was William James, who is considered the father of American psychology. In his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University, James took a courageous stand against what he called “the fangs of cerebralism and the idea that consciousness is produced by the brain. He acknowledged that arrested brain development in childhood can lead to mental retardation, that strokes or blows to the head can abolish memory or consciousness, and that certain chemicals can change the quality of thought. But to consider this as proof that the brain actually makes consciousness, James said, is irrational.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

Why irrational? Consider a radio, an invention that was introduced during James’s lifetime, and which he used to illustrate the mind-brain relationship. If one bangs a radio with a hammer, it ceases to function. But that does not mean that the origin of the sounds was the radio itself; the sound originated from outside it in the form of an electromagnetic signal. The radio received, modified, and amplified the external signal into something recognizable as sound. Just so, the brain can be damaged in various ways that distort the quality of consciousness – trauma, stroke, nutritional deficiencies, dementia, etc. But this does not necessarily mean the brain “made” the consciousness that is now disturbed, or that consciousness is identical to the brain.

British philosopher Chris Carter endorses this analogy. Equating mind and brain is irrational, he says as listening to music on a radio, smashing the radio’s receiver, and thereby concluding that the radio was producing the music.

To update the analogy, consider a television set. We can damage a television set so severely that we lose the image on the screen, but this doesn’t prove that the TV actually produced the image. We know that David Letterman does not live behind the TV screen on which he appears; yet the contention that brain equals consciousness is as absurd as if he did.

My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present.

The radio and TV analogies can be misleading, however, because consciousness does not behave like an electromagnetic signal. Electromagnetic (EM) signals display certain characteristics. The farther away they get from their source, the weaker they become. Not so with consciousness; its effects do not attenuate with increasing distance. For example, in the hundreds of healing experiments that have been done in both humans and animals, healing intentions work equally well from the other side of the earth as at the bedside of the sick individual. Moreover, EM signals can be blocked partially or completely, but the effects of conscious intention cannot be blocked by any known substance. For instance, sea water is known to block EM signals completely at certain depths, yet experiments in remote viewing have been successfully carried out beyond such depths, demonstrating that the long-distance communication between the involved individuals cannot depend on EM-type signals. In addition, EM signals require travel time from their source to a receiver, yet thoughts can be perceived simultaneously between individuals across global distances. Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent. Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions. Electromagnetic signals are not capable of these feats. From these differences, we can conclude that consciousness is not an electric signal.

Then what is it? My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present. Nonlocal events are immediate; they require no travel time. They are unmediated; they require no energetic signal to “carry” them. They are unmitigated; they do not become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once. This means there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal.

Researcher Dean Radin, whose presentiment experiments provide profound evidence for future knowing, believes that the nonlocal events in the subatomic, quantum domain underlie the nonlocal events we experience at the human level. He invokes the concept of entanglement as a bridging hypothesis uniting the small- and large-scale happenings. Quantum entanglement and quantum nonlocality are indeed potent possibilities that may eventually explain our nonlocal experiences, but only further research will tell. Meanwhile, there is a gathering tide of opinion favoring these approaches. As physicist Chris Clarke, of the University of Southampton, says, “On one hand, Mind is inherently non-local. On the other, the world is governed by a quantum physics that is inherently non-local. This is no accident, but a precise correspondence ...[Mind and the world are] aspects of the same thing...The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind. This view will affirm that consciousness is fundamental, omnipresent and eternal – a model that is as cordial to premonitions as the materialistic, brain-based view is hostile.


 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/09/2013 19:18:46
(I am well aware of some  silly childish games you have been playing here = irrelevent though =Grow up )

What games? Where is any of it irrelevant? What has growing up got to do with the price of fish?

Quote
A mechanical thinking system ? Come on,be serious  .Is the thought process mechanical ?If it is  mechanical, how would you explain human creativity, innovations, imagination,progress   ...?

Have you heard of the invention of the computer? Have you seen what a calculator can do for arithmetic and mathematics? The damn thing can outthink us in many calculations. What do you suppose happens when you take the same idea of mechanical computation and extend it into linguistics and general thought? We will have machines some day that can outthink us in any discussion on any subject, and all the thinking they do will be cause-and-effect mechanical. The alternative to a mechanical thinking machine would be a magical one. You clearly believe that the brain is a magical computer which therefore doesn't depend on mechanisms, but whenever the brain makes mistakes it displays the mechanical nature of the functionality within.

Creativity and innovations - problem solving. A machine needs to identify a problem and then calculate potential solutions. It took half a billion years for our brains to evolve to the point where they could do innovative and creative things, but we will program machines to match our abilities within a mere hundred years of the building of the first computers. Some creativity is guided by feelings, so when it comes to the arts it will be hard for machines to create things that satisfy us until we can find out what the algorithms of human aesthetics are. Some of these are known - we know that the golden ratio makes things better looking, so machines can already create arrangements of things that look more pleasing than random arrangements on that basis.

Quote
You seem to confuse the correlations or interactions between the 2 different "systems " : brain and mind ,with causation : i think that mind (mind is not just semantics, not just a word we invented ) and brain are 2 totally different "things" which do work together as one = a combination of dualism and monism then .
The brain  does not cause the mind  ; they just correlate or interacte with each other : how ? Beat me : i dunno .

Here you are trying to tell me about the workings of a system which you don't understand. I at least come to this with an understanding of the mechanisms of computation, but all you have to offer is "dont know"/magic. Who is the one playing a childish game here?

Quote
The mind is the one which is doing the most important work : thinking , feeling , experiencing , seeing ....= even seeing is not done by the brain, it's in fact done by the mind .

Is that a fact! Wow - you're good!

Quote
How can a  biological or mechanical system for that matter ever be able to think ,feel , experience or even see  things ....the developers of the so-called artificial intelligence have been having a hard time to make "sentient " machines that can at least "see " ...They will never be able to make those machines think, feel, experience or see things ...the way we do at least = machines can only simulate that .to some degree at least = they can never be conscious, ever .

I am one of the developers of artificial intelligence and my aim is not to make machines sentient. It appears to be impossible to make machines sentient, and it also appears to be impossible for us to be sentient because we are machines. It will be possible to make machines think though, and they already do. Thinking is just mechanical calculation. Machines can see too, and cameras are able to take photographs automatically whenever the subject smiles. That is machine vision.

Quote
I think that our biological neurological system is just a tool to report sensory "inputs " ( I do reject this materialistic mechanical reductionistic computer analogy )or  stimuli to our mind which acts upon that by sending ,somehow, feedbacks to the biological system to make it take action ...I dunno .

You can reject it all you like, but you're not qualified to make such a judgement (and when I say qualified, I'm not talking about certificates, but knowledge of the subject). You aren't interested in doing the work to learn about how computation works because you already have an answer that satisfies you, and that is belief in magic.

Quote
Don't you realise the fact that  your childish materialistic interpretations of scientific studies are just that = materialistic  childish  interpretations ?

Belief in magic is childish. Science is about the elimination of magic in order to understand how things really work.

Quote
When i was a child , i also used to 'think " that verything was  made of matter (not to mention that quantum physics have proven the fact that "matter is not really made of solid matter :) , i am way beyond that childish stage you are still stuck in .

That is hilarious. I'm going to print that out and put it up on the wall.


Haha : you do seem to have a sense of humor though, after all  : good , because i thought you would react angrily at my latest words here above : i am delighted by the fact that i failed to predict your behavior : nice .
Ok, Mr. Einstein :

Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .
Thanks , appreciate .

P.S.: As i said earlier ,in another thread  , to dlorde : you , mr . David Cooper, is the true materialist here ,together with Dawkins and co club  ,dlorde and many other less true materialists do have a certain materialistic  vision ,combined  with  a sort of romantic magical materialism as well .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 19:34:21
I think here we have the point where we differ, and it looks purely semantic. I'm simply saying that the sensation we have, that feeling, of awareness and self, is what we call consciousness.

If there really are feelings, that would indeed be consciousness. Mechanical awareness (as in a security light with a sensor which detects when it's dark and switches it on) is different from conscious awareness where there is a feeling of existing; a feeling of being aware. Consciousness is all about feelings.

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Whatever it's provenance, whether based on valid or invalid data (and I don't think it is at all what it subjectively feels like, so I agree it doesn't exist as what it feels like), whether you call it an illusion or a fabrication, that feeling or sensation is consciousness.

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

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Like many human concepts, it has an emergent quality itself, a kind of uncertainty principle, so that the closer you look at it, the more you try to define it, the vaguer it gets - because it's just a feeling associated with a set of brain states.

If the feelings are to be real, they have to be experienced by something, and that isn't something that can emerge out of complexity. If we can't point to something of substance (which isn't to restrict it to matter or energy, both of which may just be twists of a fabric of space) and say that it experiences the feelings, we're left with nothing experiencing the feelings, and if nothing experiences them, they can't be felt and can't be feelings.

On the free will point, there isn't such a thing, but there could indeed be a feeling of there being such a thing. That can be stuck in the pot with all the other qualia, but the big question is how to get an information system to access qualia and know anything of them. If it can't, any information it has about them is made up, unless there is some kind of intelligent sentience system which is capable of doing all the work of an information system and can directly manipulate the data in the information system to ensure that the claims about sentience contained in it are true, but an intelligent sentience system would then need to be an information system itself and would need to speak the same language as the other information system in order to know how to manipulate its data, so it doesn't take us any further on: the interface problem is merely transferred into the intelligent sentience system where the sentience side of things has to be converted into data by the information system side of things. There will always be a division between these two things because sentience and data belong to different systems - data requires representation and calculation apparatus, while sentience requires direct feeling without any representation. To translate direct experience of feelings into data about feelings appears to be impossible because the translation has to be done by the information system and the information system can't access the sensations.

That is the sticking point with consciousness. If there is a solution to this that makes consciousness as possible as it feels to us, it's going to take a radical change in approach to the way we look at computation, but so far the only alternative approach that has been suggested by anyone is the childish one of magic, though of course it may be that science is indeed just a pile of pants and that magic really is king.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/09/2013 21:28:08
Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.
So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/09/2013 21:35:37
I think here we have the point where we differ, and it looks purely semantic. I'm simply saying that the sensation we have, that feeling, of awareness and self, is what we call consciousness.

If there really are feelings, that would indeed be consciousness. Mechanical awareness (as in a security light with a sensor which detects when it's dark and switches it on) is different from conscious awareness where there is a feeling of existing; a feeling of being aware. Consciousness is all about feelings.

Quote
Whatever it's provenance, whether based on valid or invalid data (and I don't think it is at all what it subjectively feels like, so I agree it doesn't exist as what it feels like), whether you call it an illusion or a fabrication, that feeling or sensation is consciousness.

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

Quote
Like many human concepts, it has an emergent quality itself, a kind of uncertainty principle, so that the closer you look at it, the more you try to define it, the vaguer it gets - because it's just a feeling associated with a set of brain states.

If the feelings are to be real, they have to be experienced by something, and that isn't something that can emerge out of complexity. If we can't point to something of substance (which isn't to restrict it to matter or energy, both of which may just be twists of a fabric of space) and say that it experiences the feelings, we're left with nothing experiencing the feelings, and if nothing experiences them, they can't be felt and can't be feelings.

On the free will point, there isn't such a thing, but there could indeed be a feeling of there being such a thing. That can be stuck in the pot with all the other qualia, but the big question is how to get an information system to access qualia and know anything of them. If it can't, any information it has about them is made up, unless there is some kind of intelligent sentience system which is capable of doing all the work of an information system and can directly manipulate the data in the information system to ensure that the claims about sentience contained in it are true, but an intelligent sentience system would then need to be an information system itself and would need to speak the same language as the other information system in order to know how to manipulate its data, so it doesn't take us any further on: the interface problem is merely transferred into the intelligent sentience system where the sentience side of things has to be converted into data by the information system side of things. There will always be a division between these two things because sentience and data belong to different systems - data requires representation and calculation apparatus, while sentience requires direct feeling without any representation. To translate direct experience of feelings into data about feelings appears to be impossible because the translation has to be done by the information system and the information system can't access the sensations.

That is the sticking point with consciousness. If there is a solution to this that makes consciousness as possible as it feels to us, it's going to take a radical change in approach to the way we look at computation, but so far the only alternative approach that has been suggested by anyone is the childish one of magic, though of course it may be that science is indeed just a pile of pants and that magic really is king.

Right : you know : i read your replies with great interest , i mean it , simply because you are the only true materialist here , in the right materialistic sense at least .
A true materialist in the above mentioned sense without that other magical romantic thinking of some so-called materialists such as our   dlorde   here  .

If you happen to be right about the "fact " that we are just machines which seem to need those sophisticated evolutionary so-called built-in in our systems illusions such as consciousness, feelings , emotions ....in order to survive, then you or others for that matter can be able some day to create  conscious  artificial intelligent machines exactly like us ,and maybe even some conscious intelligent machines that would even surpass us = the next level of evolution as some scientists like to call it .

But i , to be honest , no offense , do not only doubt such a "possibility probability " , but i do also think it is a childish one, sorry .
But then again, who knows .
Take care
All the best
Kind regards


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 21:42:53
Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .

I have nothing to offer that can impress you as I don't have a solution to the problem of consciousness. I agree with his main objection, but he offers no solution other than to move the problem elsewhere and pretend that that fixes it.

Quote
But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

I don't see the evidence of it operating beyond the brain, but at the same time I see no reason why it shouldn't. This universe could be virtual and our consciousness could lie outside it, but this doesn't address the fundamental problem - it merely moves it elsewhere (the calculations will still need to be done somewhere, and for the claims about feelings to be true they will need to be generated by a calculating information system which has some way of accessing the experiencing of sensations - how it does that is something that still needs to be explained). Cutting up brains and looking for mechanisms in them may never reveal anything because the real mechanisms could be hidden and the apparent mechanisms of the brain may not be used when the brain is actually "running".

Quote
To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

I very much doubt that that is serious research, though I'm basing my initial judgement on the fact that I haven't heard of it before. It ought to be big news if it's true, so is it being suppressed or is it just being ignored because it's a pile of pants? Where can I read more about it? Has it been published in a serious science journal?

Quote
As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

That doesn't really matter. It could easily be the case that everything is conscious and experiences qualia all the time. The real problem is how anything can then express the thought that it is conscious and not merely get stuck at the point of feeling conscious.

Quote
This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

It is a superfluous concept in some ways, but we are set up in such a way as to believe the claims our brains generate about feelings and we can even imagine that we feel them directly. If the feelings aren't real, then we are deluded zombies, but we're pretty determined not to believe that's the case, as any well-deluded zombie should be. This nihilism would be a good solution to the whole problem if it wasn't for the fact that the illusion feels too damned good. How can the "I" in the machine be fooled into thinking it exists and into feeling sensations if there is no "I" in the machine to fool? If it was easy to dismiss the whole idea of the "I", we would just junk it and accept that we don't exist; that there are merely machines in existence which generate superfluous fictions about "I"s and the imaginary feelings they supposedly experience.

I certainly don't wake up every day to think, "Oh yes - I don't exist and all these feelings are fake." They feel too real. But if they are to be real, there has to be an explanation as to how they work, and maybe the only possible explanation for them is magic. Most of the things that used to be regarded as magic have been shown not to be magic at all, but as mechanistic. We're assuming that this will go on being the case with everything that has yet to be understood, though that may be a mistake. Then again, it also seems reasonable to suppose that even magic ought to run on some kind of mechanism, so it feels like a very poor explanation of anything just to stop at the point where you declare it to be magic and give up on looking for a mechanism.

Quote
Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

That just shows poor judgement on the part of this physicist, because they wouldn't be employing their consciousness to denounce anything - they'd simply be mechanically denouncing it using machinery which generates fictions about feelings as it grinds through all the necessary computations.

Quote
Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

I can see no way in which it can be filled in, but I still leave the door open to a way being found - it may be that there's another possible way of looking at computation waiting to be discovered which will open the door to some kind of sentience-based processing taking place in some weird quantum soup outside of the universe, though having looked into things quantum I can't find anything there that goes against normal reason (most of the odd things are really just badly described), and reason continues to appear to bar the way to dealing with the key difficulty of turning direct experience of feelings into data about feelings.

Quote
Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.

Quote
Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?

Quote
The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

You can make it as quantum as you like, but you still need to account for the translation of experience of sensation to data about sensation. I keep coming back to that because it is THE problem with consciousness. "That hurt" is data. When we think about whether something hurt, we are processing data. When something actually hurts (if such a thing is even possible), it isn't happening in data - something is directly experiencing pain. To communicate the idea that pain was felt, even just to think about the idea that pain was felt, we have to move from experience of sensation to processing of information, and that's where we hit the crucial disconnect.

Quote
When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

It will be a nonlocal picture in which the fundamental problem is not addressed either. The physicist is not proposing a solution to the problem, but a way of fiddling around moving it somewhere else rather than addressing the central problem.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/09/2013 21:43:50
Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.
So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

He explained that : evolutionary sophisticated built-in in our mechanical systems useful pragmatic illusions we take for real = that's the right materialistic approach interpretation explanation at the same time , in the right materialistic sense ,without magical romantic thinking then ,if i am not mistaken at least , but i think i am not .
You should try to join his club , if you wanna be consistent with yourself ,as a so-called materialist , at least .
Good luck indeed
Kind regards
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 21:49:10
Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.
So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

I'm in two positions. In one of them I see consciousness as impossible. In the other, I refuse to see it as impossible and hope someone will come up with a completely new way of looking at the problem with some approach in which data and sentience can be mixed together in the same system and can speak the same language. I can't see any way of doing it, but that isn't the same thing as saying it's impossible. I keep hoping that a clue will jump out of some conversation which will lead to a breakthrough, and that clue is maybe as likely to come from a fruitcake as a scientist. If there's a solution, it will be found by someone who's looking in from an angle that normal people don't explore.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/09/2013 21:53:04
Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .

I have nothing to offer that can impress you as I don't have a solution to the problem of consciousness. I agree with his main objection, but he offers no solution other than to move the problem elsewhere and pretend that that fixes it.

Quote
But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

I don't see the evidence of it operating beyond the brain, but at the same time I see no reason why it shouldn't. This universe could be virtual and our consciousness could lie outside it, but this doesn't address the fundamental problem - it merely moves it elsewhere (the calculations will still need to be done somewhere, and for the claims about feelings to be true they will need to be generated by a calculating information system which has some way of accessing the experiencing of sensations - how it does that is something that still needs to be explained). Cutting up brains and looking for mechanisms in them may never reveal anything because the real mechanisms could be hidden and the apparent mechanisms of the brain may not be used when the brain is actually "running".

Quote
To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

I very much doubt that that is serious research, though I'm basing my initial judgement on the fact that I haven't heard of it before. It ought to be big news if it's true, so is it being suppressed or is it just being ignored because it's a pile of pants? Where can I read more about it? Has it been published in a serious science journal?

Quote
As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

That doesn't really matter. It could easily be the case that everything is conscious and experiences qualia all the time. The real problem is how anything can then express the thought that it is conscious and not merely get stuck at the point of feeling conscious.

Quote
This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

It is a superfluous concept in some ways, but we are set up in such a way as to believe the claims our brains generate about feelings and we can even imagine that we feel them directly. If the feelings aren't real, then we are deluded zombies, but we're pretty determined not to believe that's the case, as any well-deluded zombie should be. This nihilism would be a good solution to the whole problem if it wasn't for the fact that the illusion feels too damned good. How can the "I" in the machine be fooled into thinking it exists and into feeling sensations if there is no "I" in the machine to fool? If it was easy to dismiss the whole idea of the "I", we would just junk it and accept that we don't exist; that there are merely machines in existence which generate superfluous fictions about "I"s and the imaginary feelings they supposedly experience.

I certainly don't wake up every day to think, "Oh yes - I don't exist and all these feelings are fake." They feel too real. But if they are to be real, there has to be an explanation as to how they work, and maybe the only possible explanation for them is magic. Most of the things that used to be regarded as magic have been shown not to be magic at all, but as mechanistic. We're assuming that this will go on being the case with everything that has yet to be understood, though that may be a mistake. Then again, it also seems reasonable to suppose that even magic ought to run on some kind of mechanism, so it feels like a very poor explanation of anything just to stop at the point where you declare it to be magic and give up on looking for a mechanism.

Quote
Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

That just shows poor judgement on the part of this physicist, because they wouldn't be employing their consciousness to denounce anything - they'd simply be mechanically denouncing it using machinery which generates fictions about feelings as it grinds through all the necessary computations.

Quote
Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

I can see no way in which it can be filled in, but I still leave the door open to a way being found - it may be that there's another possible way of looking at computation waiting to be discovered which will open the door to some kind of sentience-based processing taking place in some weird quantum soup outside of the universe, though having looked into things quantum I can't find anything there that goes against normal reason (most of the odd things are really just badly described), and reason continues to appear to bar the way to dealing with the key difficulty of turning direct experience of feelings into data about feelings.

Quote
Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.

Quote
Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?

Quote
The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

You can make it as quantum as you like, but you still need to account for the translation of experience of sensation to data about sensation. I keep coming back to that because it is THE problem with consciousness. "That hurt" is data. When we think about whether something hurt, we are processing data. When something actually hurts (if such a thing is even possible), it isn't happening in data - something is directly experiencing pain. To communicate the idea that pain was felt, even just to think about the idea that pain was felt, we have to move from experience of sensation to processing of information, and that's where we hit the crucial disconnect.

Quote
When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

It will be a nonlocal picture in which the fundamental problem is not addressed either. The physicist is not proposing a solution to the problem, but a way of fiddling around moving it somewhere else rather than addressing the central problem.


Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 21:54:14
If you happen to be right about the "fact " that we are just machines which seem to need those sophisticated evolutionary so-called built-in in our systems illusions such as consciousness, feelings , emotions ....in order to survive, then you or others for that matter can be able some day to create  conscious  artificial intelligent machines exactly like us ,and maybe even some conscious intelligent machines that would even surpass us = the next level of evolution as some scientists like to call it .

Not quite. We could make machines which copy us right down to the generation of fake claims of consciousness and the ability of the machines to get so stuck in their thinking that they believe non-existent feelings exist and that an "I" is in there feeling them, but they would not actually be conscious.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/09/2013 22:31:56
Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care
Thanks for that, but the reality is that we're all stuck here. None of us want magic in our model, but we have yet to find a way to remove it without becoming nihilists, and nihilism feels highly unsatisfactory - you only have to pinch yourself to provide yourself with a serious objection to it. We feel as if we are substantially more than soulless machines making false assertions about feelings that don't exist. But we shouldn't be surprised that this problem won't break open for us because it has always been the biggest puzzle of them all and has blocked the way of anyone who has tried to tackle it. It is important though that we pin down and understand the fundamental problem before we waste time trying to solve it, and that is what I have attempted to do. When I look at the writings of other people on consciousness though, most of them appear to be completely bonkers, so the odds tell me that it's likely that I am completely bonkers too and am just too stupid to realise it. The most bonkers ones do all have something in common though, and that is that they make the mistake of thinking consciousness can emerge out of complexity without depending on an injection of magic, and that appears to be the mainstream "scientific" position on consciousness. These people need to ask themselves what they are causing to suffer when they torture a biological machine, because if it isn't the atoms or smaller particles, and if it isn't the energy locked up in the system, and if it isn't the fabric of space in from which these other things might be built, then what is it? Sentient geometrical arrangements or sentient pluralities just don't do it for me. Torturing a mere pattern and trying to make it suffer is pretty way out. Even so, it's not beyond possibility that there could be sentiences elsewhere linking in to biological machines and being sentient for them without it happening by magic, as would be the case if this world is virtual and the real us are sitting somewhere on the outside with all our inputs and outputs wired into it, so when you think of it like that it doesn't really matter so much that they're wanting consciousness to emerge out of complexity. Yes, that's a point I have always missed in the past, right up to the moment of writing this. They can make the link to something sentient in any way they like and it doesn't really matter. What matters is how that sentience is supposed to interface with an information system to inform the information system as to its existence (the existence of sentience). That is the key problem which needs to be tackled if any real progress is ever to be made towards understanding consciousness as a real phenomenon. If anyone can crack this single little problem and find a way to turn experience of sensation into knowledge of sensation, the whole thing will open up and we will be able to work out what we really are: we will be able to point to the soul (meaning the sentient "I" in the machine - no other baggage attached beyond being something that can feel).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/09/2013 23:45:19
We could make machines which copy us right down to the generation of fake claims of consciousness and the ability of the machines to get so stuck in their thinking that they believe non-existent feelings exist and that an "I" is in there feeling them, but they would not actually be conscious.

So your definition of "conscious" is...?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/09/2013 12:54:03
Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.
PEAR was, initially at least, a serious attempt to investigate a wide range of claimed paranormal phenomena, from remote viewing to mentally biasing mechanical and electronic randomisers, precognition, etc. They did thousands of experiments over many years, with annual reports & reviews, and, in general, reported a slight (but significant) excess of anomalous results. Their methodologies and analyses were often criticised, and attempts at replication were less successful. Mainstream consensus is that nothing of interest was demonstrated (http://www.skepdic.com/pear.html).

Quote
Quote
Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?
This may be a reference to Daryl Bem's experiments on 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall'. His methodology and analyses were criticised, particularly when he modified and added new analyses after the data was obtained. Several attempted replications were unsuccessful (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033423).

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/09/2013 13:05:32
So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

I'm in two positions. In one of them I see consciousness as impossible. In the other, I refuse to see it as impossible and hope someone will come up with a completely new way of looking at the problem with some approach in which data and sentience can be mixed together in the same system and can speak the same language. I can't see any way of doing it, but that isn't the same thing as saying it's impossible. I keep hoping that a clue will jump out of some conversation which will lead to a breakthrough, and that clue is maybe as likely to come from a fruitcake as a scientist. If there's a solution, it will be found by someone who's looking in from an angle that normal people don't explore.

Thanks for such a concise summary.

I suspect that we'll need a combined approach to get close to understanding it - a synthesis of investigating the progressive increase in consciousness & awareness in animal and infant developmental studies, large scale emulation projects (Blue Brain, etc.), and scanner studies of different conscious states and their transitions. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/09/2013 23:57:48
So your definition of "conscious" is...?

That's difficult due to ambiguity. I'd like to say that being conscious means you are experiencing phenomena relating to consciousness, namely qualia (which can include a feeling of existing or of understanding something), but you could be doing that while at the same time being officially unconscious from the point of view of anyone observing you from the outside and finding you completely unresponsive.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/09/2013 00:23:17
I don't see a problem with ambiguity. If you use a word to mean two different things, just tell us both meanings!

What I do see as a problem is that you have defined conscious in terms of consciousness and not being unconscious. So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 08/09/2013 00:34:40
PEAR was, initially at least, a serious attempt to investigate a wide range of claimed paranormal phenomena, from remote viewing to mentally biasing mechanical and electronic randomisers, precognition, etc. They did thousands of experiments over many years, with annual reports & reviews, and, in general, reported a slight (but significant) excess of anomalous results. Their methodologies and analyses were often criticised, and attempts at replication were less successful. Mainstream consensus is that nothing of interest was demonstrated (http://www.skepdic.com/pear.html).
...
This may be a reference to Daryl Bem's experiments on 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall'. His methodology and analyses were criticised, particularly when he modified and added new analyses after the data was obtained. Several attempted replications were unsuccessful (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033423).

Thanks for hunting that out and confirming my (/our) expectations.

I suspect that we'll need a combined approach to get close to understanding it - a synthesis of investigating the progressive increase in consciousness & awareness in animal and infant developmental studies, large scale emulation projects (Blue Brain, etc.), and scanner studies of different conscious states and their transitions. 

The Blue Brain type of approach may get somewhere if it ever gets to the point where it starts reporting feelings, and then it might be possible to trace back those claims to see what evidence they're based on, but it could take thousands of years to untangle the functionality of the neural nets. I don't expect to find out the answer unless we can find ways to extend our lives considerably, though there's always the chance that someone will find an explanation for consciousness (of a kind that enables it to be real) just by thinking their way into the problem in an unusual way. Maybe exploring Buddhist meditation would help...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 08/09/2013 00:40:08
I don't see a problem with ambiguity. If you use a word to mean two different things, just tell us both meanings!

That's what I did, in effect. I just phrased it in the manner I thought it. You should be able to untangle the two resulting definitions from it yourself.

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What I do see as a problem is that you have defined conscious in terms of consciousness and not being unconscious.

No, I very specifically mentioned qualia. No qualia, no consciousness.

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So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.

No. you're again missing out the key bit about it mooing.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/09/2013 20:00:07
Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care
Thanks for that, but the reality is that we're all stuck here. None of us want magic in our model, but we have yet to find a way to remove it without becoming nihilists, and nihilism feels highly unsatisfactory - you only have to pinch yourself to provide yourself with a serious objection to it. We feel as if we are substantially more than soulless machines making false assertions about feelings that don't exist. But we shouldn't be surprised that this problem won't break open for us because it has always been the biggest puzzle of them all and has blocked the way of anyone who has tried to tackle it. It is important though that we pin down and understand the fundamental problem before we waste time trying to solve it, and that is what I have attempted to do. When I look at the writings of other people on consciousness though, most of them appear to be completely bonkers, so the odds tell me that it's likely that I am completely bonkers too and am just too stupid to realise it. The most bonkers ones do all have something in common though, and that is that they make the mistake of thinking consciousness can emerge out of complexity without depending on an injection of magic, and that appears to be the mainstream "scientific" position on consciousness. These people need to ask themselves what they are causing to suffer when they torture a biological machine, because if it isn't the atoms or smaller particles, and if it isn't the energy locked up in the system, and if it isn't the fabric of space in from which these other things might be built, then what is it? Sentient geometrical arrangements or sentient pluralities just don't do it for me. Torturing a mere pattern and trying to make it suffer is pretty way out. Even so, it's not beyond possibility that there could be sentiences elsewhere linking in to biological machines and being sentient for them without it happening by magic, as would be the case if this world is virtual and the real us are sitting somewhere on the outside with all our inputs and outputs wired into it, so when you think of it like that it doesn't really matter so much that they're wanting consciousness to emerge out of complexity. Yes, that's a point I have always missed in the past, right up to the moment of writing this. They can make the link to something sentient in any way they like and it doesn't really matter. What matters is how that sentience is supposed to interface with an information system to inform the information system as to its existence (the existence of sentience). That is the key problem which needs to be tackled if any real progress is ever to be made towards understanding consciousness as a real phenomenon. If anyone can crack this single little problem and find a way to turn experience of sensation into knowledge of sensation, the whole thing will open up and we will be able to work out what we really are: we will be able to point to the soul (meaning the sentient "I" in the machine - no other baggage attached beyond being something that can feel).

Hi, dude :

Look, i do agree with most of what you were saying , form the materialistic point of view at least ,so :
Help me out here ,in order to make dlorde and alcanverd see the light haha :

They both talk about man at least as just a biological evolutionary mechanical process ,while mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes , in the same sense Dawkins says that the human mind is an independent "thing " or rather process which can and must "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " : selfish is a metaphor ...


They can't have it both ways : these friends of ours seem to be schizophrenic when it comes to body and mind :  either we are just machines , then  it's pretty almost impossible to explain consciousness, feelings , emotions ....because i do not see how the latters can rise from mechanical systems , or we have  just   been confusing those illusions of consciousness, feelings , emotions,pain  ...with reality .
Either way ,we are stuck in this , as you put it earlier .

If our ethics , cultures , societies, ....evolved "independently " from our mechanical bodies , via the interactions between our minds and the environment + via some biological influences ( The fact that our thought process has a biological neurological basis is evidence enough for the fact that our minds get at least influenced by biology, a fact they seem to ignore  ) ,so, if our ethics , societies, cultures ....evolved differently or "independently " , "idependently " ,to some degree at least , how ,on earth , did they do just that .

Thanks, appreciate indeed

Take care .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/09/2013 20:35:30
...mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes...
What on Earth are you on about now?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/09/2013 20:38:18
@ David Cooper :

Please , do tell me what you do think about the following < thanks, appreciate indeed :


There is no place for free will, good or evil , emotions , feelings,consciousness  ....as such at least whatsoever  in the materialistic interpretation of evolution, or rather  they are meaningless in the materialistic evolutionary terms
You've confused the categories there - that's either carelessness or lack of understanding. Free will and good & evil are cultural constructs, the others evolved for very good reasons (literally life or death reasons)
.

(Good and evil do exist both within us and without though ,despite what materialists might say on the subject , from their materialistic world view .
There are  in fact no free will as such , no good and evil as such ....= just illusions , if we would apply to them the right materialistic interpretation at least : free will , good or evil ...cannot rise from our mechanical biological systems : Dawkins and co are therefore not the right representatives of the right materialism : only David Cooper is ...here at least .)

They are not different categories , not in the sense that the one comes from Mars and the other comes from Venus at least , no : they are only different categories which take place at different levels of man : the one is biological and the other is a matter of consciousness shaped by the environment and by world views , not to mention that consciousness has a biological sort of basis also it cannot escape from  .
What you cannot understand is how consciousness or the mind ( I see the human mind or consciousness as a whole process which contains intelligence , emotions, feelings , imagination ...) can rise from those biological mechanical processes ? or as Dawkins put it , we can "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " by deliberately modifying our selfish behavior via our free will : how, on earth, are we supposed to do just that , if we are just machines = we cannot have a free will = free will is an illusion ,according to this mechanical deterministic materialistic view of the universe , man, life , nature ...

How did our mind get to become such an "idependent " process which could defy and rise above its mechanical basis then ?

How can't you get just that ?

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only Dawkins and co club are able to provide the right materialistic interpretation of evolution , as explained above, in the sense that there are in fact no such "things" such as free will, feelings , altruism, emotions, ....= just useful pragmatic survival strategies or built-in in our mechanical systems illusions we get fooled  by by confusing them with reality , no matter how real they might ever appear to be to us ,once again =David Cooper was explaining just that to you , in another thread as well , better than i can ever do .
Yes, and no; perhaps if I make a simple analogy: consider a magician, an illusionist; he develops a range of illusions, 'The Vanishing Rabbit', 'Sawing A Woman In Half', 'Water Into Wine', etc. Now, these all involve a carefully arranged and choreographed set of activities with real objects. But they are not what they seem. There are things happening that give the appearance of the activities described, but none of the described activities real - the rabbit doesn't really vanish, the woman isn't really sawn in half, the water doesn't really turn to wine. Sadly, many people believe they really happen, via paranormal means. When the magician or the people want to discuss them, they use the names of the illusions to identify what they're talking about.


You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to make consciousness rise from our  mechanical biological process via that emergence  magical trick, like an illusionist who apparently makes a rabbit appear from nowwhere .

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Useful or pragmatic are  not always  synonymous of the truth though
Are they ever?  Ah, but what is truth?

Exactly .
The truth is a dynamic process .The Truth with a big T is only to be known after death .

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No, sorry , those were just rational justifications for my potential behavior you were trying to develop
Yes, that's how discussions on science forums go; you're expected to provide rational justifications for your argument or position.
What i meant was : you were just using some romantic magical thinking...
OK, so you said 'rational justification' when you meant 'romantic magical thinking'; it's probably nothing to worry about, everyone has senior moments now and then.

No, you were just trying to "rationalize " your claims , as we all ,sometimes, try to rationalize our   bad behaviors in order to avoid responsibility, accountability , guilt ..

You were doing just that via magical thinking : get the pic ?

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Arguments from incredulity, anecdotes, unsupported assertions, 'no true Scotsman (materialist)' fallacies, special pleading, appeals to what is 'beyond logic, rationality, and science', etc., may be entertaining, but are insubstantial.


No, it's exactly the other way around : your magical romantic thinking contradicts the materialistic mechanical reductionistic interpretation of evolution
You still seem confused - as a response, that's not 'exactly the other way round', it's a complete non-sequitur.

You do not realise that you were using some magical romantic thinking , dude , in relation to ethics , consciousness, feelings , emotions, good and evil ,free will ....= how can they rise from our mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution then ? as social mental cultural constructs ? How ? = only you ,Dawkins and co  , as  illusionists , can explain just that via some mysterious magical tricks   .


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No, you should just see them as useful pragmatic survival strategies illusions ,as they actually are in fact , according to the materialistic interpretation of evolution ,once again , David Cooper tried to explain to you .
I can see them however I wish; but as I said, I think it's a valid viewpoint (are you having trouble following these threads?), I just like to acknowledge the subjective experience.

I made a  mistake though when i used to say that Dawkins and co are the real true materialists : they are not , in fact : simply because they do think like yourself via that magical romantic side when it comes to mind and body , cultures, societies , ethics ,free will, good and evil ...

The only real materialist here i have seen is : David Cooper :

So, let's just all move to that thread concerning consciousness , in order to have David Cooper's perspectives on these subjects .

Deal ?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/09/2013 20:42:59
...mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes...
What on Earth are you on about now?

Well, you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish :

See my reply to you as displayed  here above , i requested David Cooper to comment on .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/09/2013 20:50:26
In other words ,and in short :

How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Only some illusionists here such as  our  dlorde can explain just that , i see :

Our dlorde here mainly seems to have surpassed even that big illusionist : David Copperfield .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/09/2013 21:04:22
You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to make consciousness rise from our  mechanical biological process via that emergence  magical trick, like an illusionist who apparently makes a rabbit appear from nowwhere .

This from someone who claims it's beyond logic, reason, and science?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/09/2013 21:12:54
... you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish
If I seem to have succeeded, what is the problem? :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/09/2013 21:18:23
How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Only some illusionists here such as  our  dlorde can explain just that , i see :

Our dlorde here mainly seems to have surpassed even that big illusionist : David Copperfield .
I've given my preferred hypothesis, and I'm open to new evidence as and when it becomes available.

I notice you've gone very quiet about your own... 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/09/2013 21:46:46
So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.

No. you're again missing out the key bit about it mooing.

That's my boy!!! You have defined a cow by what it does, which is a whole lot different from "not being an uncow" because I can apply the moo test to any external object and thus identify a cow with no previous knowledge of what it is, or what it is like to be one.

So, what does a conscious being do, objectively, that distinguishes it from all non-conscious entities?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/09/2013 22:03:13
... you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish
If I seem to have succeeded, what is the problem? :)

That was sacrastic ironic meant though , no offense .
Thanks, later

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/09/2013 22:18:40
That was sacrastic ironic meant though , no offense .

None taken; I'm getting used to it.

Maybe you could enlighten this thread with some of the scientific research you referred to, but failed to produce, on another thread:
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Many scientific research proved the fact that consciousness could not or cannot be produced by the brain...


 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/09/2013 00:32:55
I believe there are things that can be said to "exist" which are in a sense immaterial, such as an isosceles triangle, as well as abstract or qualitative relationships among things - goodness, evil, beauty, meaningfulness, etc.

I don't think consciousness itself falls into that category but is an emergent property of a biological process, much the way a tornado is an emergent state of certain physical environmental conditions of matter and energy. Just my opinion, but it seems to me that if consciousness were truly immaterial, it would not be so strongly altered by physical factors like anesthetics and other drugs, sleep or lack of it, diseases like Alzheimer's, brain trauma, oxygen deprivation,  genetic defects, etc.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/09/2013 00:41:22
... it seems to me that if consciousness were truly immaterial, it would not be so strongly altered by physical factors like anesthetics and other drugs, sleep or lack of it, diseases like Alzheimer's, brain trauma, oxygen deprivation,  genetic defects, etc.
If it were truly immaterial how could it be affected by physical factors at all? [and conversely, how could it affect the physical, if that is being proposed?]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/09/2013 03:45:39






Bombastic talk again : did you ever meet a dog , cat , chimp ....who is or rather which is self-aware ? in the sense that it is aware of its existence , of itself ? that it is aware of its inner life or at least has one ?
A dog might have dreams ,for example ,but when even humans dream (i am not talking here about day dreaming of humans at least  ) , they are unconscious , let alone that they would be self-aware while sleeping and dreaming  at least .
The fact that some chimps might "recognize" themselves in the mirror , apparently it seems , or maybe that's just our human interpretation of their behavior in front of the mirror, does not prove conclusively that they might have or experience some degree of self-awarness, i guess, i do not know for sure thus either, but i do not think any non-human living organism for that matter is self-aware , simply because any degree of self-awarness implies some corresponding degree of intellectual process at least  .
Animals are "conscious" (a reduced form of consciousness , compared to that extended one  of man = there is no comparison between the 2 in fact ) : they experience feel pain, experience feel hunger , anger , sadness, joy ....but animals or any other non-human  living organism can never be self-aware in the above mentioned sense at least .our consciousness, ...


A book I happen to be reading mentions an interesting experiment with chimps. Chimp A sees something threatening but is in no danger himself. Chimp B is in danger, but chimp B cannot see what chimp A can see. Chimp A will signal Chimp B to alert him if he knows that Chimp B cannot see what he can see, but not if he thinks he can. A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being. That may not be calculus or poetry, but it is thinking about thinking or awareness of awareness, which is rather sophisticated.

There are also examples of gorillas lying as when KoKo the gorilla told his caretakers that he did not rip the sink off the wall, his pet kitten did it.  Lying, too is advanced thinking. It required the animal to predict his caretaker's reaction to the damaged sink (she'll be mad), to be aware of what someone else knows and doesn't know, and imagine a series of alternate past events that didn't actually happen, but could have. Admittedly, it was not the most convincing lie, although my daughter also blamed things on the cat when she was little.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/09/2013 10:42:26
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being. That may not be calculus or poetry, but it is thinking about thinking or awareness of awareness, which is rather sophisticated
.... 
Lying, too is advanced thinking.

Even some birds show evidence of theory of mind. The European Magpie can pass the mirror test, showing some sense of self-awareness; the Western Scrub Jay will pretend to hide food if it sees another bird watching, or will hide it then come back and move it when the other bird isn't watching - but only if it has previously stolen food itself; the Little Green Bee-eater shows awareness of what its predators can and can't see. 

I think it's a mistake to see consciousness and self awareness as an all-or-nothing trait. Animals appear to have evolved to emphasize aspects and levels of consciousness, self awareness, and theory of mind, appropriate to their social and environmental contexts. There must be a dynamic balance between the resources required to support such complex behaviours (computational resources, energy consumption, etc.) and the conferred reproductive & survival advantages.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:08:46
In his "Selfish Gene " , Dawkins thinks that we are just machines or robots driven by DNA through the natural selection of evolution ,while he also thinks at the same time = a paradox , that we can "revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes ,and against the "fact " that we were born selfish ,by consciously modifying our selfish behavior ....: selfish gene as a metaphor though " :
Just tell me how are we supposed to do just the latter ,if we are indeed just machines ? : The following are quotes from Dawkins' above mentioned book by the way :



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
THIS book should be read almost as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Cliche or not, 'stranger than fiction' expresses exactly how I feel about the truth. We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it. One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others.
Three imaginary readers looked over my shoulder while I was writing, and I now dedicate the book to them. First the general reader, the layman. For him I have avoided technical jargon almost totally, and where I have had to use specialized words I have defined them. I now wonder why we don't censor most of our jargon from learned journals too. I have assumed that the layman has no special knowledge, but I have not assumed that he is stupid. Anyone can popularize science if he oversimplifies. I have worked hard to try to popularize some subtle and complicated ideas in non-mathematical language, without losing their essence. I do not know how far I have succeeded in this, nor how far I have succeeded in another of my ambitions: to try to make the book as entertaining and gripping as its subject matter deserves. I have long felt that biology ought to seem as exciting as a mystery story, for a mystery story is exactly what biology is. I do not dare to hope that I have conveyed more than a tiny fraction of the excitement which the subject has to offer.
My second imaginary reader was the expert. He has been a harsh critic, sharply drawing in his breath at some of my analogies and figures of speech. His favourite phrases are 'with the exception of'; 'but on the other hand', and 'ugh'. I listened to him attentively, and even completely rewrote one chapter entirely for his benefit, but in the end I have had to tell the story my way. The expert will still not be totally happy with the way I put things. Yet my greatest hope is that even he will find something new here; a new way of looking at familiar ideas perhaps; even stimulation of new ideas of his own. If this is too high an aspiration, may I at least hope that the book will entertain him on a train?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:24:46
........train?
xxii Preface to first edition
The third reader I had in mind was the student, making the transition from layman to expert. If he still has not made up his mind what field he wants to be an expert in, I hope to encourage him to give my own field of zoology a second glance. There is a better reason for studying zoology than its possible 'usefulness', and the general likeableness of animals. This reason is that we animals are the most complicated and perfectly-designed pieces of machinery in the known universe. Put it like that, and it is hard to see why anybody studies anything else! For the student who has already committed himself to zoology, I hope my book may have some educational value. He is having to work through the original papers and technical books on which my treatment is based. If he finds the original sources hard to digest, perhaps my non-mathematical interpretation may help, as an introduction and adjunct.
There are obvious dangers in trying to appeal to three different kinds of reader. I can only say that I have been very conscious of these dangers, but that they seemed to be outweighed by the advantages of the attempt.
I am an ethologist,and this is a book about animal behaviour. My debt to the ethological tradition in which I was trained will be obvious. In particular, Niko Tinbergen does not realize the extent of his influence on me during the twelve years I worked under him at Oxford. The phrase 'survival machine', though not actually his own, might well be. But ethology has recently been invigorated by an invasion of fresh ideas from sources not conventionally regarded as ethological. This book is largely based on these new ideas. Their originators are acknowledged in the appropriate places in the text; the dominant figures are G. C. Williams, J. Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, and R. L. Trivers.
Various people suggested titles for the book, which I have gratefully used as chapter titles: 'Immortal Coils', John Krebs; 'The Gene Machine', Desmond Morris; 'Genesmanship', Tim Clutton-Brock and Jean Dawkins, independently with apologies to Stephen Potter.
Imaginary readers may serve as targets for pious hopes and aspirations, but they are of less practical use than real readers and critics. I am addicted to revising, and Marian Dawkins has been subjected to countless drafts and redrafts of every page. Her considerable knowledge of the biological literature and her understanding of theoretical issues, together with her ceaseless encouragement and moral support, have been essential to me. John Krebs
Preface to first edition xxiii
too read the whole book in draft. He knows more about the subject than I do, and he has been generous and unstinting with his advice and suggestions. Glenys Thomson and Walter Bodmer criticized my handling of genetic topics kindly but firmly. I fear that my revision may still not fully satisfy them, but I hope they will find it somewhat improved. I am most grateful for their time and patience. John Dawkins exercised an unerring eye for misleading phraseology, and made excellent constructive suggestions for re-wording. I could not have wished for a more suitable 'intelligent layman' than Maxwell Stamp. His perceptive spotting of an important general flaw in the style of the first draft did much for the final version. Others who constructively criticized particular chapters, or otherwise gave expert advice, were John Maynard Smith, Desmond Morris, Tom Maschler, Nick Blurton Jones, Sarah Kettlewell, Nick Humphrey, Tim Clutton-Brock, Louise Johnson, Christopher Graham, Geoff Parker, and Robert Trivers. Pat Searle and Stephanie Verhoeven not only typed with skill, but encouraged me by seeming to do so with enjoyment. Finally, I wish to thank Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press who, in addition to helpfully criticizing the manuscript, worked far beyond the call of duty in attending to all aspects of the production of this book.
RICHARD DAWKINS 19761976
1
WHY ARE PEOPLE?
Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter. We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? After posing the last of these questions, the eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it thus: 'The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.'*
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun, but the full implications of Darwin's revolution have yet to be widely realized. Zoology is still a minority subject in universities, and even those who choose to study it often make their decision without appreciating its profound philosophical significance. Philosophy and the subjects known as 'humanities' are still taught almost as if Darwin had never lived. No doubt this will change in time. In any case, this book is not intended as a general advocacy of Darwinism. Instead, it will explore the consequences of the evolution theory for a particular issue. My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism.
Apart from its academic interest, the human importance of this subject is obvious. It touches every aspect of our social lives, our loving and hating, fighting and cooperating, giving and stealing, our
2 Why are people?
greed and our generosity. These are claims that could have been made for Lorenz's On Aggression, Ardrey's The Social Contract, and Eibl-Eibesfeldt's Love and Hate. The trouble with these books is that their authors got it totally and utterly wrong. They got it wrong because they misunderstood how evolution works. They made the erroneous assumption that the important thing in evolution is the good of the species (or the group) rather than the good of the individual (or the gene). It is ironic that Ashley Montagu should criticize Lorenz as a 'direct descendant of the "nature red in tooth and claw" thinkers of the nineteenth century ...'. As I understand Lorenz's view of evolution, he would be very much at one with Montagu in rejecting the implications of Tennyson's famous phrase. Unlike both of them, I think 'nature red in tooth and claw' sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably.
Before beginning on my argument itself, I want to explain briefly what sort of an argument it is, and what sort of an argument it is not. If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was. We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. 'Special' and 'limited' are important words in the last sentence. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.
This brings me to the first point I want to make about what this book is not. I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.* I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans
Why are people? 3
morally ought to behave. I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case. My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true. This book is mainly intended to be interesting, but if you would extract a moral from it, read it as a warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.
As a corollary to these remarks about teaching, it is a fallacy— incidentally a very common one—to suppose that genetically inherited traits are by definition fixed and unmodifiable. Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to be altruistic. Among animals, man is uniquely dominated by culture, by influences learned and handed down. Some would say that culture is so important that genes, whether selfish or not, are virtually irrelevant to the understanding of human nature. Others would disagree. It all depends where you stand in the debate over 'nature versus nurture' as determinants of human attributes. This brings me to the second thing this book is not: it is not an advocacy of one position or another in the nature/nurture controversy. Naturally I have an opinion on this, but I am not going to express it, except insofar as it is implicit in the view of culture that I shall present in the final chapter. If genes really turn out to be totally irrelevant to the determination of modern human behaviour, if we really are unique among animals in this respect, it is, at the very least, still interesting to inquire about the rule to which we have so recently become the exception. And if our species is not so exceptional as we might like to think, it is even more important that we should study the rule.
The third thing this book is not is a descriptive account of the detailed behaviour of man or of any other particular animal species. I
4 Why are people?
shall use factual details only as illustrative examples. I shall not be saying: 'If you look at the behaviour of baboons you will find it to be selfish; therefore the chances are that human behaviour is selfish also'. The logic of my 'Chicago gangster' argument is quite different. It is this. Humans and baboons have evolved by natural selection. If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that has evolved by natural selection should be selfish. Therefore we must expect that when we go and look at the behaviour of baboons, humans, and all other living creatures, we shall find it to be selfish. If we find that our expectation is wrong, if we observe that human behaviour is truly altruistic, then we shall be faced with something puzzling, something that needs explaining.
Before going any further, we need a definition. An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity's welfare at the expense of its own. Selfish behaviour has exactly the opposite effect. 'Welfare' is defined as 'chances of survival', even if the effect on actual life and death prospects is so small as to seem negligible. One of the surprising consequences of the modern version of the Darwinian theory is that apparently trivial tiny influences on survival probability can have a major impact on evolution. This is because of the enormous time available for such influences to make themselves felt.
It is important to realize that the above definitions of altruism and selfishness are behavioural, not subjective. I am not concerned here with the psychology of motives. I am not going to argue about whether people who behave altruistically are 'really' doing it for secret or subconscious selfish motives. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't, and maybe we can never know, but in any case that is not what this book is about. My definition is concerned only with whether the effect of an act is to lower or raise the survival prospects of the presumed altruist and the survival prospects of the presumed beneficiary.
It is a very complicated business to demonstrate the effects of behaviour on long-term survival prospects. In practice, when we apply the definition to real behaviour, we must qualify it with the word 'apparently'. An apparently altruistic act is one that looks, superficially, as if it must tend to make the altruist more likely (however slightly) to die, and the recipient more likely to survive. It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise. Once again, I do not mean that the
Why are people? 5
underlying motives are secretly selfish, but that the real effects of the act on survival prospects are the reverse of what we originally thought.
I am going to give some examples of apparently selfish and apparently altruistic behaviour. It is difficult to suppress subjective habits of thought when we are dealing with our own species, so I shall choose examples from other animals instead. First some miscellaneous examples of selfish behaviour by individual animals.
Blackheaded gulls nest in large colonies, the nests being only a few feet apart. When the chicks first hatch out they are small and defenceless and easy to swallow. It is quite common for a gull to wait until a neighbour's back is turned, perhaps while it is away fishing, and then pounce on one of the neighbour's chicks and swallow it whole. It thereby obtains a good nutritious meal, without having to go to the trouble of catching a fish, and without having to leave its own nest unprotected.
More well known is the macabre cannibalism of female praying mantises. Mantises are large carnivorous insects. They normally eat smaller insects such as flies, but they will attack almost anything that moves. When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets the chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate. It might seem most sensible for her to wait until copulation is over before she starts to eat him. But the loss of the head does not seem to throw the rest of the male's body off its sexual stride. Indeed, since the insect head is the seat of some inhibitory nerve centres, it is possible that the female improves the male's sexual performance by eating his head.* If so, this is an added benefit. The primary one is that she obtains a good meal.
The word 'selfish' may seem an understatement for such extreme cases as cannibalism, although these fit well with our definition. Perhaps we can sympathize more directly with the reported cowardly behaviour of emperor penguins in the Antarctic. They have been seen standing on the brink of the water, hesitating before diving in, because of the danger of being eaten by seals. If only one of them would dive in, the rest would know whether there was a seal there or not. Naturally nobody wants to be the guinea pig, so they wait, and sometimes even try to push each other in.
More ordinarily, selfish behaviour may simply consist of refusing
6 Why are people?
to share some valued
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:26:49
........resource such as food, territory, or sexual partners. Now for some examples of apparently altruistic behaviour.
The stinging behaviour of worker bees is a very effective defence against honey robbers. But the bees who do the stinging are kamikaze fighters. In the act of stinging, vital internal organs are usually torn out of the body, and the bee dies soon afterwards. Her suicide mission may have saved the colony's vital food stocks, but she herself is not around to reap the benefits. By our definition this is an altruistic behavioural act. Remember that we are not talking about conscious motives. They may or may not be present, both here and in the selfishness examples, but they are irrelevant to our definition.
Laying down one's life for one's friends is obviously altruistic, but so also is taking a slight risk for them. Many small birds, when they see a flying predator such as a hawk, give a characteristic 'alarm call', upon which the whole flock takes appropriate evasive action. There is indirect evidence that the bird who gives the alarm call puts itself in special danger, because it attracts the predator's attention particularly to itself. This is only a slight additional risk, but it nevertheless seems, at least at first sight, to qualify as an altruistic act by our definition.
The commonest and most conspicuous acts of animal altruism are done by parents, especially mothers, towards their children. They may incubate them, either in nests or in their own bodies, feed them at enormous cost to themselves, and take great risks in protecting them from predators. To take just one particular example, many ground-nesting birds perform a so-called 'distraction display' when a predator such as a fox approaches. The parent bird limps away from the nest, holding out one wing as though it were broken. The predator, sensing easy prey, is lured away from the nest containing the chicks. Finally the parent bird gives up its pretence and leaps into the air just in time to escape the fox's jaws. It has probably saved the life of its nestlings, but at some risk to itself.
I am not trying to make a point by telling stories. Chosen examples are never serious evidence for any worthwhile generalization. These stories are simply intended as illustrations of what I mean by altruistic and selfish behaviour at the level of individuals. This book will show how both individual selfishness and individual altruism are explained by the fundamental law that I am calling gene selfishness. But first I must deal with a particular erroneous explanation for altruism, because it is widely known, and even widely taught in schools.
Why are people? 7
This explanation is based on the misconception that I have already mentioned, that living creatures evolve to do things 'for the good of the species' or 'for the good of the group'. It is easy to see how this idea got its start in biology. Much of an animal's life is devoted to reproduction, and most of the acts of altruistic self-sacrifice that are observed in nature are performed by parents towards their young. 'Perpetuation of the species' is a common euphemism for reproduction, and it is undeniably a consequence of reproduction. It requires only a slight over-stretching of logic to deduce that the 'function' of reproduction is 'to' perpetuate the species. From this it is but a further short false step to conclude that animals will in general behave in such a way as to favour the perpetuation of the species. Altruism towards fellow members of the species seems to follow.
This line of thought can be put into vaguely Darwinian terms. Evolution works by natural selection, and natural selection means the differential survival of the 'fittest'. But are we talking about the fittest individuals, the fittest races, the fittest species, or what? For some purposes this does not greatly matter, but when we are talking about altruism it is obviously crucial. If it is species that are competing in what Darwin called the struggle for existence, the individual seems best regarded as a pawn in the game, to be sacrificed when the greater interest of the species as a whole requires it. To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection', long assumed to be true by biologists not familiar with the details of evolutionary theory, brought out into the open in a famous book by V. C. Wynne-Edwards, and popularized by Robert Ardrey in The Social Contract. The orthodox alternative is normally called 'individual selection', although I personally prefer to speak of gene selection.
The quick answer of the 'individual selectionist' to the argument just put might go something like this. Even in the group of altruists, there will almost certainly be a dissenting minority who refuse to make any sacrifice. It there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to exploit the altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely
8 Why are people?
than they are to survive and have children. Each of these children will tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several generations of this natural selection, the 'altruistic group' will be over-run by selfish individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group. Even if we grant the improbable chance existence initially of pure altruistic groups without any rebels, it is very difficult to see what is to stop selfish individuals migrating in from neighbouring selfish groups, and, by inter-marriage, contaminating the purity of the altruistic groups.
The individual-selectionist would admit that groups do indeed die out, and that whether or not a group goes extinct may be influenced by the behaviour of the individuals in that group. He might even admit that if only the individuals in a group had the gift of foresight they could see that in the long run their own best interests lay in restraining their selfish greed, to prevent the destruction of the whole group. How many times must this have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain? But group extinction is a slow process compared with the rapid cut and thrust of individual competition. Even while the group is going slowly and inexorably downhill, selfish individuals prosper in the short term at the expense of altruists. The citizens of Britain may or may not be blessed with foresight, but evolution is blind to the future.
Although the group-selection theory now commands little support within the ranks of those professional biologists who understand evolution, it does have great intuitive appeal. Successive generations of zoology students are surprised, when they come up from school, to find that it is not the orthodox point of view. For this they are hardly to be blamed, for in the Nuffield Biology Teachers' Guide, written for advanced level biology schoolteachers in Britain, we find the following: 'In higher animals, behaviour may take the form of individual suicide to ensure the survival of the species.' The anonymous author of this guide is blissfully ignorant of the fact that he has said something controversial. In this respect he is in Nobel Prize-winning company. Konrad Lorenz, in On Aggression, speaks of the 'species preserving' functions of aggressive behaviour, one of these functions being to make sure that only the fittest individuals are allowed to breed. This is a gem of a circular argument, but the point I am making here is that the group selection idea is so deeply ingrained that Lorenz, like the author of the Nuffield Guide, evidently did not realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory.
Why are people? 9
I recently heard a delightful example of the same thing on an otherwise excellent B.B.C. television programme about Australian spiders. The 'expert' on the programme observed that the vast majority of baby spiders end up as prey for other species, and she then went on to say: 'Perhaps this is the real purpose of their existence, as only a few need to survive in order for the species to be preserved'!
Robert Ardrey, in The Social Contract, used the group-selection theory to account for the whole of social order in general. He clearly sees man as a species that has strayed from the path of animal righteousness. Ardrey at least did his homework. His decision to disagree with orthodox theory was a conscious one, and for this he deserves credit.
Perhaps one reason for the great appeal of the group-selection theory is that it is thoroughly in tune with the moral and political ideals that most of us share. We may frequently behave selfishly as individuals, but in our more idealistic moments we honour and admire those who put the welfare of others first. We get a bit muddled oyer how widely we want to interpret the word 'others', though. Often altruism within a group goes with selfishness between groups. This is a basis of trade unionism. At another level the nation is a major beneficiary of our altruistic self-sacrifice, and young men are expected to die as individuals for the greater glory of their country as a whole. Moreover, they are encouraged to kill other individuals about whom nothing is known except that they belong to a different nation. (Curiously, peace-time appeals for individuals to make some small sacrifice in the rate at which they increase their standard of living seem to be less effective than war-time appeals for individuals to lay down their lives.)
Recently there has been a reaction against racialism and patriotism, and a tendency to substitute the whole human species as the object of our fellow feeling. This humanist broadening of the target of our altruism has an interesting corollary, which again seems to buttress the 'good of the species' idea in evolution. The politically liberal, who are normally the most convinced spokesmen of the species ethic, now often have the greatest scorn for those who have gone a little further in widening their altruism, so that it includes other species. If I say that I am more interested in preventing the slaughter of large whales than I am in improving housing conditions for people, I am likely to shock some of my friends.
10 Why are people?
The feeling that members of one's own species deserve special moral consideration as compared with members of other species is old and deep. Killing people outside war is the most seriously-regarded crime ordinarily committed. The only thing more strongly forbidden by our culture is eating people (even if they are already dead). We enjoy eating members of other species, however. Many of us shrink from judicial execution of even the most horrible human criminals, while we cheerfully countenance the shooting without trial of fairly mild animal pests. Indeed we kill members of other harmless species as a means of recreation and amusement. A human foetus, with no more human feeling than an amoeba, enjoys a reverence and legal protection far in excess of those granted to an adult chimpanzee. Yet the chimp feels and thinks and—according to recent experimental evidence—may even be capable of learning a form of human language. The foetus belongs to our own species, and is instantly accorded special privileges and rights because of it. Whether the ethic of 'speciesism', to use Richard Ryder's term, can be put on a logical footing any more sound than that of 'racism', I do not know. What I do know is that it has no proper basis in evolutionary biology.
The muddle in human ethics over the level at which altruism is desirable—family, nation, race, species, or all living things—is mirrored by a parallel muddle in biology over the level at which altruism is to be expected according to the theory of evolution. Even the group-selectionist would not be surprised to find members of rival groups being nasty to each other: in this way, like trade unionists or soldiers, they are favouring their own group in the struggle for limited resources. But then it is worth asking how the group-selectionist decides which level is the important one. If selection goes on between groups within a species, and between species, why should it not also go on between larger groupings? Species are grouped together into genera, genera into orders, and orders into classes. Lions and antelopes are both members of the class Mammalia, as are we. Should we then not expect lions to refrain from killing antelopes, 'for the good of the mammals'? Surely they should hunt birds or reptiles instead, in order to prevent the extinction of the class. But then, what of the need to perpetuate the whole phylum of vertebrates?
It is all very well for me to argue by reductio ad absurdum, and to point to the difficulties of the group-selection theory, but the
Why are people? 11
apparent existence of individual altruism still has to be explained. Ardrey goes so far as to say that group selection is the only possible explanation for behaviour such as 'stotting' in Thomson's gazelles. This vigorous and conspicuous leaping in front of a predator is analogous to bird alarm calls, in that it seems to warn companions of danger while apparently calling the predator's attention to the stotter himself. We have a responsibility to explain stotting Tommies and all similar phenomena, and this is something I am going to face in later chapters.
Before that I must argue for my belief that the best way to look at evolution is in terms of selection occurring at the lowest level of all. In this belief I am heavily influenced by G. C. Williams's great book Adaptation and Natural Selection. The central idea I shall make use of was foreshadowed by A. Weismann in pre-gene days at the turn of the century—his doctrine of the 'continuity of the germ-plasm'. I shall argue that the fundamental unit of selection, and therefore of self-interest, is not the species, nor the group, nor even, strictly, the individual. It is the gene, the unit of heredity.* To some biologists this may sound at first like an extreme view. I hope when they see in what sense I mean it they will agree that it is, in substance, orthodox, even if it is expressed in an unfamiliar way. The argument takes time to develop, and we must begin at the beginning, with the very origin of life itself.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 17:33:12
Look, i do agree with most of what you were saying , form the materialistic point of view at least ,so :
Help me out here ,in order to make dlorde and alcanverd see the light haha :

Do you need anyone else to see the light? None of us can see how consciousness works, but maintaining a diversity of approach is a good thing as it makes it more likely that someone will trip over something useful. What matters from my point of view is that more people understand the problem with translating experience of qualia into data about qualia because if they are aware of this issue they may find some kind of solution which looks completely imposible right up to the point where it jumps out and hits you across the face with a wet fish. If you understand the key problem and know what you're actually looking for, you're more likely to recognise the solution if you stumble upon it. Beyond that, there is no need to evangelise any specific position.

Also, attempts to make people change position are almost always doomed to have the opposite effect, so it's counterproductive to go down that road. People need to make their own journey and not be pushed. It is sufficient to set out an argument and then leave it there. If people take it on board to any degree, they may gain. If they find a fault in it and destroy it, you gain instead by having a faulty argument destroyed, thereby liberating you to find a better approach.

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What you cannot understand is how consciousness or the mind ( I see the human mind or consciousness as a whole process which contains intelligence , emotions, feelings , imagination ...) can rise from those biological mechanical processes ? or as Dawkins put it , we can "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " by deliberately modifying our selfish behavior via our free will : how, on earth, are we supposed to do just that , if we are just machines = we cannot have a free will = free will is an illusion ,according to this mechanical deterministic materialistic view of the universe , man, life , nature ...

People often put ideas across rather badly, framing them in ways that imply that they believe things they don't altogether believe in, so it's always hard to work out what their true position is. Dawkins in the context above is really talking about the ability of our intelligence to override the less intelligent evolved rules of behaviour programmed into our DNA. Our genes set up certain behaviours in us which are not always ideal, but they also generate a general purpose computer in our heads that can do a better job, and when it recognises that there are better ways to do some things (such as suppressing violent instincts in order to create a safer society in which random death by violence is massively less likely), instinctive behaviours can be overridden. He may attribute this to free will as a shorthand, but if you were to pick the point apart with him, he would probably agree that there is no such thing as free will and give a longer, more accurate account.

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"...consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality..."

There are a lot of diversions there which don't really have anything to do with consciousness. Free will is not free at all, even if qualia are real: extreme pain, if pain is real, may force you to try to act to try to reduce it in any way you can find, but there is no free will involved in that. Ethics is really just about weighing up the harm people do and minimising it within a system where some harm is necessarily allowed in order to make life fun: if you want the freedom to enjoy walking through a park, it has to be allowable for people to disturb others by walking about through a park. Some people are unable to weigh up the balance properly and will think they are allowed to push other people out of their way rather than walking round them, and some may think it's okay to stick a knife in them at the same time, but there's nothing supernaturally evil going on - all that's happening is that there are faults in the algorithms they run, and these may be caused by genetic errors, errors in the construction of the brain, or a violent upbringing which has taught the individual in question that no one else seems to care about the rules, so why should they.

Politics is an attempt to run things well and to apply morality through law, but it's all mechanistic, some of it being driven by instincts (homosexuality is not acceptable because we're programmed to find it disgusting), some is driven by cultural beliefs (homosexuality is not acceptable because this Holy book says so), and some of it is driven by direct thinking which may be right or wrong (homosexuality is not acceptable because it spreads disease; or homosexuality is acceptable because it does immense harm to people to prevent them from being the people they cannot help but be).

Religion is a kind of science in which magic is allowed as an explanation, but most of it is based on sense on some level. It began with things like hearing an echo coming out of an empty cave: you shout into it and a spirit shouts back at you. That isn't stupidity, but an attempt to understand something which happens to be wrong. Explorers used to write "here be dragons" on maps whenever they ran into a thunderstorm, and they weren't stupid either - they heard the dragons roaring and saw the fire that they breathed. That isn't part of a religion, but it works in the same way - it's an attempt at a scientific explanation that has gone wrong due to a bad assumption. A lot of religious beliefs are based on feelings, such as love and awe. These feelings may or may not be real, so exploring beliefs based on feelings really doesn't address the issue of consciousness itself - it is merely a diversion. What matters to us in this discussion is whether the feelings are real or not, and we can explore that best by looking at the most stark of qualia, pain. Pain drives behaviour more strongly than any other quale, although it only does so if pain isn't a fiction. We need to see a full cause-and-effect model of the process by which pain can drive something in order to see it as more than a fiction, and if someone can do that we will then be able to build similar models for all other qualia and explain the whole lot, but there's no point in trying to understand the whole mess in one go until we can explain the clearest case.

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How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Evolution appears to have built the first information systems in the form of DNA. A second kind of information has then evolved in the form of brains, and one species has ended up with a universal computer which can turn itself to any task. Some of the programming of that computer has evolved to do what it does, but it has reached the point where the rest of the programming can be done through learning. Science comes out of the programming of this computer to try to model the world around it. None of that requires consciousness, but if consciousness is useful as part of the mechanism for some reason, there is no reason why evolution shouldn't have taken a pathway that includes it. We just don't know what its role is because it appears to be superfluous.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:36:07
At the very end of that book of his ,and after proving the "fact " that the apparent altruistic behavior is just selfishness in disguise ,even at the level of humans ,   Dawkins went on concluding that :
true altruism has never existed neither in nature nor in the history of the world .
But , we , as humans , are the only species that can revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes, and against the "fact " that we were born as selfish creatures , by being able to deliberately and consciously modify our selfish behavior  by becoming truely altruistic , by teaching altruism, generosity ...blablabla ...


How , on earth, are we supposed to do just the latter , if we are just machines then ?

How, on earth, did we get to possess such unique property or quality to behave independently from our mechanical systems then ?
How, on earth, did those properties or qualities rise from our mechanical systems then , in the first place to begin with ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:42:05
Hi, David Cooper : see this :  the hidden truth of mind science , consciousness , and the quantum universe: interesting , despite the fact that it contains some minor bullshit as well :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 17:42:22
That's my boy!!! You have defined a cow by what it does, which is a whole lot different from "not being an uncow" because I can apply the moo test to any external object and thus identify a cow with no previous knowledge of what it is, or what it is like to be one.

So, what does a conscious being do, objectively, that distinguishes it from all non-conscious entities?

It experiences qualia. It is of course possible that a rock does too, as may all matter/energy/other. For things to experience qualia need not be problematic - they can just be something that happens. The difficulty only occurs when we try to imagine them as being part of a response and control system. We can build response and control systems which do not involve qualia in their chains of causation, but we can't work out how to build any that do involve qualia, even though we have biological machines which insist that qualia are involved in their response and control mechanisms.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:45:05
I think that the next level of human evolution will occur at the level of human consciousness indeed .Exciting .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 17:46:45
The "Nature " of Consciousness :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 17:54:40
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.

That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 18:13:00
At the very end of that book of his ,and after proving the "fact " that the apparent altruistic behavior is just selfishness in disguise ,even at the level of humans ,   Dawkins went on concluding that :
true altruism has never existed neither in nature nor in the history of the world .
But , we , as humans , are the only species that can revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes, and against the "fact " that we were born as selfish creatures , by being able to deliberately and consciously modify our selfish behavior  by becoming truely altruistic , by teaching altruism, generosity ...blablabla ...


How , on earth, are we supposed to do just the latter , if we are just machines then ?

How, on earth, did we get to possess such unique property or quality to behave independently from our mechanical systems then ?
How, on earth, did those properties or qualities rise from our mechanical systems then , in the first place to begin with ?

You've just posted three long extracts from Dawkins followed by the above in order to repeat a question you've already asked. I attempted to answer it in a post that appeared 3 minutes before you posted the above. They are mechanical processes running at a different level. The genes run at one level and determine a lot of our behaviour, but the rest happen in the general purpose computer through mechanical thought, and the ideas generated there are able to override the rough-and-ready directly-evolved behaviour control mechanisms programmed into the DNA.

[By the way, my internet connection is too slow for watching video. Even if that was not a barrier to me, it is sad in this day and age that so much content of the Internet is now being put out there in a form that can only be accessed at the speed of a snail. Video is a major step backwards for the communication of ideas, except where the visuals are important to the points being put across. Sometimes they are, but a diagram will often do just as well. Sometimes there is no substitute for video, but this is rare.]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 19:05:15
Look, i do agree with most of what you were saying , form the materialistic point of view at least ,so :
Help me out here ,in order to make dlorde and alcanverd see the light haha :

Do you need anyone else to see the light? None of us can see how consciousness works, but maintaining a diversity of approach is a good thing as it makes it more likely that someone will trip over something useful.

( I made a mistake when i said that consciousness contains feelings , emotions, intelligence ....I intended to say the mind does ,in fact )

(We use words such as consciousness, mind , spirit , soul , awareness, self-awareness , conscious, unconscious, self-consciousness ...without specifying what we mean by just that .)

Indeed : that's 1 of the reasons why i am here .
I just do not buy that exclusive magical dogmatic ossified materialistic mechanical reductionistic approach of consciousness, feelings , the thought process, free will, good and evil ...

Materialism as a world view, philosophy, paradigm...should be confined only within  the field of inorganic and organic matter processes though , and even there , materialism holds no water ,as quantum physics had shown : "matter is not made of matter " ,so to speak .




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What matters from my point of view is that more people understand the problem with translating experience of qualia into data about qualia because if they are aware of this issue they may find some kind of solution which looks completely imposible

Yeah, but i do not see how that can be done so far ,especially under that dominating materialistic paradigm in science : we will need some serious shift of paradigm, i think ,in that regard at least .

 Maybe some genius will be able to do just that some day , let's hope so .


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right up to the point where it jumps out and hits you across the face with a wet fish. If you understand the key problem and know what you're actually looking for, you're more likely to recognise the solution if you stumble upon it. Beyond that, there is no need to evangelise any specific position.

Indeed, as long as that materialistic evangelic magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness keeps on calling the shots in science , there will be no solution in sight .

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Also, attempts to make people change position are almost always doomed to have the opposite effect, so it's counterproductive to go down that road. People need to make their own journey and not be pushed. It is sufficient to set out an argument and then leave it there. If people take it on board to any degree, they may gain. If they find a fault in it and destroy it, you gain instead by having a faulty argument destroyed, thereby liberating you to find a better approach.

Yes, new ideas are first opposed , ridiculed ,and then accepted as obvious evidence afterwards : one should keeps on  looking indeed , and should not a -priori exclude any perspective on the subject, unless it turns out to be non-sense as the materialistic approach of our consciousness is  .

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What you cannot understand is how consciousness or the mind ( I see the human mind or consciousness as a whole process which contains intelligence , emotions, feelings , imagination ...) can rise from those biological mechanical processes ? or as Dawkins put it , we can "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " by deliberately modifying our selfish behavior via our free will : how, on earth, are we supposed to do just that , if we are just machines = we cannot have a free will = free will is an illusion ,according to this mechanical deterministic materialistic view of the universe , man, life , nature ...

People often put ideas across rather badly, framing them in ways that imply that they believe things they don't altogether believe in, so it's always hard to work out what their true position is. Dawkins in the context above is really talking about the ability of our intelligence to override the less intelligent evolved rules of behaviour programmed into our DNA. Our genes set up certain behaviours in us which are not always ideal, but they also generate a general purpose computer in our heads that can do a better job, and when it recognises that there are better ways to do some things (such as suppressing violent instincts in order to create a safer society in which random death by violence is massively less likely), instinctive behaviours can be overridden. He may attribute this to free will as a shorthand, but if you were to pick the point apart with him, he would probably agree that there is no such thing as free will and give a longer, more accurate account.

The problem is ,neither Dawkins or others could  , would  , or did answer is :

How did that intelligence of ours or that ability of ours to override ....rise from our alleged mechanical systems, in the first place to begin with , and how does it  do just that you were saying , in fact ? 

Materialism excludes indeed any potential existence of the free will , but many self-declared materialists scientists whose works i read , do think free will does exist = a paradox .

I do think that free will does exist though, from a non-materialistic perspective, but that's another subject .


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"...consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality..."

There are a lot of diversions there which don't really have anything to do with consciousness. Free will is not free at all, even if qualia are real: extreme pain, if pain is real, may force you to try to act to try to reduce it in any way you can find, but there is no free will involved in that. Ethics is really just about weighing up the harm people do and minimising it within a system where some harm is necessarily allowed in order to make life fun: if you want the freedom to enjoy walking through a park, it has to be allowable for people to disturb others by walking about through a park. Some people are unable to weigh up the balance properly and will think they are allowed to push other people out of their way rather than walking round them, and some may think it's okay to stick a knife in them at the same time, but there's nothing supernaturally evil going on - all that's happening is that there are faults in the algorithms they run, and these may be caused by genetic errors, errors in the construction of the brain, or a violent upbringing which has taught the individual in question that no one else seems to care about the rules, so why should they.

Nature vs nurture : what about our own input ? we cannot be just machines ,no way , otherwise , just try to explain consciousness to me via that mechanical approach of yours = you cannot , unless you do try to kiss your materialism goodbye ...But ,even then, we are stuck in this : i do not think there will be ever any totally scientific answer to the hard problem of consciousness though .
The approach of consciousness relies more heavily on its corresponding world views mainly , so .

You do make it sound as if we are just some unconscious puppets in the hands of unconscious DNA machinery in its interactions with the environment ,nurture .

That's just the mainstream materialistic point of view on the subject i do not share :
we cannot explain human behavior just via biology genetics , environment and nurture ,without the notion of free will at least .
This exclusively biological genetic approach explains some parts of the human condition , human behavior, human suffering ....not all of it .
It cannot explain consciousness, feelings , emotions , love ....not in a million years ,despite what  promissory messianic materialism says on the subject .

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Politics is an attempt to run things well and to apply morality through law, but it's all mechanistic, some of it being driven by instincts (homosexuality is not acceptable because we're programmed to find it disgusting), some is driven by cultural beliefs (homosexuality is not acceptable because this Holy book says so), and some of it is driven by direct thinking which may be right or wrong (homosexuality is not acceptable because it spreads disease; or homosexuality is acceptable because it does immense harm to people to prevent them from being the people they cannot help but be).

You're not explaining anything via this mechanical approach , dude .


How can all that rise from our mechanical systems then ? makes no sense .

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Religion is a kind of science in which magic is allowed as an explanation, but most of it is based on sense on some level. It began with things like hearing an echo coming out of an empty cave: you shout into it and a spirit shouts back at you. That isn't stupidity, but an attempt to understand something which happens to be wrong. Explorers used to write "here be dragons" on maps whenever they ran into a thunderstorm, and they weren't stupid either - they heard the dragons roaring and saw the fire that they breathed. That isn't part of a religion, but it works in the same way - it's an attempt at a scientific explanation that has gone wrong due to a bad assumption. A lot of religious beliefs are based on feelings, such as love and awe. These feelings may or may not be real, so exploring beliefs based on feelings really doesn't address the issue of consciousness itself - it is merely a diversion. What matters to us in this discussion is whether the feelings are real or not, and we can explore that best by looking at the most stark of qualia, pain. Pain drives behaviour more strongly than any other quale, although it only does so if pain isn't a fiction. We need to see a full cause-and-effect model of the process by which pain can drive something in order to see it as more than a fiction, and if someone can do that we will then be able to build similar models for all other qualia and explain the whole lot, but there's no point in trying to understand the whole mess in one go until we can explain the clearest case
.

Funny way of  looking at things : ( Religions did evolve and still do,as the universe is still expanding , as the creation of the universe is still an ongoing dynamic process  , no wonder that early muslims did discover evolution itself , centuries before Darwin was even born, thanks to that evolutionary spirit of Islam mainly .Religions were the first to call for experience , personal experience , observation ...before science learned to ever do so : even science itself did originate from the epistemology of the Qur'an ...)
We always come back to square zero again : how can pain, suffering , consciousness, feelings , the thought process, thoughts ...rise from our alleged mechanical systems ?
Either they are illusions we take for real ,or both mind and body are 2   entirely different "systems " which do interact with each other :
But , we cannot yet explain how they interact with each other : an almost impossible issue .

Mind and body correlate or interact with each other : but materialists do confuse that correlation or interaction with causation .

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How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

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Evolution appears to have built the first information systems in the form of DNA. A second kind of information has then evolved in the form of brains, and one species has ended up with a universal computer which can turn itself to any task. Some of the programming of that computer has evolved to do what it does, but it has reached the point where the rest of the programming can be done through learning. Science comes out of the programming of this computer to try to model the world around it. None of that requires consciousness, but if consciousness is useful as part of the mechanism for some reason, there is no reason why evolution shouldn't have taken a pathway that includes it. We just don't know what its role is because it appears to be superfluous
.

Wrong : makes no sense to me whatsoever ; evolution cannot explain human consciousness ...pain, suffering ...feelings , love ...no way .

You, guys , just "replaced " the God of religion with other "gods " such as nature , evolution , computation, magical emergence ...

materialism just replaced religious metaphysics or theology with its own  materialism is another kind of ossified irrational exclusive orthodox religion ,which pretends to be scientific , which is absolutely not the case .

Science cannot exist without consciousness either .

Consciousness cannot rise from mechanical systems as you know .

Evolution might "program" our alleged mechanical systems to be flexible, to be able to adapt to new situations , to be able to to learn new things ,skills ...but it cannot explain our consciousness , feelings , thought process ....not just via that materialistic mechanical approach , no way .

You were just using some magical thinking here as well, unfortunately enough, just speculating ...

I do not see any fruitful or constructive insights ever being 'able " to "emerge " from that magical materialism thus ,sorry .

Thanks, appreciate

Take care

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 19:31:51
@ David Cooper ,dlorde :

Please , let's stop deceiving each other , let's be honest :

Why did you ,  ignore what that physicist said  about the dogmatic "religious " orthodox magical ossified exclusive ...materialism in science ?

Can you try to address what he said on that subject at least ?

Especially when it comes to the fact that materialists such as yourselves  do confuse their materialism as a world view , with ...science proper as such , ironically enough .

Worse :

 How can't you , as materialists , realise the fact that you have been deceiving people , in the name of science , by presenting materialistic views as ...scientific facts,or at least as scientific approaches  : materialistic views such as the "fact " that life is just a matter of mechanical biological processes , that the universe is exclusively material, that consciousness can be , some day , (Promissory messianic materialism ) , explained within that materialistic dominating paradigm in science ...?

There are a lots of  legetimate  issues like  that regarding materialism in science and elsewhere  , you just prefer to push under the table and ignore ,as if they do not exist  ....Why is that ? Why , if you are really what you pretend to be , guys : presumabely rational logical scientific people....Why ? Why this deceit , self-deceit , dishonesty or lack of integrity ?

I thought that you, David Cooper , would be courageous enough to be honest and have integrity regarding  these issues of pure materialistic beliefs imposed on and in the name of science  , but i see i made a mistake in that regard at least . 


You can believe whatever you want to believe in ,i have no problems with just that ,  but ,please , just have the decency integrity and honesty not to present them to people as scientific facts , or as scientific approaches at least ...while those materialistic beliefs of yours  , in fact , have nothing to do with science proper ...whatsoever ...

If there is no integrity to be detected in you , guys , regarding these issues , then , any discussions concerning  science ,  materialism and -in science , evolution, consciousness , free will ethics ,...and the rest , would be an utter waste of time , or just deceptive make -believe , ....= the "truth" we seem all to be looking for would be  the main victim, together with science itself, as a result ,unfortunately enough ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 19:53:31
At the very end of that book of his ,and after proving the "fact " that the apparent altruistic behavior is just selfishness in disguise ,even at the level of humans ,   Dawkins went on concluding that :
true altruism has never existed neither in nature nor in the history of the world .
But , we , as humans , are the only species that can revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes, and against the "fact " that we were born as selfish creatures , by being able to deliberately and consciously modify our selfish behavior  by becoming truely altruistic , by teaching altruism, generosity ...blablabla ...


How , on earth, are we supposed to do just the latter , if we are just machines then ?

How, on earth, did we get to possess such unique property or quality to behave independently from our mechanical systems then ?
How, on earth, did those properties or qualities rise from our mechanical systems then , in the first place to begin with ?

You've just posted three long extracts from Dawkins followed by the above in order to repeat a question you've already asked. I attempted to answer it in a post that appeared 3 minutes before you posted the above. They are mechanical processes running at a different level. The genes run at one level and determine a lot of our behaviour, but the rest happen in the general purpose computer through mechanical thought, and the ideas generated there are able to override the rough-and-ready directly-evolved behaviour control mechanisms programmed into the DNA.

You just have been performing an amazing U boot turn , in total contrast with what you were saying earlier regarding the fact at least that consciousness cannot rise from mechanical systems ....cannot be explained by mechanical systems ...unless ....

What happened ? Why do you, guys , just resort to deliberately contradicting and therefore self-deceiving yourselves and others in the process  , whenever you are cornered via some detected anomalies and holes in your capacity of judgement ,or in your world view on the subject ?

What you said here above makes no sense whatsoever , unless we assume that our consciousness, feelings , free will, thought process ...are just sophisticated illusions we take for real in order to survive : but , if we do just that , then all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that regarding evolution itself are therefore also just ...illusions , in order to survive , or in order to improve our survival ....Maybe lying to ourselves and to others may lead to the truth , as literature assumes it to be the case , maybe ...

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[By the way, my internet connection is too slow for watching video. Even if that was not a barrier to me, it is sad in this day and age that so much content of the Internet is now being put out there in a form that can only be accessed at the speed of a snail. Video is a major step backwards for the communication of ideas, except where the visuals are important to the points being put across. Sometimes they are, but a diagram will often do just as well. Sometimes there is no substitute for video, but this is rare.

You can try to download those videos and watch them later on .
I think that those kindda videos can shed some sort of light on the subjects they try to cover , videos  lectures , video debates ....but the kings of all human learning , education ....remain represented by books indeed ..by life experiences ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/09/2013 20:21:42
@ David Cooper ,dlorde :

Please , let's stop deceiving each other , let's be honest :
So you've been deceiving us, not being honest? ohhh... and to think I trusted you...  :)

You're probably confused about our responses because you have this weird idea that you can label us materialists based on our general opinions, then castigate us for not being True Materialiststm according to some straw man absolutist definition you've decided on.

It doesn't work like that. Materialism isn't some kind of fundamentalist religious sect, nor does it (or we) have to conform to your exacting expectations. Learn to live with it.

So, now that Dawkins & co, me, and David Cooper have been excluded from your True Materialiststm club, who is left ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 20:26:37
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.

That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.

If you reduce awareness or self-awareness to just a feeling of ....Then , they might be not real, in the sense that machines , animals ...can have them as well , as illusions of feeling of awareness , self-awareness , without being able to be   aware or self-aware ,in fact .

Self-awarness or awarness can also contain cognitive elements , maybe vague cognitive elements , but nevertheless cognitive ones , otherwise animals would be aware of things and of other beings as well as such , would be aware of themselves and of their own existence as such .

Animals ' or machines ' presumed awareness of the presence of others , or presumed self-awareness are  just that =  illusions= they are not real= their own presence and that of others are real , but their presumed awareness of them is not= they just detect both presences ,including their environment , mechanically , i suppose , i dunno   .
I saw once a video where scientists tried to prove the "fact " that adult chimps  and human kids of a certain age ( The latters at the age past 18 months ) can be able to "recognize " themselves in the mirror when they are put in front of the mirror = Is that an evidence of their self-awareness ?= I do not think so, for the above mentioned intrinsic cognitive elements of the real awareness or self-awareness of adult humans ..

Furthermore , most of the people are what we can call zombies , in the philosophical sense = lacking important degrees of consciousness or self-consciousness ...

Conclusion : The real awareness or self awareness ,  the real consciousness or self-consciousness do exist only at the levels of some adult humans , and they can be improved as well = extended levels of awareness , self-awareness, consciousness, self-consciousness ...they can be extended via meditation , personal experiences , ....via prayers ...via hard work ...via certain world views ...

Conciousness, self-consciousness, awareness, self-awareness ...might be just evolutionary mechanical sophisticated illusions we take for real as well , but they cannot rise from mechanical systems , let alone that you can try to explain them via mechanical materialistic approaches = you just confuse your materialistic views with science proper,sorry .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/09/2013 20:36:14
Self-awarness or awarness can also contain cognitive elements , maybe vague cognitive elements , but nevertheless cognitive ones ...
I don't think that word means what you think it means...

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Conciousness, self-consciousness, awareness, self-awareness ...might be just evolutionary mechanical sophisticated illusions we take for real as well , but they cannot rise from mechanical systems
So how does that work  - they might be mechanical illusions, but they can't arise from mechanical systems?

Shurely shome mishtake...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 20:59:07
I just do not buy that exclusive magical dogmatic ossified materialistic mechanical reductionistic approach of consciousness, feelings , the thought process, free will, good and evil ...

And I don't buy into magic. How does magic work without a mechanism? The problem we have at the moment is that we can't find a solution that doesn't have some magic in it where a mechanism cannot be though up to account for how it does what it does. If we are to have some magic left though, our aim should be to try to keep the magical part to the minimum with as much as possible being explained through clear mechanisms.

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Materialism as a world view, philosophy, paradigm...should be confined only within  the field of inorganic and organic matter processes though , and even there , materialism holds no water ,as quantum physics had shown : "matter is not made of matter " ,so to speak .

Quantum physics doesn't eliminate the stuff of which we are made - it merely tells a different story of its nature, but one in which there is still stuff.

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The problem is ,neither Dawkins or others could  , would  , or did answer is :

How did that intelligence of ours or that ability of ours to override ....rise from our alleged mechanical systems, in the first place to begin with , and how does it  do just that you were saying , in fact ?

By a very long, slow process of evolution in which accidental advances are selected for. We have two systems for controlling how we relate to other people. One of them is primitive and based on programmed behaviours (instinctive ones), so if someone annoys you you might get angry with them, and then if you see them get upset or scared you are (hopefully) triggered into losing the anger and being nice to them again. We have a second system for doing the same job where we point out the thing the other person has done that has annoyed us instead of unleashing anger upon them, and then we talk our way to a resolution. This second way of dealing with situations is the computer side - we calculate our way to solutions in a way that is not limited by pre-programmed ways of behaving fixed by our genes. We have also evolved to be able to let this more advanced system override the more primitive one, though some of us are more successful than others at doing so, and of course some of us calculate better than others too, but the two different systems are there, they are distinct from each other, and the newer computational system is superior in enough individuals for us to have evolved a preference for allowing it to override the primitive system because it enhances our survival chances.

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Materialism excludes indeed any potential existence of the free will , but many self-declared materialists scientists whose works i read , do think free will does exist = a paradox .

Can you demonstrate your free will through a simple example of how you apply it? I can't demonstrate mine because I don't have any - I always try to do the best thing, and when I can't identify a best thing to do I have to struggle to find a way to make a random decision instead. If you have a choice between eating an orange and a lemon, your free will is powerless to make you pick the lemon other than as a futile attempt to prove that you have free will, in which case the decision is fully determined by that objective.

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Nature vs nurture : what about our own input ? we cannot be just machines ,no way , otherwise , just try to explain consciousness to me via that mechanical approach of yours = you cannot , unless you do try to kiss your materialism goodbye ...

If consciousness is real, there will be a way to fit it into the mechanical system. There is no reason why qualia shouldn't be real parts of a mechanical system, but there is a serious difficulty in seeing how they fit usefully in the chain of causation and in how the idea of their existence is communicated which needs to be accounted for.

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You do make it sound as if we are just some unconscious puppets in the hands of unconscious DNA machinery in its interactions with the environment ,nurture .

DNA has handed over control to reasoning performed by a computer. DNA merely codes for the construction of the computer and builds some default functionality into it, some of which can be overridden if the computations determine that it should be.

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That's just the mainstream materialistic point of view on the subject i do not share :
we cannot explain human behavior just via biology genetics , environment and nurture ,without the notion of free will at least .

Free will is a dead duck. There isn't any, as you'll eventually realise if you try to illustrate a case in which you can demonstrate any.

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This exclusively biological genetic approach explains some parts of the human condition , human behavior, human suffering ....not all of it .
It cannot explain consciousness, feelings , emotions , love ....not in a million years ,despite what  promissory messianic materialism says on the subject .

If qualia are involved in the mechanism, all of those things will be compatible with materialism.

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Politics is an attempt to run things well and to apply morality through law, but it's all mechanistic, some of it being driven by instincts (homosexuality is not acceptable because we're programmed to find it disgusting), some is driven by cultural beliefs (homosexuality is not acceptable because this Holy book says so), and some of it is driven by direct thinking which may be right or wrong (homosexuality is not acceptable because it spreads disease; or homosexuality is acceptable because it does immense harm to people to prevent them from being the people they cannot help but be).

You're not explaining anything via this mechanical approach , dude .

How can all that rise from our mechanical systems then ? makes no sense .

I'm showing you how politics works. Some people try to ban things that disgust them; some people try to ban things that go against a set of rules that they've bought into; some people try to ban things that they think are dangerous; and some can balance things up in such a way that they recognise that some dangers are not bad enough to justify banning them because a ban can result in greater damage. All of that is mechanistic, and politics is just a fight between rival ideas of how things should be done.

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Funny way of  looking at things : ( Religions did evolve and still do,as the universe is still expanding , as the creation of the universe is still an ongoing dynamic process  , no wonder that early muslims did discover evolution itself , centuries before Darwin was even born, thanks to that evolutionary spirit of Islam mainly .Religions were the first to call for experience , personal experience , observation ...before science learned to ever do so : even science itself did originate from the epistemology of the Qur'an ...)

Religion is a primitive form of science. Not all the primitivity has been removed from science even now, as you are aware - there is still some magic in there in places which needs to be eliminated.

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We always come back to square zero again : how can pain, suffering , consciousness, feelings , the thought process, thoughts ...rise from our alleged mechanical systems ?
Either they are illusions we take for real ,or both mind and body are 2   entirely different "systems " which do interact with each other :
But , we cannot yet explain how they interact with each other : an almost impossible issue .

That is indeed the problem, but there are only three possible solutions:-

(1): There is no such thing as consciousness.

(2): It works by magic.

(3): There is a mechanism behind consciousness which can account for it fully.

I think most of us would like (3) to be the case, but if there is no such solution we're left with just two nasty alternatives.

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Evolution appears to have built the first information systems in the form of DNA. A second kind of information has then evolved in the form of brains, and one species has ended up with a universal computer which can turn itself to any task. Some of the programming of that computer has evolved to do what it does, but it has reached the point where the rest of the programming can be done through learning. Science comes out of the programming of this computer to try to model the world around it. None of that requires consciousness, but if consciousness is useful as part of the mechanism for some reason, there is no reason why evolution shouldn't have taken a pathway that includes it. We just don't know what its role is because it appears to be superfluous
.

Wrong : makes no sense to me whatsoever ; evolution cannot explain human consciousness ...pain, suffering ...feelings , love ...no way .

It isn't wrong. It won't explain qualia, of course, but it will (if qualia are really part of the process) account for how they are used in the system to make it do what it does.

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You, guys , just "replaced " the God of religion with other "gods " such as nature , evolution , computation, magical emergence ...

I'm not giving you any magical emergence or gods. Evolution is a process by which complex functionality can come into being through as series of small steps without being designed. Any accidental step that leads to a survival advantage is likely to be retained and then be built upon by further accidental steps, and we have a chain of species to look at which serve as examples of different steps in evolved intelligence. We aren't massively different in the brain department from other apes, but we have reached the point where our brains have become full general intelligence systems which can be turned to any task. Other species can't do this as they are at least one step short of having that capability.

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materialism just replaced religious metaphysics or theology with its own  materialism is another kind of ossified irrational exclusive orthodox religion ,which pretends to be scientific , which is absolutely not the case .

Materialism is the rejection of magic. Not all materialists manage to recognise where there is still magic in their model, but that is their aim nonetheless.

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Science cannot exist without consciousness either .

An intelligent computer can do science.

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Consciousness cannot rise from mechanical systems as you know .

Consciousness would need to exist in some form already and merely be incorporated into mechanical systems.

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Evolution might "program" our alleged mechanical systems to be flexible, to be able to adapt to new situations , to be able to to learn new things ,skills ...but it cannot explain our consciousness , feelings , thought process ....not just via that materialistic mechanical approach , no way .

The energy out of which a rock is made may be experiencing feelings all the time. That may be a standard property of all stuff, and a whole range of qualia may be available states of feeling for that stuff. That is not problematic. What is problematic is how you build it into a response-and-control system and get it to serve a clear purpose there as part of the chain of causation, plus how these feelings can lead to true data about feelings being generated by information systems.

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You were just using some magical thinking here as well, unfortunately enough, just speculating ...

Where have I used magical thinking?

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I do not see any fruitful or constructive insights ever being 'able " to "emerge " from that magical materialism thus ,sorry .

I see nothing useful coming out of magical thinking of any kind - it is a non-explanation which denies mechanism. Your alternative to materialism-with-a-bit-of-magic-built-in is to ditch all the materialism and just have the magic. My alternative to it is to ditch all the magic and just have the materialism. My materialism has room for qualia in it, but I am stuck at the point where I try to fit qualia into the model to make them non-superfluous and to allow their existence to be recognised by the information system.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 21:19:55
@ David Cooper ,dlorde :

Please , let's stop deceiving each other , let's be honest :

Why did you ,  ignore what that physicist said  about the dogmatic "religious " orthodox magical ossified exclusive ...materialism in science ?

If I ignore things, it's usually where the point is put across so badly that I'd rather wait for it to be made again in a better form. Sometimes I can't work out what the question is, but I assume that if there is a decent question there and I don't answer it it will come back later on expressed in a more intelligible form and without being spread across many paragraphs of unnecessary bloat.

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Can you try to address what he said on that subject at least ?

Especially when it comes to the fact that materialists such as yourselves  do confuse their materialism as a world view , with ...science proper as such , ironically enough .

That is a case in point. Where's the actual question?

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Worse :

 How can't you , as materialists , realise the fact that you have been deceiving people , in the name of science , by presenting materialistic views as ...scientific facts,or at least as scientific approaches  : materialistic views such as the "fact " that life is just a matter of mechanical biological processes , that the universe is exclusively material, that consciousness can be , some day , (Promissory messianic materialism ) , explained within that materialistic dominating paradigm in science ...?

I'm not deceiving anyone. When I say something can be done mechanistically, it's because I can see the mechanism myself. When I can't see the whole mechanism, I point out that there's a bit of mechanism missing, and where it's not only missing but looks impossible to fit into the model, I make a point of saying so.

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There are a lots of  legetimate  issues like  that regarding materialism in science and elsewhere  , you just prefer to push under the table and ignore ,as if they do not exist  ....Why is that ? Why , if you are really what you pretend to be , guys : presumabely rational logical scientific people....Why ? Why this deceit , self-deceit , dishonesty or lack of integrity ?

I never push the gaps in understanding under the table. I always focus on mechanism and insist that any missing bits are flagged up. In the case of intelligence and all the things we do that depend upon it (politics, morality, etc.) I can see an entire mechanism behind them which does not need to involve consciousness. There may be an alternative mechanism behind them which does involve consciousness too, but there are difficulties with building the model for that.

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I thought that you, David Cooper , would be courageous enough to be honest and have integrity regarding  these issues of pure materialistic beliefs imposed on and in the name of science  , but i see i made a mistake in that regard at least .  [/b]

You are making the mistake now of thinking I'm being dishonest about this. I'm telling you how I see it, and up to a point I'm willing to take you through chunks of mechanism which you think have to rely on magic, although I am not going to go into so much detail as to give away industrial secrets relating to my AGI work.

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You can believe whatever you want to believe in ,i have no problems with just that ,  but ,please , just have the decency integrity and honesty not to present them to people as scientific facts , or as scientific approaches at least ...while those materialistic beliefs of yours  , in fact , have nothing to do with science proper ...whatsoever ...

If I have said something is a fact, I will back it up. All you have to do is point to one of my claimed facts and tell me why it's wrong.

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If there is no integrity to be detected in you , guys , regarding these issues , then , any discussions concerning  science ,  materialism and -in science , evolution, consciousness , free will ethics ,...and the rest , would be an utter waste of time , or just deceptive make -believe , ....= the "truth" we seem all to be looking for would be  the main victim, together with science itself, as a result ,unfortunately enough ...

It's no use just flinging a whole lot of concepts around and asserting that they work by magic. You need to focus down on something specific that I have said which you disagree with and tell me where I've gone wrong.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/09/2013 21:20:11
@ David Cooper ,dlorde :

Please , let's stop deceiving each other , let's be honest :
So you've been deceiving us, not being honest? ohhh... and to think I trusted you...  :)

You're probably confused about our responses because you have this weird idea that you can label us materialists based on our general opinions, then castigate us for not being True Materialiststm according to some straw man absolutist definition you've decided on.

It doesn't work like that. Materialism isn't some kind of fundamentalist religious sect, nor does it (or we) have to conform to your exacting expectations. Learn to live with it.

That says a lot about you .

What's wrong about objectivity , honesty , integrity, decency ?

I am mainly trying to be objective with you , guys (Objectivity is not as easy to achieve as you might think : total objectivity is even a myth )

I am trying to be honest with myself and with you , guys , as a result,that's all  .

"Searching for the truth and science as a means to approach the truth or reality " require some degrees of objectivity , integrity at least , honesty , ....Don't you agree ?

You can believe in whatever you wanna believe in, i have no problem with that , once again , but , please do not present your own beliefs as scientific facts or as scientific approaches : just present them as your beliefs ,as they actually are = that i can respect : That's what i meant by objectivity , honesty, decency, integrity ...

Just try to be objective , honest ,decent ,  with integrity enough to be willing to separate science proper from your beliefs , as i try to do in relation to mine as well , as much as possible though .

What's wrong with that either ?

Those who do not detect dishonesty both in themselves and in others , please do rise : those who do not sin , please , go ahead and throw stones at the other sinners ...Get the metaphor or pic ? 

Have you not ever experienced either the conscious or the sub-conscious self-deceit ? =That amazing intrinsic capacity or property of the human mind by the way , we can never be totally free from, even Dawkins himself talked about in his "Selfish Gene " by the way , a self-deceit capacity and property of our minds we seem to have developed in ourselves , both consciously and sub-consciously , via evolution .
 Have you not ever experienced  deliberate or sub-conscious self-deceit or conscious , sub-conscious deceit of others ? = we all have , without any exception , including Mother Theresa ....haha = there are neither secular no religious saints out there , inclluding prophets even , to some degree at least .


You know : There  was  even a guy who won the Nobel prize for literature :Atheist writer French  Albert Camus , just essentially because he tried to be as honest , as objective , as decent with himself and others in his masterpiece novel as possible : The fall or "La Chute " in French : That novel had so much impact on me during my immoral Don _Juan like materialist existence previously , that it made me change my life course : how about just that ? An atheist inspired me to change my life radically : nice , isn't it ?

The story of the genesis of that novel goes a bit like this :

Albert Camus wrote a philosophical essay condemning in it the suspicious double morality or double face of existentialists prominent figures such as Sartre and co , in the sense that they hold the following fundamentally hypocrit contradictory "convictions " :

They were  Stalinian Marxists  , and they pretended  to stand for the absolute freedom of the individual, at the same time  = a paradox = Marxism as a very negation of any degree of human liberty .

Sartre and co , reacted so violently as to express explicit doubts regarding the very integrity or knowledge of Camus in relation to philosophy in general .

Camus went through a devastating self-doubt process , a devastating crisis of identity which scarred his soul for life , as he put it :

His brilliant answer to Sartre and co was in the shape of that novel of his ( He got the nobel prize for his whole oeuvre in fact ) : try to read that novel where he used the Cartesian doubt , combined with the secular version of confession , combined with Pascal's philosophy ....combined with the mirror technique in literature ...combined with telling "lies " in order to get to the "truth " in literature ....and you will discover what i was talking about ...This was just an analogy , no comparison with this "conflict " of ours we have ...though .

Dawkins 30th edition of his "Selfish Gene " i did download from internet also told the stories of many people who went through devastating   despair , depression ... doubt , self-doubt ...phases ,after reading the "truths " contained in that book ....by the way .

Anyway :

Look, let's be honest indeed and stop deceiving each other , even sub-consciously , if we can at least : as much as possible though , in order to have constructive discussions we can learn from , what's wrong about that ?

What i meant : i said it clearly : you are dishonest enough to present your materialistic views as scientific facts , or at least as scientific approaches ....

I am not immune to that either ,in relation to my own beliefs : i just do no present my own beliefs as scientific facts , or as scientific approaches at least ...

And i cannot say that i can be  objective, honest , decent , with integrity ...all the time , no way : nobody can say just that about himself/herself , otherwise they would be lying obviously .

What's wrong about what i said here above and in my other post you responded to , that it made you say these irrational things of yours then ?

Thanks , appreciate

Kind regards

Take care
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 21:33:29
You've just posted three long extracts from Dawkins followed by the above in order to repeat a question you've already asked. I attempted to answer it in a post that appeared 3 minutes before you posted the above. They are mechanical processes running at a different level. The genes run at one level and determine a lot of our behaviour, but the rest happen in the general purpose computer through mechanical thought, and the ideas generated there are able to override the rough-and-ready directly-evolved behaviour control mechanisms programmed into the DNA.

You just have been performing an amazing U boot turn , in total contrast with what you were saying earlier regarding the fact at least that consciousness cannot rise from mechanical systems ....cannot be explained by mechanical systems ...unless ....

I haven't made any U-turn. You're just having difficulty understanding what you're reading.

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What happened ? Why do you, guys , just resort to deliberately contradicting and therefore self-deceiving yourselves and others in the process  , whenever you are cornered via some detected anomalies and holes in your capacity of judgement ,or in your world view on the subject ?

Where's the contradiction?

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What you said here above makes no sense whatsoever , unless we assume that our consciousness, feelings , free will, thought process ...are just sophisticated illusions we take for real in order to survive : but , if we do just that , then all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that regarding evolution itself are therefore also just ...illusions , in order to survive , or in order to improve our survival ....Maybe lying to ourselves and to others may lead to the truth , as literature assumes it to be the case , maybe ...

The machine exists. It may not exist in the form we think it exists in, but it exists in some form and it functions mechanically. It doesn't need consciousness to function unless that has somehow been built into the mechanism. Either way though, there is the DNA specifying the build of the brain and some of its functionality, and then the brain performs calculations which can be used to steer the behaviour of the machine. The involvement of consciousness in that is unimportant to the issue of how there can be two systems in the machine with one (the newer one which is programmed by interactions with the external world) able to override the other (the primitive one programmed directly by genes).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/09/2013 22:44:36
What's wrong about objectivity , honesty , integrity, decency ?
Nothing at all, they are laudable aims.

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"Searching for the truth and science as a means to approach the truth or reality " require some degrees of objectivity , integrity at least , honesty , ....Don't you agree ?
Science doesn't claim to search for truth, or even reality; nevertheless, it does help to have objectivity, integrity, and honesty in scientific work and in general.

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please do not present your own beliefs as scientific facts or as scientific approaches : just present them as your beliefs ,as they actually are = that i can respect : That's what i meant by objectivity , honesty, decency, integrity ...
That's my intent. By all means point out any examples where you think I go astray.

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What's wrong about what i said here above and in my other post you responded to , that it made you say these irrational things of yours then ?
What irrational things do you mean? if you have a problem with something I said, quote it and explain the problem.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/09/2013 13:59:28
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.

That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.

I don't know if the cat and lamp post is the best analogy. Even if the lamp post is set up to turn on all the other lamp posts in the yard that do not sense the cat, they essentially become parts of the same machine. Not to mention the fact that the lamp post is not really "aware" of a cat, or the significance of cats, it's detecting something like movement and is as likely to be set off by rustling leaves. In the chimp experiment, the threat was someone dressed as a veterinarian with a large needle, that all the chimps were afraid of because of past painful vaccinations. 

I suspect whatever experiment is offered up, someone will claim they can replicate the details of it with computers, or that the experiment cannot prove what the chimp is actually "feeling," therefore it cannot tell us anything about true consciousness, whose definition, like the word "feeling," remains elusive and constantly changing.

As flawed as these experiments may be, I still feel they contribute something to the bulk of evidence supporting a biological basis of consciousness. And certainly the explanations are more reasonable than claiming the consciousness springs from nothing at all, which reminds me of the spontaneous generation arguments hundreds of years ago.

Recently there was news about the first brain to brain interface, in which a researcher at the University of Washington was able to move another scientist's hand across campus. That isn't exactly a Vulcan mind meld, but it's pretty cool, and it does make you wonder if these methods will become sophisticated enough to allow someone to experience another person's consciousness. But I am also afraid that if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness.

Nevertheless, experiments can invalidate certain claims. DonQuixote asserted earlier that his consciousness or cognitive understanding informs his emotional responses, but fMRI imaging has shown that is not the actual sequence of events, make of that what you will. And you are probably also aware of FMRI imaging that demonstrates the brain deciding to act before the subject is aware that he has decided to do something. Until we can do mind melds, we may be limited in explaining the qualitative aspects of feelings, but we can certainly find out what happens when inside the brain.

But again, no matter what research methodology or evidence is offered up, no matter how much science progresses towards understanding phenomena which were once thought to be not only unmeasurable, but untraceable and undefinable, it's never enough for those who cannot or do not want to believe that we are physical beings and mortal. 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 17:36:14
What's wrong about objectivity , honesty , integrity, decency ?
Nothing at all, they are laudable aims.

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"Searching for the truth and science as a means to approach the truth or reality " require some degrees of objectivity , integrity at least , honesty , ....Don't you agree ?
Science doesn't claim to search for truth, or even reality; nevertheless, it does help to have objectivity, integrity, and honesty in scientific work and in general.

Ok, we do agree with each other on that at least : that was my core point .
Besides, I am not gonna argue with you concerning the fact that science tries to approach the truth , reality though .

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please do not present your own beliefs as scientific facts or as scientific approaches : just present them as your beliefs ,as they actually are = that i can respect : That's what i meant by objectivity , honesty, decency, integrity ...
That's my intent. By all means point out any examples where you think I go astray.

Well, see that post of mine to you and to Cooper as well on the subject , Cooper did try to address his own way at least .

I will add the following objection too to all that :

How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :

Our alleged evolved ability to  rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance   then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ?

How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?

You tell me ...


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What's wrong about what i said here above and in my other post you responded to , that it made you say these irrational things of yours then ?
What irrational things do you mean? if you have a problem with something I said, quote it and explain the problem.

See that post of yours here above ,as a reply to mine on the subject thus :

(So , you have been deceiving us , I trusted you ....learn to live with it ....things like that .... ).

P.S.: I have been honest with you, guys , all the way and all along so far though.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/09/2013 17:48:01
...if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness.

That would be a fun experiment, though any feelings involved in the human triggered by the inputs from the chimp would depend on human feelings which might be nothing like those experienced by the chimp. It is interesting though that our friend DonQuichotte thinks chimps lack consciousness. There's a biological machine which is almost the same as us and superior intellectually to some people, and yet chimps supposedly lack consciousness while people have it. All these mechanisms which we have that are driven by likes and dislikes, by discomfort and pleasure, are unnecessary in all other creatures? They are all zombies? Why do we have them if all other creatures have no need of them?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 17:51:06
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.

That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.

I don't know if the cat and lamp post is the best analogy. Even if the lamp post is set up to turn on all the other lamp posts in the yard that do not sense the cat, they essentially become parts of the same machine. Not to mention the fact that the lamp post is not really "aware" of a cat, or the significance of cats, it's detecting something like movement and is as likely to be set off by rustling leaves. In the chimp experiment, the threat was someone dressed as a veterinarian with a large needle, that all the chimps were afraid of because of past painful vaccinations. 

I suspect whatever experiment is offered up, someone will claim they can replicate the details of it with computers, or that the experiment cannot prove what the chimp is actually "feeling," therefore it cannot tell us anything about true consciousness, whose definition, like the word "feeling," remains elusive and constantly changing.

As flawed as these experiments may be, I still feel they contribute something to the bulk of evidence supporting a biological basis of consciousness. And certainly the explanations are more reasonable than claiming the consciousness springs from nothing at all, which reminds me of the spontaneous generation arguments hundreds of years ago.

Recently there was news about the first brain to brain interface, in which a researcher at the University of Washington was able to move another scientist's hand across campus. That isn't exactly a Vulcan mind meld, but it's pretty cool, and it does make you wonder if these methods will become sophisticated enough to allow someone to experience another person's consciousness. But I am also afraid that if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness.

Nevertheless, experiments can invalidate certain claims. DonQuixote asserted earlier that his consciousness or cognitive understanding informs his emotional responses, but fMRI imaging has shown that is not the actual sequence of events, make of that what you will. And you are probably also aware of FMRI imaging that demonstrates the brain deciding to act before the subject is aware that he has decided to do something. Until we can do mind melds, we may be limited in explaining the qualitative aspects of feelings, but we can certainly find out what happens when inside the brain.

But again, no matter what research methodology or evidence is offered up, no matter how much science progresses towards understanding phenomena which were once thought to be not only unmeasurable, but untraceable and undefinable, it's never enough for those who cannot or do not want to believe that we are physical beings and mortal.

I am gonna respond only to what you said about me , to some extent at least :
First of all , I cannot say i understand what consciousness is or how it operates ,let alone that i can do just that in relation to awareness ...I just said things in that regard without really thinking about what i was saying .

Second : i am well aware of those experiments that show that one can predict the potential "decisions " of a subject , 6 secs before he/she  can do that himself/herself : but , those experiments were just conducted at the level of the brain only = our decisions do involve sub-conscious as well as conscious elements though : so , just studying the brain only in that regard would only give us incomplete and non-conclusive results on the subject at hand .

But then again, our Cooper or dlorde here would say that mechanical systems or programmed machines can make "decisions" also ,even though they cannot be conscious ...But , i think that our decision -making process is in a way different than those of machines, in the sense that our mind did not "emerge " from our evolved brain = our mind has some degree of independence= our mind is not mechanical  ...I dunno ...The notion of human free will is a very nasty elusive deceptive one  humanity has been struggling with for so long now that there seems to be no end in sight to it,so... We cannot pretend to solve that human free will issue .....for the time being at least though .

Which brings us back to square zero again ,regarding the issue of the brain and consciousness :

I assume that they are both different "systems " which do correlate and interact with each other ,materialists mainly do confuse with ..causation though .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/09/2013 18:10:42
How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :

Our alleged evolved ability to  rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance   then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ?

How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?

It might be more correct to say that the genes aren't overridden - they program for a system which is capable of calculating intelligently, so the genes are still winning out. It's only the simpler systems which aren't able to calculate intelligently that are being overridden by the newer system involving complex thinking. When you look at it like that, it's not so very different from two competing instincts, one which tries to make an animal run away from a possible danger while another instinct makes it stay where it is in order to continue feeding on some good fruit that's growing on a bush. If the fear outweighs the desire to eat, the animal will run away. When you add some decent calculation into the equation and make it a person feeding from a bush covered in fruit while a lion is approaching, that person can override the fear based on the knowledge that there is a hidden ravine between him and the lion which it won't be able to cross. Knowledge and understanding overrides the fear and may even remove the fear altogether. This could happen in many animals too, their knowledge of things unseen being used to override/modify their feelings. It's a small step from there to more complex thoughts also being able to override instinctive behaviours, so it isn't such a jump to get to the point where we can reject our instinct to be violent and suppress those desires deliberately in order to live in a more peaceful, safe society.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 10/09/2013 18:11:00
I think we are approaching DQ's definition of consciousness as "that which is unique to humans".

Problem is that we can trace a continuum of evolution that suggests a common ancestor with some nonhuman species - gorillas, orangutans, etc., so he needs to tell us whether this mysterious attribute occurred at the moment of divergence or some time later in the hominid line, and why, if it is so closely associated with a purely genetic origin, it is itself not genetic and therefore mechanistic in origin.

It's also slightly odd that although we exploit various animals, the only ones that fully and willingly integrate into human society as partners are dogs, which are very different from the apes we resemble. Can it be that they share our consciousness, whatever that means? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 18:35:27
How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :

Our alleged evolved ability to  rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance   then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ?

How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?

It might be more correct to say that the genes aren't overridden - they program for a system which is capable of calculating intelligently, so the genes are still winning out. It's only the simpler systems which aren't able to calculate intelligently that are being overridden by the newer system involving complex thinking. When you look at it like that, it's not so very different from two competing instincts, one which tries to make an animal run away from a possible danger while another instinct makes it stay where it is in order to continue feeding on some good fruit that's growing on a bush. If the fear outweighs the desire to eat, the animal will run away. When you add some decent calculation into the equation and make it a person feeding from a bush covered in fruit while a lion is approaching, that person can override the fear based on the knowledge that there is a hidden ravine between him and the lion which it won't be able to cross. Knowledge and understanding overrides the fear and may even remove the fear altogether. This could happen in many animals too, their knowledge of things unseen being used to override/modify their feelings. It's a small step from there to more complex thoughts also being able to override instinctive behaviours, so it isn't such a jump to get to the point where we can reject our instinct to be violent and suppress those desires deliberately in order to live in a more peaceful, safe society.

That might be relatively true ,if we eliminate the hard problem of human consciousness from the "equation " ,but we can't ...

The human mind or the human consciousness are no mechanical processes : no one has been able to prove just that = makes no sense whatsoever either , unless we confine ourselves within the narrow exclusive boundaries key holes or tunnel visions of the mechanical materialism on the subject .

Our consciousness or mind might be just sophisticated built -in in our evolutionary alleged mechanical systems illusions survival strategies , but then again , that would imply that all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that concerning evolution itself ...to mention just that ...that would imply explicitly that they are all just illusions = a paradox .

At the other hand , If consciousness is real , you cannot "build " it in mechanical systems it cannot rise from = i do not see how one can do just that in fact , no matter how you try to "incorporate or integrate " consciousness in mechanical systems ,via trying to find out how the mechanical data gets translated or converted to consciousness, as you put it at least  : maybe our consciousness just gets informed somehow ,don't tell me how, i dunno, via our sensory "inputs " about some data it acts upon as a result by triggering the response to that data generated by our senses, to action , i dunno - I am as in the dark in this as we all are : we are stuck in this, for the time being at least .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/09/2013 18:58:38
The human mind or the human consciousness are no mechanical processes : no one has been able to prove just that = makes no sense whatsoever either , unless we confine ourselves within the narrow exclusive boundaries key holes or tunnel visions of the mechanical materialism on the subject .

The problem is that we have a mechanical biological machine that acts mechanically without appearing to need consciousness. A simple example is with pain where an input signalling potential damage feeds into some part of the brain where pain is perhaps experienced, then a signal goes on from there to trigger an action to respond to it, but the part of that model where pain is experienced is superfluous as the input signal might as well just become the output signal without any pain being generated in the middle. That doesn't mean that pain isn't generated somewhere along the way, but with humans at least there is also data generated which asserts that there was some pain generated. If that is really happening (i.e. pain is being felt and the information is being informed of that), then there has to be a mechanism of some kind which generates that information, so putting consciousness into the model requires it to tie into the whole system mechanically.

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At the other hand , If consciousness is real , you cannot "build " it in mechanical systems it cannot rise from = i do not see how one can do just that in fact , no matter how you try to "incorporate or integrate " consciousness in mechanical systems ,via trying to find out how the mechanical data gets translated or converted to consciousness, as you put it at least  : maybe our consciousness just gets informed somehow ,don't tell me how, i dunno, via our sensory "inputs " about some data it acts upon as a result by triggering the response to that data generated by our senses, to action , i dunno - I am as in the dark in this as we all are : we are stuck in this, for the time being at least .

It is not beyond possibility that consciousness is not found within the biological machines that we see. They could be more like books. You read a book and get caught up in the story and feel for the characters in it. This universe might be a virtual realm that holds interactive stories, and consciousnesses on the outside (the real us) get tied into it such that they can feel for the machines which they are in control of. But the key thing here is that controlling aspect. If our feelings are causing those machines to behave differently depending on how we feel, there must be a causation mechanism involved by which those feelings lead to the machines being steered in their behaviour. You can try to replace mechanism with magic, but in doing so you can only hide mechanism - there must still be a mechanism by which any magic operates, so it is not a good answer to anything.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 19:43:20
The human mind or the human consciousness are no mechanical processes : no one has been able to prove just that = makes no sense whatsoever either , unless we confine ourselves within the narrow exclusive boundaries key holes or tunnel visions of the mechanical materialism on the subject .

The problem is that we have a mechanical biological machine that acts mechanically without appearing to need consciousness. A simple example is with pain where an input signalling potential damage feeds into some part of the brain where pain is perhaps experienced, then a signal goes on from there to trigger an action to respond to it, but the part of that model where pain is experienced is superfluous as the input signal might as well just become the output signal without any pain being generated in the middle. That doesn't mean that pain isn't generated somewhere along the way, but with humans at least there is also data generated which asserts that there was some pain generated. If that is really happening (i.e. pain is being felt and the information is being informed of that), then there has to be a mechanism of some kind which generates that information, so putting consciousness into the model requires it to tie into the whole system mechanically.

Pain is real ,not an illusion,  dude :

You cannot build the human real feeling of pain in a machine either ,no matter how hard you try to do just that, you can just make it simulate that = you cannot make any mechanical system generate a totally different process than his ,no way  .

Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way .

what if consciousness is primordial ? What if consciousness is the real boss  that 's in charge of our whole system ,and our biology is just its executive power ,relatively speaking ,so to speak ?
What if brain and mind are 2 different systems in relation to their entirely different natures that  do interact with each other , but do not cause each other ?
How they might correlate with each other is still a mystery indeed .

But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .

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At the other hand , If consciousness is real , you cannot "build " it in mechanical systems it cannot rise from = i do not see how one can do just that in fact , no matter how you try to "incorporate or integrate " consciousness in mechanical systems ,via trying to find out how the mechanical data gets translated or converted to consciousness, as you put it at least  : maybe our consciousness just gets informed somehow ,don't tell me how, i dunno, via our sensory "inputs " about some data it acts upon as a result by triggering the response to that data generated by our senses, to action , i dunno - I am as in the dark in this as we all are : we are stuck in this, for the time being at least .

It is not beyond possibility that consciousness is not found within the biological machines that we see. They could be more like books. You read a book and get caught up in the story and feel for the characters in it. This universe might be a virtual realm that holds interactive stories, and consciousnesses on the outside (the real us) get tied into it such that they can feel for the machines which they are in control of. But the key thing here is that controlling aspect. If our feelings are causing those machines to behave differently depending on how we feel, there must be a causation mechanism involved by which those feelings lead to the machines being steered in their behaviour. You can try to replace mechanism with magic, but in doing so you can only hide mechanism - there must still be a mechanism by which any magic operates, so it is not a good answer to anything.

Do not confuse the ordinary "magical" tricks (That's no magic in fact : that can be explained by certain corresponding mechanisms indeed )   conducted by illusionists, no matter how sophisticated they might ever be,  with the hard problem of consciousness .

You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to introduce magic into a mechanical system , by trying to make consciousness fit into it .

It would take an act of magic indeed haha to do just that = cannot be done in fact .


What if consciousness is immaterial and therefore it behaves via non-mechanical processes then ?

How the alleged mechanical brain interacts with the non-mechanical consciousness is yet another mystery we cannot explain either .

We cannot prove all the above  to be the case either , as we cannot try to explain how the different systems : consciousness and brain , do interact with each other , without causing each other = the executive power does not get caused by the legislative one = the legislative power does not create the executive power , so to speak , physically , or vice versa = the ordinary executive power is made of already existing people and vice versa  = this is just an analogy , no comparison though .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 19:52:55
Many scientific studies have come  across that mysterious healing power of the mind in relation to the body they cannot explain :

See just this scientific study on the subject concerning :

Placebo-Cracking the Code = They have cracked no code in fact :

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/placebo-cracking-code/

P.S.: Humanity today still cannot seem to be able to find its way concerning its attempts to figure out what ,on earth, the nature or function of human consciousness are :

We are all stuck in this dead-end street = cul de sac , as the French say .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/09/2013 20:11:58
How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :
I've no idea - did someone say that?

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Our alleged evolved ability to  rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance   then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ?

How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?

You tell me ...
In brief, the success of a more nuanced approach to behaviour drove the evolution of the neocortex in mammals. It provides an extra level of behavioural complexity and subtlety, and can modify, redirect, or suppress many of the simpler behavioural responses from the 'earlier' parts of the brain.

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See that post of yours here above ,as a reply to mine on the subject thus :

(So , you have been deceiving us , I trusted you ....learn to live with it ....things like that .... ).
'Learn to live with it' is common-sense recommendation. I don't see any irrationality there. For the rest, it was a light-hearted comment on your extraordinary "let's stop deceiving each other , let's be honest", with it's implications of deceit and dishonesty. I added a smiley specifically so you wouldn't misread it...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/09/2013 20:22:45
our Cooper or dlorde here would say that mechanical systems or programmed machines can make "decisions" also ,even though they cannot be conscious ...
As it happens, I wouldn't say that, and I'd appreciate you quoting what I actually do say rather than putting words in my mouth.

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.. i think that our decision -making process is in a way different than those of machines, in the sense that our mind did not "emerge " from our evolved brain = our mind has some degree of independence= our mind is not mechanical  ...I dunno
Is this an 'argument from incredulity' or a circular argument ? I have a sneaking suspicion it's both.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/09/2013 20:48:54
Pain is real ,not an illusion,  dude :

How can you be so sure that it's real? You could just be a machine being tricked into generating data that asserts that it's real. This possibility must be seriously considered until we can find some useful way of fitting pain into the model.

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You cannot build the human real feeling of pain in a machine either ,no matter how hard you try to do just that, you can just make it simulate that = you cannot make any mechanical system generate a totally different process than his ,no way  .

I'm using the word "mechanical" in a wider sense than normal, taking my lead in that regard from the words "mechanism" and "mechanistic". The point of using these words is to point to chains of cause and effect which make up the process by which things function. If pain is to cause a response, that is an act of causation. It is mechanistic. Mechanical. If you deny its mechanical nature, you are taking away its ability to cause anything. If pain can't cause a response, it can have no role in the response system.

[Note: in English, "it can have no role" actually means "it cannot have any role". I used the first of these phrase formulae above for stylistic reasons because that is the normal way to express things, though it may be unclear to someone whose first language is not English.]

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Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way .

I don't care what label you want to attach to it in the way of material/immaterial - what matters is its role as part of a mechanism.

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what if consciousness is primordial ? What if consciousness is the real boss  that 's in charge of our whole system ,and our biology is just its executive power ,relatively speaking ,so to speak ?
What if brain and mind are 2 different systems in relation to their entirely different natures that  do interact with each other , but do not cause each other ?
How they might correlate with each other is still a mystery indeed .

What if the real boss is something else and somewhere else? Well, how does it link up with the biological machine to make that machine function? How can the machine act without being caused to act by the real boss elsewhere? The chains of causation (i.e. the mechanism) cannot simply be ignored by having two systems and trying to link them by magic.

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But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .

Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-

But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.

In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.

[Note: the above does not represent my view of things, but is a logical extension of your view.]

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Do not confuse the ordinary "magical" tricks (That's no magic in fact : that can be explained by certain corresponding mechanisms indeed )   conducted by illusionists, no matter how sophisticated they might ever be,  with the hard problem of consciousness .

When I talk of magic, I'm referring to the Harry Potter variety: not simple tricks, but supernatural powers. But even then, these powers if they were to be real would still have a hidden mechanism by which they operate, so the distinction is really about whether they can be explained by known laws of physics or unknown ones. Magicians act within known laws. Wizards (of the kind found in fiction) need to use laws outside of known physics.

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You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to introduce magic into a mechanical system , by trying to make consciousness fit into it .

No, I'm trying to eliminate all the magic by aiming to identify the full chain of causation in the system. Consciousness cannot drive anything without causation, and causation = mechanism.

The model has to take the form: A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F. To add non-mechanistic consciousness into that system you would need to add something to say: A doesn't cause X, X doesn't cause Y, Y doesn't cause Z, Z doesn't cause F, and then assert that the "X doesn't cause Y" part of it has a key role in the chain "A causes F". It clearly doesn't. It has no role in the chain "A causes F" at all.

If it is to have a role, we have to rewrite the chain as: A causes X, X causes Y, Y causes Z, Z causes F. We now have a new model for the chain "A causes F" with consciousness as part of a replacement mechanism, but we still have a mechanistic system. The problem now though is that if the chain "A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F" still looks valid, the new chain must either override it or be overridden by it whenever they disagree. Only one of them can be valid while the other is wrong, unless they always happen to agree by chance such that it's impossible to identify which one would override the other, though in such a case it would render consciousness redundant. It would also prevent the system from reporting that it has consciousness unless the system which has no knowledge of consciousness happens to generate fictions about consciousness which happen by luck to be true.

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What if consciousness is immaterial and therefore it behaves via non-mechanical processes then ?

You would have non-mechanical causes which are unable to cause their mechanical effects.

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We cannot prove all the above  to be the case either , as we cannot try to explain how the different systems : consciousness and brain , do interact with each other , without causing each other = the executive power does not get caused by the legislative one = the legislative power does not create the executive power , so to speak , physically , or vice versa = the ordinary executive power is made of already existing people and vice versa  = this is just an analogy , no comparison though .

That might or might not make sense, depending on what it means.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/09/2013 04:51:22
Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way


....But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .

Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-

But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.

In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.


It would seem that it has to work both ways. If consciousness is immaterial, truly separate, different, than there is no way it should control or affect biological or physical activities. You cannot have your metaphysical cake and eat it too.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 19:26:56
...if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness.

That would be a fun experiment, though any feelings involved in the human triggered by the inputs from the chimp would depend on human feelings which might be nothing like those experienced by the chimp. It is interesting though that our friend DonQuichotte thinks chimps lack consciousness. There's a biological machine which is almost the same as us and superior intellectually to some people, and yet chimps supposedly lack consciousness while people have it. All these mechanisms which we have that are driven by likes and dislikes, by discomfort and pleasure, are unnecessary in all other creatures? They are all zombies? Why do we have them if all other creatures have no need of them?

I never said that chimps lacked consciousness : they have a lesser degree of consciousness , compared to humans , for example (There is no comparison between the 2 in fact , in that regard at least ):there are degrees and levels of consciousness we can find in all creatures , including maybe in the inorganic matter or atoms , as some might say :

There are even many levels of human consciousness as well , few people can pretend to achieve .

Man's consciousness is unique , in the sense that it is not matched by that of any other living organism or inorganic matter .

Your wicked denigrating statement that some chimps are intellectually more superior to some humans ...is worst than racism by the way :

In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/09/2013 19:39:38

I never said that chimps lacked consciousness : they have a lesser degree of consciousness , compared to humans , for example (There is no comparison between the 2 in fact , in that regard at least ):there are degrees and levels of consciousness we can find in all creatures ,......

.........In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .

So, ignoring the fact that you refuse to define consciouness, (a) how do you measure it and (b) how do you reconcile your two statements above?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 19:40:11
Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way


....But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .

Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-

But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.

In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.


It would seem that it has to work both ways. If consciousness is immaterial, truly separate, different, than there is no way it should control or affect biological or physical activities. You cannot have your metaphysical cake and eat it too.

I am sorry to say that you all sound to me as short sighted people on the issue of consciousness at least , due to your world views on the matter , you do confuse with science proper , wihtout being able to realise that fact , unfortuantely enough .

Your reduced levels of consciousness do the rest ,as a result .

Try to listen to this very interesting interview of a quantum physicist regarding consciousness through  Higgins' field ...:


"The mind of God " expression in the video is just a metaphor though .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 19:48:16

I never said that chimps lacked consciousness : they have a lesser degree of consciousness , compared to humans , for example (There is no comparison between the 2 in fact , in that regard at least ):there are degrees and levels of consciousness we can find in all creatures ,......

.........In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .

So, ignoring the fact that you refuse to define consciouness, (a) how do you measure it and (b) how do you reconcile your two statements above?

Humans have way too many extended levels of consciousness ,compared to the rest = no comparison , in fact , just an analogy .

There are also humans individuals who can reach more levels of consciousness , than other humans individuals, as this thread shows .= we do not all reach the same levels of human consciousness = some people are able to reach more levels of consciousness than other humans can ever be , as this thread shows , for example ,and once again  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 20:14:26
Pain is real ,not an illusion,  dude :

How can you be so sure that it's real? You could just be a machine being tricked into generating data that asserts that it's real. This possibility must be seriously considered until we can find some useful way of fitting pain into the model.

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You cannot build the human real feeling of pain in a machine either ,no matter how hard you try to do just that, you can just make it simulate that = you cannot make any mechanical system generate a totally different process than his ,no way  .

I'm using the word "mechanical" in a wider sense than normal, taking my lead in that regard from the words "mechanism" and "mechanistic". The point of using these words is to point to chains of cause and effect which make up the process by which things function. If pain is to cause a response, that is an act of causation. It is mechanistic. Mechanical. If you deny its mechanical nature, you are taking away its ability to cause anything. If pain can't cause a response, it can have no role in the response system.

[Note: in English, "it can have no role" actually means "it cannot have any role". I used the first of these phrase formulae above for stylistic reasons because that is the normal way to express things, though it may be unclear to someone whose first language is not English.]

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Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way .

I don't care what label you want to attach to it in the way of material/immaterial - what matters is its role as part of a mechanism.

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what if consciousness is primordial ? What if consciousness is the real boss  that 's in charge of our whole system ,and our biology is just its executive power ,relatively speaking ,so to speak ?
What if brain and mind are 2 different systems in relation to their entirely different natures that  do interact with each other , but do not cause each other ?
How they might correlate with each other is still a mystery indeed .

What if the real boss is something else and somewhere else? Well, how does it link up with the biological machine to make that machine function? How can the machine act without being caused to act by the real boss elsewhere? The chains of causation (i.e. the mechanism) cannot simply be ignored by having two systems and trying to link them by magic.

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But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .

Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-

But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.

In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.

[Note: the above does not represent my view of things, but is a logical extension of your view.]

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Do not confuse the ordinary "magical" tricks (That's no magic in fact : that can be explained by certain corresponding mechanisms indeed )   conducted by illusionists, no matter how sophisticated they might ever be,  with the hard problem of consciousness .

When I talk of magic, I'm referring to the Harry Potter variety: not simple tricks, but supernatural powers. But even then, these powers if they were to be real would still have a hidden mechanism by which they operate, so the distinction is really about whether they can be explained by known laws of physics or unknown ones. Magicians act within known laws. Wizards (of the kind found in fiction) need to use laws outside of known physics.

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You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to introduce magic into a mechanical system , by trying to make consciousness fit into it .

No, I'm trying to eliminate all the magic by aiming to identify the full chain of causation in the system. Consciousness cannot drive anything without causation, and causation = mechanism.

The model has to take the form: A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F. To add non-mechanistic consciousness into that system you would need to add something to say: A doesn't cause X, X doesn't cause Y, Y doesn't cause Z, Z doesn't cause F, and then assert that the "X doesn't cause Y" part of it has a key role in the chain "A causes F". It clearly doesn't. It has no role in the chain "A causes F" at all.

If it is to have a role, we have to rewrite the chain as: A causes X, X causes Y, Y causes Z, Z causes F. We now have a new model for the chain "A causes F" with consciousness as part of a replacement mechanism, but we still have a mechanistic system. The problem now though is that if the chain "A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F" still looks valid, the new chain must either override it or be overridden by it whenever they disagree. Only one of them can be valid while the other is wrong, unless they always happen to agree by chance such that it's impossible to identify which one would override the other, though in such a case it would render consciousness redundant. It would also prevent the system from reporting that it has consciousness unless the system which has no knowledge of consciousness happens to generate fictions about consciousness which happen by luck to be true.

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What if consciousness is immaterial and therefore it behaves via non-mechanical processes then ?

You would have non-mechanical causes which are unable to cause their mechanical effects.

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We cannot prove all the above  to be the case either , as we cannot try to explain how the different systems : consciousness and brain , do interact with each other , without causing each other = the executive power does not get caused by the legislative one = the legislative power does not create the executive power , so to speak , physically , or vice versa = the ordinary executive power is made of already existing people and vice versa  = this is just an analogy , no comparison though .

That might or might not make sense, depending on what it means.


The core point here , we all seem to have forgotten is :

How can a mechanical system create the mind or consciousness ,once again ?

No one has ever been able to answer just that question : so, you guys , just resort to that promissory messianic materialism alternative circle "reasoning "  or exit strategy , instead of acknowledging your obvious impotence on the subject , especially after realising the fact that materialism 's approach of consciousness was / is just a magical "emergence " trick .

What if causation is just an illusion we take for real , as David Hume tried to prove ?

What if there is no such a thing as mechanical systems , when it comes to living organisms , or even when it comes to inorganic matter ?

What if cause and effect were / are just illusions thus ?

If, say , i was experiencing some frustrations at work ...in my family life ...and i happen to meet you , as a friend , in the street : let's say you propose to take me for a drink , in order to chill out and release stress  : then , we start talking about this and that : later on, human consciousness grabs our attention and we focus on it :

As a guy who presumabely works with machines , as opposed to me as just an artist who's no expert on evolution, mechanical systems , biology ...you suddenly make a mistake of saying that some people are lower than chimps intellectually , just because they might be relatively ignorant ,as we all are regarding this or that , regarding some subjects or sciences , relatively speaking : you get a punch in the face while falling on the ground , without realising what hit you : would i have caused your potential self-defence or survival reaction ,as a result , that might have put you in more or less danger ?

Your brain would react to that feeling of pain ,via your sensory "inputs " , by triggering a potential reaction ,would i have caused that ?

Would i have caused any potential lethal threat to your life , depending on your reaction ?

....

I was once crazy about football to the point where i threw my tv set out of the window when i saw the defeat of my preferred club : the tv set almost landed on the head of an innocent pedestrian = I almost killed the guy that way : that episode of my life helped me cure myself from my football fanatism ,later on .

That destroyed tv set of mine on the street stopped functioning of course: take it as a metaphor for the human brain then : did that mean that my tv set created the tv signals it used to receive when it was functioning ?

Get real ,grow up , get  better adults'  behaviours , get  a  better life and better world views via trying to extend your level of consciousness, life experiences ...and relative knowledge ...if you wanna increase your survival and beyond that chances at least ...

Good luck .

 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 20:37:22
Action triggered by or in fact as equal to the human mind put in motion via Higgins' field that maybe , just maybe gets in its turn made in motion by a higher power that might hold everything existing together for that matter, our minds that depend on or tend to long for unity with that fundamental root capacity of that higher power or root  Self  , that action might be the core " building block element " of the  "structure "  of the universe , who knows ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 11/09/2013 20:46:40
There is nothing racist in pointing out that people with severe learning disabilities can in many cases be on a lower intellectual level than chimps. It's a measurable fact.

Also, the "Higgins' field" is a snooker table.

And, there is a great danger of someone on this thread turning into a troll, so it's probably time it was locked by a moderator.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 21:13:20
There is nothing racist in pointing out that people with severe learning disabilities can in many cases be on a lower intellectual level than chimps. It's a measurable fact.

(Who's really intellectually lower than chimps here  is a matter of opinion indeed , and of  whishful thinking as well  = beware of what you might wish for ...= blindness of the heart is what you do seem to share with apparent genuises such as Stephen Hawking : heart's intelligence as the highest form of intelligence or intellect : heart as no emotions, feelings or biological organ ...)

You mean people who are not willing to confuse your  silly childish mechanical world view with science proper ,or rather do not share your own interpretations of science ...and who are not willing to share those silly childish mechanical word views of yours with you ...

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Also, the "Higgins' field" is a snooker table.

That quantum physicist in the above mentioned   video based his assumptions on maths and physics , assumptions i might have distorted .
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And, there is a great danger of someone on this thread turning into a troll, so it's probably time it was locked by a moderator.

Disagreeing with people and with their stupid appaling tendency to impose their world views on them, in the name of science ,are not synonymous of trolling ,dude .

Yeah, just run to mummy , and hide behind her skirt ....and do not forget to take your industrial secrets ' fantasies with you as well, while you are at it ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 21:34:13
Mummy :

I have just discovered a brilliant fact = we are just machines: I am a genius ,and the rest are so lower than chimps intellectually  haha

You are machines indeed , how can i disagree with that fact , silly me .

What ,on earth, am i doing here talking to ...machines indeed ? haha

Why not talk to my tv set or to my dog instead = that might turn out to be more fruitfuil  and more intelligent than talking to you as self-declared and actual machines  ,who knows .

Pathetic
Sad
Tragic

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 21:43:27
Final note , after that , just close this thread ,mod , if you wish to do so :
I have no objections :

This western materialistic secular atheistic civilization has been taking over  this planet and humanity for so long now that it is about time indeed to deliver both this planet and humanity from the tyranny of this so-called civilization ,despite the latter's huge material scientific and technological advances , a so-called civilization that has been turning humans into just consumptive superficial hollow machines zombies indeed , with no consciousness whatsoever ,depriving most  humans of their fundamental primary quality of them all = consciousness ,in the process  .

I have the feeling our planet have been taken over by apes, by  western mechanical  Eurocentric mainstream racist paternalistic imperialist white apes zombies , to be more precize ,ironically enough  = the planet of the mechanical white apes zombies ,mechanical white apes  zombies humanity gotta be liberated from, sooner or later= inevitable = just a matter of time thus  .

...........
Real apes  animals out there in your natural habitat : i am sorry for offending you indeed ,by calling others by your names  : i know you would understand ...



Ciao

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/09/2013 22:19:44
Your wicked denigrating statement that some chimps are intellectually more superior to some humans ...is worst than racism by the way :

In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .
This is just nonsense - if superior or inferior value judgements have no meaning, how can they be wicked, denigrating, and worse than racism?

Nevertheless, even in healthy individuals at their peak, the average chimp is intellectually superior (i.e. can outperform) the the average human in memory tests (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071203/full/news.2007.317.html). Of course, humans can outperform chimps in many other intellectual tasks - and, of course, plenty of other animals have better memories than we do. Nothing says human intellect is necessarily special. It's no big deal - a slime-mould can navigate a maze more efficiently than most humans; OTOH it can't write a poem.

It's nothing to do with racism. If you were going to accuse him of anything, it would be specism, but that's something else entirely.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/09/2013 22:28:04
Mummy :

I have just discovered a brilliant fact = we are just machines: I am a genius ,and the rest are so lower than chimps intellectually  haha

You are machines indeed , how can i disagree with that fact , silly me .

What ,on earth, am i doing here talking to ...machines indeed ? haha

Why not talk to my tv set or to my dog instead = that might turn out to be more fruitfuil  and more intelligent than talking to you as self-declared and actual machines  ,who knows .

Pathetic
Sad
Tragic
I was wondering when you'd start this again...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/09/2013 22:46:44
This western materialistic secular atheistic civilization has been taking over  this planet and humanity for so long now that it is about time indeed to deliver both this planet and humanity from the tyranny of this so-called civilization ,despite the latter's huge material scientific and technological advances , a so-called civilization that has been turning humans into just consumptive superficial hollow machines zombies indeed , with no consciousness whatsoever ,depriving most  humans of their fundamental primary quality of them all = consciousness ,in the process  .

I have the feeling our planet have been taken over by apes, by  western mechanical  Eurocentric mainstream racist paternalistic imperialist white apes zombies , to be more precize ,ironically enough  = the planet of the mechanical white apes zombies ,mechanical white apes  zombies humanity gotta be liberated from, sooner or later= inevitable = just a matter of time thus  .

...........
Real apes  animals out there in your natural habitat : i am sorry for offending you indeed ,by calling others by your names  : i know you would understand ...

So what's the plan? - or was that just more empty rhetoric?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/09/2013 23:38:35
Alas, the man has gone from curious eloquence to raving logorrhea. Time to move on.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 12/09/2013 15:46:10
I haven't called in a mod. I just think that when a thread starts attempting to commit suicide repeatedly like this one, it may be kindest just to help it on its way. I've given up a significant amount of my time to share some ideas with someone who was asking for such ideas, and while for a time he appeared to be modifying his position in some places, he now appears to have thrown away all his gains and retreated back into his original position. I have no complaint about that whatsoever, but it's clear that further discussion is pointless because of the trolling style of posts which have now become the main event.

For this reason, I'm out.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 17:08:45
This western materialistic secular atheistic civilization has been taking over  this planet and humanity for so long now that it is about time indeed to deliver both this planet and humanity from the tyranny of this so-called civilization ,despite the latter's huge material scientific and technological advances , a so-called civilization that has been turning humans into just consumptive superficial hollow machines zombies indeed , with no consciousness whatsoever ,depriving most  humans of their fundamental primary quality of them all = consciousness ,in the process  .

I have the feeling our planet have been taken over by apes, by  western mechanical  Eurocentric mainstream racist paternalistic imperialist white apes zombies , to be more precize ,ironically enough  = the planet of the mechanical white apes zombies ,mechanical white apes  zombies humanity gotta be liberated from, sooner or later= inevitable = just a matter of time thus  .

...........
Real apes  animals out there in your natural habitat : i am sorry for offending you indeed ,by calling others by your names  : i know you would understand ...

So what's the plan? - or was that just more empty rhetoric?.

Those were no rhetorics , just facts on the reality ground : materialism has also been hijacking science for more than 5 centuries now , while excluding all non-materialistic paradigms or world views in the process .

Besides, it is a fact that white western Eurocentrism has been taking over this planet and humanity for more than 5 centuries now as well :

I couldn't help but make reference to that  planet of the apes  analogy in that regard ,so.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 12/09/2013 17:31:58
... it's clear that further discussion is pointless because of the trolling style of posts which have now become the main event.

For this reason, I'm out.

Yup, that about sums it up.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 18:48:58
I haven't called in a mod. I just think that when a thread starts attempting to commit suicide repeatedly like this one, it may be kindest just to help it on its way. I've given up a significant amount of my time to share some ideas with someone who was asking for such ideas, and while for a time he appeared to be modifying his position in some places, he now appears to have thrown away all his gains and retreated back into his original position. I have no complaint about that whatsoever, but it's clear that further discussion is pointless because of the trolling style of posts which have now become the main event.

For this reason, I'm out.

(I think that telling stories can help : they work perfectly when it comes to my kids at least, no offense  )

You do sound to me like those earlier fanatic intolerant exclusive medieval jesuites on a mission who used to think it was a privilege for "primitive " peoples to receive the "light"  of christianity they should be grateful  for  .

Great philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal said once on the subject , or in words to that same effect at least , the following :(He studied western philosophy both in Oxford and in Berlin by the way ,as he was knighted by the Queen of England back then for his brilliant poetry works  ) :

An English Gentleman told me once he hated the jews , because they thought of themselves as the choosen people of God .A belief which implies and maybe justifies contempt of other peoples .
He did not remember that the phrase " White Man's Burden " contains the same belief in a different garb .


..............

So,stop this silly paternalism of yours , emotional blackmail or pleading i cannot stand , please : pathetic

Do not flatter yourself too much , dude : you do seem to lack the most important form of intelligence or most important form of intellect of them all , mainly thanks to that mechanical spirit of yours (Heart's intelligence as the highest form of intelligence or intellect , heart as no emotions feelings , or biological organ , once again. Heart as intuition or intuitive insights : informed experienced developed extended intuition, not the ordinary intuition that 's not really reliable though  ) as apparent genuises such as Stephen Hawking , Dawkins  ...do by the way .

Thare are also many other forms of intelligence ...Intelligence is also and certainly a relative concept : we might be relatively  intelligent in some areas  and totally or relatively stupid in other ones   ...
.........
There was a story my grandma used to tell me when i was a kid that goes a bit like this, in order to cheer me out when i was afraid of the dark  :

A pretentious arrogant full of himself scholar wanted to cross a certain river to get to the other part of it via a little boat managed by an old man : when the scholar got on board , he could not stop bragging about his knowledge on this and that , then he turned his attention to the silent humble old man and asked him whether he happened to know about this and that .

The old man said : Look, sir , i do not know much , all i know is how to get people where they wanna go through this river , via this boat , in order to be able to make a decent living .

The scholar responded :  well, you ignorance made you lose  half of your life for nothing .

A storm suddenly turned the little boat upside down ,and both passengers found themselves on water .

The old man asked the pretentious scholar whether he knew how to swim : no , said the latter .

Well, you 're about to lose your whole life ....


...

Another pretentious full of himself scholar was informed by the great wisdom of a buddhist monk he went to see what the guy was all about for himself :

That scholar would not stop bragging about his supposed knowledge ...so, that humble silent monk proposed tea : when the monk was pouring tea for the scholar , he did not stop doing that even when the tea cup was full : the scholar said to him : stop, the cup is overfull and the table is covered by tea , can"t you see that ? Are you stupid ? .

The monk responded : when a tea cup is full, it cannot be filled with anythingelse = you scholar are like that : you gotta be emptied first .
.............
The "value " of that silly IQ test is like trying to "capture "  beauty via measuring
the size of the nose , of the cheeks, the hips .....I did extremely well in that stupid IQ test i do not see any value in though .
...........
Well, there were  no suicide attempts being committed by this or on this thread ,that's a rather  hilarious  peculiar weird way of putting things .

I do appreciate your time spent on this thread i could do perfectly without , i must admit , to be honest , but i do not see it as some kindda altruism, "charity" , goodness ...i should be "grateful " for .... .

You lack also that subtle sensitive humanistic patient ...pedagogy you could accomplish "miracles " by , if you only tried to develop it in yourself = I do not see how a machine like yourself can do just that,maybe you can, who knows  .

If you happened to have expected some reward or reciprocity by spending all that time here as a transaction , in the form or shape of changing my mind on the subject of this thread as a reward for being so "generous " as to shed your mechanical "light " on the supposed " darkness or ignorance of my heart and mind " : just know it does not work like that ,and i do not believe in scratch my back and i will scratch yours either , and i certainly cannot stand arrogant pretentious people who might think they have the monopoly of the truth other people should be grateful for receiving as a privilege  ...

You can keep on talking about your mechanical world view all you want : i cannot share it whith you, not in a million years even : i did specify why ,relatively speaking .

But when one crosses the line of respect , decency, courtesy  ...by calling his opponents names , by stating that as a fact even, by insulting people's relative intelligence ,just because they cannot swallow one's world views on the subject  then , there can be no room for constructive or productive discussions, no room for discussions at all   .

P.S.: Even prophets themselves who were sent to people in order to transmit their received messages to them , those prophets were explicitly ordered to be subtle in that by being patient , gentle kind nice , without hurting people's feelings , without calling people names ...

Who then the hell do you think  you are , in comparison ? That's no comparison in fact , not even remotely close = just an anlogy .

Even prophet Moses himself was not wise or patient open-minded enough  to be able to handle the subtle truths of a wiser guy he met :

That wiser guy, so to speak , said to Moses when the latter insisted on accompanying  him , in order to learn from his superior wisdom ,that wiser guy said : you cannot handle the truth :

Moses promissed to do his best in that regard :

After getting on board of a humble boat owned by some poor guys , that wiser guy damaged  some part of it.

Moses was  outraged : how can you reward the goodness of these poor people who accepted to take us on board for free , by harming their boat , this evil way ? ,he shouted to the wiser guy .

The latter answered : there is a ruthless unjust king out there who likes to rob people from their property , so, i damaged the boat , in order to make that king ignora this boat of these poor people as their only source of living . I told you you cannot handle the truth .

Moses promissed again that he would try to be patient and not object a-priori to any potential future mysterious behaviour of the wiser guy ...

In short : they went through 2 other similar incidents Moses could not understand or handle at first sight , the wiser guy explained his perfectly logical behaviour that seemed mysterious and evil to Moses at first sight .

After the third incident , both went their separate ways , as a result .

Final note :

Who's the wiser guy here , i do not pretend to be just that in fact , maybe you are ,who knows ?

Obvious inevitable solution ? : Let's go our separate ways .

Deal ?



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:01:44
... it's clear that further discussion is pointless because of the trolling style of posts which have now become the main event.

For this reason, I'm out.
Quote
Yup, that about sums it up.

No wonder = very predictable= 2 machanical soul mates agreeing with each other ...no wonder ...

I also happen to agree with the both of you indeed , ironically enough, for opposite totally different reasons = all roads do lead to Rome, so it seems at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:04:00
I told you you cannot handle the truth , didn't I ? But , i am no wiser guy though .
Try to figure that out, or not , who cares  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:16:52
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss...people .

So, let's just let some intellectually ( Your reductionistic mechanical approach of human or other intellect can only make you utter such non-sense in that regard ) superior chimp figure that out for us all indeed , from your exclusively mechanical perspective at least , i do not share with you , not even remotely close , no way .

May i have that privilege freedom or right ? i am perfectly entiteld to , ironically enough  haha = It's not up to either of you, guys , or to anyoneelse for that matter to decide just that .

Or , let's just wait for the next level of evolution of man instead : at the level of consciousness indeed ,no chimp can ever dream of ever reaching , not even remotely close, even though chimps seem to share more than 99 % DNA material with us ...........= We are not just DNA or physical brain body  interacting with the environment+ nurture = we are not just mechanical biological processes = we are much much much more than just that in fact , that's way beyond your mechanical reduced imaginations, you have no idea = our minds are way too primordial and fundamental for that = a fact you , hopefully , might be able to figure out for yourselves , some day , or not , who cares ...= you have a lot of catch up to do, a long way to go , a very long journey to take ...to be able to just grasp that fact , and take it from there again ... = a dynamic endless restless journey ...

Good luck indeed, you're gonna certainly need it, even though i do not believe in the existence of such a thing such as ...luck   .
.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/09/2013 19:18:07
What is "science proper" ?  How  does science work without empirical evidence and reproducible results? Even physics, one of the most theoretical areas of the physical sciences, uses empirical observations and measurements to confirm mathematical propositions or conclusions generated by thought experiments. It may, as in the case of Einstein and relativity, take technology decades to catch up with theory, but empirical experiments are eventually done. And when there are contradictions, it causes a lot of head scratching and consternation. But they don't just ignore the data.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/09/2013 19:24:58
Great minds discuss ideas


A lot of big ideas from great minds were proven wrong by empirical evidence and careful observation of seemingly small and insignificant events.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:34:00
Quote
What is "science proper" ?  How  does science work without empirical evidence and reproducible results? Even physics, one of the most theoretical areas of the physical sciences, uses empirical observations and measurements to confirm mathematical propositions or conclusions generated by thought experiments. It may, as in the case of Einstein and relativity, take technology decades to catch up with theory, but empirical experiments are eventually done. And when there are contradictions, it causes a lot of head scratching and consternation. But they don't just ignore the data.

Well, darling :

When you're gonna learn to separate between materialism as just a world view and science , when you will learn to separate science from the materialistic interpretations of science ,when you will learn to separate materialistic  world views and materialistic approaches from  science results and from scientific approaches , then , and only then , you will be able to understand what i was saying all along .

Our physical brain might be just a receiver , in almost the same fashion as the tv set is just a receiver of tv signals, tv signals that stop getting received by that tv set when the tv set or some parts of it at  least cease to function or are damaged ...= no comparison, just an analogy .

Does that mean that the tv set used to create those tv signals or images when it used to function ?


Need more examples or rather analogies?  .Just shoot .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:47:33
Great minds discuss ideas


A lot of big ideas from great minds were proven wrong by
Quote
e
mpirical evidence and careful observation of seemingly small and insignificant events.[/quote
]



Are all your supposed ideas proven empirical ones ? Come on , just get down from your high horse as a human being always should do .

And i was talking  about events in the ordinary trivial sense.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 19:52:41
Mummy :

I have just discovered a brilliant fact = we are just machines: I am a genius ,and the rest are so lower than chimps intellectually  haha

You are machines indeed , how can i disagree with that fact , silly me .

What ,on earth, am i doing here talking to ...machines indeed ? haha

Why not talk to my tv set or to my dog instead = that might turn out to be more fruitfuil  and more intelligent than talking to you as self-declared and actual machines  ,who knows .

Pathetic
Sad
Tragic
I was wondering when you'd start this again...

I might also use other similar or not stuff as well .

Repeating things might make them get through to you .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/09/2013 20:15:59
Your wicked denigrating statement that some chimps are intellectually more superior to some humans ...is worst than racism by the way :

In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .
This is just nonsense - if superior or inferior value judgements have no meaning, how can they be wicked, denigrating, and worse than racism?

Nevertheless, even in healthy individuals at their peak, the average chimp is intellectually superior (i.e. can outperform) the the average human in memory tests (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071203/full/news.2007.317.html). Of course, humans can outperform chimps in many other intellectual tasks - and, of course, plenty of other animals have better memories than we do. Nothing says human intellect is necessarily special. It's no big deal - a slime-mould can navigate a maze more efficiently than most humans; OTOH it can't write a poem.

Only people through mechanical reductionistic world views can say that human intellect is no big deal : come on .

Human intellect makes part of the human mind, the latter as an immaterial process which happens to interact somehow, i dunno how , with the physical brain , the latter as some sort of just a  kindda  receiver .

There are many other animals , insects ...that can hear  what we cannot hear , that can see better than we can ever do  ....Does that mean they are superior to us  ?

We do also surpass them in many other areas they cannot ever approach, not even remotely close .

Birds , for example ,do fly , we do not , not via natural wings at least haha we do not have : does that mean they are syperior to us ?

There was once an experiment conducted with  chimps in France , i guess , who or which or whatever made some paintings that were later on considered by critics as top art , without a-priori knowing of course that they were made by chimps ....Does that mean that  chimps are superior to us  ?

What kindda silly reasoning is this then ?

As some famous scientist i do not recall the name of right now , who happened to write an intrduction to Dawkins ' "Selfish Gene " said i will sum up by this :

All living organisms were / are shaped by the same natural selection of evolution through their genes ...,including man thus = there is no reason to say that any species for that matter is superior or inferior to any other one for that matter , in the materialistic sense at least= i think humans are obviously and essentially way too superior to any other known living species or  known  living organisms on earth at least , despite the fact that many other  living organisms do surpass us in this area or that  .

Our unique unparalleled mind is what makes us human and therefore distinguishes us from other living organisms .

The whole is not the sum of its parts , dude .





Quote
It's nothing to do with racism. If you were going to accuse him of anything, it would be specism, but that's something else entirely.

I said that was worst or worse   than racism : i did not say it was racist or racism .

If i would accuse him of anything , i would rather accuse him of being a total jerk or ***** haha , in that regard at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/09/2013 20:41:41
Quote
What is "science proper" ?  How  does science work without empirical evidence and reproducible results? Even physics, one of the most theoretical areas of the physical sciences, uses empirical observations and measurements to confirm mathematical propositions or conclusions generated by thought experiments. It may, as in the case of Einstein and relativity, take technology decades to catch up with theory, but empirical experiments are eventually done. And when there are contradictions, it causes a lot of head scratching and consternation. But they don't just ignore the data.

Well, darling :

When you're gonna learn to separate between materialism as just a world view and science , when you will learn to separate science from the materialistic interpretations of science ,when you will learn to separate materialistic  world views and materialistic approaches from  science results and from scientific approaches , then , and only then , you will be able to understand what i was saying all along .

Our physical brain might be just a receiver , in almost the same fashion as the tv set is just a receiver of tv signals, tv signals that stop getting received by that tv set when the tv set or some parts of it at  least cease to function or are damaged ...= no comparison, just an analogy .

Does that mean that the tv set used to create those tv signals or images when it used to function ?


Need more examples or rather analogies?  .Just shoot .




I would be delighted to learn how to separate science from materialism, just explain how science works with out empirical evidence and reproducible results. Think of the money universities could save without all those fancy laboratories and particle accelerators!

I have heard of the radio/receiver analogy for consciousness, and it is an interesting idea. But it remains just an idea until you can tell me something scientifically verifiable about that mysterious transmitter.

In medicine there is something called a "zebra diagnosis." When you hear the sound of hooves, you expect to see a horse. Occasionally though, it turns out to be a zebra. The same set of observations, even though accurate, can lead you to a false conclusion, because you may be missing (or didn't think to look for) some small piece of critical information that makes a difference. Scientists have wandered down dead end paths for that reason. These kind of errors do not invalidate the entire scientific process and empiricism itself. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 12/09/2013 21:08:45
Quote
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss...people .

and morons rehash drivel whilst throwing insults at those trying to hold an intelligent discussion.

Though I'm not even sure about the precepts here. Anyone can come up with an idea, but it takes a great mind to suggest a critical experiment (i.e. a series of events) that might support or disprove the idea. And it takes a bold mind to question a popular authority. Which is why I value science way above philosophy, and have no time for the discussion of undefined abstractions. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 12/09/2013 23:30:31
...there is no reason to say that any species for that matter is superior or inferior to any other one for that matter , in the materialistic sense at least= i think humans are obviously and essentially way too superior to any other known living species or  known  living organisms on earth at least , despite the fact that many other  living organisms do surpass us in this area or that  .

I thought this was worth re-quoting just for surreality :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 12/09/2013 23:59:27
Some people have a pretty high opinion of homo sapiens. But every other species sees us only as food or the enemy. Now with several million other species out there, the majority opinion among God's creation is clearly against us. And when I encounter a pompous fool, I'm tempted to side with the majority.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 16:37:05
Quote
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss...people .

and morons rehash drivel whilst throwing insults at those trying to hold an intelligent discussion.

Though I'm not even sure about the precepts here. Anyone can come up with an idea, but it takes a great mind to suggest a critical experiment (i.e. a series of events) that might support or disprove the idea. And it takes a bold mind to question a popular authority. Which is why I value science way above philosophy, and have no time for the discussion of undefined abstractions.


Finished preaching ?

It takes only xerox machines sort of people to repeat or copy  what others might say ,while distorting the actual reality at hand ;but the real xerox machines do make good copies though : see the sifference ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 16:46:08
Some people have a pretty high opinion of homo sapiens. But every other species sees us only as food or the enemy. Now with several million other species out there, the majority opinion among God's creation is clearly against us. And when I encounter a pompous fool, I'm tempted to side with the majority.

I think you really should consider a career , as a wanna -be bombastic materialistic preacher : you might attract some followers ...who knows ?

Beware of temptations : they might be  deceptive , elusive , delusive ..:

The truth is not a matter of the opinion of the majority , is not a matter of some sort of democracy: it takes only 1 single mind to turn even science itself upside down , no matter what  the  overwhelming  majority  in science might  say on the matter .




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 16:48:47
...there is no reason to say that any species for that matter is superior or inferior to any other one for that matter , in the materialistic sense at least= i think humans are obviously and essentially way too superior to any other known living species or  known  living organisms on earth at least , despite the fact that many other  living organisms do surpass us in this area or that  .

I thought this was worth re-quoting just for surreality:)

What's so surreal about it then ?

Why did you ignore my other quotes ? because you could not answer them maybe ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 13/09/2013 17:41:41
Here's another banana for the troll.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 18:25:36
Quote
What is "science proper" ?  How  does science work without empirical evidence and reproducible results? Even physics, one of the most theoretical areas of the physical sciences, uses empirical observations and measurements to confirm mathematical propositions or conclusions generated by thought experiments. It may, as in the case of Einstein and relativity, take technology decades to catch up with theory, but empirical experiments are eventually done. And when there are contradictions, it causes a lot of head scratching and consternation. But they don't just ignore the data.

Well, darling :

When you're gonna learn to separate between materialism as just a world view and science , when you will learn to separate science from the materialistic interpretations of science ,when you will learn to separate materialistic  world views and materialistic approaches from  science results and from scientific approaches , then , and only then , you will be able to understand what i was saying all along .

Our physical brain might be just a receiver , in almost the same fashion as the tv set is just a receiver of tv signals, tv signals that stop getting received by that tv set when the tv set or some parts of it at  least cease to function or are damaged ...= no comparison, just an analogy .

Does that mean that the tv set used to create those tv signals or images when it used to function ?


Need more examples or rather analogies?  .Just shoot .




I would be delighted to learn how to separate science from materialism, just explain how science works with out empirical evidence and reproducible results. Think of the money universities could save without all those fancy laboratories and particle accelerators!


You're distorting my views : Who said that science can be or rather exist , let alone function without observation, experience, empirical evidence , without verifiable falsifiable reproducible results ? = that's the very definition of science by the way : what has that to do with materialism as a world view then ?

How can you confuse that with materialism as a world view ? : how can you confuse materialism with science ? - you are confirming my earlier and core point on the subject .Thanks for that .

Quote
I have heard of the radio/receiver analogy for consciousness, and it is an interesting idea. But it remains just an idea until you can tell me something scientifically verifiable about that mysterious transmitter.

Nobody can , for the time being at least , if ever : i am no exception to that rule .

That "transmitter " happens to be immaterial though ,that's why i said that that radio or tv set example was just that : an analogy, no comparison  : a logical analogy  , not a scientific one .

Quote
In medicine there is something called a "zebra diagnosis." When you hear the sound of hooves, you expect to see a horse. Occasionally though, it turns out to be a zebra. The same set of observations, even though accurate, can lead you to a false conclusion, because you may be missing (or didn't think to look for) some small piece of critical information that makes a difference. Scientists have wandered down dead end paths for that reason. These kind of errors do not invalidate the entire scientific process and empiricism itself.

Ok, there  is also what we can call learned cultural or other habits of thought and behaviour out there as well that are shaped by their corresponding cultural and other world views via nurture environment , as the case here is in this thread .

(There are also biological social cultural psychological and other factors that do shape our thought and thus our behaviour )
............
Organic chemist Linda Jean Shepherd in her unique book : " Lifting the veil : the feminine face of science " : neo-feminist philosophy of science , ethics ....combined  with the so-called depth Jung's psychology she said she studied for more than 15 years , combined with  the theory of chaos , with physics of chemistry ....

She told the tales of many brilliant mathematicians and scientists who dared to say that intuition, feeling and even love made them discover some breakthroughs in their respective fields .

A great mathematician , for example , even said to her : many great ideas of mine were the products of intuition, feeling ...and that he developed the habit to tell his students : what do you feel   about this ? when he displays certain mathematical equations on the board for them .

Linda Jean left science as a result of what she described in that interesting book of hers concerning her own experiences with science and scientists , what she went through ... ,because of that exclusive rational empirical reductionist approach in science she tried to improve by a more  holistic approach  , because of that ossified dogmatic exclusive bureaucratic hieriarchial , insensitive blind reductionist specialised materialism in science : she said , or in words to that same effect at least,for example  :

We were all raised a certain way , in order to think and behave a certain way , in order to approach a certain level of reality , missing the whole spectrum of other potential levels of reality in the process .

One example among many to illustrate the above she described as follows :

The Indians , from India , to be more precize , used to tame their elephants this way :

They used to tie their new born elephants babies to a soft leaf via a soft rope .

When they grown up to become adult elephants , they would destroy their metal chains tying them to solid big trees , together with the latter sometimes, but , and here where or when the amazing thing happened :

When those same grown -up adult elephants  would be tied to a soft leaf via a soft rope , they do not even try to make the slightest effort to break free from those soft "chains " they could do so easily .

Learned helplessness is also another example of the conditioned behaviour and thought at the level of  humans , and other species ...

Theer are many examples and scientific facts like that ,so  i will leave it at this then .


She said also, for example , that she tried to observe , look at , experience , grasp ..what she sees, experiences ... differently ...


...........

Say,  you decide to travel to a foreign country , you buy a travel guide that tells you where to go in the country of your choice , what to look for , what  to expect to find , to see , what food to eat , what clothes to wear depending on the weather there , what kindda culture and people you would meet and encounter ....

But , say , you decide to overlook some aspects of those info contained in that travel guide , by unlearning some of them , you might stumble across new experiences ,facts , events ...that might startle you , and that travel guide might not turn out to be really accurate .

You would experience things yourself , not what that guide tells you what to experience or find , expect ...

.........

There was an ancient tale of a famous Arab fool that goes a bit as follows :
He was so drunk once that he lost his  home  keys in the street while trying to go back home in that drunk state of his :
A friend of his happened to see him on his knees on the ground searching for something : that friend said : what 's going on ? What are you looking for ? Can i help ? Yes , i lost my keys , the fool responded :
After hours of exhausting search on their knees covering many blocks in the process , that exhausted friend said to the fool : Are you sure  you lost your keys here ,in this area ?

The fool answered : no ,i am not .

"Why didn't you say that ,in the first place to begin with ? , Why did you  let me search all this time on my knees  for nothing ? " said the angry friend .

 "Well i thought i should  better search for them here , because there is street light  only in this area:, responded the fool  .


We might be all behaving like that Arab fool indeed ...who knows .


...

A chinese old tale goes a bit as follows i did extract from "Geography of Thought : or how westerners and Asians think and why ?" by Richard E.Nisbett  , unique book by the way , even though i do not agree much with its core secular liberal so-called evolutionary "geographic " approach :

An old poor chinese farmer lost his only horse once that he used to rely on for farming his poor tiny piece of land .
His tiny village neighbours visited him to express their empathy for his loss .
He said : we do not know whether the loss of my only horse is a good or bad thing .

A week later , the old man's lost horse came back accompanied by another horse as well : a female horse then .

The neighbours were overjoyed : the old farmer said ,once again the same thing .

After a while , the young son of the old farmer injured his knees after falling from the back of his father's returning horse .
The neighbours visited the old man again to express their sorrow for his son's injury  .

The old farmer said the same thing again .

A month or so later , the emperor's army came to towm or to that village , in order to recruit all healthy men and boys by force , by direct order of the emperor himself .

Only the old farmer's son , old men  ,and little kids , together with women girls of course ...were allowed to stay in the village .

The old farmer said the same thing again to the villagers  who rushed to him to express their joy for the fact that his injured son  was not taken by the army ...

This story goes on and on indefinitely ...like that ...

..........

Here is an analogy regarding what you said also :

Logic or reason are also as less infaillible as common sense is by the way , as David Hume used to say .

.......

Take also , for example , this analogy :

As a western lady , i assume , say , you go to the US  where many foreigners taxi-drivers are out there , or  to any foreign country for that matter :

You talk to the first taxi-driver in English after landing in the airport , he/she turns out to be no English speaker , you go to the next one , the same happens, to the third one and so on , the same happens , there is no reason to assume that the next one after all that would also turn out to be no English speaker .

Take care




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 13/09/2013 18:27:29
If consciousness is immaterial, that is not made of any form of matter and energy, and cannot be studied by any empirical or physical process, how does one know what it is, or isn't, what it can and cannot do, it's effects on other things, or anything about it?  It would seem that one is stuck with the options of 1) a priori reasoning, 2) some intuitive process and/or lucky guess, or 3) divine revelation, all of which are problematic. As powerful as logic and reasoning can be, your subsequent understanding of consciousness will rest on whether or not it is as you originally define it to be, that it has the characteristics you say it does. Lucky guesses and divine revelation will ultimately result in logical fallacies like "appeal to authority," eg something is true because the Bible says so, or the Koran says so, or Jojo's psychic hotline says so.

I guess the forth option is just to say it is unknowable, but that seems rather like just giving up.

If I am overlooking some path to knowledge about something which is immaterial, please fill me in.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 13/09/2013 18:38:23
Quote from: DonQuichotte

You're distorting my views : Who said that science can be or rather exist , let alone function without observation, experience, empirical evidence , without verifiable falsifiable reproducible results ? = that's the very definition of science by the way : what has that to do with materialism as a world view then ?


Because experiments, observations, measurements, and empirical evidence are all material processes involving material things!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 18:39:59
Here's another banana for the troll.

Welcome back , Mr . machine jesuit : I am delighted to have you back  .

I thought you said you were gone haha

What happened ? Was i able to trigger some mechanical mechanism in you , somehow ?

I know what particular "buttons " to push in you, don't worry .

If you happen to be looking for just that , all you have to do is just : shoot indeed.

You are welcome .

I would love to conduct some harmless innocent ethical experiments here , to be honest , i must admit .

I love bananas , i have enough of them by the way , thanks .

Can you sink even lower ?I wonder ,  I think you have already reached the bottom : you do not need any further push from anyone for that matter ,  i was not even responsible for , i was not even causing ...

Congratulations .

You are really turning into a real troll now , i see : do not preach what you do not do , Mr.mechanical hypocrit preacher .

Interesting sudden development worth studying carefully indeed .

I feel i am gonna have some real fun here : awesome .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 18:45:43
Quote from: DonQuichotte

You're distorting my views : Who said that science can be or rather exist , let alone function without observation, experience, empirical evidence , without verifiable falsifiable reproducible results ? = that's the very definition of science by the way : what has that to do with materialism as a world view then ?


Because experiments, observations, measurements, and empirical evidence are all material processes involving material things!

Do not confuse material things, the material nature of science , or the material side of reality with ...materialism as a world view , philosophy , life style, paradigm....= 2 entirely different categories  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 19:04:04
If consciousness is immaterial, that is not made of any form of matter and energy, and cannot be studied by any empirical or physical process, how does one know what it is, or isn't, what it can and cannot do, it's effects on other things, or anything about it?  It would seem that one is stuck with the options of 1) a priori reasoning, 2) some intuitive process and/or lucky guess, or 3) divine revelation, all of which are problematic. As powerful as logic and reasoning can be, your subsequent understanding of consciousness will rest on whether or not it is as you originally define it to be, that it has the characteristics you say it does. Lucky guesses and divine revelation will ultimately result in logical fallacies like "appeal to authority," eg something is true because the Bible says so, or the Koran says so, or Jojo's psychic hotline says so.

I guess the forth option is just to say it is unknowable, but that seems rather like just giving up.

If I am overlooking some path to knowledge about something which is immaterial, please fill me in.

There is also another option regarding the approach of consciousness, mainly because no single approach of consciousness can ever be able to claim itself to be totally scientific , not even remotely close thus , including the magical materialistic approach of consciousness thus :

Either we wait for some radical shift of paradigm in science ,or rather for a radical shift of meta-paradigm in  science,meta-paradigm  that's underlying all those paradigms or sub-paradigms in science , a radical shift of meta-paradigm that would disprove the actually mainstream materialistic dominating meta-paradigm in science =the materialistic meta-paradigm in science = that the universe is exclusively material .

Or combined with the fact that we  can try to approach consciousness via trying to extend our levels of consciousness via personal experiences shaped by certain world views, by the personal experiences of others on the subject , by ancient wisdoms on the subject , by trying to be up to date regarding what science can  relatively  say about consciousness via studying its alleged receiver some more : the brain : we still do not know much about the extreme complexity of the latter though ....
= a multi-approach then that might result in some sort of holistic synthesis someday = science alone cannot really approach consciousness ...we should combine science with a holistic approach ....of consciousness ...

Art, literature , philosophy , .....can also have some say on the subject as well thus ...

I dunno .

That's just my take on that .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 19:07:32
Later , alligators ...kidding
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 13/09/2013 20:18:55
If consciousness is immaterial, that is not made of any form of matter and energy, and cannot be studied by any empirical or physical process, how does one know what it is, or isn't, what it can and cannot do, it's effects on other things, or anything about it?  It would seem that one is stuck with the options of 1) a priori reasoning, 2) some intuitive process and/or lucky guess, or 3) divine revelation, all of which are problematic. As powerful as logic and reasoning can be, your subsequent understanding of consciousness will rest on whether or not it is as you originally define it to be, that it has the characteristics you say it does. Lucky guesses and divine revelation will ultimately result in logical fallacies like "appeal to authority," eg something is true because the Bible says so, or the Koran says so, or Jojo's psychic hotline says so.

I guess the forth option is just to say it is unknowable, but that seems rather like just giving up.

If I am overlooking some path to knowledge about something which is immaterial, please fill me in.

There is also another option regarding the approach of consciousness, mainly because no single approach of consciousness can ever be able to claim itself to be totally scientific , not even remotely close thus , including the magical materialistic approach of consciousness thus :

Either we wait for some radical shift of paradigm in science ,or rather for a radical shift of meta-paradigm in  science,meta-paradigm  that's underlying all those paradigms or sub-paradigms in science , a radical shift of meta-paradigm that would disprove the actually mainstream materialistic dominating meta-paradigm in science =the materialistic meta-paradigm in science = that the universe is exclusively material .

Or combined with the fact that we  can try to approach consciousness via trying to extend our levels of consciousness via personal experiences shaped by certain world views, by the personal experiences of others on the subject , by ancient wisdoms on the subject , by trying to be up to date regarding what science can  relatively  say about consciousness via studying its alleged receiver some more : the brain : we still do not know much about the extreme complexity of the latter though ....
= a multi-approach then that might result in some sort of holistic synthesis someday = science alone cannot really approach consciousness ...we should combine science with a holistic approach ....of consciousness ...

Art, literature , philosophy , .....can also have some say on the subject as well thus ...

I dunno .

That's just my take on that .


I don't see where you have really provided another option than the ones I listed above.

ancient wisdom - appeal to authority, divine revelation
philosophy -  a prior reasoning, appeal to authority
personal experience - intuitive process, lucky guess, or divine revelation
other people's personal experience - appeal to authority
Expanding consciousness to understand consciousness - intuitive, or a priori reasoning
art, literature - intuitive process, more appeals to authority.
Paradigm shift - to what? Belief in the immaterial? Which can be known or understood by what means? See above.

Combining all of the above in some "holisitic" way does not solve your problem.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/09/2013 20:39:48
If consciousness is immaterial, that is not made of any form of matter and energy, and cannot be studied by any empirical or physical process, how does one know what it is, or isn't, what it can and cannot do, it's effects on other things, or anything about it?  It would seem that one is stuck with the options of 1) a priori reasoning, 2) some intuitive process and/or lucky guess, or 3) divine revelation, all of which are problematic. As powerful as logic and reasoning can be, your subsequent understanding of consciousness will rest on whether or not it is as you originally define it to be, that it has the characteristics you say it does. Lucky guesses and divine revelation will ultimately result in logical fallacies like "appeal to authority," eg something is true because the Bible says so, or the Koran says so, or Jojo's psychic hotline says so.

I guess the forth option is just to say it is unknowable, but that seems rather like just giving up.

If I am overlooking some path to knowledge about something which is immaterial, please fill me in.

There is also another option regarding the approach of consciousness, mainly because no single approach of consciousness can ever be able to claim itself to be totally scientific , not even remotely close thus , including the magical materialistic approach of consciousness thus :

Either we wait for some radical shift of paradigm in science ,or rather for a radical shift of meta-paradigm in  science,meta-paradigm  that's underlying all those paradigms or sub-paradigms in science , a radical shift of meta-paradigm that would disprove the actually mainstream materialistic dominating meta-paradigm in science =the materialistic meta-paradigm in science = that the universe is exclusively material .

Or combined with the fact that we  can try to approach consciousness via trying to extend our levels of consciousness via personal experiences shaped by certain world views, by the personal experiences of others on the subject , by ancient wisdoms on the subject , by trying to be up to date regarding what science can  relatively  say about consciousness via studying its alleged receiver some more : the brain : we still do not know much about the extreme complexity of the latter though ....
= a multi-approach then that might result in some sort of holistic synthesis someday = science alone cannot really approach consciousness ...we should combine science with a holistic approach ....of consciousness ...

Art, literature , philosophy , .....can also have some say on the subject as well thus ...

I dunno .

That's just my take on that .


I don't see where you have really provided another option than the ones I listed above.

ancient wisdom - appeal to authority, divine revelation
philosophy -  a prior reasoning, appeal to authority
personal experience - intuitive process, lucky guess, or divine revelation
other people's personal experience - appeal to authority
Expanding consciousness to understand consciousness - intuitive, or a priori reasoning
art, literature - intuitive process, more appeals to authority.
Paradigm shift - to what? Belief in the immaterial? Which can be known or understood by what means? See above.

Combining all of the above in some "holisitic" way does not solve your problem.

I have little time left at my disposal, so , i am gonna just say the following  very quickly  ,for the time being at least :

Once again, science alone cannot help in that regard ,can just partly help by sheding light on the alleged receiver of consciousness : the brain , mainly due to the fact that consciousness is immaterial , science must be combined with what i mentioned .

Philosophy is no appeal to authority , philosophy can be enriched and developed by science results as well , not to mention the philosophy of science ...

Personal experiences do contain some cognitive elements as well ,not just subjective ones,  and can be developed by life experiences, scientific knowledge  ...by experienced spirituality, experienced art ...

Ancient wisdom also contains some cognitive elements ,  some cognitive elements of other people's personal experiences as well ....

For example, you can try to get in touch , so to speak, with your self , consciousness, inner life via meditation, via mindfulness, ....via other means as well .

Literature , art , music , philosophy, world views, ancient wisdoms , personal experiences, life experiences, psychology  ...combined with sciences can deliver some holistic approach of consciousness ...

It's not my problem that science is guided by a false meta-paradigm ...I am not responsible for just that haha

Just take a look at the following then :

 http://keentalks.com/primacy-consciousness/

P.S.: I am not really responsible for the potential errors that might or might not be contained in this post of mine , blame that eventually on  the speed of "light " through which i wrote this post .

Good night
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 13/09/2013 23:18:56
What's so surreal about it then ?
You're just not trying...

Quote
Why did you ignore my other quotes ? because you could not answer them maybe ?
Most of your questions have been asked and answered repeatedly; did you have some particular question in mind that hasn't yet been asked or answered?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 13/09/2013 23:22:19
I dunno .

That's just my take on that .
Can't argue with that; you could have just omitted all the preceding blah.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 13/09/2013 23:26:18
P.S.: I am not really responsible for the potential errors that might or might not be contained in this post of mine , blame that eventually on  the speed of "light " through which i wrote this post .
Your choice, your post, your responsibility.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 14/09/2013 13:26:05
Why  I like science:

Materialists may be like the guy searching for his keys under the lamp post because the light is better there, but at least he will know whether or not they are there. He can rule out that part of the lawn. The materialist hopes to build a better light to extend the search to more distant areas. At any rate, it seems preferable to groping around the dark, hoping to get lucky.

Rhythmic Brain Waves: Fluctuations in Electrical Activity May Allow Brain to Form Thoughts and Memories
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121121130815.htm

The above link discusses research about one small aspect of brain activity linking cells to thoughts: "A new study from researchers at MIT and Boston University (BU) sheds light on how neural ensembles form thoughts and support the flexibility to change one's mind. The research team, led by Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, identified groups of neurons that encode specific behavioral rules by oscillating in synchrony with each other."

To the philosopher looking for big answers to big questions, it would not seem terribly impressive, but it is to me. Perhaps I have a small mind, but I  would rather know one small detail about the world with some degree of certainty than have a vague, fuzzy concept about life, the universe, and everything. I would rather understand the workings of a cricket.

Although there have been revolutionary shifts in thinking in  science, I think the bulk of scientific knowledge advances in these small increments, chipping away slowly at the nature of reality, one chemical reaction or oscillating neuron or particle experiment at time.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/09/2013 13:42:50
Why  I like science:
<wise words>

Well put.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 14/09/2013 13:43:34
More bananas for the troll.

[These banana comments aren't aimed at the troll.]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/09/2013 18:23:07
Why  I like science:

Materialists may be like the guy searching for his keys under the lamp post because the light is better there, but at least he will know whether or not they are there. He can rule out that part of the lawn. The materialist hopes to build a better light to extend the search to more distant areas. At any rate, it seems preferable to groping around the dark, hoping to get lucky.

Rhythmic Brain Waves: Fluctuations in Electrical Activity May Allow Brain to Form Thoughts and Memories
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121121130815.htm

The above link discusses research about one small aspect of brain activity linking cells to thoughts: "A new study from researchers at MIT and Boston University (BU) sheds light on how neural ensembles form thoughts and support the flexibility to change one's mind. The research team, led by Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, identified groups of neurons that encode specific behavioral rules by oscillating in synchrony with each other."

To the philosopher looking for big answers to big questions, it would not seem terribly impressive, but it is to me. Perhaps I have a small mind, but I  would rather know one small detail about the world with some degree of certainty than have a vague, fuzzy concept about life, the universe, and everything. I would rather understand the workings of a cricket.

Although there have been revolutionary shifts in thinking in  science, I think the bulk of scientific knowledge advances in these small increments, chipping away slowly at the nature of reality, one chemical reaction or oscillating neuron or particle experiment at time.

Is this some sort of desperate pleading and stubborn denial ?
Anyway :
You forgot to mention that materialism itself is just a world view, a philosophy , a life style, a paradigm ...you do continue to confuse with science proper , with the apparent material side of reality , with the material nature of science , with scientific approaches, with scientific results and facts ...

Not to mention that materialistic interpretations of science or of science results facts has nothing to do with the latter also .

It is also a fact that we all change reality , scientific experiments ,scientific results , ...whenever we look at them  , in the sense that we get a modified version of them via our human interpretations and perceptions of them  , or we just get a representation of reality, not reality proper  .

Second : that certain neurons can generate thoughts is just a materialistic magical assumption interpretation that can be compared to that magical materialistic "emergence " trick regarding consciousness : I provided you earlier with some analogies or metaphors regarding just that , in the sense that a tv set ,for example , cannot create tv signals or images , otherwise , all the images we see on tv ,regarding people , landscapes ...."might be living inside the tv haha " : i was once once on tv myself : my family recorded that , and while we were watching it afterwards at home , my little kids told me : dad, were you living inside the tv? : how come you are here and not there where you live inside the tv haha : Get the pic or rather metaphor ?

Sweet dreams , darling ,or rather dear Alice in your own materialistic mechanical magical wonderland :

I will sum up the true reality and nature of materialism as follows :

The materialist is the guy who looks at the world universe through a key hole tunnel vision ,thanks to his / her materialism as just an exclusive narrow-minded reductionist mechanical world view .and therefore pretends that all he / she can see through that key hole is all what there is out there ,while trying to make science fit into that materialistic key hole , via some magical performance, in order to be able to "validate " itself in the process ,via magic thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/09/2013 18:51:26
@ dlorde :

If you have something intelligent to say , be my guest , go ahead , knock yourself out ,make my day and just say it .
I do not have time for silly games , or silly remarks ,rhetorics ...

Davide Cooper : Get a life , grow up ,stop trolling , or just continue doing just that , if that would make you happy and give you some sense of purpose or meaning ...: It's gonna be extrenmely difficult for you to climb that whole mountain all the way from its  very bottom  you have already reached : if you need any help in that regard , just say so , deal ?
Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/09/2013 18:57:09
Why  I like science:
<wise words>

Well put.

Sweet dreams in your magical materialistic wonderland, Alice II


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/09/2013 21:04:09
Quote from: dlorde
... did you have some particular question in mind that hasn't yet been asked or answered?
@ dlorde :If you have something intelligent to say , be my guest , go ahead , knock yourself out ,make my day and just say it .
I do not have time for silly games , or silly remarks ,rhetorics ...
OK. I'll take that as a 'no'.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 15/09/2013 00:23:23
To the philosopher looking for big answers to big questions, it would not seem terribly impressive, but it is to me.

Come off it, girl! Have you ever met a philosopher who was looking for an answer, or was prepared to accept one? AFAIK the job of philosophers is to try to convince you that you don't understand the question, or if it is plain that you do (because you asked the question), that you couldn't possibly understand the answer.

"How does a cricket work?" is a big question because if we knew, we could explain pretty much everything from the origin of life to its probable destiny. "Why does the universe exist?" looks like a big question to a philosopher, but it is illogical nonsense based on human vanity, and therefore inconsequential.

The reason I like science is because what we do is VERY IMPORTANT and VERY INTERESTING. And I'm pretty sure you feel the same.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 15/09/2013 02:36:36



Is this some sort of desperate pleading and stubborn denial ?
Anyway :
You forgot to mention that materialism itself is just a world view, a philosophy , a life style, a paradigm ...you do continue to confuse with science proper , with the apparent material side of reality , with the material nature of science , with scientific approaches, with scientific results and facts ..


You keep accusing me and other posters of confusing materialism as a tool of science with materialism as “a world view or life style”, but I can’t help but conclude that it is actually you who is doing this. I am in fact specifically and only referring to a belief that the world consists of matter and energy, and the use of physical processes involving matter and energy in order to learn more  about the world. You are the only person here ranting about Soulless White Eurocentric Apes holding Science Proper captive. Materialsim as a “lifestyle” I assume refers to valuing material goods and money above knowledge, ideas, helping people, experiences, etc, and I do not know how I or anyone else has displayed or advocated that. I really think it is you who is confusing the two terms which are only superficially related in the English language anyway. Incidentally, “material” in English also refers to fabric, and although I am a materialist, I am not a seamstress, in case you might be confused on this point.

PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 15/09/2013 03:11:11
Quote from: DonQuichotte

Second : that certain neurons can generate thoughts is just a materialistic magical assumption [b
interpretation [/b]that can be compared to that magical materialistic "emergence " trick regarding consciousness : I provided you earlier with some analogies or metaphors regarding just that , in the sense that a tv set ,for example , cannot create tv signals or images , otherwise , all the images we see on tv ,regarding people , landscapes ...."might be living inside the tv haha " : i was once once on tv myself : my family recorded that , and while we were watching it afterwards at home , my little kids told me : dad, were you living inside the tv? : how come you are here and not there where you live inside the tv haha : Get the pic or rather metaphor ?

Sweet dreams , darling ,or rather dear Alice in your own materialistic mechanical magical wonderland :

I will sum up the true reality and nature of materialism as follows :

The materialist is the guy who looks at the world universe through a key hole tunnel vision ,thanks to his / her materialism as just an exclusive narrow-minded reductionist mechanical world view .and therefore pretends that all he / she can see through that key hole is all what there is out there ,while trying to make science fit into that materialistic key hole , via some magical performance, in order to be able to "validate " itself in the process ,via magic thus .



I have friends who believe in the supernatural, paranormal, and of course, religion. I do not ridicule their beliefs or try to convert them to my way of thinking, and we have some interesting and pleasant discussions.

I do sometimes feel, though, that people who look for supernatural and "immaterial" explanations are like spoiled children at Christmas who see an entire room strewn with presents and packages and say "Is that all there is?" before opening a single one and looking inside.

Excuse me for psycho-analyzing you, but you seem to attribute a positive value, or "sacredness" to the immaterial and see everything material, from simple atoms to the flesh on the the bone, as profane. But I see something sacred or magical in the nuts and bolts of reality and every chemical reaction. The physical world needs no supernatural embellishment - it's awe inspiring enough to me on it's own. 

I sometimes wonder if someone could prove the existence  of angels, whether after I got over my initial surprise, they would be any more interesting than beavers or octopi. Certainly no imaginary description of angels has held my interest as much.

DonQuixote: when you ridicule me for not believing in something more beyond what I can see, I pity you for not seeing all that is there, right in your grasp.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/09/2013 10:28:47
PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.
He used to call me 'dear', but he's obviously switched his affections - good luck with that!

@ dlorde :... When you will acknowledge ,recognize and realise the obvious  limits of science , reason, logic ....when you will stop confusing materialism as an exclusive world view with science ....

Otherwise , just keep on cherishing your own materialistic illusions ,delusions and fairytales in your own materialistic wonderland , dear Alice .
As you can see, his patronising is as Cut'n'Paste as his 'arguments', and all the really cool stuff is conveniently beyond science, reason, & logic.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 15/09/2013 10:39:12
PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.

and very modest about it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 15/09/2013 14:44:13
Of course, comments about feeding trolls are really just to make trolls think they're winning whenever they're fed. The opposite is true.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 16:57:09
PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.

and very modest about it.

So what ? I might be hotter than you could ever be as well haha,whatever that might mean .

We were born that way : there is no reason to pretend to be modest about something you have no merit in , or something you had no say in , something you had no input in whatsoever............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 17:13:22
PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.
He used to call me 'dear', but he's obviously switched his affections - good luck with that!

@ dlorde :... When you will acknowledge ,recognize and realise the obvious  limits of science , reason, logic ....when you will stop confusing materialism as an exclusive world view with science ....

Otherwise , just keep on cherishing your own materialistic illusions ,delusions and fairytales in your own materialistic wonderland , dear Alice .
As you can see, his patronising is as Cut'n'Paste as his 'arguments', and all the really cool stuff is conveniently beyond science, reason, & logic.

I do use  the words darling , dear ....just as a form of courtesy , politeness ..that's all .

As for the rest of your "input " , instead of discussing people, try to discuss what they have to say , deal ? Otherwise , just have the decency to shut up .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 18:39:42
Quote from: DonQuichotte

Second : that certain neurons can generate thoughts is just a materialistic magical assumption [b
interpretation [/b]that can be compared to that magical materialistic "emergence " trick regarding consciousness : I provided you earlier with some analogies or metaphors regarding just that , in the sense that a tv set ,for example , cannot create tv signals or images , otherwise , all the images we see on tv ,regarding people , landscapes ...."might be living inside the tv haha " : i was once once on tv myself : my family recorded that , and while we were watching it afterwards at home , my little kids told me : dad, were you living inside the tv? : how come you are here and not there where you live inside the tv haha : Get the pic or rather metaphor ?

Sweet dreams , darling ,or rather dear Alice in your own materialistic mechanical magical wonderland :

I will sum up the true reality and nature of materialism as follows :

The materialist is the guy who looks at the world universe through a key hole tunnel vision ,thanks to his / her materialism as just an exclusive narrow-minded reductionist mechanical world view .and therefore pretends that all he / she can see through that key hole is all what there is out there ,while trying to make science fit into that materialistic key hole , via some magical performance, in order to be able to "validate " itself in the process ,via magic thus .



I have friends who believe in the supernatural, paranormal, and of course, religion. I do not ridicule their beliefs or try to convert them to my way of thinking, and we have some interesting and pleasant discussions.


It takes 2 to tango,sweetie,  i just try to adapt my behaviour to that of the audience at hand .

Facts about something are not synonymous of ridiculing it .Respect is somethingelse .I can respect your views as long as you do not try to impose them on me as scientific facts or as scientific approaches , but the fact of the matter is : you do present materialistic views and approaches as scientific facts , or at least as scientific approaches : that way , either one who would object to that would be branded as unscientific ,irrational or worse , as that lunatic mechanical jesuit Cooper did in relation to the fact that i refused to share his mechanical views with him ...
Who was trying to convert anyone here ? Cooper as a mechanical jesuit was , for example, and when it became obvious that i would not embrace his mechanical faith , see what  his reaction was ...not to mention the fact that he still continues to play the fool in that regard as well .

I do have no problem with any world view, religion, current of thought , culture , people ...whatsoever , as long as they do not try to impose their own beliefs on others , in the name of science or in the name of any ...Jupiter ,Zeus or whatever for that matter ...

Materialists ,for example , are not only dishonest  enough as to present their own materialistic world views and approaches as scientific facts or as scientific  approaches , but they are in fact worse than that : they deliberately deceive people in the name of science as well = an understatement .


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I do sometimes feel, though, that people who look for supernatural and "immaterial" explanations are like spoiled children at Christmas who see an entire room strewn with presents and packages and say "Is that all there is?" before opening a single one and looking inside.

I do see the materialistic approaches regarding our immaterial side , for example , as the childish belief of some little kids who believe that Obama lives inside the tv .

The suprnatural does exist out there you gotta try to differentiate from ordinary fairy tales, kids' imagination, illusions ....Even that Russell's tea pot argument cannot cover the real supernatural out there ...

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Excuse me for psycho-analyzing you, but you seem to attribute a positive value, or "sacredness" to the immaterial and see everything material, from simple atoms to the flesh on the the bone, as profane. But I see something sacred or magical in the nuts and bolts of reality and every chemical reaction. The physical world needs no supernatural embellishment - it's awe inspiring enough to me on it's own. 


Everything in the universe is , per definition , sacred in my own belief,including chemical reactions, atoms ,sex ....(I am a happily married perfectly hetero guy to an angel of a woman i do "worship " : legetimate sex in my belief is even a kindda spiritual prayer , not just a biological process  ..... My artist side , that artist sensitive side brings me in trouble sometimes with people ,and does cause some misunderstanding as well in and by people : Get the pic ?  ): it's just that the implications of that  universal sacredness of everything in the universe in that  belief of mine regarding this or that on earth or elsewhere are a matter of degree ...-= a dog's life is not as sacred as the  human life ,but at the same time , saving a dog's life is a nobel thing to do as well = a matter of priority , balance , humanity , relativity,degree of sacredness  ....

Furthermore , i might even risk my own life and eventually even lose it by trying to save a dog's life ........there are many blanks like that that need to be filled ...

That awe of this world you get inspired by originates from your consciousness as a reaction to that you see ..., from your self or soul mainly , a soul you are trying to reduce to living organic matter = have you ever seen any non-human species being delighted or marvelled by the sunset , by nature ,by music, art,poetry  ... by the aesthetics of anything for that matter ? They might experience some lesser degrees of that , compared to humans ( no comparison in fact , just an analogy ) , but they would never be able to reach the level of humans or of rather some humans  in that regard  , not even remotely close .

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I sometimes wonder if someone could prove the existence  of angels, whether after I got over my initial surprise, they would be any more interesting than beavers or octopi. Certainly no imaginary description of angels has held my interest as much.

Ever occured to you that that might be beyond your or beyond any human imagination for that matter ?

You seem to have been overestimating the and your  human capacity of judgement or intellect as well  (dlorde said once that human intellect is no big deal though haha ) : you gotta use your heart as the highest form of intellect to just acknowledge the foolishness of your statements above : heart as no emotions, fee lings , or biological organ ...

When you will be grown-up and mature enough , you will be able to acknowledge the fact that science , for example , covers only a tiny apparent side of reality , and that human reason, logic ....have also limits + there might be other levels of reality out there we have absolutely no "idea " about = can you a-priori exclude any possibility or probability like that ?

So, do not act like a bee on the back of an elephant ( no comparison, just an analogy ) trying to "figure out " what that elephant might be , just via covering the area  or part of that elephant where it happens to stand .

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DonQuixote: when you ridicule me for not believing in something more beyond what I can see, I pity you for not seeing all that is there, right in your grasp.

Pleading again , sweetie ? :

 I am gonna only sweetie you from now on....simply because i think that women are the most beautiful creatures on earth ...women are far more sensitive intuitive than we could ever be ,if they happen not to be mechanical haha at least , no offense ,  women are more intelligent in some areas we could never reach ....women are the ones in charge in this world and in our private lives as well, even though they even succeed in making us , men , believe otherwise haha ...
Guys might have some perverse ideas if i would call them that they do not even deserve haha


Well, i see this apparent material side of reality science tries to cover ,every single day of my life i do interact with all the time : I just do not interpret it   the way you do by pretending that's all what there is out there : this apparent reality of ours is just an illusion in fact :

who's really to be pitied here , if pity can ever mean anything for that matter or seve any purpose , is a matter of opinion indeed , a matter of wishful thinking as well ...sometimes ..

Take care , sweetie .

Try to read that unique book of Linda Jean Shepherd that might turn your own life upside down , by , for example , showing you why and how you were / are attracted by the materialistic mechanical world view , and why you do the things you do, among manny other things as well ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 18:42:07
Expressions of courtesy , politeness .....and affection are 2 entirely different things .
There can be no affection involved , do not worry , folks haha ,simply because i do know neither of you, personally ...

In short : Grow up ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 18:49:02
Of course, comments about feeding trolls are really just to make trolls think they're winning whenever they're fed. The opposite is true.

Ever heard of projections ?

This would sound like feeding you , as the real silly fool troll here who seems to need some therapy of some sort  :
.............
It's not about winning ,silly : this is no competition .
It's all about trying to find out about the "truth " ,whatever the latter might mean or be  ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 19:09:07



Is this some sort of desperate pleading and stubborn denial ?
Anyway :
You forgot to mention that materialism itself is just a world view, a philosophy , a life style, a paradigm ...you do continue to confuse with science proper , with the apparent material side of reality , with the material nature of science , with scientific approaches, with scientific results and facts ..


You keep accusing me and other posters of confusing materialism as a tool of science with materialism as “a world view or life style”, but I can’t help but conclude that it is actually you who is doing this. I am in fact specifically and only referring to a belief that the world consists of matter and energy, and the use of physical processes involving matter and energy in order to learn more  about the world. You are the only person here ranting about Soulless White Eurocentric Apes holding Science Proper captive. Materialsim as a “lifestyle” I assume refers to valuing material goods and money above knowledge, ideas, helping people, experiences, etc, and I do not know how I or anyone else has displayed or advocated that. I really think it is you who is confusing the two terms which are only superficially related in the English language anyway. Incidentally, “material” in English also refers to fabric, and although I am a materialist, I am not a seamstress, in case you might be confused on this point.

I was  referring only to materialism as , once again, a philosophy , paradigm or meta-pardigm in science , as a world view , as a life style ...though : do not confuse it with the rest .
Do not confuse science with materialism in that sense , once again .
Materialism in that sense you can trace back to the medieval time as an Eurocentric historic cultural  ...rebellion against the bullshit , excuse my French, of the medieval church.

You happened to provide that link concerning the "fact " that ensemble of neurons can somehow generate thoughts, via some "rythmic harmonious "  dances of theirs , metaphorically speaking then = oscillations, synchronisations,vibrations  ... ...

I said : that's just the materialistic interpretation of those scientific experiments , in the same sense that the "fact " that human consciousness is an "emergent " property from the evolved complexity of the human brain ....is : magical : Got that ,sweetie ?

If not , try to re-read what i used to say in that regard at least in my earlier posts = I see no point in repeating myself over and over again , in that regard at least .



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PS Why do you not call David Cooper or dlorde "darling"? They are probably younger and cuter than I am, and I hear alancalverd is totally hot.

haha

See above , sweetie : sweet dreams in that regard as well then , Alice

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/09/2013 19:16:00
I have the weird feeling i have been talking to ..."grown-up " kids ...not only to machines ...on a presumed science forum, ironically enough .
I have enough kids of my own i have to take care of , deal with , ...

I do love them so much though  : my affection goes thus only to them and to my other beloved ones as well .

I am against adoption though haha : i have no room ,patience or intention of adopting you , guys : there are plenty of foster homes and institutions  ...out there .

Good luck indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/09/2013 00:04:18
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg418329#msg418329

When you will be grown-up and mature enough , you will be able to acknowledge the fact that science , for example , covers only a tiny apparent side of reality , and that human reason, logic ....have also limits + there might be other levels of reality out there we have absolutely no "idea " about = can you a-priori exclude any possibility or probability like that ?



No, I cannot exclude that possibility, but without some means to detect those alternate realities, I have no way of distinguishing between something related to them which is true, and something that isn't true. But you're welcome to imagine any alternate reality you like.

I don't think anyone has really tried to make you change your views. Some, myself included, tried to force you to define or expound on terms you use constantly in your arguments, to no avail. And I at times I did not see how your conclusions followed your premises, regardless of whether I agreed with either. It's the process in your reasoning that drives me nuts, not the outcome.

If "science proper" refers to science that includes or takes into account supernatural objects or supernatural forces that cannot be studied by any materialist, physical process, you are the only one I know advocating for it.

I do know of controversial figures in science who challenge traditional explanations and suggest other models. Sheldrake comes to mind. He studied ESP and  his "morphic resonance" theory claims that some kind of energy field directs the growth and development of living things. He does not, apparently, think differential gene expression can do the job.  I think his theory is unlikely, as there doesn't seem to be any evidence for it.  But even he does not describe it as an immaterial or supernatural process, he just says we haven't figured out a way yet to detect this field. Although he hasn't abandoned materialism, he is, never the less, faced with the same problem as yours - without anyway to detect, to measure, to obtain any information about his morphic field, it remains just an imaginary speculation as far as science is concerned.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 16/09/2013 00:44:55
We were born that way : there is no reason to pretend to be modest about something you have no merit in , or something you had no say in , something you had no input in whatsoever............

Nah! Nobody was ever born this hot. It takes gallons of beer and years of patient selfabuse to cultivate a mind and a physique like mine. To say nothing of the moustache
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/09/2013 17:26:55
We were born that way : there is no reason to pretend to be modest about something you have no merit in , or something you had no say in , something you had no input in whatsoever............

Nah! Nobody was ever born this hot. It takes gallons of beer and years of patient selfabuse to cultivate a mind and a physique like mine. To say nothing of the moustache

Oh , no , you might have landed on the right address , Eagle , in order to be able to be taught some humility    haha : I used to be called Mr.Casanova or Mr.Don Juan and still am : I was also a Don Quichotte sometimes trying to "save " humanity or change it " ...I left memorable significant traces in most of Europe and some other earth corners ,both literally and figuratively : i cannot even count the broken hearts i left behind , the amazing things i did , experience ...i am not so proud of ...
When it comes to "self-abuse " , tons of beer , strong drink, cocke, marijuana , hash , xtc ...use : i was called the champ of just that i could use all that in a single night without ever losing control ...Sometimes we used to party for a period of more or less 48 hours straight non-stop ....

Oh, man , i will tell you all about it , if you would insist on knowing : you would hear about things i have done, experienced , felt , risked ....that might blow your mind away , things that might be beyond your imagination ...really and seriously : no exaggerations or bluff whatsoever ....I might even not give myself justice in that regard ...

P.S.: Be aware of the long term consequences of all those drugs, alcohol use , on brain body and mind : i kissed all that goodbye : i have been having a healthy life via good diet , sport , creative work ...love ...discipline ...meditation...

Not to mention that being born the way we were  is not something we can pretend to have any merit in , once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 16/09/2013 18:19:50
Good work, folks! Thanks for keeping him busy and out of the real world.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/09/2013 18:53:24
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg418329#msg418329

When you will be grown-up and mature enough , you will be able to acknowledge the fact that science , for example , covers only a tiny apparent side of reality , and that human reason, logic ....have also limits + there might be other levels of reality out there we have absolutely no "idea " about = can you a-priori exclude any possibility or probability like that ?
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No, I cannot exclude that possibility, but without some means to detect those alternate realities, I have no way of distinguishing between something related to them which is true, and something that isn't true. But you're welcome to imagine any alternate reality you like

Ok, i know it's extremely difficult , elusive , deceptive .... to differentiate between real supernatural or paranormal phenomena and simple illusions, delusions, fairy tales , myths ...science alone cannot really help us in doing just that .

But, it takes hard work, life experiences, it takes flirting with death itself and looking it deep in the eye  ....it takes blood sweat and tears , joy , rise and fall ,setbacks and breakthroughs ....to just be able to develop that 6th sense that makes one sharp alert and awake sober lucid enough to know , not just believe in, there are   whole unimaginable dimentions and levels of reality out there our powerful developed mind can make us able to approach somehow , to some degree at least .

Just take a look at the following , for the time being at least : i will try to walk you through these amazing dimentions step by step , simply because you cannot handle the whole package at the same time :no one can for that matter :

I have developed some relative telepathic powers in my mind ,among other things as well,  for example, but not as powerful as those of some of my relatives though , you would be amazed at the incredible powers of the human mind , if only one would try to develop them  = The sky is not even the limit :

I think that human consciousness does not only hold THE  key to unveiling major mysteries in this universe , but also that  the most important and next level of human evolution at the level of consciousness  is yet to be undertaken by humanity as a whole  , while grasping its incredible implications for all humanity :

Human consciousness that has been deliberately ignored and marginalized by materialism in science , for obvious reasons: there can be nothing more important for human growth, evolution, progress and much more beyond all that than approaching the mysteries of human consciousness though .

I searched for a great docu concerning the CIA and KGB psi projects telepathy during the cold war , i did not find it on youtube ,but i do have in my pc , concerning what was called remote viewing : the psychic trained ability of some people ,especially creative artists , employed by the CIA to spy on the enemy from a remote distance , a large distance in fact , via their minds = it is still a huge controversy in science , the latter seems to have no answers to .

Just see this instead then :

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/telepathy/

I will give you other links concerning similar phenomena of the human mind ,another time then .


............

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I don't think anyone has really tried to make you change your views. Some, myself included, tried to force you to define or expound on terms you use constantly in your arguments, to no avail. And I at times I did not see how your conclusions followed your premises, regardless of whether I agreed with either. It's the process in your reasoning that drives me nuts, not the outcome.

Cooper reacted the way he did , simply because i did not wanna buy his exclusive mechanical world views ,concerning human consciousness at least , so .
Besides, when it comes to immaterial processes such as human consciousness or the nature, mystery or power of the human mind ,you cannot expect from me or from anyoneelse for that matter  to deliver some reasoning in that regard  .
The human consciousness or mind remain the hard problem in science and elsewhere nobody has ever been able so far to "crack the secrets or codes of " , i am no exception to that rule  .

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If "science proper" refers to science that includes or takes into account supernatural objects or supernatural forces that cannot be studied by any materialist, physical process, you are the only one I know advocating for it.

No, science proper must confine itself to matter and to material processes ,but materialists pretend to make their materialistic world views and approaches ...scientific, by reducing everything to just matter  , that's the problem mainly : major example ? : the materialistic "scientific " approach of human consciousness .

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I do know of controversial figures in science who challenge traditional explanations and suggest other models. Sheldrake comes to mind. He studied ESP and  his "morphic resonance" theory claims that some kind of energy field directs the growth and development of living things. He does not, apparently, think differential gene expression can do the job.  I think his theory is unlikely, as there doesn't seem to be any evidence for it.  But even he does not describe it as an immaterial or supernatural process, he just says we haven't figured out a way yet to detect this field. Although he hasn't abandoned materialism, he is, never the less, faced with the same problem as yours - without anyway to detect, to measure, to obtain any information about his morphic field, it remains just an imaginary speculation as far as science is concerned.

Yeah , i "know " that guy you mentioned here above : i do happen to be downloading his " The evolution of telepathy " video by the way : Rupert Sheldrake .
That's the problem with materialists , instead of trying to look for alternative non-materialistic explanations for phenomena or processes they cannot approach via their materialistic world views, via their meta-paradigm in science or via their materialistic approaches, they just resort to what a scientist has called " Promissory messianic materialism " =  materialism in science will be able some day to find explanations for consciousness ....= just denial , just a sophisticated dishonest exit -strategy , simply because materialism in science , per definition, will never be able to approach the immaterial consciousness ...for obvious reasons that have to do with the very nature of materialism itself .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/09/2013 19:04:21
Good work, folks! Thanks for keeping him busy and out of the real world.
[/quote]

haha

We're all both in this "real " world or "real reality " and in the other , at the same time , without realising that fact= try to figure that out via your mechanical magical world view then  .

The "real " world or "real reality "  is just an illusion though .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/09/2013 19:12:52
Make no mistake, please, folks : I do love science ,more than you can  ever imagine,you have no idea .
 I just reject materialism as a world view in ...science , that's all :
To illustrate my point once again, i am gonna display this interesting article on the subject , once again , even though i do not agree with the assumption there that humans are able to know the ...future : not in the sense explained by that article at least :


Why Consciousness is Not the Brain
IN THIS ISSUE FALL 2010

Fall 2010 Issue

 
The Science of Premonitions
Author: Larry Dossey

Excerpted from The Science of Premonition: How Knowing the Future Can Help Us Avoid Danger, Maximize Opportunities and Create a Better Life by Larry Dossey. Copyright 2009 by Larry Dossey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Physicist Freeman Dyson believes the cosmos is suffused with consciousness, from the grandest level to the most minute dimensions. If it is, why aren’t we aware of it?
For more articles about "Science", Click Here

“We don’t know who first discovered water, but we can be sure that it wasn’t a fish,” the old saw reminds us. Continual exposure to something reduces our awareness of its presence. Over time, we become blind to the obvious. We swim in a sea of consciousness, like a fish swims in water. And like a fish that has become oblivious to his aqueous environment, we have become dulled to the ubiquity of consciousness.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined. The polite term for this trick is “emergence.” At a certain stage of biological complexity, evolutionary biologists claim, consciousness pops out of the brain like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. Yet this claim rests on no direct evidence whatsoever. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

In spite of the complete absence of evidence, the belief that the brain produces consciousness endures and has ossified into dogma. Many scientists realize the limitations of this belief. One way of getting around the lack of evidence is simply to declare that what we call consciousness is the brain itself. That way, nothing is produced, and the magic of “emergence” is avoided. As astronomer Carl Sagan expressed his position, “My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call mind – are a consequence of anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.” Nobelist Francis Crick agreed, saying “[A] person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them.”

This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

Consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

Others suggest that there are no mental states at all, such as love, courage, or patriotism, but only electrochemical brain fluxes that should not be described with such inflated language. They dismiss thoughts and beliefs for the same reasons. This led Nobel neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles to remark that “professional philosophers and psychologists think up the notion that there are no thoughts, come to believe that there are no beliefs, and feel strongly that there are no feelings.” Eccles was emphasizing the absurdities that have crept into the debates about consciousness. They are not hard to spot. Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

The arguments about the origins and nature of consciousness are central to premonitions. For if the promissory materialists are correct – if consciousness is indeed identical with the brain – the curtain closes on premonitions. The reason is that the brain is a local phenomenon – i.e., it is localized to the brain and body, and to the present. This prohibits premonitions in principle, because accordingly the brain cannot operate outside the body and the here-and-now. But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined.

These assertions are not hyperbolic, but conservative. They are consistent with the entire span of human history, throughout which all cultures of which we have record believed that human perception extends beyond the reach of the senses. This belief might be dismissed as superstition but for the fact that modern research has established its validity beyond reasonable doubt to anyone whose reasoning has not clotted into hardened skepticism. To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

One of the first modern thinkers to endorse an outside-the-brain view of consciousness was William James, who is considered the father of American psychology. In his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University, James took a courageous stand against what he called “the fangs of cerebralism and the idea that consciousness is produced by the brain. He acknowledged that arrested brain development in childhood can lead to mental retardation, that strokes or blows to the head can abolish memory or consciousness, and that certain chemicals can change the quality of thought. But to consider this as proof that the brain actually makes consciousness, James said, is irrational.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

Why irrational? Consider a radio, an invention that was introduced during James’s lifetime, and which he used to illustrate the mind-brain relationship. If one bangs a radio with a hammer, it ceases to function. But that does not mean that the origin of the sounds was the radio itself; the sound originated from outside it in the form of an electromagnetic signal. The radio received, modified, and amplified the external signal into something recognizable as sound. Just so, the brain can be damaged in various ways that distort the quality of consciousness – trauma, stroke, nutritional deficiencies, dementia, etc. But this does not necessarily mean the brain “made” the consciousness that is now disturbed, or that consciousness is identical to the brain.

British philosopher Chris Carter endorses this analogy. Equating mind and brain is irrational, he says as listening to music on a radio, smashing the radio’s receiver, and thereby concluding that the radio was producing the music.

To update the analogy, consider a television set. We can damage a television set so severely that we lose the image on the screen, but this doesn’t prove that the TV actually produced the image. We know that David Letterman does not live behind the TV screen on which he appears; yet the contention that brain equals consciousness is as absurd as if he did.

My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present.

The radio and TV analogies can be misleading, however, because consciousness does not behave like an electromagnetic signal. Electromagnetic (EM) signals display certain characteristics. The farther away they get from their source, the weaker they become. Not so with consciousness; its effects do not attenuate with increasing distance. For example, in the hundreds of healing experiments that have been done in both humans and animals, healing intentions work equally well from the other side of the earth as at the bedside of the sick individual. Moreover, EM signals can be blocked partially or completely, but the effects of conscious intention cannot be blocked by any known substance. For instance, sea water is known to block EM signals completely at certain depths, yet experiments in remote viewing have been successfully carried out beyond such depths, demonstrating that the long-distance communication between the involved individuals cannot depend on EM-type signals. In addition, EM signals require travel time from their source to a receiver, yet thoughts can be perceived simultaneously between individuals across global distances. Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent. Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions. Electromagnetic signals are not capable of these feats. From these differences, we can conclude that consciousness is not an electric signal.

Then what is it? My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present. Nonlocal events are immediate; they require no travel time. They are unmediated; they require no energetic signal to “carry” them. They are unmitigated; they do not become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once. This means there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal.

Researcher Dean Radin, whose presentiment experiments provide profound evidence for future knowing, believes that the nonlocal events in the subatomic, quantum domain underlie the nonlocal events we experience at the human level. He invokes the concept of entanglement as a bridging hypothesis uniting the small- and large-scale happenings. Quantum entanglement and quantum nonlocality are indeed potent possibilities that may eventually explain our nonlocal experiences, but only further research will tell. Meanwhile, there is a gathering tide of opinion favoring these approaches. As physicist Chris Clarke, of the University of Southampton, says, “On one hand, Mind is inherently non-local. On the other, the world is governed by a quantum physics that is inherently non-local. This is no accident, but a precise correspondence ...[Mind and the world are] aspects of the same thing...The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind. This view will affirm that consciousness is fundamental, omnipresent and eternal – a model that is as cordial to premonitions as the materialistic, brain-based view is hostile.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/09/2013 22:01:13
Rather than rehash all the old debunking of precognition/premonition, here's a link that deals with most of that mentioned (http://www.skepdic.com/precog.html).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/09/2013 22:07:46
I have developed some relative telepathic powers in my mind...
Easy enough to say, but can you demonstrate these telepathic powers, e.g. to us? so far we've seen no indication of any special powers or intellect.

Quote
I searched for a great docu concerning the CIA and KGB psi projects telepathy during the cold war , i did not find it on youtube ,but i do have in my pc , concerning what was called remote viewing : the psychic trained ability of some people ,especially creative artists , employed by the CIA to spy on the enemy from a remote distance , a large distance in fact , via their minds = it is still a huge controversy in science , the latter seems to have no answers to .
The military remote viewing programs were shut down as 'too unreliable to be of any military value'. See Remote Viewing (http://www.skepdic.com/remotevw.html) for more.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/09/2013 15:33:28

Ok, i know it's extremely difficult , elusive , deceptive .... to differentiate between real supernatural or paranormal phenomena and simple illusions, delusions, fairy tales , myths ...science alone cannot really help us in doing just that .

But, it takes hard work, life experiences, it takes flirting with death itself and looking it deep in the eye  ....it takes blood sweat and tears , joy , rise and fall ,setbacks and breakthroughs ....to just be able to develop that 6th sense that makes one sharp alert and awake sober lucid enough to know , not just believe in, there are   whole unimaginable dimentions and levels of reality out there our powerful developed mind can make us able to approach somehow , to some degree at least .



Since you are fond of stories, I will share one with you. Of course we both know stories and analogies are not proof of anything, just illustrative, but I hope this will illustrate why how one knows something can be as important as what one knows.

The was an internet scam in which a person would send out a large number of emails claiming to be able to predict the results of boxing matches based on inside information he had about the fighters. To prove his ability he would make a prediction about a boxing match that was taking place next week. To half of the recipients he would say boxer A would be the winner and the other half, Boxer B. If Boxer A won, he sent out another email to those for whom he had predicted Boxer A. To half of those, he said the winner of the next match would be Boxer C, and to the other half Boxer D. If Boxer D won, he emailed those for whom he predicted Boxer D and made another prediction -I’m sure you see where I am going with this. After a series of several amazing “correct” predictions, his final email recipients received an email about an upcoming fight in which the odds were ten to one against Boxer G, but he was quite sure Boxer  G would win. If they wished, they could bet on it, or, since there wasn't much time, he would be happy to make the bet for them with his bookie, who was also giving an additional 2:1 odds on top.  Just wire him $5,000.  Hard to believe anyone would fall for this, but $100,000 on a $5,000 bet is a lot of money and he was right again and again! The scammer only needed one person to take the bait in order to walk away with an easy $5,000, one person who was over-impressed that this person had been so consistently right, without wondering why or how he knew what he claimed to know.

You might say, well, that’s different. He was con artist, not a scientist or philosopher sincerely seeking the truth. But deception or self deception takes many forms. Wanting to believe something, and wanting others to believe it, because it is more exciting, unusual, comforting, appeals to our egos as an individual or a species, and relieves our anxiety about mortality or the meaning of life and our sense of powerlessness, is a kind of deception, intentional or not. How one knows something, the kind of evidence and its verifiability and its transparency to others, is sometimes ones only defense against this.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/09/2013 16:33:03
You might say, well, that’s different. He was con artist, not a scientist or philosopher sincerely seeking the truth. But deception or self deception takes many forms. Wanting to believe something, and wanting others to believe it, because it is more exciting, unusual, comforting, appeals to our egos as an individual or a species, and relieves our anxiety about mortality or the meaning of life and our sense of powerlessness, is a kind of deception, intentional or not. How one knows something, the kind of evidence and its verifiability and its transparency to others, is sometimes ones only defense against this.

Yes, indeed. This kind of information-poor situation can also happen where fraud isn't necessarily involved, and it's even more difficult to spot. For example, in finance. Tables are often published of the most successful brokers, or portfolio and fund managers, year-on-year. It's tempting to pick the ones that have been consistently among the top performers for the last few years; but let's suppose their performance is not due to their talents, but is entirely random... consider looking at the top 20% of a group of 1250 fund managers.

At the end of year 1, there will be 250 in the top 20%. Of these, roughly 50 will be in the top 20% at the end of year 2, around 10 in year 3 and around 2 in year 4. But if you then picked the 2 managers who had been consistently in the top 20% over the last 4 years, you'd be likely to have no more success than if you'd picked at random.

Which is why it should come as no surprise when selections by monkeys or throwing darts at a list often do as well or better than 'top' portfolio managers... Past performance is truly no guarantee of future performance (this is not to say that there aren't good investors & managers out there, but that it's easy to be fooled by relative performance data).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 17/09/2013 18:06:46
You might say, well, that’s different. He was con artist, not a scientist or philosopher sincerely seeking the truth. But deception or self deception takes many forms. Wanting to believe something, and wanting others to believe it, because it is more exciting, unusual, comforting, appeals to our egos.....

Brilliant scam, and reminds me of a doctor who always predicted the sex of a baby with 100% accuracy. He would tell the newly pregnant mother "it will be X" and write "Y" in his diary. Then if it turned out to be Y and mother complained, he would say "but you must be mistaken - look, I made a note in my diary!"
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 18:19:43
Rather than rehash all the old debunking of precognition/premonition, here's a link that deals with most of that mentioned (http://www.skepdic.com/precog.html).

I don't care about that : i , myself, do not agree much with that premonition stuff , as i clearly stated .

What the author of the article  said about materialism in science is my main point in posting that article :  he said true things about materialism as an ossified promissory dogmatic messianic religion in science,so .

Why don't you address just that then ?




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 18:31:23
I have developed some relative telepathic powers in my mind...
Easy enough to say, but can you demonstrate these telepathic powers, e.g. to us? so far we've seen no indication of any special powers or intellect.

Pathetic,Tragic-hilarious  :

 The behaviour of people who suddenly do realise they have been believing in a lie (The materialistic magical lie , in this case ) ,living a lie ...can't be more typical than this one of yours = very predictable .

Ok, i am a dummy then, satisfied ? Now that we have proven this fact to be true haha , can you disprove what i or at least what  that above mentioned article of that physicist said about the magical irrational materialism ?
I think you are just trying so desperately to derail the discussion concerning the magical phony unscientific nature of materialism you believe in , by attacking people this vicious tragic-hilarious silly pathetic way , by making me angry :

Haha : And all that coming from a guy who said he turned his back on the christian magical superstitions , just to replace them by another kindda magic : the materialistic one he pretends it to be "scientific " haha
Typical Freudian self-projections , i see = are you hurt , deep down , by the fact that you witnessed the massacre of your beloved irrational magical materialism ? haha , that's why you act now like a total mechanical jerk as a reaction , aren't you and don't you  ?
Really ? Are you gonna now resort to acting like a jerk ,by imitating that other jerk , just because you obviously are incapable of looking at the universe beyond your key hole or tunnel vision magical materialistic mechanical phony irrational faith  ? = you can deliver no interesting insights , ideas , ....beyond that materialistic magic of yours , you happen to believe in without any shadow of a proof ,not even remotely close ...

And you dare to talk about the intellect of other people ? haha : how hypocrit and lowest of the low can you ever be or become ? : Tragic-hilarious pathetic silly psychological self-defense animal mechanical survival oe self-preservation instinct of yours .
Really ? and that coming from a guy who said that human intellect is no big deal .
Besides, you might be overestimating your capacity of judgement   as well,obviously  .
Reminds me of the story i told you earlier , you seem not to have been able to learn anything from, concerning how Albert Camus was attacked that vicious way by Sartre and co., by expressing bold explicit doubts concerning the intellect and integrity of Camus , just because the latter was so right about displaying the obvious  hypocrit paradoxical contradictory nakedness of existentialism represented by Sartre and co ...hahah ....wao ...
Once again, instead of discussing people,attacking people,  try to address what they have to say , Deal ? Otherwise , just have the decency to shut up = just shut up in fact : your magical materialism puts you in no position to deliver any interesting ideas or insights ...

Well, dude : the emperor's really naaaaaaked , even a child can see that obvious nakedness of his: you cannot disprove the truth concerning that magical bankrupt dishonest phony materialism in science by just attacking people who happen to tell the naked truth about that despicable materialism that's in fact lower than christinaity itself , that's even a degenerate form of christianity ,as Nietzsche used to say about .....humanism .

P.S.: I have to demonstrate nothing to you , especially when we would consider the fact that you turned out to be a narrow-minded ossified dogmatic messianic materialistic irrational believer who happens to believe in magic = the "emergence " trick = that excludes you  a-priori from any serious discussions regarding telepathy or any other paranormal phenomena for that matter .

Quote
Quote
I searched for a great docu concerning the CIA and KGB psi projects telepathy during the cold war , i did not find it on youtube ,but i do have in my pc , concerning what was called remote viewing : the psychic trained ability of some people ,especially creative artists , employed by the CIA to spy on the enemy from a remote distance , a large distance in fact , via their minds = it is still a huge controversy in science , the latter seems to have no answers to .
The military remote viewing programs were shut down as 'too unreliable to be of any military value'. See Remote Viewing (http://www.skepdic.com/remotevw.html) for more.

I know : i searched for a docu on the matter ,i do happen to have in my pc , on youtube for Cheryl , but i couldn't find it .

Those remote viewing experiments did deliver some good results though during the cold war , sometimes, but they were shut down after the cold war , so they say : but , they were used against Saddam,for example , though ...

They might have been continuing to conduct research on the matter , as a matter of secrecy , you are not allowed to know about .

The point is : they did book some success though : How ? That remains a big controversy in science .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/09/2013 19:20:58
I have developed some relative telepathic powers in my mind...
..can you demonstrate these telepathic powers, e.g. to us?

I have to demonstrate nothing to you , especially when we would consider the fact that you turned out to be a narrow-minded ossified dogmatic messianic materialistic irrational believer who happens to believe in magic = the "emergence " trick = that excludes you  a-priori from any serious discussions regarding telepathy or any other paranormal phenomena for that matter .
I'll take that as a 'no'. So we apply Hitchen's Razor ("What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence").

Quote
They might have been continuing to conduct research on the matter , as a matter of secrecy , you are not allowed to know about .
Sure, it's possible; but is it plausible that they're spending billions of dollars on surveillance satellites, spy planes, drones, and human assets just to cover up the success of their secret remote viewers? On the other hand, given the number of mistakes they make, they may still be trying it... :)

BTW - Great rant in that last post! :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 19:32:54
I have developed some relative telepathic powers in my mind...
..can you demonstrate these telepathic powers, e.g. to us?

I have to demonstrate nothing to you , especially when we would consider the fact that you turned out to be a narrow-minded ossified dogmatic messianic materialistic irrational believer who happens to believe in magic = the "emergence " trick = that excludes you  a-priori from any serious discussions regarding telepathy or any other paranormal phenomena for that matter .
I'll take that as a 'no'. So we apply Hitchen's Razor ("What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence").

Quote
They might have been continuing to conduct research on the matter , as a matter of secrecy , you are not allowed to know about .
Sure, it's possible; but is it plausible that they're spending billions of dollars on surveillance satellites, spy planes, drones, and human assets just to cover up the success of their secret remote viewers? On the other hand, given the number of mistakes they make, they may still be trying it... :)

BTW - Great rant in that last post! :)

Irrelevent to the very existence of telepathy ....and to other paranormal phenomena one can develop his/her  contacts with : humans are just in their childish stage of evolution at the level of consciousness as the next and most important form of evolution of them all , humanity is yet to undertake as a whole : This is just the beginning : and there might be some advances regarding the approaches of the paranormal booked by some powerful governments they keep hidden from the large public, for obvious reasons as well : you're too dumb to look beyond your materialistic magical nose to be able to grasp just that  .

I think you should read the rest of what i said here above i did just add .
I think you should look in the mirror first, regarding your stupid belief in that magical 'scientific " materialism as a degenerate form of christianity,the latter  you said you abandoned earlier  :

= You rejected christianity just to replace it by a lower magical belief = materialism , the latter as a degenerate form of christianity .

Are you afraid to look in the mirror  ? That's why you avoid just that , by accusing , judging and attacking your opponent ....haha : no wonder = very predictable indeed .

"People accuse and judge others , in order to avoid being accused or judged themselves ..."  Albert Camus , or in words to that same effect at least .

You know what : just spare me your magical mechanical key hole bullshit , simply because you have nothing interesting to offer beyond that ...

P.S.: You will get no response from me from now on = you do not deserve even just that .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 20:31:10

Ok, i know it's extremely difficult , elusive , deceptive .... to differentiate between real supernatural or paranormal phenomena and simple illusions, delusions, fairy tales , myths ...science alone cannot really help us in doing just that .

But, it takes hard work, life experiences, it takes flirting with death itself and looking it deep in the eye  ....it takes blood sweat and tears , joy , rise and fall ,setbacks and breakthroughs ....to just be able to develop that 6th sense that makes one sharp alert and awake sober lucid enough to know , not just believe in, there are   whole unimaginable dimentions and levels of reality out there our powerful developed mind can make us able to approach somehow , to some degree at least .



Since you are fond of stories, I will share one with you. Of course we both know stories and analogies are not proof of anything, just illustrative, but I hope this will illustrate why how one knows something can be as important as what one knows.

The was an internet scam in which a person would send out a large number of emails claiming to be able to predict the results of boxing matches based on inside information he had about the fighters. To prove his ability he would make a prediction about a boxing match that was taking place next week. To half of the recipients he would say boxer A would be the winner and the other half, Boxer B. If Boxer A won, he sent out another email to those for whom he had predicted Boxer A. To half of those, he said the winner of the next match would be Boxer C, and to the other half Boxer D. If Boxer D won, he emailed those for whom he predicted Boxer D and made another prediction -I’m sure you see where I am going with this. After a series of several amazing “correct” predictions, his final email recipients received an email about an upcoming fight in which the odds were ten to one against Boxer G, but he was quite sure Boxer  G would win. If they wished, they could bet on it, or, since there wasn't much time, he would be happy to make the bet for them with his bookie, who was also giving an additional 2:1 odds on top.  Just wire him $5,000.  Hard to believe anyone would fall for this, but $100,000 on a $5,000 bet is a lot of money and he was right again and again! The scammer only needed one person to take the bait in order to walk away with an easy $5,000, one person who was over-impressed that this person had been so consistently right, without wondering why or how he knew what he claimed to know.

You might say, well, that’s different. He was con artist, not a scientist or philosopher sincerely seeking the truth. But deception or self deception takes many forms. Wanting to believe something, and wanting others to believe it, because it is more exciting, unusual, comforting, appeals to our egos as an individual or a species, and relieves our anxiety about mortality or the meaning of life and our sense of powerlessness, is a kind of deception, intentional or not. How one knows something, the kind of evidence and its verifiability and its transparency to others, is sometimes ones only defense against this
.

What kindda silly "reasoning" is this then ? Unbelievable :
You're telling a particular ordinary story humanity has been experiencing some perfectly natural forms or other of since day 1= no big deal = makes part of the human nature one should try to be alert of , should try to improve ,recognize as such ... ,while you are trying to extract many unfounded unrelated generalisations from it it cannot deliver ....

Human deception and self-deceit are common knowledge since day 1 ,one must be aware of : you're behaving as if you have just discovered some breakthrough nobody but you knew,come on , be serious .

You can try to perform any ritual paradoxical distractory dances like that all you like   , but that cannot make the facts go away , no way:

Facts such as the fact that materialism is a kindda degenerate form of christianity in ...science , ironically enough .

Facts such as the fact that science can cover only its own limited realm : the natural reality , can cover only matter and material processes .

Facts such as the fact that the realm of science is just a tiny piece of reality , or just the apparent material side of reality .

Facts such as the fact that there are many other levels of reality out there ,science cannot , per definition, cover .

Facts such as the fact that there are indeed many illusions , delusions, fairy tales, myths ...out there , we should try not to confuse with the real paranormal, no matter how difficult that might be ...the real paranormal that's obviously out of reach of that famous Russell's tea pot argument ...

Other facts do not come to mind right now , due to the fact that i was outraged by the dishonesty hypocrisy denials projections ...of yet another disappointing  lunatic here : dlorde ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 20:32:31
A Greek says : All Greeks are ...liars haha : a famous paradox in logic.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/09/2013 20:43:16
So much for our "rationa logical scientific " people here , my ass,excuse my French or Dutch, or just Arabic  ...haha
Unbelievable: it's like talking to a ...wall .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/09/2013 21:47:39
he said true things about materialism as an ossified promissory dogmatic messianic religion in science,so .

What don't you address just that then ?
OK. He's welcome to his opinion; but I will address that extract (it's an easy target and I've got time).

Quote
[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”
The 'straw-ogre' argument. Scientists and materialists have a broad range of opinion. I'm sure there are a few fanatics, but the vast majority are just taking a pragmatic evidence-based approach. It's possible Eccles & Popper encountered a disproportionate number of fanatics in their rarified circles - they do tend to use their elbows and shout loudest. Empty vessels and all that.

Quote
He acknowledged that arrested brain development in childhood can lead to mental retardation, that strokes or blows to the head can abolish memory or consciousness, and that certain chemicals can change the quality of thought. But to consider this as proof that the brain actually makes consciousness, James said, is irrational.
A good thing people don't consider it proof. It's just yet more circumstantial evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis.

Quote
Equating mind and brain is irrational, he says as listening to music on a radio, smashing the radio’s receiver, and thereby concluding that the radio was producing the music.
A good thing nobody is equating mind and brain; the consensus is that one is a function of the other. The radio analogy is popular but weak - if you examine a radio you'll see an antenna, receiver, decoder, amplifier, etc., all connected together to make a radio - if you examine the brain you'll see no structures that could be assigned to the 'reception' of consciousness; when you damage a radio, the announcer doesn't get a stutter, or have trouble reading, or lose her sense of self, etc. No, when a radio is damaged in various ways it acts consistently with a damaged radio. When the brain is damaged in various ways, it acts consistently with something that generates a mind and consciousness. It's possible that it isn't the case, but that's where empirically informed opinion is leaning until there's evidence to the contrary.

So, they make some provocative straw-man arguments. They're probably trying to catch the attention of people without the awkward mainstream predeliction for evidence-based hypotheses. When you're in a small minority without a good argument, you need to shout loud and fake targets to attack.

Dossey then concludes that consciousness is not a substance (did someone say it was?) but a 'nonlocal phenomenon', by which he means, vaguely, 'infinite':
Quote from: Dossey
Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite [no, it isn't] ...Nonlocal events are immediate; they require no travel time. They are unmediated; they require no energetic signal to “carry” them [nor can they carry information]. They are unmitigated; they do not become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once. This means there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal.
In other words, he's stretching the very specific meaning of 'non-locality', used in QM, past breaking point, so as to get complete suspension of the laws of physics - because otherwise his whole shaky crate of an argument wouldn't even taxi, let alone get off the ground. IOW, pseudoscience.

Dossey's final mistake is to recruit Dean Radin to his case - whose hand-waving pseudoscientific appeals to QM weirdness to support his heavily criticised, unconvincing, and ultimately unreplicable 'prescience' experiments, are the final nails in the coffin of this ropey piece of special pleading.

As Dossey says, "Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple...." No argument with the first part - the experiments are (mostly) real enough. But the evidence has been examined 'unflinchingly' (well maybe some flinching at the worst of it), and in detail, with attempts to replicate, and nothing unusual has been found.

The notion may eventually topple, but so far, what evidence there is buttresses it, which suggests that the real superstition is that it's 'non-local' QM magic. Time will tell.

How's that? too harsh? not enough ad-hominems?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/09/2013 21:54:01
P.S.: You will get no response from me from now on ...
OK, let's see if the evidence supports that claim :)

p.s. not such a great rant that time; materialism as a degenerate form of Christianity doesn't really work...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/09/2013 14:08:01


What kindda silly "reasoning" is this then ? .....

.....You're telling a particular ordinary story humanity has been experiencing some perfectly natural forms or other of since day 1= no big deal = makes part of the human nature one should try to be alert of , should try to improve ,recognize as such ....Human deception and self-deceit are common knowledge since day 1 ,one must be aware of...


As I prefaced my comments with, stories and analogies are not proof. They are only illustrative.

Um, I think you are actually arguing my own point here. And because there is such a tendency to want to believe things for reasons other than it is likely to be true, the kind of evidence, how ones knows what one knows, and the transparency of the process to others is important.

Ironically, there is not much difference between some of the paranormal, immaterial things you mention - remote viewing, ESP - and some  conventional material process proposed in a  research study in which the author simply refused to publish his data or explain his methodology. If I don't know how he got the results he got, I can't evaluate them. I just have to take his word for it.



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/09/2013 15:01:10
A Greek says : All Greeks are ...liars haha : a famous paradox in logic.

No, it was a Cretan, quoted by a Greek. Please check your facts.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/09/2013 15:15:41
One of the peculiarities about PSI research is that conclusions are really based on process of elimination: "There is no other way this person could have known this; we've controlled for every variable we can think of, so it must be ESP."

This doesn't happen often in science, and when it does, it often leads to premature conclusions and outright blunders.

Like PSI research,  early studies of newly identified physical phenomenon, may only be able to show a correlation between two things beyond what would be statistically predicted by chance. If the the study is reproducible, though, it is usually followed by ones that ask more specific questions. At which point the researchers can say: "Okay, we still don't know how it works or the cause, but we can show it happens in this situation, but not that one. It is effected by A but not B. It is more likely to occur when C is also present."

Findings like these usually lead to some proposed mechanism or model, which if correct, should have some predictive value in future experiments.

But research on the paranormal never seems to advance past conclusions based on process of elimination, and there is never any more descriptive insight into the process or it's characteristics. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 17:35:45
One of the peculiarities about PSI research is that conclusions are really based on process of elimination: "There is no other way this person could have known this; we've controlled for every variable we can think of, so it must be ESP."

This doesn't happen often in science, and when it does, it often leads to premature conclusions and outright blunders.

Like PSI research,  early studies of newly identified physical phenomenon, may only be able to show a correlation between two things beyond what would be statistically predicted by chance. If the the study is reproducible, though, it is usually followed by ones that ask more specific questions. At which point the researchers can say: "Okay, we still don't know how it works or the cause, but we can show it happens in this situation, but not that one. It is effected by A but not B. It is more likely to occur when C is also present."

Findings like these usually lead to some proposed mechanism or model, which if correct, should have some predictive value in future experiments.

But research on the paranormal never seems to advance past conclusions based on process of elimination, and there is never any more descriptive insight into the process or it's characteristics.

See this : this scientist makes research on telepathy ...and he makes sense ,relatively speaking , despite what you said about him earlier :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 17:54:27


What kindda silly "reasoning" is this then ? .....

.....You're telling a particular ordinary story humanity has been experiencing some perfectly natural forms or other of since day 1= no big deal = makes part of the human nature one should try to be alert of , should try to improve ,recognize as such ....Human deception and self-deceit are common knowledge since day 1 ,one must be aware of...


As I prefaced my comments with, stories and analogies are not proof. They are only illustrative.

Um, I think you are actually arguing my own point here. And because there is such a tendency to want to believe things for reasons other than it is likely to be true, the kind of evidence, how ones knows what one knows, and the transparency of the process to others is important.

Ironically, there is not much difference between some of the paranormal, immaterial things you mention - remote viewing, ESP - and some  conventional material process proposed in a  research study in which the author simply refused to publish his data or explain his methodology. If I don't know how he got the results he got, I can't evaluate them. I just have to take his word for it
.

See above .

One cannot  a-priori  just dismiss the potential existence of the paranormal ,just because it is extremely difficult to differentiate between that  and the rest , or just because the nature of the paranormal is , per definition, out of reach of conventional science ...

But , science can try to help us shed some light though on the alleged  paranormal
claims or experiences of some people ...as Sheldrake and others try to do : just take a look at the evidence delivered by the man , before a-priori concluding anything for that matter .

Sheldrake and others try to conduct some scientific research on telepathy ...as the video above shows ..

In short : There is much more to the universe than meets the eye .

Science just covers a tiny piece of reality , as i said earlier , just that apparent side of reality = there is a lot of dimensions out there that are way out of reach of science : dimensions we should try to approach via a holistic approach ..

So, to say that anything science cannot prove to be true as such is not, is the most stupid thing anyone can utter .....


P.S.: Materialism in science cannot , per definition, help you discover anything beyond the apparent material side of reality ,materialism in science which a-priori assumes the universe to be exclusively  material, ironically enough , a materialistic core assumption or materialistic meta-paradigm in science ,quantum physics had already debunked .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 18:06:01
A Greek says : All Greeks are ...liars haha : a famous paradox in logic.

No, it was a Cretan, quoted by a Greek. Please check your facts
.

Never mind :  whatever ...

 That paradox applies to any x you can replace " Greek  " by : applies to an Arab  , an English , an alien  ..., a Martian,a cat  ...haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 18:53:29
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond :

Rumi – “I have passed beyond all thoughts”

http://www.tm.org/blog/enlightenment/rumi/

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 18:56:06
I died once but no one shed a tear,
So if I live again I will know how to be.
You pursue me with your ignorant talk
Which to me sounds so empty.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 18:58:34

Feminine Consciousness-Poetry of Rumi


http://feminineconsciousness.blogspot.com/2010/09/poetry-of-rumi.html
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 19:01:26
My heart, on this path words are hollow.
At the door of Union
You have to surrender yourself.
You will never soar to the sky
Where His birds fly
Unless you give up your wings.

...............



Whose feet are worthy
To enter the garden?
Whose eyes are worthy
Of the cypress and the jasmine?
The feet and eyes of a heart
That has been broken.


............


Every object and being in the universe is
a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty,
a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin.
Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining,
as though covered in satin…”


.............


Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it.
It will turn to gold. Resurrection
will be now. Every moment,
a new beauty.”


...........


“Human beings are mines.
World-power means nothing. Only the unsayable,
jeweled inner life matters…”

..........................


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 19:12:10
“In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.”

.........


Don’t ask what love can make, or can do.
Look at the colors of the world!
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty, and scared.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument and start to play.
Let the beauty you love be what you do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.


..........

Be patient.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what you really love
When you do things from your soul, a river moves through you,
Freshness and a deep joy are the signs…


...............


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 18/09/2013 19:28:44
One cannot  a-priori  just dismiss the potential existence of the paranormal ,just because it is extremely difficult to differentiate between that  and the rest , or just because the nature of the paranormal is , per definition, out of reach of conventional science ...
The question is how one can distinguish between a paranormal phenomenon, a claim of paranormal phenomenon, and a mundane phenomenon, if not by careful investigation & critical thinking, e.g. scientific method.

One cannot, a priori, assume that what is said to be paranormal is out of reach of conventional science. Much like alternative medicine, which, if tested and found to be efficacious, becomes medicine, so a claimed paranormal phenomenon, when tested, might be found to be a novel natural phenomenon - although this is extremely rare; the general course is that such phenomena are found to be misidentified mundane phenomena, nonexistent, fraudulent, or undemonstrable. Nevertheless, it can happen.

Quote
So, to say that anything science cannot prove to be true as such is not, is the most stupid thing anyone can utter .....[/b]
Has anyone really said this?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 20:21:38
Rumi and  SCIENCE :

The Science of Truth disappears in the Sufi's knowledge.
When will mankind understand this saying?

[Idries Shah, "The Way of the Sufi," pp. 102-108.]


. . . .and, finally, from "The Essential Rumi," by Coleman Barks:

THE MILK OF MILLENIA

. . . For hundreds of thousands of years
I have been dust grains
floating and flying in the will of the air,
often forgetting ever being
in that state, but in sleep
I migrate back. I spring loose
from the four-branched time-and-space cross,
this waiting room.

            I walk into a huge pasture.
            I nurse the milk of millenia.
            Everyone does this in different ways.
            Knowing that conscious decisions
            and personal memory
            are much too small a place to live,
            every human being streams at night
            into the loving nowhere, or during the day,
            in some absorbing work.


Rumi on Evolution:

HOW FAR YOU HAVE COME

    Originally you were clay. From being mineral, you became vegetable. From vegetable, you became animal, and from animal, man. During these periods man did not know where he was going, but he was being take on a long journey, nonetheless. And you have to go through a hundred different worlds yet.


I have again and again grown like grass;
I have experienced seven hundred and seventy moulds.
I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearnace through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels:
After that soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine. I shall be that.



http://spiritualnotreligious.blogspot.com/2011/05/rumi-on-religion-evoloution-and-science.html
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/09/2013 20:50:19
Rumi's Holistic Humanism :

http://www.codhill.com/ashraf-rhh.html

Mirza Iqbal Ashraf
Rumi’s Holistic Humanism :
Rumi’s Holistic Humanism: The Timeless Appeal of the Great Mystic Poet, presents the mystical poet's passionate conviction that "love is the strongest unifying force," and that its force is present everywhere and in everything. It may even encourage some to study the extraordinary work of Rumi that so often opens the heart of its adepts. For Rumi peace is the natural quest for a "whole person," and the human being's inclination to it arises from a natural universal order. In humankind's fight to root out conflict, violence and war, Rumi's holistic view of unconditional love may prove one of our best friends. Rumi's holistic approach to the phenomena of humankind is that the perimeters between the self and the universe are mitigated to the extent that the material body becomes indistinct of its typical cultural identity.

After so many centuries, Rumi today is as he was yesterday, a living icon of Unity and Love for the whole of mankind. Ashraf's holistic weaving of the many spiritual, philosophical, rational, scientific, and cultural "threads" that converge in Rumi's thought offers the beginning of a unitive language that humanists, rationalists, theists, non-theists, atheists, religious folks, artists, scientists—all thinkers of good will from all cultures may welcome and embrace—as they explore and try to understand the universe. So doing, though taking different roads, they unearth a new level of communication and productive diversity.

Rumi's Holistic Humanism takes into account the wide range of philosophical inquiry and mystical experiences, issues of psychology, morality and discipline, and the problematic conditions of ordinary daily human existence. Shakespeare gave us the question, "To be or not to be..."Rumi asked"... to love or not to love?", and the WHOLE HEART answers with a resounding YES! "Gamble everything for love."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/09/2013 23:07:10
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond :

Really? How do you know?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: AndroidNeox on 18/09/2013 23:26:14
The human mind is a physical process of the human brain. While it might be difficult to understand, there's no reason to think it is dependent upon anything but common (universal) physical rules. People have similar problems understanding how life could be a consequence of common matter in complex arrangements. The problem isn't with the physics, it's with our ability to imagine.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 19/09/2013 14:53:15
Oi! Who asked for common sense? You'll be questioning the existence of fairies if you're not careful, and you know what that means... 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 19/09/2013 15:04:26
Oi! Who asked for common sense? You'll be questioning the existence of fairies if you're not careful, and you know what that means... 
More poetry?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 19/09/2013 15:06:05
Worse - the death of fairies! Well, maybe not worse.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 16:27:30
The human mind is a physical process of the human brain. While it might be difficult to understand, there's no reason to think it is dependent upon anything but common (universal) physical rules. People have similar problems understanding how life could be a consequence of common matter in complex arrangements. The problem isn't with the physics, it's with our ability to imagine.

Welcome , even though we have enough magicians here .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 16:29:36
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond :

Really? How do you know?

Read the man's work,if you wanna know
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/09/2013 16:34:45
Thank you for the poetry, Don Quixote. It's lovely. But I do think you are starting to compare apples to oranges. Here is another story:

I enjoy painting. If you lived in my neighborhood, I could sit in your yard, and paint a picture of your house. I could show you my finished painting and ask "Do you know what this is?" and if I was any good, you might say, "Why, yes. That is  my house. I can tell by color of the siding, just the way it looks when the sun shines on it at four in the afternoon, the slope of the gables, and the placement of the door. You've captured the rose bushes outside that we planted last spring rather nicely. Oh, and that appears to be me in the upstairs window typing furiously away at the computer."

The next day, you are rummaging through a drawer and find a set of blueprints. You show them to your son, and say "Do you know what this is?" He examines it closely and says "Hey, that's our house!" The blueprints show where the kitchen is, in relationship to the living room, and bedrooms, the hallways and closets, etc. and the dimensions of each.

Which representation is more accurate? Which is closer to the truth?

The artistic rendering, impercise as it is, may be closer to the image recreated in your visual centers in your brain from electrical impulses generated when photons stimulate receptors on the retina of your eye. It may be closer to  image of your house  stored in your memory. The painting may stimulate the same emotional response you have when you look at your house or recall it. You might like it so well, that you pay me a large sum of money for it, and hang it over your couch.

But if you are doing renovations or having any electrical work done, I suggest you provide the blueprints, not the painting.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 19/09/2013 16:41:34

Read the man's work,if you wanna know


No, I want to know how you know, not what someone else told you. This is a science forum, not a poetry club.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 17:52:35
There is also what can be called the  "science of spirituality or neurotheology " as well, as the logical consequence of the mainstream dominance  of materialism and the materialistic meta-paradigm in science, that tries to approach human consciousness, human spirituality , religious experiences, the "believing brain " (The latter by atheist Michael Schermer )....via studying the specific corresponding activity of the brain : that's a typical example of that magical materialism in science :

See this on the subject ,concerning the materialistic magical approach of the above :

Note :

No one yet  ,if ever , can be able to prove the paradoxical magical "validity" or "truth" of that magical emergency trick ,not even remotely close , and no one can tell how unconscious matter gives rise to consciousness , and therefore to such concepts and ideas such as the human  currents of thought ,philosophies , beliefs , cultures ...freedom,ethics ...

Studying the brain in the above mentioned sense by assuming that the brain creates human consciousness , religious experiences, the God feeling ,human spirituality ...is a false magical materialistic debunked premise or assumption,not to mention the fact that materialistic scientists do confuse epilepsy and its related  corresponding  illusions,delusions ....with the healthy spirituality of man   :

Those scientists do not make the difference between the 2 categories ,for obvious materialistic magical "reasons " , only materialists seem to possess the magical key to unlock their secrets haha, not to mention that if spirituality is created by the brain, due to the materialistic magical fact that consciousness was the product of the evolutionary complexity  of the brain  ,the brain that seems to create just a representation of reality via our senses, then, it's pretty logical  to assume that even all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including  our knowledge of evolution itself  .....are just some sort of sophisticated pragmatic survival strategies , or elaborate illusions , in the same sense spirituality is then ...= a paradox no one here or elsewhere seem to be able or wanna answer,except by some sort of magic then  .

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/god-on-the-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/phantoms-in-the-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/mystical-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/michael-shermer-the-believing-brain/


P.S.: That earlier tv set ,radio ...analogy regarding  the brain , a tv set that can, obvioulsy ,not create those tv signals it receives ,neither can the radio create the sound waves it receives ,  was just that : an analogy :

The tv set proper ,  and the images of the tv set created by those tv signals the tv receives are 2 different separate things or processes  , while brain and consciousness are 2 different things or processes in 1 , mind and body as being 1 in any given human person   : a kindda combination between dualism and monism .

When the human brain is damaged at the level of  some specific areas ,due to some disease , handicap, accident , genetic defect ...disorders like Alzheimer or dementia, ...even the sense of the self is altered radically indeed , and many aspects of consciousness in those cases are also radically altered,to say just that  : but that does not mean that the brain  is the "home "  or is the creator of consciousness as a kindda magical "emergence " trick popping out suddenly from the evolved complexity of the human brain :

 I see the human brain as just some kindda receiver its own biological way that cannot be compared to any mechanical manufactured-by-man device  :

when the brain  gets damaged in some specific areas , the corresponding elements or aspects of consciousness that get apparently altered as a result , are still there , they are just disconnected from the brain as a receiver , they do not get through, as a result, i dunno  :

The question now is : do those people who do suffer from Alzheimer dementia ....still have levels of consciousness within we cannot detect ?
Or is there a way to find out about that and how ? 

Second : the main problem regarding telepathy and other high levels of human consciousness ,that can be easily confused with illusions, delusions, self-deceit , .......is that they are not only subjective, but they also cannot be generated on demand , they just happen to people , even though humans can be trained to develop those consciousness powers or skils in themselves, by developing their 'contacts " with their consciousness via some means  :

So, when science tries to take a closer look at telepathy, for example , it misses the fact that telepathy cannot be generated on demand ...

High levels of consciousness can also be experienced only under certain meditation and other spiritual circumstances where the body or the material world cease to "exist " or cease to be perceived as such for the given person under those meditation or under other spiritual states ,due to that extremely targeted attention or focuss of the given person at the level of the pure consciousness .

The other question that come to mind is : at which extent can science approach human spirituality .?

But , to reduce human spirituality and human consciousness to just magical "emergent " phenomena from the evolutionary complexity of the brain is not only magic , but also a paradox in the above mentioned sense + total non-sense ,science has nothing to do with .

Magical materialism can thus never be able to deliver any breakthroughs concerning human consciousness, not even remotely close , thanks to its very magical nature which reduces everything to matter , a materialistic nature quantum physics had already debunked .

I think that we need a radical shift of paradigm in science , a radical shift of meta-paradigm in science in fact , if we wanna ever be able to scientifically try to approach these eternal issues of human consciousness  ,humanity has been struggling with for so long now without any end in sight to that eternal human struggle , and we should combine those future scientific approaches in combination with all sciences and currents of thought = we need a revolutionary holistic approach thus .

You tell me ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 17:53:49

Read the man's work,if you wanna know

No, I want to know how you know, not what someone else told you. This is a science forum, not a poetry club.

Read that work, and you will know : The man's work is so large and huge  that it cannot be really discussed this way, come on , be serious .

Taking drugs and using tons of Alcohol ,combined with  your false deceptive big ego won't help you in that regard or in any other for that matter .

First thing you should do : Get rid of your false ego, get rid of your ego,period : that should help you get in contact with your true self as a result, you have been hiding from all along .
Second : Reject that materialistic magic in science, by delivering science from its phony meta-paradigm  .

Do just that , and i will tell you all about the next steps.

Deal ?

Good luck

P.S.: I haven't seen much science from any of you, guys , so far , just magical materialistic interpretations of science : See the difference ? I hope you do,but i seriously doubt just that , sorry  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 19:33:17
Thank you for the poetry, Don Quixote. It's lovely. But I do think you are starting to compare apples to oranges. Here is another story:

I enjoy painting. If you lived in my neighborhood, I could sit in your yard, and paint a picture of your house. I could show you my finished painting and ask "Do you know what this is?" and if I was any good, you might say, "Why, yes. That is  my house. I can tell by color of the siding, just the way it looks when the sun shines on it at four in the afternoon, the slope of the gables, and the placement of the door. You've captured the rose bushes outside that we planted last spring rather nicely. Oh, and that appears to be me in the upstairs window typing furiously away at the computer."

The next day, you are rummaging through a drawer and find a set of blueprints. You show them to your son, and say "Do you know what this is?" He examines it closely and says "Hey, that's our house!" The blueprints show where the kitchen is, in relationship to the living room, and bedrooms, the hallways and closets, etc. and the dimensions of each.

Which representation is more accurate? Which is closer to the truth?

The artistic rendering, impercise as it is, may be closer to the image recreated in your visual centers in your brain from electrical impulses generated when photons stimulate receptors on the retina of your eye. It may be closer to  image of your house  stored in your memory. The painting may stimulate the same emotional response you have when you look at your house or recall it. You might like it so well, that you pay me a large sum of money for it, and hang it over your couch.

But if you are doing renovations or having any electrical work done, I suggest you provide the blueprints, not the painting.

Oh, boy , or oh , girl :  Editing my post afterwards : my little kids contributted in distracting me ,so, i lost focus at times , so, pardon me if this post seems a bit chaotic : thanks :

Oh, girl : You're putting your finger on a huge issue , i will try to approach this quick clumsy way :

You're confusing many things with each other , while separating  some areas of human consciousness , activity,reality,human dimentions, human condition, human knowledge , easthetics  ... from each other ,one cannot always separate ,not in the absolute sense at least ,simply because they all complete each other , feedback each other , influence each other , ...simply because they are all pursued by the same human spirit , and simply because those artificial boundaries between them are not really absolute .

You're doing all that and much more via this inspiring nice story of yours i do appreciate and thank you for indeed , a story  that cannot prove the point you are trying to prove ,or the implications it tries to illustrate : i   will tell you why in a sec : hint ?:

Art is both a subjective and a cultural  "product " of the artist's holistic approach via his /her whole being that includes , his /her relative understanding or knowledge regarding the  science of his / her  time,regarding the wisdom of his /her time , some artists can transcend and rise above which results in the transmission of universal timeless values , wisdom ...as the example of Rumi shows  + the artist's use of the tools and technology ,techniques, symbols ...or zeitgeist of his /her time ..........:

You're confusing or rather comparing science with art ,while they overlap each other in subtle ways , while trying to prove the obvious fact that science is not art , and vice versa

Nice story , i would love to see your paintings since i , myself , like to make amateur paintings ,among other creative things as well .

But , you forgot to mention that an artist knows that he / she tries to "reflect reality "
in his / her own creative work his / her own subjective way , he / she does not pretend to copy  "reality proper " : if an artist would try to copy "reality " as it is , and not as it should be , or as he /she sees it or how she/he likes to see it or likes it to be ..... then he /she (I am tired of this he /she haha ) ,then he/she is not an artist and should therefore pursue another different career .

Art is indeed subjective , is a matter of taste , but art "flies above the truth while trying not to get burned  by it " as Kafka used to say at least : art tries to approach the truth as well thus its own holistic way :

I am sure you prefer this style of painting to another , a style which might reflect your world view , your taste, your convictions, your easthetics,taste  ...

Make no mistake, even a casual painting can tell a lot about one's preferences, taste, likes and dislikes, personality , convictions, world view ...

You put your whole being into that painting , i presume : you put yourself in it ...

Art can reflect  the world view ,eathetics , ethics , taste , experiences, knowledge ,skills ....of the given artist ...

Any casual painting , ....is done through your whole spirit .

The same goes , and in higher degrees, with the art ,poetry of Rumi , the latter puts his whole accumulated wisdom, experiences ,spirit  .... in he communicates to the world in the process ,while succeeding in touching the hearts and minds of different people from different cultures , races, ........simply because Rumi knew , as great artists  do ,how to transmit universal values , emotions, feelings , universal love , universal wisdom...to people .

Those universal blueprints transmitted by art to all mankind are a kindda holy Grail only great artists can achieve ...while an architect , for example, just studies his practical work at the university : anyone can become an architect , but not any one can become an artist though : those universal blueprints communicated by great artists ,those universal wisdoms, through art, literature , music , ....cannot be studied in any school then : you can study about art , easthetics ...but no study can make you an artist or create that talent needed and developed by artists .


I am a big fan of world literature also, for example , and i am found of extracting wisdom , easthetics , ...from that literature .

I see ,for example, Don Quichottes everywhere, i see Don Juans like our friend with his false big deceptive ego here everywhere and in myself previously as well,  in life and here , and i was also one , i am still somehow, I do get also moved by some Dante's existential poetry , by the universal blueprints of the music of Yanni who succeeded , at the level of music , at least , to get the best from different cultures , schools of thought , religions ...,at the level of music at least , represented by the people he worked with ,as this awsome wonderful wonderful wonderful beautiful masterpiece of his shows, i dedicate to you,even if it's not mine haha  :



Science is only one way of approaching reality or the truth : i prefer a holistic approach that combines science with the rest though .

Science itself is a different form of art , poetry , a social cultural universal human activity ,a form of culture  ...practiced by humans scientists through their senses and minds brains , and through their world views and convictions as well , as the major example of materialism as a world view in science shows ,for example , one should try not to confuse with science proper , once again .

Thanks for your inspiring insights i do appreciate very much indeed .

Take care

[/b]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/09/2013 19:43:10

When the human brain is damaged at the level of  some specific areas ,due to some disease , handicap, accident , genetic defect ...disorders like Alzheimer or dementia, ...even the sense of the self is altered radically indeed , and many aspects of consciousness in those cases are also radically altered,to say just that  : but that does not mean that the brain  is the "home "  or is the creator of consciousness as a kindda magical "emergence " trick popping out suddenly from the evolved complexity of the human brain :

 I see the human brain as just some kindda receiver its own biological way that cannot be compared to any mechanical manufactured-by-man device  :

when the brain  gets damaged in some specific areas , the corresponding elements or aspects of consciousness that get apparently altered as a result , are still there , they are just disconnected from the brain as a receiver , they do not get through, as a result, i dunno  :

The question now is : do those people who do suffer from Alzheimer dementia ....still have levels of consciousness within we cannot detect ?
Or is there a way to find out about that and how ? 




Thomas Nagel, a philosopher you might like, who is also a critic of reductionism and materialism, says "Science can tell us everything about a bat except what it's like to be a bat."

Well, he has a point.

My response to that is: I had surgery once and received a general anesthetic. The experience, if I can even call it that, was nothing like sleeping. Nothing happened. I did not even have a sense of time having passed as when one sleeps, from the moment I lost consciousness until I regained it.

One might argue, "but you could have experienced something and the anesthetic simply erased your memory of the experience." However, if a bat is the only authority on what it is like to be a bat, I should likewise be the ultimate authority on my own subjective experiences, and I will testify that while under general anesthesia, there was none. For all intents and purposes "I" did not exist at that time, inside my brain or via the magical consciousness transmitter in outer space. Your results may vary.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 20:58:51

When the human brain is damaged at the level of  some specific areas ,due to some disease , handicap, accident , genetic defect ...disorders like Alzheimer or dementia, ...even the sense of the self is altered radically indeed , and many aspects of consciousness in those cases are also radically altered,to say just that  : but that does not mean that the brain  is the "home "  or is the creator of consciousness as a kindda magical "emergence " trick popping out suddenly from the evolved complexity of the human brain :

 I see the human brain as just some kindda receiver its own biological way that cannot be compared to any mechanical manufactured-by-man device  :

when the brain  gets damaged in some specific areas , the corresponding elements or aspects of consciousness that get apparently altered as a result , are still there , they are just disconnected from the brain as a receiver , they do not get through, as a result, i dunno  :

The question now is : do those people who do suffer from Alzheimer dementia ....still have levels of consciousness within we cannot detect ?
Or is there a way to find out about that and how ? 




Thomas Nagel, a philosopher you might like, who is also a critic of reductionism and materialism, says "Science can tell us everything about a bat except what it's like to be a bat."

Well, he has a point.

My response to that is: I had surgery once and received a general anesthetic. The experience, if I can even call it that, was nothing like sleeping. Nothing happened. I did not even have a sense of time having passed as when one sleeps, from the moment I lost consciousness until I regained it.

One might argue, "but you could have experienced something and the anesthetic simply erased your memory of the experience." However, if a bat is the only authority on what it is like to be a bat, I should likewise be the ultimate authority on my own subjective experiences, and I will testify that while under general anesthesia, there was none. For all intents and purposes "I" did not exist at that time, inside my brain or via the magical transmitter in outer space. Your results may vary.

I will check that philosopher you mentioned ,thanks .
I had a day off today,so :
The same happened to me when i went under the knife after a stupid group of drunks 'fight  haha  once,during my foolish period  : total black out after general aneasthetics: it happened to me just once i do not wish to go through  again,as i do not wish it for anybodyelse for that matter  .

Well, almost the same happens to all of us during deep sleep also ,science is still trying to figure out .

These things + Alzheimer dementia ,their repercussions and those of damaged brain areas  resulting in those corresponding loss of the sense of self , the loss of the capacity to recognize faces ,.....and much more ,as talked about in those videos i provided you with earlier do puzzle me a lot indeed.

So, i can only speculate about consciousness and all that ,and how that might happen : i might be as in the dark in that regard as you might be ,so .

But , art , meditation, spirituality , creative work ....music ....love...do make me get in touch , sometimes , with incredible states of consciousness , awareness, self-awareness ...that are , per definition, uncommunicable as the mystics say , science can never be able to give me .

Words cannot describe those states of consciousness i do experience sometimes , and i can tell you with relative confidence= i am not really sure , who can be in that context ?,  that i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ... : only me can tell what's it like to be a bat , as you said , what is it like to be me during those circumstances .

My own belief also warns me against illusions, delusions ....as well, so , in that regard .

Rumi, for example, just happens to touch and move the right "buttons " in me and in other people ,so, i do not rely much on authority in the strict sense , i just try to learn from the experiences and wisdom of others , so , while trying to figure all that out for myself and what it might mean for me , as a human being , and for the people around me as well ...:

I also do not agree with some aspects of Rumi's philosophy ,wisdom ...and he can try to sing all night about his alleged fact that he succeeded in reaching the so-called beyond thought pure consciousness and all that , but , as long as i cannot pretend to be able to do or reach just that myself , whatever that might be , that would mean nothing to me , personally .

He also tried to use some explicit coarse vulgar sexual stories to convey his so-called esoterics neither me or my faith that also happens to be his would agree with .

Some even call his Mathnawi the Qur'an in Persian: unacceptable pretentious bullshit  .

I read thus a study about those  unethical and perplexing vulgar coarse sexual stories of Rumi in order to convey some of his alleged esoteric messages i was outraged by : the guy might have lost it , i guess .

That study tried to apply Lacan'psychology to Rumi's eroticism ,and came up with disturbing conclusions .

I think that Rumi might have lost it to the point where he "killed " God that Nietzshean way ,via being deceived by his 'enlightened " ego to the point where he could say that God speaks through him , or stuff like that ....

The greatest mystic of them all , Ibn Arabi whose teachings influenced Rumi himself and all other Sufis made some lethal erros  as well .........

Another big shot sufi also made a huge mistake by saying : "I am the Truth= I am God " : he maybe thought he was God , or that he has become God haha  , or maybe he was misunderstood as some say , in the sense that he reached high levels of consciousness ...He was put to death , unfortunately enough , some 11 centuries ago .

This is thus a real minefield ,this risky field of consciousness we must be alert of ...


In fact , nobody teaches us anything , we do : you can take people to the fountain, but you cannot make them drink from it .

Let's just hope some genius would be able , some day , to discover some breakthroughts regarding all that ,so, we can benefit from it as human beings ,because i see nothing more important to human development ,self-development,  progress, enlightenment , evolution, health,peace , love  ...than unveiling at least some secrets of the mysteries surrounding human consciousness .

I must add that science alone cannot do just the latter : only a revolutionary holistic approach can, i dunno .

I do also believe in the fact that we , as individuals , must take that endless restless dynamic journey regarding our own consciousness and destiny : i do not rely much on science to do just that for me  it cannot do , per definition.

It's really amazing that  man can be able to send missions to Mars , conduct experiments about the Big Bang ...and all that , but cannot say almost anything intelligent about human consciousness, the latter , i see , as THE key to almost everything within and without : THE key to relatively trying to understand ourselves and the universe ...

Good night , best wishes , and thanks for sharing all those interesting insights of yours with me , i do appreciate very much indeed .I mean it .

Take care .





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/09/2013 21:09:16


But , you forgot to mention that an artist knows that he / she tries to "reflect reality " in his / her own creative work his / her own subjective way , he / she does not pretend to copy  "reality proper " : if an artist would try to copy "reality " as it is ,

I don't think science tries to "duplicate" reality either. There are many pictures of molecules and cells in my textbook, and some of them are quite different, and exclude or include different information. No diagram or model of a molecule will include or represent everything that is known about a molecule or atoms. That said, some representations or models could be completely inaccurate, with no features that correspond to any of it's properties.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 19/09/2013 21:20:59
The tv set proper ,  and the images of the tv set created by those tv signals the tv receives are 2 different separate things or processes  , while brain and consciousness are 2 different things or processes in 1 , mind and body as being 1 in any given human person   : a kindda combination between dualism and monism .
A combination of dualism and monism? Really? how is claiming mutually exclusive options not special pleading?

Quote
So, when science tries to take a closer look at telepathy, for example , it misses the fact that telepathy cannot be generated on demand ...
Except, of course, that the individuals claiming telepathic skills that get tested believe that they can do it on demand. There's no point testing them otherwise.  The better run tests have them satisfy themselves that their abilities are working in the test environment before putting controls in place. You may not be able to use your claimed telepathic abilities on demand, but can you legitimately contradict those who say they can?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/09/2013 21:49:54
The tv set proper ,  and the images of the tv set created by those tv signals the tv receives are 2 different separate things or processes  , while brain and consciousness are 2 different things or processes in 1 , mind and body as being 1 in any given human person   : a kindda combination between dualism and monism .
A combination of dualism and monism? Really? how is claiming mutually exclusive options not special pleading?

Quote
So, when science tries to take a closer look at telepathy, for example , it misses the fact that telepathy cannot be generated on demand ...
Except, of course, that the individuals claiming telepathic skills that get tested believe that they can do it on demand. There's no point testing them otherwise.  The better run tests have them satisfy themselves that their abilities are working in the test environment before putting controls in place. You may not be able to use your claimed telepathic abilities on demand, but can you legitimately contradict those who say they can?

I can't seem to be able to hold a grudge against anyone long enough ,i see .

Later , alligator : Time up, sorry : I will just say this , for the time being at least :

consciousness is really a highly risky deceptive elusive ...business ,even the greatest mystics of them all happened to have made lethal errors on the subject , by subjecting themselves to delusions they took for real, so .

See above .

I forgive you , my son, even though i am still young ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 19/09/2013 22:27:20
Sorry, mate, but accepting someone else's absurd statement without question, isn't science.

Quote
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond

If you think that its true, how do you know it is true? What do you think "the relatively full scale of human consciousness" means? How do you know that (a) "true mystics" (whatever they are) experience it, and nobody else does? A categorical statement is open to demonstration and test. Have you seen it demonstrated, or tested it? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 15:55:05


But , you forgot to mention that an artist knows that he / she tries to "reflect reality " in his / her own creative work his / her own subjective way , he / she does not pretend to copy  "reality proper " : if an artist would try to copy "reality " as it is ,

I don't think science tries to "duplicate" reality either. There are many pictures of molecules and cells in my textbook, and some of them are quite different, and exclude or include different information. No diagram or model of a molecule will include or represent everything that is known about a molecule or atoms. That said, some representations or models could be completely inaccurate, with no features that correspond to any of it's properties.

Indeed :
 who can say that what we see under the microscope as a cell ,bacteria,molecules, virusses, ...are in fact the way we see them through a microscope .
Quantum mechanics had shown that man's thought or consciousness do change the course or activity of atoms, neutrons ...when the observer looks at them .
If that can happen at that micro level,i see no reason why it cannot happen on the macro level .
I did not say that science does try to "duplicate reality " either : even science itself just give us a representation of reality through our senses ;science that's practiced by humans ,the latter fact we seem to forget about.
We talk about science as if it is some sort of an idependent totally objective tool out there ,it is not .
There  is in fact no such a thing as ...science : there is just a scientific method ,as an effective human instrument or tool to apprehend reality which were /are developed and practiced by humans scientists : science does not have an independent existence of its own ,even in the metaphoric sense .
Even the technology developed by man in order to extend the scope and reach of his /her faculties like seeing via microscopes , brain scans ...are just human manufactured tools to help man extend  the natural limits  of man's limited faculties .

I do not rely on science much when it comes to human consciousness ,love ,spirituality ...
Science just covers a tiny piece of "reality" : just the apparent material side of reality ,so.
I do pity those who do rely on science only though ,simply because they reduce themselves and their whole beings as a result to just that .
I think that the apparent material side of reality , or the natural reality as covered by science are just elaborate illusions, in the sense that that there is much more to them than science can reveal = the underlying reality behind that illusion is somethingelse we should try to approach via ...spirituality .
I see this natural reality as just a veil that deprives us from seeing  the underlying true real reality ,the latter we can only try to approach via spirituality,once again  .
I am gonna even go further by saying that the ultimate reality is...spiritual ,simply because there is no such a thing such as ...matter ,as we understand it to be at least : quantum physics had already shown to us that matter is not really what we think it is ...


But then again, you would argue that this is no science what i was saying : exactly, simply because science can only cover a limited area of "reality " = the illusionary side of reality .
I dunno.

But then again, you would say : there is nothing more tricky deceptive and elusive than spirituality ,i would say : that's the beaurty of it : we gotta try to figure it out for ourselves = an endless restless dynamic journey = a journey far more exciting and challenging difficult ..than science can ever be ,even thou science can help us somehow on that spiritual path we gotta take as well  ...
Spirituality is in fact putting ourselves, our whole beings , our destiny...our future in this life and beyond ..on the line ,while science is just a means to decode some secrets of this temporary apparent side of reality .
Science does not care about the truth or existence of things or beings ,their potential destiny ... it just tries to describe their apparent material processes ....
So, i need much more than just science to live my life and beyond , while trying to figure out what the meaning of life itself would mean to me , what lays ahead after death ........science cannot deliver any answers to, per definition.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 16:44:58
Sorry, mate, but accepting someone else's absurd statement without question, isn't science.

You're extending the scope of science beyond its natural reach , buddy .
See what i said to Cheryl here above in that regard at least .
Critical thinking might be a better word to approach what people claim to experience , but then again, critical thinking fails short at the level of "pure " consciousness  "beyond thought "
This might seem to you as just semantics , but i see no better way to put it to you , since "pure 'consciousness via meditation and via other spiritual means is , per definition, uncommunicable = words fail short to describe it .

Quote
Quote
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond
If you think that its true, how do you know it is true? What do you think "the relatively full scale of human consciousness" means? How do you know that (a) "true mystics" (whatever they are) experience it, and nobody else does? A categorical statement is open to demonstration and test. Have you seen it demonstrated, or tested it?
[/quote]

See above : the only way to figure that out for yourself is by trying to experience those states of consciousnsess, via meditation and via other spiritual means = that's beyond the territory of conventional science and thought .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 16:56:40
The tv set proper ,  and the images of the tv set created by those tv signals the tv receives are 2 different separate things or processes  , while brain and consciousness are 2 different things or processes in 1 , mind and body as being 1 in any given human person   : a kindda combination between dualism and monism .
A combination of dualism and monism? Really? how is claiming mutually exclusive options not special pleading?

Quote
So, when science tries to take a closer look at telepathy, for example , it misses the fact that telepathy cannot be generated on demand ...
Except, of course, that the individuals claiming telepathic skills that get tested believe that they can do it on demand. There's no point testing them otherwise.  The better run tests have them satisfy themselves that their abilities are working in the test environment before putting controls in place. You may not be able to use your claimed telepathic abilities on demand, but can you legitimately contradict those who say they can?
[/quote]

See above concerning what i said to our friends here above  .

The only way to figure out all that for yourself in that regard is by trying to experience those states of consciousness yourself via meditation or via other spiritual means : science or critical thinking alone cannot help you in that regard ,since "pure " consciousness is beyond thought , science ..
Have you ever done some meditation ,Yoga , or some other spiritual exercises ?
Do not reduce yourself to just ..science .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 17:13:52
P.S.: I thought i said what i thought of those mystics and their alleged "pure consciousness beyond thought " claimed experiences ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/09/2013 17:49:54
I forgive you , my son, even though i am still young ...
For what - trying to reason with you?

Or perhaps just early signs of messiah complex... ;)

Quantum mechanics had shown that man's thought or consciousness do change the course or activity of atoms, neutrons ...when the observer looks at them .
Ah, no. The idea that consciousness could collapse the wave function is, and always was, that of a fringe minority of physicists. It clings on outside physics in pseudoscience partly due to a misinterpretation of 'observer' and 'observation'. An observation or measurement in QM is any particle interaction, and an 'observer' can be any measurement device (even a particle). By the time a conscious observer becomes aware of an observation, the wave function collapse is ancient history at QM timescales.

Quote
If that can happen at that micro level,i see no reason why it cannot happen on the macro level .
In a word, decoherence (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-decoherence/).

Quote
... there is no such a thing such as ...matter ,as we understand it to be at least : quantum physics had already shown to us that matter is not really what we think it is ...
An oddly backward-looking way to phrase it; quantum physics shows us that matter isn't what we thought it was. We now have a much better understanding of it than we had before.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/09/2013 18:12:09
Have you ever done some meditation ,Yoga , or some other spiritual exercises ?
Do not reduce yourself to just ..science .
I meditate, and spent some years practicing Yang Family Tajiquan (T'ai Chi). If physical & mental exercise, relaxation, mood elevation, and emotional balancing are spiritual, then they're spiritual exercises.

As you might expect, I take the mystical, paranormal side of it with a pinch of salt (e.g. I see the popular concept of 'chi' as the understandable result of an holistic rather than reductionist approach to physical & mental performance, coupled with a lack of detailed knowledge of human biology, especially physiology - with the more absurd paranormal aspects driven by fakes & frauds and their coteries of hangers-on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I)).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 20/09/2013 18:20:05
There seem to be three different topics: conciousness, sentience and a thing called The Self. I'll have a go at the first two; my views on The Self are not entirely scientific and have no place here.

Back to our trusty old computer. It is not self-aware like me. I can "create" the value 2 in my head, double it, and "create" the value 4 - all on my lonesome! I don't need any prompting, any codes, my consciousness provides me with both the task and the goal and the means to effect both "in my head". The computer, on the other hand, needs to be told what to do and what to do it with - we are matched in the intellectual aspect of number-crunching only. Furthermore, I can decide whether I want to add 2 and 2, the computer cannot. I base the decision on stored data - there were dozens of examples I could have used, I "chose" this one effectively "unconsciously" while my "conciousness" was dealing with the problem "how to get my idea across?". To me, as the author, the example is of little significance; I know what I want to say. It seems to me that consciousness is no more than data handling. Data arrives through a set of senses; the five "physical" ones plus a "mental" one that allows us to be "aware" of our thoughts - working consciousness (is this the sense responsible for "imagination"?). We handle this data incredibly fast, so fast that the distinction between "conscious" thought - getting the view across   - and unconscious thought - the tool will be adding 2 and 2 - becomes blurred, but it is data handling none the less.

Sentience is another issue; it represents a new phase of Evolution which gives a species a drive to classify and a drive to aesthetics (we die for our art, animals die for the mate that the art should win). Put another way, sentience leaves us dissatisfied with merely having "enough" - the grass in the next field may appear greener to the cow so it wanders; we want to measure the field whether it has grass in it or not so we wander too. Life, an evolutionary milestone without doubt, put constructions into the universe that could change that universe to suit their needs - build nests, burrow holes. Sentience, the next milestone in Evolution, developed constructions that could, and do, change the universe whether they need it or not - just for the satisfaction of knowing. Sentience is, in this case, just another evolutionary drive like reproduction or finding a niche, but a strangely anti-evolutionary drive since, with our highly developed data-handling capabilities, we are capable of stopping the universe altogether. It is no wonder that Evolution saw fit to develop sentience and the highly-developed consciousness that we possess together; morality is certainly a sub-routine that I would have included.

To clarify, I see Evolution as a process that has been going on for the entire life of the universe; the "basic law" of Creation, if you like. The first "phase" was a foundation phase (from our perspective) where habitats eventually evolved, the second phase was Life, products that can change their environment to suit their needs, and the third phase is sentience.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/09/2013 18:44:20
It seems to me that consciousness is no more than data handling. Data arrives through a set of senses; the five "physical" ones plus a "mental" one that allows us to be "aware" of our thoughts - working consciousness (is this the sense responsible for "imagination"?). We handle this data incredibly fast, so fast that the distinction between "conscious" thought - getting the view across   - and unconscious thought - the tool will be adding 2 and 2 - becomes blurred, but it is data handling none the less.
I wouldn't argue with that. Except that there are many more than five physical senses (up to about 21, depending on what you want to include (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense)); I also suspect the mental one is composed of multiple facets of awareness.

Quote
To clarify, I see Evolution as a process that has been going on for the entire life of the universe; the "basic law" of Creation, if you like. The first "phase" was a foundation phase (from our perspective) where habitats eventually evolved, the second phase was Life, products that can change their environment to suit their needs, and the third phase is sentience.
It's worth bearing in mind that the processes of natural evolution are undirected, so enumerating such phases of development is a retrospective convenience; the sequence is predictable, as each depends on the previous, but there is no evidence of (or need for) purpose or intent, and no implications for the future.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 20/09/2013 19:05:22
If nonsentient life evolved before sentient life, and sentience is the root of wanting more, how did nonsentient life come to populate the planet? Wouldn't it have been satisfied with the puddle in which it first evolved? So why did sentience evolve, if the primordial puddle was so pleasant? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 20/09/2013 19:32:20
In answer to the last point made by dlorde; who says that "the natural processes of Evolution are undirected."? Regardless of any spiritual connoctations the Universe is, and always has been, developing more and more complex products. In this respect it is far more like old Henrys production line than a place where matter, energy and dead cats can randomly appear, destructive and constructive in equal measure. I would have been happier with "appears to be undirected" but, given the Model T, I would still have wondered.

In respect to the primordial soup mentioned by alancalverd, there was no consciousness involved in "filling the niches"; natural selection took care of the finches and the cows still wander to the other field. Sentience may be the root of wanting "stuff that we don't need" but it is certainly not the root of "wanting more", as any Goldfish, notorious for eating themselves to death, can tell you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/09/2013 19:45:47
If nonsentient life evolved before sentient life, and sentience is the root of wanting more, how did nonsentient life come to populate the planet? Wouldn't it have been satisfied with the puddle in which it first evolved?
How do you define 'satisfaction' and 'want' for non-sentient life? They're generally considered sentient properties. Non-sentient life could populate the planet passively, from its puddle, by variations on the theme of splashing (caused by external agencies).

p.s. It seems unlikely that life evolved in a puddle ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/09/2013 19:58:02
In answer to the last point made by dlorde; who says that "the natural processes of Evolution are undirected."?
No, I said, "the processes of natural evolution are undirected". If you're going to quote me, please use cut & paste rather than memory.

Quote
Regardless of any spiritual connoctations the Universe is, and always has been, developing more and more complex products.
True, but it's a statistical observation, and it goes the other way too - complex things also become simpler. If you start at a certain level of complexity, things can either get more complex, less complex, or stay at the same level of complexity. There is a lower bound on simplicity, but no (known) upper bound on complexity, so complexity will increase. This says nothing about the relative abundance of complexity vs simplicity, if it was even possible to calculate such a measure.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 21:09:20
Have you ever done some meditation ,Yoga , or some other spiritual exercises ?
Do not reduce yourself to just ..science .
I meditate, and spent some years practicing Yang Family Tajiquan (T'ai Chi). If physical & mental exercise, relaxation, mood elevation, and emotional balancing are spiritual, then they're spiritual exercises.

As you might expect, I take the mystical, paranormal side of it with a pinch of salt (e.g. I see the popular concept of 'chi' as the understandable result of an holistic rather than reductionist approach to physical & mental performance, coupled with a lack of detailed knowledge of human biology, especially physiology - with the more absurd paranormal aspects driven by fakes & frauds and their coteries of hangers-on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I)).

Ok, do you have other hypotheses concerning consciousness, other than that materialistic magical  "emergence " trick   then ?
And how do you explain what you experience during meditation ...?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 21:16:42
Guys :

Did it ever occur to you that human consciousness might exist and function outside of the laws of physics ?
Otherwise , just tell me what consciousness is ,and where is it to be "found or localised " in man ?

Just try to answer the following as well, while you are at it :

If consciousness was the product of the "blind " evolution ,if the intellect is the product of the "blind " evolution ,both as some sort of pragmatic survival strategies, then it's pretty logical to question all our sense of reality , knowledge , including the scientific knowledge , including the scientific knowledge regarding  evolution itself = a paradox = try to explain this paradox to me then ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 20/09/2013 21:40:19
I'm sorry I misquoted you dlorde, it was careless and rude of me.

While I understand the argument regarding the bounds of complexity I do not understand why this means that complexity will increase. I agree that there is more "room" for complexity to increase but why must it? What does the universe gain from increasing complexity?

In relation to the last post from DonQuihotte, consciousness is a data-processing operation that takes place in the brain. However, the mind of man is made up of many elements - consciousness, instinct, the unconscious and the previously mentioned Self for example - there may be others. Whether they all have their basis in physics or not is a question of Faith.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 21:48:31
Folks :

I do prefer this anti-reductionist , anti-materialist "emergence " trick, anti-neo- -Darwinian view ...represented by this philosopher , relatively speaking : Thanks ,Cheryl, for that :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 21:51:27
I do not see how relatively intelligent people can believe in that materialistic reductionist neo-Darwinian "emergence " trick bullshit  regarding consciousness  though : Amazing .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/09/2013 22:00:34
In relation to the last post from DonQuihotte, consciousness is a data-processing operation that takes place in the brain. However, the mind of man is made up of many elements - consciousness, instinct, the unconscious and the previously mentioned Self for example - there may be others. Whether they all have their basis in physics or not is a question of Faith.
[/quote]

Explain this magic of yours to me , please  = consciouness is a data- processing that takes place in the brain : ..takes place where in the brain exactly ? how do you know just that ? Try to prove just that then .

Thanks, appreciate indeed , and welcome, even though we do have enough magicians here already , once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 20/09/2013 22:39:02
A windmill might be useful right now.

I'm OK, you're OK. Great book. Read it many times. It occurred to me:

"Now there's an interesting thing. Values are learned initially though “instinct” and instinct in non-sentient creatures is something that helps to keep them alive and successful by controlling their behaviour – don't eat the grass by the T-Rex even if you are hungry and it looks good; eat other grass. Sentience extends this effect to include being “good” as well – alive, successful and good. Don't take the wallet that the customer before you just left on the counter even if you are pretty skint and he looks like he can afford it; it's not right. A £20 note blowing down the street is another matter, though also often difficult.
Could it be that instinct is part of the Self, that it lies very deeply rooted in the value system? Or could it be that instinct is the original, insentient version of conscience itself? This would indicate that the leap from insentience to sentience happened when this, very personal, reservoir of self-esteem got added to the Self, when the judgements of the conscience began to have a lasting effect on our “feel good” factor; guilt is cumulative and people who habitually deny their conscience are unhappy people. The doctors tell us that they are suffering from low self-esteem. If one thinks about this then would it not have been a brilliant evolutionary step in mental development? It would necessitate the development of memory so that one could look back at behaviour that didn't make them “feel good”. Furthermore better analytical ability, intelligence, would need to develop  in order to be able to “rationalise” why one chose behaviour that didn't make one “feel good” or, conversely, why one wasn't going to take the wallet.
Could Sentience be the natural bye-product of the introduction of Self-Esteem into our innermost characters, our Selfs?"

In other words, the whole development of sentience and intelligence was a natural, Darwinian, progression following the development of the psychological trait we call self-esteem, a quantity of every adult mind. Consciousness remains a purely biological function based on electrical impulses in the brain.

The proof you seek is on the trauma ward of every hospital. There are hundreds of brain damaged people who show reduced intelligence, awareness or any other measure of "consciousness".

Do you mean consciousness or do you mean the mind?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 00:12:56
Ok, do you have other hypotheses concerning consciousness, other than that materialistic magical  "emergence " trick   then ?
The only plausible hypothesis I am aware of for consciousness is that it is a function of brain processes.

Quote
And how do you explain what you experience during meditation ...?
I think the main benefits are the result of training the focus of attention in various non-stressful ways. I could probably be more specific given a more specific question.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 00:39:11
Did it ever occur to you that human consciousness might exist and function outside of the laws of physics ?
Otherwise , just tell me what consciousness is ,and where is it to be "found or localised " in man ?
I expect most people with an interest have considered the basis of consciousness; everything else we know about the universe exists and functions within the laws of physics, and as has been said here repeatedly, there's no good reason to make an exception for consciousness, and all the evidence suggests that it isn't an exception.

The evidence suggests it is a process, a function of the brain, which means it is physically localised to the brain. In the sense of it's perceptual or experiential domain, it extends to the sensory limits of our bodies, and can be considered to extend beyond that in various ways. The virtual location of the experiential self is generally felt to be 'behind the eyes', but that feeling can be distorted or dislocated in various ways (an indication that it is a construct of a mapping process).

Quote
If consciousness was the product of the "blind " evolution ,if the intellect is the product of the "blind " evolution ,both as some sort of pragmatic survival strategies, then it's pretty logical to question all our sense of reality , knowledge , including the scientific knowledge , including the scientific knowledge regarding  evolution itself = a paradox = try to explain this paradox to me then ... [/b]
Why do you think it's a paradox? it's logical to assume that those traits are rooted in optimising our chances of survival. Why should we question them any more than our hands and feet or our eyes? In evolutionary terms, they are tools that aid survival. No guarantees for the future though - what is beneficial in one context may not necessarily be in another.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 00:46:19


To clarify, I see Evolution as a process that has been going on for the entire life of the universe; the "basic law" of Creation, if you like. The first "phase" was a foundation phase (from our perspective) where habitats eventually evolved, the second phase was Life, products that can change their environment to suit their needs, and the third phase is sentience.

I don't think there is such a thing as non-sentient life. That's part of the definition of a living thing - can reproduce itself, has a metabolism, maintains homeostasis, and responds to stimuli. Microbes have chemotaxis and move towards an increase in concentrations of nutrients and away from decreases in concentration. And there are unicellular organisms with photosensitive organelles as well.

Some biologists think the brains and nervous systems evolved in order to facilitate processing or responding to the information from the sensing systems, despite the fact that we tend to think of the senses "serving" the brain. Some jelly fish have well developed eyes but no brain. Their eyes transmit signals directly to the muscles. Anyway,  if sentience is defined as being able to sense something in the outside world and react to it in a way that increases survival, that was there from the get go.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 00:59:30
I'm sorry I misquoted you dlorde, it was careless and rude of me.
OK, no offence taken - I tend to be sensitive about it, as your own words are all you have online, and some people like to misrepresent and misquote what you say to make straw-man arguments.

Quote
While I understand the argument regarding the bounds of complexity I do not understand why this means that complexity will increase. I agree that there is more "room" for complexity to increase but why must it? What does the universe gain from increasing complexity?
Why should it be a question of what the universe gains? are you suggesting there is some kind of universal judgement of benefit? by whom, or what?
As I said, it's just a statistical likelihood if some interactions can have more complex results than others. If the more complex results happen to be as stable or more stable than the less complex ones, they are likely to persist. If not, they are likely to break down to less complex ones. Dynamical complex systems, like life, manage to maintain different complex equilibria in the short term (individual lifetime) and the long term (population or species lifetime), leveraging an entropy gradient.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 01:04:26
Anyway,  if sentience is defined as being able to sense something in the outside world and react to it in a way that increases survival, that was there from the get go.
True, although sentience is often defined as conscious awareness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 01:15:02
Have you ever done some meditation ,Yoga , or some other spiritual exercises ?
Do not reduce yourself to just ..science .
I meditate, and spent some years practicing Yang Family Tajiquan (T'ai Chi). If physical & mental exercise, relaxation, mood elevation, and emotional balancing are spiritual, then they're spiritual exercises.

As you might expect, I take the mystical, paranormal side of it with a pinch of salt (e.g. I see the popular concept of 'chi' as the understandable result of an holistic rather than reductionist approach to physical & mental performance, coupled with a lack of detailed knowledge of human biology, especially physiology - with the more absurd paranormal aspects driven by fakes & frauds and their coteries of hangers-on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I)).

Ok, do you have other hypotheses concerning consciousness, other than that materialistic magical  "emergence " trick   then ?
And how do you explain what you experience during meditation ...?


There are tons of studies about what goes on in the brain during meditation if you are really interested. They are hooking up Buddhists monks all the time to imaging instruments. The Dalai Lama, incidentally doesn't see any conflict between his spiritual practice and science, and says “In the Buddhist investigation of reality we traditionally employ four principles of reasoning: dependence, function, nature and evidence. Both approaches [science and Buddhism]  seem to work in parallel." He has invited many physicists and neuroscientists to speak at his conferences. “Bringing science to Buddhist monks does not mean bending the belief system,” he insists, “they are parallel, there is no attempt to harmonize the two."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 01:18:50
@ dlorde : your reductionist magical neo-Darwinian views spring to the face of common sense as obviously false:

I do not understand in fact how can such a relatively intelligent guy such as yourself believe in that materialistic reductionist obvious non-sense :

See this introduction to this interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel i have been reading , i will post a link regarding a site where one can download almost all ebooks of Nagel for free , as i did :

The book's title i am talking about here is : "Mind and Cosmos : Why the materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false :



Chapter 1
Introduction
The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do
with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our
understanding of the entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology
cannot be kept insulated from it, and I believe a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem
must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical sciences in describing the natural
order.
One of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed
and most successful forms of contemporary scientific knowledge. It may be frustrating to
acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at which we find
ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we
have not dreamt. Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility
requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle
sufficient to understand the universe as a whole. Pointing out their limits is a philosophical task,
whoever engages in it, rather than part of the internal pursuit of science—though we can hope that if
the limits are recognized, that may eventually lead to the discovery of new forms of scientific
understanding. Scientists are well aware of how much they don’t know, but this is a different kind of
problem—not just of acknowledging the limits of what is actually understood but of trying to
recognize what can and cannot in principle be understood by certain existing methods.
My target is a comprehensive, speculative world picture that is reached by extrapolation from
some of the discoveries of biology, chemistry, and physics—a particular naturalistic Weltanschauung
that postulates a hierarchical relation among the subjects of those sciences, and the completeness in
principle of an explanation of everything in the universe through their unification. Such a world view
is not a necessary condition of the practice of any of those sciences, and its acceptance or
nonacceptance would have no effect on most scientific research. For all I know, most practicing
scientists may have no opinion about the overarching cosmological questions to which this materialist
reductionism provides an answer. Their detailed research and substantive findings do not in general
depend on or imply either that or any other answer to such questions. But among the scientists and
philosophers who do express views about the natural order as a whole, reductive materialism is widely
assumed to be the only serious possibility.1
The starting point for the argument is the failure of psychophysical reductionism, a position in the
philosophy of mind that is largely motivated by the hope of showing how the physical sciences could
in principle provide a theory of everything. If that hope is unrealizable, the question arises whether
any other more or less unified understanding could take in the entire cosmos as we know it. Among
the traditional candidates for comprehensive understanding of the relation of mind to the physical
world, I believe the weight of evidence favors some form of neutral monism over the traditional
alternatives of materialism, idealism, and dualism. What I would like to do is to explore the
possibilities that are compatible with what we know—in particular what we know about how mind and
everything connected with it depends on the appearance and development of living organisms, as a
result of the universe’s physical, chemical, and then biological evolution. I will contend that these
processes must be reconceived in light of what they have produced, if psychophysical reductionism is
false.
The argument from the failure of psychophysical reductionism is a philosophical one, but I
believe there are independent empirical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in
biology. Physico-chemical reductionism in biology is the orthodox view, and any resistance to it is
regarded as not only scientifically but politically incorrect. But for a long time I have found the
materialist account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist hard to believe, including the
standard version of how the evolutionary process works. The more details we learn about the chemical
basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical
account becomes.2 This is just the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that explains
contemporary science to the nonspecialist. Perhaps that literature presents the situation with a
simplicity and confidence that does not reflect the most sophisticated scientific thought in these areas.
But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the
product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.
I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to the reductionist neo-Darwinian
account of the origin and evolution of life.3 It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it
is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We
are expected to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical
explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some
examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible
probability of being true. There are two questions. First, given what is known about the chemical basis
of biology and genetics, what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into
existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through the operation of the laws of physics and
chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was
set in motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on
earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic
mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the
organisms that actually exist?
There is much more uncertainty in the scientific community about the first question than about the
second. Many people think it will be very difficult to come up with a reductionist explanation of the
origin of life, but most people have no doubt that accidental genetic variation is enough to support the
actual history of evolution by natural selection, once reproducing organisms have come into
existence. However, since the questions concern highly specific events over a long historical period in
the distant past, the available evidence is very indirect, and general assumptions have to play an
important part. My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite
alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of
scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of
common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life.
The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools
needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle’s day. That it has produced
you, and me, and the rest of us is the most astonishing thing about it. If contemporary research in
molecular biology leaves open the possibility of legitimate doubts about a fully mechanistic account
of the origin and evolution of life, dependent only on the laws of chemistry and physics, this can
combine with the failure of psychophysical reductionism to suggest that principles of a different kind
are also at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form
teleological rather than mechanistic. I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous,
but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the
reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science.
My project has the familiar form of trying to meet a set of conditions that seem jointly
impossible. In addition to antireductionism, two further constraints are important: first, an assumption
that certain things are so remarkable that they have to be explained as non-accidental if we are to
pretend to a real understanding of the world; second, the ideal of discovering a single natural order
that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles—an ideal toward
which the inevitably very incomplete forms of our actual understanding should nevertheless aspire.
Cartesian dualism rejects this second aspiration, and the reductive programs of both materialism and
idealism are failed attempts to realize it. The unifying conception is also incompatible with the kind
of theism that explains certain features of the natural world by divine intervention, which is not part
of the natural order.
The great advances in the physical and biological sciences were made possible by excluding the
mind from the physical world. This has permitted a quantitative understanding of that world,
expressed in timeless, mathematically formulated physical laws. But at some point it will be
necessary to make a new start on a more comprehensive understanding that includes the mind. It
seems inevitable that such an understanding will have a historical dimension as well as a timeless one.
The idea that historical understanding is part of science has become familiar through the
transformation of biology by evolutionary theory. But more recently, with the acceptance of the big
bang, cosmology has also become a historical science. Mind, as a development of life, must be
included as the most recent stage of this long cosmological history, and its appearance, I believe, casts
its shadow back over the entire process and the constituents and principles on which the process
depends.
The question is whether we can integrate this perspective with that of the physical sciences as they
have been developed for a mindless universe. The understanding of mind cannot be contained within
the personal point of view, since mind is the product of a partly physical process; but by the same
token, the separateness of physical science, and its claim to completeness, has to end in the long run.
And that poses the question: To what extent will the reductive form that is so central to contemporary
physical science survive this transformation? If physics and chemistry cannot fully account for life
and consciousness, how will their immense body of truth be combined with other elements in an
expanded conception of the natural order that can accommodate those things?
As I have said, doubts about the reductionist account of life go against the dominant scientific
consensus, but that consensus faces problems of probability that I believe are not taken seriously
enough, both with respect to the evolution of life forms through accidental mutation and natural
selection and with respect to the formation from dead matter of physical systems capable of such
evolution. The more we learn about the intricacy of the genetic code and its control of the chemical
processes of life, the harder those problems seem.
Again: with regard to evolution, the process of natural selection cannot account for the actual
history without an adequate supply of viable mutations, and I believe it remains an open question
whether this could have been provided in geological time merely as a result of chemical accident,
without the operation of some other factors determining and restricting the forms of genetic variation.
It is no longer legitimate simply to imagine a sequence of gradually evolving phenotypes, as if their
appearance through mutations in the DNA were unproblematic—as Richard Dawkins does for the
evolution of the eye.4 With regard to the origin of life, the problem is much harder, since the option of
natural selection as an explanation is not available. And the coming into existence of the genetic code
—an arbitrary mapping of nucleotide sequences into amino acids, together with mechanisms that can
read the code and carry out its instructions—seems particularly resistant to being revealed as probable
given physical law alone.5
In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific
world picture from a very different direction: the attack on Darwinism mounted in recent years from a
religious perspective by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe
and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments
they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully
explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves.6 Another skeptic, David
Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference.7 Even if
one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that
these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously.8 They do not
deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.
Those who have seriously criticized these arguments have certainly shown that there are ways to
resist the design conclusion; but the general force of the negative part of the intelligent design
position—skepticism about the likelihood of the orthodox reductive view, given the available
evidence—does not appear to me to have been destroyed in these exchanges.9 At least, the question
should be regarded as open. To anyone interested in the basis of this judgment, I can only recommend
a careful reading of some of the leading advocates on both sides of the issue—with special attention
to what has been established by the critics of intelligent design. Whatever one may think about the
possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine—that the appearance of life from dead matter and its
evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing
but the operation of physical law—cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing
the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis.
I confess to an ungrounded assumption of my own, in not finding it possible to regard the design
alternative as a real option. I lack the sensus divinitatis that enables—indeed compels—so many
people to see in the world the expression of divine purpose as naturally as they see in a smiling face
the expression of human feeling.10 So my speculations about an alternative to physics as a theory of
everything do not invoke a transcendent being but tend toward complications to the immanent
character of the natural order. That would also be a more unifying explanation than the design
hypothesis. I disagree with the defenders of intelligent design in their assumption, one which they
share with their opponents, that the only naturalistic alternative is a reductionist theory based on
physical laws of the type with which we are familiar. Nevertheless, I believe the defenders of
intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the
passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion.
That world view is ripe for displacement, in spite of the great achievements of reductive
materialism, which will presumably continue for a long time to be our main source for concrete
understanding and control of the world around us. To argue, as I will, that there is a lot it can’t explain
is not to offer an alternative. But the recognition of those limits is a precondition of looking for
alternatives, or at least of being open to their possibility. And it may mean that some directions of
pursuit of the materialist form of explanation will come to be seen as dead ends. If the appearance of
conscious organisms in the world is due to principles of development that are not derived from the
timeless laws of physics, that may be a reason for pessimism about purely chemical explanations of
the origin of life as well.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 01:35:46
Have you ever done some meditation ,Yoga , or some other spiritual exercises ?
Do not reduce yourself to just ..science .
I meditate, and spent some years practicing Yang Family Tajiquan (T'ai Chi). If physical & mental exercise, relaxation, mood elevation, and emotional balancing are spiritual, then they're spiritual exercises.

As you might expect, I take the mystical, paranormal side of it with a pinch of salt (e.g. I see the popular concept of 'chi' as the understandable result of an holistic rather than reductionist approach to physical & mental performance, coupled with a lack of detailed knowledge of human biology, especially physiology - with the more absurd paranormal aspects driven by fakes & frauds and their coteries of hangers-on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I)).

Ok, do you have other hypotheses concerning consciousness, other than that materialistic magical  "emergence " trick   then ?
And how do you explain what you experience during meditation ...?


There are tons of studies about what goes on in the brain during meditation if you are really interested. They are hooking up Buddhists monks all the time to imaging instruments. The Dalai Lama, incidentally doesn't see any conflict between his spiritual practice and science, and says “In the Buddhist investigation of reality we traditionally employ four principles of reasoning: dependence, function, nature and evidence. Both approaches [science and Buddhism]  seem to work in parallel." He has invited many physicists and neuroscientists to speak at his conferences. “Bringing science to Buddhist monks does not mean bending the belief system,” he insists, “they are parallel, there is no attempt to harmonize the two."
[/quote]

First of all , thanks a lot for telling me about philosopher Thomas Nagel : he seems to be my kindda guy ,so to speak : i have been reading his introduction as displayed here above for our hopeless reductionist dlorde , an introduction to his "Mind and cosmos : why the materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " .I did download most of the man's books for free .

Second : You seem to have missed my thread : "What is the real origin of the scientific method ? " ,concerning the islamic origin of the scientific method : check it , if you haven't done so already .

Third : Thomas Nagel tries in that book of his to debunk that materialistic neo-Darwinian reductionism in science , he tries to show the obvious limits of man's knowledge , the obvious limits of science ....

Fourth and last :
Science is certainly very welcome in trying to shed some light on spirituality , religious spiritual or mystic experiences , consciousness ...via studying their corresponding links with the corresponding specific brain activity , but , those materialistic reductionist mechanical magical neo-Darwinian interpretations of those scientific studies concerning those activities of the brain corresponding to the above mentioned processes are just that : interpretations = have nothing to do with science proper .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 02:05:16
A windmill might be useful right now.

I'm OK, you're OK. Great book. Read it many times. It occurred to me:

"Now there's an interesting thing. Values are learned initially though “instinct” and instinct in non-sentient creatures is something that helps to keep them alive and successful by controlling their behaviour – don't eat the grass by the T-Rex even if you are hungry and it looks good; eat other grass. Sentience extends this effect to include being “good” as well – alive, successful and good. Don't take the wallet that the customer before you just left on the counter even if you are pretty skint and he looks like he can afford it; it's not right. A £20 note blowing down the street is another matter, though also often difficult.
Could it be that instinct is part of the Self, that it lies very deeply rooted in the value system? Or could it be that instinct is the original, insentient version of conscience itself? This would indicate that the leap from insentience to sentience happened when this, very personal, reservoir of self-esteem got added to the Self, when the judgements of the conscience began to have a lasting effect on our “feel good” factor; guilt is cumulative and people who habitually deny their conscience are unhappy people. The doctors tell us that they are suffering from low self-esteem. If one thinks about this then would it not have been a brilliant evolutionary step in mental development? It would necessitate the development of memory so that one could look back at behaviour that didn't make them “feel good”. Furthermore better analytical ability, intelligence, would need to develop  in order to be able to “rationalise” why one chose behaviour that didn't make one “feel good” or, conversely, why one wasn't going to take the wallet.
Could Sentience be the natural bye-product of the introduction of Self-Esteem into our innermost characters, our Selfs?"

In other words, the whole development of sentience and intelligence was a natural, Darwinian, progression following the development of the psychological trait we call self-esteem, a quantity of every adult mind. Consciousness remains a purely biological function based on electrical impulses in the brain.

The proof you seek is on the trauma ward of every hospital. There are hundreds of brain damaged people who show reduced intelligence, awareness or any other measure of "consciousness".

Do you mean consciousness or do you mean the mind?
[/quote]

Can you prove any of these romantic Cinderella stories of yours ?
What , on earth , are you talking about ?
You have just landed , Mr. magical Eagle , so , you have missed a lot here :
See the previous posts where we talked about damaged brains, the magical "emergence " trick ...........

You haven't answered any of my questions regarding your reductionist magical claims that have nothing to do with science whatsoever , just with materialism  as a world view  in science .
See above : concerning that interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel also : you can read his displayed introduction to that interesting book of his .
I certainly cannot understand the fact that relatively intelligent people such as yourselves can  believe in that materialistic reductionist neo-Darwinian magical "emergence " trick obvious non-sense , come on : amazing : see that book .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 02:29:17
For those reductionists here who might happen to use their critical minds  regarding their reductionist magical non-sense , the following ,concerning Thomas Nagel 's books for free :

http://bookos.org/g/Thomas%20Nagel

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 03:23:58


First of all , thanks a lot for telling me about philosopher Thomas Nagel : he seems to be my kindda guy ,so to speak :



I was afraid you'd say that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 03:27:16
Anyway,  if sentience is defined as being able to sense something in the outside world and react to it in a way that increases survival, that was there from the get go.
True, although sentience is often defined as conscious awareness.

Yeah, Merriam Webster, I notice, includes both definitions. They probably had a big argument about it while writing the dictionary.

So at what point, I wonder, does an animal sense that it senses?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 03:48:41


First of all , thanks a lot for telling me about philosopher Thomas Nagel : he seems to be my kindda guy ,so to speak :



I was afraid you'd say that.
[/quote]

I was  also afraid you would say this    .
What do you think about his views and analyses by the way ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 04:22:29
Quote from: DonQuichotte



I was  also afraid you would say this    .
What do you think about his views and analyses by the way ?

[/quote

I don't agree. I just read him to torture myself.

But if you are going to read Nagel, someone you already agree with, maybe you should also sample something like Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio. Or maybe Patricia Churchland.
Before you say "There is absolutely no way you can derive A from B, you should at least be quite sure you know what B is and what it can do. I just feel you dismiss the brain as a bunch of cells and and chemical reactions in a way too nonchalant and incurious way without bothering to find out. Start with the cingulate gyrus.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 06:11:04
Quote from: DonQuichotte



I was  also afraid you would say this    .
What do you think about his views and analyses by the way ?

[/quote

I don't agree. I just read him to torture myself.

But if you are going to read Nagel, someone you already agree with, maybe you should also sample something like Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio. Or maybe Patricia Churchland.
Before you say "There is absolutely no way you can derive A from B, you should at least be quite sure you know what B is and what it can do. I just feel you dismiss the brain as a bunch of cells and and chemical reactions in a way too nonchalant and incurious way without bothering to find out. Start with the cingulate gyrus.

I can understand that you would disagree with him, but why "torture yourself " by reading him,  or was that just sarcasm  ...  : is he that bad ?
....................I know i am no easy read either haha ......He ,himself,said in his above displayed introduction to his " Mind and cosmos ..." book , that he read the scientific popularized  literature extensively , and he expressed the potential possibility that that literature he read might be too simplistic ...

............................
Well, you got that wrong ,regarding what you said about me at least , and i do have that ebook of Antonio Damasio "Self comes to mind ..." , dlorde told me about it , so, i downloaded it from the net : i will read it whenever i can .

I do value the brain , i am marvelled and perplexed by its complexity and functioning we still know so little about , despite all those breakthroughs in that regard delivered by neuroscience ...: i did give you some links regarding just that earlier ,in the form of those videos, for example

I read relatively enough about the materialistic magical mainstream reductionism in science i am deeply appaled and outraged by its deceptive ideological dishonesty and hijacking of science , as i said many times and in different forms ,to be honest = we hear mostly only about the materialistic interpretations of science , of scienctific results and approaches  that get presented to people as science proper  = science is dominated by that  ..even the meta-paradigm of science is materialistic .
And there is no reason to say that A or the brain ,or what takes place in it , do cause  B or  consciousness : there is correlation and interaction between the 2 , materialists do confuse with causation ,for obvious ideological "reasons " , in order to make those scientific results fit into their materialistic ideology :

I will just let Nagel sum all that up , via the eloquent concise conclusion of his above mentioned book : Here you go :


Chapter 6
Conclusion:
Philosophy has to proceed comparatively. The best we can do is to develop the rival alternative
conceptions in each important domain as fully and carefully as possible, depending on our antecedent
sympathies, and see how they measure up. That is a more credible form of progress than decisive
proof or refutation.
In the present climate of a dominant scientific naturalism, heavily dependent on speculative
Darwinian explanations of practically everything, and armed to the teeth against attacks from religion,
I have thought it useful to speculate about possible alternatives. Above all, I would like to extend the
boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the
world. It would be an advance if the secular theoretical establishment, and the contemporary
enlightened culture which it dominates, could wean itself of the materialism and Darwinism of the
gaps—to adapt one of its own pejorative tags. I have tried to show that this approach is incapable of
providing an adequate account, either constitutive or historical, of our universe.
However, I am certain that my own attempt to explore alternatives is far too unimaginative. An
understanding of the universe as basically prone to generate life and mind will probably require a
much more radical departure from the familiar forms of naturalistic explanation than I am at present
able to conceive. Specifically, in attempting to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon,
it is too easy to forget how radical is the difference between the subjective and the objective, and to
fall into the error of thinking about the mental in terms taken from our ideas of physical events and
processes. Wittgenstein was sensitive to this error, though his way of avoiding it through an
exploration of the grammar of mental language seems to me plainly insufficient.
It is perfectly possible that the truth is beyond our reach, in virtue of our intrinsic cognitive
limitations, and not merely beyond our grasp in humanity’s present stage of intellectual development.
But I believe that we cannot know this, and that it makes sense to go on seeking a systematic
understanding of how we and other living things fit into the world. In this process, the ability to
generate and reject false hypotheses plays an essential role. I have argued patiently against the
prevailing form of naturalism, a reductive materialism that purports to capture life and mind through
its neo-Darwinian extension.

But to go back to my introductory remarks, I find this view antecedently
unbelievable—a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense
.

The empirical evidence can
be interpreted to accommodate different comprehensive theories, but in this case the cost in
conceptual and probabilistic contortions is prohibitive. I would be willing to bet that the present rightthinking
consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two—though of course it may be
replaced by a new consensus that is just as invalid. The human will to believe is inexhaustible.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 07:09:21
Nagel was a bit merciful or too kind in fact :

 He had to say that the reductionist materialistic world view was already laughable , antecedently unbelievable ,childish , ridiculous , magical ...and even stupid , sorry , from day 1 already .
Those huge advances or "miracles " of science were the results of the scientific method , materialism had nothing to do with .
The next generations will show no intellectual mercy for materialism  ...i guess ...simply because materialists   have been deliberately deceiving so many people ,during all those more than 5 centuries up to this present date , in the name of science ...
Ignorant people ,or even ignorant religious extremists might be pardoned for their ignorance , or for their crimes in the name of God ...but, i see not how materialists can be intellectually pardoned for the fact that they have been deceiving people , in the name of science , by deliberately and knowingly presenting their materialistic  world views or materialistic approaches to the peopel as scientific facts or as scientific approaches ...

materialism in science is the biggest scam , the ultimate con and fraud in the history of mankind : worse : and even more so in science....in science most people genuinely trust as a valid source of knowledge like no other .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 21/09/2013 10:41:08
On meditation you won't find a much better book than "The Which Guide to Meditation". It's about 20 years old now but gives a great explanation of the "relaxation response". It is amazing. For many years I slept 4 hours per night, was never tired, and meditated - simple counting breaths until I hit the RR - for 30 minutes each morning and evening. I don't hit the relaxation response very often these days but, when I do, there is still a euphoric feeling when I return from the "poised awareness" state of the relaxation response to normal awareness. I do not know why there is a feeling of euphoria but I think the chances of it being a naturally evolved "reward" to a useful survival trait are good - it is, in some ways, like an orgasm. Mankinds tendency to assign spiritual significance to euphoria provides alternative causes.

DonQuihotte, you asked:
"Can you prove any of these romantic Cinderella stories of yours ?
What , on earth , are you talking about ?..........."

OK. To the first, no I can't - it's pure speculation, a possible explanation. The elements of this speculation - self esteem, conscience, intelligence - are observable as is Evolution. I just put 2 and 2 together and came up with 4, or near enough that I don't "need" any other explanation. Not to say that there isn't one and I'm all ears.

To the second, didn't I just ask you that? There is a reason why we say "the conscious mind". There are things going on in the mind that we are not "conscious" of. The question posed by this conversation asks what is consciousness? I just want to clarify what you mean by consciousness

But you're absolutely right, I am a newbie and, yes, I skimmed over a lot of entries; I'll go back and take a look.

In response to cheryl j, I would not define sentience like this; sensing the outside world and reacting to it is either instinct or consciousness. I would describe sentience as the ability to react, or choose to react, to stimuli in a way not conducive to survival - we don't need to know why stars explode yet we expend resources trying to find out. Such a behaviour change requires a lot more memory and reasoning ability simply because it offers such an expanded scope for choice - a bug can eat, sleep or reproduce, I can do all that or listen to some Led Zeppelin or do the washing up - no contest. Why would we want to do this and what sort of control mechanisms would be required for such a dangerous development in mental ability might be a good subject for another thread but I've referred to my own views regarding drives and reward mechanisms in a previous post. Sorry, but I think "conscious awareness" is just a symptom of sentience.

Thank you dlorde, that makes things clear, I think; The universe appears to function like a conveyor belt because it must, over time, function like a conveyor belt.

Had a glance at Nagel; I agree with some of what he has to say. However, I have a problem with people who won't see what they don't want to. His denigration of "speculative Darwinian explanation" is almost fanatical. I don't believe that science has all the answers either, but I accept the possibility that it may only be a matter of time. I also accept the possibility that science will never have all the answers because there is a supernatural element involved. It's a case of I'll go back 2 million years and show you that my ancestor was an ape just as soon as you show me God.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 21/09/2013 11:12:32
Non-sentient life could populate the planet passively, from its puddle, by variations on the theme of splashing (caused by external agencies).

So why did sentient life evolve at all?

Quote
p.s. It seems unlikely that life evolved in a puddle ;)

The transpiration of water is common to all the things we call life forms, and the hydrogen bond is the basis of DNA mitosis and replication. Whether selfreplicating molecules first appeared in a dirty rain puddle or a vent at the bottom of the ocean is only a matter of size - it's still a puddle!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 12:55:37
So why did sentient life evolve at all?
Because it gives highly complex organisms an advantage; e.g., in cooperation, creative problem-solving, forward planning, etc.

Quote
Whether selfreplicating molecules first appeared in a dirty rain puddle or a vent at the bottom of the ocean is only a matter of size - it's still a puddle!
Puddle < ocean by definition; but yeah, whatever ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/09/2013 14:17:32
@ dlorde : your reductionist magical neo-Darwinian views spring to the face of common sense as obviously false:
Well there's your problem. Common sense can be a very poor guide to how the world works - as has been demonstrated repeatedly, and is one of the reasons critical thinking and the scientific method were developed with such success.

Quote
I do not understand in fact how can such a relatively intelligent guy such as yourself believe in that materialistic reductionist obvious non-sense :
I certainly don't expect you to agree with my position, but given that I've explained the reasons that I take the position I do, in some detail, several times on this forum, your failure to understand is telling - particularly when your counter arguments appear to be the argument from incredulity and the 'spiritual' argument of indescribable private subjective experience.

Quote
See this introduction to this interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel i have been reading
Surprisingly, he explicitly admits his view is based on a degree of ignorance and incredulity:
Quote from: Nagel
This is just the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that explains contemporary science to the nonspecialist. Perhaps that literature presents the situation with a simplicity and confidence that does not reflect the most sophisticated scientific thought in these areas.
...
I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution of life.3 It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.
I suspect that if he'd experimented with evolutionary simulators such as Tierra and it's ilk, and seen for himself the complexity and variation that can arise in simple replicators within a few hundred thousand generations; if he'd looked at the results from labs where single-celled organisms like yeasts and bacteria are gaining novel traits and even speciating in vitro, studied the number and types of speciations that have been observed in the wild, and taken some time to appreciate the significance of deep time and climate & ecosystem variation in evolution, he'd have less untutored incredulity and less difficulty with probability.

It is commendable that a philosopher admits those limitations at the outset, but less commendable that he fails to address them before expounding his opinion.

It's perfectly valid and acceptable to point to areas of uncertainty in our current knowledge, if you're familiar with those areas - he admits he isn't; and it's fine to provide plausible alternatives to mainstream hypotheses and theories - he doesn't.

If he wants to cast doubt on the current mainstream view of the origins and development of life, all he needs is to find a single item of contrary evidence, or plausible contradictory argument. When all's said and done, "I find that hard to believe" is not, of itself, an argument.

I suspect he's just found himself a philosophical doubter's niche he can use to advantage; critical of the mainstream, sympathetic to, yet unsupportive of, theist & irrational alternatives. Sitting high on this intellectual fence, perhaps he feels he can attract more attention - because he must know there is no significant or substantive content to his exposition.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 19:12:48
@ dlorde : your reductionist magical neo-Darwinian views spring to the face of common sense as obviously false:
Well there's your problem. Common sense can be a very poor guide to how the world works - as has been demonstrated repeatedly, and is one of the reasons critical thinking and the scientific method were developed with such success.

Wao, your denials ,blindness ...are staggering : even though common sense is not always reliable, it is in this case ,in the sense that reductionism makes no sense whatsoever , the more when we see it as just an ideology in science ,you seem not yet to be able to differentiate from science proper .
Worse : reductionism in science interprets scientific results or empirical evidence and scientific experiments , scientific approaches its own reductionist way that has nothing to do with science ,obviously, but it has more to do with reductionistic naturalism as an ideology :
Why didn't you try to address that core point of Nagel, instead of circling around it , you're just  addressing the other more or less minor issues of Nagel's analysis = very predictable indeed : you either ignore the core issues related to magical ideological reductionism in science , or you just resort to denigrating or at least questioning your opponents' intellect : did it ever occur to you that that reductionist world view is in fact even stupid, to say the least : you pretend to possess a higher intellect than your opponents via all that fancy talk , while you do believe in the most stupid world view ever ,in the history of mankind : reductionist magical materialistic naturalist neo-Darwinian world view ,the latter as just a reductionist ideological interpretation of the empirical evidence ...
I read extensively concerning the general lines ,specualtions, hypotheises ...of reductionism in science , i think i can say i understand most of  that , relatively speaking then , as i understand your magical "emergence " tricks and their implications + their intrinsic paradoxes you do not even see yourself,to say just that  : you just continue to confuse your reductionistic naturalist religion with science proper .

Quote
Quote
I do not understand in fact how can such a relatively intelligent guy such as yourself believe in that materialistic reductionist obvious non-sense .
I certainly don't expect you to agree with my position, but given that I've explained the reasons that I take the position I do, in some detail, several times on this forum, your failure to understand is telling - particularly when your counter arguments appear to be the argument from incredulity and the 'spiritual' argument of indescribable private subjective experience.

See above :

You're confusing isues here with each other :
You did present no evidence or arguments that might support your magical claims , you just presented the mainstream ideological reductionist naturalist neo-darwinian interpretations of some empirical evidence , see the difference ? = I think you cannot , simply because you do confuse science with the reductionist  naturalist  ideology to the point where you equate between them .
So, do not change the subject or project it on your opponents , simply because the burden of proof must be addresserd by you and by the mainstream reductionist naturalism in science ,that pretends to be scientific .

Quote
Quote
See this introduction to this interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel i have been reading
Surprisingly, he explicitly admits his view is based on a degree of ignorance and incredulity
[/quote]

Are you using his integrity and honesty as arguments against him ?
Who can say that anyone for that matter  knows everything concerning all sciences ,let alone that one  can know all that  ? You're no exception to that rule.

Quote from: Nagel
This is just the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that explains contemporary science to the nonspecialist. Perhaps that literature presents the situation with a simplicity and confidence that does not reflect the most sophisticated scientific thought in these areas.
...
I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution of life.3 It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents tofrom labs where single-celled organisms like yeasts and bacteria are gaining novel traits and even speciating in vitro, studied the number and types of speciations that have been observed in the wild, and taken some time to appreciate the significance of deep time and climate & ecosystem variation in evolution, he'd have less untutored incredulity and less difficulty with probability.
[/quote]

Despite your fancy talk, you are no better than he is , in the sense that you are just reflecting the opinions or interpretations of the empirical evidence by the mainstream reductionists : he's in fact in a better position than you could ever be , simply because he dares to utter his own radical bold anti-mainstream opinions,while you are just repeating those of mainstream reductionism in science : see the difference ?
Incredulity regarding the incredible unbelievable unrealistic obvious ideological reductionist naturalist non-sense in science regarding the very nature of the universe , life , evolution, man ....can be a valid argument : you do not remember saying on this thread yourself that any claims  without evidence should be dismissed without evidence , didn't you ?
I just add to that that abscence of evidence is not always evidence of abscence .
In the case of reductionist naturalism in science : i dare to say that it is certainly a false ideology , simply because the obvious abscence of evidence regarding the extraordinary unbelievable incredible obvious phony claims of reductionist naturalist world view is evidence of abscence .

Quote
It is commendable that a philosopher admits those limitations at the outset, but less commendable that he fails to address them before expounding his opinion. gether with the mechanism of natural selection.
Quote
I suspect that if he'd experimented with evolutionary simulators such as Tierra and it's ilk, and seen for himself the complexity and variation that can arise in simple replicators within a few hundred thousand generations; if he'd looked at the results
[/quote]

The scientific results , empirical evidence can be interpreted via a million ways ,sometimes ..cannot even exclude the fact that there is a higher power behind all of the universe processes and their origins as well  ...for example .
You might argue that some would say that Saint Claus might be behind all those processes as well haha , but that's a lesser serious "argument " : there might be some so-called morphic underlying fields as well underneath those universal processes , who knows ...

So, why  should one  try to reduce everything to just matter and material processes,as reductionist naturalists do indeed in  fact =  certainly without any evidence supporting that magical claim either as well ?
You tell me ..

Quote
It's perfectly valid and acceptable to point to areas of uncertainty in our current knowledge, if you're familiar with those areas - he admits he isn't; and it's fine to provide plausible alternatives to mainstream hypotheses and theories - he doesn't.

He points to more interesting facts : such as the fact that science or our human knowledge or epistemology in general have limits: we cannot know "everything " there is to know , no matter how those lunatics reductionists would try to come up with some so-called theory of everything no one can deliver ,per definition,  not yesterday, not today and not tomorrow or beyond.
Besides, he said also that reductionism in science has really no viable concurrents today ,in the sense that there is no non-materialist world view out there that can pretend to be scientific as that phony reductionist naturalistic ideology in science pretends to be at least ,and that should be no reason to assume that reductionism is true ,is there ?.
His study was comparative , he talked about the disease and its sympthoms as well, while expressing the wish that humanity might be able, in the future , to adopt non-reductionist views, but he fears  that the potential latter might turn out to be as invalid as reductionism today is ...The human will or rather urge  to believe is indeed staggering .

Quote
If he wants to cast doubt on the current mainstream view of the origins and development of life, all he needs is to find a single item of contrary evidence, or plausible contradictory argument. When all's said and done, "I find that hard to believe" is not, of itself, an argument.

Oh, man , the mainstream approach of the origin of life is so full of specualations and unbelievable fairytales that they  can be hardly taken as ...'evidence ", not even remotely close ,come on , be serious .
Even evolution itself is dominated by the mainstream reductionist interpretations of evolution, despite all the evidence regarding evolution : see how reductionist fanatic neo-darwinism of fanatic scientists such as Dawkins and co has been doing to evolution , by interpreting it its  own ideological ways , in order to make the data fit into their ideology ,or in order to  twist  the empirical evidence to the point where it can be squeezed into the reductionist key hole view of life ...as you certainly do as well .

Quote
I suspect he's just found himself a philosophical doubter's niche he can use to advantage; critical of the mainstream, sympathetic to, yet unsupportive of, theist & irrational alternatives. Sitting high on this intellectual fence, perhaps he feels he can attract more attention - because he must know there is no significant or substantive content to his exposition.

Maybe , but he makes sense : we shouldn't try to judge his possible probable intentions, motives ...we cannot know ,come on, we should address just what he says .
You were just being predictably selective in doing just the latter , by ignoring the obvious ideological nature of reductionist naturalism through its neo-darwinism extension you cannot but confuse with science or with the empirical evidence ...

Hopeless discussion .
It's almost impossible to make any believer for that matter see , recognize or acknowledge the obvious holes and paradoxes, bullshit , of his /her own belief , you are no exception to that rule ,neithet am i : the human urge , i would say , to believe is unbelievably puzzling .
When are you gonna realise the fact , if ever , that reductionist naturalism has already reached a dead-end street it cannot find any  way to avoid  ,dude ?
Well, maybe only when man will be able to replace it by a more or less valid world view, i guess, not earlier : why should you wait for just that to happen ? Why don't you use your so-called critical thinking , the scientific method itself , and your bombastic alleged higher intellect to do just that ,during your own lifetime ?,especially when we might consider the possible probable fact that that potential future or futuristic more or less valid non-reductionist world view that might replace that bankrupt false reductionism in science , might be applied when you will be dead :
You would take your reductionist lie to the grave with you , as a result , without ever realising that fact before just that ...
The only comfort or consolation that i can give you is that you will , as we all will also for that matter , know THE Truth with a big T , only after death =that only Certainty out there , in that double sense then .

Good luck indeed .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 19:52:53
On meditation you won't find a much better book than "The Which Guide to Meditation". It's about 20 years old now but gives a great explanation of the "relaxation response". It is amazing. For many years I slept 4 hours per night, was never tired, and meditated - simple counting breaths until I hit the RR - for 30 minutes each morning and evening. I don't hit the relaxation response very often these days but, when I do, there is still a euphoric feeling when I return from the "poised awareness" state of the relaxation response to normal awareness. I do not know why there is a feeling of euphoria but I think the chances of it being a naturally evolved "reward" to a useful survival trait are good - it is, in some ways, like an orgasm. Mankinds tendency to assign spiritual significance to euphoria provides alternative causes.

DonQuihotte, you asked:
"Can you prove any of these romantic Cinderella stories of yours ?
What , on earth , are you talking about ?..........."

OK. To the first, no I can't - it's pure speculation, a possible explanation. The elements of this speculation - self esteem, conscience, intelligence - are observable as is Evolution. I just put 2 and 2 together and came up with 4, or near enough that I don't "need" any other explanation. Not to say that there isn't one and I'm all ears.

To the second, didn't I just ask you that? There is a reason why we say "the conscious mind". There are things going on in the mind that we are not "conscious" of. The question posed by this conversation asks what is consciousness? I just want to clarify what you mean by consciousness

But you're absolutely right, I am a newbie and, yes, I skimmed over a lot of entries; I'll go back and take a look.

In response to cheryl j, I would not define sentience like this; sensing the outside world and reacting to it is either instinct or consciousness. I would describe sentience as the ability to react, or choose to react, to stimuli in a way not conducive to survival - we don't need to know why stars explode yet we expend resources trying to find out. Such a behaviour change requires a lot more memory and reasoning ability simply because it offers such an expanded scope for choice - a bug can eat, sleep or reproduce, I can do all that or listen to some Led Zeppelin or do the washing up - no contest. Why would we want to do this and what sort of control mechanisms would be required for such a dangerous development in mental ability might be a good subject for another thread but I've referred to my own views regarding drives and reward mechanisms in a previous post. Sorry, but I think "conscious awareness" is just a symptom of sentience.

Thank you dlorde, that makes things clear, I think; The universe appears to function like a conveyor belt because it must, over time, function like a conveyor belt.

Had a glance at Nagel; I agree with some of what he has to say. However, I have a problem with people who won't see what they don't want to. His denigration of "speculative Darwinian explanation" is almost fanatical. I don't believe that science has all the answers either, but I accept the possibility that it may only be a matter of time. I also accept the possibility that science will never have all the answers because there is a supernatural element involved. It's a case of I'll go back 2 million years and show you that my ancestor was an ape just as soon as you show me God.

Try to organize your post , please , so, we can address it .Thanks .
See what i said here above to our magical friend here dlorde on the subject :

You also happen to confuse,as all our other magical friends here also do by the way , you confuse that magical false reductionist naturalism as a world view or ideology in science , with science proper , while not being able, of course and obviously , to prove any of your magical reductionist claims on the subject as well .so .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/09/2013 21:02:21
The reductionist naturalist materialist neo-Darwinian world view or ideology in science , has been crippling objectiviy in science :
Congratulations, folks .
Way to go ...
We do really need a revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm in science , together with a revolutionary holistic approach of ...human consciousness, if we wanna ever be able to really know anything relatively objective regarding the secrets and mysteries surrounding the latter hard problem in science = human consciousness ...
Human consciousness as being in fact THE Key to trying to understand ourselves and the universe , to say just that ............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/09/2013 21:51:21
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg418872#msg418872


I can understand that you would disagree with him, but why "torture yourself " by reading him,  or was that just sarcasm  ...



Well, I was joking, in a way. I read things written by people even when I suspect I won't agree with them because it might change my views, or modify them. And because it seems to provoke more creative or clearer thinking than reading someone who just confirms what I already knew or believed.

I honestly don’t understand why you accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with you of “magical” thinking. History overwhelming contradicts your assertion  that  scientific materialism in any way appeals to or relies on   “magical” processes. Innumerable natural phenomena once attributed to acts of Gods or angry spirits have been explained, from lightening to plagues, the changing seasons, the rising of the sun, birth defects, earthquakes, comets...or do you question the magical materialist explanation of those as well? Dlorde made the comment earlier: “Everything else we know about the universe exists and functions within the laws of physics, and as has been said here repeatedly, there's no good reason to make an exception for consciousness, and all the evidence suggests that it isn't an exception.” So why do you think human consciousness is a special exception?

Utility does not prove validity, but mysticism certainly has a dismal track record. You can’t wire a house or build computers or launch rockets with mysticism, you can’t understand photosynthesis or how the kidney works with mysticism, you can’t figure out the age of fossils with mysticism.  ( I honestly don’t know what else to call the immaterial forces or processes you believe are responsible for consciousness, since you won’t identify them either. I’m sorry if mysticism is the wrong word, but it’s the definition that seems to apply.  “Mysticism: Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism:the belief that direct knowledge of ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience such as intuition or insight ”)

This is what I think: In the end, even if it turns out there is some  mystical component of consciousness that I cannot test, identify, or understand, I suspect that I  will still know a lot more interesting and useful things about the mind/ brain, and people through materialistic science than you will through mysticism. What's more, these facts or theories can be shared, and are easily verifiable to other people, and their understanding does not depend on any special, subjective state of mystical insight in myself or them.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 22/09/2013 06:56:44
We do really need a revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm in science

I gave up on Thomas Kuhn when I came across a page of his work that used the word "paradigm" over 20 times, with apparently a different meaning each time. I thought that was the ultimate in oforgawdsake lexicolalia until I saw this! 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 22/09/2013 13:56:11
Unfortunately, DonQuichotte, I have limited time at the weekend and, since several interesting points had been made, I judged the intellect of the members on this forum as sufficient to let me address several points in a single post. Obviously this assumption was an error.

Still, the few comments you did make would indicate that you gave my post a reasonable glance over, thank you. And your answer to dlorde was interesting too, just as Nagel is. Mind you, I would still appreciate an answer to what you mean by "consciousness".

As for reductionist naturalism, indeed my faith in Darwin is as unshakeable as my faith in God, I just look in different places for indications of the latter.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/09/2013 14:13:17
... reductionism in science interprets scientific results or empirical evidence and scientific experiments , scientific approaches its own reductionist way that has nothing to do with science ,obviously, but it has more to do with reductionistic naturalism as an ideology.
Why didn't you try to address that core point of Nagel, instead of circling around it , you're just  addressing the other more or less minor issues of Nagel's analysis = very predictable indeed
I addressed points of interest on Nagel's introduction that you posted. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on that.

If, by 'that core point of Nagel', you are referring to your first convoluted sentence (quoted above), all it seems to say is that reductionism is a has a reductionist approach to, and interpretation of, science; and that you feel it's an ideology that has nothing to do with science. The first part is an obvious tautology; the second, an unsupported assertion of opinion. It seems to me that reductionism is the basis of a number of areas of science, particularly the physical and biological sciences, but it is clearly not the be-all and end-all of science; for example: emergence, holism (e.g. of complex assemblies, ecosystems, etc.), top-down control, feedback loops, etc.

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you just resort to denigrating or at least questioning your opponents' intellect
My opponents? who are my 'opponents'?

Care to quote an example of me denigrating or questioning someone's intellect? (or are you just miffed that I called you on your claim of telepathic powers and the mysterious 'other things as well'?)

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you pretend to possess a higher intellect than your opponents via all that fancy talk
Opponents again?
Articulacy is not a pretence to higher intellect; you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about this. I'm interested in the arguments people present, not their intellect, IQ, or qualifications.

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while you do believe in the most stupid world view ever ,in the history of mankind : reductionist magical materialistic naturalist neo-Darwinian world view ,the latter as just a reductionist ideological interpretation of the empirical evidence ...
You seem determined to force those who differ from your non-materialist view of science into a reductionist idealogue pidgeon-hole. Who was it said, "To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail"?  If you put the hammer down for a moment, you might discover that some of us have already made clear that the reductionist approach is just part (although an important part) of the story.

Distorting someone's view then criticising it for that distortion is fallacious (the 'Straw Man' type of 'Red Herring' informal fallacy (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html)).

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See this introduction to this interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel i have been reading
Surprisingly, he explicitly admits his view is based on a degree of ignorance and incredulity
Are you using his integrity and honesty as arguments against him ?
Evidently not:
Quote from: dlorde
It is commendable that a philosopher admits those limitations at the outset...

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Who can say that anyone for that matter  knows everything concerning all sciences ,let alone that one  can know all that  ? You're no exception to that rule.
Quite true; one can only hope to be reasonably well-informed.

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Despite your fancy talk, you are no better than he is , in the sense that you are just reflecting the opinions or interpretations of the empirical evidence by the mainstream reductionists : he's in fact in a better position than you could ever be , simply because he dares to utter his own radical bold anti-mainstream opinions,while you are just repeating those of mainstream reductionism in science : see the difference ?
Again, articulacy doesn't imply intellectual or moral superiority. Equally, uttering radical, bold anti-mainstream opinions is not necessarily 'better' than holding opinions close to the mainstream. It is the quality of the arguments underlying those opinions that matters. See the difference? ;)

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Incredulity regarding the incredible unbelievable unrealistic obvious ideological reductionist naturalist non-sense in science regarding the very nature of the universe , life , evolution, man ....can be a valid argument...
Incredulity isn't a valid argument, it's a state of mind. An argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, by giving reasons for accepting a particular conclusion as evident.

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So, why  should one  try to reduce everything to just matter and material processes,as reductionist naturalists do indeed...
You tell me ..
A reductionist approach is generally taken because it has been found to be very effective. The objective is not reduction, but explanation and understanding. There are also situations where alternative approaches are more productive.

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Besides, he said also that reductionism in science has really no viable concurrents today ,in the sense that there is no non-materialist world view out there that can pretend to be scientific as that phony reductionist naturalistic ideology in science pretends to be at least ,and that should be no reason to assume that reductionism is true ,is there ?.
Sorry Don, I can't make any sense of that. What are 'viable concurrents'? I agree there appear to be no non-materialist world views that can pretend to be scientific, but what has that to do with whether reductionism is 'true'?

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Hopeless discussion .
Probably.

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When are you gonna realise the fact , if ever , that reductionist naturalism has already reached a dead-end street it cannot find any  way to avoid  ,dude ?
Reductionist naturalism is still producing useful discoveries and knowledge; I don't see that ending any time soon. There are plenty of other approaches to tackle those areas where reductionism is unproductive. I'm wondering whether you've been ranting for so long against this straw-bogeyman reductionist idealogue movement you've invented, that you're beginning to believe it really exists...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/09/2013 14:22:13
Try to organize your post , please , so, we can address it .Thanks .
My irony meter just exploded :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/09/2013 14:24:45
... Utility does not prove validity, but mysticism certainly has a dismal track record. You can’t wire a house or build computers or launch rockets with mysticism, you can’t understand photosynthesis or how the kidney works with mysticism, you can’t figure out the age of fossils with mysticism.  ( I honestly don’t know what else to call the immaterial forces or processes you believe are responsible for consciousness, since you won’t identify them either. I’m sorry if mysticism is the wrong word, but it’s the definition that seems to apply.  “Mysticism: Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism:the belief that direct knowledge of ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience such as intuition or insight ”)

This is what I think: In the end, even if it turns out there is some  mystical component of consciousness that I cannot test, identify, or understand, I suspect that I  will still know a lot more interesting and useful things about the mind/ brain, and people through materialistic science than you will through mysticism. What's more, these facts or theories can be shared, and are easily verifiable to other people, and their understanding does not depend on any special, subjective state of mystical insight in myself or them.
This ^
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 16:58:00
Unfortunately, DonQuichotte, I have limited time at the weekend and, since several interesting points had been made, I judged the intellect of the members on this forum as sufficient to let me address several points in a single post. Obviously this assumption was an error.

Well, you cannot expect people to react to that unorganized post of yours i read : that has nothing to do with the intellect of any potential reader of your post : it was just a matter of organization your post obviously lacked : you can quote the people you wanna react to , as we all do .


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Still, the few comments you did make would indicate that you gave my post a reasonable glance over, thank you. And your answer to dlorde was interesting too, just as Nagel is. Mind you, I would still appreciate an answer to what you mean by "consciousness".

I see human consciousness as the self , the soul, the spirit ...as an immaterial process that can ,obviously , not rise from  unconscious matter : that materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian magical "emergency " trick  is just a fantasy that can explain nothing : one cannot explain B as consciousness  by just assuming that it rises ,via some magic , from A as the brain : that's no explanation, just a presumed causation , presumed causation  is no explanation thus , not to mention the fact that there is only what we can call some sort of a mutual interaction or mutual correlation between brain and consciousness , materialists do deliberately confuse with causation, in order to make the data fit into their materialist key hole world view  .
How brain and consciousness interact with each other ? I dunno : beat me .

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As for reductionist naturalism, indeed my faith in Darwin is as unshakeable as my faith in God, I just look in different places for indications of the latter.

Reductionist naturalism and faith in God do certainly not go with each other = they are mutually exclusive .
Second: the materialist reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian version of evolution should not be confused with the real evolution .
Furthermore,If evolution is exclusively physical or biological, then it cannot answer or account for the hard problem of consciousness in science ,not in a million years :
See Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos ..." interesting book on the subject  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 17:05:31
Try to organize your post , please , so, we can address it .Thanks .
My irony meter just exploded :)

Haha : touche .
Well, i was just referring to the fact that he should quote the specific statements of people he wanna react to : that would make it easier for us all to react to his posts that way .

Besides, to try to tackle the multiple issues raised by consciousness in this thread , does require a lots of time i can hardly afford ;that's why i react so quickly to the posts i quote + English is no first language of mine ...
Try me in French, Dutch or in Arabic ...haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 22/09/2013 17:47:20
I must be very lucky! Not only have a couple of people been able to dig their way through my lack of organisation but you answered my question. My thanks for your perseverance.
As soon as I get an answer from administration I promise to use cut and paste for quotes; please bear with me for a while.

You and I have somewhat different definitions of consciousness. You are clearly more eloquent than a bat so I ask you, what does it feel like to be conscious of your soul?

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"Reductionist naturalism and faith in God do certainly not go with each other = they are mutually exclusive ."

On the contrary, reductionist naturalism is new and a lot of "phenomena" have yet to emerge. I would not be at all surprised if it led us to a better understanding of God - what God is and what God isn't - over time, assuming that some otherwise inexplicable phenomena arise.
Maybe they have - the timing of social breakthroughs attributed to prophets is a particular interest of mine - but there are no answers to the origin of consciousness here, not by any definition that I know anyway.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 18:38:20
... reductionism in science interprets scientific results or empirical evidence and scientific experiments , scientific approaches its own reductionist way that has nothing to do with science ,obviously, but it has more to do with reductionistic naturalism as an ideology.
Why didn't you try to address that core point of Nagel, instead of circling around it , you're just  addressing the other more or less minor issues of Nagel's analysis = very predictable indeed
I addressed points of interest on Nagel's introduction that you posted. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on that.

I haven't read the whole book yet either : i recommend strongly though that you try to read it : i would be interested in your potential comments regarding that book afterwards , to see if Nagel would make some effect on you ,via his interesting analysis : that book would help you understand most of what i was saying all along, much better than i can ever do .
Besides, you haven't addressed the core issue of that introduction i posted = the fact that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinism in science , is a bankrupt false impotent  ideology that should be rejected .

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If, by 'that core point of Nagel', you are referring to your first convoluted sentence (quoted above), all it seems to say is that reductionism is a has a reductionist approach to, and interpretation of, science; and that you feel it's an ideology that has nothing to do with science. The first part is an obvious tautology; the second, an unsupported assertion of opinion. It seems to me that reductionism is the basis of a number of areas of science, particularly the physical and biological sciences, but it is clearly not the be-all and end-all of science; for example: emergence, holism (e.g. of complex assemblies, ecosystems, etc.), top-down control, feedback loops, etc.


The core poit was in fact : that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false : a false view of the world that should be rejected by all sciences for that matter , simply because it  cannot explain the universe , just via matter and material or physical processes : the major anomaly that debunks naturalism is the hard problem of consciousness in science : see that book of Nagel on the subject .

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you just resort to denigrating or at least questioning your opponents' intellect
'?
My opponents? who are my 'opponents?

Whoever might disagree with your axiomatic irrational magical reductionist naturalist belief or religion in science , you do confuse with science proper .

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Care to quote an example of me denigrating or questioning someone's intellect? (or are you just miffed that I called you on your claim of telepathic powers and the mysterious 'other things as well'?)

Never mind , we're not gonna get stuck in this side irrelevant issue .

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you pretend to possess a higher intellect than your opponents via all that fancy talk
Opponents again?
Articulacy is not a pretence to higher intellect; you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about this. I'm interested in the arguments people present, not their intellect, IQ, or qualifications.

Well, there we are again : let's get it over with once and for all then ,shall we ? You said earlier , for example ,to mention just that , that my presumed failure to understand your emergence magical assertions (any idiot can in fact understand that "emergence " magical trick  , that's not really a difficult magic to understand ,even though it's a materialist false assumption ) ...is the issue here , not those naturalist reductionist magical false interpretations of   science and science results: you did not say that this way at least , this is just my own expression  or interpretation of what you said, since you do seem to be oversensitive regarding the misquotations of your words .

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while you do believe in the most stupid world view ever ,in the history of mankind : reductionist magical materialistic naturalist neo-Darwinian world view ,the latter as just a reductionist ideological interpretation of the empirical evidence
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...
You seem determined to force those who differ from your non-materialist view of science into a reductionist idealogue pidgeon-hole. Who was it said, "To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail"?  If you put the hammer down for a moment, you might discover that some of us have already made clear that the reductionist approach is just part (although an important part) of the story.

I saw none but reductionist naturalist views from you  so far , but i might be mistaken indeed , since i do not have time enough to investigate all your sayings thoroughly this way at least  .

But ,the core issue here is that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian dominance in science , that magical reductionist "emergence " trick is an extension of .
What non-reductionist views do you have then,on the subject  ?


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Distorting someone's view then criticising it for that distortion is fallacious (the 'Straw Man' type of 'Red Herring' informal fallacy (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html)).

I am not aware of any distortions of your views ,it is perfectly possible thought that i might have done so , if there were some , do tell me about them .

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See this introduction to this interesting book of philosopher Thomas Nagel i have been reading
Surprisingly, he explicitly admits his view is based on a degree of ignorance and incredulity
Are you using his integrity and honesty as arguments against him ?
Evidently not:
Quote from: dlorde
It is commendable that a philosopher admits those limitations at the outset...
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Who can say that anyone for that matter  knows everything concerning all sciences ,let alone that one  can know all that  ? You're no exception to that rule.
Quite true; one can only hope to be reasonably well-informed.

It is a must indeed that any thinker , scientist ....must admit his/her  limitations= a matter of honesty and integrity  ,not to mention the fact that even science itself, our human knowledge in general ,our logic , reason,common sense ...our human epistemology for that matter ...do have limits , in the sense that we certainly cannot know all there is to know out there , despite those silly attempts of reductionists to try to come up with some sort of magical theory of everything ...no one for that matter can deliver , per definition,no way  .
(I , personally ,do think that God Himself is "the theory of everything" or THE Truth with a big T ,THE source of knowledge ,beauty, love , justice, goodness , ethics ... ,but that's no scientific statement of course  )

Read that Nagel's book , and then tell me whether  you think he is  reasonably well-informed or not .

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Despite your fancy talk, you are no better than he is , in the sense that you are just reflecting the opinions or interpretations of the empirical evidence by the mainstream reductionists : he's in fact in a better position than you could ever be , simply because he dares to utter his own radical bold anti-mainstream opinions,while you are just repeating those of mainstream reductionism in science : see the difference ?
Again, articulacy doesn't imply intellectual or moral superiority. Equally, uttering radical, bold anti-mainstream opinions is not necessarily 'better' than holding opinions close to the mainstream. It is the quality of the arguments underlying those opinions that matters. See the difference? ;)

It is the quality of the arguments indeed that matters ,but you have already judged Nagel before reading that book of his , remember , and you used his integrity and honesty regarding his perfectly normal and logical relative ignorance on the subject he happened to have admitted as anyone should do in that regard ,you used that as "arguments" against him ,ironically enough .
Worse : you even explicitly uttered the  accusation that Nagel might be just looking for fame , for followers ...
Your selective amnesia is staggering .

Second, you contradict yourself in this regard , since you , personally , happen to believe in a ,sorry , stupid irrational unproved conception of nature or the universe = the naturalist reductionist world view ,while attacking people that might disagree with you , via accusing them of ignorance, incredulity , ...

Never mind , just read that book , because this silly side talk about allegedly denigrating one's intellect  is irrelevant .

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Incredulity regarding the incredible unbelievable unrealistic obvious ideological reductionist naturalist non-sense in science regarding the very nature of the universe , life , evolution, man ....can be a valid argument...
Incredulity isn't a valid argument, it's a state of mind. An argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, by giving reasons for accepting a particular conclusion as evident
.

Exactly : read the man before judging him or his assertions then .
Do you remember ,by the way, saying that any claims without evidence should be dismissed without evidence ? : the naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature or the universe is just that : a world view without any evidence whatsoever to support it ,that's why i dismiss it without any evidence .

Why do you believe in it without evidence then ? The burden of proof is yours to address and eventually deliver , don't you think ? : see the difference ?  haha


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So, why  should one  try to reduce everything to just matter and material processes,as reductionist naturalists do indeed...
You tell me ..
A reductionist approach is generally taken because it has been found to be very effective. The objective is not reduction, but explanation and understanding. There are also situations where alternative approaches are more productive.

That's exactly what i was talking about all along = that reductionist ideological  approach in science cannot explain the universe , not just via its materialist approach ,no way : see Nagel's book on the subject ,once again : he would explain just that to you , much better than i can ever do : even evolution itself cannot be exclusively physical or biological, otherwise it certainly cannot explain consciousness ...that was one of the reasons why i did open that thread concerning the presumed exclusive biological nature of evolution ...that cannot account for the existence of  consciousness in any living organism out there for that matter , or for the existence of the human thought process, feelings , emotions , love , ethics , currents of thought , cultures , religions ...it gets extended to materialistically  ,for obvious materialist reasons
But, nobody seemed to get the point back then, that's why i left that thread about evolution  .
Reductionist naturalist materialism cannot explain life ,for example,let alone consciousness in any living organism for that matter , not only in man ,  not via just material processes ,no way : otherwise , just explain to me how life emerged , so to speak , from organic matter , or how inorganic matter gave rise to the organic one ...
I am well aware of all those materialist speculations and unbelievable fairy tales regarding the origins of life .....in science .

All sciences must in fact reject that materialist reductionism ,simply because it is intenable, even at the level of matter itself ..
You do confuse that reductionist ideological approach with the effectiveness of the scientific method or with science = all those huge great achievements of science during at least the last 5 centuries.were the direct results of the unparalleled effectiveness of the scientific method or science ,materialism had / has nothing  to do with , materialism that's been hijacking science since , for obvious ideological "reasons " ,by trying to make the empirical evidence fit into that materialist reductionist key hole world view , in vain , in order to "validate " itself in the process, without ever being able to do just the latter ,for obvious reasons that had / have to do with the very false nature of reductionism as a false ideology itself.

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Besides, he said also that reductionism in science has really no viable concurrents today ,in the sense that there is no non-materialist world view out there that can pretend to be scientific as that phony reductionist naturalistic ideology in science pretends to be at least ,and that should be no reason to assume that reductionism is true ,is there ?.
Sorry Don, I can't make any sense of that. What are 'viable concurrents'? I agree there appear to be no non-materialist world views that can pretend to be scientific, but what has that to do with whether reductionism is 'true'?

Reductionism pretends to be scientific ,right ? ,in order to validate itself , as i explained above = the non-reductionist world views out there cannot claim to be scientific and therefore "validate " themselves , as reductionism tries to do at least :
Result ? Most people think reductionism is true , just because reductionism makes them believe it is scientific ...
Science is the most effective unparralleled tool to deliver any valid knowledge for that matter , so, most people genuinely trust it , and rightly so , to understand the universe and ourselves .
But when science is dominated by that false reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian ideology ,as it is actually the case , that cannot explain life , consciousness, the universe ...,not via just material processes,  an ideology most people do confuse with science , an ideology which cripples the ability of science to help us understand ourselves and the universe , then , it's pretty logical to try to look for non-reductionist paradigms or for non-reductionist meta-paradigms in science , in order to refine science in its  path to explain the universe to us .

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Hopeless discussion .
Probably.

We do not listen to each other , and every one is digging in , without trying to question one's views or interpretations of science or of the empirical evidence , so, that might result in a counter-productive hopeless discussion , logically .

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When are you gonna realise the fact , if ever , that reductionist naturalism has already reached a dead-end street it cannot find any  way to avoid  ,dude ?
Reductionist naturalism is still producing useful discoveries and knowledge; I don't see that ending any time soon. There are plenty of other approaches to tackle those areas where reductionism is unproductive. I'm wondering whether you've been ranting for so long against this straw-bogeyman reductionist idealogue movement you've invented, that you're beginning to believe it really exists...

Thanks, this is exactly what i meant by : hopeless discussion : you do even deny the very real existence of the problematic  reductionist dominating ideology in science that had/has nothing to do with all those "miracles " achieved by science during the last 5 centuries at least : see that book of Nagel on the subject : he might be delusional as well regarding the real existence of reductionism in science as a false unproved  untrue promissory messianic religion that's been dominating and hijacking science , for ideological "reasons", during all those centuries up to this present date . 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 19:47:25
I must be very lucky! Not only have a couple of people been able to dig their way through my lack of organisation but you answered my question. My thanks for your perseverance.

Thanks, you're welcome, don't mention it .
You're such a sweet polite guy that i would have fallen in love with you, if only i was  gay  haha , which i am not,thank God ,God forbids haha  .

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As soon as I get an answer from administration I promise to use cut and paste for quotes; please bear with me for a while.

Ok, no problem : what seems to be the problem that needs attention from administration  ?
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You and I have somewhat different definitions of consciousness.

Pretty normal fact  : what's your own definition of consciousness then ?

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You are clearly more eloquent than a bat

Thanks, really ? How ?

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so I ask you ,what does it feel like to be conscious of your soul?

It feels just like me being conscious of my soul or rather of myself ,whatever the latter might be ,  as you put it at least= a subjective unique -to-me experience , as a human being .

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"Reductionist naturalism and faith in God do certainly not go with each other = they are mutually exclusive ."

On the contrary, reductionist naturalism is new and a lot of "phenomena" have yet to emerge
.

There is nothing new about reductionist naturalism in science : see that Nagel's book on the subject .

A lot of "phenomena " have yet to "emerge" from what or from where and how ? What "phenomena " exactly ? How do you know just that ? Is that a fact ? Can you predict the future ? 
Are you referring to 'emergent phenomena " like consciousness "was /is " , popping out suddenly from the biological physical evolutionary complexity of the brain, via some mysterious unexplained unexplicable magic ?
How can the unconscious matter ever give rise to such a totally different " thing " or rather process such as the immaterial consciousness ? Well, materialists just try to avoid that anomaly inescapable snare or lethal trap by reducing consciousness to just material or biological processes haha , an obviously false materialist ideological assumption they can never be able to "explain " ,per definition : they 're stuck in there as elsewhere : the last nails were already hemmed in in the coffin of that untrue materialistic deceptive scam ever in the history of mankind , whose already declared clinical death almost no one will ever regret or mourn = condolences though  .

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I would not be at all surprised if it led us to a better understanding of God - what God is and what God isn't - over time, assuming that some otherwise inexplicable phenomena arise.

Once again,reductionist naturalism and the concept of God are 2 mutually exclusive "things " : reductionist naturalism that assumes the universe to be just exclusively material or physical = God as a non -material "being or process or whatever   has no place in this reductionist world view " .
Reductionism cannot even explain life itself, consciousness itself ...let alone other potential future inexplicable -via-materialism phenomena that might arise  .

Reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinism in science , as just a false untrue  ideology  in science ,the latter that has nothing to do with whatsoever (that reductionism in science just delivers its own ideological interpretation of evolution in fact , i might add , evolution might not be only physical biological , but might also be mental ..... ) has already been getting stuck in an inescapable unsolvable unavoidable- for- materialism dead-end street , it can neither escape from nor avoid .

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Maybe they have - the timing of social breakthroughs attributed to prophets is a particular interest of mine - but there are no answers to the origin of consciousness here, not by any definition that I know anyway.

I am also interested in similar ,but different prophecies .
I will unveil a secret to you ,not really a secret though,  i never revealed here to anyoneelse = i think that humans will never be able to figure out what the nature of human consciousness might be  , ever , not in this temporary life at least , simply because human consciousness or soul, spirit ...is beyond humans' reach : neither science , nor human reason, logic ...or any world view,religion... out there for that matter ,can tell you what the nature of human consciousness might be  , ...and simply because human consciousness is 1 of those "things " we cannot , per definition, know , not in this life at least .
Some religions might tell you Who happened to make  human consciousness come to exist ,but they can never tell you how , why , when ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 22/09/2013 20:29:22
We have been discussing different things. Consciousness, to me, is a subset of functions of the Mind. It includes handling senses, memories, intellect. However, there are many other areas of the mind, the sub-conscious is as good a name as any. You seem to mean the Mind in its entirety. Again, from my own personal viewpoint, I find a place in the Mind for God, I simply would not put it within the area of my "consciousness".

That being said, Minds have evolved and will continue to evolve. We will have ideas and develop proofs to things neither you nor I can imagine, and they will do it using tried-and-trusted methods that fit the facts. They are tools, and good ones. They are no more the only tool in the tool-box than religion is and it is a limitation to deny the usefulness of one or the other. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 21:16:35
We have been discussing different things. Consciousness, to me, is a subset of functions of the Mind. It includes handling senses, memories, intellect. However, there are many other areas of the mind, the sub-conscious is as good a name as any. You seem to mean the Mind in its entirety. Again, from my own personal viewpoint, I find a place in the Mind for God, I simply would not put it within the area of my "consciousness".

That being said, Minds have evolved and will continue to evolve. We will have ideas and develop proofs to things neither you nor I can imagine, and they will do it using tried-and-trusted methods that fit the facts. They are tools, and good ones. They are no more the only tool in the tool-box than religion is and it is a limitation to deny the usefulness of one or the other. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I see i did waste my time for nothing , unfortunately enough : thanks for just that .

What happened ? can't you handle ot rather deal with what i said ? that you just resorted to rhetorics, pleading , to that  promissory messianic materialism , to this psychological self-defense or retreat or denials ... as a result? .........Weird .

Just know that ideas are first opposed , then ridiculed , and only then accepted as such as obvious evidence afterwards : you, guys , do need to go through that process regarding the ideological nature of reductionism in science , the latter has nothing to do with : read that Nagel's book then , to figure all that out for yourself .

Good luck indeed .

I do mean the Mind in its entirety indeed when i say consciousness or soul , the "I'...the self ... .

Consciousness cannot be reduced to that definition of yours thus .

You are perfectly entiteld to your own opinions indeed .
Once again, just try not to confuse reductionism as an ideology in science with science proper : for example, the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian version of evolution or reductionist ideological interpretation of evolution has not much to do with the scientific empirical evidence regarding evolution ...the scientific empirical evidence regarding evolution that gets interpreted or rather misinterpreted by reductionism in a way that makes it fit into materialism as an ideology , as Nagel said in that book of his you should really try to read .

I love science so much to the point that i would love to see science proper get rid of that reductionist ideology and reductionist meta-paradigm dominating in science that do cripple the ability of science to deliver intelligible explanations of the universe and ourselves .....

Our consciousness does evolve indeed, religions too by the way , as the universe is still expanding , as the creation of the universe is still an ongoing dynamic process as well .

There is indeed nothing more important to human growth , progress , evolution, development , self-development , enlightenment ....than to try to figure out at least some secrets concerning the mysteries surrounding human consciousness reductionism in science cannot , per definition, deliver , ever .
I also think that the next level of human evolution will be occuring at the level of human consciousness : see what quantum physicist Peter Russell has to say on the subject as well  :


http://keentalks.com/primacy-consciousness/



Just try to read that Nagel's book , and you will understand what i was saying about reductionism as an ideology in science , and much more ...

The universe , life ....are not exclusively material as reductionism wanna make you believe in ,and therefore there is no way for materialism in science to deliver anything scientific regarding the immaterial side of life , the immaterial side of reality ...regarding the immaterial consciousness ...

Do not listen to me then,just read that book : you, guys , have been so brainwashed and indoctrinated by materialism for so long now that you cannot but confuse it with science proper : i do not really blame you for that fact : you are just yet another victim of reductionism .

P.S.: Reductionism, per definition, excludes any "ideas " regarding the immaterial or supernatural, including the "idea " of God , once again : God is in fact no "idea " ,they just use the word idea of God , in order to suggest that it was created by man via man's evolved brain ...

See in this regard reductionism at work , see how the mainstream reductionism  in science misinterprets the empirical evidence regarding the functioning of the human brain, for example, in order to make it fit into the materialist  world view :

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/god-on-the-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/phantoms-in-the-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/mystical-brain/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/michael-shermer-the-believing-brain/

Some scientists in those videos might tell you that those materialist interpretations of theirs regarding those scientific results do not debunk the "idea " of God (Science proper is not interested in or rather cannot prove-disprove the "idea " of God indeed ) , but they are just lying , simply because materialism , per definition, excludes any "idea " of the supernatural : do you see that subtle difference between what science says or rather can or cannot say on the subject of the supernatural or God , and what those hypocrit materialist scientists say, in total contrast with their own materialism on the same subject that excludes the supernatural  ? I think you are intelligent enough to grasp just that subtle difference .


Good luck with your own search and journey .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/09/2013 21:40:56
Just for the record : for those who might misunderstand or misinterpret my core points and motives :

I am no so-called evangelic missionary on a presumed or alleged mission to "convert " anyone here or elsewhere .

 I do despise all kinds of missionaries in fact, either religious or secular, (Reductionism in science is just a form of a secular missionary religion in science , unfortunately enough , we should all condemn as such )  :

I just try to make you, folks , try to differentiate science proper from missionary reductionism as an ideology in science : that's all .
I am in fact against any ideology for that matter in science ...
I do love science so much that i cannot but try to detect ,reveal ,   debunk or condemn any ideology for that matter in ...science proper .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 22/09/2013 22:42:55
"What happened ? can't you handle ot rather deal with what i said ? that you just resorted to rhetorics, pleading , to that  promissory messianic materialism , to this psychological self-defense or retreat or denials ... as a result? .........Weird ."
Weird?

"Consciousness cannot be reduced to that definition of yours thus."
There are plenty of books describing the "conscious" mind - the stuff that you are aware of - and the sub-conscious, like core value systems and self-esteem. Of course, the activation of the relaxation response during meditation is an act outside of consciousness. Your expansion of the definition of consciousness to include elements that are clearly part of the sub-conscious mind makes no sense. I'm afraid that I will have to stick by my, admittedly plagiarised, definition.

"Once again, just try not to confuse reductionism as an ideology in science with science proper"
It could well be that I have misunderstood. I understand reductionism to suggest that everything can be explained according to science and will be, eventually, as our abilities increase. Have I missed the point here? If so please excuse me.

I am sure you hold your own spiritual views as closely as I hold my own, and I am always happy to find somebody who believes in God, regardless of how they came to that belief. From my viewpoint, you are a fortunate man. It is not that I find you an evangelist "for God" rather than I find you evangelising "against" a philosophy that attempts to disprove God, a philosophy that says, "we do not need God, Science has it all". I find this an excellent basis for acquiring knowledge of the Universe and do not understand why anybody would object. However, I may, as stated, have misunderstood the meaning of reductionism.

(By now you may have realised that I don't know how to use the "quote" feature, which is why I contacted Admin. There doesn't seem to be any info in the "help" on this site or the forum software providers site. All I can see is a general "quote" button on each post but no details on how to use it. No doubt I'll have an answer next week. Thank you for your concern; I didn't want to burden anybody.)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/09/2013 23:11:20
.. you haven't addressed the core issue of that introduction i posted = the fact that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinism in science , is a bankrupt false impotent  ideology that should be rejected .
OK; I don't agree that it's 'a bankrupt false impotent  ideology that should be rejected'.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
.. that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false : a false view of the world that should be rejected by all sciences for that matter , simply because it  cannot explain the universe , just via matter and material or physical processes : the major anomaly that debunks naturalism is the hard problem of consciousness in science : see that book of Nagel on the subject .
If you reject all methodologies that cannot explain everything, you'll end up with none and miss out on a lot -  unless you know of an approach that can explain the universe and consciousness?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
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Quote from: DonQuichotte
you just resort to denigrating or at least questioning your opponents' intellect

Care to quote an example of me denigrating or questioning someone's intellect?
Never mind , we're not gonna get stuck in this side irrelevant issue .
I thought not.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
You said earlier , for example ,to mention just that , that my presumed failure to understand your emergence magical assertions (any idiot can in fact understand that "emergence " magical trick  , that's not really a difficult magic to understand ,even though it's a materialist false assumption ) ...is the issue here , not those naturalist reductionist magical false interpretations of   science and science results: you did not say that this way at least , this is just my own expression  or interpretation of what you said, since you do seem to be oversensitive regarding the misquotations of your words .
No indeed, I didn't say that. I said your failure to understand my viewpoint, despite repeated explanations of it, is telling.
I think it's reasonable to object to being misquoted or misrepresented. 

Quote from: DonQuichotte
I saw none but reductionist naturalist views from you  so far , but i might be mistaken indeed , since i do not have time enough to investigate all your sayings thoroughly this way at least  .
Do you think the idea of emergence is reductionist? :)

Quote from: DonQuichotte
What non-reductionist views do you have then,on the subject  ?
I already said, there are other useful approaches. I listed  some examples. These  approaches are all tools for gaining knowledge; they are useful in appropriate contexts. They're not mutually exclusive. You seem to think they're like religious belief systems; they're not.

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I am not aware of any distortions of your views ,it is perfectly possible thought that i might have done so , if there were some , do tell me about them .
I already did; remember the man with a hammer?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Read that Nagel's book , and then tell me whether  you think he is  reasonably well-informed or not .
He may well be; that doesn't make him right.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
... you have already judged Nagel before reading that book of his , remember , and you used his integrity and honesty regarding his perfectly normal and logical relative ignorance on the subject he happened to have admitted as anyone should do in that regard ,you used that as "arguments" against him ,ironically enough .
I've judged only the introduction you posted. I commended him for admitting his limitations, ironically enough.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
you even explicitly uttered the  accusation that Nagel might be just looking for fame , for followers ...
Your selective amnesia is staggering .
No, I said "perhaps he feels he can attract more attention". You made up the bit about fame and followers. Selective amnesia?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Second, you contradict yourself in this regard , since you , personally , happen to believe in a ,sorry , stupid irrational unproved conception of nature or the universe = the naturalist reductionist world view ,while attacking people that might disagree with you , via accusing them of ignorance, incredulity , ...
I didn't have to make accusations of ignorance and incredulity - Nagel admitted them.

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... this silly side talk about allegedly denigrating one's intellect  is irrelevant .
Quite, so why bring it up?

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Incredulity  ....can be a valid argument.
Incredulity isn't a valid argument, it's a state of mind...
Exactly
Make up your mind - either incredulity is a valid argument or it isn't (hint: it isn't).

Quote from: DonQuichotte
read the man before judging him or his assertions then .
I did. You posted some of his assertions, I read them, then judged them. Simples.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Do you remember ,by the way, saying that any claims without evidence should be dismissed without evidence ? : the naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature or the universe is just that : a world view without any evidence whatsoever to support it ,that's why i dismiss it without any evidence .
So do you dismiss the multiple lines of evidence for evolution by natural selection - or are you just unaware of them ?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
The burden of proof is yours to address and eventually deliver , don't you think ? : see the difference ?  haha
You have it backwards. The burden of proof lies with those wishing to overturn, contradict, or correct the established body of knowledge. See the difference?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Reductionism pretends to be scientific ,right ?
Your question doesn't make sense to me. Reductionism is an approach commonly used in science.

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see that book of Nagel on the subject : he might be delusional as well regarding the real existence of reductionism in science as a false unproved  untrue promissory messianic religion that's been dominating and hijacking science , for ideological "reasons", during all those centuries up to this present date .
You said it, not me :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/09/2013 23:33:02
It is not that I find you an evangelist "for God" rather than I find you evangelising "against" a philosophy that attempts to disprove God, a philosophy that says, "we do not need God, Science has it all".
It's not so much a philosophy that 'attempts to disprove God' (that's not possible), but one which ignores God as irrelevant. That probably annoys theists more than denying or attempting to disprove it ;)

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By now you may have realised that I don't know how to use the "quote" feature, which is why I contacted Admin. There doesn't seem to be any info in the "help" on this site or the forum software providers site. All I can see is a general "quote" button on each post but no details on how to use it.
If you click on the [ Quote] link at the top left of the post you want to quote, it will be inserted into your post between quote 'tags': [ quote] ...quoted text... [ /quote] tags (leave out the spaces inside the [] ). You can split up the quoted text into sections for individual response by inserting your own end-quote and start-quote tags. There is also a 'quote' icon button in the selection of editing buttons (next to the [#] button). Just ensure each start-quote tag has a matching end-quote tag and you'll be OK.



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/09/2013 18:43:34
.. you haven't addressed the core issue of that introduction i posted = the fact that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinism in science , is a bankrupt false impotent  ideology that should be rejected .
OK; I don't agree that it's 'a bankrupt false impotent  ideology that should be rejected'.

It should be rejected , simply because its reductionist exclusively physical or biological view of the universe is intenable : it cannot explain the emergence of life on earth from dead matter , it fails to explain the evolution of life via its exclusive physical or biological view of the world: it gives only an incomplete account of evolution  ,it fails to explain the irreducibility of consciousness to just physical or biological processes ,it fails to explain consciousness , the rise of cognition reason thought process ...
Nagel rejects both materialist reductionism and theism by the way  , and tries to replace them by a non-reductionist naturalism that would allegedly be able to explain the above , without any notion thus of the intervention of any higher power = an eventual naturalist non-reductionist conception of nature that's doomed to fail also : Nagel can't realise just that fact .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
.. that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false : a false view of the world that should be rejected by all sciences for that matter , simply because it  cannot explain the universe , just via matter and material or physical processes : the major anomaly that debunks naturalism is the hard problem of consciousness in science : see that book of Nagel on the subject .
If you reject all methodologies that cannot explain everything, you'll end up with none and miss out on a lot -  unless you know of an approach that can explain the universe and consciousness?
No, reductionism is a false conception of nature ,and therefore cannot explain life , consciousness , ...via just biological physical approaches .
The mainstream reductionist naturalism that tries to explain everything in the universe via the so-called fundamental underlying laws of physics, tries to come up with a theory of everything in that regard : a theory of everything in that sense that cannot explain anything in fact ,simply because the universe is not exclusively driven by the laws of physics , there is a fundamental mental side to it reductionism tries to reduce to just physical processes ,simply because reductionism  cannot explain consciousness otherwise .
Nagel proposes a naturalist non-reductionist approach ,that cannot , in its turn , explain the rise or emergence of life ,consciousness, human cognition reason  values  meaning ...


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you just resort to denigrating or at least questioning your opponents' intellect

Care to quote an example of me denigrating or questioning someone's intellect?
Never mind , we're not gonna get stuck in this side irrelevant issue .
I thought not.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
You said earlier , for example ,to mention just that , that my presumed failure to understand your emergence magical assertions (any idiot can in fact understand that "emergence " magical trick  , that's not really a difficult magic to understand ,even though it's a materialist false assumption ) ...is the issue here , not those naturalist reductionist magical false interpretations of   science and science results: you did not say that this way at least , this is just my own expression  or interpretation of what you said, since you do seem to be oversensitive regarding the misquotations of your words .
No indeed, I didn't say that. I said your failure to understand my viewpoint, despite repeated explanations of it, is telling.
I think it's reasonable to object to being misquoted or misrepresented.


Your reductionist view point is intenable : can't explain the universe ,can't explain life , consciousness, human cognition reason ...
It's not that i do not understand your view, i do, it just makes no sense= that's the mainstream reductionist view in science in fact  .
Otherwise , try to explain life , consciousness ...to me via your reductionist exclusive physical biological approaches : you cannot : your reductionist magical approaches of consciousness, life ...make no sense .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
I saw none but reductionist naturalist views from you  so far , but i might be mistaken indeed , since i do not have time enough to investigate all your sayings thoroughly this way at least  .
Do you think the idea of emergence is reductionist? :)

Yes, indeed : that's the major example of reductionism : reducing consciousness to just physical biological processes that allegedly "emerged " from the evolutionary complexity of the brain = magical non-sense .
The phenomena of emergence does exist in fact indeed , but can be applied only to biological processes though , consciousness is not a biological process .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
What non-reductionist views do you have then,on the subject  ?
I already said, there are other useful approaches. I listed  some examples. These  approaches are all tools for gaining knowledge; they are useful in appropriate contexts. They're not mutually exclusive. You seem to think they're like religious belief systems; they're not.

You seem to miss the whole point of what i am saying : materialism can only lead to reductionism : the only way to avoid reductionism is by trying to apply some sort of non-reductionist naturalism ,not to mention the anti-reductionism options represented by  theism or idealism that i eliminate from from  this "equation ", just for the sake of this discussion, ,  by acknowledging the non-biological and non-physical nature of mental states, consciousness, life , reason ... ...by acknowledging the non-biological and non-physical side of evolution....as Nagel proposes .
I see not how   that eventual  non-reductionist naturalism can do just  that  . .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
I am not aware of any distortions of your views ,it is perfectly possible thought that i might have done so , if there were some , do tell me about them .
I already did; remember the man with a hammer?

haha : I do not see everything as nails to be nailed down : i am very specific about the actual reductionist nails that must be hammered in .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
Read that Nagel's book , and then tell me whether  you think he is  reasonably well-informed or not .
He may well be; that doesn't make him right.

The same goes for you,for me , and for everyoneelse for tha matter  .

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... you have already judged Nagel before reading that book of his , remember , and you used his integrity and honesty regarding his perfectly normal and logical relative ignorance on the subject he happened to have admitted as anyone should do in that regard ,you used that as "arguments" against him ,ironically enough .
I've judged only the introduction you posted. I commended him for admitting his limitations, ironically enough.

We already talked about that .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
you even explicitly uttered the  accusation that Nagel might be just looking for fame , for followers ...
Your selective amnesia is staggering .
No, I said "perhaps he feels he can attract more attention". You made up the bit about fame and followers. Selective amnesia?

How can you say that without even reading the man then .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
Second, you contradict yourself in this regard , since you , personally , happen to believe in a ,sorry , stupid irrational unproved conception of nature or the universe = the naturalist reductionist world view ,while attacking people that might disagree with you , via accusing them of ignorance, incredulity , ...
I didn't have to make accusations of ignorance and incredulity - Nagel admitted them.


He admitted that ,as everyoneelse should for that matter .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
... this silly side talk about allegedly denigrating one's intellect  is irrelevant .
Quite, so why bring it up?

Intellect is no physical biological product of evolution: the exclusively physical biological reductionist interpretation or rather reductionist misinterpretation of evolution cannot explain the rise of intellect that reductionist way, no way .
Just try to tell me instead how can man explain the whole universe , consciousness, life ...just via the underlying laws of physics that seem to govern everything , including evolution ...:

 There might be some  more fundamental principles  underlying  the laws of physics  themselves : How can life rise from the dead matter , how can the unconscious matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness : to reduce all that to just material physical biological processes would make no sense ,and that can therefore explain nothing .
If our consciousness  thought process reason  cognition ...were the products of accidental evolution ,then they are not reliable : see the implications of that for all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that regarding evolution itself ?


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Incredulity  ....can be a valid argument.
Incredulity isn't a valid argument, it's a state of mind...
Exactly
Make up your mind - either incredulity is a valid argument or it isn't (hint: it isn't).

Never mind : reductionism makes no sense ,and  can't explain life , consciousness , ...

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
read the man before judging him or his assertions then .
I did. You posted some of his assertions, I read them, then judged them. Simples
.

What i posted from the man is no sufficient data regarding  his views or analyses , not sufficient to "judge " him .

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
Do you remember ,by the way, saying that any claims without evidence should be dismissed without evidence ? : the naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature or the universe is just that : a world view without any evidence whatsoever to support it ,that's why i dismiss it without any evidence .
So do you dismiss the multiple lines of evidence for evolution by natural selection - or are you just unaware of them ?

I am the one who should say that your obvious  failure to understand my views i repeated here extensively is more than telling .
You're even misquoting , misunderstanding and misinterpretaing those views of mine .
Who said i reject evolution ? Be serious : i just said i do reject the reductionist interpretation or rather reductionist misinterpretation of evolution : see the difference ? ,in the sense that if evolution is exclusively physical biological , as reductionism assumes it to be , then is that reductionist version of evolution incapable of explaining life , consciousness ...

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
The burden of proof is yours to address and eventually deliver , don't you think ? : see the difference ?  haha
You have it backwards. The burden of proof lies with those wishing to overturn, contradict, or correct the established body of knowledge. See the difference?

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Reductionism pretends to be scientific ,right ?
Your question doesn't make sense to me. Reductionism is an approach commonly used in science.

Reductionism is rather a false conception of nature , a world view that has nothing to do with science proper .

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see that book of Nagel on the subject : he might be delusional as well regarding the real existence of reductionism in science as a false unproved  untrue promissory messianic religion that's been dominating and hijacking science , for ideological "reasons", during all those centuries up to this present date .
You said it, not me :)

I was just being ironic .
How can't you see that reductionism is just an ideology in science ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/09/2013 19:16:31
"What happened ? can't you handle ot rather deal with what i said ? that you just resorted to rhetorics, pleading , to that  promissory messianic materialism , to this psychological self-defense or retreat or denials ... as a result? .........Weird ."
Weird?

"Consciousness cannot be reduced to that definition of yours thus."
There are plenty of books describing the "conscious" mind - the stuff that you are aware of - and the sub-conscious, like core value systems and self-esteem. Of course, the activation of the relaxation response during meditation is an act outside of consciousness. Your expansion of the definition of consciousness to include elements that are clearly part of the sub-conscious mind makes no sense. I'm afraid that I will have to stick by my, admittedly plagiarised, definition.

I should have used the word Mind with a big T , instead of consciousness then.

Never mind : the core point is : naturalist reductionism fails to explain life , consciousness ...the universe ...simply because it is a false conception of nature and the universe that must be rejected , and replaced by a more or less valid conception of nature .
The mainstream reductionist view of the universe as just a matter of the underlying so-called fundamental physical laws, is incomplete and incorrect , and therefore fails to explain life , consciousness ...or just tries to reduce them to just a matter of the underlying laws of physics : there gotta be some more fundamental principles out there governing the universe, more fundamental than and underlying the laws of physics . .

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"Once again, just try not to confuse reductionism as an ideology in science with science proper"
It could well be that I have misunderstood. I understand reductionism to suggest that everything can be explained according to science and will be, eventually, as our abilities increase. Have I missed the point here? If so please excuse me.

No problem : reductionist naturalism in science sees the universe , including life on earth thus , consciousness,evolution  ...as just a matter of physical or biological processes governed by the so-called fundamental underlying laws of physics = the major hard problem of life , consciousness ... in science disprove that reductionist physical biological world view in science thus .
Besides, neither science ,nor reason logic , or any human epistemology ,method or approach for that matter can ever be able to explain "everything " : we cannot know everything there is to know out there via our human limited faculties ,despite the fact that reductionism tries to come up with some sort of underlying theory of everything,reductionism  cannot , per definition, deliver either  .

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I am sure you hold your own spiritual views as closely as I hold my own, and I am always happy to find somebody who believes in God, regardless of how they came to that belief. From my viewpoint, you are a fortunate man. It is not that I find you an evangelist "for God" rather than I find you evangelising "against" a philosophy that attempts to disprove God, a philosophy that says, "we do not need God, Science has it all". I find this an excellent basis for acquiring knowledge of the Universe and do not understand why anybody would object. However, I may, as stated, have misunderstood the meaning of reductionism
.

Science proper "is not interested in God that's not its field of inquiry ,that's the domain of religion ", and therefore science proper can ,per definition , neither pretend to prove nor disprove the existence of God: it also can do neither  : I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case : God is not the field of science , basta : but , God is irrelevant to reductionism in science,for obvious reductionist ideological "reasons " that have to do with reductionism itself as a secular world view : see the difference ?  .

Once again , i do love science so much that i would love to see it get rid of that false untrue intenable incorrect reductionism in science , reductionism as an ideology and view of the world universe .

See how muslims were the first ever to "invent " and practice the scientific method, thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology .

Science and religion, or Islam in this case , are necessary to each other , need each other , complete each other , are the both sides of the same coin ...and thus do have different natures, functions and roles to play ...if only science would be able,as science will be in fact some day ,  to get rid of reductionism as an ideology in science .
I think i cannot be more clearer than this .

We should thus stop seeing religion, or Islam in this case ,  and science as concurrents or as opposite opponents .

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(By now you may have realised that I don't know how to use the "quote" feature, which is why I contacted Admin. There doesn't seem to be any info in the "help" on this site or the forum software providers site. All I can see is a general "quote" button on each post but no details on how to use it. No doubt I'll have an answer next week. Thank you for your concern; I didn't want to burden anybody.)

Don't worry about it : dlorde here explained that to you .
I will continue answering your posts , as much as possible , even if you continue to post them this way : no problem = i have no problem with just that : my apologies for being somewhat or somehow a bit rude about it earlier , sorry ....
Just continue posting your replies this way then ,if you cannot otherwise ,  no worries .


P.S.: Just try to read Nagel's "Mind and cosmos ..." i did provide a free download link for previously , here above , and you would understand what i mean regarding that untrue reductionist naturalist materialism in science ...and much more ...
Nagel can make you understand just that , much better than i can ever do , even though he's some kindda "torturing read " , sometimes, as Cheryl put it .

Thanks, appreciate indeed .
All the best .
Kind regards .
The same for our friend dlorde here, and for the rest of our abscent friends here as well .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/09/2013 20:05:42
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg418872#msg418872


I can understand that you would disagree with him, but why "torture yourself " by reading him,  or was that just sarcasm  ...



Well, I was joking, in a way. I read things written by people even when I suspect I won't agree with them because it might change my views, or modify them. And because it seems to provoke more creative or clearer thinking than reading someone who just confirms what I already knew or believed
.

Sorry, i missed this post of yours .
Indeed : agree : that  's 1 of the reasons why i am here .
Different views do enrich ours.

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I honestly don’t understand why you accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with you of “magical” thinking. History overwhelming contradicts your assertion  that  scientific materialism in any way appeals to or relies on   “magical” processes. Innumerable natural phenomena once attributed to acts of Gods or angry spirits have been explained, from lightening to plagues, the changing seasons, the rising of the sun, birth defects, earthquakes, comets...or do you question the magical materialist explanation of those as well? Dlorde made the comment earlier: “Everything else we know about the universe exists and functions within the laws of physics, and as has been said here repeatedly, there's no good reason to make an exception for consciousness, and all the evidence suggests that it isn't an exception.” So why do you think human consciousness is a special exception?

Science has been able to achieve all those "miracles , thanks only to its efective and unparralled method that's like no other , reductionist naturalism had/ has nothing to do with all that : reductionism just takes a free ride on the unwilling back of science , in order to validate itself , by pretending to be scientific .

The reductionist assumption that everything in the universe is governed by those so-called fundamental laws of physics is an untrue one : the major hard problems in science , as Nagel and others proved , hard problems in science such as consciousness, life ....disprove that untrue reductionist assumption .
There gotta be some more fundamental underlying principles , more fundamental than those laws of physics , otherwise , neither the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of evolution , nor the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of the origin of life , to mention just that , can explain the emergence of life from dead or inanimate inorganic matter , or can explain consciousness ...

P.S. : Reductionism as an ideology in science  that should be , once again, not confused with science proper , reductionism  in the above mentioned sense thus , is  certainly magical  : its major  magical  "emergence " trick  regarding the origin of consciousness is 1 of those major examples concerning the magical untrue nature of reductionism .


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Utility does not prove validity

Indeed : say that to those pragmatic utilitarianist materialist opportunnist machiavellistic reductionists .

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, but mysticism certainly has a dismal track record. You can’t wire a house or build computers or launch rockets with mysticism, you can’t understand photosynthesis or how the kidney works with mysticism, you can’t figure out the age of fossils with mysticism.  ( I honestly don’t know what else to call the immaterial forces or processes you believe are responsible for consciousness, since you won’t identify them either. I’m sorry if mysticism is the wrong word, but it’s the definition that seems to apply.  “Mysticism: Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism:the belief that direct knowledge of ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience such as intuition or insight ')


You're confusing oranges with carrots :
Mysticism and science are 2 totally different 'things "

I did myself talk about the extremely unreliabe mysticism , didn't i ?

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This is what I think: In the end, even if it turns out there is some  mystical component of consciousness that I cannot test, identify, or understand, I suspect that I  will still know a lot more interesting and useful things about the mind/ brain, and people through materialistic science than you will through mysticism. What's more, these facts or theories can be shared, and are easily verifiable to other people, and their understanding does not depend on any special, subjective state of mystical insight in myself or them.

What had/ has reductionism in science to do with those scientific empirical evidences, scientific approaches, scientific facts or scientific results  ...?= absolutely nothing = 0,0000000000000

Once again , you are confusing science proper with reductionism as an ideology  in science , unfortunately enough : See in that regard Nagel's "Mind and cosmos ..." book on the subject i did provide a free download link for previously .

Take care
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/09/2013 21:37:36
Your reductionist view point is intenable : can't explain the universe ,can't explain life , consciousness, human cognition reason ...
It's not that i do not understand your view, i do, it just makes no sense= that's the mainstream reductionist view in science in fact  .
Appropriately enough, you're tilting at windmills; my view is that science is the best means we have for discovering and learning about the universe. A reductionist approach has proved very effective so far, and is likely to continue to do so. However, where it is inappropriate or unproductive, other approaches will be used. Your objections are like chaff in the wind.

BTW, it's 'untenable'.
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Do you think the idea of emergence is reductionist? :)
Yes, indeed : that's the major example of reductionism : reducing consciousness to just physical biological processes that allegedly "emerged " from the evolutionary complexity of the brain = magical non-sense .
The phenomena of emergence does exist in fact indeed , but can be applied only to biological processes though , consciousness is not a biological process .
OK; you seem to have a radically different idea of what emergence is to the commonly held understanding. Try the wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) to see if you can get back on the same page.

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haha : I do not see everything as nails to be nailed down : i am very specific about the actual reductionist nails that must be hammered in .
There's a subtle difference between accuracy and precision.

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Just try to tell me instead how can man explain the whole universe , consciousness, life ...just via the underlying laws of physics that seem to govern everything , including evolution ...:
The best chance we have is science.

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If our consciousness  thought process reason  cognition ...were the products of accidental evolution ,then they are not reliable : see the implications of that for all our knowledge , including the scientific one, including that regarding evolution itself ?
Quite right - our mental processes are extremely unreliable; that's been one of the major discoveries of cognitive research in recent years. Fortunately, we have developed techniques to help account for and minimise the effects of this unreliability; simply becoming aware of it was an important step.

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Quote from: DonQuichotte
...the naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature or the universe is just that : a world view without any evidence whatsoever to support it...
So do you dismiss the multiple lines of evidence for evolution by natural selection - or are you just unaware of them ?
You're even misquoting , misunderstanding and misinterpretaing those views of mine .
Who said i reject evolution ?
Not misquoting, cut & paste sees to that. You claimed the neo-Darwinian conception of nature is 'a world view without any evidence whatsoever to support it'.  Since the the neo-Darwinian conception of nature is based on the theory of evolution by natural selection, it seems reasonable to question whether you reject the evidence that leads to it. But, whatever.

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How can't you see that reductionism is just an ideology in science ?
The reductionist approach is just a tool science can use where appropriate. The vast majority of scientific progress and the technical developments that resulted have been achieved using that approach.

If you want to attack reductionism as an ideology, I'm sure there are philosophy forums where rabid reductionist ideologues hang out. Good luck with that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/09/2013 21:51:43
I should have used the word Mind with a big T...
I'm not even sure I want to hear the explanation for that! :)

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...there gotta be some more fundamental principles out there governing the universe, more fundamental than and underlying the laws of physics . .
When and if they're discovered, those more fundamental principles will become the new 'laws of physics', replacing and subsuming the standard model of the time, just as General Relativity replaced and subsumed Newtonian physics. So it goes...

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I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
Care to explain how God is relevant to science?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/09/2013 22:07:51

There gotta be some more fundamental underlying principles , more fundamental than those laws of physics , otherwise , neither the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of evolution , nor the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of the origin of life , to mention just that , can explain the emergence of life from dead or inanimate inorganic matter , or can explain consciousness ...






Well, when you discover them and can identify them, and verify to others that they exist, let me know. So far this is all I could find in the past 12 pages of posts that you have offered as an alternative a means to understanding consciousness, and I quote:

"The real awareness or self awareness ,  the real consciousness or self-consciousness do exist only at the levels of some adult humans , and they can be improved as well = extended levels of awareness , self-awareness, consciousness, self-consciousness ...they can be extended via meditation , personal experiences , ....via prayers ...via hard work ...via certain world views ...
Action triggered by or in fact as equal to the human mind put in motion via Higgins' field that maybe , just maybe gets in its turn made in motion by a higher power that might hold everything existing together for that matter, our minds that depend on or tend to long for unity with that fundamental root capacity of that higher power or root  Self  , that action might be the core " building block element " of the  "structure "  of the universe , who knows ?
(Heart's intelligence as the highest form of intelligence or intellect , heart as no emotions feelings , or biological organ , once again. Heart as intuition or intuitive insights : informed experienced developed extended intuition, not the ordinary intuition that 's not really reliable though  )
...we can try to approach consciousness via trying to extend our levels of consciousness via personal experiences shaped by certain world views, by the personal experiences of others on the subject , by ancient wisdoms on the subject..
I think that human consciousness does not only hold THE  key to unveiling major mysteries in this universe , but also that  the most important and next level of human evolution at the level of consciousness  is yet to be undertaken by humanity as a whole  , while grasping its incredible implications for all humanity...
But, it takes hard work, life experiences, it takes flirting with death itself and looking it deep in the eye  ....it takes blood sweat and tears , joy , rise and fall ,setbacks and breakthroughs ....to just be able to develop that 6th sense that makes one sharp alert and awake sober lucid enough to know , not just believe in, there are   whole unimaginable dimentions and levels of reality out there our powerful developed mind can make us able to approach somehow , to some degree at least .
humans can be trained to develop those consciousness powers or skils in themselves, by developing their 'contacts " with their consciousness via some means
High levels of consciousness can also be experienced only under certain meditation and other spiritual circumstances where the body or the material world cease to "exist " or cease to be perceived as such for the given person under those meditation or under other spiritual states ,due to that extremely targeted attention or focuss of the given person at the level of the pure consciousness
Critical thinking might be a better word to approach what people claim to experience , but then again, critical thinking fails short at the level of "pure " consciousness  "beyond thought "
This might seem to you as just semantics , but i see no better way to put it to you , since "pure 'consciousness via meditation and via other spiritual means is , per definition, uncommunicable = words fail short to describe it .
The only way to figure out all that for yourself in that regard is by trying to experience those states of consciousness yourself via meditation or via other spiritual means : science or critical thinking alone cannot help you in that regard ,since "pure " consciousness is beyond thought , science .
But then again, you would say : there is nothing more tricky deceptive and elusive than spirituality ,i would say : that's the beauty of it : we gotta try to figure it out for ourselves = an endless restless dynamic journey = a journey far more exciting and challenging difficult ..than science can ever be ,even thou science can help us somehow on that spiritual path we gotta take as well
I see this natural reality as just a veil that deprives us from seeing  the underlying true real reality ,the latter we can only See above : the only way to figure that out for yourself is by trying to experience those states of consciousnsess, via meditation and via other spiritual means = that's beyond the territory of conventional science and thought . try to approach via spirituality,once again
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond
But , art , meditation, spirituality , creative work ....music ....love...do make me get in touch , sometimes , with incredible states of consciousness , awareness, self-awareness ...that are , per definition, uncommunicable as the mystics say , science can never be able to give me .
Words cannot describe those states of consciousness i do experience sometimes , and i can tell you with relative confidence= i am not really sure , who can be in that context ?,  that i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Did it ever occur to you that human consciousness might exist and function outside of the laws of physics ?"

End Quote


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/09/2013 22:34:41
... i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Ouch - there goes another irony meter...

Thanks for that cheryl, I missed it first time round.

I wonder how he can tell whether his 'sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense' is itself the 'real thing' or an illusion or delusion...

As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool".
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 24/09/2013 00:37:15
We should thus stop seeing religion, or Islam in this case ,  and science as concurrents or as opposite opponents .

*** Exactly my point!

You appear to be attacking science because it is not religious enough.

it is a false conception of nature and the universe

That cannot be. Science, by its very nature, is only a tool to "investigate" and "explain" the nature of the universe. This is like saying that a microscope is a conception of the nature of micro-biology.

we cannot know everything there is to know out there via our human limited faculties

Nobody on this forum would disagree with you there but, as you said, we have more to come. I am sure that this universe - Gods universe - hasn't finished with us yet - one day we may not even be able to call ourselves human by any yardstick we use today. Until then, and beyond, I hope with all my heart, that science continues on its mission, using whatever tools best fit the job, and tries to explain absolutely everything WITHOUT reference to God; better still, on the fundamental assumption that there is no God - it's ALL up to us. This is the best way to learn. Whether by chemistry or divine will we have been given the drive to classify and the tools with which to do it. My guess is, either way, that means that we are meant to use them

Gennlemen, if this works then thank you indeed!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Europan Ocean on 24/09/2013 04:36:13
The question with doctors is whether human consciousness is generated by the brain or received by the brain. It is a question of humanism or dualism.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/09/2013 09:59:58
The question with doctors is whether human consciousness is generated by the brain or received by the brain. It is a question of humanism or dualism.
Which doctors are you referring to, specifically? It seems to me it isn't a question the majority of doctors are concerned with in their work.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 24/09/2013 17:27:06
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See how muslims were the first ever to "invent " and practice the scientific method, thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology .

Apart from everyone else, that is.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/09/2013 18:04:47
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See how muslims were the first ever to "invent " and practice the scientific method, thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology .
Apart from everyone else, that is.
Yeah. We covered that at length in What's the real origin of the scientific method? (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.0), where it turned out the title was less a question, more a rhetorical preface to a diatribe on the Islamic contribution. For example:
Those muslims did much much more , including giving birth to science itself ... i am talking here mainly about the fact that science owes its very existence to muslims indeed .
and so-on.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 19:11:06
We should thus stop seeing religion, or Islam in this case ,  and science as concurrents or as opposite opponents .

*** Exactly my point!

You appear to be attacking science because it is not religious enough.

No, i was just attacking that untrue ideological reductionism as a secular religion in science : see the difference ?

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it is a false conception of nature and the universe

That cannot be. Science, by its very nature, is only a tool to "investigate" and "explain" the nature of the universe. This is like saying that a microscope is a conception of the nature of micro-biology.

I am talking , once again, about reductionism as an ideology in science,not about science proper  : can't you see the difference ?

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we cannot know everything there is to know out there via our human limited faculties

Nobody on this forum would disagree with you there but, as you said, we have more to come. I am sure that this universe - Gods universe - hasn't finished with us yet - one day we may not even be able to call ourselves human by any yardstick we use today. Until then, and beyond, I hope with all my heart, that science continues on its mission, using whatever tools best fit the job, and tries to explain absolutely everything WITHOUT reference to God; better still, on the fundamental assumption that there is no God - it's ALL up to us. This is the best way to learn. Whether by chemistry or divine will we have been given the drive to classify and the tools with which to do it. My guess is, either way, that means that we are meant to use them.

God is not the field of science : science is not interested in God ,so to speak,  science can thus neither pretend to prove nor disprove the existence of God : why bring God up in this discussion then , discussion concerning reductionism in science ?.
The main issue here is that dominance of that untrue reductionism in science , not science proper .
That reductionism in science that gotta be replaced by a more or less valid conception of nature .


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Gennlemen, if this works then thank you indeed!

What are you talking about ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 19:21:27
... i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Ouch - there goes another irony meter...

Thanks for that cheryl, I missed it first time round.

I wonder how he can tell whether his 'sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense' is itself the 'real thing' or an illusion or delusion...

As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool".

I did already say that that alleged "radar " haha was not really realiable, as my own belief warns me about by the way .
Why don't you try to focuss on the real issues i was bringing up, instead of this unnuanced none-sense of yours ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 19:22:57
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See how muslims were the first ever to "invent " and practice the scientific method, thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology .
Apart from everyone else, that is.
Yeah. We covered that at length in What's the real origin of the scientific method? (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.0), where it turned out the title was less a question, more a rhetorical preface to a diatribe on the Islamic contribution. For example:
Those muslims did much much more , including giving birth to science itself ... i am talking here mainly about the fact that science owes its very existence to muslims indeed .
and so-on.

Well, that thread in question speaks for itself ,so.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 19:24:37
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See how muslims were the first ever to "invent " and practice the scientific method, thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology .

Apart from everyone else, that is.

What do you have to say about reductionism in science , genius ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/09/2013 19:35:43
... i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Ouch - there goes another irony meter... I wonder how he can tell whether his 'sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense' is itself the 'real thing' or an illusion or delusion...
I did already say that that alleged "radar " haha was not really realiable, as my own belief warns me about by the way .
Oh boy... your own belief warns you when the 'sophisticated radar or 6th sense' that allows you to tell what's reliable, is unreliable?

Quote
Why don't you try to focuss on the real issues i was bringing up, instead of this unnuanced none-sense of yours ?
If you could post them clearly and concisely instead of camouflaging them in flannel and distractions, they might be easier to focus on. Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 19:50:03

There gotta be some more fundamental underlying principles , more fundamental than those laws of physics , otherwise , neither the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of evolution , nor the mainstream reductionist misinterpretation of the origin of life , to mention just that , can explain the emergence of life from dead or inanimate inorganic matter , or can explain consciousness ...






Well, when you discover them and can identify them, and verify to others that they exist, let me know. So far this is all I could find in the past 12 pages of posts that you have offered as an alternative a means to understanding consciousness, and I quote:

"The real awareness or self awareness ,  the real consciousness or self-consciousness do exist only at the levels of some adult humans , and they can be improved as well = extended levels of awareness , self-awareness, consciousness, self-consciousness ...they can be extended via meditation , personal experiences , ....via prayers ...via hard work ...via certain world views ...
Action triggered by or in fact as equal to the human mind put in motion via Higgins' field that maybe , just maybe gets in its turn made in motion by a higher power that might hold everything existing together for that matter, our minds that depend on or tend to long for unity with that fundamental root capacity of that higher power or root  Self  , that action might be the core " building block element " of the  "structure "  of the universe , who knows ?
(Heart's intelligence as the highest form of intelligence or intellect , heart as no emotions feelings , or biological organ , once again. Heart as intuition or intuitive insights : informed experienced developed extended intuition, not the ordinary intuition that 's not really reliable though  )
...we can try to approach consciousness via trying to extend our levels of consciousness via personal experiences shaped by certain world views, by the personal experiences of others on the subject , by ancient wisdoms on the subject..
I think that human consciousness does not only hold THE  key to unveiling major mysteries in this universe , but also that  the most important and next level of human evolution at the level of consciousness  is yet to be undertaken by humanity as a whole  , while grasping its incredible implications for all humanity...
But, it takes hard work, life experiences, it takes flirting with death itself and looking it deep in the eye  ....it takes blood sweat and tears , joy , rise and fall ,setbacks and breakthroughs ....to just be able to develop that 6th sense that makes one sharp alert and awake sober lucid enough to know , not just believe in, there are   whole unimaginable dimentions and levels of reality out there our powerful developed mind can make us able to approach somehow , to some degree at least .
humans can be trained to develop those consciousness powers or skils in themselves, by developing their 'contacts " with their consciousness via some means
High levels of consciousness can also be experienced only under certain meditation and other spiritual circumstances where the body or the material world cease to "exist " or cease to be perceived as such for the given person under those meditation or under other spiritual states ,due to that extremely targeted attention or focuss of the given person at the level of the pure consciousness
Critical thinking might be a better word to approach what people claim to experience , but then again, critical thinking fails short at the level of "pure " consciousness  "beyond thought "
This might seem to you as just semantics , but i see no better way to put it to you , since "pure 'consciousness via meditation and via other spiritual means is , per definition, uncommunicable = words fail short to describe it .
The only way to figure out all that for yourself in that regard is by trying to experience those states of consciousness yourself via meditation or via other spiritual means : science or critical thinking alone cannot help you in that regard ,since "pure " consciousness is beyond thought , science .
But then again, you would say : there is nothing more tricky deceptive and elusive than spirituality ,i would say : that's the beauty of it : we gotta try to figure it out for ourselves = an endless restless dynamic journey = a journey far more exciting and challenging difficult ..than science can ever be ,even thou science can help us somehow on that spiritual path we gotta take as well
I see this natural reality as just a veil that deprives us from seeing  the underlying true real reality ,the latter we can only See above : the only way to figure that out for yourself is by trying to experience those states of consciousnsess, via meditation and via other spiritual means = that's beyond the territory of conventional science and thought . try to approach via spirituality,once again
Only real true mystics can experience the relatively full scale of human consciousness or pure consciousness and beyond
But , art , meditation, spirituality , creative work ....music ....love...do make me get in touch , sometimes , with incredible states of consciousness , awareness, self-awareness ...that are , per definition, uncommunicable as the mystics say , science can never be able to give me .
Words cannot describe those states of consciousness i do experience sometimes , and i can tell you with relative confidence= i am not really sure , who can be in that context ?,  that i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Did it ever occur to you that human consciousness might exist and function outside of the laws of physics ?"

End Quote

Well, do not try to derail the discussion, honey, please :
In a discussion, views change , thanks to that discussion exchange: that's the purpose ,beauty ,meaning , value, and utility of a constructive discussion .
I was  just  talking about the disease and its sympthoms in science = reductionism and its exclusively physical biological conception of nature that's obviously untrue .
Nagel ,so far as i can tell from reading some parts of his "Mind and cosmos ..." book , proposes an alternative to reductionism in the form of a non-reductionist naturalism : that's all what a secular guy can come up with : a non-reductionist naturalism in science that allegedly can explain the fact concerning how nature might have  generated the mind or consciousness ,reductionism cannot explain the latter via its handicaped reductionist and incomplete exclusive physical biological approach or rather conception of nature ,obviously  .
I ,personally , think that science cannot alone explain consciousness, there gotta be a holistic approach to that that can try to tackle that hard problem of consciousness,life ...and their evolutions via a non-reductionist conception of nature . .
Sheldrake, for example, talks about morphic fields underlying the laws of physics, i suppose , if i am not mistaken .
In short :
The best way to solve the  problem of reductionism in science is by trying to put the finger on the problem itself and its sympthoms ,by defining them  clearly,as Nagel does ,for example,  ,and then by trying to look for some alternatives to the reductionism problem in science that has been crippling science in trying to figure out consciousness, life ...and their evolutions via a complete valid alternative that's not reductiionistic  . .


There gotta be some fundamental underlying principles out there , obviously, more fundamental than and underlying those laws of physics themsleves , otherwise , there is no true scientific way to approach the hard problem of consciousness, life ...their origins or their evolutions , a true eventual scientific way that should include the fact that consciousness , life ...their origins and evolution cannot be exclusively explained by just physical biological reductionist approaches ,no way  : that materialist reductionist magical approach of consciousness,life ...their origins and their evolutions ... is just a way to avoid the problem that cannot be avoided that way for a long time thus .
See what Nagel has to say on the subject then .
I am really fed up with your silly denials and exit starategies .
Just know that : ideas are first opposed , ridiculed and then accepted as such as obvious evidence afterwards = you gotta try to go through just that process, or not , who cares ...- your silly attitudes won't change the facts on the reality ground concerning all the above ...
Scientific guys  you are , my ass , excuse my French ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 20:00:04
... i developed a sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense , so to speak, that make me able to detect the real thing from fraud or illusions,delusions ..
Ouch - there goes another irony meter... I wonder how he can tell whether his 'sort of a sophisticated radar or 6th sense' is itself the 'real thing' or an illusion or delusion...
I did already say that that alleged "radar " haha was not really realiable, as my own belief warns me about by the way .
Oh boy... your own belief warns you when the 'sophisticated radar or 6th sense' that allows you to tell what's reliable, is unreliable?

Stop being a jerk, be serious : and do not try to derail the discussion you obvioulsly cannot handle .
I meant that my own belief warns me against the relative unreliability of that "radar ". so to speak .
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Why don't you try to focuss on the real issues i was bringing up, instead of this unnuanced none-sense of yours ?
If you could post them clearly and concisely instead of camouflaging them in flannel and distractions, they might be easier to focus on. Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?

What ? Do you want me to draw you a picture ? I think i was clear enough .
I have even referred you to a more competent guy on the subject than myself .
If you cannot deliver yourself from those reductionist indoctrinations  and brainwash you obviously do confuse with science proper , that's not my problem , but yours to deal with ,otherwise just go see a ..shrink .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/09/2013 20:22:51
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I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
Care to explain how God is relevant to science?

Did i say that God is to science ?
You know what : you are out of the pic again : i am not even gonna respond to the rest of your silly denials,misinterpretations of my views , lack of understanding what people tell you .. ...I will ignore you from now on , simply because you are not only not serious , but you are also a guy who are not willing to consider non-reductionist views ...so, why should i bother wasting my time on you ? I will not , from now on :
Just read that book of Nagel then , or not , who gives a f...?
What kindda "scientific " guys are you ? Unbelievable .


This issue of reductionism in science is an  extremely  relevant one to the progress of science ,you have no idea , not just only to  non-reductionist sites or whatever ...This issue of that untrue rductionism in science is a huge issue to mankind's evolution, progress , development ............................to say just that .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/09/2013 21:08:19
Stop being a jerk, be serious : and do not try to derail the discussion you obvioulsly cannot handle .
I meant that my own belief warns me against the relative unreliability of that "radar ". so to speak .
I know; but it's hard to be serious when you say stuff like that. Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque :)
 
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... Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?
What ? Do you want me to draw you a picture ? I think i was clear enough .
So, you can't remember either? :)

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If you cannot deliver yourself from those reductionist indoctrinations  and brainwash you obviously do confuse with science proper , that's not my problem , but yours to deal with ,otherwise just go see a ..shrink .
If I don't agree with you I need a psychiatrist? Disappointing stuff... playground taunts really don't help your credibility.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/09/2013 21:24:52
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Quote
I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
Care to explain how God is relevant to science?

Did i say that God is to science ?
C'mon Don, it's simple logic; if, as you say, God is not irrelevant for science, then in what way is God relevant to science?

Quote
... i am not even gonna respond to the rest of your silly denials,misinterpretations of my views , lack of understanding what people tell you .. ...I will ignore you from now on , simply because you are not only not serious , but you are also a guy who are not willing to consider non-reductionist views ...so, why should i bother wasting my time on you ? I will not , from now on :
Oh no, not again... :)

For everyone else's benefit, why don't you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 24/09/2013 22:11:17
No, i was just attacking that untrue ideological reductionism as a secular religion in science : see the difference ?
..
I am talking , once again, about reductionism as an ideology in science,not about science proper  : can't you see the difference ?
 

I can see the difference between a saw and the art of carpentry. Reductionism is a tool, a method, and it produces results. I cannot understand how it could be considered an "ideology" or a "religion".

God is not the field of science : science is not interested in God ,so to speak,  science can thus neither pretend to prove nor disprove the existence of God : why bring God up in this discussion then , discussion concerning reductionism in science ?.
I absolutely agree with the first part of this statement, I do not believe that science is pretending anything - or trying to and I see no reason to imagine that it is. In answer to your question, I didn't; actually you did. I followed your reference to see if you agreed with the first part of your statement.

I would be fascinated to hear what it is about reductionism that makes you classify it as any more than a method or tool, if that would not stray to far off the subject of this thread.

The thanks was for your information on using the quote feature - it wasn't a bad first try! :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/09/2013 01:20:11
Well, David Cooper was correct about one thing. Trolls are impossible and it is probably best to ignore them. No matter what logical evidence you support your arguments with, no matter what credible scientific studies provide positive proof for something, they will say "But it fails to explain this other thing," followed by an ideological rant about why something is "obviously" false just because they keep saying it is.  What's worse, they offer no reasonable, verifiable alternative for any of it.
Don essentially says you cannot expect him to provide scientific proof of the immaterial because it is immaterial. And my response is "Great! Go post these immaterial things on the The Mystical Angel My Little Pony Website."

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/09/2013 01:54:23


For everyone else's benefit, why don't you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged?


Yes, Don, I have asked this, as have several other posters. What is "science proper" ???You keep saying science proper is "more than" reductionism, so tell us how science proper works without isolating and controlling certain variables in an experiment and taking things apart to see how things work?  Tell me how to do a scientific experiment in a "non-reductionist" or "holistic" way. Give me an example. If you can't do that, everything you've said is basically BS, or at least, not science.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Europan Ocean on 25/09/2013 05:40:44
dlorde, these Doctors are interested in the dualism or humanism, what creates consciousness question:

There is Dr Melvin Morse:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts06.html

Dr Pim Van Lommel
Dr Eben Alexander who recommends:
http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net/reading-list-0
Dr Peter Fenwick.
Dr Bruce Greyson.
Dr Charbonier.
Dr Donald Whitaker.
Dr Maurice Rawlings.
Dr Heather Ross.
Dr LLoyd Rudy.
Dr George Ritchie.
Dr Raymond Moody.
They are on youtube free...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 09:56:22
dlorde, these Doctors are interested in the dualism or humanism, what creates consciousness question:
OK, thanks. So not doctors in general, but 11 particular doctors.

There are lots of people interested in the dualism/monism issue; I was wondering why you decided to pick a few doctors?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 10:05:07
Well, David Cooper was correct about one thing. Trolls are impossible and it is probably best to ignore them.
They can be useful practice... up to a point. This one either becomes insulting and rude or stops responding (temporarily) when you point out flaws in his logic or try to pin him down to reasoned arguments.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 25/09/2013 12:17:09
Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque :)
 

But it happens in real life. "Flight 401" is an infamous instance. Approaching their destination, the crew lowered the undercarriage but one of the "three greens" (lamps signifying "undercarriage locked") didn't appear. So they faffed around trying to change the bulb, peer out of the window at the wheels, and generally do everything except fly the plane, which flew itself into the Everglades and killed 101 people.   

I have the same problem with officious twits who insist (at your expense) on putting "warning lights" outside x-ray rooms. If the bulb fails (which it does, because the light is on for most of the working day) you have signalled a dangerous area as safe!   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 14:39:54
Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque :)
 

But it happens in real life. "Flight 401" is an infamous instance. Approaching their destination, the crew lowered the undercarriage but one of the "three greens" (lamps signifying "undercarriage locked") didn't appear. So they faffed around trying to change the bulb, peer out of the window at the wheels, and generally do everything except fly the plane, which flew itself into the Everglades and killed 101 people.
Sorry, I don't get it - how is that similar to having a reliability indicator for a reliability indicator?

I was also wondering if he could use each 'sixth sense' to tell whether the other was reliable, and how reliable the combination could be - which one would he believe? :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 25/09/2013 15:05:28
It's an unreliable indicator of the reliability of an unreliable system, which is actually less unreliable than the indicator. These things abound on aircraft, fuel gauges being the most prominent. Because fuel is stored in the very flat wings and the whole thing tilts in all directions, "level" isn't a reliable indication of content. Because it is also subject to varying g forces, weight isn't a useful indicator either. In fact for most small aircraft, sticking your finger in the tank before you start, and using a stopwatch, is the most reliable indication of remaining fuel, but the Authorities demand that (a) you must have an expensive and useless bit of electical gadgetry and (b) you must be taught to ignore it. 

I think DonQ is actually female. When accused of talking improbable nonsense my mum used to say "I just know". 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 16:23:28
Stop being a jerk, be serious : and do not try to derail the discussion you obvioulsly cannot handle .
I meant that my own belief warns me against the relative unreliability of that "radar ". so to speak .
I know; but it's hard to be serious when you say stuff like that. Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque :)

I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :

This is a side issue you're making such a fuss about,an easy one  : I told you that that "radar " ,so to speak, is relatively unreliable : my own faith or religion  tells me it is indeed.
Got it ?
When i said that you should not try to derail this discussion you cannot handle obviously : I meant : you either misinterpret my views or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distort them beyond any recognition, you quote parts   of my statements by isolating them from their actual context , ...and you do put words in my mouth that are not mine ...to say just that :
Just try to compare  what i said in my previous posts to  how you responded to them as described above .
Example : I said that the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian approach or conception of evolution ( as the direct consequence  of the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature thus ) ,  for instance ,  is just  a reductionist misinterpretation of evolution   = the reductionist version of evolution that has no evidence to support it : in the sense that evolution is not exclusively biological physical , otherwise we cannot explain life , consciousness, their origins and their evolution fully .
You did not understand that : your response was like this : there is plenty of or overwhelming empirical evidence regarding   evolution ....
Compare what i said here to your reply then : i said 1 thing and you responded with a totally  different other  .
There is indeed overwhelming evidence regarding the biological physical side of evolution , but i was not talking about the latter , just about the reductionist exclusively biological physical version of evolution as a whole .

What i meant by  the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misinterpretation of evolution that has nothing to support it ,once again= the reductionist version of evolution, was  rather this in fact : evolution cannot be explained by just those reductionist naturaist neo-Darwinian exclusive biological physical explanations approaches , simply because evolution has a non-biological non-physical side to it as well , so , there is nothing out there that supports the reductionist assumption or reductionist version of evolution that evolution  is just a matter of exclusively physical biological processes .
Got it ?
Plus , those reductionist exclusive biological physical approaches  of evolution give just an incomplete acccount of evolution, simply because evolution has a non-physical non-biological side to it also = the reductionist version of evolution has nothing to support it = evolution is not exclusively biological physical .
Another example : i see it here below in 1 of your posts , i will respond to in a sec .
There are plenty of statements of mine like that , either you do not understand, misquote way out of their context , misinterpret ...beyond ny recognition...
Another example : i said that the reductionist "emergence " trick regarding consciousness is indeed reductionistic , in the sense that it reduces consciousness to biological processes : i did not say that the purely physical biological emergence phenomena were / are reductionist = only that "emergence " reductionist magical trick regarding consciousness is reductionist : see the difference ?

 
Quote
Quote
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... Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?
What ? Do you want me to draw you a picture ? I think i was clear enough .
So, you can't remember either? :)

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If you cannot deliver yourself from those reductionist indoctrinations  and brainwash you obviously do confuse with science proper , that's not my problem , but yours to deal with ,otherwise just go see a ..shrink .
If I don't agree with you I need a psychiatrist? Disappointing stuff... playground taunts really don't help your credibility.

These statements of yours are yet another major example of what i was saying here above regarding your  gross misinterpretations of my words :
That you would agree-disagree with me is certainly  not the issue here : that's a rather pretty normal fact = that's 1 of the reasons why i am here , in order to learn from different views, different conceptions of nature , from different world views ...from science proper that shuld not be confused with those reductionist world views, reductionist conception of nature ......
What i meant was : if you cannot either understand what i was saying regarding reductionism to the point that you distort and misinterpret my words on the subject beyond any recognition , or if you cannot see how you have been brainwashed and indoctrinated by reductionism you obviously still do confuse with science proper , than is that not my problem, but yours to handle, otherwise go see a shrink : that's what i meant when i said shall i draw you a pic ,when you responded that i was not clear enough or not concise : it is not that i was not clear enough , maybe  i was ,to some degree at least : it is in fact you who do not understand my words , distort them , misinterprets them , takes them out of context ,...beyond any recognition ....

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 16:48:10
I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :
You're funny :)

I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
So anyway Don, are you going to explain this? how is God relevant to science?

And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?

Both questions have been asked more than once and ignored so far.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 17:21:38
Well, David Cooper was correct about one thing. Trolls are impossible and it is probably best to ignore them. No matter what logical evidence you support your arguments with, no matter what credible scientific studies provide positive proof for something, they will say "But it fails to explain this other thing," followed by an ideological rant about why something is "obviously" false just because they keep saying it is.  What's worse, they offer no reasonable, verifiable alternative for any of it.
Don essentially says you cannot expect him to provide scientific proof of the immaterial because it is immaterial. And my response is "Great! Go post these immaterial things on the The Mystical Angel My Little Pony Website."

You got it all wrong , honey : see what i said to dlorde on the subject right here  above .
The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false , simply because it obviously and intrinsically inherently misses the non-biological non-physical side of nature ,as Nagel said, that's why he proposed a non-reductionist naturalist conception of nature,as an alternative to reductionism  .
Besides, that reductionist exclusively biological physical conception of nature has therefore implications for how reductionists approach ,see and explain the emergence of life , the emergence of consciousness in nature ,and for their respective origins and evolution , logically =reductionism gives thus an incomplete account of evolution in general , of life's origins , emergence and evolution, of consciousness ' emergence origins and evolution ...

But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well ,reductionism tries so desperately to reduce to just physical biological processes , simply because reductionism , per definition, cannot do otherwise .

All those wonderful amazing great "miracles " achieved by science proper were the direct consequences of the scientific method used by scientists  ,were  the direct consequences of the effective and unparralleled scientific method thus that's like no other : reductionism in science has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific results and huge advances ...= reductionism just takes a free ride on the  unwilling back of science proper , in order to validate itself  so desperately  , in vain .

In short :

The main core issue here is that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misconception of nature in science .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 17:54:58
I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :
You're funny :)

No, i am certainly not in this case , i am deadly serious : remember your oversensitivity whenever someone misquotes you : you were not only misquoting my words , but you also did not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distorted misinterpreted them beyond any recognition ...so.
Maybe , i did not formulate my answers properly : in that case , you should have asked for a better formulation, instead of  distorting my views ..
If one would continue  doing just that , there is absolutely no point in continuing any discusions for that matter with him / her : that would be an utter and total waste of time .

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I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
So anyway Don, are you going to explain this? how is God relevant to science?

I told you here above that i would react to that , didn't i ?
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
You still continue to misquote me , i see : my patience with you is really running out .
Anyway :
This is another example  concerning the fact that you were taking my words out of context by just quoting some parts of my statements on the subject : why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?

I said : God is not the field of science , i see dlorde here saying to you that God is irrelevant to science , it is not the case , God is irrelevant only to reductionism in science in fact , reductionism as a secular religion in science ...stuff like that .
So, God is neither  irrelevant nor relevant  to science proper , simply because God is not the field of science,so to speak then ...
You're really making me nuts with these misquotes , distortions ...of my words .

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And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?

Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " : what has reductionism as a misconception of nature  to do with science proper or with the scientific method , scientific approaches, scientific results = absolutely nothing= reductionism was/is  just crippling science via its reductionist meta-paradigm in science in fact ... .
Reductionism is no method , just a world view in science = a misconception of nature in science = science needs to be guided by a more or less valid non-reductionist  meta-paradigm in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one maybe , as Nagel proposes at least ...........

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Both questions have been asked more than once and ignored so far.

Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 20:25:31
"Mind and Cosmos : Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false : Chapter 4 : Cognition " By Thomas Nagel :
The following is of course in English, folks, as you can see ,not in ...Arabic or in Chinese :
If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to Mohammed ,i see :


Chapter 4
Cognition
1
I now want to take up a different type of antireductionist argument and its consequences.
Consciousness presents a problem for evolutionary reductionism because of its irreducibly subjective
character. This is true even of the most primitive forms of sensory consciousness, such as those
presumably found in all animals. The problem that I want to take up now concerns mental functions
such as thought, reasoning, and evaluation that are limited to humans, though their beginnings may be
found in a few other species. These are the functions that have enabled us to transcend the perspective
of the immediate life-world given to us by our senses and instincts, and to explore the larger objective
reality of nature and value.
I shall assume that the attribution of knowledge to a computer is a metaphor, and that the higherlevel
cognitive capacities can be possessed only by a being that also has consciousness (setting aside
the question whether their exercise can sometimes be unconscious). That already implies that those
capacities cannot be understood through physical science alone, and that their existence cannot be
explained by a version of evolutionary theory that is physically reductive. But the problem I now want
to discuss goes beyond this. It has to do with the nature of these capacities and the relation they put us
in to the world. What we take ourselves to be doing when we think about what is the case or how we
should act is something that cannot be reconciled with a reductive naturalism, for reasons distinct
from those that entail the irreducibility of consciousness. It is not merely the subjectivity of thought
but its capacity to transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case that presents a
problem.
Thought and reasoning are correct or incorrect in virtue of something independent of the thinker’s
beliefs, and even independent of the community of thinkers to which he belongs. We take ourselves to
have the capacity to form true beliefs about the world around us, about the timeless domains of logic
and mathematics, and about the right thing to do. We don’t take these capacities to be infallible, but
we think they are often reliable, in an objective sense, and that they can give us knowledge. The
natural internal stance of human life assumes that there is a real world, that many questions, both
factual and practical, have correct answers, and that there are norms of thought which, if we follow
them, will tend to lead us toward the correct answers to those questions. It assumes that to follow
those norms is to respond correctly to values or reasons that we apprehend. Mathematics, science, and
ethics are built on such norms.
It is difficult to make sense of all this in traditional naturalistic terms. Unless we are prepared to
regard most of it as an illusion, this points to a further expansion of our conception of the natural
order to include not only the source of phenomenological consciousness—sensation, perception, and
emotion
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 20:38:03
 tell us,
the ability of creatures like us to arrive at such truth, or even to think about it, requires explanation.
An important aspect of this explanation will be that we have acquired language and the possibilities of
interpersonal communication, justification, and criticism that language makes possible. But the
explanation of our ability to acquire and use language in these ways presents problems of the same
order, for language is one of the most important normatively governed faculties. To acquire a
language is in part to acquire a system of concepts that enables us to understand reality.
I am going to set aside at this point all the problems mentioned earlier about the probability of the
origin of life and the sufficiency of random mutation and natural selection to account for the actual
evolutionary history of life on earth. The question I want to raise remains even if those problems can
be solved for the evolution of plants and lower animals. I will also suppose for the sake of argument
that evolutionary theory can be recast in a way that is consistent with antireductionism, so as to make
it capable of explaining the appearance of consciousness. The question I now want to pose is whether
our cognitive capacities can be placed in the framework of an evolutionary theory that is in this way
no longer exclusively materialist, but that retains the Darwinian structure. It is a hypothetical
question, since there may not be such a theory. But I will talk as if there were.
The problem has two aspects. The first concerns the likelihood that the process of natural selection
should have generated creatures with the capacity to discover by reason the truth about a reality that
extends vastly beyond the initial appearances—as we take ourselves to have done and to continue to
do collectively in science, logic, and ethics. Is it credible that selection for fitness in the prehistoric
past should have fixed capacities that are effective in theoretical pursuits that were unimaginable at
the time? The second problem is the difficulty of understanding naturalistically the faculty of reason
that is the essence of these activities. I will begin by considering a possible response to the first
problem, before going on to the second, which is particularly intractable.
2
The first problem arises only if one presupposes realism about the subject matter of our thought. We
want to know how likely it is, for example, that evolution should have given some human beings the
capacity to discover, and other human beings the capacity to understand, the laws of physics and
chemistry. If there is no real, judgment-independent physical world, no judgment-independent truths
of mathematics, and no judgment-independent truths of ethics and practical reason, then there is no
problem of explaining how we are able to learn about them. On an antirealist view, scientific or moral
truth depends on our systematic cognitive or conative responses rather than being something
independent to which our responses may or may not conform. The “worlds” in question are all just
human constructions. In that case an explanation of how those responses—including our scientific
theories—were formed will not have to explain their objective correctness in order to be acceptable
(although it will have to explain their internal coherence).
Antirealism of this kind is a more serious option for the moral than for the scientific case. One can
intelligibly hold that moral realism is implausible because evolutionary theory is the best current
explanation of our faculties, and an evolutionary account cannot be given of how we would be able to
discover judgment-independent moral truth, if there were such a thing.1 But it would be awkward to
abandon scientific realism for analogous reasons, because one would then have to become an
antirealist about evolutionary theory as well. This would mean that evolutionary theory is inconsistent
with scientific realism and cannot be understood realistically, which seems an excessively strong
result. There would be something strange to the point of incoherence about taking scientific
naturalism as the ground for antirealism about natural science.
If we leave the assumption of realism in place, the best hope for a naturalistic response to the first
problem would be that evolutionary theory, and in particular evolutionary psychology, is in fact
capable of giving a credible account of the success of our cognitive capacities. For factual knowledge,
this is the aim of naturalized epistemology. The goal would be to explain how innate mental
capacities that were selected for their immediate adaptive value are also capable of generating,
through extended cultural evolutionary history, true theories about a law-governed natural order that
there was no adaptive need to understand earlier. The evolutionary explanation would have to be
indirect, since scientific knowledge had no role in the selection of the capacities that generated it.
The just-so story would go roughly like this. Even in the wild, it isn’t just perception and operant
conditioning that have survival value. The capacity to generalize from experience and to allow those
generalizations, or general expectations, to be confirmed or disconfirmed by subsequent experience is
also adaptive. So is a basic disposition to maintain logical consistency in belief, by modifying beliefs
when inconsistencies arise. A further, very important step would be the capacity to correct individual
appearances not only by reference to other conflicting appearances of one’s own but also by reference
to how things appear to other perceivers. That requires recognition of other minds, an ability with
obvious adaptive potential. The reach of these capacities can be greatly extended and deliberately
exercised with the help of language, which also permits knowledge to be collectively created,
accumulated, and transmitted. With language we can hold in our minds and share with others
alternative possibilities, and decide among them on the basis of their consistency or inconsistency
with further observations. Complex scientific theories that entail empirical predictions are therefore
extensions of the highly adaptive capacity to learn from experience—our own and that of others.
This story depends heavily on the supposition of a biological origin of the capacity for
nonperceptual representation through language, resulting in the ability to grasp logically complex
abstract structures. It is not easy to say how one might decide whether this could be a manifestation of
abilities that have survival value in prehistoric everyday life. In view of the mathematical
sophistication of modern physical theories, it seems highly unlikely; but perhaps the claim could be
defended.
It is even possible to tell a parallel just-so story about the compatibility between evolutionary
theory and moral realism. I am not thinking of the familiar appeal to sociobiology, with its essentially
nepotistic interpretation of innate altruistic dispositions. I am not even thinking of the explanation
through group selection of dispositions to cooperation in social creatures.2 Rather, I have in mind the
discovery of general principles of value by rational means analogous to those used elsewhere. Starting
from an understanding of innate desires and aversions as immediate impressions of value—of what is
good or bad for ourselves or our kin—the discovery of a larger, principle-governed normative domain,
or domain of practical reason, in which these immediately apparent values are situated, can again
proceed through the capacity to generalize and the disposition to avoid inconsistency.
Generalization would lead to the recognition of value in possible future experiences, in the means
to them, and in the lives of creatures other than ourselves. These values are not extra properties of
goodness and badness, but just truths such as the following: If something I do will cause another
creature to suffer, that counts against doing it. I can come to see that this is true by generalizing from
the evident disvalue of my own suffering, and once I recognize the more general truth, my motives
will be altered. If there are objective general norms of conduct, this kind of thinking would allow us to
discover them even if they are no more innate than the laws of physics. As with science, the process of
discovery would be impossible without language, interpersonal communication, and cultural memory.
In both cases, although the basic capacities employed are adaptive in their simple form, they would
permit us to transcend our starting points to discover large domains of truth quite independently of
whether such knowledge enhances fitness.
All this is very far-fetched, but no more so than much evolutionary speculation. It requires that
mutations and whatever else may be the sources of genotypic variation should generate not only
physical structures but phenomenology, desire and aversion, awareness of other minds, symbolic
representations, and logical consistency, all having essential roles in the production of behavior.
Provided we can assume some global solution to the mind-body problem that allows all this, the rest
of the story suggests that knowledge of objective scientific and moral truth, should there be such
things, could result from the exercise of capacities that, in more mundane applications, are at least not
inimical to survival. There may not be an insuperable problem of improbability, provided we accept
the evolutionary framework itself as probable.
3
However, even if we suppose for the sake of argument that some evolutionary explanation of this kind
is true, there is a further problem about thinking of our basic reasoning capacities in this way. It
emerges if we contrast the attitude we can reasonably take toward our perceptual and appetitive
systems with the attitude we can take toward our reasoning. This will lead to the second problem
identified above—the difficulty of understanding reason naturalistically.
If we suppose that there is some way to include consciousness in the evolutionary story, then we
can understand our visual system, like the visual systems of other species, to have been shaped by
natural selection. The specifics of human vision respond to aspects of the world that have been
important in the lives of our ancestors. That allows us to continue to rely on the prima facie evidence
of our senses, while recognizing that the evidence will sometimes be misleading, selective, or
distorted, and that it bears the marks of our particular biological ancestry.
Something similar is possible in our attitudes toward our intuitive judgments of probability, or
toward some of our intuitive value judgments (the desire for revenge, for example). We may come to
understand those intuitions as rough but useful unreflective responses shaped by natural selection to a
fitness-enhancing form in the circumstances in which our forebears lived and died. At the same time,
we can recognize that they may need correction or inhibition. Evolutionary self-awareness of this kind
is a common feature of our reflective attitudes toward our natural dispositions of hunger, fear, lust,
anger, and so forth.
But whenever we take such a reasonable detached attitude toward our innate dispositions, we are
implicitly engaged in a form of thought to which we do not at the same time take that detached
attitude. When we rely on systems of measurement to correct perception, or probability calculations
to correct intuitive expectations, or moral or prudential reasoning to correct instinctive impulses, we
take ourselves to be responding to systematic reasons which in themselves justify our conclusions,
and which do not get their authority from their biological origins.3 They could not be backed up in
that way. They don’t get their authority from their cultural origins, either; on the contrary, the cultural
history that has yielded their development is validated as an instance of progress only by the fact that
it has led to these methods for increasing the accuracy of our judgments.
Relying on one’s vision and relying on one’s reason are similar in one respect: in both cases, the
reliance is immediate. When I see a tree, I do not infer its existence from my experience any more
than I infer the correctness of a logical inference from the fact that I can’t help believing the
conclusion. However, there is a crucial difference: in the perceptual case I can recognize that I might
be mistaken, but on reflection, even if I think of myself as the product of Darwinian natural selection,
I am nevertheless justified in believing the evidence of my senses for the most part, because this is
consistent with the hypothesis that an accurate representation of the world around me results from
senses shaped by evolution to serve that function. That is not a refutation of radical skepticism, since
evolutionary theory, like all of science, depends on the evidence of the senses. But it does provide a
coherent picture of my place in the world that is consistent with the general reliability of such
evidence.
By contrast, in a case of reasoning, if it is basic enough, the only thing to think is that I have
grasped the truth directly. I cannot pull back from a logical inference and reconfirm it with the
reflection that the reliability of my logical thought processes is consistent with the hypothesis that
evolution has selected them for accuracy. That would drastically weaken the logical claim.
Furthermore, in the formulation of that explanation, as in the parallel explanation of the reliability of
the senses, logical judgments of consistency and inconsistency have to occur without these
qualifications, as direct apprehensions of the truth. It is not possible to think, “Reliance on my reason,
including my reliance on this very judgment, is reasonable because it is consistent with its having an
evolutionary explanation.” Therefore any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes
reason’s validity and cannot confirm it without circularity.
Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out
in something that is grasped as valid in itself—something without which the evolutionary
understanding would not be possible. Thought moves us beyond appearance to something that we
cannot regard merely as a biologically based disposition, whose reliability we can determine on other
grounds. It is not enough to be able to think that if there are logical truths, natural selection might
very well have given me the capacity to recognize them. That cannot be my ground for trusting my
reason, because even that thought implicitly relies on reason in a prior way.
We can suppose that the capacities which enable us to travel far beyond our innate dispositions in
representing and responding to the world have appeared in an ancestor and then been preserved in
subsequent generations. The appearance of these capacities has to be integrated with the evolutionary
process in that they are at least not inimical to fitness, so that they are not extinguished by natural
selection. That much seems plausible. But if I am right to think that we can’t regard them merely as
further instinctive dispositions, some other explanation is needed of what these capacities are.
Just as consciousness cannot be explained as a mere extension or complication of physical
evolution, so reason cannot be explained as a mere extension or complication of consciousness. To
explain our rationality will require something in addition to what is needed to explain our
consciousness and its evidently adaptive forms, something at a different level. Reason can take us
beyond the appearances because it has completely general validity, rather than merely local utility. If
we have it, we recognize that it can be neither confirmed nor undermined by a theory of its
evolutionary origins, nor by any other external view of itself. We cannot distance ourselves from it.
That was Descartes’ insight.
If such a thing appeared on the evolutionary menu, it could have proven its adaptive value locally.
Then, with the help of cultural deployment and development, it might have risen to its current
position of critical authority, correcting and often overruling the older promptings of perception,
instinct, and intuition, and not subject to correction by anything else. Its entrenchment and eventual
sovereignty over older instincts is comprehensible—but only if we can understand how such a thing
can exist at all.
4
This is the second problem: What is the faculty that enables us to escape from the world of
appearance presented by our prereflective innate dispositions, into the world of objective reality? And
what, besides consciousness, do we have to add to the biological story to make sense of such a
faculty?
The distinctive thing about reason is that it connects us with the truth directly. Perception connects
us with the truth only indirectly. When I see a tree, I see it because it is there, but not just because it is
there. Perception is not a form of insight: I do not grasp the presence of the tree immediately, even
though it may seem so prior to reflection. Rather I am aware of it because the tree causes a mental
effect in me in virtue of the character of my visual system, which we may suppose has been shaped by
natural selection to react in this way to light reflected from physical objects. Having such a system,
together with other perceptual and motivational dispositions, enables me to survive in the world. So it
is only in a complicated and indirect sense that when I see a tree, I see it because it is there.
But suppose I observe a contradiction among my beliefs and “see” that I must give up at least one
of them. (I am driving south in the early morning, and the sun rises on my right.) In that case, I see
that the contradictory beliefs cannot all be true, and I see it simply because it is the case. I grasp it
directly. It is not adequate to say that, faced with a contradiction, I feel the urgent need to alter my
beliefs to escape it, which is explained by the fact that avoiding contradictions, like avoiding snakes
and precipices, was fitness-enhancing for my ancestors. That would be an indirect explanation of how
the impossibility of the contradiction explains my belief that it cannot be true. But even if some of our
ancestors were prey to mere logical phobias and instincts, we have gone beyond that: We reject a
contradiction just because we see that it is impossible, and we accept a logical entailment just because
we see that it is necessarily true.
In ordinary perception, we are like mechanisms governed by a (roughly) truth-preserving
algorithm. But when we reason, we are like a mechanism that can see that the algorithm it follows is
truth-preserving. Something has happened that has gotten our minds into immediate contact with the
rational order of the world, or at least with the basic elements of that order, which can in turn be used
to reach a great deal more. That enables us to possess concepts that display the compatibility or
incompatibility of particular beliefs with general hypotheses. We have to start by regarding our
prereflective impressions as a partial and perspectival view of the world, but we are then able to use
reason and imagination to construct candidates for a larger conception that can contain and account
for that part. This applies in the domain of value as well as of fact. The process is highly fallible, but
it could not even be attempted without this hard core of self-evidence, on which all less certain
reasoning depends. In the criticism and correction of reasoning, the final court of appeal is always
reason itself.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 20:53:39
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
I thought so; 'Not irrelevant', says 'relevant' to me. If this isn't what you meant, you only had to say so.

Quote
why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?
What, "God is irrelevant to reductionism in science"? It appeared to confirm my interpretation - by implying that God might somehow be relevant to non-reductionist science (whatever that might be). The rest of it was fluff.

Quote
Quote
And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?
Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " :<...blah...>
If you mean the scientific method, that's the framework within which an approach (e.g. reductionism) is used. As I'm sure you're aware.

Quote
Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .
Ah; such subtle answers they just appeared to be ignoring the questions altogether...

OK; I suppose that's that then.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 20:55:08
What this means is that if we hope to include the human mind in the natural order, we have to
explain not only consciousness as it enters into perception, emotion, desire, and aversion but also the
conscious control of belief and conduct in response to the awareness of reasons—the avoidance of
inconsistency, the subsumption of particular cases under general principles, the confirmation or
disconfirmation of general principles by particular observations, and so forth. This is what it is to
allow oneself to be guided by the objective truth, rather than just by one’s impressions. It is a kind of
freedom—the freedom that reflective consciousness gives us from the rule of innate perceptual and
motivational dispositions together with conditioning. Rational creatures can step back from these
influences and try to make up their own minds. I set aside the question whether this kind of freedom is
compatible or incompatible with causal determinism, but it does seem to be something that cannot be
given a purely physical analysis and therefore, like the more passive forms of consciousness, cannot
be given a purely physical explanation either.
If I decide, when the sun rises on my right, that I must be driving north instead of south, it is
because I recognize that my belief that I am driving south is inconsistent with that observation,
together with what I know about the direction of rotation of the earth. I abandon the belief because I
recognize that it couldn’t be true. If I put money into a retirement account because the future income
it generates will be more valuable to me then than what I could spend it on now, I act because I see
that this makes it a good thing to do. If I oppose the abolition of the inheritance tax, it is because I
recognize that the design of property rights should be sensitive not only to autonomy but also to
fairness. As the saying goes, I operate in the space of reasons.
The appearance of reason and language in the course of biological history seems, from the point of
view of available forms of explanation, something radically emergent—if, as I assume, it cannot be
understood behavioristically. Like consciousness, it presents problems of both constitutive and
historical explanation. It appeared long after the emergence of conscious creatures, yet it also seems
to be essentially a development of consciousness and ought to be understandable as part of that
history. Like consciousness, reason is inseparable from the physical life of organisms that have it,
since it acts on the material provided by perception and natural desire and controls action, both
directly and indirectly. Any understanding of it will transform our understanding of physical
organisms and their development as well.
The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in
the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both
individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our
species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy
process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.
5
This, then, is what a theory of everything has to explain: not only the emergence from a lifeless
universe of reproducing organisms and their development by evolution to greater and greater
functional complexity; not only the consciousness of some of those organisms and its central role in
their lives; but also the development of consciousness into an instrument of transcendence that can
grasp objective reality and objective value.
Certain things can be assumed, if there is such a thing as reason. First, there are objective, mindindependent
truths of different kinds: factual truths about the natural world, including scientific laws;
eternal and necessary truths of logic and mathematics; and evaluative and moral truths. Second, by
starting from the way things initially appear to us, we can use reason collectively to achieve justified
beliefs about some of those objective truths—though some of those beliefs will probably be mistaken.
Third, those beliefs in combination can directly influence what we do. Fourth, these processes of
discovery and motivation, while mental, are inseparable from physical processes in the organism.
It is trivially true that if there are organisms capable of reason, the possibility of such organisms
must have been there from the beginning. But if we believe in a natural order, then something about
the world that eventually gave rise to rational beings must explain this possibility. Moreover, to
explain not merely the possibility but the actuality of rational beings, the world must have properties
that make their appearance not a complete accident: in some way the likelihood must have been latent
in the nature of things. So we stand in need of both a constitutive explanation of what rationality
might consist in, and a historical explanation of how it arose; and both explanations must be
consistent with our being, among other things, physical organisms. The understanding of biological
organisms and their evolutionary history would have to expand to accommodate this additional
explanatory burden, as I have argued it must expand beyond materialism to accommodate the
explanation of consciousness.
Such an explanation would complete the pursuit of intelligibility by showing how the natural order
is disposed to generate beings capable of comprehending it. But the obstacles seem enormous. In light
of the remarkable character of reason, it is hard to imagine what a naturalistic explanation of it, either
constitutive or historical, could look like.
In the previous chapter I explored the possibility of a reductive account of consciousness, based on
some form of universal monism or panpsychism. This is modeled on the physical reductionism
encouraged by molecular biology, but with an expanded metaphysical basis, in which the physical and
the mental are ontologically inseparable. Although it would be a radical departure from the reigning
materialist view of nature, the monism required for a reductive but not physically reductionist account
of consciousness seems at least conceivable. In answer to the constitutive question, the idea that a
complex subject of consciousness might be built up out of minimal protomental elements that are
somehow unified simultaneously into an organism and a self has enough potential to merit
consideration. Considered as an alternative to an equally speculative emergence of consciousness at
high levels of physical organization, it seems relatively credible, in spite of serious problems about
the mental part-whole relationship.
However, a reductive account of reason, entirely in terms of the properties of the elementary
constituents of which organisms are made, is even more difficult to imagine than a reductive account
of consciousness. Rationality, even more than consciousness, seems necessarily a feature of the
functioning of the whole conscious subject, and cannot be conceived of, even speculatively, as
composed of countless atoms of miniature rationality. The metaphor of the mind as a computer built
out of a huge number of transistorlike homunculi will not serve the purpose, because it omits the
understanding of the content and grounds of thought and action essential to reason. It could account
for behavioral output, but not for understanding. For these reasons, a holistic or emergent answer to
the constitutive question comes to seem increasingly more likely than a reductive one as we move up
from physical organisms, to consciousness, to reason. This would mean that reason is an irreducible
faculty of the kind of fully formed conscious mind that exists in higher animals, and that it cannot be
analyzed into the activity of the mind’s protomental parts, in the way that sensation perhaps can be.
But the historical question remains. Even if something entirely new begins to happen when the
conscious brain reaches a certain size and level of complexity, an explanation of the existence of that
complexity will be adequate only if it also explains the existence of reason as such. (This parallels the
demands on an explanation of consciousness as such, discussed in the last chapter.) Suppose we have
reason because our brains have reached a level of complexity at which reason emerges. If this is to be
an explanation that renders the appearance of reason not a complete accident, it must in some way
account not just for the physical complexity itself but for the appearance of just the kind of
complexity that is a condition of the emergence of reason. This would not be necessary if one were
willing to regard reason as a fluke—a pure side effect of other brain developments. But if that is not
acceptable, then an explanation of reason would have to explain the likelihood of the appearance of its
biological conditions qua conditions of reason, i.e., under that description. The possibilities at this
point are too abstractly described to permit any speculation as to whether a reductive causal
explanation could do this, but if emergence is the correct answer to the constitutive question about
reason, it may be that the historical question will require either a teleological or an intentional
solution.
6
I have raised the possibility of teleological principles as part of the natural order in the previous
chapter. Teleological explanation may have serious problems, but in this case they are no more
serious than those of the alternatives, so the possibility should not be disregarded. The evolution of
mind is part of a single long process of evolutionary descent. It is the latest stage in the evolution of
physical organisms, some of which are now governed largely by thought. If we are skeptical about an
intentional (theistic) explanation of the existence of reason, and can’t make sense of a causal
reductionist one, it is natural to speculate that some tendencies in this direction have been at work all
along. If physics alone or even a nonmaterialist monism can’t account for the later stages of our
evolutionary history, we shouldn’t assume that it can account for the earlier stages. Indeed, when we
go back far enough, to the origin of life—of self-replicating systems capable of supporting evolution
by natural selection—those actually engaged in research in the subject recognize that they are very far
from even formulating a viable explanatory hypothesis of the traditional materialist kind. Yet they
assume that there must be such an explanation, since life cannot have arisen purely by chance.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 20:57:38
4
In fact, that assumption may be based on a confusion. In an important paper, Roger White has
argued that the search for an explanation of the origin of life in terms of the nonpurposive principles
of physics and chemistry—an explanation that will reveal that the origin of life is not merely a matter
of chance but something to be expected, or at least not surprising—is probably motivated by the sense
that life can’t be a matter of chance because it looks so much as though it is the product of intentional
design. But the hypothesis of intentional design is ruled out as unscientific. So it seems natural to
conclude that the only way left for life not to be a matter of chance is for it somehow to be made
likely by physical law. But as White points out, this inference is illegitimate. Here is what he says:
The line of reasoning … is something like the following. That molecular replicating systems
appear to be designed by an agent is sufficient to convince us that they didn’t arise by
chance. But in scientific reasoning, non-intentional explanations are to be preferred, if
possible (some would say at all costs), to intentional ones—hence the motivation to find a
non-intentional explanation of life.
It should be clear however, that even granting the appropriateness of a preference for nonintentional
explanations, this line of reasoning is confused. In general, if BI [the hypothesis
that the process that led to S was intentionally biased] raises the likelihood of S, then S
confirms BI to at least some degree, and may thereby disconfirm C [the chance hypothesis].
But it does not follow that S confirms BN [the hypothesis that the process was nonintentionally
biased] one iota. S confirms BN only if BN raises the likelihood of S. If the
reason we doubt the Chance Hypothesis is that we suspect that life is due in part to
intelligent agency, this by itself gives us no reason to expect there to be a non-intentional
explanation for life. If on reflection we do not find the hypothesis of intentional biasing
acceptable, then we are left with no reason at all to doubt that life arose by chance.5
Much of White’s paper is taken up with arguing that life is no more to be expected on the assumption
of BN—the hypothesis of nonintentional bias—than on the assumption of chance. That is because
even if there is nonintentional bias toward certain outcomes resulting from purposeless physical law,
it could be a bias toward any type of outcome whatever, so it cannot make the appearance of life more
likely than anything else. As White says,
What makes certain molecular configurations stand out from the multitude of possibilities
seems to be that they are capable of developing into something that strikes us as rather
marvelous, namely a world of living creatures. But there is no conceivable reason that blind
forces of nature or physical attributes should be biased toward the marvelous.6
By contrast, intentional bias is limited as a hypothesis by some rough assumptions about the motives
that give rise to intentions. (Thus one cannot claim about just any outcome S, however random or
arbitrary, that it gives evidence that the process that led to it was intentionally biased, simply on the
ground that it is rendered likely by the hypothesis that it was produced by a being who wanted
precisely S to occur. Any argument from design depends on more restrictive general assumptions
about what kinds of things a designer might want to produce.)
I am drawn to a fourth alternative, natural teleology, or teleological bias, as an account of the
existence of the biological possibilities on which natural selection can operate. I believe that teleology
is a naturalistic alternative that is distinct from all three of the other candidate explanations: chance,
creationism, and directionless physical law. To avoid the mistake that White finds in the hypothesis of
nonintentional bias, teleology would have to be restrictive in what it makes likely, but without
depending on intentions or motives. This would probably have to involve some conception of an
increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by the higher forms of organization
toward which nature tends: not just any outcome could qualify as a telos. That would make value an
explanatory end, but not one that is realized through the purposes or intentions of an agent. Teleology
means that in addition to physical law of the familiar kind, there are other laws of nature that are
“biased toward the marvelous.”
The idea of teleology as part of the natural order flies in the teeth of the authoritative form of
explanation that has defined science since the revolution of the seventeenth century. Teleology would
mean that some natural laws, unlike all the basic scientific laws discovered so far, are temporally
historical in their operation. The laws of physics are all equations specifying universal relations that
hold at every time and place among mathematically specifiable quantities like force, mass, charge,
distance, and velocity. In a nonteleological system the explanation of any temporally extended
process has to consist in the explanation, by reference to those laws, of how each state of the universe
evolved from its immediate predecessor. Teleology, by contrast, would admit irreducible principles
governing temporally extended development.
The teleology I want to consider would be an explanation not only of the appearance of physical
organisms but of the development of consciousness and ultimately of reason in those organisms. But
its form can be described even if we stay at the physical level. Natural teleology would require two
things. First, that the nonteleological and timeless laws of physics—those governing the ultimate
elements of the physical universe, whatever they are—are not fully deterministic. Given the physical
state of the universe at any moment, the laws of physics would have to leave open a range of
alternative successor states, presumably with a probability distribution over them.
Second, among those possible futures there will be some that are more eligible than others as
possible steps on the way to the formation of more complex systems, and ultimately of the kinds of
replicating systems characteristic of life. The existence of teleology requires that successor states in
this subset have a significantly higher probability than is entailed by the laws of physics alone—
simply because they are on the path toward a certain outcome. Teleological laws would assign higher
probability to steps on paths in state space that have a higher “velocity” toward certain outcomes.7
They would be laws of the self-organization of matter, essentially—or of whatever is more basic than
matter.
This is a frankly teleological hypothesis because the preferred transitions do not have a higher
probability in virtue of their intrinsic immediate characteristics, but only in virtue of temporally
extended developments of which they form a potential part. In other words, some laws of nature
would apply directly to the relation between the present and the future, rather than specifying
instantaneous functions that hold at all times. A naturalistic teleology would mean that organizational
and developmental principles of this kind are an irreducible part of the natural order, and not the
result of intentional or purposive influence by anyone. I am not confident that this Aristotelian idea of
teleology without intention makes sense, but I do not at the moment see why it doesn’t.
7
What are the alternatives? Any alternative must include the constitutive possibility, in the character of
the elements of which the world is composed, of their combination into living organisms with the
properties of consciousness, action, and cognition which we know they have. But given this
possibility, the historical question of why such organisms arose could in principle receive two very
different nonteleological answers. First, there is the hypothesis that the initial appearance of a codegoverned
replicating system that started the evolutionary process was a cosmic accident, and that
subsequent accidental mutations provided the set of successive candidates on which natural selection
operated to generate the history of life. This hypothesis makes the outcome too accidental to count as
a genuine explanation of the existence of conscious, thinking beings as such.
Second, for theists there is the intentional alternative: divine intervention to create life out of the
basic material of the world, and perhaps also to guide the process of evolution by natural selection,
through the intentional production and preservation of some of the mutations on which natural
selection operates along the way.8 This could be combined with either a reductive or an emergent
answer to the constitutive question. A creationist explanation of the existence of life is the biological
analogue of dualism in the philosophy of mind. It pushes teleology outside of the natural order, into
the intentions of the creator—working with completely directionless materials whose properties
nevertheless underlie both the mental and the physical. If God at some point in the past constructed
DNA or one of its predecessors out of its elements, that dispenses with the need for any explanation of
the capacity of the elements to organize themselves in this apparently purposive way.
That would require only that the existence of DNA be a physical possibility—in chemical space,
so to speak. And if we extend the case to consciousness and reason, it would require that conscious
and rational subjects supported by brains of the right kind be mental possibilities. But in the
creationist picture, the natural order accounts for the physical possibility of DNA in the same way that
it accounts for the physical possibility of an airplane or a telephone or a computer. Those possibilities
are all explained by physics alone: it is only their actualization that involves a designer, and
something analogous would be true for animal consciousness—a surprising way in which the
protopsychic elements of the world can be combined. So biological and mental organization are no
more part of the natural order in the creationist view than airplanes or telephones are. The laws of
nature entail their possibility, but they do not explain their actuality.
My preference for an immanent, natural explanation is congruent with my atheism. But even a
theist who believes God is ultimately responsible for the appearance of conscious life could maintain
that this happens as part of a natural order that is created by God, but that it does not require further
divine intervention. A theist not committed to dualism in the philosophy of mind could suppose that
the natural possibility of conscious organisms resides already in the character of the elements out of
which those organisms are composed, perhaps supplemented by laws of psychophysical emergence.
To make the possibility of conscious life a consequence of the natural order created by God while
ascribing its actuality to subsequent divine intervention would then seem an arbitrary complication.
Some form of teleological naturalism should for these reasons seem no less credible than an
interventionist explanation, even to those who believe that God is ultimately responsible for
everything.9
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 20:59:34
<... tl;dr ...>
The normal way to discuss on forums is to post your own thoughts about what you've read, not copy-paste reams of someone else's work.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 21:04:31
It's an unreliable indicator of the reliability of an unreliable system, which is actually less unreliable than the indicator.
OIC - yes; sorry, I'm a bit slow today...

Quote
I think DonQ is actually female. When accused of talking improbable nonsense my mum used to say "I just know". 
It's a lovely thought!  (not) :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:10:08
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
I thought so; 'Not irrelevant', says 'relevant' to me. If this isn't what you meant, you only had to say so.

You would have noticed just that , if you read carefully what i said .
God is ,once again, neither irrelevent nor relevant to science , i said ; can't you read ? : ...God ...
What might not  be  irrelevant to something might  also be not relevant to it as well,and at the same time  .

Quote
Quote
why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?
What, "God is irrelevant to reductionism in science"? It appeared to confirm my interpretation - by implying that God might somehow be relevant to non-reductionist science (whatever that might be). The rest of it was fluff.

Read Nagel above .
You're really exasperating and extremely irritating : the word here is "naturalism " for natural science :
If God is irrelevant to reductionist naturalism, then is God  logically also so regarding non-reductionist naturalism ...

Quote
Quote
Quote
And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?
Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " :<...blah...>
If you mean the scientific method, that's the framework within which an approach (e.g. reductionism) is used. As I'm sure you're aware.

Reductionism is just a conception , or rather misconception of nature in science ,via its reductionist meta-paradigm mainly in science ...
Do not try to integrate reductionism in that sense within the frame work of the scientific method , as you put it at least,it has nthing to do with : reductionism  was/is  just crippling science in its capability to explain nature ,the universe , man , life , consciousness ... .

Quote
Quote
Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .
Ah; such subtle answers they just appeared to be ignoring the questions altogether...

OK; I suppose that's that then
.

What had you in mind then ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:26:26
<... tl;dr ...>
The normal way to discuss on forums is to post your own thoughts about what you've read, not copy-paste reams of someone else's work.

It did obviously not help to post my own thoughts about what i have read : what do you think i was doing then ?,So, i resorted to posting what the guy had to say on the subject , partly .
You remind me of an experience i had  when i was in Amsterdam , i was making love to a lovely  English girl : during that , she could not stop shouting " f...me, f...me, f...me " : i shouted back : " f...what do you think i am doing ? , missing her cultural  point that she was just trying to arose me some more , and herself in the process ...due to the passion and heat of the live love making "debate" ...
Are you doing just that ,or something Freudian similar , your own different way ?, even though Freud's psychology was  largely refuted and discredited for and as having been largely ...unscientific ...



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:31:53
"Mind and Cosmos : Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " By Thomas Nagel ,Chapter 3 : Consciousness .

Chapter 3
Consciousness
1
Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the
resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical
description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and
that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for
everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications, it threatens to unravel
the entire naturalistic world picture. Yet it is very difficult to imagine viable alternatives.
Let me begin with a brief history of what has brought us to our present predicament. The modern
mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result
of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the
crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically
precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description
limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the
relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand—how this physical world appears to
human perception—were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and
smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses,
to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract
subjective appearances and the human mind—as well as human intentions and purposes—from the
physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective
physical reality to develop.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:33:09

However, the exclusion of everything mental from the scope of modern physical science was
bound to be challenged eventually. We humans are parts of the world, and the desire for a unified
world picture is irrepressible. It seems natural to pursue that unity by extending the reach of physics
and chemistry, in light of their great successes in explaining so much of the natural order. These
successes have so far taken the form of reduction followed by reconstruction: discovering the basic
elements of which everything is composed and showing how they combine to yield the complexity we
observe.
It has become clear that our bodies and central nervous systems are parts of the physical world,
composed of the same elements as everything else and completely describable in terms of the modern
versions of the primary qualities—more sophisticated but still mathematically and spatiotemporally
defined. Molecular biology keeps increasing our knowledge of our own physical composition,
operation, and development. Finally, so far as we can tell, our mental lives, including our subjective
experiences, and those of other creatures are strongly connected with and probably strictly dependent
on physical events in our brains and on the physical interaction of our bodies with the rest of the
physical world.
Perhaps it is these developments in neurophysiology and molecular biology that have encouraged
the hope of including the mind in a single physical conception of the world; at any rate, the consensus
in that direction is recent. Descartes thought it couldn’t be done—that mind and matter are both fully
real and irreducibly distinct, though they interact. In the dualist view, physical science is defined by
the exclusion of the mental from its subject matter. There has always been resistance to dualism, but
for several centuries after Descartes, it expressed itself primarily through idealism, the view that mind
is the ultimate reality and the physical world is in some way reducible to it. This attempt to overcome
the division from the direction of the mental extends from Berkeley—who rejected the primarysecondary
quality distinction and held that physical things are ideas in the mind of God—to the
logical positivists, who analyzed the physical world as a construction out of sense data. Then, in a
rapid historical shift whose causes are somewhat obscure, idealism was largely displaced in later
twentieth-century analytic philosophy by attempts at unification in the opposite direction,
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:34:20
 starting
from the physical.
Materialism is the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real, and that a place must be
found in it for mind, if there is such a thing. This would continue the onward march of physical
science, through molecular biology, to full closure by swallowing up the mind in the objective
physical reality from which it was initially excluded. The assumption is that physics is
philosophically unproblematic, and the main target of opposition is Descartes’ dualist picture of the
ghost in the machine. The task is to come up with an alternative, and here begins a series of failures.
One strategy for putting the mental into the physical world picture is conceptual behaviorism,
offered as an analysis of the real nature of mental concepts. This was tried in several versions. Mental
phenomena were identified variously with behavior, behavioral dispositions, or forms of behavioral
organization. In another version, associated with Ryle and inspired by Wittgenstein,1 mental
phenomena were not identified with anything, either physical or nonphysical; the names of mental
states and processes were said not to be referring expressions. Instead, mental concepts were
explained in terms of their observable behavioral conditions of application—behavioral criteria or
assertability conditions rather than behavioral truth conditions.
All these strategies are essentially verificationist, i.e., they assume that all that needs to be said
about the content of a mental statement is what would verify or confirm it, or warrant its assertion,
from the point of view of an observer. In one way or another, they reduce mental attributions to the
externally observable conditions on the basis of which we attribute mental states to others. If
successful, this would obviously place the mind comfortably in the physical world.
It is certainly true that mental phenomena have behavioral manifestations, which supply our main
evidence for them in other creatures. Yet all these theories seem insufficient as analyses of the mental
because they leave out something essential that lies beyond the externally observable grounds for
attributing mental states to others, namely, the aspect of mental phenomena that is evident from the
first-person, inner point of view of the conscious subject: for example, the way sugar tastes to you or
the way red looks or anger feels, each of which seems to be something more than the behavioral
responses and discriminatory capacities that these experiences explain. Behaviorism leaves out the
inner mental state itself.
In the 1950s an alternative, nonanalytic route to materialism was proposed, one that in a sense
acknowledged that the mental is something inside us, of which outwardly observable behavior is
merely a manifestation. This was the psycho-physical identity theory, offered by U. T. Place and J. J.
C. Smart2 not as conceptual analysis but as a scientific hypothesis. It held that mental events are
physical events in the brain: ? = F (where ? is a mental event like pain or a taste sensation and F is
the corresponding physical event in the central nervous system). Since this is not a conceptual truth, it
cannot be known a priori; it is supposed to be a theoretical identity, like “Water = H2O,” and can be
confirmed only by the future development of science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:35:35

The trouble is that this nonanalytic identity raises a further question: What is it about F that
makes it also ?? It must be some property conceptually distinct from the physical properties that
define F. That is required for the identity to be a scientific and not a conceptual truth.3 Clearly
materialists won’t want to give a dualist answer—i.e., that F is ? because it has a nonphysical
property in addition to its physiological ones (e.g., a nonphysical experiential quality). But they have
to give some answer, and it has to be an answer that is consistent with materialism. So defenders of
the identity theory, in spite of their wish to avoid relying on conceptual analysis, tended to be pulled
back into different kinds of analytical behaviorism, in order to analyze the mental character of brain
processes in a way that avoided dualism. What makes the brain process a mental process, they
proposed, is not an additional intrinsic property but a relational one—a relation to physical behavior.
A causal element was now added to the analysis: “the inner state that typically causes certain
behavior and is caused by certain stimuli.” This was prompted by the need to explain the two distinct
nonsynonymous references to the same thing that occur in a non-conceptual identity statement.
Materialists had to explain how “pain” and “brain state” can refer to the same thing even though their
meaning is not the same, and to explain this without appealing to anything nonphysical in accounting
for the reference of “pain.”4
These strategies have taken increasingly sophisticated form, under the headings of causal
behaviorism, functionalism, and other theories of how mental concepts could refer to states of the
brain in virtue of the causal role of those states in controlling the interaction between the organism
and its environment. But all such strategies are unsatisfactory for the same old reason: even with the
brain added to the picture, they clearly leave out something essential, without which there would be
no mind. And what they leave out is just what was deliberately left out of the physical world by
Descartes and Galileo in order to form the modern concept of the physical, namely, subjective
appearances.
Another problem was subsequently noticed by Saul Kripke. Identity theorists took as their model
for ? = F other theoretical identities like “Water = H2O” or “Heat = Molecular Motion.” But Kripke
argued that those identities are necessary truths (though not conceptual and not a priori), whereas the
?/F relation appears to be contingent.5 This was the basis of Descartes’ argument for dualism.
Descartes said that since we can clearly conceive of the mind existing without the physical body, and
vice versa, they can’t be one thing.6
Consider “Water = H2O,” a typical scientifically discovered theoretical identity. It means that
water is nothing but H2O. You can’t have H2O without water, and you don’t need anything more than
H2O for water. It’s water even if there’s no one around to see, feel, or taste it. We ordinarily identify
water by its perceptible qualities, but our perceptual experiences aren’t part of the water; they are just
effects it has on our senses. The intrinsic properties of water, its density, electrical conductivity, index
of refraction, liquidity between 0 and 100 degrees centigrade, etc., are all fully explained by H2O and
its properties. The physical properties of H2O are by themselves sufficient for water.
So if ? really is F in this sense, and nothing else, then F by itself, once its physical properties are
understood, should likewise be sufficient for the taste of sugar, the feeling of pain, or whatever it is
supposed to be identical with. But it doesn’t seem to be. It seems conceivable, for any F, that there
should be F without any experience at all. Experience of taste seems to be something extra,
contingently related to the brain state—something produced rather than constituted by the brain state.
So it cannot be identical to the brain state in the way that water is identical to H2O.
I have given only a brief sketch of the territory. A voluminous and intricate literature has grown
up around these problems, but it serves mainly to confirm how intractable they are. The multiple dead
ends in the forward march of materialism suggest that the ?/F dualism introduced at the birth of
modern science may be harder to get out of than many people have imagined. It has even led some
philosophers to eliminative materialism—the suggestion that mental events, like ghosts and Santa
Claus, don’t exist at all.7 But if we don’t regard that as an option and still want to pursue a unified
world picture, I believe we will have to leave materialism behind. Conscious subjects and their mental
lives are inescapable components of reality not describable by the physical sciences.
I suspect that the appearance of contingency in the relation between mind and brain is probably an
illusion, and that it is in fact a necessary but nonconceptual connection, concealed from us by the
inadequacy of our present concepts.8 Major scientific advances often require the creation of new
concepts, postulating unobservable elements of reality that are needed to explain how natural
regularities that initially appear accidental are in fact necessary. The evidence for the existence of
such things is precisely that if they existed, they would explain what is otherwise incomprehensible.
Certainly the mind-body problem is difficult enough that we should be suspicious of attempts to
solve it with the concepts and methods developed to account for very different kinds of things.
Instead, we should expect theoretical progress in this area to require a major conceptual revolution at
least as radical as relativity theory, the introduction of electromagnetic fields into physics—or the
original scientific revolution itself, which, because of its built-in restrictions, can’t result in a “theory
of everything,” but must be seen as a stage on the way to a more general form of understanding. We
ourselves are large-scale, complex instances of something both objectively physical from outside and
subjectively mental from inside. Perhaps the basis for this identity pervades the world.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:36:58

2
So far I have argued that the physical sciences will not enable us to understand the irreducibly
subjective centers of consciousness that are such a conspicuous part of the world. But the failure of
reductionism in the philosophy of mind has implications that extend beyond the mind-body problem.
Psychophysical reductionism is an essential component of a broader naturalistic program, which
cannot survive without it. This naturalistic program is both metaphysical and scientific. It holds both
that everything in the world is physical and that everything that happens in the world has its most
basic explanation, whether we can come to know it or not, in physical law, as applied to physical
things and events and their constituents.
Many—perhaps most—philosophers of mind are still committed to the reductionist project; they
think of the difficulties I have described merely as problems that need to be solved in carrying it out
successfully. Whoever shares that point of view can regard the argument that follows as a
hypothetical one. Its aim is to show that if psychophysical reductionism is ruled out, this infects our
entire naturalistic understanding of the universe, not only our understanding of consciousness.
Beginning with biology, and seeping down to our conception of the basic constituents of reality, it
makes the currently standard materialist form of naturalism untenable, even as an account of the
physical world, simply because we are parts of that world. I assume this hypothetical conclusion will
be welcome to reductionists, since it shows just how extravagant and costly a position
antireductionism in the philosophy of mind is.
Reductionists believe the way has been cleared for the completeness of the materialist conception
of the world by some form of functional or causal role analysis of the mental, including all the
contents of consciousness. A biological—evolutionary—account of the nature and origin of those
behavioral capacities and functions by reference to which consciousness can be analyzed then
provides the final link with more basic physical science. All this involves a great deal of speculation
and evolutionary guesswork, but the general idea of how consciousness is to be included as part of the
physical world is clear enough. It is included in virtue of the existence of physical organisms capable
of certain kinds of behavioral interaction with the world, which is in turn explained by genetic
variation and natural selection. If there is a problem about how materialism can account for the
coming into existence of such organisms, it has nothing in particular to do with consciousness but is
just the general problem of whether evolutionary theory really does provide the basis for a reduction
of biology to chemistry and physics.
But if the program of analyzing consciousness in terms of behavior and its physical causes is not
viable, another problem arises. Even if consciousness is something that cannot be analyzed in terms of
the purely physical properties of organisms, its appearance still needs to be explained, as part of the
larger project of making sense of the world. Further, any such explanation must account for the fact
that the appearance of consciousness on earth and the different forms it takes are closely dependent on
the evolutionary development of those physical forms of life that have consciousness. We do not
know precisely which forms of life these are, but we can be reasonably sure that they extend far
beyond our species. The evolution of life must be at least part of the explanation of the development
and forms of consciousness.
The problem, then, is this: What kind of explanation of the development of these organisms, even
one that includes evolutionary theory, could account for the appearance of organisms that are not only
physically adapted to the environment but also conscious subjects? In brief, I believe it cannot be a
purely physical explanation. What has to be explained is not just the lacing of organic life with a
tincture of qualia but the coming into existence of subjective individual points of view—a type of
existence logically distinct from anything describable by the physical sciences alone. If evolutionary
theory is a purely physical theory, then it might in principle provide the framework for a physical
explanation of the appearance of behaviorally complex animal organisms with central nervous
systems. But subjective consciousness, if it is not reducible to something physical, would not be part
of this story; it would be left completely unexplained by physical evolution—even if the physical
evolution of such organisms is in fact a causally necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness.
The bare assertion of such a connection is not an acceptable stopping point. It is not an
explanation to say just that the physical process of evolution has resulted in creatures with eyes, ears,
central nervous systems, and so forth, and that it is simply a brute fact of nature that such creatures
are conscious in the familiar ways. Merely to identify a cause is not to provide a significant
explanation, without some understanding of why the cause produces the effect. The claim I want to
defend is that, since the conscious character of these organisms is one of their most important
features, the explanation of the coming into existence of such creatures must include an explanation
of the appearance of consciousness. That cannot be a separate question. An account of their biological
evolution must explain the appearance of conscious organisms as such.
Since a purely materialist explanation cannot do this, the materialist version of evolutionary
theory cannot be the whole truth. Organisms such as ourselves do not just happen to be conscious;
therefore no explanation even of the physical character of those organisms can be adequate which is
not also an explanation of their mental character. In other words, materialism is incomplete even as a
theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most
striking occupants.
This problem depends only on the assumption that even though reductionism is false, mind is a
biological phenomenon. So long as the mental is irreducible to the physical, the appearance of
conscious physical organisms is left unexplained by a naturalistic account of the familiar type. On a
purely materialist understanding of biology, consciousness would have to be regarded as a tremendous
and inexplicable extra brute fact about the world. If it is to be explained in any sense naturalistically,
through the understanding of organic life, something fundamental must be changed in our conception
of the natural order that gave rise to life.
What kind of unified conception of the natural world would allow the explanation of the
development of living organisms also to explain the development of consciousness? Antireductionism
allows us to pose the question, but to answer it requires something more positive. And it cannot
consist (merely!) in a revision of the basic concepts of physics, however radical—as happened with
the introduction of electromagnetic fields or relativistic space-time. If we continue to assume that we
are parts of the physical world and that the evolutionary process that brought us into existence is part
of its history, then something must be added to the physical conception of the natural order that
allows us to explain how it can give rise to organisms that are more than physical. The resources of
physical science are not adequate for this purpose, because those resources were developed to account
for data of a completely different kind.
The appearance of animal consciousness is evidently the result of biological evolution, but this
well-supported empirical fact is not yet an explanation—it does not provide understanding, or enable
us to see why the result was to be expected or how it came about. In this case, unlike that of the
appearance of the physical adaptations characteristic of life, an explanation by natural selection based
on physical fitness to survive is not sufficient. Selection for physical reproductive fitness may have
resulted in the appearance of organisms that are in fact conscious, and that have the observable variety
of different specific kinds of consciousness, but there is no physical explanation of why this is so—
nor any other kind of explanation that we know of.
To make facts of this kind intelligible, a postmaterialist theory would have to offer a unified
explanation of how the physical and the mental characteristics of organisms developed together, and it
would have to do so not just by adding a clause to the effect that the mental comes along with the
physical as a bonus. The need for an illuminating explanation of the mental outcome pushes back to
impose itself on the understanding of the entire process that led to that outcome.
3
I am putting a great deal of weight on the idea of explanation, and the goal of intelligibility at which it
aims—a goal that assumes the fundamental intelligibility of the universe, as discussed in the previous
chapter. Not everything has an explanation in this sense. Some things that seem to call for
explanation, like the deaths in near succession of several close relatives, may just be coincidences,
whose components have unrelated explanations. But systematic features of the natural world are not
coincidences, and I do not believe that we can regard them as brute facts not requiring explanation.
Regularities, patterns, and functional organization call out for explanation—the more so the more
frequent they are. When we become aware of such facts, we conclude that there is something we do
not know—something which, if we did know it, would render the facts intelligible. And I take it for
granted that knowing the immediate cause of some effect does not always make it intelligible—the
causation of consciousness by brain activity being a prime example.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:38:08

Explanation, unlike causation, is not just of an event, but of an event under a description. An
explanation must show why it was likely that an event of that type occurred. We may know the causes
of the deaths of several members of a family in near succession, but that will not explain why several
members of that family died, as such, unless there is some relation among the causes of the individual
deaths that makes it antecedently likely that they would strike the group—such as a vendetta or a
genetic disease.
Another example: There is a physical explanation of why, when I tap “3,” “+,” “5,” and “ = ” into
my pocket calculator, the figure “8” appears on the display screen. But this causal explanation of the
shape on the screen is not an explanation of why the device produced the right answer. To explain the
result under that description, we must refer to the algorithm governing the calculator, and the
intention of the designer to give it a physical realization.
A naturalistic expansion of evolutionary theory to account for consciousness would not refer to the
intentions of a designer. But if it aspires to explain the appearance of consciousness as such, it would
have to offer some account of why the appearance of conscious organisms, and not merely of
behaviorally complex organisms, was likely.
The explanation by standard evolutionary theory of the purely physical characteristics of
organisms is hard enough even if one disregards consciousness. As I have said earlier, the physical
and functional complexity of the results imposes very demanding conditions on a reductionist
historical explanation. The theory of natural selection, if it is to rely only on the operation of physical
law, has to postulate that there is a purely physical explanation of why it is not unlikely that
accidental mutations in the genetic material have generated the range of variation in viable
phenotypes needed to permit natural selection to produce the evolutionary history that has actually
occurred on earth over the past three billion years.9 Like any historical explanation, it will embody a
great deal of contingency, so the particular history of life will not be explained by evolutionary theory
alone. But the contingencies and their effects have to be consistent with the physical character of the
theory. And to complete the link with physics, the explanation has to suppose that there is a
nonnegligible probability that some sequence of steps, starting from nonliving matter and depending
on purely physical mechanisms, could eventually have resulted in a replicating molecule capable of
all this, embodying a precise code billions of characters long, together with the ribosomes that
translate that code into proteins.10 It is not enough to say, “Something had to happen, so why not
this?” I find the confidence among the scientific establishment that the whole scenario will yield to a
purely chemical explanation hard to understand, except as a manifestation of an axiomatic
commitment to reductive materialism.11
But to explain consciousness, as well as biological complexity, as a consequence of the natural
order adds a whole new dimension of difficulty. I am setting aside outright dualism, which would
abandon the hope for an integrated explanation. Indeed, substance dualism would imply that biology
has no responsibility at all for the existence of minds.12 What interests me is the alternative
hypothesis that biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious mental phenomena,
but that since those phenomena are not physically explainable, the usual view of evolution must be
revised. It is not just a physical process.
If that is so, how much would have to be added to the physical story to produce a genuine
explanation of consciousness—one that made the appearance of consciousness, as such, intelligible,
as opposed to merely explaining the appearance of certain physical organisms that, as a matter of fact,
are conscious? It is not enough simply to add to the physical account of evolution the further
observation that different types of animal organisms, depending on their physical constitution, have
different forms of conscious life. That would present the consciousness of animals as a mysterious
side effect of the physical history of evolution, which explains only the physical and functional
character of organisms.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:39:16

Elliott Sober once suggested to me in that spirit that consciousness might be like the redness of
blood—a side effect of functional biological features that has no function in itself, and no direct
explanation by natural selection. In that case consciousness would be like a giant spandrel, in the
sense of Gould and Lewontin13 (and a very lucky one for us). But clearly this bare identification of a
cause would not be a satisfactory explanation. Without more, it would explain neither why particular
organisms are conscious nor why conscious organisms have come to exist at all.
For a satisfactory explanation of consciousness as such, a general psychophysical theory of
consciousness would have to be woven into the evolutionary story, one which makes intelligible both
(1) why specific organisms have the conscious life they have, and (2) why conscious organisms arose
in the history of life on earth. At this point such a theory is a complete fantasy, but it is still possible
to pose some questions about what it would have to accomplish—in particular about the relation
between parts (1) and (2) of the explanatory task.
Suppose there were a general psychophysical theory that, if we could discover it, would allow us
to understand, for any type of physical organism, why it did or did not have conscious life, and if it
did, why it had the specific type of conscious life that it had. This could be called a nonhistorical
theory of consciousness. It would accomplish task (1). But I believe that even if such a powerful nonhistorical
theory were conjoined with a purely physical theory of how those organisms arose through
evolution, the result would not be an explanation of the appearance of consciousness as such. It would
not accomplish task (2); it would still leave the appearance of consciousness as an accidental and
therefore unexplained concomitant of something else—the genuinely intelligible physical history.
Let me call a conjunctive explanation one in which A explains B and B has as a consequence C.
Sometimes such a conjunction will not amount to an explanation of C as such. Suppose C is “the death
of several members of the same family,” as discussed above. If A gives the independent cause of each
of four deaths, B is the sum of those deaths, and they are in fact members of the same family, then C
is a consequence of B but it is not explained, as such, by A. We can explain why four people died who
are in fact members of the same family without explaining why four members of the same family
died.
Or consider the different conjunctive explanation in the case of the pocket calculator. A is the
physical explanation of what happens when I tap in “3 + 5 =,” which causes B, the display on the
screen of the figure “8.” It is a further fact that this figure is the symbol for the number 8, and the
figures I tapped in are the symbols for a certain sum, so we have the consequence C that the device
produced the right answer for the sum entered. But without more, this is merely an assertion, and not
yet an explanation of why the calculator gave that answer, or the right answer. Without the further fact
that the calculator was designed to embody an arithmetic algorithm and to display its results in Arabic
numerals, the physical explanation alone would leave the arithmetical result completely mysterious. It
would give the cause of the figure that appeared on the screen, but would not explain the number as
such.
The moral seems to be that a conjunctive explanation, going from A to B and B to C, can explain
C only if there is some further, internal relation between the way A explains B and the way B explains
C. In the case of the family, this would be satisfied if the same rare hereditary disease killed all four
people: each of them developed the disease partly because they were members of the same family. In
the case of the calculator, the condition is satisfied since the device has the physical structure and
function it has precisely in order to embody the arithmetic algorithm.
It isn’t enough that C should be the consequence, even the necessary consequence, of B, which is
explained by A. There must be something about A itself that makes C a likely consequence. I believe
that if A is the evolutionary history, B is the appearance of certain organisms, and C is their
consciousness, this means that some kind of psychophysical theory must apply not only
nonhistorically, at the end of the process, but also to the evolutionary process itself. That process
would have to be not only the physical history of the appearance and development of physical
organisms but also a mental history of the appearance and development of conscious beings. And
somehow it would have to be one process, making both aspects of the result intelligible.
If, for example, the explanation of nonreducible conscious life were to preserve the basic structure
of evolutionary theory, it would probably involve the following: (1) At least in later stages,
consciousness per se plays an essential causal role in the survival and reproduction of organisms. (2)
The features of consciousness that play this role are somehow genetically transmitted. (3) The genetic
variation among individuals which supplies the candidates for natural selection, at least after a certain
point, is simultaneously mental and physical variation. (4) Further, and most significant, it seems
unavoidable that these mechanisms should be preceded by others in the earlier stages of evolution that
create the conditions for their possibility.
This would mean abandoning the standard assumption that evolution is driven by exclusively
physical causes. Indeed, it suggests that the explanation may have to be something more than physical
all the way down. The rejection of psychophysical reductionism leaves us with a mystery of the most
basic kind about the natural order—a mystery whose avoidance is one of the primary motives of
reductionism. It is a double mystery: first, about the relation between the physical and the mental in
each individual instance, and second, about how the evolutionary explanation of the development of
physical organisms can be transformed into a psychophysical explanation of how consciousness
developed.
The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding
things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be
expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may
have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows
that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different
way in which things as they are make sense, and that includes the way the physical world is, since the
problem cannot be quarantined in the mind.
4
Given this vacancy in our understanding, what kind of explanation does it make sense to imagine? So
far I have considered the possibility of additions or modifications to a standard evolutionary
explanation, but now I want to consider a broader range of options. All one can do is to describe
abstract possibilities, but to begin with, it is clear that any explanation will have two elements: an
ahistorical constitutive account of how certain complex physical systems are also mental, and a
historical account of how such systems arose in the universe from its beginnings. Evidently the
historical account will depend partly on the correct constitutive account, since the latter describes the
outcome that the former has to explain. Let me first discuss the constitutive possibilities.
The constitutive account will be either reductive or emergent. A reductive account will explain the
mental character of complex organisms entirely in terms of the properties of their elementary
constituents, and if we stay with the assumption that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical, this
will mean that the elementary constituents of which we are composed are not merely physical.14 Since
we are composed of the same elements as the rest of the universe, this will have extensive and radical
consequences, to which I will return below.
An emergent account, by contrast, will explain the mental character of complex organisms by
principles specifically linking mental states and processes to the complex physical functioning of
those organisms—to their central nervous systems in particular, in the case of humans and creatures
somewhat like them. The difference from a reductive account is that, while the principles do not
reduce the mental to the physical, the connections they specify between the mental and the physical
are all higher-order. They concern only complex organisms, and do not require any change in the
exclusively physical conception of the elements of which those organisms are composed. An
emergent account of the mental is compatible with a physically reductionist account of the biological
system in which mind emerges.
To qualify as a genuine explanation of the mental, an emergent account must be in some way
systematic. It cannot just say that each mental event or state supervenes on the complex physical state
of the organism in which it occurs. That would be the kind of brute fact that does not constitute an
explanation but rather calls for explanation. But I think we can imagine a higher-order psychophysical
theory that would make the connection cease to seem like a gigantic set of inexplicable correlations
and would instead make it begin to seem intelligible. Physiological psychologists are only beginning
to uncover the systematic dependence of visual experience on events in the visual cortex, for example,
but we can imagine that such explorations will lead to a general theory.
Still, this kind of higher-level theory, however empirically accurate, seems unsatisfactory as a
final answer to the constitutive question. If emergence is the whole truth, it implies that mental states
are present in the organism as a whole, or in its central nervous system, without any grounding in the
elements that constitute the organism, except for the physical character of those elements that permits
them to be arranged in the complex form that, according to the higher-level theory, connects the
physical with the mental. That such purely physical elements, when combined in a certain way, should
necessarily produce a state of the whole that is not constituted out of the properties and relations of
the physical parts still seems like magic even if the higher-order psychophysical dependencies are
quite systematic.
This dissatisfaction with an explanatory stopping place that relates complex structures to complex
structures is what underlies the constant push toward reduction in modern science. It is hard to give up
the assumption that whatever is true of the complex must be explained by what is true of the elements.
That does not mean that new phenomena cannot emerge at higher levels, but the hope is that they can
be analyzed through the character and interactions of their more elementary components. Such
harmless emergence is standardly illustrated by the example of liquidity, which depends on the
interactions of the molecules that compose the liquid. But the emergence of the mental at certain
levels of biological complexity is not like this. According to the emergent position now being
considered, consciousness is something completely new.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:40:26

Because such emergence, even if systematic, remains fundamentally inexplicable, the ideal of
intelligibility demands that we take seriously the alternative of a reductive answer to the constitutive
question—an answer that accounts for the relation between mind and brain in terms of something
more basic about the natural order. If such an account were possible, it would explain the appearance
of mental life at complex levels of biological organization by means of a general monism according
to which the constituents of the universe have properties that explain not only its physical but its
mental character. Tom Sorell states the point clearly:
Even if the mechanisms that produced biological life, including consciousness, are, at some
level, the same as those that operate in the evolution of the physical universe, it does not
follow that those mechanisms are physical just because physical evolution preceded
biological evolution. Perhaps some transphysical and transmental concept is required to
capture both mechanisms. This conjecture stakes out a territory for something sometimes
called “neutral monism” in addition to dualist, materialist, and idealist positions.15
Sorell is here using “neutral monism” to designate not just a metaphysical position but a type of
systematic explanatory theory distinct from traditional materialism. Considered just metaphysically,
as an answer to the mind-body problem, monism holds that certain physical states of the central
nervous system are also necessarily states of consciousness—their physical description being only a
partial description of them, from the outside, so to speak. Consciousness is in that case not, as in the
emergent account, an effect of the brain processes that are its physical conditions; rather, those brain
processes are in themselves more than physical, and the incompleteness of the physical description of
the world is exemplified by the incompleteness of their purely physical description.
But since conscious organisms are not composed of a special kind of stuff, but can be constructed,
apparently, from any of the matter in the universe, suitably arranged, it follows that this monism will
be universal. Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both
physical and nonphysical—that is, capable of combining into mental wholes. So this reductive
account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are
also mental.16 However, the sense in which they are mental is so far exhausted by the claim that they
are such as to provide a reductive account of how their appropriate combinations necessarily
constitute conscious organisms of the kind we are familiar with. Any further consequences of their
more-than-physical character at the microlevel remain unspecified by this abstract proposal.
5
Having described the difference between the two types of answers, emergent and reductive, to the
constitutive question, let me now turn to the historical question, again on the assumption that
psychophysical reductionism is false. The prevailing naturalistic answer to the historical question is
the materialist version of evolutionary theory, supplemented by a speculative chemical account of the
origin of life. The question is: What alternatives to this picture open up if psychophysical
reductionism is rejected?
The historical account of how conscious organisms arose in the universe can take one of three
forms: it will be either causal (appealing only to law-governed efficient causation), or teleological, or
intentional. (1) A causal historical account will hold that the origin of life and its evolution to the
level of conscious organisms has its ultimate explanation in the properties of the elementary
constituents of the universe, which are also the constituents of conscious organisms, together with any
further properties that may emerge as a result of their combination. (If the constitutive account of
consciousness is not emergent but reductive, then the causal historical account will also be fully
reductive.) (2) A teleological account will hold that in addition to the laws governing the behavior of
the elements in every circumstance, there are also principles of self-organization or of the
development of complexity over time that are not explained by those elemental laws. (3) An
intentional account will hold that although the natural order provides the constitutive conditions for
the possibility of conscious organisms, as it provides the conditions for the possibility of jet aircraft,
the realization of this possibility was due to intervention by a being (presumably God) who put the
constitutive elements together in the right way—perhaps by assembling the genetic material that
would result eventually in the evolution of conscious life. Since either a reductive or an emergent
constitutive account could be combined with any of the three types of historical account—causal,
teleological, or intentional—there are six options. Let me say something about causal accounts before
turning to the other possibilities, which depart much more radically from the usual form of scientific
explanation.
A causal historical account could be combined with either an emergent or a reductive constitutive
account. In the first alternative, the historical account would be restricted to purely physical
explanations of the origin and evolution of life until the point at which organisms reached the kind of
complexity that is associated with consciousness. After that, the history would be both a physical and
a mental one, and if the emergent mental element played an independent causal role, and was not
merely epiphenomenal, the causal process would cease to be strictly reductive. But I am interested in
the hypothesis of a physically reductive causal history leading at least to a point at which
psychophysical emergence occurs—perhaps in creatures with a nervous system, perhaps sooner. This
hypothesis would preserve the standard version of physical evolution without change up to the
emergence of consciousness.
Earlier I discussed the question whether a physical account of evolutionary history conjoined with
a nonhistorical psychophysical theory could really explain the appearance of consciousness, and I
concluded that unless there were some further link between the physical history and the
psychophysical theory, this would not render the result intelligible, even if it were causally accurate.
It would present consciousness as a mysterious side effect of biological evolution—inevitable,
perhaps, but inexplicable as such. To explain consciousness, a physical evolutionary history would
have to show why it was likely that organisms of the kind that have consciousness would arise.
That would be possible if the psychophysical theory governing the emergence of consciousness
revealed it to be inseparable from just the kind of physical organization and functioning of animal life
whose development a physical evolutionary history purports to explain through natural selection.17
That would go a long way toward making evolutionary theory an explanation of why conscious life
exists. It would imply that conscious organisms have developed through natural selection precisely in
virtue of the kinds of physical characteristics that systematically give rise to consciousness, according
to the psychophysical theory of emergence. This, then, is one serious option. It has the disadvantage
of postulating the brute fact of emergence, not explainable in terms of anything more basic, and
therefore essentially mysterious. And it relies on the large assumption that a reductive physical theory
could confer sufficient likelihood on the appearance in geological time of the right kind of physical
organisms to trigger that emergence. But it might be regarded as the historical account requiring the
smallest alteration to the prevailing physical form of naturalism, while nevertheless acknowledging
the irreducibility of the mental to the physical.
However, the other type of causal historical account, based on a reductive rather than an emergent
constitutive theory, would in principle explain more. In a different way, it might even be said that the
least radical departure from materialist reductionism would be a monistic reductive conception that is
both constitutive and historical, as physical theory aims to be with respect to the physical world. The
question is whether it makes sense.
A comprehensively reductive conception is favored by the belief that the propensity for the
development of organisms with a subjective point of view must have been there from the beginning,
just as the propensity for the formation of atoms, molecules, galaxies, and organic compounds must
have been there from the beginning, in consequence of the already existing properties of the
fundamental particles. If we imagine an explanation taking the form of an enlarged version of the
natural order, with complex local phenomena formed by composition from universally available basic
elements, it will depend on some kind of monism or panpsychism, rather than laws of psychophysical
emergence that come into operation only late in the game.
However, it is not clear that this kind of reductive explanation could really render the result
intelligible in the way that particle physics or something comparable ostensibly renders the character
and cosmological history of the nonliving material world intelligible. The protopsychic properties of
all matter, on such a view, are postulated solely because they are needed to explain the appearance of
consciousness at high levels of organic complexity. Apart from that nothing is known about them:
they are completely indescribable and have no predictable local effects, in contrast to the physical
properties of electrons and protons, which allow them to be detected individually. So we have no idea
how such a compositional explanation would work. Without something unimaginably more
systematic in the way of a reduction, panpsychism does not provide a new, more basic resting place in
the search for intelligibility—a set of basic principles from which more complex results can be seen
to follow. It offers only the form of an explanation without any content, and therefore doesn’t seem to
be much of an advance on the emergent alternative.
Yet the proposal is not empty. In its schematic, pre-Socratic way, this sort of monism attempts to
recognize the mental as a physically irreducible part of reality while still clinging to the basic form of
understanding that has proved so successful in physical theory. This is not just intellectual imitation;
it is encouraged by the close connection between minds and bodies. Organisms are physical
complexes whose existence and operation seem to call for reductive explanation, and their existence
and operation seem largely or wholly responsible for the existence of consciousness. It therefore
seems natural to try to fold the explanation of consciousness into the same reductive structure.
On the other hand, the idea of reducing the mind to elementary mental events or particles seems
unnatural in a way that physical atomism doesn’t. The space-time framework of the physical world
makes the physical part-whole relation immediately graspable, geometrically, but we have no
comparably clear idea of a part-whole relation for mental reality—no idea how mental states at the
level of organisms could be composed out of the properties of microelements, whether those
properties are similar in type to our experiential states or different. Yet a mentalistic reductionism
would presumably have to find the protomental parts in a monist counterpart of the physical parts of
the organism, and would have to include a theory of how they combine into conscious wholes.
It is even more obscure how properties that would explain how conscious beings are constituted
out of universal elements could also help to explain how conscious beings have arisen, historically, in
virtue of the laws or principles governing the behavior of those elements. If the theory is to be not
only constitutively but historically reductive, then the protomental character of the elements would
have to play a part in the explanation of how life began and evolved even before the appearance of
animal organisms
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 21:41:51
.
It is already a natural part of the monist conception that the protomental features of the basic
constituents are not merely passive but are necessarily also active, since this is needed to explain the
inseparability of active and passive in the consciousness of ordinary animals. Just as phenomenology
and behavior are internally connected in the mental life of organisms, something analogous must be
true at the micro level, if monism is correct. So the protomental will have behavioral implications.
Furthermore, if a universal monism is correct, it would mean that these psychophysical connections
are unbreakable: one cannot have the mental without the physical aspect, or vice versa.18
But this doesn’t help us to imagine a monist alternative to the materialist history of the origin and
evolution of life, prior to the appearance of conscious organisms. Once conscious organisms appear
on the scene, we can see how it would go. For example, a reductive monism would imply that certain
structures necessarily have visual experience, in a sense that inextricably combines phenomenology
and capacities for discrimination in the control of action, and that there are no possible structures
capable of the same control without the phenomenology. If such structures appeared on the
evolutionary menu, they would presumably enhance the fitness of the resulting organisms. In that way
the protomental would play a truly explanatory, and not merely epiphenomenal, role in biological
evolution.
But that would not explain why such structures formed in the first place. Even if the possibility of
a visual system is somehow already implied by the properties of the basic elements, how can a
nonmaterialist monism help to explain its appearance in actuality, over geological time? How could
the same active principles that account for action and perception in a fully formed organism also
account for the original formation of organisms and the generation of viable mutations over
evolutionary history? These questions are analogous to those that can be posed with respect to a
purely materialistic reductive evolutionary theory, and they seem just as hard for a nonmaterialist
theory.
There will be the same problems about explaining the origin of life and the availability of a
sufficient supply of viable mutations for natural selection to work on—sufficient to account for the
appearance of (now conscious) life as we know it. The kind of monism or panpsychism that would be
needed to provide a non-emergent solution to the constitutive problem will not make these historical
questions any easier. Chemistry is assumed to play this double role in the standard materialist
explanation of both the living operation and the evolutionary history of physical organisms, including
the origin of life. That is already highly speculative, but a hypothetical monism that has expanded to
encompass the mind is far more speculative, since it says only that there is more to the basic
substance of the world than can be captured by physics and chemistry. The object is to recast the
explanation of the evolution of animal organisms so that it explains not only their physical character
but also their consciousness and its character and functioning. But even if we conclude that the basis
of mind must be present in every part of the universe, that offers no hint of how the monistic
properties that underlie consciousness in living organisms lead first to the origin of life and
eventually to the appearance of conscious systems on the menu of mutations available for natural
selection.
Our beliefs about the properties of the physical elements and their constituents are based on what
is needed to account for their contemporary observable behavior and interaction and the results of
their combination into molecules and larger structures. The materialist form of naturalism assumes
that the history of the universe since the big bang, including the origin and evolution of life, can be
explained by those same properties. This is a very large assumption, and an analogous assumption
would have to underlie the historical hypothesis of a reductive monism, if it too is based on properties
of the elements needed to answer the constitutive question in a way that includes consciousness as a
physically irreducible feature of certain organisms. Why should those properties make the appearance
of such organisms, starting from inorganic matter, at all likely?
The idea of a reductive answer to both the constitutive and the historical questions remains very
dark indeed. It seeks a deeper and more cosmically unified explanation of consciousness than an
emergent theory, but at the cost of greater obscurity, and it offers no evident advantage with respect to
the historical problem of likelihood.
6
Let me comment more briefly on the intentional and teleological alternatives, whose attractions are
enhanced by the difficulties facing a causal account. Either answer to the constitutive question can be
combined with an intentional answer to the historical question. Suppose, for example, the constitutive
truth is reductive. Then if theistic explanations are possible at all, God might have carried out his
purpose of creating conscious beings either by assembling them out of elements with protopsychic
properties or by creating a universe with the appropriate highly specific initial conditions to give rise
to conscious beings through chemical and then biological evolution, entirely by nonteleological laws
of interaction among the elements. Purpose would in that case serve only as the outer frame for a
reductive system of efficient causation. For theists, this remains an option.
But if we are trying to imagine a secular theory, according to which the historical development of
conscious life is fully explained not by intervention but as part of the natural order, there seem to be
only two alternatives: either this development itself depends entirely on efficient causation, operating
in its later stages through the mechanisms of biological evolution, or there are natural teleological
laws governing the development of organization over time, in addition to laws of the familiar kind
governing the behavior of the elements.
This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth
of modern science.19 But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and
quite different from the idea of explanation by the intentions of a purposive being who produces the
means to his ends by choice. In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it
certainly shouldn’t be ruled out a priori. Formally, the possibility of principles of change over time
tending toward certain types of outcomes is coherent, in a world in which the nonteleological laws are
not fully deterministic.20 But it is essential, if teleology is to form part of a revised natural order, that
its laws should be genuinely universal and not just the description of a single goal-seeking process.
Since we are acquainted with only one instance of the appearance and evolution of life, we lack a
basis for bringing it under universal teleological laws, unless teleological principles can be found
operating consistently at much lower levels. But there would have to be such laws for teleology to
genuinely explain anything.
Admittedly, the idea of teleological explanation is often associated with the further idea that the
outcomes have value, so that it is not arbitrary that those particular teleological principles hold. That
in turn poses the question whether an explanation that appeals to value can be understood apart from
the purposes of some being who aims at it. Nonpurposive teleology would either have to be value-free
or would have to say that the value of certain outcomes can itself explain why the laws hold.21 In
either case, natural teleology would mean that the universe is rationally governed in more than one
way—not only through the universal quantitative laws of physics that underlie efficient causation but
also through principles which imply that things happen because they are on a path that leads toward
certain outcomes—notably, the existence of living, and ultimately of conscious, organisms.
The teleological option is in many ways obscure. I will have more to say about it later. The
reductive causal alternative is equally obscure, but if it made sense, it would have the attraction of
greater unity than the teleological, for it would mean not only that the elements of which the natural
world consists have properties that result in conscious organisms when suitably combined, but that
those same properties render it not unlikely that such combinations would actually form by some
gradual process in the course of cosmological history, given the time available. The constitutive and
the historical questions would then be answered by reference to a common set of principles.
7
So far I have posed the problem by emphasizing the irreducibility of conscious experience to the
physical. But I have alluded to the fact that human consciousness is not merely passive but is
permeated, both in action and in cognition, with intentionality, the capacity of the mind to represent
the world and its own aims. It may be more controversial to claim that intentionality cannot be
realized in a purely physical universe than that consciousness cannot be. However, if, as I believe,
intentionality, thought, and action resist psychophysical reduction and can exist only in the lives of
beings that are also capable of consciousness, then they too form part of what a larger explanation of
the mental must account for. This subject will be taken up in the following chapters. I believe that the
role of consciousness in the survival of organisms is inseparable from intentionality: inseparable from
perception, belief, desire, and action, and finally from reason. The generation of the entire mental
structure would have to be explained by basic principles, if it is recognized as part of the natural
order.
Philosophy cannot generate such explanations; it can only point out the gaping lack of them, and
the obstacles to constructing them out of presently available materials. But in contrast to classical
dualism, I suggest that we should not renounce the aim of finding an integrated naturalistic
explanation of a new kind. Such a theory cannot be approached directly. It would require many stages,
over a long period of time, beginning with greatly expanded empirical information about regularities
in the relation between conscious states and brain states in ourselves and closely related organisms.
Only later could reductive hypotheses be formulated on this evidential base. But I believe that it
makes sense to pursue not only neurophysiological but evolutionary research with a certain utopian
long-term goal in mind. We should seek a form of understanding that enables us to see ourselves and
other conscious organisms as specific expressions simultaneously of the physical and the mental
character of the universe. One might object that life is hard enough to understand considered purely as
a physical phenomenon, and that the mind can wait. But adding the requirement that any theory of life
also has to explain the development of consciousness may not make the problem worse. Perhaps, on
the contrary, the added features of the natural order needed to account for mind will in the end
contribute to the explanation of life as well. The more a theory has to explain, the more powerful it
has to be.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 22:04:55
It's an unreliable indicator of the reliability of an unreliable system, which is actually less unreliable than the indicator.
OIC - yes; sorry, I'm a bit slow today...

Quote
I think DonQ is actually female. When accused of talking improbable nonsense my mum used to say "I just know". 
It's a lovely thought!  (not) :)

That was , by the way ,a disgusting sexist statement  uttered by that guy .
I am no female though , even though i do have a feminine side to me as  well...
We all have male and female sides,both the "Martians and the Venitians " have  , including the women "Venitians " thus
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/09/2013 22:29:16
[/thread]
Cause of death - suffocation...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/09/2013 22:53:08
[/thread]
Cause of death - suffocation...

Are you hallucinating ? This thread is still alive and kicking ,it just needed some fresh air to make you ,folks, see  your silly denials, reductionist brainwash ...lack of understanding of what science proper is that cannot be confused with reductionism .... see some replies of mine to yours above as well .
Can't you handle all that ?
Need some more fresh air ?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 26/09/2013 01:34:27
As far as Nagel himself is concerned, people who throw spears at things they don't understand worry me, whether they admit their ignorance or not. As far as his idea is concerned, his admission was certainly honest.

A process that caused a photo-tropic behaviour in a bacteria would, with a bit of trial and error and some recording, become a photo-receptor on a worm some time later. Simple statistics. Recordings get changed – DNA gets corrupted – and useful changes survive. From there to an eye and, with an eye, a centralisation of nerves to handle additional sensory info. From there to a brain requires no more than chemistry and statistics. Bigger, more powerful brains become a survival factor. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that one of the many species of “brainy” animals would live in groups, possess opposable thumbs, well developed sensory apparatus and a sophisticated social structure to handle all that brain power – still just statistics. In a social order of brainy apes, where order is pretty much dictated by the biggest chap and his cronies – it is logical that a sense of “knowing your place” would develop; without it you'd be quickly dead or exiled. That leads, statistically, to personal identity. If a process is good enough to go from a photo-tropic bug to an eye and the optic centre behind it, then it can certainly go from “knowing your place” to what you call consciousness.  If it isn't broke don't fix it.

Having had so much thrust upon me I'll give him credit for a reasonable style of writing, but this “science can't explain” argument smacks of aliens in Peru – and that was a better read.

God is irrelevant to science. God is not relevant to science. If you insist on a distinction, then both statements are true; God has no place in science. Science must explain “where we live” and it must do that by itself – “on the evidence of its own eyes”. If there is no evidence of a phenomenon then science must ignore it; that is what science is.

Other disciplines consider other aspects of our existence rather than “where we live”– Theology, Psychology, Art – but these are not within the realm of science. I have no idea what the future holds.

Everything you've said indicates that you object to the idea that God has no place in science although you are trying to portray this as a blunt “science is wrong!” argument. Your dedication to this blunt argument is very telling; you refuse to accept the evidence of your own eyes - the "explaining" that science has already done. I thought you were merely having difficulty distinguishing between a method and an ideology, now I see it runs deeper; you seem to think science is all there is or, worse, you seem to think that scientists think that science is all there is. I am certainly not the only member of this discussion who disproves that! Do you find the basis of science somehow “blasphemous”? The idea that God has no place in science?

I'm quite happy to replace science with reductionism anywhere in this post; the meaning would be the same, considering your arguments.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 01:53:16
As far as Nagel himself is concerned, people who throw spears at things they don't understand worry me, whether they admit their ignorance or not. As far as his idea is concerned, his admission was certainly honest.

A process that caused a photo-tropic behaviour in a bacteria would, with a bit of trial and error and some recording, become a photo-receptor on a worm some time later. Simple statistics. Recordings get changed – DNA gets corrupted – and useful changes survive. From there to an eye and, with an eye, a centralisation of nerves to handle additional sensory info. From there to a brain requires no more than chemistry and statistics. Bigger, more powerful brains become a survival factor. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that one of the many species of “brainy” animals would live in groups, possess opposable thumbs, well developed sensory apparatus and a sophisticated social structure to handle all that brain power – still just statistics. In a social order of brainy apes, where order is pretty much dictated by the biggest chap and his cronies – it is logical that a sense of “knowing your place” would develop; without it you'd be quickly dead or exiled. That leads, statistically, to personal identity. If a process is good enough to go from a photo-tropic bug to an eye and the optic centre behind it, then it can certainly go from “knowing your place” to what you call consciousness.  If it isn't broke don't fix it.

Having had so much thrust upon me I'll give him credit for a reasonable style of writing, but this “science can't explain” argument smacks of aliens in Peru – and that was a better read.

God is irrelevant to science. God is not relevant to science. If you insist on a distinction, then both statements are true; God has no place in science. Science must explain “where we live” and it must do that by itself – “on the evidence of its own eyes”. If there is no evidence of a phenomenon then science must ignore it; that is what science is.

Other disciplines consider other aspects of our existence rather than “where we live”– Theology, Psychology, Art – but these are not within the realm of science. I have no idea what the future holds.

Everything you've said indicates that you object to the idea that God has no place in science although you are trying to portray this as a blunt “science is wrong!” argument. Your dedication to this blunt argument is very telling; you refuse to accept the evidence of your own eyes - the "explaining" that science has already done. I thought you were merely having difficulty distinguishing between a method and an ideology, now I see it runs deeper; you seem to think science is all there is or, worse, you seem to think that scientists think that science is all there is. I am certainly not the only member of this discussion who disproves that! Do you find the basis of science somehow “blasphemous”? The idea that God has no place in science?

I'm quite happy to replace science with reductionism anywhere in this post; the meaning would be the same, considering your arguments.


What , on earth , are you talking about ?
Amazing ........No further comment .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 26/09/2013 02:11:39
Yes, I should have said very blunt argument.

I assume the brevity of your answer indicates that you have realised this.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 02:19:21
Yes, I should have said very blunt argument.

I assume the brevity of your answer indicates that you have realised this.

Realised what exactly ?
Seriously : what are you talking about ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 26/09/2013 10:43:07
You started this discussion by asking what on Earth human consciousness was. You explained your reasons for asking and opened the conversation. In your initial reasoning you asserted that Science alone cannot explain it. You backed this up during the conversation by frequent – and lengthy – extracts from T. Nagel. Most of the other participants, myself included, oppose your assertion and believes Science adequately explains human consciousness. Most of the other participants, myself included, have debunked Nagels work as a piece of pseudo-scientific speculation with little basis in fact. Your responses to opposition have been dismissive, evasive and often downright rude, from the point of view of this Mr. Eagle Has Landed at least; you do not like opposition.

To believe that anything other than Science is responsible for something as mundane as my consciousness would be the hight of arrogance.  But here, of course, you combine all the facets of the Mind – the Human Condition, if you like – and call it “human consciousness”. It has clearly not occurred to you that, even if there is some element of the Mind/human consciousness that cannot be observed and explained by Science, there is definitely a large portion that can. So, by your definition, human consciousness is composed of “a part that science can explain” and “a part that science cannot explain”. Of course you get nowhere holding such a position up to scrutiny; it is a ridiculously circular argument.

It is, however, a definition of the Mind – Existence even - that I would be happy with, but what place does that have on a science forum? I cannot defend my “spirituality” from “scientific scrutiny” - my spirituality is not scientific. Basta! To attempt to do so would be preaching, not discussion. Do you see the difference?

That's what I'm talking about.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 12:37:58
Stop being a jerk, be serious : and do not try to derail the discussion you obvioulsly cannot handle .
I meant that my own belief warns me against the relative unreliability of that "radar ". so to speak .
I know; but it's hard to be serious when you say stuff like that. Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque :)

I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :

This is a side issue you're making such a fuss about,an easy one  : I told you that that "radar " ,so to speak, is relatively unreliable : my own faith or religion  tells me it is indeed.
Got it ?
When i said that you should not try to derail this discussion you cannot handle obviously : I meant : you either misinterpret my views or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distort them beyond any recognition, you quote parts   of my statements by isolating them from their actual context , ...and you do put words in my mouth that are not mine ...to say just that :
Just try to compare  what i said in my previous posts to  how you responded to them as described above .
Example : I said that the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian approach or conception of evolution ( as the direct consequence  of the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature thus ) ,  for instance ,  is just  a reductionist misinterpretation of evolution   = the reductionist version of evolution that has no evidence to support it : in the sense that evolution is not exclusively biological physical , otherwise we cannot explain life , consciousness, their origins and their evolution fully .
You did not understand that : your response was like this : there is plenty of or overwhelming empirical evidence regarding   evolution ....
Compare what i said here to your reply then : i said 1 thing and you responded with a totally  different other  .
There is indeed overwhelming evidence regarding the biological physical side of evolution , but i was not talking about the latter , just about the reductionist exclusively biological physical version of evolution as a whole .

What i meant by  the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misinterpretation of evolution that has nothing to support it ,once again= the reductionist version of evolution, was  rather this in fact : evolution cannot be explained by just those reductionist naturaist neo-Darwinian exclusive biological physical explanations approaches , simply because evolution has a non-biological non-physical side to it as well , so , there is nothing out there that supports the reductionist assumption or reductionist version of evolution that evolution  is just a matter of exclusively physical biological processes .
Got it ?
Plus , those reductionist exclusive biological physical approaches  of evolution give just an incomplete acccount of evolution, simply because evolution has a non-physical non-biological side to it also = the reductionist version of evolution has nothing to support it = evolution is not exclusively biological physical .
Another example : i see it here below in 1 of your posts , i will respond to in a sec .
There are plenty of statements of mine like that , either you do not understand, misquote way out of their context , misinterpret ...beyond ny recognition...
Another example : i said that the reductionist "emergence " trick regarding consciousness is indeed reductionistic , in the sense that it reduces consciousness to biological processes : i did not say that the purely physical biological emergence phenomena were / are reductionist = only that "emergence " reductionist magical trick regarding consciousness is reductionist : see the difference ?

 
Quote
Quote
Quote
... Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?
What ? Do you want me to draw you a picture ? I think i was clear enough .
So, you can't remember either? :)

Quote
If you cannot deliver yourself from those reductionist indoctrinations  and brainwash you obviously do confuse with science proper , that's not my problem , but yours to deal with ,otherwise just go see a ..shrink .
If I don't agree with you I need a psychiatrist? Disappointing stuff... playground taunts really don't help your credibility.

These statements of yours are yet another major example of what i was saying here above regarding your  gross misinterpretations of my words :
That you would agree-disagree with me is certainly  not the issue here : that's a rather pretty normal fact = that's 1 of the reasons why i am here , in order to learn from different views, different conceptions of nature , from different world views ...from science proper that shuld not be confused with those reductionist world views, reductionist conception of nature ......
What i meant was : if you cannot either understand what i was saying regarding reductionism to the point that you distort and misinterpret my words on the subject beyond any recognition , or if you cannot see how you have been brainwashed and indoctrinated by reductionism you obviously still do confuse with science proper , than is that not my problem, but yours to handle, otherwise go see a shrink : that's what i meant when i said shall i draw you a pic ,when you responded that i was not clear enough or not concise : it is not that i was not clear enough , maybe  i was ,to some degree at least : it is in fact you who do not understand my words , distort them , misinterprets them , takes them out of context ,...beyond any recognition ....

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 12:39:41
Well, David Cooper was correct about one thing. Trolls are impossible and it is probably best to ignore them. No matter what logical evidence you support your arguments with, no matter what credible scientific studies provide positive proof for something, they will say "But it fails to explain this other thing," followed by an ideological rant about why something is "obviously" false just because they keep saying it is.  What's worse, they offer no reasonable, verifiable alternative for any of it.
Don essentially says you cannot expect him to provide scientific proof of the immaterial because it is immaterial. And my response is "Great! Go post these immaterial things on the The Mystical Angel My Little Pony Website."

You got it all wrong , honey : see what i said to dlorde on the subject right here  above .
The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false , simply because it obviously and intrinsically inherently misses the non-biological non-physical side of nature ,as Nagel said, that's why he proposed a non-reductionist naturalist conception of nature,as an alternative to reductionism  .
Besides, that reductionist exclusively biological physical conception of nature has therefore implications for how reductionists approach ,see and explain the emergence of life , the emergence of consciousness in nature ,and for their respective origins and evolution , logically =reductionism gives thus an incomplete account of evolution in general , of life's origins , emergence and evolution, of consciousness ' emergence origins and evolution ...

But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well ,reductionism tries so desperately to reduce to just physical biological processes , simply because reductionism , per definition, cannot do otherwise .

All those wonderful amazing great "miracles " achieved by science proper were the direct consequences of the scientific method used by scientists  ,were  the direct consequences of the effective and unparralleled scientific method thus that's like no other : reductionism in science has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific results and huge advances ...= reductionism just takes a free ride on the  unwilling back of science proper , in order to validate itself  so desperately  , in vain .

In short :

The main core issue here is that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misconception of nature in science .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 12:43:05
I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :
You're funny :)

No, i am certainly not in this case , i am deadly serious : remember your oversensitivity whenever someone misquotes you : you were not only misquoting my words , but you also did not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distorted misinterpreted them beyond any recognition ...so.
Maybe , i did not formulate my answers properly : in that case , you should have asked for a better formulation, instead of  distorting my views ..
If one would continue  doing just that , there is absolutely no point in continuing any discusions for that matter with him / her : that would be an utter and total waste of time .

Quote
I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...
So anyway Don, are you going to explain this? how is God relevant to science?

I told you here above that i would react to that , didn't i ?
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
You still continue to misquote me , i see : my patience with you is really running out .
Anyway :
This is another example  concerning the fact that you were taking my words out of context by just quoting some parts of my statements on the subject : why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?

I said : God is not the field of science , i see dlorde here saying to you that God is irrelevant to science , it is not the case , God is irrelevant only to reductionism in science in fact , reductionism as a secular religion in science ...stuff like that .
So, God is neither  irrelevant nor relevant  to science proper , simply because God is not the field of science,so to speak then ...
You're really making me nuts with these misquotes , distortions ...of my words .

Quote
And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?

Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " : what has reductionism as a misconception of nature  to do with science proper or with the scientific method , scientific approaches, scientific results = absolutely nothing= reductionism was/is  just crippling science via its reductionist meta-paradigm in science in fact ... .
Reductionism is no method , just a world view in science = a misconception of nature in science = science needs to be guided by a more or less valid non-reductionist  meta-paradigm in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one maybe , as Nagel proposes at least ...........

Quote
Both questions have been asked more than once and ignored so far.

Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 12:48:02
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
I thought so; 'Not irrelevant', says 'relevant' to me. If this isn't what you meant, you only had to say so.

You would have noticed just that , if you read carefully what i said .
God is ,once again, neither irrelevent nor relevant to science , i said ; can't you read ? : ...God ...
What might not  be  irrelevant to something might  also be not relevant to it as well,and at the same time  .

Quote
Quote
why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?
What, "God is irrelevant to reductionism in science"? It appeared to confirm my interpretation - by implying that God might somehow be relevant to non-reductionist science (whatever that might be). The rest of it was fluff.

Read Nagel above .
You're really exasperating and extremely irritating : the word here is "naturalism " for natural science :
If God is irrelevant to reductionist naturalism, then is God  logically also so regarding non-reductionist naturalism ...

Quote
Quote
Quote
And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?
Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " :<...blah...>
If you mean the scientific method, that's the framework within which an approach (e.g. reductionism) is used. As I'm sure you're aware.

Reductionism is just a conception , or rather misconception of nature in science ,via its reductionist meta-paradigm mainly in science ...
Do not try to integrate reductionism in that sense within the frame work of the scientific method , as you put it at least,it has nthing to do with : reductionism  was/is  just crippling science in its capability to explain nature ,the universe , man , life , consciousness ... .

Quote
Quote
Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .
Ah; such subtle answers they just appeared to be ignoring the questions altogether...

OK; I suppose that's that then
.

What had you in mind then ?




<... tl;dr ...>
The normal way to discuss on forums is to post your own thoughts about what you've read, not copy-paste reams of someone else's work.

It did obviously not help to post my own thoughts about what i have read : what do you think i was doing then ?,So, i resorted to posting what the guy had to say on the subject , partly .
You remind me of an experience i had  when i was in Amsterdam , i was making love to a lovely  English girl : during that , she could not stop shouting " f...me, f...me, f...me " : i shouted back : " f...what do you think i am doing ? , missing her cultural  point that she was just trying to arose me some more , and herself in the process ...due to the passion and heat of the live love making "debate" ...
Are you doing just that ,or something Freudian similar , your own different way ?, even though Freud's psychology was  largely refuted and discredited for and as having been largely ...unscientific ...



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 13:06:20
You started this discussion by asking what on Earth human consciousness was. You explained your reasons for asking and opened the conversation. In your initial reasoning you asserted that Science alone cannot explain it. You backed this up during the conversation by frequent – and lengthy – extracts from T. Nagel. Most of the other participants, myself included, oppose your assertion and believes Science adequately explains human consciousness. Most of the other participants, myself included, have debunked Nagels work as a piece of pseudo-scientific speculation with little basis in fact. Your responses to opposition have been dismissive, evasive and often downright rude, from the point of view of this Mr. Eagle Has Landed at least; you do not like opposition.

To believe that anything other than Science is responsible for something as mundane as my consciousness would be the hight of arrogance.  But here, of course, you combine all the facets of the Mind – the Human Condition, if you like – and call it “human consciousness”. It has clearly not occurred to you that, even if there is some element of the Mind/human consciousness that cannot be observed and explained by Science, there is definitely a large portion that can. So, by your definition, human consciousness is composed of “a part that science can explain” and “a part that science cannot explain”. Of course you get nowhere holding such a position up to scrutiny; it is a ridiculously circular argument.

It is, however, a definition of the Mind – Existence even - that I would be happy with, but what place does that have on a science forum? I cannot defend my “spirituality” from “scientific scrutiny” - my spirituality is not scientific. Basta! To attempt to do so would be preaching, not discussion. Do you see the difference?

That's what I'm talking about.

I really did hesitate some time before responding to this surreal i do not know what to make of it post of yours : simply absurd ;

I do react now to that absurd non-sense of yours , only out of courtesy and politeness, i must admit , to be honest , because , seriously: what kindda gibberish is this then .

In short :

you did not understand a single thing of what i was saying ,or of what this discussion is all about .

............
Who did debunk Nagel ? You ?
One cannot debunk facts , such as the fact that the reductionist exclusively biological physical neo-Darwinian materialist conception of nature is ...false = a misconception of nature ...

As for the rest of your above displayed silly talk:  i cannot make any sense of it, the more when i see how you do not only not understand my views, but you also distort them beyond any recognition as well : you are much worse than dlorde in that regard = you are making no sense whatsoever , sorry to say that .
I suggest you try to read carefully what i was saying all along , if you wanna see my point , because , honestly ,this is total non-sense of yours , turning the discussion upside down beyond any recognition :
Please , do try to read and understand what i say, before reacting , thanks , appreciate indeed: just compare what i was saying to what you made of it haha ...= 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 26/09/2013 16:38:11
My dear fellow, Don Q,

You are casting your pearls before swine. I think you should write all this stuff up as a proper book and make it available on the Kindle where it can be read more comfortably and without being derailed repeatedly by other people with their ludicrous objections.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 18:21:28
My dear fellow, Don Q,

You are casting your pearls before swine. I think you should write all this stuff up as a proper book and make it available on the Kindle where it can be read more comfortably and without being derailed repeatedly by other people with their ludicrous objections.

Nice subtle irony of yours haha , that does have some elements of truth , ironically enough : "DonQ" ? haha , come on .
Hi , buddy : nice to have you back, i mean it  : Philosopher Thomas Nagel is more qualified than i could ever be in that regard .
Well, despite my repeated extensive attempts to clarify my main core point concerning the facts discussed by philosopher Thomas Nagel 's " Mind and cosmos : why the materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " book , these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least : maybe  i was not clear enough , who knows : i did my best though , in that regard at least .
I did even post the introduction, the conclusion , chapter 3 cognition, and chapter 4 consciousness of that book here on this thread for them, in vain .
Not to mention that i also did provide a free download link to most books of Nagel on line , including to that above mentioned book of his .
I really would love to see you forget about our previous little insignificant and meaningless conflict , it was nothing in fact really ,and enrich us with your eventual insights on the subject , seriously .
I would really appreciate it , if you would tell us  your own opinions about Thomas Nagel's book ,or about the main core issue here,as follows  : 

The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist materialist neo_Darwinian conception of nature is false = a misconception of nature , that gotta be replaced by a more or less valid conception of nature in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one , as Nagel proposes in fact ...
Thanks , appreciate .
I really missed your significant presence -personality here and views as well , even though i do not agree with most of your world views ,regarding reductionism in science at least,and its implications for the reductionist approaches of the emergence evolution and origins of life ,the emergence evolution and origins of consciousness ... its implications for the reductionist version of evolution ...  .
Kind regards .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 18:47:17
Metaphorically and amusingly speaking :
I hope that you,guys , do have some sense of humor though :
"Rats " are the first to leave the sinking ship, that of reductionism in science , in this case haha
So, why have you left the reductionist "unsinkable  Titanic "sinking ship .....then, you should try to rescue or defend ?
So much for your  "unshakable "  faith in ...reductionism....Disappointing . 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/09/2013 19:03:51
Rupert Sheldrake at EU 2013—"Science Set Free" (Part 1)


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 26/09/2013 21:02:28
OK, done that. Some impressions.

On page 1 of this thread, your third post actually, you bring God into the discussion, emphatically. On page 12 you ask me why I bring God into this discussion.
On the second page the first reference to semantics is made. By this time you have mentioned the contributions and opinions of Islam and the Holy Koran several times.
Your basic assertion, well defined by the end of the first few pages, is that evolution cannot, alone, explain the origin or subsequent development of human consciousness. As mentioned, you suggest God as the missing element in your third post. You make reference to the "soul" and the "self" and the subjective sense of self-awareness that we all possess. You assert that, in particular, the development of this subjective feature of human consciousness  could not have arisen through evolution.
As is to be expected on a forum your assertion is challenged by several people. Much of this is semantic clarification.
There are several digressions into "what is science" and "what place does God have in science" (it was during one of these that you asked me why "I" was bringing Godinto the discussion(?)).
There were also suggestions that Evolution is competent to account for human consciousness. My own was as arrogantly dismissed as any other.
From page 2 onwards you were clearly promoting Islamic scientific philosophy, backed up by a complimentary approach from Nagel
I have not read every page of Nagel posted - my subjective sense of Dignity baulks at the imposition.

No, I believe that I have understood what you have said in this thread perfectly well.

I understand the contribution that Islam has made to science - you have mentioned it several times (I was, actually, very well aware, but thanks anyway).
I understand that "human consciousness" may contain a "soul" or a "spirit" - your words, not mine.
I understand that souls, spirits and religions have no place in science.

I also understand your constant reference to these non-scientific items in defence of your opinion and I understand your resorting to insults and evasion when you have them thrown back at you, although you do actually use this technique a lot when I think about it.

I understand your opinion of scientific method, tightly-based on Nagel; I don't agree with it and have given my arguments. I have received arrogance and rudeness rather than adult and logical challenge for my efforts on the majority of occasions.

This is not a discussion, it is a pulpit for a preacher, despite all your pretence of some scientific basis in your opening arguments. What, on Earth, is the Human Consciousness? Well, you have your answer, always did, and you're obviously not interested in hearing anybody elses, in fact your replies show that you despise them. You are talking "Faith", not "Science"; I understand exactly what this "thread"is about.

The worrying thing is that you, an intelligent young man, do not.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 27/09/2013 01:33:53


But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well...
Quote

But that's the whole problem, you and Nagel haven't proven that, and your entire argument rests on that very assumption. Just because you keep saying there is a non biological, non-physical side of nature doesn't make it so. But your excuse is you can't prove it because it's immaterial, and physical science can't identify or measure something that's immaterial. Well, how convenient.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/09/2013 17:43:59


But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well...
Quote

But that's the whole problem, you and Nagel haven't proven that, and your entire argument rests on that very assumption. Just because you keep saying there is a non biological, non-physical side of nature doesn't make it so. But your excuse is you can't prove it because it's immaterial, and physical science can't identify or measure something that's immaterial. Well, how convenient.

Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have serious implications for the dominating materialist meta-paradigm in science , for the materialist version of evolution, for the materialist explanations and approaches of the emergence evolution and origins of life , for the emergence origins and evolution of consciousness ...to say just that .
Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself , by its emergence ,origins and evolution , by the emergence evolution and origin of consciousness, by the nature of human cognition ...those exclusive physical biological materialist explanations and approaches can certainly not account for , that's why materialists just resort to reducing life , consciousnes,human cognition , memory , ...to just physical biological processes , for obvious dogmatic ideological materialist "reasons " that have nothing to do with science proper ....
Did you , at least , listen to what Sheldrake said on the subject , as my provided link to here above shows, concerning those materialist dogmatic  beliefs that do prevent science from progressing , and much more ?
Sheldrake wrote also a whole book on the subject , called "Science set free ..." ( Sheldrake did also praise that fascinating book of T.Nagel "MInd and Cosmos ...by the way " )

There he is talking about this book of his :


If this above video of Sheldrake in the US does not succeed in making you understand all this , than nothingelse  will ...

The British original title of the book was/is : "The science delusion" (Sheldrake  might have been referring to the "God delusion " of Dawkins ,i dunno,  the latter as 1 of the major representatives of the inherently atheist materialist "scientific " fundamentalism, or scientism = the dogmatic materialist belief system that was/ is sold to the people as science proper , as   scientific approaches or as scientific facts  .),  Sheldrake's book thus tackles these issues of what  can be called scientism , or the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science that gets presented to the people as scientific facts ,or at least as scientific approaches , science has absolutely nothing to do with , ironically enough .
When Sheldrake wanted to publish his "The science delusion " book thus in the US , his US publishers advised him to change the title to " Science set free ..." , simply because people might misunderstand his views ,and might misinterpret them, as you all might do, ironically enough , as a denigration of science ...which is absolutely not the case .
Sheldrake's US publishers had to make Sheldrake change the title of that book of his , due to that polarisation in the US created by fanatics atheists such as Dawkins , Dennett , Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris ...against religion or against religious creationists and their "intelligent design " theory ...a polarisation that's obviously  conducted in the name of science , but is in fact driven by just ideology from both sides or camps .
Sheldrake is in fact trying just to liberate science from the materialist dogmatic belief systems ,once again, a materialist dogmatic ossified belief system that gets presented to the people as science proper  .


Science does not have to be materialist , materialism  has just been hijacking science for so long now ,that most people cannot but  confuse it with science proper as a result , as you all do by the way  .
If science is delivered from materialism some day , and it will certainly be , then, whole new unimaginable vistas will open up for science , the latter that has been seriously held back by that backward secular religion in science : materialism , to say the least = an understatement .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/09/2013 18:25:37
OK, done that. Some impressions.

On page 1 of this thread, your third post actually, you bring God into the discussion, emphatically. On page 12 you ask me why I bring God into this discussion.
On the second page the first reference to semantics is made. By this time you have mentioned the contributions and opinions of Islam and the Holy Koran several times.
Your basic assertion, well defined by the end of the first few pages, is that evolution cannot, alone, explain the origin or subsequent development of human consciousness. As mentioned, you suggest God as the missing element in your third post. You make reference to the "soul" and the "self" and the subjective sense of self-awareness that we all possess. You assert that, in particular, the development of this subjective feature of human consciousness  could not have arisen through evolution.
As is to be expected on a forum your assertion is challenged by several people. Much of this is semantic clarification.
There are several digressions into "what is science" and "what place does God have in science" (it was during one of these that you asked me why "I" was bringing Godinto the discussion(?)).
There were also suggestions that Evolution is competent to account for human consciousness. My own was as arrogantly dismissed as any other.
From page 2 onwards you were clearly promoting Islamic scientific philosophy, backed up by a complimentary approach from Nagel
I have not read every page of Nagel posted - my subjective sense of Dignity baulks at the imposition.

No, I believe that I have understood what you have said in this thread perfectly well.

I understand the contribution that Islam has made to science - you have mentioned it several times (I was, actually, very well aware, but thanks anyway).
I understand that "human consciousness" may contain a "soul" or a "spirit" - your words, not mine.
I understand that souls, spirits and religions have no place in science.

I also understand your constant reference to these non-scientific items in defence of your opinion and I understand your resorting to insults and evasion when you have them thrown back at you, although you do actually use this technique a lot when I think about it.

I understand your opinion of scientific method, tightly-based on Nagel; I don't agree with it and have given my arguments. I have received arrogance and rudeness rather than adult and logical challenge for my efforts on the majority of occasions.

This is not a discussion, it is a pulpit for a preacher, despite all your pretence of some scientific basis in your opening arguments. What, on Earth, is the Human Consciousness? Well, you have your answer, always did, and you're obviously not interested in hearing anybody elses, in fact your replies show that you despise them. You are talking "Faith", not "Science"; I understand exactly what this "thread"is about.

The worrying thing is that you, an intelligent young man, do not.

You, obviously , still have no clue whatsoever regarding what we have been talking about all along : incredibly amazing lack of understanding  :

Gross absurd surreal misinterpretations of my words , once again, unfortunately enough : unbelievable : use your God -given mind , dude : just listen to a great scientist on the issue : Sheldrake : it does not take a genius to do just that :
See this above displayed post of mine on the issue , and especially the important relevant link in it regarding Sheldrake's debunking of materialism in science , to Cheryl :
If that does not succeed in making you, people,  understand the lethal predicament represented by the materialist dogmatic belief system in science ,then nothingelse will...
Good luck indeed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/09/2013 18:44:56
To all our surreal unbelievable reductionists here :

Once again, if this following lecture of this great scientist: Rupert Sheldrake, as a preview to his "Science set free ..." book ,does not succeed in making you understand or grasp what we have been talking about all along here , concerning the reductionist misconception of nature in science that has been crippling science for so long now that you cannot but confuse it with science proper , the latter has absolutely nothing to do with, then , nothingelse will  ...:


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/09/2013 20:02:48
" The Science Delusion " By Rupert Sheldrake :
The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :  :




Rupert Sheldrake- Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 27/09/2013 23:43:31
My dear young sir, once again you have given a non-answer – I “don't understand”.

Of course, you don't say what I don't understand. You can't. You do not have any argument, just a “feeling” that I am wrong. Therefore you resort to dismissal. You will, indeed, dismiss this assertion in the same way; you have no choice.

Don't worry, it is a time-honoured tactic of preachers, be they skinheads preaching the virtues of racial purity or murderers preaching the “sinfulness” of western education. I don't mind – I know where it comes from.

This thread deals with “human consciousness”. Let us assume you did some research into the subject before you started writing. Research is, after all, what any sensible adult would do.

Your research into psychology no doubt made you aware of Transactional Analysis. Broadly speaking, it occupies the place in psychology that “materialist reductionism” occupies in other branches of science. You are, therefore, familiar with the parent/child/adult aspects of “character”, a fundamental feature of human consciousness.

(If these assumptions regarding your validity as a commentator are incorrect my apologies. However, an appreciation of psychiatric principles and methods is usual, nay, essential, in discussions on “human consciousness”, particularly if you add God to the mix - your third post.)

It is not hard to discern from your posts that your parent sits like a solemn giant on all the wisdom and truth that Creation possesses; it is the guardian of your value system. Your child believes implicitly in this body of “truth” and cannot comprehend how anybody could disagree with the certain “truth” that was fixed in your value system before you were ten years old. It behaves as a child behaves; yeah but, no but, yeah but “why bring God into the discussion” circular arguments and “It's not fair!” dismissals. Your adult, the would-be modifier of your value system, lies battered and bleeding in the corner where it has crawled to die. This is because it gets a good kick from your child every time it dares to think that there might be some other truth. Externally this manifests itself in your frequent recourse to “What are you talking about?” and “you don't understand”.

You have now added another name to Nagels to “prove” that everything you learned at your parents knee was the one and only solemn truth of Creation (including, but certainly not limited to human consciousness). In fact, Nagel and Sheldrake are the only ideas you can accept; anything else would mean that your parent was wrong and your adult is nowhere near strong enough to stand up to your implicitly-believing child.

A child can only preach that his daddy is the strongest – what else does he know that he can rely on? It is only with adulthood, after time and experience have modified its Weltanschauen, that a child realises that daddy was not always right.

Of course, you have no choice but to dismiss this as well; how can you, a grown man, be thinking childishly on such an important topic? You know the difference between preaching and discussing, right?

Wrong. You don't. You need to a) grow up and b) develop some humility – you have at least one good book on the subject; the best.

I won't quote any of the many evasive, rude and dismissive answers that you have given to back up my assertion but I will quote something you said recently (reply 357):

“ these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly “

It's not fair! Is it.

Now, I think it's reasonable to bring a little of the “science” of human consciousness into a discussion on the subject. You do not like it; you can't – you don't not have the ability to give credence to criticism of your beliefs or your style of argument; your adult is simply not strong enough.

Which means you have no choice but to dismiss this again. However, may I suggest that, this time, you bottle your child-like arrogance and try something a bit more adult than “you don't understand”. Your lack of common courtesy is most telling and very irritating.

Finally, there is a phrase in your last post: “Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers”.
It's a good idea; you should try it when you're ready.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/09/2013 02:46:26


Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have....

That is not a fact.

There exist diseases that do not yet have a known cause. By your logic, I should be able to say that  science, blinded by its materialistic paradigm, has failed miserably to find their true cause, which is obviously the work of Satan (or the supernatural force of my choice.) And offer no reason or proof because as we all know, immaterial things don't require that. They just require that you keep saying it over and over.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 28/09/2013 04:22:36
I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/09/2013 12:38:33
The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :

Piffle. Science is a process of systematic unbelief. Isms are anathema to science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/09/2013 17:23:02
I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

Well, it also seems to be a problem with logic. I did watch one of the Sheldrake videos. The experiment he mentioned, in which a blind child seemed to be receiving information from his sighted mother was, if validly controlled, interesting. But claiming that any unexplained phenomena, whether it is the appearance of ESP or UFOs, is more likely to have one explanation than another, if you have no evidence for either, only a lack of evidence, is not logical.

The other problem with his reasoning is asserting that his subjective impression of the qualitative nature of things as a kind of fact. He calls things non-biological which he has not proven to be non biological, and are certainly not immaterial or unobservable or unmeasurable scientifically, such as human behavior, social interactions, or economics. That is the basis of this claim that "Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself ..."

For his next debate, I suggest he move to the physics forum and tell them that there can't possibly be so much empty space inside atoms because it fails to explain why the brick wall he's been banging his head against feels so solid.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 17:31:36


Well, honey : you are really impossible and ludicrous :
Fact is : the reductionist materialist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , or rather  misconception of nature, is not only almost certainly false , it is also certainly ,obviously and absolutely false , a fact which does have....

That is not a fact.

There exist diseases that do not yet have a known cause. By your logic, I should be able to say that  science, blinded by its materialistic paradigm, has failed miserably to find their true cause, which is obviously the work of Satan (or the supernatural force of my choice.) And offer no reason or proof because as we all know, immaterial things don't require that. They just require that you keep saying it over and over.

It is an indeniable obvious fact that nature or the universe are not a matter of just exclusively biological physical processes,as reductionism makes you believe they are  .

I am , once again, not talking about science proper , just about that untrue reductionism in science , reductionist materialism as a world view in science ...as a misconception of nature ...as a meta-paradigm in science ...

Did you listen to what Sheldrake had to say on the subject ? , I guess not .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 17:36:31
The science delusion = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science, or scientism :

Piffle. Science is a process of systematic unbelief. Isms are anathema to science.

It was not about science proper , once again : what Sheldrake talked about is that materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science ,and which has thus nothing to do with science proper .
Sheldrake just tries to liberate science proper from that prison of that materialist dogmatic belief system , that's all .
Can't you get just that ? Is that so difficult to understand ?
Just try to listen to what Sheldrake has to say on the subject then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 17:37:32
Maybe, it would help to draw you a pic ...Unbelievable .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 17:47:03
I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

Well, it also seems to be a problem with logic. I did watch one of the Sheldrake videos. The experiment he mentioned, in which a blind child seemed to be receiving information from his sighted mother was, if validly controlled, interesting. But claiming that any unexplained phenomena, whether it is the appearance of ESP or UFOs, is more likely to have one explanation than another, if you have no evidence for either, only a lack of evidence, is not logical.


You still do not get it , honey :
Science does not have to be materialistic , it just has been hijacked by materialism since the 19 th century at least up to this present date .
The objective reality out there is not exclusively biological physical...

Quote
The other problem with his reasoning is asserting that his subjective impression of the qualitative nature of things as a kind of fact. He calls things non-biological which he has not proven to be non biological, and are certainly not immaterial or unobservable or unmeasurable scientifically, such as human behavior, social interactions, or economics. That is the basis of this claim that "Besides, the exclusively biological physical materialist conception of nature is seriously debunked by the challenging  anomalies  represented by life itself ..."

What makes you so sure that reality is exclusively biological physical ?
Who said that non-biological or non-physical processes cannot be studied scientifically ?
What do you think Sheldrake was doing then ?

Quote
For his next debate, I suggest he move to the physics forum and tell them that there can't possibly be so much empty space inside atoms because it fails to explain why the brick wall he's been banging his head against feels so solid.

Don't be silly :
Do not confuse science proper with materialism in science , materialism that has been challenged even by modern physics , or quantum physics ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 18:04:38
I don't believe that facts are the issue here Cheryl, and the more I read the more I am convinced by that. Your reference to "Satan", who neither myself nor anybody I know has ever met, are far more the issue.

This seems all about immovable objects and irresistible forces - Faith Vs. Science. It has been dressed up a bit, rather clumsily and transparently, but when a "scientific discussion" starts referring to souls, spirits, God and now Satan (a reference I accept as perfectly valid given the context) it really is time to call it a day.

What you all do not seem to be able to get, understand or grasp, even though it is an easy thing to understand , is that the core issue here is not about science proper , it is just about the materialist dogmatic belief system in science : can't you get just that ?
Science proper should be thus liberated from that materialist dogmatic belief system prison  , and then whole new vistas would open up for science   proper as a result , the latter that has been just held back by materialism, materialism  as a backward secular religion in science =
materialism as a conception ,or rather misconception of nature has thus nothing to do with science proper ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 18:13:42
My dear young sir, once again you have given a non-answer – I “don't understand”.

Of course, you don't say what I don't understand. You can't. You do not have any argument, just a “feeling” that I am wrong. Therefore you resort to dismissal. You will, indeed, dismiss this assertion in the same way; you have no choice.

Don't worry, it is a time-honoured tactic of preachers, be they skinheads preaching the virtues of racial purity or murderers preaching the “sinfulness” of western education. I don't mind – I know where it comes from.

This thread deals with “human consciousness”. Let us assume you did some research into the subject before you started writing. Research is, after all, what any sensible adult would do.

Your research into psychology no doubt made you aware of Transactional Analysis. Broadly speaking, it occupies the place in psychology that “materialist reductionism” occupies in other branches of science. You are, therefore, familiar with the parent/child/adult aspects of “character”, a fundamental feature of human consciousness.

(If these assumptions regarding your validity as a commentator are incorrect my apologies. However, an appreciation of psychiatric principles and methods is usual, nay, essential, in discussions on “human consciousness”, particularly if you add God to the mix - your third post.)

It is not hard to discern from your posts that your parent sits like a solemn giant on all the wisdom and truth that Creation possesses; it is the guardian of your value system. Your child believes implicitly in this body of “truth” and cannot comprehend how anybody could disagree with the certain “truth” that was fixed in your value system before you were ten years old. It behaves as a child behaves; yeah but, no but, yeah but “why bring God into the discussion” circular arguments and “It's not fair!” dismissals. Your adult, the would-be modifier of your value system, lies battered and bleeding in the corner where it has crawled to die. This is because it gets a good kick from your child every time it dares to think that there might be some other truth. Externally this manifests itself in your frequent recourse to “What are you talking about?” and “you don't understand”.

You have now added another name to Nagels to “prove” that everything you learned at your parents knee was the one and only solemn truth of Creation (including, but certainly not limited to human consciousness). In fact, Nagel and Sheldrake are the only ideas you can accept; anything else would mean that your parent was wrong and your adult is nowhere near strong enough to stand up to your implicitly-believing child.

A child can only preach that his daddy is the strongest – what else does he know that he can rely on? It is only with adulthood, after time and experience have modified its Weltanschauen, that a child realises that daddy was not always right.

Of course, you have no choice but to dismiss this as well; how can you, a grown man, be thinking childishly on such an important topic? You know the difference between preaching and discussing, right?

Wrong. You don't. You need to a) grow up and b) develop some humility – you have at least one good book on the subject; the best.

I won't quote any of the many evasive, rude and dismissive answers that you have given to back up my assertion but I will quote something you said recently (reply 357):

“ these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly “

It's not fair! Is it.

Now, I think it's reasonable to bring a little of the “science” of human consciousness into a discussion on the subject. You do not like it; you can't – you don't not have the ability to give credence to criticism of your beliefs or your style of argument; your adult is simply not strong enough.

Which means you have no choice but to dismiss this again. However, may I suggest that, this time, you bottle your child-like arrogance and try something a bit more adult than “you don't understand”. Your lack of common courtesy is most telling and very irritating.

Finally, there is a phrase in your last post: “Dispelling Dogmas and Opening New Frontiers”.
It's a good idea; you should try it when you're ready.

Dude, instead of writing these kindda absurd whole lengthy posts that make no sense whatsoever , just try to understand what the core issue here is ,we have been talking about :

Did you at least listen to what Sheldrake had to say on the subject ? I do not think so .
We are talking here about the fact that the materialist dogmatic belief system in science as a direct consequence of the materialist 's  misconception of nature , gotta be rejected ,simply because it is untrue and has thus nothing to do with science proper , and must be replaced by a more or less valid non -reductionist naturalist conception of nature ..........
What's wrong with you, people ?
How can't you understand these simple statements and obvious facts ? Unbelievable ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:14:31
Excerpts from "Science Set Free : 10 Paths To New Discovery " By Rupert Sheldrake , Chapter 1 :" Is Nature Mechanical " :



Is Nature Mechanical?
Many people who have not studied science are baffled by scientists’ insistence that animals and plants
are machines, and that humans are robots too, controlled by computer-like brains with genetically
programmed software. It seems more natural to assume that we are living organisms, and so are
animals and plants.

. Organisms are self-organizing; they form and maintain themselves, and have their
own ends or goals. Machines, by contrast, are designed by an external mind; their parts are put
together by external machine-makers and they have no purposes or ends of their own.
The starting point for modern science was the rejection of the older, organic view of the universe.
The machine metaphor became central to scientific thinking, with very far-reaching consequences. In
one way it was immensely liberating. New ways of thinking became possible that encouraged the
invention of machines and the evolution of technology. In this chapter, I trace the history of this idea,
and show what happens when we question it.
Before the seventeenth century, almost everyone took for granted that the universe was like an
organism, and so was the earth. In classical, medieval and Renaissance Europe, nature was alive.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), for example, made this idea explicit: “We can say that the earth has a
vegetative soul, and that its flesh is the land, its bones are the structure of the rocks … its breathing
and its pulse are the ebb and flow of the sea.”1 William Gilbert (1540–1603), a pioneer of the science
of magnetism, was explicit in his organic philosophy of nature: “We consider that the whole universe
is animated, and that all the globes, all the stars, and also the noble earth have been governed since the
beginning by their own appointed souls and have the motives of self-conservation.”2
Even Nicholas Copernicus, whose revolutionary theory of the movement of the heavens, published
in 1543, placed the sun at the center rather than the earth was no mechanist. His reasons for making
this change were mystical as well as scientific. He thought a central position dignified the sun:
Not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul, still others the governor.
Tremigistus calls it the visible God: Sophocles’ Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun,
seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle around him.3
Copernicus’s revolution in cosmology was a powerful stimulus for the subsequent development of
physics. But the shift to the mechanical theory of nature that began after 1600 was much more radical.
For centuries, there had already been mechanical models of some aspects of nature. For example, in
Wells Cathedral, in the west of England, there is a still-functioning astronomical clock installed more
than six hundred years ago. The clock’s face shows the sun and moon revolving around the earth,
against a background of stars. The movement of the sun indicates the time of day, and the inner circle
of the clock depicts the moon, rotating once a month. To the delight of visitors, every quarter of an
hour, models of jousting knights rush round chasing each other, while a model of a man bangs bells
with his heels.
Astronomical clocks were first made in China and in the Arab world, and powered by water. Their
construction began in Europe around 1300, but with a new kind of mechanism, operated by weights
and escapements. All these early clocks took for granted that the earth was at the center of the
universe. They were useful models for telling the time and for predicting the phases of the moon; but
no one thought that the universe was really like a clockwork mechanism.
A change from the metaphor of the organism to the metaphor of the machine produced science as
we know it: mechanical models of the universe were taken to represent the way the world actually
worked. The movements of stars and planets were governed by impersonal mechanical principles, not
by souls or spirits with their own lives and purposes.
In 1605, Johannes Kepler summarized his program as follows: “My aim is to show that the celestial
machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to clockwork … Moreover I show how
this physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.”4 Galileo Galilei (1564–
1642) agreed that “inexorable, immutable” mathematical laws ruled everything.
The clock analogy was particularly persuasive because clocks work in a self-contained way. They
are not pushing or pulling other objects. Likewise the universe performs its work by the regularity of
its motions, and is the ultimate time-telling system. Mechanical clocks had a further metaphorical
advantage: they were a good example of knowledge through construction, or knowing by doing.
Someone who could construct a machine could reconstruct it. Mechanical knowledge was power.
The prestige of mechanistic science did not come primarily from its philosophical underpinnings
but from its practical successes, especially in physics. Mathematical modelling typically involves
extreme abstraction and simplification, which is easiest to realize with man-made machines or
objects. Mathematical mechanics is impressively useful in dealing with relatively simple problems,
such as the trajectories of cannonballs or rockets.
One paradigmatic example is billiard-ball physics, which gives a clear account of impacts and
collisions of idealized billiard balls in a frictionless environment. Not only is the mathematics
simplified, but billiard balls themselves are a very simplified system. The balls are made as round as
possible and the table as flat as possible, and there are uniform rubber cushions at the sides of the
table, unlike any natural environment. Think of a rock falling down a mountainside for comparison.
Moreover, in the real world, billiard balls collide and bounce off each other in games, but the rules of
the game and the skills and motives of the players are outside the scope of physics. The mathematical
analysis of the balls’ behavior is an extreme abstraction.
From living organisms to biological machines
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:17:55

The vision of mechanical nature developed amid devastating religious wars in seventeenth-century
Europe. Mathematical physics was attractive partly because it seemed to provide a way of
transcending sectarian conflicts to reveal eternal truths. In their own eyes the pioneers of mechanistic
science were finding a new way of understanding the relationship of nature to God, with humans
adopting a God-like mathematical omniscience, rising above the limitations of human minds and
bodies. As Galileo put it:
When God produces the world, he produces a thoroughly mathematical structure that obeys the
laws of number, geometrical figure and quantitative function. Nature is an embodied
mathematical system.5
But there was a major problem. Most of our experience is not mathematical. We taste food, feel angry,
enjoy the beauty of flowers, laugh at jokes. In order to assert the primacy of mathematics, Galileo and
his successors had to distinguish between what they called “primary qualities,” which could be
described mathematically, such as motion, size and weight, and “secondary qualities,” like color and
smell, which were subjective.6 They took the real world to be objective, quantitative and
mathematical. Personal experience in the lived world was subjective, the realm of opinion and
illusion, outside the realm of science.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was the principal proponent of the mechanical or mechanistic
philosophy of nature. It first came to him in a vision on November 10, 1619, when he was “filled with
enthusiasm and discovered the foundations of a marvellous science.”7 He saw the entire universe as a
mathematical system, and later envisaged vast vortices of swirling subtle matter, the ether, carrying
around the planets in their orbits.
Descartes took the mechanical metaphor much further than Kepler or Galileo by extending it into
the realm of life. He was fascinated by the sophisticated machinery of his age, such as clocks, looms
and pumps. As a youth he designed mechanical models to simulate animal activity, such as a pheasant
pursued by a spaniel. Just as Kepler projected the image of man-made machinery onto the cosmos,
Descartes projected it onto animals. They, too, were like clockwork.8 Activities like the beating of a
dog’s heart, its digestion and breathing were programmed mechanisms. The same principles applied to
human bodies.
Descartes cut up living dogs in order to study their hearts, and reported his observations as if his
readers might want to replicate them: “If you slice off the pointed end of the heart of a live dog, and
insert a finger into one of the cavities, you will feel unmistakably that every time the heart gets
shorter it presses the finger, and every time it gets longer it stops pressing it.”9
He backed up his arguments with a thought experiment: first he imagined man-made automata that
imitated the movements of animals, and then argued that if they were made well enough they would
be indistinguishable from real animals:
If any such machines had the organs and outward shapes of a monkey or of some other animal
that lacks reason, we should have no way of knowing that they did not possess entirely the same
nature as those animals.10
With arguments like these, Descartes laid the foundations of mechanistic biology and medicine that
are still orthodox today. However, the machine theory of life was less readily accepted in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than the machine theory of the universe. Especially in England,
the idea of animal-machines was considered eccentric.11 Descartes’ doctrine seemed to justify cruelty
to animals, including vivisection, and it was said that the test of his followers was whether they would
kick their dogs.12
As the philosopher Daniel Dennett summarized it, “Descartes … held that animals were in fact just
elaborate machines … It was only our non-mechanical, non-physical minds that make human beings
(and only human beings) intelligent and conscious. This was actually a subtle view, most of which
would readily be defended by zoologists today, but it was too revolutionary for Descartes’
contemporaries.”13
We are so used to the machine theory of life that it is hard to appreciate what a radical break
Descartes made. The prevailing theories of his time took for granted that living organisms were
organisms, animate beings with their own souls. Souls gave organisms their purposes and powers of
self-organization. From the Middle Ages right up into the seventeenth century, the prevailing theory
of life taught in the universities of Europe followed the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his leading
Christian interpreter, Thomas Aquinas ( c. 1225–74), according to whom the matter in plant or animal
bodies was shaped by the organisms’ souls. For Aquinas, the soul was the form of the body.14 The soul
acted like an invisible mold that shaped the plant or the animal as it grew and attracted it toward its
mature form.15
The souls of animals and plants were natural, not supernatural. According to classical Greek and
medieval philosophy, and also in William Gilbert’s theory of magnetism, even magnets had souls. 16
The soul within and around them gave them their powers of attraction and repulsion. When a magnet
was heated and lost its magnetic properties, it was as if the soul had left it, just as the soul left an
animal body when it died. We now talk in terms of magnetic fields. In most respects fields have
replaced the souls of classical and medieval philosophy.17
Before the mechanistic revolution, there were three levels of explanation: bodies, souls and spirits.
Bodies and souls were part of nature. Spirits were non-material but interacted with embodied beings
through their souls. The human spirit, or “rational soul,” according to Christian theology, was
potentially open to the Spirit of God.18
After the mechanistic revolution, there were only two levels of explanation: bodies and spirits.
Three layers were reduced to two by removing souls from nature, leaving only the human “rational
soul” or spirit. The abolition of souls also separated humanity from all other animals, which became
inanimate machines. The “rational soul” of man was like an immaterial ghost in the machinery of the
human body.
How could the rational soul possibly interact with the brain? Descartes speculated that their
interaction occurred in the pineal gland.19 He thought of the soul as like a little man inside the pineal
gland controlling the plumbing of the brain. He compared the nerves to water pipes, the cavities in the
brain to storage tanks, the muscles to mechanical springs, and breathing to the movements of a clock.
The organs of the body were like the automata in seventeenth-century water gardens, and the
immaterial man within was like the fountain keeper:
External objects, which by their mere presence stimulate [the body’s] sense organs … are like
visitors who enter the grottoes of these fountains and unwittingly cause the movements which
take place before their eyes. For they cannot enter without stepping on certain tiles which are so
arranged that if, for example, they approach a Diana who is bathing they will cause her to hide in
the reeds. And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal
seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to
which the fountain’s pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements
in some way.20
The final step in the mechanistic revolution was to reduce two levels of explanation to one. Instead of
a duality of matter and mind, there is only matter. This is the doctrine of materialism, which came to
dominate scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, despite their
nominal materialism, most scientists remained dualists, and continued to use dualistic metaphors.
The little man, or homunculus, inside the brain remained a common way of thinking about the
relation of body and mind, but the metaphor moved with the times and adapted to new technologies. In
the mid-twentieth century the homunculus was usually a telephone operator in the telephone exchange
of the brain, and he saw projected images of the external world as if he were in a cinema, as in a book
published in 1949 called The Secret of Life: The Human Machine and How It Works .21 In an exhibit in
2010 at the Natural History Museum in London called “How You Control Your Actions,” you looked
through a Perspex window in the forehead of a model man. Inside was a cockpit with banks of dials
and controls, and two empty seats, presumably for you, the pilot, and your co-pilot in the other
hemisphere. The ghosts in the machine were implicit rather than explicit, but obviously this was no
explanation at all because the little men inside brains would themselves have to have little men inside
their brains, and so on in an infinite regress.
If thinking of little men and women inside brains seems too naïve, then the brain itself is
personified. Many popular articles and books on the nature of the mind say “the brain perceives,” or
“the brain decides,” while at the same time arguing that the brain is just a machine, like a computer.22
For example, the atheist philosopher Anthony Grayling thinks that “brains secrete religious and
superstitious belief” because they are “hardwired” to do so:
As a “belief engine,” the brain is always seeking to find meaning in the information that pours
into it. Once it has constructed a belief, it rationalises it with explanations, almost always after
the event. The brain thus becomes invested in the beliefs, and reinforces them by looking for
supporting evidence while blinding itself to anything contrary.23
This sounds more like a description of a mind than a brain. Apart from begging the question of the
relation of the mind to the brain, Grayling also begs the question of how his own brain escaped from
this “hardwired” tendency to blind itself to anything contrary to its beliefs. In practice, the
mechanistic theory is only plausible because it smuggles non-mechanistic minds into human brains. Is
a scientist operating mechanistically when he propounds a theory of materialism? Not in his own eyes.
There is always a hidden reservation in his arguments: he is an exception to mechanistic determinism.
He believes he is putting forward views that are true, not just doing what his brain makes him do.24
It seems impossible to be a consistent materialist. Materialism depends on a lingering dualism,
more or less thinly disguised. In the realm of biology this dualism takes the form of personifying
molecules, as I discuss below.
The God of mechanical nature
Although the machine theory of nature is now used to support materialism, for the founding fathers of
modern science it supported the Christian religion, rather than subverted it.
Machines only make sense if they have designers. Robert Boyle, for example, saw the mechanical
order of nature as evidence for God’s design.25 And Isaac Newton conceived of God in his own image
as “very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.”26
The better the world-machine functioned, the less necessary was God’s ongoing activity. By the end
of the eighteenth century, the celestial machinery was thought to work perfectly without any need for
divine intervention. For many scientifically minded intellectuals, Christianity gave way to deism. A
Supreme Being designed the world-machine, created it, set it in motion and left it to run
automatically. This kind of God did not intervene in the world and there was no point in praying to
him. In fact there was no point in any religious practice. Several Enlightenment philosophers, like
Voltaire, combined deism with a rejection of the Christian religion.
Some defenders of Christianity agreed with the deists in accepting the assumptions of mechanistic
science. The most famous proponent of mechanistic theology was William Paley, an Anglican priest.
In his book Natural Theology, published in 1802, he argued that if someone were to find an object like
a watch, he would be bound to conclude on examining it and observing its intricate design and
precision that “there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or
artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its
construction and designed its use.”27 So it was with “the works of nature” such as the eye. God was the
designer.
In Britain in the nineteenth century, Anglican clergymen, most of whom emphasized the same
points as Paley, wrote many popular books on natural history. For example, the Reverend Francis
Morris wrote a popular, lavishly illustrated History of British Butterflies (1853), which served both as
a field guide and a reminder of the beauty of nature. Morris believed that God had implanted in every
human mind “an instinctive general love of nature” through which young and old alike could enjoy the
“beautiful sights in which the benign Creator displays such infinite wisdom of Almighty skill.”28
This was the kind of natural theology that Darwin rejected in his theory of evolution by natural
selection. By doing so, he undermined the machine theory of life itself, as I discuss below. But the
controversy he stirred up is still with us, and its latest incarnation is Intelligent Design. Proponents of
Intelligent Design point out the difficulty, if not impossibility, of explaining complex structures like
the vertebrate eye or the bacterial flagellum in terms of a series of random genetic mutations and
natural selection. They suggest that complex structures and organs show a creative integration of
many different components because they were intelligently designed. They leave open the question of
the designer,29 but the obvious answer is God.
The problem with the design argument is that the metaphor of a designer presupposes an external
mind. Humans design machines, buildings and works of art. In a similar way the God of mechanistic
theology, or the Intelligent Designer, is supposed to have designed the details of living organisms.
Yet we are not forced to choose between chance and an external intelligence. There is another
possibility. Living organisms may have an internal creativity, as we do ourselves. When we have a
new idea or find a new way of doing something, we do not design the idea first, and then put it into our
own minds. New ideas just happen, and no one knows how or why. Humans have an inherent
creativity; and all living organisms may also have an inherent creativity that is expressed in larger or
smaller ways. Machines require external designers; organisms do not.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:19:23

Ironically, the belief in the divine design of plants and animals is not a traditional part of
Christianity. It stems from seventeenth-century science. It contradicts the biblical picture of the
creation of life in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Animals and plants were not portrayed as
machines, but as self-reproducing organisms that arose from the earth and the seas, as in Genesis 1:11:
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself.” In Genesis 1: 24: “God said, Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind.” In theological
language, these were acts of “mediate” creation: God did not design or create these plants and animals
directly. As an authoritative Roman Catholic Biblical Commentary expressed it, God created them
indirectly “through the agency of the mother earth.”30
When nature came to life again
Followers of the Enlightenment put their faith in mechanistic science, reason and human progress.
“Enlightened” ideas or values still have a major influence on our educational, social and political
systems today. But from around 1780 to 1830 in the Romantic movement there was a widespread
reaction against the Enlightenment faith, expressed mainly in the arts and literature. Romantics
emphasized emotions and aesthetics, as opposed to reason. They saw nature as alive, rather than
mechanical. The most explicit application of these ideas to science was by the German philosopher
Friedrich von Schelling, whose book Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797) portrayed nature as a
dynamic interplay of opposed forces and polarities through which matter is “brought to life.”31
A central feature of Romanticism was the rejection of mechanical metaphors and their replacement
with imagery of nature as alive, organic and in a process of gestation or development.32 The first
evolutionary theories arose in this context.
Some scientists, poets and philosophers linked their philosophy of living nature to a God who
imbued Nature with life and left her to develop spontaneously, more like the God of Genesis than the
designer God of mechanistic theology. Others proclaimed themselves atheists, like the English poet
Percy Shelley (1792–1822), but they had no doubt about a living power in nature, which Shelley called
the Soul of the universe, or the all-sufficing Power, or the Spirit of Nature. He was also a pioneering
campaigner for vegetarianism because he valued animals as sentient beings.33
These different worldviews can be summarized as follows:
Worldview
Traditional Christian
God
Interactive
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Early mechanistic
God
Interactive
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Enlightenment deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Romantic deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Romantic atheism
God
No God
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Materialism
God
No God
Nature
Machine
The Romantic movement created an enduring split in Western culture. Among educated people, in the
world of work, business and politics, nature is mechanistic, an inanimate source of natural resources,
exploitable for economic development. Modern economies are built on these foundations. On the
other hand, children are often brought up in an animistic atmosphere of fairy tales, talking animals
and magical transformations. The living world is celebrated in poems and songs and in works of art.
Nature is most strongly identified with the countryside, as opposed to cities, and especially by
unspoiled wilderness. Many urban people dream of moving to the country, or having a weekend home
in rural surroundings. On Friday evenings, cities of the Western world are clogged with traffic as
millions of people try to get back to nature in a car.
Our private relationship with nature presupposes that nature is alive. For a mechanistic scientist, or
technocrat, or economist, or developer, nature is neuter and inanimate. It needs developing as part of
human progress. But often the very same people have different attitudes in private. In Western Europe
and North America, many people get rich by exploiting nature so that they can buy a place in the
countryside to “get away from it all.”
This division between public rationalism and private romanticism has been part of the Western way
of life for generations, but is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Our economic activities are not
separate from nature, but affect the entire planet. Our private and public lives are increasingly
intertwined. This new consciousness is expressed through a revived public awareness of Gaia, Mother
Earth. But goddesses were not far below the surface of scientific thought even in its most materialist
forms.
The goddesses of evolution
One of the pioneers of evolutionary theory was Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who
wanted to increase the importance of nature and reduce the role of God.34 The spontaneous evolution
of plants and animals struck at the root of natural theology and the doctrine of God as designer. If new
forms of life were brought forth by Nature herself, there was no need for God to design them. Erasmus
Darwin suggested that God endued life or nature with an inherent creative capacity in the first place
that was thereafter expressed without the need for divine guidance or intervention. In his book
Zoönomia (1794), he asked rhetorically:
Would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new
parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and
associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent
activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without
end!35
For Erasmus Darwin, living beings were self-improving, and the results of the efforts of parents were
inherited by their offspring. Likewise, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his Zoological Philosophy (1809)
suggested that animals developed new habits in response to their environment, and their adaptations
were passed on to their descendants. The giraffe, inhabiting arid regions of Africa,
is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and make constant efforts to reach them. From this
habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal’s fore-legs have become
longer than its hind legs, and its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe attains a
height of six metres.36
In addition, a power inherent in life produced increasingly complex organisms, moving them up a
ladder of progress. Lamarck attributed the origin of the power of life to “the Supreme Author,” who
created “an order of things which gave existence successively to all that we see.”37 Like Erasmus
Darwin, he was a romantic deist. So was Robert Chambers, who popularized the idea of progressive
evolution in his bestselling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , published anonymously in
1844. He argued that everything in nature is progressing to a higher state as a result of a God-given
“law of creation.”38 His work was controversial both from a religious and scientific point of view but,
like Lamarck’s theory, it was attractive to atheists because it removed the need for a divine designer.
But Chambers, Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin not only undermined mechanistic theology, they also,
perhaps unwittingly, undermined the mechanistic theory of life. No inanimate machinery contained
within it a power of life, capacity for self-improvement or creativity. Their theories of progressive
evolution demystified the creativity of God by mystifying evolution.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s theory of evolution by natural selection (1858)
attempted to demystify evolution. Natural selection was blind and impersonal, and required no divine
agency. It weeded out organisms that were not fit to survive, and favored those that were better
adapted. The subtitle of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was The Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life. The source of creativity was within animals and plants themselves: they varied
spontaneously and adapted to new circumstances.
Darwin gave no explanation for this creative power. In effect, he rejected the designing God of
mechanistic theology, and attributed all creativity to Nature, just as his grandfather had done. For
Darwin, Nature herself gave rise to the Tree of Life. Through her prodigious fertility, her spontaneous
variability and her powers of selection, she could do everything that Paley thought God did. But
Nature was not an inanimate, mechanical system like the clockwork of celestial physics. She was
Nature with a capital N. Darwin even apologized for his language: “For brevity’s sake I sometimes
speak of natural selection as an intelligent power … I have, also, often personified the word Nature;
for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity.”39
Darwin advised his readers to ignore the implications of his turns of phrase. If, instead, we pay
attention to their implications, Nature is the Mother from whose womb all life comes forth, and to
whom all life returns. She is prodigiously fertile, but she is also cruel and terrible, the devourer of her
own offspring. She is creative, but she is also destructive, like the Indian goddess Kali. For Darwin,
natural selection was “a power incessantly ready for action,”40 and natural selection worked by
killing. The phrase “Nature red in tooth and claw” was the poet Tennyson’s rather than Darwin’s, but
sounds very like Kali, or the destructive Greek goddess Nemesis, or the vengeful Furies.
Charles Darwin, like his grandfather Erasmus and Lamarck, believed in the inheritance of habits.
His books give many examples of offspring inheriting the adaptations of their parents.41 The neo-
Darwinian theory of evolution, which developed from the 1940s onward, differed from Charles
Darwin’s theory in that it rejected the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Instead, organisms
inherited genes from their parents, passing them on unaltered to their offspring, unless there were
mutations, that is to say, random changes in the genes. The molecular biologist Jacques Monod
summarized this theory in the title of his book, Chance and Necessity (1972).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:20:29

These seemingly abstract principles are the hidden goddesses of neo-Darwinism. Chance is the
goddess Fortuna, or Lady Luck. The turnings of her wheel confer both prosperity and misfortune.
Fortuna is blind, and was often portrayed in classical statues with a veil or blindfold. In Monod’s
words, “pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of
evolution.”42
Shelley called Necessity the “All-sufficing Power” and the “Mother of the world.” She is also Fate
or Destiny, who appears in classical European mythology as the Three Fates, who spin, allot and cut
the thread of life, dispensing to mortals their destiny at birth. In neo-Darwinism, the thread of life is
literal: helical DNA molecules in thread-like chromosomes dispense to mortals their destiny at birth.
Materialism is like an unconscious cult of the Great Mother. The word “matter” itself comes from
the same root as “mother”; in Latin the equivalent words are materia and mater.43 The Mother
archetype takes many forms, as in Mother Nature, or Ecology, or even the Economy, which feeds and
sustains us, working like a lactating breast on the basis of supply and demand. (The Greek root eco in
both of these words means family or household.) Archetypes are more powerful when they are
unconscious because they cannot be examined or discussed.
Life breaks out of mechanical metaphors
The theory of evolution destroyed the argument from mechanical design. A creator God could not
have designed the machinery of animals and plants in the beginning if they evolved progressively
through spontaneous variation and natural selection.
Living organisms, unlike machines, are themselves creative. Plants and animals vary
spontaneously, respond to genetic changes and adapt to new challenges from the environment. Some
vary more than others, and occasionally something really new appears. Creativity is inherent in living
organisms, or works through them.
No machine starts from small beginnings, grows, forms new structures within itself and then
reproduces itself. Yet plants and animals do this all the time. They can also regenerate after damage.
To see them as machines propelled only by ordinary physics and chemistry is an act of faith; to insist
that they are machines despite all appearances is dogmatic.
Within science itself, the machine theory of life was challenged continually throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by an alternative school of biology called vitalism. Vitalists
thought that organisms were more than machines: they were truly vital or alive. Over and above the
laws of physics and chemistry, organizing principles shaped the forms of living organisms, gave them
their purposive behavior, and underlay the instincts and intelligence of animals. In 1844, the chemist
Justus von Liebig made a typical statement of the vitalist position when he argued that although
chemists could analyze and synthesize organic chemicals that occurred in living organisms, they
would never be able to create an eye or a leaf. Besides the recognized physical forces, there was a
further kind of cause that “combines the elements in new forms so that they gain new qualities—
forms and qualities which do not appear except in the organism.”44
In many ways, vitalism was a survival of the older worldview that living organisms were organized
by souls. Vitalism was also in harmony with a romantic vision of living nature. Some vitalists, like the
German embryologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941), deliberately used the language of souls to
emphasize this continuity of thought. Driesch believed that a non-material organizing principle gave
plants and animals their forms and their goals. He called this organizing principle entelechy, adopting
a word that Aristotle had used for the aspect of the soul that has its end within itself (en = in, telos =
purpose). Embryos, Driesch argued, behave in a purposive way; if their development is disrupted, they
can still reach the form toward which they are developing. He showed by experiment that when seaurchin
embryos were cut in two, each half could give rise to a small but complete sea urchin, not half
a sea urchin. Their entelechy attracted the developing embryos—and even separated parts of embryos
—toward the form of the adult.
Vitalism was and still is the ultimate heresy within mechanistic biology. The orthodox view was
clearly expressed by the biologist T. H. Huxley in 1867:
Zoological physiology is the doctrine of the functions or actions of animals. It regards animal
bodies as machines impelled by various forces, and performing a certain amount of work which
can be expressed in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. The final object of physiology is to
deduce the facts of morphology on the one hand, and those of ecology on the other, from the laws
of the molecular forces of matter.45
In these words, Huxley foreshadowed the spectacular development of molecular biology since the
1960s, the most powerful effort ever made to reduce the phenomena of life to physical and chemical
mechanisms. Francis Crick, who shared in a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA,
made this agenda very explicit in his book Of Molecules and Men (1966). He denounced vitalism and
affirmed his belief that “the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all
biology in terms of physics and chemistry.”
The mechanistic approach is essentially reductionist: it tries to explain wholes in terms of their
parts. That is why molecular biology has such a high status within the life sciences: molecules are
some of the smallest components of living organisms, the point at which biology crosses over into
chemistry. Hence molecular biology is at the leading edge of the attempt to explain the phenomena of
life in terms of “the laws of the molecular forces of matter.” In so far as biologists succeed in
reducing organisms to the molecular level, they will then hand the baton to chemists and physicists,
who will reduce the properties of molecules to those of atoms and subatomic particles.
Until the nineteenth century, most scientists thought that atoms were the solid, permanent, ultimate
basis of matter. But in the twentieth century it became clear that atoms are made up of parts, with
nuclei at the center and electrons in orbitals around them. The nuclei themselves are made up of
protons and neutrons, which in turn are composed of components called quarks, with three quarks
each. When nuclei are split up in particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, near
Geneva, a host of further particles appears. Hundreds have been identified so far, and some physicists
expect that with even larger particle accelerators, yet more will be found.
The bottom has dropped out of the atom, and a zoo of evanescent particles seems unlikely to
explain the shape of an orchid flower, or the leaping of a salmon, or the flight of a flock of starlings.
Reductionism no longer offers a solid atomic basis for the explanation of everything else. In any case,
however many subatomic particles there may be, organisms are wholes, and reducing them to their
parts by killing them and analyzing their chemical constituents simply destroys what makes them
organisms.
I was forced to think about the limitations of reductionism when I was a student at Cambridge. As
part of the final-year biochemistry course, my class did an experiment on enzymes in rat livers. First,
we each took a living rat and “sacrificed” it over the sink, decapitating it with a guillotine, then we cut
it open and removed its liver. We ground up the liver in a blender and centrifuged it, to remove
unwanted fractions of the cellular debris. Then we purified the aqueous fraction to isolate the enzymes
we wanted, and we put them in test tubes. Finally we added chemicals and studied the speeds at which
chemical reactions took place. We learned something about enzymes, but nothing about how rats live
and behave. In a corridor of the Biochemistry Department the bigger problem was summed up on a
wall chart showing the chemical details of Human Metabolic Pathways; across the top someone had
written in big blue letters, “KNOW THYSELF.”
Attempting to explain organisms in terms of their chemical constituents is rather like trying to
understand a computer by grinding it up and analyzing its component elements, such as copper,
germanium and silicon. Certainly it is possible to learn something about the computer in this way,
namely what it is made of. But in this process of reduction, the structure and the programmed activity
of the computer vanishes, and chemical analysis will never reveal the circuit diagrams; no amount of
mathematical modelling of interactions between its atomic constituents will reveal the computer’s
programs or the purposes they fulfilled.
Mechanists expel purposive vital factors from living animals and plants, but then they reinvent
them in molecular guises. One form of molecular vitalism is to treat the genes as purposive entities
with goals and powers that go far beyond those of a mere chemical like DNA. The genes become
molecular entelechies. In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins endowed them with life and
intelligence. Living molecules, rather than God, are the designers of the machinery of life:
We are survival machines, but “we” does not mean just people. It embraces all animals, plants,
bacteria, and viruses … We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules
called DNA—but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the
replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine which
preserves genes up trees; a fish a machine which preserves genes in the water.46
In Dawkins’s words, “DNA moves in mysterious ways.” The DNA molecules are not only
intelligent, they are also selfish, ruthless and competitive, like “successful Chicago gangsters.” The
selfish genes “create form,” “mould matter” and engage in “evolutionary arms races”; they even
“aspire to immortality.” These genes are no longer mere molecules:
Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the
outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote
control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the
ultimate rationale for our existence … Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their
survival machines.47
The persuasive power of Dawkins’s rhetoric depended on anthropocentric language and his cartoonlike
imagery. He admits that his selfish-gene imagery is more like science fiction than science,48 but
he justifies it as a “powerful and illuminating” metaphor.49
The most popular use of a vitalistic metaphor in the name of mechanism is the “genetic program.”
Genetic programs are explicitly analogous to computer programs, which are intelligently designed by
human minds to achieve particular purposes. Programs are purposive, intelligent and goal-directed.
They are more like entelechies than mechanisms. The “genetic program” implies that plants and
animals are organized by purposive principles that are mind-like, or designed by minds. This is
another way of smuggling intelligent designs into chemical genes.
If challenged, most biologists will admit that genes merely specify the sequence of amino acids in
proteins, or are involved in the control of protein synthesis. They are not really programs; they are not
selfish, they do not mold matter, or shape form, or aspire to immortality. A gene is not “for” a
characteristic like a fish’s fin or the nest-building behavior of a weaver bird. But molecular vitalism
soon creeps back again. The mechanistic theory of life has degenerated into misleading metaphors and
rhetoric.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:21:38

To many people, especially gardeners and people who keep dogs, cats, horses or other animals, it is
blindingly obvious that plants and animals are living organisms, not machines.
The philosophy of organism
Whereas the mechanistic and vitalist theories both date back to the seventeenth century, the
philosophy of organism, also called the holistic or organismic approach, has been developing only
since the 1920s. One of its proponents was the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947);
another was Jan Smuts, a South African statesman and scholar, whose book Holism and Evolution
(1926) focused attention on “the tendency of nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the
parts through creative evolution.”50 He saw holism as
the ultimate synthetic, ordering, organizing, regulative activity in the universe, which accounts
for all the structural groupings and syntheses in it, from the atom and the physico-chemical
structures, through the cell and organisms, through Mind in animals to Personality in man. The
all-pervading and ever-increasing character of synthetic unity or wholeness in these structures
leads to the concept of Holism as the fundamental activity underlying and co-ordinating all
others, and to the view of the universe as a Holistic Universe.51
The holistic or organismic philosophy agrees with the mechanistic theory in affirming the unity of
nature: the life of biological organisms is different in degree but not in kind from physical systems
like molecules and crystals. Organicism agrees with vitalism in stressing that organisms have their
organizing principles within themselves; organisms are unities that cannot be reduced to the physics
and chemistry of simpler systems.
The philosophy of organism in effect treats all nature as alive; in this respect it is an updated
version of pre-mechanistic animism. Even atoms, molecules and crystals are organisms. As Smuts put
it, “Both matter and life consist, in the atom and the cell, of unit structures whose ordered grouping
produces the natural wholes which we call bodies or organisms.”52 Atoms are not inert particles of
stuff, as in old-style atomism. Rather, as revealed by twentieth-century physics, they are structures of
activity, patterns of energetic vibration within fields. In Whitehead’s words, “Biology is the study of
the larger organisms, whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.”53 In the light of modern
cosmology, physics is also the study of very large organisms, like planets, solar systems, galaxies and
the entire universe.
The philosophy of organism points out that everywhere we look in nature, at whatever level or
scale, we find wholes that are made up of parts that are themselves wholes at a lower level. This
pattern of organization can be represented diagrammatically as in Figure 1.1. The smallest circles
represent quarks, for example, within protons, within atomic nuclei, within atoms, within molecules,
within crystals. Or the smallest circles represent organelles, in cells, in tissues, in organs, in
organisms, in societies of organisms, in ecosystems. Or the smallest circles are planets, in solar
systems, in galaxies, in galactic clusters. Languages also show the same kind of organization, with
phonemes in syllables, in words, in phrases, in sentences.
FIGURE 1.1 A nested hierarchy of wholes or holons.
These organized systems are all nested hierarchies. At each level, the whole includes the parts; they
are literally within it. And at each level the whole is more than the sum of the parts, with properties
that cannot be predicted from the study of parts in isolation. For example, the structure and meaning
of this sentence could not be worked out by a chemical analysis of the paper and the ink, or deduced
from the quantities of letters that make it up (five as, one b, five cs, two ds, etc.). Knowing the
numbers of constituent parts is not enough: the structure of the whole depends on the way they are
combined together in words, and on the relationships between the words.
Arthur Koestler proposed the term holon for wholes made up of parts that are themselves wholes:
Every holon has a dual tendency to preserve and assert its individuality as a quasi-autonomous
whole; and to function as an integrated part of an (existing or evolving) larger whole. This
polarity between the Self-assertive and Integrative tendencies is inherent in the concept of
hierarchic order.54
For such nested hierarchies of holons, Koestler proposed the term holarchy.
Another way of thinking about wholes is through “systems theory,” which speaks of “a
configuration of parts joined together by a web of relationships.”55 Such wholes are also called
“complex systems,” and are the subject of a number of mathematical models, variously called
“complex systems theory,” “complexity theory” or “complexity science.”56
For a chemical example, think of benzene, a molecule with six carbon and six hydrogen atoms.
Each of these atoms is a holon consisting of a nucleus with electrons around it. In the benzene
molecule, the six carbon atoms are joined together in a six-sided ring, and electrons are shared
between the atoms to create a vibrating cloud of electrons around the entire molecule. The patterns of
vibration of the molecule affect the atoms within it, and since the electrons are electrically charged,
the atoms are in a vibrating electromagnetic field. Benzene is a liquid at room temperature, but below
5.5÷C it crystallizes, and as it does so, the molecules stack themselves together in a regular threedimensional
pattern, called the lattice structure. This crystal lattice also vibrates in harmonic
patterns,57 creating vibrating electromagnetic fields, which affect the molecules within them. There is
a nested hierarchy of levels of organization, interacting through a nested hierarchy of vibrating fields.
In the course of evolution, new holons arise that did not exist before: for example, the first amino
acid molecules, the first living cells, or the first flowers, or the first termite colonies. Since holons are
wholes, they must arise by sudden jumps. New levels of organization “emerge” and their “emergent
properties” go beyond those of the parts that were there before. The same is true of new ideas, or new
works of art.
The cosmos as a developing organism
The philosopher David Hume (1711–76) is perhaps best known today for his skepticism about
religion. Yet he was equally skeptical about the mechanistic philosophy of nature. There was nothing
in the universe to prove that it was more like a machine than an organism; the organization we see in
nature was more analogous to plants and animals than to machines. Hume was against the idea of a
machine-designing God, and suggested instead that the world could have originated from something
like a seed or an egg. In Hume’s words, published posthumously in 1779,
There are other parts of the universe (besides the machines of human invention) which bear still a
greater resemblance to the fabric of the world, and which, therefore, afford a better conjecture
concerning the universal origin of the system. These parts are animals and plants. The world
plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable, than it does a watch or a knitting-loom … And
does not a plant or an animal, which springs from vegetation or generation, bear a stronger
resemblance to the world, than does any artificial machine, which arises from reason and
design?58
Hume’s argument was surprisingly prescient in the light of modern cosmology. Until the 1960s, most
scientists still thought of the universe as a machine, and moreover as a machine that was running out
of steam, heading for its final heat death. According to the second law of thermodynamics,
promulgated in 1855, the universe would gradually lose the capacity to do work. It would eventually
freeze in “a state of universal rest and death,” as William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, put it.59
It was not until 1927 that Georges Lemaître, a cosmologist and Roman Catholic priest, advanced a
scientific hypothesis like Hume’s idea of the origin of the universe in an egg or seed. Lemaître
suggested that the universe began with a “creation-like event,” which he described as “the cosmic egg
exploding at the moment of creation.”60 Later called the Big Bang, this new cosmology echoed many
archaic stories of origins, like the Orphic creation myth of the Cosmic Egg in ancient Greece, or the
Indian myth of Hiranyagarbha, the primal Golden Egg.61 Significantly, in all these myths the egg is
both a primal unity and a primal polarity, since an egg is a unity composed of two parts, the yolk and
the white, an apt symbol of the emergence of “many” from “one.”
Lemaître’s theory predicted the expansion of the universe, and was supported by the discovery that
galaxies outside our own are moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance. In
1964, the discovery of a faint background glow everywhere in the universe, the cosmic microwave
background radiation, revealed what seemed to be fossil light left over from the early universe, soon
after the Big Bang. The evidence for an initial “creation-like event” became overwhelming, and by
1966 the Big Bang theory became orthodox.
Cosmology now tells a story of a universe that began extremely small, less than the size of a
pinhead, and very hot. It has been expanding ever since. As it grows, it cools down, and as it cools,
new forms and structures appear within it: atomic nuclei and electrons, stars, galaxies, planets,
molecules, crystals and biological life.
The machine metaphor has long outlived its usefulness, and holds back scientific thinking in
physics, biology and medicine. Our growing, evolving universe is much more like an organism, and so
is the earth, and so are oak trees, and so are dogs, and so are you.
What difference does it make?
Can you really think of yourself as a genetically programmed machine in a mechanical universe?
Probably not. Probably even the most committed materialists cannot either. Most of us feel we are
truly alive in a living world—at least at weekends. But through loyalty to the mechanistic worldview,
mechanistic thinking takes over during working hours.
In recognizing the life of nature, we can allow ourselves to recognize what we already know, that
animals and plants are living organisms, with their own purposes and goals. Anyone who gardens or
keeps pets knows this, and recognizes that they have their own ways of responding creatively to their
circumstances. But instead of dismissing our own observations and insights to conform to mechanistic
dogma, we can pay attention to them and try to learn from them.
In relation to the living earth, we can see that the Gaia theory is not just an isolated poetic metaphor
in an otherwise mechanical universe. The recognition of the earth as a living organism is a major step
toward recognizing the wider life of the cosmos. If the earth is a living organism, what about the sun
and the solar system as a whole? If the solar system is a kind of organism, what about the galaxy?
Cosmology already portrays the entire universe as a kind of growing super-organism, born through the
hatching of the cosmic egg.
These differences in viewpoint do not immediately suggest a new range of technological products,
and in that sense they may not be economically useful. But they make a big difference in healing the
split created by the mechanistic theory—a split between our personal experiences of nature and the
mechanical explanations that science gives us. And they help heal the split between the sciences and
all traditional and indigenous cultures, none of which sees humans and animals as machines in a
mechanical world.
Finally, dispelling the belief that the universe is an inanimate machine opens up many new
questions, discussed in the following chapters.
Questions for materialists
Is the mechanistic worldview a testable scientific theory, or a metaphor?
If it is a metaphor, why is the machine metaphor better in every respect than the organism metaphor?
If it is a scientific theory, how could it be tested or refuted?
Do you think that you yourself are nothing but a complex machine?
Have you been programmed to believe in materialism?
SUMMARY
The mechanistic theory is based on the metaphor of the machine. But it’s only a metaphor. Living
organisms provide better metaphors for organized systems at all levels of complexity, including
molecules, plants and societies of animals, all of which are organized in a series of inclusive levels, in
which the whole at each level is more than the sum of the parts, which are themselves wholes at a
lower level. Even the most ardent defenders of the mechanistic theory smuggle purposive organizing
principles into living organisms in the form of selfish genes or genetic programs. In the light of the
Big Bang theory, the entire universe is more like a growing, developing organism than a machine
slowly running out of steam.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/09/2013 20:58:41
Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK



BANNED TEDx TALKS: Real Truth, Science, Consciousness, etc.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/09/2013 04:20:55

Who said that non-biological or non-physical processes cannot be studied scientifically ?
Quote


That's what we have been asking you to explain, how your theories can be studied scientifically! Explain that process instead of ranting about how science proper has been hijacked by materialists.

I cannot watch all of the videos you posted links for because of bandwidth limits, but like you, Sheldrake's arguments that I have seen so far rest on the absence of other kinds of evidence.

Sometimes lack of evidence prompts scientists to look for alternative explanations, which is entirely reasonable. If a new disease appears to be infectious in nature, and you can't culture it on any bacterial agar or find it under the microscope, it may be time to start looking for viruses or other types of pathogens, or even something in the environment linked to all of the patients . That still doesn't mean you have completely ruled out, 100% that it's a bacteria. When Legionnaires disease cropped up, they couldn't culture it on standard media, and couldn't see it under the microscope until one enterprising microbiologist used an old, uncommonly used stain called a silver stain, and there it was in all the patients' specimens and not there in the control samples.

Even if lack of evidence prompts a scientist to look elsewhere for answers, in the end, the validity of his theory rests on evidence that directly supports it. If one proposes that fibromyalgia is caused by evil garden gnomes, the credibility of the claim rests on evidence regarding garden gnomes, not the fact that so far no virus or autoimmune  process explains it.

See the difference?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/09/2013 18:09:24

Who said that non-biological or non-physical processes cannot be studied scientifically ?


Quote

That's what we have been asking you to explain, how your theories can be studied scientifically! Explain that process instead of ranting about how science proper has been hijacked by materialists.

I cannot watch all of the videos you posted links for because of bandwidth limits, but like you, Sheldrake's arguments that I have seen so far rest on the absence of other kinds of evidence.

Sometimes lack of evidence prompts scientists to look for alternative explanations, which is entirely reasonable. If a new disease appears to be infectious in nature, and you can't culture it on any bacterial agar or find it under the microscope, it may be time to start looking for viruses or other types of pathogens, or even something in the environment linked to all of the patients . That still doesn't mean you have completely ruled out, 100% that it's a bacteria. When Legionnaires disease cropped up, they couldn't culture it on standard media, and couldn't see it under the microscope until one enterprising microbiologist used an old, uncommonly used stain called a silver stain, and there it was in all the patients' specimens and not there in the control samples.

Even if lack of evidence prompts a scientist to look elsewhere for answers, in the end, the validity of his theory rests on evidence that directly supports it. If one proposes that fibromyalgia is caused by evil garden gnomes, the credibility of the claim rests on evidence regarding garden gnomes, not the fact that so far no virus or autoimmune  process explains it.

See the difference?


Try to fix your post first :
What you still are not able to get so far , amazingly enough, even if it is in fact an extremely easy thing to understand , is that:  science proper and materialism as a secular religion in science are  2  totally different things , materialism that gets sold to the people as science proper ,ironically incredibly enough , materialism  that gets confused with science proper , with science results and facts , by many people , including yourself : how can't you see the difference , folks ?
When reasonable people are confronted with these facts , they first oppose them , deny them as such , ridicule them (That's a normal process ) ,simply because the materialist brainwash and indoctrination in that regard are so powerful and widespread ....and then they accept them as obvious evidence afterwards, in total contrast with  you , people, of all people :
 
Unbelievable lack of understanding of yours that should be reason enough to ban you from any science forum for that matter ,sorry .
See what Sheldrake and Nagel, among others , had/have  to say on the subject as well, while you are it .
I am not gonna do the job for you , (try to read what Sheldrake has to say here above  in that book of his on the subject , i did quote ), since you  cannot even understand simple facts and statements, people with below -average- intellect can  .
Why should i bother then ?
I am not gonna waste my time on people who cannot even acknowledge or recognize obvious simple facts ...
Got better things to do than that ...I'm fed up with you  , guys .
Try to figure all that out for yourselves ,or not , who cares ...
Science proper will be liberated from materialism as a secular religion  , no doubt about that = inevitable = only a question of time ... then, and only then, whole unimaginable new vistas would open up for science proper , the latter that has been seriously handicaped and held back within that materialistic backward dogmatic belief system prison it gotta be liberated from, sooner or later , your  silly denials and unbelievable lack of understanding on the subject won't prevent science proper from breaking free from that despicable untrue materialism as a false world view or ideology  , as a misconception of nature ................
Don't bother responding to this post , you will get no eventual reply  in return,for obvious reasons  .
Ciao





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 29/09/2013 19:48:27
Don Q

Are you, or have you ever been, a scientist?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/09/2013 23:36:00
Regardless of what you think I "get," or don't get, I stand by my challenge, because I know you can't explain how your theories can be studied scientifically. It's not that I don't understand the words that you are saying, it's that I don't agree with them, incredible as that must seem to some one as arrogant as you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/09/2013 00:13:28
Regardless of what you think I "get," or don't get, I stand by my challenge, because I know you can't explain how your theories can be studied scientifically. It's not that I don't understand the words that you are saying, it's that I don't agree with them, incredible as that must seem to some one as arrogant as you.
He puts me in mind of Macbeth's description of life (soliloquy; Act 5, Scene 5, lines 24-28) ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Skyli on 30/09/2013 08:51:18
"Dude, instead of writing these kindda absurd whole lengthy posts that make no sense whatsoever , just try to understand what the core issue here is ,we have been talking about :"

Absurd? This "dude" finished complaining about my "lengthy" post before putting up 19 pages (yes folks, that's Nineteen!) of cut'n'paste.
One rule for us, one for you? Now what sort of person does that?

Young fellow, from where you stand the truth of these ridiculous conspiracy theories is as plain as the nose on your face or the air that you breath - so obvious that they cannot be rejected any more than sunlight can, so they can only be misunderstood. Just look at your answers: "You don't understand", "These people don't get it", "I can't believe that intelligent etc....". You don't challenge peoples arguments when they disagree with you, you challenge their intelligence. Now what sort of person does that?

You do not have enough reason or humility to accept that people REJECT your proposition - they see no conspiracy, they see nothing wrong with the way science is going - and you see that rejection as meaning that we can't understand. You sound like the little boy saying, "Of course my dads the strongest, and if you don't know that then you're stupid.".

There is tons of this rubbish in the "new" religious press; books slamming "the science of materialism", "materialist dogma/paradigm in science", all backed up with silly yeah-but-no-but arguments and ridiculous, pompous nonsense about how "science sees itself". Unreasoned, knee-jerk reaction from people who, like you, are not able to question "The Truth" that they learned as children; fools who are afraid that science is "against God", out to disprove God or some such nonsense.

Your idea is rejected, not misunderstood. What sort of a person has such a problem with rejection?

I don't really care whether you're a scientist or not, I would be more interested in your age, because you "debate" like a typically invincible, know-it-all teenager.

Ah. That sort of person.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 30/09/2013 17:13:37
Life is short. Don't spend all of it here.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 19:33:33
Life is short. Don't spend all of it here.

Exactly , the more when one sees how these people are not even able to understand simple obvious facts and simple statements ...
I already lost my appetite for this ...really ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 19:45:02
Regardless of what you think I "get," or don't get, I stand by my challenge, because I know you can't explain how your theories can be studied scientifically. It's not that I don't understand the words that you are saying, it's that I don't agree with them, incredible as that must seem to some one as arrogant as you.
He puts me in mind of Macbeth's description of life (soliloquy; Act 5, Scene 5, lines 24-28) ;)

I thought that your "mind " was just a matter of physics and chemistry haha = can't be , physics and chemistry cannot account for such things or rather processes such as consciousness, cognition, mind , reason, love , feelings , emotions, free will, ethics ....life, ....their emergence evolution and  origins ...Can they ?
....................
No, i like to see myself sometimes as Shakespeare ' s fool haha
And i do see you as Alice in wonderland , in your reductionist wonderland  magical fantasy  ...
P.S.: Where have you been hiding all this time ? just to come out of your hiding place to utter this non-sense of yours .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 19:55:28
"Dude, instead of writing these kindda absurd whole lengthy posts that make no sense whatsoever , just try to understand what the core issue here is ,we have been talking about :"

Absurd? This "dude" finished complaining about my "lengthy" post before putting up 19 pages (yes folks, that's Nineteen!) of cut'n'paste.
One rule for us, one for you? Now what sort of person does that?

Young fellow, from where you stand the truth of these ridiculous conspiracy theories is as plain as the nose on your face or the air that you breath - so obvious that they cannot be rejected any more than sunlight can, so they can only be misunderstood. Just look at your answers: "You don't understand", "These people don't get it", "I can't believe that intelligent etc....". You don't challenge peoples arguments when they disagree with you, you challenge their intelligence. Now what sort of person does that?

You do not have enough reason or humility to accept that people REJECT your proposition - they see no conspiracy, they see nothing wrong with the way science is going - and you see that rejection as meaning that we can't understand. You sound like the little boy saying, "Of course my dads the strongest, and if you don't know that then you're stupid.".

There is tons of this rubbish in the "new" religious press; books slamming "the science of materialism", "materialist dogma/paradigm in science", all backed up with silly yeah-but-no-but arguments and ridiculous, pompous nonsense about how "science sees itself". Unreasoned, knee-jerk reaction from people who, like you, are not able to question "The Truth" that they learned as children; fools who are afraid that science is "against God", out to disprove God or some such nonsense.

Your idea is rejected, not misunderstood. What sort of a person has such a problem with rejection?

I don't really care whether you're a scientist or not, I would be more interested in your age, because you "debate" like a typically invincible, know-it-all teenager.

Ah. That sort of person.

Surreal and absurd as usual : Kafka would have been very jealous of you indeed .
Weird how you interpret and perceive statements of people : you distort them beyond any recognition ....God ...
Fact is : the fact that the materialist dogmatic belief system has been dominating in  science  ,many people do confuse with science proper , with scientific approaches and scientific results is an indeniable  obvious  fact ,  no conspiracy theory ...
No further comment , that would be just an utter waste of time .
Do you read what you write ? Unbelievable non-sense .
How can any sane average person for that matter utter such an amount of non-sense in 1 single post : amazing .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/10/2013 20:20:47
No further comment , that would be just an utter waste of time .
Do you read what you write ? Unbelievable non-sense .
How can any sane average person for that matter utter such an amount of non-sense in 1 single post : amazing .

Ipsi dixit, nemine contradicente.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 20:45:16
Regardless of what you think I "get," or don't get, I stand by my challenge, because I know you can't explain how your theories can be studied scientifically. It's not that I don't understand the words that you are saying, it's that I don't agree with them, incredible as that must seem to some one as arrogant as you.

First of all, you obviously still do not understand the core issue here that's obviously not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact : the materialist naturalist reductionism as a secular dominating religion in science , is obviously and indeniably  false .
That's  an indeniable obvious fact , only fools , materialists , or idiots can deny as such .
How can anyone for that matter deny such obvious indeniable fact ...
Facts are , per definition, indeniable .
See Nagel's book regarding the obvious logical and other evidence that supports such a claim : such logical and other evidence that proves the fact that materialism is obviously a false conception of nature in science , materialism as an incoherent ideology also .
Did science proper ever prove the materialist false ideological core assumption  that nature is exclusively biological physical ? = absolutely not = never .
Science does not have to be materialistic , the core true assumption of science  is that the universe or nature are intelligible = materialism in science offers no intelligible understanding or intelligible explanation of nature , obviously , simply because materialism is false = materialism has nothing to do with science proper , materialism that's only been holding science proper imprisoned within materialism's ideological false assumptions .
Second : Nagel and Sheldrake, among others , have already been introducing a non-reductionist naturalist alternative to the materialist false reductionist naturalism  .
Third : The implications of the first fact ,concerning the fact   at least that the materialist reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is certainly false , for the materialist version of evolution, for the materialist version of the emergence evolution and origins of life , for the materialist version of the emergence evolution and origins of consciousness, to mention just that ...are obvious also, not to mention the fact that materialism is certainly intenable ,false and even intenable , even at the level of the physical sciences and biology .... ,simply because , once again, nature is not exclusively biological physical ,so, the purely physical sciences cannot account for such processes such as life , consciousness, human reason, .....and for their respective evolution origins and emergence = materialism in science just gives its own exclusively physical biological version of those and other processes , an exclusively material version which is obviously not only incomplete , but also false thus.

Fourth : reality is certainly not exclusively biological physical, otherwise , it can certainly and absolutely not account for the emergence evolution and origins of life itself, for the origins evolution and emergence of consciousness ...to mention just that , once again .
Fifth : Nagel had already proposed a non-reductionist naturalist alternative to that false naturalist reductionism in science thus .
Sheldrake has also been applying his non-reductionist approaches to phenomena such as telepathy , psychic skills , and to other so-called paranormal phenomena .
Note that some so-called paranormal phenomena can turn out to be just normal ones indeed + non-reductionist naturalism can , per definition, only exclude any phenomena for that matter  that is allegedly called paranormal in general : the word here is naturalism for non-reductionist naturalism as an alternative to the materialist reductionist naturalism,non-reductionist naturalism that , per definition, excludes any existence of so-called paranormal or from outside- of -nature -so-called- originating- phenomena : Got it ?
Non-reductionist naturalism as proposed by Nagel and others , is yet another doomed to fail attempt to explain or understand the universe as a whole .
After reading that Nagel's difficult and torturing book , i still do not see how that presumed non-reductionist naturalism can account for consciousness, life ,and for their respective origins evolution and emergence , within nature , either .
The materialist reductionist naturalist false conception or rather misconception of nature will be just replaced , as Nagel himself admitted , by yet another false conception of nature , either a non-reductionist naturalist one , the likelihood of the rise of which  in science is highly predictable indeed ,but , it will also encounter inescapable inevitable dilemmas and dead -end streets in relation to life , consciousness , human reason, ethics ....and their respective emergence evolution and origins of course , or worse : by some anti-reductionist  idealist conception of nature that assumes that all is mind = the very exact opposite of materialism thus ....anti-reductionist idealist conception of nature that's not only also false ,but unpractical too .
Do the "maths " then ...

In short :
That Eurocentric cultural historic philosophical...artificial created conflict  between religion and science is not universal = not true regarding all religions and science for that matter : no wonder that the scientific method itself originated directly from the Qur'anic epistemology .
I see no conflict between science and Islam thus :
I can assume that God created everything , including life , consciousness, , evolution ...while trying ,at the same time , to find out about their  secrets and signs of God in them within and without , while separating between science and Islam  in the process : a holistic synthesis that can be "extracted " afterwards from  both science and Islam + from all those elements of truth contained in all other religions, currents of thought ,cultures ,  including from all those relative truths contained in atheism and in the inherently intrinsically atheist reductionist materialism ....such a holistic synthesis thus can give us some better and holistic non-reductionist naturalist and beyond nature approach of reality as a whole ...=  Islamic theism going hand in hand with science proper , science proper as the historic legetimate natural daughter of Islam thus , while being separated from science proper at first , for scientific practical reasons , and going hand in hand with all those relative truths contained in all currents of thought , cultures, religions in general ...result = only such a holistic approach of the true reality as such can deliver some breakthroughs regarding all those eternal issues humanity has been struggling with for so long now : issues such as life , such as the relative degrees of consciousness in all living beings and non-living matter  , issues such as human reason , ethics .....and their respective emergence origins and evolution ....

In other words :
I see no reason why one cannot be a believer and a scientist at the same time, while being a cosmopolitan in the true sense in the process  .
The concept of a  true believer in Islam at least does not exclude science proper , knowledge in the broader sense = science proper and knowledge in the larger sense ...+ wisdom, personal experiences,hard work, endless restless dynamic search ...are even religious duties in islam = forms of worship of God :
The early muslims who "invented " science proper and did pradctice it as well, saw science as a religious duty , a form of worship of God , in order to find out about the secrets and signs of God within and without , while separating science from Islam in the process ....
All other approaches will obviously and , per definition, fail to "capture " or rather approach the true reality as a whole as such , relatively speaking then.

P.S.: I will even dare risk getting accused of preaching by adding the following fact ,that's rather no preaching , just a fact :
Islam is , per definition, a dynamic lifetime long evolutionary experience and journey :
Islam is positive science , in the sense that the only way to understand islam is by experiencing it , by going through it , by taking that dynamic restless endless search journey , combined with science proper , and with the relative truths contained in all currents of thought , religions, cultures, human experiences ...relatively speaking .
Plus , no Islamic experience of any given muslim individual for that matter is like that of another muslim individual ,as no adventure of any given adventurer for that matter is like that of any other adventurer .
You can read books, watch movies , ....about some adventures of some adventurers , you can even feel , taste , hear , smell , see , think about ....what those adventurers might have felt , thought , smelt , heard , saw, experienced  .....
But , fact is : you can never match what they actually felt , smelt , heard , saw , experienced ...via their whole individual unique beings and souls , not even remotely close .
You gotta take such holistic dynamic evolutionary lifetime long restless endless journeys yourself , in the above holistic cosmopolitan sense , that also includes science proper .............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 21:03:30
No further comment , that would be just an utter waste of time .
Do you read what you write ? Unbelievable non-sense .
How can any sane average person for that matter utter such an amount of non-sense in 1 single post : amazing .
Ipsi dixit, nemine contradicente.
[/quote]

Whatever :
Do you have some intelligent and relevant to say on the subject ?


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 21:41:14
I see science proper moving ahead to meet religion ultimately ,as that famous quote of Whitehead so eloquently put it  , i cannot repeat here , for fear of being accused of ...missionary evangelism  again  ...the latter i do despise so much , either secular or religious evangelism for that matter .
Only the proper universal cosmopolitan  anti-reductionist theism combined with  science proper , while being separated from it , at the same time , can try to come up with true holistic universal cosmopolitan true approaches of those hard problems in science  and elsewhere ,and eternal issues humanity has been struggling with for so long now : issues such as life  in general  , consciousness in all beings and things , human reason , ....
All exclusively naturalist conceptions of nature for that matter , either reductionist or non-reductionist ones , the same goes for that anti-reductionist idealism ...will fail to approach the true reality as a whole out there , relatively speaking then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/10/2013 22:05:52
Folks :
I will say the following , but i am afraid you will neither understand it nor grasp it , you will just distort it beyond any recognition, since you were not even able to understand or acknowledge recognize the simple fact that science proper has been dominated ,since the 19th century at least , by that inherently intrinsically both atheist and reductionist materialistic naturalist conception, or rather misconception of nature :
Atheist Nagel's proposed alternative to that false inherently atheist materialist reductionist naturalist misconception of nature , or false materialist meta-paradigm in science , his alternative solution is : of course : the inherently atheist non-reductionist naturalism .
I say that the latter is not only false also , but it will fail too ultimately , if it is ever applied to science ,as a meta-paradigm or as a system of belief .
The ultimate solution is as follows :
The true proper universal cosmopolitan theism as a meta-paradigm in science ....in the future .
It does not take a genius to understand the latter , but i am afraid that you will not only misunderstand just that , but you will predictably also misinterpret it beyond any recognition as well ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/10/2013 02:36:58

Facts are , per definition, indeniable .



Well, not if they're inaccurate or unproven.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/10/2013 18:31:15

Facts are , per definition, indeniable .



Well, not if they're inaccurate or unproven.

I said that Nagel did prove that obvious indeniable fact to be true in that book of his, didn't i ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/10/2013 18:32:59
I miss that absurd non-sense of Skyli though haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/10/2013 18:34:34
@  dlorde :
Lost your tongue ? Guess so , very predictable indeed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/10/2013 19:09:55
Quote
the core true assumption of science  is

Wrong! Science is a process, wholly devoid of assumptions, which are human artefacts.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/10/2013 20:16:29
Quote
the core true assumption of science  is

Wrong! Science is a process, wholly devoid of assumptions, which are human artefacts.

What are you talking about ?
Science is practiced by scientists humans , dude :
See that materialist  dogmatic belief system and materialist meta-paradigm dominating in science .
But , i was talking about somethingelse , about the core scientific assumption that the universe is intelligible , an assumption without which there would be no point in trying to explain or understand the universe via science , if the universe is not ...intelligible : the universe is thus .

See this concerning the presumed objectivity in science as well, while you are at it :

Quote : "
Illusions of Objectivity
For those who idealize science, scientists are the epitome of objectivity, rising above the sectarian
divisions and illusions that afflict the rest of humanity. Scientific minds are freed from the normal
limitations of bodies, emotions and social obligations, and can travel beyond the earthbound realm of
the senses to see all nature as if from outside, stripped of subjective qualities. They have godlike,
mathematical knowledge of the vast reaches of space and time, and even of countless universes
beyond our own. Unlike religion, locked in endless conflicts and disputes, science offers a true
understanding of material nature, the only reality there is. Scientists constitute a priesthood superior
to the priesthoods of religions, which maintain their prestige and power by playing on human
ignorance and fear. Scientists stand in the vanguard of human progress, leading humanity onward and
upward to a better and brighter world.
Most scientists are unconscious of the myths, allegories and assumptions that shape their social
roles and political power. These beliefs are implicit rather than explicit. But they are more powerful
because they are so habitual. If they are unconscious, they cannot be questioned; and in so far as they
are collective, shared by the scientific community, there is no incentive to question them.
In the course of this book, I have shown that the materialist philosophy or “the scientific
worldview” is not a vision of undeniable, objective truth. It is a questionable belief system superseded
by the development of the sciences themselves. In this chapter I look at the myths of disembodied
knowledge and scientific objectivity and the ways in which they conflict with the obvious fact that
scientists are people. Sciences are human activities. The assumption that the sciences are uniquely
objective not only distorts the public perception of scientists, but affects scientists’ perception of
themselves. The illusion of objectivity makes scientists prone to deception and self-deception. It
works against the noble ideal of seeking truth."  End Quote :
Source : "Science set free ,10 paths to new discovery " By Rupert Sheldrake : Chapter 11 : The illusions of objectivity .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/10/2013 22:57:17
@  dlorde :
Lost your tongue ? Guess so , very predictable indeed.
You've said nothing worth responding to. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/10/2013 03:27:06

Facts are , per definition, indeniable .



Well, not if they're inaccurate or unproven.

I said that Nagel did prove that obvious indeniable fact to be true in that book of his, didn't i ?


I think you are confusing the definition of a factual statement with what you believe to be a truthful statement. They are not the same. Factual means something that is verifiable by others. The average distance of the moon from Earth is 900 miles. The average distance of the moon from Earth is  252,088 miles. They are both factual statements, but one is definitely more accurate. I can measure it. You can measure it. You brother Bob can measure it.

There are probably "facts" in Nagel's book but I would argue that his proposition in total falls outside of being a verifiable fact.

Ironically, despite Nagel's critique of reductionism or materialism (which admittedly I don't agree with), I don't find anything in his other propositions terribly objectionable or alarming. His "natural teleology," or looking for higher order relationships to explain or  describe phenomena, is not all that revolutionary. They've been doing that in the mathematics of probability and statistics since the 1800s. Pascal's triangle. Gaussian distribution. You don't always have to reduce every part to its most fundamental components, to make predictions or learn something significant about how objects behave en masse.  The weird thing about people in probability and statistics, is they never seem to freak out about why certain mathematical relationships exist, even among random events, or why they pop up again and again in totally unrelated areas. They just say "Oh, good! Now we can make predictions!"

Unfortunately, I don't think you will find Nagel quite the ally you were hoping for. To me at least, these higher order relationships sound suspiciously like emergent properties that you are so scornful of. And I say this because I don't know how one would distinguish between a property that emerges from the interactions between objects, and a property that is somehow imposed on them by the universe in which they inhabit. At anyrate, he does not sound like a supporter of your kind of mystical insight into the nature of reality as a scientific method to learn about consciousness, despite his comments about what it is to be a bat. You better stick with Sheldrake.

Just my thoughts on the matter. Feel free to be as derisive as usual.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/10/2013 10:47:55
Quote
Science is practiced by scientists humans , dude :

Exactly. Don't confuse the singer with the song. I've played some beautiful songs for some rubbish singers in my time, but I wouldn't blame Kern or Handel for their mistakes.   

Quote
But , i was talking about somethingelse , about the core scientific assumption that the universe is intelligible

It appears to be, at least to the intelligent. But it wouldn't matter much it it wasn't. The "core assumption" is made by philosophers, not practitioners, of science, i.e. by people with no required knowledge or understanding of the subject. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/10/2013 17:10:23

Facts are , per definition, indeniable

Well, not if they're inaccurate or unproven.

I said that Nagel did prove that obvious indeniable fact to be true in that book of his, didn't i ?

Quote
I think you are confusing the definition of a factual statement with what you believe to be a truthful statement. They are not the same. Factual means something that is verifiable by others. The average distance of the moon from Earth is 900 miles. The average distance of the moon from Earth is  252,088 miles. They are both factual statements, but one is definitely more accurate. I can measure it. You can measure it. You brother Bob can measure it.

There are probably "facts" in Nagel's book but I would argue that his proposition in total falls outside of being a verifiable fact.

Ironically, despite Nagel's critique of reductionism or materialism (which admittedly I don't agree with), I don't find anything in his other propositions terribly objectionable or alarming. His "natural teleology," or looking for higher order relationships to explain or  describe phenomena, is not all that revolutionary. They've been doing that in the mathematics of probability and statistics since the 1800s. Pascal's triangle. Gaussian distribution. You don't always have to reduce every part to its most fundamental components, to make predictions or learn something significant about how objects behave en masse.  The weird thing about people in probability and statistics, is they never seem to freak out about why certain mathematical relationships exist, even among random events, or why they pop up again and again in totally unrelated areas. They just say "Oh, good! Now we can make predictions!"

Unfortunately, I don't think you will find Nagel quite the ally you were hoping for. To me at least, these higher order relationships sound suspiciously like emergent properties that you are so scornful of. And I say this because I don't know how one would distinguish between a property that emerges from the interactions between objects, and a property that is somehow imposed on them by the universe in which they inhabit. At anyrate, he does not sound like a supporter of your kind of mystical insight into the nature of reality as a scientific method to learn about consciousness, despite his comments about what it is to be a bat. You better stick with Sheldrake.

Just my thoughts on the matter. Feel free to be as derisive as usual.
[/quote]

Too much side irrelevant talk and silly denials that say absolutely nothing : an obvious insult to the obvious undeniable  facts on the subject :

I did say , on many occasions  here ,that atheist Nagel's proposed alternative to reductionism is also a false conception of nature , that's obviously doomed to fail as well ,didn't i ?.

Besides , it is an obvious and an undeniable fact that reductionism in science is a false conception of nature that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, modern physics  themselves  ...
See what Sheldrake said here above on the subject .
An obvious and undeniable fact that has been proven to be true by many scientists , thinkers , philosophers , by the physical sciences themselves , by Nagel, by Sheldrake ....
That's not just a statement ,honey : to try to prove to you this fact as being true , is like trying to prove to you that the sun rises from the East ...come on, be serious .
Once again, has science proper even proved the "fact " to be true that reality is exclusively biological physical ? come on, don't be an idiot, sorry = absolutely not= never = ever ,simply because nature or reality cannot be a matter of exclusively biological physical processes or physics and chemistry , otherwise they absolutely cannot account for such processes such as life , consciousness, human cognition .....let alone their origins evolution and emergence = exclusive reductionist or even non-reductionist naturalism can certainly not explain consciousness, life , human cognition ...no way .
Science proper itself will therefore reject materialism as untrue and untenable ...no doubt about that .
Quantum physics , for example, have already been challenging materialism as being untrue and untenable since the 1920's ...
I can elaborate some more on this , and can even provide you with some relevant quotes from prominent scientists '. thinkers' work on the subject  ...concerning the obvious undeniable evidence that proves materialism to be false , beyond  any shadow of a doubt :
But , that's so an obvious and an undeniable fact that it would be an utter waste of time to try to discuss it any further , simply because it's so obvious that materialism is false , and is therefore challenged by the mental side of nature , by consciousness, life ...their emergence origins and evolution ..............
If you cannot see all that , if you cannot see obvious things and facts as such , there is no point in going any further with this discussion,for obvious reasons,  i am afraid .
Just try to read that Nagel's book, that Sheldrake's book at least then :
I am not gonna waste my time to try to make you get rid of your denials , that's neither my job to do , nor a relevant to this discussion thing to do  either  , that's your job and responsibility you gotta deal with , not mine .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/10/2013 17:35:33
Quote
Science is practiced by scientists humans , dude :

Exactly. Don't confuse the singer with the song. I've played some beautiful songs for some rubbish singers in my time, but I wouldn't blame Kern or Handel for their mistakes.   

Don't be a naive childish silly  idiot :
There is no such a thing as "science " , not in the sense that it is an alleged independent 'totally objective entity " out there : science is a human activity , a human social activity, a form of culture ...practiced by scientists humans : there is no science without scientists ....
"Science " does not exist independently : that's just a metaphor word used to refer to the work of scientists ...
Did you read or understand what Sheldrake was saying about the illusion of objectivity in science ?
You obviously did not understand that quote , assuming you read it , in the first place to begin with :
Here is another quote from that great book of Sheldrake "Science set free ..." , on the subject , concerning the fact that scientists are just humans  with shortcomings , flaws ...pretty much like any other humans , no super humans :

"Science"  approaches  relative degrees of objectivity or otherwise via scientists : the first cannot exist without the latter , science cannot exist without humans that practice it :

Quote :
"The humanity of scientists
Among the many scientists I have known, some are ruthlessly ambitious, others kind and generous;
some boringly pedantic, others excitingly speculative; some narrow-minded, others visionary; some
cowardly, others brave; some meticulous, others careless; some honest, others deceptive; some
secretive, others open; some original, others unoriginal. In other words, they are people. They vary,
just as other kinds of people vary.
Through studying scientists in action, sociologists of science have revealed that scientists are
indeed like other people. They are subject to social forces and peer-group pressures, and they need
acceptance, funding and, if possible, political influence. Their success does not depend simply on the
ingenuity of their theories or the facts they discover. The facts do not speak for themselves. To be
successful, scientists need rhetorical skills, to build up alliances and win the support of others.10
The historian of science Thomas Kuhn has shown that “normal science” is practiced within a shared
framework of assumptions and agreed practices, a paradigm. Phenomena that do not fit—anomalies—
are routinely dismissed or explained away. Scientists are often dogmatic and prejudiced when
confronted with evidence or ideas that go against their beliefs. They usually ignore what they do not
want to deal with. “Turning a blind eye is the no-nonsense way to deal with potentially troublesome
ideas,” observed the sociologists of science, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch.11 “The meaning of an
experimental result does not … depend only on the care with which it was designed and carried out, it
depends on what people are ready to believe.”12
In disputes between rival scientists, experimental results are rarely decisive on their own. The facts
do not speak for themselves because there is no agreement about the facts. Maybe the method was
flawed, or the apparatus faulty, or the data wrongly interpreted. When a new consensus builds up,
these disputes recede into the background, and the “correct” results are accepted, making it easier for
similar results to be correct.
The determination of the fundamental constants is a case in point. When the speed of light, c,
apparently dropped by 20 kilometers per second from 1928 to 1945, laboratories all around the world
reported measurements close to the consensus value. But when c went up again, laboratories duly
agreed closely with the new consensus (see Chapter 3). Did the speed of light really change? The data
say that it did. But for theoretical reasons it could not really have changed, because it is believed to be
a fundamental constant. Therefore the consensus data must have been flawed. The scientists probably
discarded measurements that didn’t fit, and “corrected” the remaining data until they converged on the
expected value as a result of “intellectual phase locking” (see this page–this page).
An international committee fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972, putting an end to
embarrassing variations. But other constants have continued to vary, especially the Universal
Gravitational Constant, G. So does G really vary? The facts cannot speak for themselves because most
of the measurements are not published. Within individual laboratories, researchers discard unsuitable
data, arriving at the final value by averaging selected measurements. Then an international committee
of experts selects, adjusts and averages the data from different laboratories to arrive at the
internationally recognized “best value” of G. Previous “best values” are consigned to the archives of
science, where they gather dust.13
Anyone who has actually carried out scientific research knows that data are uncertain, that much
depends on the way they are interpreted and that all methods have their limitations. Scientists are used
to having their data and interpretations scrutinized and criticized by anonymous peer reviewers. They
are usually well aware of the uncertainties and limitations of knowledge in their own field.
The illusion of objectivity gains in strength through distance. Biologists, psychologists and social
scientists are notorious for physics envy, seeing physics as far more objective and precise than their
own rather messy fields, where there is so much uncertainty. From the outside, metrology, the branch
of physics concerned with fundamental constants, seems an oasis of certainty. But metrologists
themselves make no such claim: they are preoccupied with variations in measurements, arguments
about the reliability of different methods, and disputes between different laboratories. They achieve a
higher level of precision than scientists studying plants, rats or minds, but their “best values” are still
consensus figures arrived at through processes of subjective evaluation.
The further the distance, the stronger the illusion. Those who are most prone to idealize the
objectivity of scientists are people who know almost nothing about science, people for whom it has
become a kind of religion, their hope of salvation." End Quote .


Quote
Quote
But , i was talking about somethingelse , about the core scientific assumption that the universe is intelligible

It appears to be, at least to the intelligent. But it wouldn't matter much it it wasn't. The "core assumption" is made by philosophers, not practitioners, of science, i.e. by people with no required knowledge or understanding of the subject.

What are you talking out again ?

I presumed that you were more intelligent than this , come on : unbelievable :

Intelligible  means comprehensible understandable .....that makes sense ...that can be easily understood ...
If the universe was not intelligible , there would be no science , no knowledge in the broader sense , no cognition logic to approach it , no life , no action, no nothing = a paradox = the universe is intelligible ,that's why science tries to understand explain it , but materialism cripples that wonderful capacity of science ...

God ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/10/2013 17:48:42
What's going on with you today , people ?
You are  way below the required level today : you also were all along   in fact , but in lesser degrees than today , how come ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/10/2013 17:57:59
@  dlorde :
Lost your tongue ? Guess so , very predictable indeed.
You've said nothing worth responding to.

This is the most stupid statement you have ever uttered   here so far : way to go, man .
Are you blind or just dumb ?
Oh, how could i miss this unbelievable non-sense : tragic-hilarious .
Really ? haha :
Your own definition of "worth " is staggering : it made me laugh to the point that it brought tears to my eyes ...hahah
God ...
Thank you for confirming my "pic " of you indeed : just have the decency to remain silent then : you , obviously , have nothing interesting to offer , i see .
Your abscence or silence were  more eloquent though ...but, not in the way you might interpret or rather misinterpret  the latter .
Just keep it that way then.
Byyyyeeee





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/10/2013 19:39:33
Quote
There is no such a thing as "science "

Please don't tell my clients. They think it is what I do all day, every day, for money.

If they thought I was just trotting out vapid -isms and not solving problems by the application of science, they might not pay me (though I could make a living as a politician, priest or management consultant)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/10/2013 20:12:49
Quote
There is no such a thing as "science "

Please don't tell my clients. They think it is what I do all day, every day, for money.

If they thought I was just trotting out vapid -isms and not solving problems by the application of science, they might not pay me (though I could make a living as a politician, priest or management consultant)

Don't take my words out of context , please : read what Sheldrake had to say about all that ,i did quote for you, just for your blue eyes .
Your understanding or rather misinderstanding of what science is , how it works , and by whom it is actually practiced  , is simply ...staggering though : i pity your clients in that regard .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/10/2013 21:37:01
Quote
There is no such a thing as "science "

Please don't tell my clients. They think it is what I do all day, every day, for money.

If they thought I was just trotting out vapid -isms and not solving problems by the application of science, they might not pay me (though I could make a living as a politician, priest or management consultant)

Don't take my words out of context , please : read what Sheldrake had to say about all that ,i did quote for you, just for your blue eyes .
Your understanding or rather misinderstanding of what science is , how it works , and by whom it is actually practiced  , is simply ...staggering though : i pity your clients in that regard .




What makes you think he has blue eyes?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/10/2013 21:56:24
...or that I don't understand what I do for a living?

As I thought, DonQ is a philosopher, that is, a person whose mission is to infect others with his ignorance - a sort of intellectual Munchausen by Proxy. A miserable calling, doomed forever to tell other people that they "just don't understand", but unlike teenagers, philosophers never grow up or acquire the humility and wisdom that science - or even normal life - confer on others.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/10/2013 22:07:48

Too much side irrelevant talk and silly denials that say absolutely nothing : an obvious insult to the obvious undeniable  facts on the subject:

I did say , on many occasions  here ,that atheist Nagel's proposed alternative to reductionism is also a false conception of nature , that's obviously doomed to fail as well ,didn't i ?.

Besides , it is an obvious and an undeniable fact that reductionism in science is a false conception of nature that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, modern physics  themselves  ...
See what Sheldrake said here above on the subject .
An obvious and undeniable fact that has been proven to be true by many scientists , thinkers , philosophers , by the physical sciences themselves , by Nagel, by Sheldrake ....
That's not just a statement ,honey : to try to prove to you this fact as being true , is like trying to prove to you that the sun rises from the East ...come on, be serious .
Once again, has science proper even proved the "fact " to be true that reality is exclusively biological physical ? come on, don't be an idiot, sorry = absolutely not= never = ever ,simply because nature or reality cannot be a matter of exclusively biological physical processes or physics and chemistry , otherwise they absolutely cannot account for such processes such as life , consciousness, human cognition .....let alone their origins evolution and emergence = exclusive reductionist or even non-reductionist naturalism can certainly not explain consciousness, life , human cognition ...no way .
Science proper itself will therefore reject materialism as untrue and untenable ...no doubt about that .
Quantum physics , for example, have already been challenging materialism as being untrue and untenable since the 1920's ...
I can elaborate some more on this , and can even provide you with some relevant quotes from prominent scientists '. thinkers' work on the subject  ...concerning the obvious undeniable evidence that proves materialism to be false , beyond  any shadow of a doubt :
But , that's so an obvious and an undeniable fact that it would be an utter waste of time to try to discuss it any further , simply because it's so obvious that materialism is false , and is therefore challenged by the mental side of nature , by consciousness, life ...their emergence origins and evolution ..............
If you cannot see all that , if you cannot see obvious things and facts as such , there is no point in going any further with this discussion,for obvious reasons,  i am afraid .
Just try to read that Nagel's book, that Sheldrake's book at least then :
I am not gonna waste my time to try to make you get rid of your denials , that's neither my job to do , nor a relevant to this discussion thing to do  either  , that's your job and responsibility you gotta deal with , not mine .




Don't worry your pretty little head about it, Don. I'll be fine if the Complete Works of Rupert Sheldrake are missing from my science library. But I'm glad you realize the atheist, Nagel, is not really your boy. He might be cranky when it comes to science, but he's almost rational. I would suggest Deepak Chopra but, dang it, he's the wrong religion.

I can't help but  notice a pattern with you. People actually think about what you say and try to respond in some logical way. I recall several interesting responses, for example, to your frequent comments regarding what physics has proved regarding consciousness. And you never address comments like that directly. There's never any counter argument that specifically addresses assertions point by point, or even one you feel worth pursuing. You either totally ignore it, or just restate your original argument that materialism is a false misconception of nature which has hijacked science proper and so on. Or you respond by saying they are "confused"  "don't get it" "irrelevant" "stupid"  or "childish" (and the best!) "twisting your words." I suspect you do this when you are backed into a corner, or are just too lazy to come up with a response - "I cannot be bothered by people who do not accept my brilliance without question!" 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/10/2013 22:15:57
Quote
"I cannot be bothered by people who do not accept my brilliance without question!"

Just like every other philosopher it has ever been my displeasure to meet!

However, much as I despise philosphers, I admire successful soldiers, so in the true spirit of cut and paste, here's a quickie from Mao Tse Tung (1957)

Quote
....the metaphysical method should not be used, but efforts should be made to apply the dialectical method. What is needed is scienmtific analysis and convincing argument

I think on a majority vote, Mao with a billion followers and a major revolutionary war to show for his efforts, trumps Sheldrake. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2013 18:00:16
Quote
There is no such a thing as "science "

Please don't tell my clients. They think it is what I do all day, every day, for money.

If they thought I was just trotting out vapid -isms and not solving problems by the application of science, they might not pay me (though I could make a living as a politician, priest or management consultant)

Don't take my words out of context , please : read what Sheldrake had to say about all that ,i did quote for you, just for your blue eyes .
Your understanding or rather misinderstanding of what science is , how it works , and by whom it is actually practiced  , is simply ...staggering though : i pity your clients in that regard .




What makes you think he has blue eyes?

That was just a metaphor , a figure of speech ,you mechanic silly sis .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2013 18:11:34
...or that I don't understand what I do for a living?

As I thought, DonQ is a philosopher, that is, a person whose mission is to infect others with his ignorance - a sort of intellectual Munchausen by Proxy. A miserable calling, doomed forever to tell other people that they "just don't understand", but unlike teenagers, philosophers never grow up or acquire the humility and wisdom that science - or even normal life - confer on others.

I am no philsopher ,dude , and i was just correcting your errors of understanding and judgement , that's all : you do not have to take it like this : we all make errors , we are all relatively ignorant ....
Nobody is perfect .
But, when one pretends to know this or that  about something , one gotta prove that to be true : in your case , you do not seem to know much about what science is , what its limitations are , its role or function ...
Science is not about wisdom either ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/10/2013 18:33:28
Please try to be consistent. On the one hand you say there is no such thing as science, and on the other you tell a professional scientist that he doesn't know what it is, or what it can be used for.

Only a priest, philosopher or a politician would consider such selfcontradiction to be normal or acceptable, but since you claim not to be a philosopher I must conclude that you are either a member of one of the other two despicable professions, or insane.  I will not insult you by suggesting that you are a priest or a politician.

 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2013 19:22:46

Too much side irrelevant talk and silly denials that say absolutely nothing : an obvious insult to the obvious undeniable  facts on the subject:

I did say , on many occasions  here ,that atheist Nagel's proposed alternative to reductionism is also a false conception of nature , that's obviously doomed to fail as well ,didn't i ?.

Besides , it is an obvious and an undeniable fact that reductionism in science is a false conception of nature that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, modern physics  themselves  ...
See what Sheldrake said here above on the subject .
An obvious and undeniable fact that has been proven to be true by many scientists , thinkers , philosophers , by the physical sciences themselves , by Nagel, by Sheldrake ....
That's not just a statement ,honey : to try to prove to you this fact as being true , is like trying to prove to you that the sun rises from the East ...come on, be serious .
Once again, has science proper even proved the "fact " to be true that reality is exclusively biological physical ? come on, don't be an idiot, sorry = absolutely not= never = ever ,simply because nature or reality cannot be a matter of exclusively biological physical processes or physics and chemistry , otherwise they absolutely cannot account for such processes such as life , consciousness, human cognition .....let alone their origins evolution and emergence = exclusive reductionist or even non-reductionist naturalism can certainly not explain consciousness, life , human cognition ...no way .
Science proper itself will therefore reject materialism as untrue and untenable ...no doubt about that .
Quantum physics , for example, have already been challenging materialism as being untrue and untenable since the 1920's ...
I can elaborate some more on this , and can even provide you with some relevant quotes from prominent scientists '. thinkers' work on the subject  ...concerning the obvious undeniable evidence that proves materialism to be false , beyond  any shadow of a doubt :
But , that's so an obvious and an undeniable fact that it would be an utter waste of time to try to discuss it any further , simply because it's so obvious that materialism is false , and is therefore challenged by the mental side of nature , by consciousness, life ...their emergence origins and evolution ..............
If you cannot see all that , if you cannot see obvious things and facts as such , there is no point in going any further with this discussion,for obvious reasons,  i am afraid .
Just try to read that Nagel's book, that Sheldrake's book at least then :
I am not gonna waste my time to try to make you get rid of your denials , that's neither my job to do , nor a relevant to this discussion thing to do  either  , that's your job and responsibility you gotta deal with , not mine .




Don't worry your pretty little head about it, Don. I'll be fine if the Complete Works of Rupert Sheldrake are missing from my science library. But I'm glad you realize the atheist, Nagel, is not really your boy. He might be cranky when it comes to science, but he's almost rational. I would suggest Deepak Chopra but, dang it, he's the wrong religion.

How sweet of you , honey :
You know : by the way :
 I have "The believing brain " book of atheist Michael Schermer  you would most certainly love  , and the audio of that book of his read by his own voice , by himself in person thus :
That's a typical major example of materialism in science at work :
But , i do agree with some of his ideas , insights ...in that book of his   though , while rejecting most , if not all,  of his materialist allegations or materialist belief system he confuses with science proper ,inevitably :
He said, in that book of his, for example, that we are all attracted by some ideas , beliefs in the broader sense , insights , facts ...while rejecting others , via our likes and dilsikes , via our psychological tendencies and pre-dispositions in that regard ...
He's right about that obvious fact , that explains , partly, why you, Cheryl, are attracted by materialism , and i am  certainly and absolutely  not ...
That explains , partly, why you disregard obvious undeniable facts regarding the fact that the materialist conception of nature is false ...
Anyway :
 That said :
Do not worry : i am not the type of person who might idolize certain types of  scientists , thinkers ...no matter how brilliant they might ever be : i am only interested in their innovative creative relatively convincing ideas,i am not obssessed with them as some sort of fetish idols, no way :
I know that certain scientists , thinkers ...might be wrong on  this ,and might   be right on that as well , nobody is perfect indeed :
I am just interested in some of their ideas , lines of evidence , insights ...i do get inspired by , that's all : ideas , lines of evidence , insights ...that just help me ,or rather inspire me on my own search path .
 I am just a restless dynamic truth seeker, i hope i am in fact anyway  : i can hunt down the truth ,no matter  where  it might try to hide or reveal itself , and no matter by whom it would try to do  so   : i would chase the truth even in the very dark terrifying  ugly heart of the devil in person as well haha .
We should all recognize facts as such ,we should all be driven by the noble search of the truth , no matter how painful ,difficult ,destabilizing ,self-destabilizing or shocking they  might turn out to be in the process or as a result  ,  but that's not how things usually go : see what Sheldrake said about the varying characters of scientists here above on the subject  .
Almost nobody is interested in the truth in fact , whatever the latter might be indeed .

Quote
I can't help but  notice a pattern with you. People actually think about what you say and try to respond in some logical way. I recall several interesting responses, for example, to your frequent comments regarding what physics has proved regarding consciousness. And you never address comments like that directly. There's never any counter argument that specifically addresses assertions point by point, or even one you feel worth pursuing. You either totally ignore it, or just restate your original argument that materialism is a false misconception of nature which has hijacked science proper and so on. Or you respond by saying they are "confused"  "don't get it" "irrelevant" "stupid"  or "childish" (and the best!) "twisting your words." I suspect you do this when you are backed into a corner, or are just too lazy to come up with a response - "I cannot be bothered by people who do not accept my brilliance without question!"

No , honey :
It just would take too much time to do what you are asking me to do : it would cost me too much time i cannot afford :
That's 1 of the reasons why i prefer to provide   well informed and relevant sources that  support my allegations , to the people , so, they can conduct their own investigation or research , so to speak, on the matter themselves , that's all .

P.S.: I can give you a safe direct free download link to Sheldrake's very interesting "Science set free ..." ebook , if you want to.
It's an extremely enjoyable charming and interesting book indeed, even though i do not agree with some of Sheldrake's ideas, insights ....
I am very critical in relation to any book i read for that matter , to any ideas , insights ....i am very critical in relation to science and scientists as well ;
I am even very critical in relation to the alleged word of God ...the Qur'an ,so.
I do not idealise or idolize ideas , insights ....let alone people , no matter how bright they might ever be ...simply because scientists , thinkers ... are just human , all too human , as Nietzsche used to say , humans with their own human limitations, flaws , deceptions , self-deceptions , beliefs or world views ...via their limited human capacities or faculties .
The search for the truth , the latter as a  restless endless  dynamic process , can have only 2 absolute certainties in this life at least :
Death is absolutely certain , and the absolute Truth with a big T does exist only after death, i guess  .
So, nobody possesses the truth or has the monoply of the truth , as materialism and other world views, people ....delude self-deceive themselves into believing they do and have .



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2013 19:38:58
Please try to be consistent. On the one hand you say there is no such thing as science, and on the other you tell a professional scientist that he doesn't know what it is, or what it can be used for.

Only a priest, philosopher or a politician would consider such selfcontradiction to be normal or acceptable, but since you claim not to be a philosopher I must conclude that you are either a member of one of the other two despicable professions, or insane.  I will not insult you by suggesting that you are a priest or a politician.

Absurd specualtions of yours : do not allow yourself to be carried away by emotions, hurt pain , ...ego ...
I am , in fact , very skeptical about your allegation that you are a pro scientist : how can that be ? : you might be one , but a very ignorant one regarding the nature of science , its alleged objectivity, its limitations, its role and function ...not to mention that you do confuse science proper with materialism as a false conception of nature , to say just that .
I was just stating what i thought to be facts extracted from your own replies on the subject .
Science is simply  the scientific method used by scientists humans , science is not an entity, let alone an independent entity out there , scientific method used and practiced by scientists humans via their human shortcomings, flaws , via their human limitations ...despite the advances of technology that relatively extend the scope and reach of those human limitations ...despite the fact that the scientific method used by scientists , is highly disciplined methodic , and despite the fact that scientific results are verifiable reproducible, falsifiable ...

I said : science does not exist as such , not in the sense that it is an alleged "totally objective entity " out there : there is no science in that sense at least , just the scientific method as an effective and unparalleled tool to try to explain and understand the universe , a scientific method used by scientists humans ...once again .
Quantum mechanics , for example, had shown that scientific experiments or scientific observations ...are changed by the scientist observer , by just looking at them :
I will give you a relevant quote on the subject , from Sheldrake 's above mentioned book , if you wish so .

I was just responding to your uninformed and wrong allegations , especially to those concerning the "fact " that science "is wholly devoid of assumptions ", as you put it earlier at least ,  ( I referred you to that materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science , to that materialist dominating meta-paradigm in science , to relevant quotes of Sheldrake's book on the subject ...concerning the illusion of objectivity in science , concerning the obvious human character of scientists ...) , to the fact that you stated that intelligibility of the universe is irrelevant to science (How can that be , since the core assumption of science rests on the fact , or rather on the scientific core true assumption that the universe is intelligible ) , ....
Instead of reacting this absurd emotional rhetorical  way , just try to prove me wrong then ...scientifically then, since you do claim to be a pro scientist : just try to disprove the above...scientifically , not via emotions or via silly absurd rhetorics or   via wild speculations  .
Good luck indeed .

Your views concerning the nature of science , its alleged objectivity that's presumably totally devoid of assumptions  ......concerning the limitations , function and role of science are simply staggering , once again, the more when an alleged  self-declared pro scientist such as yourself would utter them = you are making your "case" only worse thus .
Neither of your  "despicable ",as you put it least ,  above mentioned professions are mine .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/10/2013 21:46:52
Any one of these articles has information about a finding or experiment that is vastly more useful, and just plain interesting, than anything Sheldrake has come up with, or in Nagel's curmudgeon-ish book.  Even the article on crickets.

Did You Have a Good Time? We Know Where You'll Store the Memory of It
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131002092301.htm

Thinking Crickets: 'Cognitive' Processes Underlie Memory Recall In Crickets
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090803193645.htm

Not What You Consciously Thought: How We Can Do Math Problems and Read Phrases Nonconsciously http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121114083930.htm

How Brain Activity Changes When Anesthesia Induces Unconsciousness
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121105151338.htm

Aiming To Avoid Damage To Neurocognitive Areas Of The Brain During Cranial Radiation
(Unless your consciousness is immaterial, then it's no problem)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091103112403.htm

How Old Memories Fade Away
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130918180925.htm

Social Reasoning And Brain Development Are Linked In Preschoolers
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715074928.htm

Well-Connected Hemispheres of Einstein's Brain May Have Sparked His Brilliance
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131004104754.htm

Neuroscientists Find a Key to Reducing Forgetting: It's About the Network
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829123444.htm

Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' In The Brain http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105132448.htm

People Control Thoughts Better When They See Their Brain Activity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110408101740.htm

Covert Operations: Your Brain Digitally Remastered for Clarity of Thought
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130921092234.htm

Can't Place That Face?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728151429.htm


Flatworms Remember Their Surroundings, Even After Being Decapitated and Growing a New Head.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flatworms-recall-familiar-environs-even-after-losing-their-heads

Long Memories in Brain Activity Explain Streaks in Individual Behavior
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130212075220.htm
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2013 22:42:47
Any one of these articles has information about a finding or experiment that is vastly more useful, and just plain interesting, than anything Sheldrake has come up with, or in Nagel's curmudgeon-ish book.  Even the article on crickets.

Did You Have a Good Time? We Know Where You'll Store the Memory of It
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131002092301.htm

Thinking Crickets: 'Cognitive' Processes Underlie Memory Recall In Crickets
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090803193645.htm

Not What You Consciously Thought: How We Can Do Math Problems and Read Phrases Nonconsciously http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121114083930.htm

How Brain Activity Changes When Anesthesia Induces Unconsciousness
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121105151338.htm

Aiming To Avoid Damage To Neurocognitive Areas Of The Brain During Cranial Radiation
(Unless your consciousness is immaterial, then it's no problem)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091103112403.htm

How Old Memories Fade Away
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130918180925.htm

Social Reasoning And Brain Development Are Linked In Preschoolers
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715074928.htm

Well-Connected Hemispheres of Einstein's Brain May Have Sparked His Brilliance
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131004104754.htm

Neuroscientists Find a Key to Reducing Forgetting: It's About the Network
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829123444.htm

Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' In The Brain http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105132448.htm

People Control Thoughts Better When They See Their Brain Activity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110408101740.htm

Covert Operations: Your Brain Digitally Remastered for Clarity of Thought
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130921092234.htm

Can't Place That Face?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728151429.htm


Flatworms Remember Their Surroundings, Even After Being Decapitated and Growing a New Head.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flatworms-recall-familiar-environs-even-after-losing-their-heads

Long Memories in Brain Activity Explain Streaks in Individual Behavior
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130212075220.htm

Deja-vu :
Damn : how come i can't  find Obama or his memories inside of my tv ? ,silly me : i did look for them  so hard though   there : i did even cause the malfunction of my tv as a result ,by trying to totally reverse -engineer my tv  , in vain :  the whole world would be at my mercy if i can get access to Obama's memory or secrets , to the US' state secrets ,or to the CIA's stored  memories inside of CNN news channel ,inside of my tv haha

Cheryl : you do owe me a tv : i destroyed mine during that search ,thanks to you.
I sincerly hope (kidding again ) that that simple minded Skyli is not watching right now haha : he would believe in the "obvious truths revealed by these links of yours" so easily without ever using his critical mind , if he happens to have one at least , no offense , just kidding , "revealed truths by these links of yours " as real breakthroughs humanity has been waiting for all along   , i am afraid : Skyli : don't haha = that would mean that everything is just chemistry and physics = God does not exist thus haha ,or maybe is God just physics and chemistry though .

Deja-vu thus :
 We get bombarded  by such materialist misinterpretations of scientific experiments , scientific results , all day and night  long , honey  :
Well, dear pretty charming sis ,or materialist nice magical wich : kidding :
The above is just a logical extension of the materialist misconception of nature , of the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science , and of the materialist meta-paradigm in science, we have been talking about all along : reducing everything to just physics and chemistry : memory , consciousness, life, human cognition, conscience , feelings , emotions   ...cannot be reduced to just physics and chemistry : love neither.


I can make the whole internet full of similar "findigns " ,sweetie : that's the mainstream dominant view or orthodox materialist belief in science  by the way  ,that materialist approach that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , ,under that materialist dominance in science , that's what i have been talking about all along : i see that by just taking a quick look at the first parts of your first link here above = materialism in science at work : pleasant-unpleasant memories stored in some  area of the brain haha = hilarious materialist misinterpretation of scientific experiments that gets sold to the people as scientific findigns or scientific results : that's the core issue of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet ,love .
I will take a look at the rest of your links, but i am afraid , they will just be playing the same  boring false noisy music ,via those tasteless materialist false music notes .
Show me where memory is stored then in those specific areas of the brain : how does that memory looks like = just like physics and chemistry, or neuro-physiological-electrochemical processes "emerging " from those  ritual sexy synchronisations oscillations vibrations strip-tease harmonious dances of neurons or of enesemble of neurons haha  ?
Come on, be serious : how can memory that's not a physical thing or process emerge from just chemistry physics ,or that memory can be equated with physical biological processes ?
Hilarious ...
Thanks though .
Good night , sweet Alice : sweet dreams .
Oh, your dreams might be stored as well in your head somewhere : they are just physics and chemistry : you might as well store them in a tube somewhere ...
What kindda  sane intelligent person can see memory at least , as just physics and chemistry ? Right , only materialists can , ironically incredibly amusignly unbelievably enough .
Bye, love .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2013 16:41:27
When is science proper gonna be delivered from that materialist bullshit : amazing .
Reminds me of that great song of Paul Mc Cartney, i guess :
"...Deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us ..." : let's hope for a swift and quick deliverance from the materialist darkness in science and elsewhere that surrounds us indeed .
Materialism as a primitive false  fanatic backward orhodox secular religion  in science and elsewhere ...

Just try to imagine with me , just try to imagine (Reminds me of that other great song , that of John Lennon : Imagine ), just try to imagine the exact sciences , human sciences : political science , economics , sociology, anthropology , psychology ...the science of history ...+ art and literature ...just try to imagine them all breaking free from that dark backward primitive materialist suffocating secular religion prison without a soul , without any windows , in order to be able to smell the fresh air , under the bright light of the sun :
Just imagine :
That 's 1 of my biggest dreams indeed , much bigger and much wider than that of Martin Luther King indeed ....
Just imagine , imagine that big dream ...coming true : the sky would not even be the ...limit .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/10/2013 18:28:51
When is science proper gonna be delivered from that materialist bullshit : amazing .
...
Just imagine , imagine that big dream ...coming true : the sky would not even be the ...limit .
Dreams and imaginings are all very well, but perhaps you could explain how science will be done when it is free of 'materialist bullshit'?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2013 19:03:15
When is science proper gonna be delivered from that materialist bullshit : amazing .
...
Just imagine , imagine that big dream ...coming true : the sky would not even be the ...limit .
Dreams and imaginings are all very well, but perhaps you could explain how science will be done when it is free of 'materialist bullshit'?

Well, materialism will be history : inevitable = just a matter of time  indeed , materialism that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, especially by quantum physics ...
How come you still do not get it yet , after all these lengthy kilometers of pages on this thread ?
Science will continue using its effective and unparalleled method that's like no other , but will be free from that materialist prison ,science has been confined to .
Science will have thus a non-reductionist meta-paradigm  at least  ...........
Science will then be able to approach the universe or reality as not exclusively physical biological processes ...
Consciousness  in all living organisms and in inanimate matter , the human mind, human cognition, feelings , emotions , love , ......in short : the mental side of nature will not be reduced to just physics and chemistry ....
What part of these statements can't you understand ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 05/10/2013 20:25:44


Deja-vu :
Damn : how come i can't  find Obama or his memories inside of my tv ? ,silly me : i did look for them  so hard though   there : i did even cause the malfunction of my tv as a result ,by trying to totally reverse -engineer my tv  , in vain :  the whole world would be at my mercy if i can get access to Obama's memory or secrets , to the US' state secrets ,or to the CIA's stored  memories inside of CNN news channel ,inside of my tv haha

Cheryl : you do owe me a tv : i destroyed mine during that search ,thanks to you.
I sincerly hope (kidding again ) that that simple minded Skyli is not watching right now haha : he would believe in the "obvious truths revealed by these links of yours" so easily without ever using his critical mind , if he happens to have one at least , no offense , just kidding , "revealed truths by these links of yours " as real breakthroughs humanity has been waiting for all along   , i am afraid : Skyli : don't haha = that would mean that everything is just chemistry and physics = God does not exist thus haha ,or maybe is God just physics and chemistry though .

Deja-vu thus :
 We get bombarded  by such materialist misinterpretations of scientific experiments , scientific results , all day and night  long , honey  :
Well, dear pretty charming sis ,or materialist nice magical wich : kidding :
The above is just a logical extension of the materialist misconception of nature , of the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science , and of the materialist meta-paradigm in science, we have been talking about all along : reducing everything to just physics and chemistry : memory , consciousness, life, human cognition, conscience , feelings , emotions   ...cannot be reduced to just physics and chemistry : love neither.


I can make the whole internet full of similar "findigns " ,sweetie : that's the mainstream dominant view or orthodox materialist belief in science  by the way  ,that materialist approach that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , ,under that materialist dominance in science , that's what i have been talking about all along : i see that by just taking a quick look at the first parts of your first link here above = materialism in science at work : pleasant-unpleasant memories stored in some  area of the brain haha = hilarious materialist misinterpretation of scientific experiments that gets sold to the people as scientific findigns or scientific results : that's the core issue of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet ,love .
I will take a look at the rest of your links, but i am afraid , they will just be playing the same  boring false noisy music ,via those tasteless materialist false music notes .
Show me where memory is stored then in those specific areas of the brain : how does that memory looks like = just like physics and chemistry, or neuro-physiological-electrochemical processes "emerging " from those  ritual sexy synchronisations oscillations vibrations strip-tease harmonious dances of neurons or of enesemble of neurons haha  ?
Come on, be serious : how can memory that's not a physical thing or process emerge from just chemistry physics ,or that memory can be equated with physical biological processes ?
Hilarious ...
Thanks though .
Good night , sweet Alice : sweet dreams .
Oh, your dreams might be stored as well in your head somewhere : they are just physics and chemistry : you might as well store them in a tube somewhere ...
What kindda  sane intelligent person can see memory at least , as just physics and chemistry ? Right , only materialists can , ironically incredibly amusignly unbelievably enough .
Bye, love .



Well, since you bring it up again and again, I am curious about the details of your theory of the brain simply being a receiver of "real" consciousness which is generated non locally from a as yet unidentified transmitter, and I have a few questions which you will mostly ignore because they seem so silly to you.

Are there any tasks that you would delegate to just the brain? Like say, the control of motor functions, moving the arms and legs? Regulation of blood pressure perhaps or releasing hormones? I recall you saying that your brain informs your consciousness of sensory information it is receiving from sense organs but it is your immaterial consciousness that interprets, makes inferences, or decisions about it. Is that correct?

Here is a situation  you might want to mull over:

There are two kinds of impairment that result in patients not being able to see objects in half of their visual field. One is caused by a lesion in the optic nerve. The other is caused by a lesion in a part of the brain called the visual associative cortex, that materialists say processes visual information and produces the visual experience. Although both patients cannot see objects in part of their optical field, the patient with optic nerve damage is conscious of it - he will complain "Hey, doc, I can't see anything on my left side! What's up with that?" The patient with a lesion in the visual associative cortex does not. He doesn't know he cannot see an object in that part of the visual field, and he doesn't experience a blind spot there. The patient's brain no longer has an area responsible for processing what is going on in that area of the visual field, and for that patient, it ceases to exist consciously. The patient does not complain, because the part of the brain that might notice or complain is incapacitated, and no other part takes over.

So what? you say. In your interpretation, in either case, it's just a broken TV set. The real "you" or consciousness is out there in outer space some where. I'm wondering if that real you is aware of the lesion in the associative visual cortex, if it is disrupting his life in any way, if he's frustrated or annoyed by the lack of information in his visual field? It's odd that he can't communicate any of this back to your receiver; it's almost as if from the point of view of your brain or body, he didn't exist!

I also recall you saying that just because certain brain activities are associated with certain thoughts, correlation does not prove causality. So what is the alternative explanation for this? Do you not think it odd, that the brain has so many specific areas that correlate, so many complicated connections between billions of neurons just to reflect or react to work that is really being done by the immaterial, mysterious consciousness?

Although you may see higher level cognitive or creative processes as somehow ephemeral, different from say, vision or hearing,  a lesion in the lateral frontal lobes produces deficits in sequencing. The patient is unable to plan or multitask. Orbital frontal lesions result in a loss of the ability to judge right and wrong. A lesion in the left temporal lobe or Wernickes area destroys a person's ability to comprehend written or spoken language, although he can still, himself, speak normally. So what I'm wondering is, when these types of brain damage occur, can the non-local form of your consciousness still perform these tasks somewhere out in space? Again, it must be quite frustrating for him when his robot like receiver on Earth can't! He's up there multitasking and sequencing properly, making moral judgements, but that silly body on Earth isn't doing what he wants!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2013 20:54:16


Deja-vu :
Damn : how come i can't  find Obama or his memories inside of my tv ? ,silly me : i did look for them  so hard though   there : i did even cause the malfunction of my tv as a result ,by trying to totally reverse -engineer my tv  , in vain :  the whole world would be at my mercy if i can get access to Obama's memory or secrets , to the US' state secrets ,or to the CIA's stored  memories inside of CNN news channel ,inside of my tv haha

Cheryl : you do owe me a tv : i destroyed mine during that search ,thanks to you.
I sincerly hope (kidding again ) that that simple minded Skyli is not watching right now haha : he would believe in the "obvious truths revealed by these links of yours" so easily without ever using his critical mind , if he happens to have one at least , no offense , just kidding , "revealed truths by these links of yours " as real breakthroughs humanity has been waiting for all along   , i am afraid : Skyli : don't haha = that would mean that everything is just chemistry and physics = God does not exist thus haha ,or maybe is God just physics and chemistry though .

Deja-vu thus :
 We get bombarded  by such materialist misinterpretations of scientific experiments , scientific results , all day and night  long , honey  :
Well, dear pretty charming sis ,or materialist nice magical wich : kidding :
The above is just a logical extension of the materialist misconception of nature , of the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in science , and of the materialist meta-paradigm in science, we have been talking about all along : reducing everything to just physics and chemistry : memory , consciousness, life, human cognition, conscience , feelings , emotions   ...cannot be reduced to just physics and chemistry : love neither.


I can make the whole internet full of similar "findigns " ,sweetie : that's the mainstream dominant view or orthodox materialist belief in science  by the way  ,that materialist approach that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , ,under that materialist dominance in science , that's what i have been talking about all along : i see that by just taking a quick look at the first parts of your first link here above = materialism in science at work : pleasant-unpleasant memories stored in some  area of the brain haha = hilarious materialist misinterpretation of scientific experiments that gets sold to the people as scientific findigns or scientific results : that's the core issue of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet ,love .
I will take a look at the rest of your links, but i am afraid , they will just be playing the same  boring false noisy music ,via those tasteless materialist false music notes .
Show me where memory is stored then in those specific areas of the brain : how does that memory looks like = just like physics and chemistry, or neuro-physiological-electrochemical processes "emerging " from those  ritual sexy synchronisations oscillations vibrations strip-tease harmonious dances of neurons or of enesemble of neurons haha  ?
Come on, be serious : how can memory that's not a physical thing or process emerge from just chemistry physics ,or that memory can be equated with physical biological processes ?
Hilarious ...
Thanks though .
Good night , sweet Alice : sweet dreams .
Oh, your dreams might be stored as well in your head somewhere : they are just physics and chemistry : you might as well store them in a tube somewhere ...
What kindda  sane intelligent person can see memory at least , as just physics and chemistry ? Right , only materialists can , ironically incredibly amusignly unbelievably enough .
Bye, love .



Well, since you bring it up again and again, I am curious about the details of your theory of the brain simply being a receiver of "real" consciousness which is generated non locally from a as yet unidentified transmitter, and I have a few questions which you will mostly ignore because they seem so silly to you.

Are there any tasks that you would delegate to just the brain? Like say, the control of motor functions, moving the arms and legs? Regulation of blood pressure perhaps or releasing hormones? I recall you saying that your brain informs your consciousness of sensory information it is receiving from sense organs but it is your immaterial consciousness that interprets, makes inferences, or decisions about it. Is that correct?

Here is a situation  you might want to mull over:

There are two kinds of impairment that result in patients not being able to see objects in half of their visual field. One is caused by a lesion in the optic nerve. The other is caused by a lesion in a part of the brain called the visual associative cortex, that materialists say processes visual information and produces the visual experience. Although both patients cannot see objects in part of their optical field, the patient with optic nerve damage is conscious of it - he will complain "Hey, doc, I can't see anything on my left side! What's up with that?" The patient with a lesion in the visual associative cortex does not. He doesn't know he cannot see an object in that part of the visual field, and he doesn't experience a blind spot there. The patient's brain no longer has an area responsible for processing what is going on in that area of the visual field, and for that patient, it ceases to exist consciously. The patient does not complain, because the part of the brain that might notice or complain is incapacitated, and no other part takes over.

So what? you say. In your interpretation, in either case, it's just a broken TV set. The real "you" or consciousness is out there in outer space some where. I'm wondering if that real you is aware of the lesion in the associative visual cortex, if it is disrupting his life in any way, if he's frustrated or annoyed by the lack of information in his visual field? It's odd that he can't communicate any of this back to your receiver; it's almost as if from the point of view of your brain or body, he didn't exist!



I also recall you saying that just because certain brain activities are associated with certain thoughts, correlation does not prove causality. So what is the alternative explanation for this? Do you not think it odd, that the brain has so many specific areas that correlate, so many complicated connections between billions of neurons just to reflect or react to work that is really being done by the immaterial, mysterious consciousness?

Although you see higher level cognitive or creative processes as somehow ephemeral, different from say, vision or hearing,  a lesion in the lateral frontal lobes produces deficits in sequencing. The patients is unable to plan or multitask. Orbital frontal lesions result in a loss of the ability to judge right and wrong. A lesion in the left temporal lobe or Wernickes area destroys a person's ability to comprehend written or spoken language, although he can still, himself, speak normally. So what I'm wondering is, when these types of brain damage occur, can the non-local form of your consciousness still perform these tasks somewhere out in space? Again, it must be quite frustrating for him when his robot like receiver on Earth can't! He's up there multitasking and sequencing properly, making moral judgements, but that silly body on Earth isn't doing what he wants!

No enough time now , sugar ,sorry :

 I will try to respond to the above another time then .
Thanks for bringing up these legetimate relevant issues  that should be addressed properly indeed , and that do puzzle me also ,obviously  .
I will just say the following though ,very quickly then,  for the time being at least :
The universe is certainly not a matter of just physical biological processes : it would make no sense if it was / is , simply because then it can certainly not account for such processes such as life , consciousness , feelings , emotions , memory ,love ....human cognition ...that cannot rise from physics and chemistry ,or cannot be equated with physics and chemistry , or cannot be physics and chemistry .
It makes no sense to say that memory is stored in the brain, or that the mind , consciousness ...just "emerged " from the evolved physical brain : that's just materialist magic that makes no sense .

That's 1 of the reasons  why   materialism is false .
As of the damaged areas of the human brain that seem to cause the loss of their corresponding parts of consciousness ....I just see that as being the case of the damaged receiver or brain that stops to receive those corresponding "signals " from  those corresponding parts of consciousness ...
Besides, the hard problem of consciousness can be only approached by a potentially non-reductionist approach,obviously  , in the sense that we can study the physical brain , while trying to figure out how it interacts with consciousness as such .....
Later then .

P.S.: No one yet , if ever , including Nagel, Sheldrake and the rest , were /are able to come up with a cristal-clear vision concerning how the potentially non-reductionist approach of consciousness , memory ,cognition, feelings , emotions ...can be done on the reality ground , or what that non-reductionist approach exactly is , how it might work ...
I already said though , on many occasions here , that that potentially non-reductionist naturalism as a possible alternative to reductionist naturalism ,is also a false conception of nature ....
I will try to elaborate on all that , later on thus .
Thanks , love .
Have fun .
Nice weekend .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/10/2013 21:41:12
...perhaps you could explain how science will be done when it is free of 'materialist bullshit'?

Well, materialism will be history : inevitable = just a matter of time  indeed , materialism that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, especially by quantum physics ...
How come you still do not get it yet , after all these lengthy kilometers of pages on this thread ?
Science will continue using its effective and unparalleled method that's like no other , but will be free from that materialist prison...
Science will then be able to approach the universe or reality as not exclusively physical biological processes ...
...the mental side of nature will not be reduced to just physics and chemistry ....
What part of these statements can't you understand ?
I understand what you just said, but it didn't answer the question. Perhaps it was too general for you...

Let's be more specific; science involves observation, making hypotheses, and testing hypotheses; how do you propose that science observes the non-material, or tests a hypothesis about the non-material?

For someone who knows what they're talking about, it should be easy enough to give a realistic example; as that someone said recently, "when one pretends to know this or that  about something , one gotta prove that to be true".
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/10/2013 22:04:03
... As of the damaged areas of the human brain that seem to cause the loss of their corresponding parts of consciousness ....I just see that as being the case of the damaged receiver or brain that stops to receive those corresponding "signals " from  those corresponding parts of consciousness ..
Oh dear. Did you miss the parts where Chery described brain injuries that affect the subject's knowledge and judgement without affecting movement or communication?

If your external consciousness hypothesis was correct, the external consciousness's knowledge & judgement would not be affected, and it would be able to communicate that, as it would still have control of the brain's communication facilities.

How do you account for this?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 06/10/2013 00:32:36




That's 1 of the reasons  why   materialism is false .
As of the damaged areas of the human brain that seem to cause the loss of their corresponding parts of consciousness ....I just see that as being the case of the damaged receiver or brain that stops to receive those corresponding "signals " from  those corresponding parts of consciousness ...
Besides, the hard problem of consciousness can be only approached by a potentially non-reductionist approach,obviously  , in the sense that we can study the physical brain , while trying to figure out how it interacts with consciousness as such .....
Later then .

P.S.: No one yet , if ever , including Nagel, Sheldrake and the rest , were /are able to come up with a cristal-clear vision concerning how the potentially non-reductionist approach of consciousness , memory ,cognition, feelings , emotions ...can be done on the reality ground , or what that non-reductionist approach exactly is , how it might work ...

Yes, that would seem to be a bit of a problem, wouldn't it?

It's also ironic, that by relocating consciousness, and removing consciousness from the physical being whenever its receiver is malfunctioning, you have managed to reduce human beings to biological robots in a way no materialist has ever dared to do. You've out done Dawkins, my boy!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 16:48:27
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Questions for materialists :


Experimenters’ expectations are known to affect the results of research in psychology, parapsychology
and medicine, which is why researchers often use blind methodologies. Do you think that
experimenter effects could play a role in other fields of science too?
Do you think that scientists and science students should write in the passive voice in their reports, or
use the active voice?
Most scientists publish only a small proportion of their results. Do you think that this is likely to
introduce serious biases into the scientific literature?
How should scientists deal with ideologically, politically or commercially motivated skepticism?
SUMMARY
Scientists are often imagined to achieve a superhuman level of objectivity. This belief is sustained by
the ideal of disembodied knowledge, unaffected by ambitions, hopes, fears and other emotions. In the
allegory of the cave, scientists venture forth into the light of objective truth and bring back their
discoveries for the benefit of ordinary people, trapped in a world of opinion, self-interest and illusion.
By writing in the passive voice (“a test tube was taken”) rather than the active voice (“I took a test
tube”) scientists tried to emphasize their objectivity, but many have now abandoned this pretense.
Scientists are, of course, people, and subject to the limitations of personality, politics, peer-group
pressures, fashion and the need for funding. Within medicine, psychology and parapsychology, most
researchers recognize that their expectations can bias their results, which is why they often use blind
or double-blind methodologies. In the so-called hard sciences, most researchers assume that blind
methods are unnecessary. This is no more than an assumption, and needs to be tested experimentally.
In most fields of science, researchers publish only a small proportion of their data, giving plenty of
scope for the selective presentation of results, and scientific journals introduce a further source of bias
through their unwillingness to publish negative findings. Fraud and deceit in science are rarely
detected by the peer-review system and usually come to light as a result of whistle-blowing.
Skepticism is a healthy part of normal science but is often used as a weapon in defense of politically
or ideologically motivated points of view, or to stave off the regulation of toxic chemicals. Productdefense
companies emphasize uncertainty on behalf of big business, influencing policy decisions in
favor of their clients. The separation of facts and values is usually impossible in practice, and many
scientists have to exaggerate the value of their research in order to get it funded. Although the
objectivity of science is a noble ideal, there is more hope of achieving it by recognizing the humanity
of scientists and their limitations than by pretending that science has a unique access to truth.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 16:52:01
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Chapter 12 : Scientific Futures :


The sciences are entering a new phase. The materialist ideology that has ruled them since the
nineteenth century is out of date. All ten of its essential doctrines have been superseded. The
authoritarian structure of the sciences, the illusions of objectivity and the fantasies of omniscience
have all outlived their usefulness.
The sciences will have to change for another reason too: they are now global. Mechanistic science
and the materialist ideology grew up in Europe, and were strongly influenced by the religious disputes
that obsessed Europeans from the seventeenth century onward. But these preoccupations are alien to
cultures and traditions in many other parts of the world.
In 2011, the worldwide expenditure on scientific and technological research and development was
more than $1,000 billion, of which China spent $100 billion.1 Asian countries, especially China and
India, now produce enormous numbers of science and engineering graduates. In 2007, at BSc level
there were 2.5 million science and engineering graduates in India and 1.5 million in China,2 compared
with 515,000 in the United States3 and 100,000 in the UK.4 In addition, many of those studying in the
United States and Europe are from other countries: in 2007, nearly a third of the graduate students in
science and engineering in the United States were foreign, with the majority from India, China and
Korea.5
Yet the sciences as taught in Asia, Africa, the Islamic countries and elsewhere are still packaged in
an ideology shaped by their European past. Materialism gains its persuasive power from the
technological applications of science. But the successes of these applications do not prove that this
ideology is true. Penicillin will go on killing bacteria, jet planes will keep on flying and mobile
telephones will still work if scientists move on to wider views of nature.
No one can foresee how the sciences will evolve, but I believe recognizing that “science” is not one
thing will facilitate their development. “Science” has given way to “the sciences.” By moving beyond
physicalism, the status of physics has changed. By freeing the sciences from the ideology of
materialism, new opportunities for debate and dialogue open up, and so do new possibilities for
research.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:02:04
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Are Memories Stored As Material Traces :

Are Memories Stored as Material Traces?
We take memory for granted, like the air we breathe. Everything we do, see and think is shaped by
habits and memories. My ability to write this book, and yours to read it, presupposes the memory of
words and their meanings. My ability to ride a bicycle depends on unconscious habit memory. I can
recall facts I have learned, like the year of the Battle of Hastings—1066; I can recognize people I first
met years ago; I can remember specific incidents that happened when I was on holiday in Canada last
summer. These are different kinds of memory, but all involve influences from the past that affect me
in the present. Our memories underlie all our experience. And obviously animals have memories too.
How does memory work? Most people take it for granted that memories must somehow be stored in
brains as material traces. In ancient Greece these traces were usually compared to impressions in wax.
In the early twentieth century they were compared to connections between wires in a telephone
exchange, and now they are thought of by analogy with memory-storage systems in computers.
Although the metaphors change, the trace theory is taken for granted by most scientists, and almost
everyone else.
From a materialist point of view, memories must be stored as material traces in brains. Where else
could they be? The neuroscientist Steven Rose expressed the standard assumptions as follows:
Memories are in some way “in” the mind, and therefore, for a biologist, also “in” the brain. But
how? The term memory must include at least two separate processes. It must involve, on the one
hand, that of learning something new about the world around us; and on the other, at some later
date, recalling, or remembering that thing. We infer that what lies between the learning and the
remembering must be some permanent record, a memory trace, within the brain.1
This seems obvious and straightforward. It might seem pointless to question it. Yet the trace theory
of memory is very questionable indeed. It raises appalling logical problems. Attempts to locate
memory traces have been unsuccessful despite more than a century of research, costing many billions
of dollars. For promissory materialists, this failure does not imply that the trace theory of memory
might be wrong; it merely means that we need to spend more time and money searching for the
elusive memory traces.
But memory traces are not the only option. Several philosophers in the ancient world, notably
Plotinus, were skeptical that memories were material impressions, and argued that they were
immaterial rather than material, aspects of the soul rather than the body.2 Likewise, more recent
philosophers, like Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig
Wittgenstein,3 saw memories as direct connections across time, not material structures in brains (see
Chapter 4).
My own suggestion is that memories depend on morphic resonance. All individuals are influenced
by morphic resonance from their own past. Morphic resonance depends on similarity; since organisms
are more similar to themselves in the past than to other members of their species, self-resonance is
highly specific. Individual memory and collective memory both depend on morphic resonance; they
differ from each other in degree, not in kind.
I start with the trace theory of memory, then discuss the resonance hypothesis, and finally ways in
which this hypothesis can be tested.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/10/2013 17:04:25
Quote
I am , in fact , very skeptical about your allegation that you are a pro scientist : how can that be ?
Fortunately you are not my client, patient, bank manager or professional registrar, all of whom seem convinced that I do know what I am talking about (though my students are encouraged to disagree).
 
 
Quote
: you might be one , but a very ignorant one regarding the nature of science , its alleged objectivity,

alleged by whom? Only a fantasist. It's a process, so it can't have human characteristics like objectivity.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:05:14
Logical and Chemical problems :

Logical and chemical problems
Several modern philosophers have pointed out that the trace theory of memory runs into an insoluble
logical problem, quite apart from repeated failures to find memory traces.
In order for a memory trace to be consulted or reactivated, there has to be a retrieval system, and
this system needs to identify the stored memory it is looking for. To do so it must recognize it, which
means the retrieval system must itself have a memory. There is therefore a vicious regress: if the
retrieval system is endowed with a memory store, this in turn requires a retrieval system with
memory, and so on ad infinitum.4
There is a structural problem too. Memories can persist for decades, yet the nervous system is
dynamic, continually changing, and so are the molecules within it. As Francis Crick put it, “Almost all
the molecules in our bodies, with the exception of DNA, the genetic material, turn over in a matter of
days, weeks, or at the most a few months. How then is memory stored in the brain so that its trace is
relatively immune to molecular turnover?” He suggested a complex mechanism whereby molecules
were replaced one at a time so as to preserve the overall state of the memory-storage structures.5 No
such mechanism has been detected.
For decades, the most popular theory has been that memory must depend on changes in connections
between nerve cells, the synapses. Yet attempts to locate memory stores have proved unsuccessful
over and over again.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:07:39
The Fruitless Search For Memory Traces :


The fruitless search for memory traces
In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov studied the way that animals such as dogs could learn to associate a
stimulus, such as hearing a bell, with being fed. After repeated training, merely hearing the bell could
cause the dogs to salivate. Pavlov called this a conditioned reflex. For many scientists at the time, this
research suggested that the animals’ memory depended on reflex arcs, in which the nerve fibers were
like wires and the brain like a telephone exchange. But Pavlov himself was reluctant to claim there
were specific localized traces. He discovered that conditioning could survive massive surgical damage
to the brain.6 Those who knew less about it were less cautious, and in the first few decades of the
twentieth century many biologists assumed that all psychological activity, including the phenomena
of the human mind, could ultimately be reduced to chains of reflexes wired together in the brain.
In a heroic series of experiments lasting more than thirty years, Karl Lashley (1890–1958) tried to
locate specific memory traces, or “engrams,” in the brains of rats, monkeys and chimpanzees. He
trained the animals in a variety of tasks ranging from simple conditioned reflexes to the solution of
difficult problems. After the training, he surgically cut nerve tracts or removed portions of the brain
and measured the effects on the animals’ memory. To his astonishment, he found that the animals
could still remember what they had learned even after large amounts of brain tissue had been
removed.
Lashley first became skeptical of the supposed path of conditioned reflex arcs through the motor
cortex when he found that rats trained to respond in specific ways to light could perform almost as
well as control rats after almost all their motor cortex was cut out. In similar experiments with
monkeys, he removed most of the motor cortex after they had been trained to open boxes with latches.
This operation resulted in a temporary paralysis. After two or three months, when they recovered their
ability to move in a coordinated way, they were exposed to the puzzle boxes again. They opened them
promptly without random exploratory movements.
Lashley then showed that learned habits were retained after the associative areas of the brain were
destroyed. Habits also survived a series of deep incisions into the cerebral cortex that destroyed crossconnections
within it. Moreover, if the cerebral cortex was intact, removal of subcortical structures
such as the cerebellum did not destroy the memory either.
Lashley started as an enthusiastic supporter of the reflex theory of learning, but was forced to
abandon it:
The original programme of research looked toward the tracing of conditioned-reflex arcs
throughout the cortex … The experimental findings have never fitted into such a scheme. Rather,
they have emphasised the unitary character of every habit, the impossibility of stating any
learning as concatenations of reflexes, and the participation of large masses of nervous tissue in
the functions rather than the development of restricted conduction paths.7
Lashley suggested that
the characteristics of the nervous network are such that when it is subject to any pattern of
excitation, it may develop a pattern of activity, reduplicated through an entire functional area by
spread of excitations, such as the surface of a liquid develops an interference pattern of spreading
waves when it is disturbed at several points.
He suggested that recall involved “some sort of resonance among a very large number of neurons.”8
These ideas were carried further by his former student Karl Pribram in his proposal that memories are
stored in a distributed manner throughout the brain analogous to the interference patterns in a
hologram.9
Even in invertebrates specific memory traces have proved elusive. In a series of experiments with
trained octopuses, learned habits survived when various parts of the brain were removed, leading to
the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that “memory is both everywhere and nowhere in particular.”10
Despite these results, new generations of researchers have tried again and again to find localized
memories. In the 1980s, Steven Rose and his colleagues thought they had at last succeeded in finding
traces in the brains of day-old chicks. They trained the chicks to avoid pecking at little colored lights
by making them sick, and the chicks duly avoided these stimuli when they encountered them again.
Rose and his colleagues then studied the changes in the brains of these chicks, and found that nerve
cells in a particular region of the left forebrain underwent more active growth and development when
learning took place than when it did not.11
These findings agreed with results from studies of the growing brains of young rats, kittens and
monkeys, which found that active nerve cells in the brain developed more than inactive nerve cells.
But the greater development of active cells did not prove that they contained specific memory traces.
When the region of active cells was surgically removed from the chicks’ left forebrains a day after
training, the chicks could still remember what they had learned. Therefore the region of the brain
involved in the learning process was not necessary for the retention of memory. Once again, the
hypothetical memory traces proved elusive, and once more those who searched for them were forced
to postulate unidentified “storage systems” somewhere else in the brain.12
In a more recent series of studies, mice were studied as they learned to negotiate a maze. The
formation of memories involved activity in the median temporal lobes of the brain, particularly in the
hippocampus. The ability to form long-term memories depended on a process called long-term
potentiation, which involved protein synthesis in hippocampal nerve cells. But yet again, the
memories proved elusive. Once the memories had been established, the destruction of the
hippocampus on both sides of the brain failed to wipe them out. Thus, the researchers concluded, the
hypothetical memory traces must somehow have moved from one part of the brain to another.
Erik Kandel, who won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on memory in the sea slug, Aplysia,
drew attention to some of these problems in his acceptance speech:
How do different regions of the hippocampus and the median temporal lobe … interact in the
storage of explicit memory? We do not, for example, understand why the initial storage of
memory requires the hippocampus, whereas the hippocampus is not required once a memory has
been stored for weeks or months. What critical information does the hippocampus convey to the
neo-cortex? We also know very little about the recall of explicit (declarative) memory … These
systems properties of the brain will require more than the bottom-up approach of molecular
biology.13
Currently, in the Connectome Project researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
elsewhere are trying to map some of the trillions of connections between nerve cells in mammalian
brains, using thin slices of brain tissue and sophisticated computer analyses of the images. There are
about 100 billion neurons in the human brain. As Sebastian Seung, the leader of the MIT team, pointed
out, “In the cerebral cortex, it’s believed that one neuron is connected to 10,000 others.” This is a
vastly ambitious project, but it seems unlikely to shed light on memory storage. First of all, a person
has to be dead before his brain can be cut up, so changes before and after learning cannot be studied in
this way. Second, there are great differences between the brains of different people; we do not have
identical “wiring.”
The same is true of small animals like mice. A pilot project in the Max Planck Institute in Germany
looked at the wiring diagrams for just fifteen neurons that control two small muscles in mouse ears.
Even though this work was a technical tour de force, it revealed no unique wiring diagram. Even for
the right and left ears of the same animal the patterns of connection were different.14
The most striking deviations from normal brain structure occur in people who suffered from
hydrocephalus when they were babies. In this condition, also called “water on the brain,” much of the
skull is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The British neurologist John Lorber found that some people
with extreme hydrocephalus were surprisingly normal, which led him to ask the provocative question:
“Is the brain really necessary?” He scanned the brains of more than six hundred people with
hydrocephalus, and found that about sixty had more than 95 percent of the cranial cavity filled with
cerebrospinal fluid. Some were seriously retarded, but others were more or less normal, and some had
IQs of well over 100. One young man who had an IQ of 126 and a first-class degree in mathematics, a
student from Sheffield University, had “virtually no brain.” His skull was lined with a thin layer of
brain cells about a millimeter thick, and the rest of the space was filled with fluid.15 Any attempt to
explain his brain in terms of a standard “connectome” would be doomed to failure. His mental activity
and his memory were still able to function more or less normally even though he had a brain only 5
percent of the normal size.
The available evidence shows that memories cannot be explained in terms of localized changes in
synapses. Brain activity involves rhythmic patterns of electrical activity extended over thousands or
millions of nerve cells, rather than simple reflex arcs like wires in a telephone exchange or wiring
diagrams of computers. These patterns of nervous activity set up—and respond to—changes in the
electromagnetic fields in the brain.16 The oscillating fields of entire brains are routinely measured in
hospitals with electroencephalographs (EEG), and within these overall rhythms there are many
subsidiary patterns of electrical activity in different regions of the brain. If these patterns, or systems
properties, are to be remembered, resonance across time seems more likely than chemical storage in
nerve endings.
More than a century of intensive, well-funded research has failed to pin down memory traces in
brains. There may be a very simple reason for this: the hypothetical traces do not exist. However long
or hard researchers look for them, they may never find them. Instead, memories may depend on
morphic resonance from an organism’s own past. The brain may be more like a television set than a
hard-drive recorder. What you see on TV depends on the resonant tuning of the set to invisible fields.
No one can find out today what programs you watched yesterday by analyzing the wires and
transistors in your TV set for traces of yesterday’s programs.
For the same reason, the fact that injury and brain degeneration, as in Alzheimer’s disease, lead to
loss of memory does not prove that memories are stored in the damaged tissue. If I snipped a wire or
removed some components from the sound circuits of your TV set, I could render it speechless, or
aphasic. But this would not mean that all the sounds were stored in the damaged components.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:09:57

Can a Moth Remember What It Learned as a Caterpillar?


Can a moth remember what it learned as a caterpillar?
Insects that undergo complete metamorphosis experience enormous changes in anatomy and lifestyle.
It is hard to believe that a caterpillar chewing a leaf is the same organism as the moth that later
emerges from the pupa. In the pupa, almost all the caterpillar tissues are dissolved before the new
structures of the adult develop. Most of the nervous system is dissolved as well.
In a recent study, Martha Weiss and her colleagues at Georgetown University, Washington, found
that moths could remember what they had learned as caterpillars in spite of all the changes they went
through during metamorphosis. They trained caterpillars of the Carolina Sphinx moth, Manduca sexta,
to avoid the odor of ethyl acetate by associating exposure to this odor with a mild electric shock. After
two larval molts and metamorphosis within the pupae, the adult moths were averse to ethyl acetate,
despite that radical transformation of their nervous system. Weiss and her colleagues carried out
careful controls that showed this was a real transfer of learning, not just a carryover of odors absorbed
by the tested caterpillars.17
This ability of adult moths to remember their experience as caterpillars may well be of evolutionary
significance. If the plants that moths have experienced as caterpillars influence the behavior of adults,
the female moths will tend to avoid laying eggs on harmful plants and favor nutritious ones, even if
members of the species have never encountered these plants before. New patterns of preference for
particular host plants could be established in a single generation, and would persist in their offspring;
a species could evolve new feeding habits very rapidly.
The carryover of learning from caterpillar to moth after the dissolution of most of the nervous
system would be very puzzling indeed if all memories were stored as material traces, but there is
already evidence from higher animals and humans that memories may not be stored in traces and can
survive substantial damage to brains.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:12:24
Brain Damage and Loss of Memory



Brain damage and loss of memory
Brain damage can result in two kinds of memory loss: retrograde (backward) amnesia, forgetting what
happened before the damage, and anterograde (forward) amnesia, losing the ability to remember what
happens after the damage.
The best-known examples of retrograde amnesia occur after concussion. As a result of a sudden
blow on the head a person loses consciousness and becomes paralyzed for a few seconds or for many
days, depending on the severity of the impact. As she recovers and regains the ability to speak, she
may seem normal in most respects, but is unable to recall what happened before the accident.
Typically, as recovery proceeds, the first of the forgotten events to be recalled are those longest ago;
the memory of more recent events returns progressively.
In such cases, amnesia cannot be due to the destruction of memory traces, for the lost memories
return. Karl Lashley reached a similar conclusion years ago:
I believe that the evidence strongly favours the view that amnesia from brain injury rarely, if
ever, is due to the destruction of specific memory traces. Rather, the amnesias represent a
lowered level of vigilance, a greater difficulty in activating the organized pattern of traces, or a
disturbance of some broader system of organized functions.18
Although many memories return, the events immediately preceding a blow on the head may never be
recovered: there may be a permanent blank period. For example, a motorist may remember
approaching the crossroads where an accident occurred, but nothing more. A similar “momentary
retrograde amnesia” also occurs as a result of electroconvulsive therapy, administered to some
psychiatric patients by passing a burst of electric current through their heads. They usually cannot
remember what happened immediately before the administration of the shock.19
Events and information in short-term memory are forgotten because a loss of consciousness
prevents them being connected up into patterns of relationship that can be remembered. The failure to
make such connections, and hence to turn short-term memories into long-term memories, often
persists for some time after a concussed patient has regained consciousness, and is sometimes
described as “memorizing defect.” People in this condition rapidly forget events almost as soon as
they occur.
Everyone agrees that the formation of memories is an active process. Either the inability to
construct them prevents new memory traces being formed; or this inability prevents the formation of
new morphic fields, resonant patterns of activity, and if these patterns are not formed in the first
place, they cannot be recalled by morphic resonance.
Some kinds of brain damage have very specific effects on people’s abilities to recognize and
recall,20 and others cause specific disorders, such as aphasias (disorders of language use) resulting
from lesions in various parts of the cortex in the left hemisphere. These kinds of damage disturb the
organized patterns of activity in the brain,21 and affect the brain’s ability to tune in to skills and
memories by morphic resonance.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:14:33
Holograms and the Implicate Order


Holograms and the implicate order:
In a famous series of investigations carried out during brain surgery on conscious patients, Wilder
Penfield and his colleagues tested the effects of mild electrical stimulation of various regions of the
cerebral cortex. As the electrode touched parts of the motor cortex, limbs moved. Electrically
stimulating the auditory or visual cortex evoked auditory or visual hallucinations like buzzing noises
or flashes of light. Stimulation of the secondary visual cortex gave hallucinations of flowers, for
example, or animals, or familiar people. When some regions of the temporal cortex were stimulated,
some patients recalled dream-like memories, for example of a concert or a telephone conversation.22
Penfield initially assumed that the electrical evocation of memories meant that they were stored in
the stimulated tissue, which he named the “memory cortex.” On further consideration, he changed his
mind: “This was a mistake … The record is not in the cortex.”23 Like Lashley and Pribram, he gave up
the idea of localized memory traces in favor of the theory that they were widely distributed in other
parts of the brain.
The most popular analogy for distributed memory storage is holography, a form of lens-less
photography in which interference patterns are stored as holograms, from which the original image
can be reconstructed in three dimensions. If part of the hologram is destroyed, the whole image can
still be reconstructed from the remaining parts, although in lower definition. The whole is present in
each part. This may sound mysterious, but the basic principle is simple and familiar. As you look
around you now, your eyes are sampling light from all the parts of the scene in front of you. The light
absorbed by your eyes is only a small part of the available light, and yet you can see the whole scene.
If you move a few feet, you can still see everything, the whole scene is present there too, although you
are now sampling the light waves in a different place. In a similar way, the whole is enfolded into each
part of a hologram. This is not true of an ordinary photograph: if you tear off half the photo, you have
lost half the image. If you tear off half a hologram, the whole image can still be re-created.
But what if the holographic wave patterns are not stored in the brain at all? Pribram later came to
this conclusion, and thought of the brain as a “waveform analyzer” rather than a storage system,
comparing it to a radio receiver that picked up waveforms from the “implicate order,” rendering them
explicate.24 This aspect of his thinking was influenced by the quantum physicist David Bohm, who
suggested that the entire universe is holographic, in the sense that wholeness is enfolded into every
part.25
According to Bohm, the observable or manifest world is the explicate or unfolded order, which
emerges from the implicate or enfolded order.26 Bohm thought that the implicate order contains a
kind of memory. What happens in one place is “introjected” or “injected” into the implicate order,
which is potentially present everywhere; thereafter when the implicate order unfolds into the explicate
order, this memory affects what happens, giving the process very similar properties to morphic
resonance. In Bohm’s words, each moment will “contain a projection of the re-injection of the
previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past
forms.”27
Maybe morphic resonance will one day be included in an enlarged version of quantum theory, as
Bohm suggested. No one yet knows. The question “How can morphic resonance be explained?” is
open. In the context of a debate about the reality of memory traces, does morphic resonance—or
memory in the implicate order—fit the facts better than the trace theory?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:16:18
Resonance Across Time:


Resonance across time:
The trace theory says that memories are stored materially in brains, for example as chemicals in
synapses. The alternative is the resonance theory: memories are transferred by resonance from similar
patterns of activity in the past. We tune in to ourselves in the past; we do not carry our memories
around inside our heads.
The resonance of memory is part of a much wider hypothesis. The hypothesis of morphic resonance
proposes a resonance across space and time of patterns of vibratory activity in all self-organizing
systems.28 Morphic resonance underlies habits of crystallization and protein folding (see Chapter 3).
It also underlies the inheritance of morphogenetic fields and of patterns of instinctive behavior (see
Chapter 6). It plays an essential role in the transfer of learning, as discussed below. Morphic
resonance provides a new way of looking at memories. There are at least five kinds of memory:
habituation, sensitization, behavioral memory, recognition and recalling.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:19:05
Habituation and Sensitization:



Habituation and sensitization:
Habituation means getting used to things. If you hear a new sound, or smell a new smell, you may pay
attention to it to start with, but if it makes no difference, you soon cease to notice it. You don’t notice
the pressure of your clothes on your body most of the time, or the pressure of your bottom on the seat
on which you are sitting, or the sounds of a clock ticking, or the many other background noises around
you.
Habituation is one of the most fundamental kinds of memory and underlies all our responses to our
environment. Generally speaking, we do not notice what stays the same; we notice changes or
differences. All our senses work on this principle. If you are gazing over a landscape, anything that
moves immediately catches your eye. If there is a change in the background noise, you notice it. Our
entire culture works on the same principle, which is why gossip and newspapers rarely concern
themselves with things that stay the same. They are about changes or differences.
Other animals likewise become accustomed to their environments. They generally react to
something new because they are not used to it, often showing alarm or avoidance. This kind of
response even occurs in single-celled animals like Stentor raesilii, which lives in marshy pools. Each
Stentor is a trumpet-shaped cell covered with rows of fine, beating hairs called cilia. The activity of
the cilia sets up currents around the cell, carrying suspended particles to the mouth, which is at the
bottom of a tiny vortex (Figure 7.1). These cells are attached at their base by a “foot,” and the lower
part of the cell is surrounded by a mucus-like tube. If the surface to which it is attached is slightly
jolted, Stentor rapidly contracts into its tube. If nothing happens, after about half a minute it extends
again and the cilia resume their activity. If the same stimulus is repeated, it does not contract but
continues its normal activities. This is not a result of fatigue because the cell responds to a new
stimulus, such as being touched, by contracting again.29
FIGURE 7.1A: The single-celled organism Stentor raesilii, showing the currents of water around it
caused by the beating of its cilia. In response to an unfamiliar stimulus it rapidly contracts into its
tube (B). (After Jennings, 1906)
The cell membranes of Stentor have an electrical charge across them, just like nerve cells. When they
are stimulated, an action potential sweeps over the surface of the cell, very similar to a nerve impulse,
and this leads to the cell contracting.30 As it becomes habituated, the receptors on the cell’s membrane
become less sensitive to mechanical stimulation, and the action potential is not triggered.31 Since
Stentor is a single cell, its memory cannot be explained in terms of changes in nerve endings, or
synapses, because it has none.
Habituation implies a kind of memory that enables harmless and irrelevant stimuli to be recognized
when they recur. Morphic resonance suggests a straightforward explanation. The organism is in
resonance with its own past patterns of activity, including its return to normal following its
withdrawal response to a harmless stimulus. When the stimulus is repeated, the organism resonates
with its previous pattern of response, including the return to normal activity. It returns to normal
activity sooner, and responds less and less, until the harmless stimuli are ignored. It habituates
through self-resonance. A new stimulus stands out precisely because it is new and unfamiliar.
Habituation occurs in all animals, large and small, with and without nervous systems. The effects of
habituation have been studied in detail in the giant marine slug Aplysia, which grows more than a foot
long. Its nervous system is relatively simple, and is similar in different individuals. Normally the
slug’s gill is extended, but if the slug is touched, the gill is withdrawn. This reflex soon ceases if
harmless stimuli are repeated; the slugs habituate, just like Stentor. Eric Kandel and his group showed
that only four motor nerve cells are responsible for the gill withdrawal response. As habituation
occurs, the sensory nerve cells cease to excite the motor cells because they release fewer and fewer
packets of chemical transmitter at the synapses with the motor cells. But the fact that the synapses
function differently as a result of habituation does not prove that the memory is stored chemically in
the synapses. The entire system may habituate as a result of self-resonance, as in Stentor. Selfresonance
may underlie habituation in animals at all levels of complexity, including ourselves.
Sensitization is the opposite of habituation: animals become more responsive to stimuli that have a
harmful effect. Again, even single-celled animals like Stentor exhibit this kind of behavior. If a
stream of noxious particles is directed at Stentor, it contracts into its tube. The next time it is exposed
to the same particles it contracts more rapidly, and after several exposures, it goes on contracting
inside its tube until its foot is detached; it swims away until it finds a more peaceful place to settle
down, where it builds a new tube and resumes its normal life. Aplysia shows a similar kind of
sensitization, and Kandel and his group have described several changes that occur in the nerve cells as
this happens. Whereas habituation results in less neurotransmitter being released by sensory neurons
in their synapses with motor neurons, sensitization results in more being released.32
Again, there is no need to suppose that the memory that underlies sensitization is stored in the form
of chemical changes inside the cells. Like habituation, sensitization fits well with a self-resonance
model. When a stimulus that proved harmful in the past occurs, the organism resonates with itself,
responding to the same stimulus, resulting in a greater response. In addition, sensitization can reach a
threshold where the organism does something different. Stentor swims away.33 Aplysia releases toxic
ink containing hydrogen peroxide.34
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:20:30
Resonant Learning:


Resonant learning:
Many animals learn patterns of behavior from other members of their group through imitation. For
example, some species of bird, like blackbirds, learn parts of songs by listening to the songs of nearby
adults. This is a kind of cultural inheritance.
Cultural inheritance reaches its highest development in humanity where all human beings learn a
great variety of patterns of behavior, including the use of language, as well as many physical and
mental skills, like doing arithmetic, playing the flute or knitting. From the point of view of morphic
resonance, the transfer of these skills is a kind of resonance process.
In the 1980s, neuroscientists discovered that when animals watched other animals carrying out a
particular action, changes in the motor part of their brains mirrored those in the brains of the animals
they were watching. These responses are often described in terms of “mirror neurons”: the brain
activity mirrors that of the animal being watched, and involves the same sorts of changes that take
place in carrying out the action itself. But the term mirror neuron is misleading if it suggests that
special kinds of nerves are required for this activity. Instead, it is better thought of as a kind of
resonance. In fact, Vittorio Gallese, one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, refers to the imitation of
movements or actions by another individual as “resonance behavior.”35
Resonance behavior is a new phrase, but the phenomenon itself is not a new discovery. The entire
pornography industry depends on it. Watching other people engaged in sexual activity stimulates
erotic arousal by a kind of resonance.
Some neuroscientists have extended the idea of mirror systems to what they call a “motor resonance
theory of mind reading,” whereby the nervous system responds “to execution and observation of goaloriented
actions.”36 This resonance is not confined to the brain but to the entire pattern of movements
of the body as well, and no doubt plays a major part in the learning of skills, such as riding a bicycle,
and in other forms of “learning by doing.”
Through repetition, behavioral patterns and skills improve, and become increasingly habitual. Both
the acquisition of new patterns of behavior and remembering them fit well with a resonance model.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:21:40
Recognizing:


Recognizing:
Recognition involves the awareness that a present experience is also remembered: we know that we
were in this place before, or met this person somewhere, or came across this fact or idea. But we may
not be able to recall where or when, or recall the person’s or the place’s name. Recognition and recall
are different kinds of memory: recognition depends on a similarity between present experience and
previous experience. Recall involves an active reconstruction of the past on the basis of remembered
meanings or connections.
Recognizing is easier than recalling. For example, it is usually easier to recognize people than
remember their names. Most of us have remarkable powers of recognition that we usually take for
granted. Many laboratory experiments have demonstrated just how powerful this ability can be. For
example, in one study, subjects were asked to memorize a meaningless shape. When they were asked
to recall it by drawing it, their ability to do so declined rapidly within minutes. By contrast, most
people could pick out the test shape from a range of similar shapes weeks later.37
Recognition, like habituation, depends on morphic resonance with previous similar patterns of
activity. The pattern of vibratory activity within your sensory organs and nervous system when you
see a person you know is similar to the pattern when you saw the same person before. The sensory
stimuli are similar and have similar effects on the sense organs and the nervous system. The greater
the similarity, the stronger the resonance.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:22:52
Recalling:



Recalling:
Conscious recall is an active process. The ability to recall a particular experience depends on the ways
we made connections in the first place. To the extent that we use language to categorize and connect
the elements of experience, we can use language to help reconstruct these past patterns. But we cannot
recall connections that were not made to start with.
Our short-term memory for words and phrases enables us to remember them long enough to grasp
their connections and understand their meanings. We usually remember meanings—patterns of
connection—rather than the actual words. It is relatively easy to summarize the gist of a recent
conversation but, for most of us, impossible to reproduce it verbatim. The same is true of written
language: you may recall some of the facts and ideas in the preceding chapters of this book, but you
will probably recall very few passages word for word.
Short-term memories provide the opportunities for elements of our near-present experience to be
connected with each other, as well as with past experience. What is not connected is forgotten. Shortterm
memory is often compared to a computer’s RAM (Random Access Memory), and has a very
limited capacity, typically 7±2 items. In the 1940s, the neuroscientist Donald Hebb pointed out that
such short-term memories, lasting less than a minute, were unlikely to be stored chemically and
suggested that they might depend on reverberating circuits of electrical activity—again implying a
process of resonance.
In the case of spatial recall—for instance, in remembering the layout of a particular house—the
connections between different spaces are related to movements of the body; for example, along a
corridor, climbing stairs and entering a room.
The principles of memorizing and recalling have long been understood; the basic principles of
mnemonic systems were well known in classical times and were taught to students of rhetoric,
providing techniques for establishing connections that enable items to be recalled more easily.38 Some
methods depend on verbal connections and involve coding the information in rhymes, phrases or
sentences. For instance, “Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain” is a well-known mnemonic for the
colors of the rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet). Other systems are spatial
and rely on visual imagery. For instance, in the “method of loci” one first memorizes a sequence of
locations; for example, the various rooms and cupboards of one’s own house. Each item to be recalled
is then visualized in one of these locations, and remembered by imagining walking from one place to
the other and finding the object there. Modern mnemonic systems, such as systems for improving your
memory power advertized in popular magazines, are the heirs of this long and rich tradition.39
Memorizing spatial patterns in many animals depends on the activity of the hippocampus, as
discussed above, and the activity of the brain in this and other regions seems to be necessary for
connecting together the items to be recalled. Between being laid down and recalled, the memories are
usually supposed to be encoded in elusive long-term memory traces. The resonance hypothesis fits the
facts better. The pattern of connections established when the memories are formed is associated with
rhythmic patterns of brain activity. The memories are recalled through similar patterns of activity
established by morphic resonance. They are not stored as traces in the brain.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:24:50
Experimental Tests :



Experimental tests:
If memories are stored in individual animals’ brains, then anything an animal learns is confined to its
own brain. When it dies the memory is extinguished. But if memory is a resonant phenomenon
through which organisms specifically resonate with themselves in the past, individual memory and
collective memory are different aspects of the same phenomenon; they differ in degree, not in kind.
This hypothesis is testable. If rats learn a new trick in one place, then rats all over the world should
be able to learn the same trick quicker. The more rats that learn it, the easier it should become
everywhere else. There is already evidence from one of the longest series of experiments in the history
of psychology that rats do indeed seem to learn quicker what other rats have already learned. The
more that learned to escape from a water maze, the easier it became for others to do so. These
experiments, conducted first at Harvard, then at Edinburgh and Melbourne universities, showed that
the Scottish and Australian rats took up more or less where the Harvard rats had left off, and their
descendants learned even faster. Some got it right first time with no need for learning at all. In the
experiment at Melbourne University, a line of control rats, whose parents had never been trained,
showed the same pattern of improvement as rats descended from trained parents, showing that this
effect was not passed through the genes, or through epigenetic modifications of genes. All similar rats
learned quicker, just as the hypothesis of morphic resonance would predict.40
Likewise, humans should be able to learn more easily what others have already learned. New skills
like snowboarding and playing computer games should become easier to learn, on average. Of course
there will always be faster and slower learners, but the general tendency should be toward quicker
learning. Much anecdotal evidence suggests that this is so. But for hard, quantitative evidence, the
best place to look is in standardized tests that have remained more or less the same over decades.
Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are a good example. By morphic resonance, the questions should
become easier to answer because so many people have answered them before. The scores in the tests
should rise not because people are becoming more intelligent but because the tests are becoming
easier to do. Just such an effect has in fact occurred and is known as the Flynn effect after the
psychologist James Flynn, who has done so much to document this phenomenon.41 Average IQ test
scores have been rising for decades by 30 percent or more. Data from the United States are in Figure
7.2.
FIGURE 7.2. THE FLYNN EFFECT: changes in average IQ scores in the United States, relative to 1989
values.42
There has been a long debate among psychologists about possible reasons for the Flynn effect.
Attempted explanations in terms of nutrition, urbanization, exposure to TV and practice with
examinations seem to account for only a small part of this effect. At first Flynn confessed himself
baffled, and has tried out a number of ever more complex explanations. His most recent attempt
ascribes this effect to a change in the general culture:
The best short-hand description I can offer is this. During the twentieth century, people invested
their intelligence in the solution of new cognitive problems. Formal education played a
proximate causal role but a full appreciation of causes involves grasping the total impact of the
industrial revolution.43
The trouble is that this hypothesis is vague, obscure and untestable. Morphic resonance provides a
simpler explanation.
Scientists in universities in Europe and America have already carried out a series of tests
specifically designed to test for morphic resonance in human learning, particularly in connection with
written languages. Most have given positive, statistically significant results.44 This is inevitably a
controversial area of research but, unlike Flynn’s hypothesis, morphic resonance is relatively easy to
test with animals and people.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:27:01
What Difference  Does It Make ? :




What difference does it make?:
I find it makes a big difference to think of tuning in to my memories, instead of retrieving them from
stores inside my brain by obscure molecular mechanisms. Resonance feels more plausible and fits
better with experience. It is also more compatible with the findings of brain research: memory traces
are nowhere to be found.
In research there would be a shift of focus from the molecular details of nerve cells to the transfer
of memory by resonance. This shift would also open up the question of collective memory, which the
psychologist C. G. Jung thought of in terms of the collective unconscious.
If learning involves a process of resonance not only with the teacher who is transmitting the skill,
but all those who have learned it before, educational methods could be improved by deliberately
enhancing the process of resonance, leading to a faster and more effective transfer of skills.
The resonance theory of memory also opens up a religious question. All religions take it for granted
that some aspect of a person’s memory survives that person’s bodily death. In Hindu and Buddhist
theories of reincarnation or rebirth, memories, habits or tendencies are carried over from one life to
another. This transfer of memory is part of the action of karma, a kind of causation across time;
actions bring about effects in the future, even in later lives. In Christianity there are several different
theories of survival, but all imply a survival of memory. According to the Roman Catholic doctrine of
Purgatory, after death believers enter an ongoing process of development, comparable to dreaming.
This process would make no sense unless the person’s memories played a part in the process. Some
Protestants believe that after death everyone goes to sleep, only to be resurrected just before the Last
Judgment. But this theory too requires a survival of memory because the Last Judgment would be
meaningless if the person being judged had forgotten who he was and what he had done.
By contrast, the materialist theory is simple. Memories are in the brain; the brain decays at death;
therefore all memories are wiped out forever. For an atheist, what could be a better proof of the folly
of religious belief? All religious theories of survival are impossible because they all rely on the
survival of personal memories, which are wiped out when the brain decays. The materialist theory
leaves the question of the survival of bodily death closed. By contrast, the resonance theory leaves the
question open. Memories themselves do not decay at death, but can continue to act by resonance, as
long as there is a vibratory system that they can resonate with. They contribute to the collective
memory of the species. But whether or not there is an immaterial part of the self that can still access
these memories in the absence of a brain is another question.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 17:30:41
Quote
I am , in fact , very skeptical about your allegation that you are a pro scientist : how can that be ?
Fortunately you are not my client, patient, bank manager or professional registrar, all of whom seem convinced that I do know what I am talking about (though my students are encouraged to disagree).
 
 
Quote
: you might be one , but a very ignorant one regarding the nature of science , its alleged objectivity,

alleged by whom? Only a fantasist. It's a process, so it can't have human characteristics like objectivity.

If you are a scientist , i am Elvis :

Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Chapter 12 : Scientific Futures :


The sciences are entering a new phase. The materialist ideology that has ruled them since the
nineteenth century is out of date. All ten of its essential doctrines have been superseded. The
authoritarian structure of the sciences, the illusions of objectivity and the fantasies of omniscience
have all outlived their usefulness.
The sciences will have to change for another reason too: they are now global. Mechanistic science
and the materialist ideology grew up in Europe, and were strongly influenced by the religious disputes
that obsessed Europeans from the seventeenth century onward. But these preoccupations are alien to
cultures and traditions in many other parts of the world.
In 2011, the worldwide expenditure on scientific and technological research and development was
more than $1,000 billion, of which China spent $100 billion.1 Asian countries, especially China and
India, now produce enormous numbers of science and engineering graduates. In 2007, at BSc level
there were 2.5 million science and engineering graduates in India and 1.5 million in China,2 compared
with 515,000 in the United States3 and 100,000 in the UK.4 In addition, many of those studying in the
United States and Europe are from other countries: in 2007, nearly a third of the graduate students in
science and engineering in the United States were foreign, with the majority from India, China and
Korea.5
Yet the sciences as taught in Asia, Africa, the Islamic countries and elsewhere are still packaged in
an ideology shaped by their European past. Materialism gains its persuasive power from the
technological applications of science. But the successes of these applications do not prove that this
ideology is true. Penicillin will go on killing bacteria, jet planes will keep on flying and mobile
telephones will still work if scientists move on to wider views of nature.
No one can foresee how the sciences will evolve, but I believe recognizing that “science” is not one
thing will facilitate their development. “Science” has given way to “the sciences.” By moving beyond
physicalism, the status of physics has changed. By freeing the sciences from the ideology of
materialism, new opportunities for debate and dialogue open up, and so do new possibilities for
research.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 18:15:09




That's 1 of the reasons  why   materialism is false .
As of the damaged areas of the human brain that seem to cause the loss of their corresponding parts of consciousness ....I just see that as being the case of the damaged receiver or brain that stops to receive those corresponding "signals " from  those corresponding parts of consciousness ...
Besides, the hard problem of consciousness can be only approached by a potentially non-reductionist approach,obviously  , in the sense that we can study the physical brain , while trying to figure out how it interacts with consciousness as such .....
Later then .

P.S.: No one yet , if ever , including Nagel, Sheldrake and the rest , were /are able to come up with a cristal-clear vision concerning how the potentially non-reductionist approach of consciousness , memory ,cognition, feelings , emotions ...can be done on the reality ground , or what that non-reductionist approach exactly is , how it might work ...

Yes, that would seem to be a bit of a problem, wouldn't it?

It's also ironic, that by relocating consciousness, and removing consciousness from the physical being whenever its receiver is malfunctioning, you have managed to reduce human beings to biological robots in a way no materialist has ever dared to do. You've out done Dawkins, my boy!

Don't insult me , dear , by comparing me to ...Dawkins, please ...God ...
You know :
I was terrified once by experiencing the following :
After an agitated  night sleep , i was about to wake up , when i realised i could not move any part of my body : i panicked , i was terrified for a moment , and then i persuaded myself that this "paralysis " was just temporary and that i would overcome  it eventually  by just relaxing .
I calmed down while praying  ,full of hope and expectation,  and waited to see what happens next.
I felt like being imprisoned within my motionless body i could not control or move : i felt that  the powerless  me is inside of that motionless body cage prison of mine : i cannot even describe what i really and exactly felt and experienced during those terrifying short moments .
I was lucky enough to regain control of my body again  afterwards  .
A relative of mine was , once, declared clinically dead ,but , when he was about to be put to rest in his grave , he started suddenly ,luckily enough for him, to scream and move hysterically : then, he was delivered from that terrible predicament of his ...
There are many cases like that of people getting buried alive , while they are totally conscious , but cannot move any of their body parts ...They seemed  dead , but they were actually not .
There are also many cases of people who were struck by strokes , and eventually did recover ,partly or fully , from their paralysis , and they described their aweful experiences afterwards : they struggled with so much pain and frustrations to move their paralyzed bodies , in vain, but , after many attempts ,exercises , faith and hope ,determination, ...they succeeded in recovering , partly or fully thus,despite the fact that their doctors told them they would never recover from their paralysis  : you can read all about that and much more in this interesting book :
"You are not your Brain,The 4 -step solution for changing bad habits , ending unhealthy thinking ,and taking control of your life  " by Jeffrey M.Schwarts Author of  the bestseller  " Brain Lock " , and Rebecca Gladding .
I think that the human brain as a receiver is also responsible for unconscious reflexive instinctive survival motor and other functions .....but, cobsciousness is the real boss, i guess, relatively speaking : The mind is way more primordial and fundamental than matter or the physical brain can ever be :the physical brain might be just an executive tool for consciousness ...
I dunno: see those scientific studies regarding the placebo effect , even in surgery ...i provided you with a link for earlier , to mention just that , and there are many cases that proved the healing power of the mind to be true in relation to the body as well ...
You are asking me to tell you how the immaterial consciousness or transmitter , so to speak, can interact with the physical brain .....how consciousness in that sense can be studied scientifically ....I say : beat me, i do not know yet : I just think that when science proper will be delivered from that materialist primitive outdated  backward orthodox secular religion  prison it has been confined to for so long now , then and only then, science will  be able to offer some new ways of understanding consciousness and the rest , relatively speaking .
Besides, we cannot , obviously , know all what there is to know out there , simply because of our limited human faculties and capacities , despite the fact that science can extend the scope and reach of the latter ...
I am , in fact , pretty skeptical about the fact whether science can ever be able for that matter or not to explain anything regarding consciousness ...i dunno : even the so-called non-reductionist naturalism as a possible alternative to reductionist naturalism can, obviously , not account for consciousness, life , human cognition ... from within nature thus .
In other words :
I do not see how nature could ever have been able , so to speak, to generate mind , life , or consciousness ...that lunatic atheist Nagel does think otherwise though on the subject ,of course = makes no sense that nature can  ever able to accomplish such extraordinary performance , let alone how nature can ever do just that = makes no sense  ...
Read the above then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 18:40:55
... As of the damaged areas of the human brain that seem to cause the loss of their corresponding parts of consciousness ....I just see that as being the case of the damaged receiver or brain that stops to receive those corresponding "signals " from  those corresponding parts of consciousness ..
Oh dear. Did you miss the parts where Chery described brain injuries that affect the subject's knowledge and judgement without affecting movement or communication?

If your external consciousness hypothesis was correct, the external consciousness's knowledge & judgement would not be affected, and it would be able to communicate that, as it would still have control of the brain's communication facilities.

How do you account for this?

(I see consciousness or the soul as permeating the body from within and without , within every cell, atom , organ ...of the body ,and without ,i dunno )

Well, those brain injuries that affected knowledge and judgement of that patient ,without affecting movement and communication,may have caused those corresponding parts of consciousness to somehow 'disconnect " from their corresponding damaged brain areas ,  that's why they could not get through via those damaged areas of the brain, i dunno : i can only speculate about this .
I never pretended to know how consciousness interacts with the brain and vice versa ...otherwise , i should have deserved more than beyond a nobel prize for that , don't you think ?


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 19:13:15
...perhaps you could explain how science will be done when it is free of 'materialist bullshit'?

Well, materialism will be history : inevitable = just a matter of time  indeed , materialism that has been superseded even by the physical sciences, especially by quantum physics ...
How come you still do not get it yet , after all these lengthy kilometers of pages on this thread ?
Science will continue using its effective and unparalleled method that's like no other , but will be free from that materialist prison...
Science will then be able to approach the universe or reality as not exclusively physical biological processes ...
...the mental side of nature will not be reduced to just physics and chemistry ....
What part of these statements can't you understand ?
I understand what you just said, but it didn't answer the question. Perhaps it was too general for you...

Let's be more specific; science involves observation, making hypotheses, and testing hypotheses; how do you propose that science observes the non-material, or tests a hypothesis about the non-material?

One can apply some sort of phenomenological approaches in that regard ,or indeed just try to study the effects of the immaterial consciousness  or mind  in relation to the physical brain : one should also not a-priori disregard those proved to be true mysterious healing powers of the mind in relation to the body or brain : the placebo effect ...
One should also not a -priori disregrad telepathy , and other psychic phenomena ..just because materialism says so , materialism as a false conception of nature in science thus, science should be delivered from  : see the work of Sheldrake on the subject as wel, while you are at it .
Besides, learning more about the functioning  or neurophysiology  , anatomy and activity of the brain, we still do not know much about despite all those advances of neuroscience in that regard , neuroscience that's also still kept within the narrow-minded exclusive false  walls of  the crippling ideological materialist prison though , neuroscience should also be liberated from thus , learning more about the physical brain thus might shed some  light on consciousness, indirectly , somehow ,also .

Quote
For someone who knows what they're talking about, it should be easy enough to give a realistic example; as that someone said recently, "when one pretends to know this or that  about something , one gotta prove that to be true".

See what i said to Cheryl here above on the subject .
All forms of naturalism, either reductionist or non -reductionist , all forms of anti-reductionist idealism ....cannot account for such processes fully such as life , consciousness, human cognition, memory , conscience , feelings , emotions, human love ........
In other words :
Only the right true universal cosmopolitan theism as a potentially valid conception of nature or meta-paradigm in science , combined with science while being separated from it as well in the process  = no contradiction ,might lead humanity somewhere on the subject of consciousness, life , ......................i guess, i dunno for sure either ...

As Sheldrake said in that above mentioned book of his : planes will still keep on flying , gsm's will continue functioning , internet will still be there , science will still continue to be practiced and deliver results ....if or when  that outdated false  materialism in science is out of the pic ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 19:22:41
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Chapter 12 : Scientific Futures :
In other words : dear westerners : you'd better try to get rid of that Eurocentric outdated primitive backward orthodox materialist false secular religion in science, otherwise , you will find yourselves suddenly way behind the rest of the world at the level of the sciences , in plural, at least : you are warned :



The sciences are entering a new phase. The materialist ideology that has ruled them since the
nineteenth century is out of date. All ten of its essential doctrines have been superseded. The
authoritarian structure of the sciences, the illusions of objectivity and the fantasies of omniscience
have all outlived their usefulness.
The sciences will have to change for another reason too: they are now global. Mechanistic science
and the materialist ideology grew up in Europe, and were strongly influenced by the religious disputes
that obsessed Europeans from the seventeenth century onward. But these preoccupations are alien to
cultures and traditions in many other parts of the world.
In 2011, the worldwide expenditure on scientific and technological research and development was
more than $1,000 billion, of which China spent $100 billion.1 Asian countries, especially China and
India, now produce enormous numbers of science and engineering graduates. In 2007, at BSc level
there were 2.5 million science and engineering graduates in India and 1.5 million in China,2 compared
with 515,000 in the United States3 and 100,000 in the UK.4 In addition, many of those studying in the
United States and Europe are from other countries: in 2007, nearly a third of the graduate students in
science and engineering in the United States were foreign, with the majority from India, China and
Korea.5
Yet the sciences as taught in Asia, Africa, the Islamic countries and elsewhere are still packaged in
an ideology shaped by their European past. Materialism gains its persuasive power from the
technological applications of science. But the successes of these applications do not prove that this
ideology is true. Penicillin will go on killing bacteria, jet planes will keep on flying and mobile
telephones will still work if scientists move on to wider views of nature.
No one can foresee how the sciences will evolve, but I believe recognizing that “science” is not one
thing will facilitate their development. “Science” has given way to “the sciences.” By moving beyond
physicalism, the status of physics has changed. By freeing the sciences from the ideology of
materialism, new opportunities for debate and dialogue open up, and so do new possibilities for
research.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/10/2013 19:45:29
Quote
If you are a scientist , i am Elvis :

Feel free to check my qualifications and professional registrations. Or contact Rupert Sheldrake - we've not been in touch for years!

Can you do a gig next Saturday? The hall is already hired for a big band show (they know most of your Las Vegas numbers), no problem raising backing singers, and I have a quartet of contemporary rockers who will be delighted to work through your early stuff from memory. Name your price, big fella - I'm sure it will be a sellout. And as many burgers as you want.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/10/2013 19:55:28
how do you propose that science observes the non-material, or tests a hypothesis about the non-material?
One can apply some sort of phenomenological approaches in that regard
Such as?

Quote
Quote
For someone who knows what they're talking about, it should be easy enough to give a realistic example..
See what i said to Cheryl here above on the subject .
I'll take that as, "I haven't a clue..." 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 19:57:22
Quote
If you are a scientist , i am Elvis :

Feel free to check my qualifications and professional registrations. Or contact Rupert Sheldrake - we've not been in touch for years!

Can you do a gig next Saturday? The hall is already hired for a big band show (they know most of your Las Vegas numbers), no problem raising backing singers, and I have a quartet of contemporary rockers who will be delighted to work through your early stuff from memory. Name your price, big fella - I'm sure it will be a sellout. And as many burgers as you want.

Well, judging from your own replies and behaviour here on this forum , you 're either a  vulgar  liar , or a lousy third or x grade "scientist " , sorry : no pain, no gain, truth does hurt sometimes.
No hard feelings , right ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/10/2013 20:04:31
Incidentally Don, you might find this SciAm article on the materialism and science interesting: Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/01/30/is-scientific-materialism-almost-certainly-false/). The author, John Horgan, approves of Nagel's book, but it's the comments to the article that tell the story :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 20:13:15
how do you propose that science observes the non-material, or tests a hypothesis about the non-material?
One can apply some sort of phenomenological approaches in that regard
Such as?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology
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Quote
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For someone who knows what they're talking about, it should be easy enough to give a realistic example..
See what i said to Cheryl here above on the subject .
I'll take that as, "I haven't a clue..."


See what i said to Cheryl on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 20:32:28
Incidentally Don, you might find this SciAm article on the materialism and science interesting: Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/01/30/is-scientific-materialism-almost-certainly-false/). The author, John Horgan, approves of Nagel's book, but it's the comments to the article that tell the story :)

Well, i did just read some parts of some comments quickly :
Obviously , those commentators do confuse materialism with science proper and with scientific results , as you all do , ironically enough = very predictable = there is no such a thing such as the "scientific " materialism , just the materialist false conception of nature in science that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , let alone with scientific results , scientific approaches , scientific method .....
I will read some more , later .
I do agree with atheist Nagel's analysis , relatively speaking , regarding the materialist false conception of nature in science , but , i do reject his proposed vague alternative to materialism ,to mention just that,  simply because it is also a false conception of nature : what can one expect from an atheist in that regard indeed , right :  just another false conception of nature thus = very predictable indeed.
Nagel tried to come up with some teleological and non-reductionist naturalist approach or conceptions of nature to account for the "fact " that consciousness,mind,  life , human cognition....were "generated" , so to speak , by nature haha = makes no sense = Nagel does not realise that he also tries to do what he accuses materialism of doing = he tries to make his non-reductionist naturalist "teleological " atheism fit the scientific data as well haha
Nagel is an irritating torturing read also , i did skip many of those pages of that book of his as a result ...
Sheldrake's "Science set free ..." is an extremely enjoyable fascinating interesting read though , even though i do not share his morphic resonance fields theory with him , to say just that ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2013 01:42:55
I'll have to look into the rat experiment. There have been problems reproducing other research he cites or has done, like the staring experiment. ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance )

 Any phenomena that is new is worth pursuing, trying to reproduce and explain, no argument from me. But again, if you suggest a mechanism (like morphic fields), the validity of the claim rests on evidence that directly supports, not lack of some other mechanism. Saying "well, this is how it could work...." is a nice start, I guess, but that's all it is.

 The one thing I wondered about the rat experiment, how genetically similar do the rats have to be? And can they access the squirrel channel if they need to?

There are two things that bother me: 1) The repetitive claim that science has somehow "crippled" itself by materialism, when the research productivity is exploding in neurology. You and Sheldrake may not like their conclusions, but it is not grinding to halt for some reason.

The second is, when mystics or fringe scientists invent an alternative model for a process in science, or mystical explanation for a phenomena, they seem to think they are off the hook, and won't have their very own complaints and criticisms turned against them. "But Sheldrake, how can some simple field explain love and poetry and culture, and my unique individuality, blood sweat and tears, hopes and dreams, Duck Dynasty and all of human history and....no way makes no sense! Science proper has been hijacked by morphism!"

Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 07/10/2013 08:27:31
Well, judging from your own replies and behaviour here on this forum , you 're either a  vulgar  liar , or a lousy third or x grade "scientist " , sorry : no pain, no gain, truth does hurt sometimes.
No hard feelings , right ?

So, soi-disant Elvis, I take you at your word and offer you the chance to make an amazing comeback and as much money as you want for one night's work, and instead of thanking me, you call me a liar. Hard feelings? Your stupidity is beneath contempt! Or maybe your honesty is questionable. Perhaps you are a priest after all. Never mind! Young Alice will sing for us as usual - and she is in a better state of preservation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/10/2013 11:28:42
Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.
As I understand it, it affects the patient's subjective perceived and/or reported symptoms (i.e. they feel it has helped). Meta-studies show no evidence overall for a placebo effect on objectively measured outcomes (although one might have expected a small effect for stress or mood-related physiological problems). They show minor improvements in subjective outcomes, particularly pain.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:18:45
Well, judging from your own replies and behaviour here on this forum , you 're either a  vulgar  liar , or a lousy third or x grade "scientist " , sorry : no pain, no gain, truth does hurt sometimes.
No hard feelings , right ?
So, soi-disant Elvis, I take you at your word and offer you the chance to make an amazing comeback and as much money as you want for one night's work, and instead of thanking me, you call me a liar. Hard feelings? Your stupidity is beneath contempt! Or maybe your honesty is questionable. Perhaps you are a priest after all. Never mind! Young Alice will sing for us as usual - and she is in a better state of preservation.


Face it , dude , you are  just  a vulgar liar : if you are a scientist , then i am Lady Gaga or Madonna also,not just Elvis  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:23:54
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Questions for materialists :


Experimenters’ expectations are known to affect the results of research in psychology, parapsychology
and medicine, which is why researchers often use blind methodologies. Do you think that
experimenter effects could play a role in other fields of science too?
Do you think that scientists and science students should write in the passive voice in their reports, or
use the active voice?
Most scientists publish only a small proportion of their results. Do you think that this is likely to
introduce serious biases into the scientific literature?
How should scientists deal with ideologically, politically or commercially motivated skepticism?
SUMMARY
Scientists are often imagined to achieve a superhuman level of objectivity. This belief is sustained by
the ideal of disembodied knowledge, unaffected by ambitions, hopes, fears and other emotions. In the
allegory of the cave, scientists venture forth into the light of objective truth and bring back their
discoveries for the benefit of ordinary people, trapped in a world of opinion, self-interest and illusion.
By writing in the passive voice (“a test tube was taken”) rather than the active voice (“I took a test
tube”) scientists tried to emphasize their objectivity, but many have now abandoned this pretense.
Scientists are, of course, people, and subject to the limitations of personality, politics, peer-group
pressures, fashion and the need for funding. Within medicine, psychology and parapsychology, most
researchers recognize that their expectations can bias their results, which is why they often use blind
or double-blind methodologies. In the so-called hard sciences, most researchers assume that blind
methods are unnecessary. This is no more than an assumption, and needs to be tested experimentally.
In most fields of science, researchers publish only a small proportion of their data, giving plenty of
scope for the selective presentation of results, and scientific journals introduce a further source of bias
through their unwillingness to publish negative findings. Fraud and deceit in science are rarely
detected by the peer-review system and usually come to light as a result of whistle-blowing.
Skepticism is a healthy part of normal science but is often used as a weapon in defense of politically
or ideologically motivated points of view, or to stave off the regulation of toxic chemicals. Productdefense
companies emphasize uncertainty on behalf of big business, influencing policy decisions in
favor of their clients. The separation of facts and values is usually impossible in practice, and many
scientists have to exaggerate the value of their research in order to get it funded. Although the
objectivity of science is a noble ideal, there is more hope of achieving it by recognizing the humanity
of scientists and their limitations than by pretending that science has a unique access to truth.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:28:04
I'll have to look into the rat experiment. There have been problems reproducing other research he cites or has done, like the staring experiment. ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance )

 Any phenomena that is new is worth pursuing, trying to reproduce and explain, no argument from me. But again, if you suggest a mechanism (like morphic fields), the validity of the claim rests on evidence that directly supports, not lack of some other mechanism. Saying "well, this is how it could work...." is a nice start, I guess, but that's all it is.

 The one thing I wondered about the rat experiment, how genetically similar do the rats have to be? And can they access the squirrel channel if they need to?

There are two things that bother me: 1) The repetitive claim that science has somehow "crippled" itself by materialism, when the research productivity is exploding in neurology. You and Sheldrake may not like their conclusions, but it is not grinding to halt for some reason.

The second is, when mystics or fringe scientists invent an alternative model for a process in science, or mystical explanation for a phenomena, they seem to think they are off the hook, and won't have their very own complaints and criticisms turned against them. "But Sheldrake, how can some simple field explain love and poetry and culture, and my unique individuality, blood sweat and tears, hopes and dreams, Duck Dynasty and all of human history and....no way makes no sense! Science proper has been hijacked by morphism!"

Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.


http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/placebo-cracking-code/
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:30:15
Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.
As I understand it, it affects the patient's subjective perceived and/or reported symptoms (i.e. they feel it has helped). Meta-studies show no evidence overall for a placebo effect on objectively measured outcomes (although one might have expected a small effect for stress or mood-related physiological problems). They show minor improvements in subjective outcomes, particularly pain.


http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/placebo-cracking-code/
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:35:34
Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Chapter 12 : Scientific Futures :
In other words : dear westerners : you'd better try to get rid of that Eurocentric outdated primitive backward orthodox materialist false secular religion in science, otherwise , you will find yourselves suddenly way behind the rest of the world at the level of the sciences , in plural, at least : you are warned :



The sciences are entering a new phase. The materialist ideology that has ruled them since the
nineteenth century is out of date. All ten of its essential doctrines have been superseded. The
authoritarian structure of the sciences, the illusions of objectivity and the fantasies of omniscience
have all outlived their usefulness.
The sciences will have to change for another reason too: they are now global. Mechanistic science
and the materialist ideology grew up in Europe, and were strongly influenced by the religious disputes
that obsessed Europeans from the seventeenth century onward. But these preoccupations are alien to
cultures and traditions in many other parts of the world.
In 2011, the worldwide expenditure on scientific and technological research and development was
more than $1,000 billion, of which China spent $100 billion.1 Asian countries, especially China and
India, now produce enormous numbers of science and engineering graduates. In 2007, at BSc level
there were 2.5 million science and engineering graduates in India and 1.5 million in China,2 compared
with 515,000 in the United States3 and 100,000 in the UK.4 In addition, many of those studying in the
United States and Europe are from other countries: in 2007, nearly a third of the graduate students in
science and engineering in the United States were foreign, with the majority from India, China and
Korea.5
Yet the sciences as taught in Asia, Africa, the Islamic countries and elsewhere are still packaged in
an ideology shaped by their European past. Materialism gains its persuasive power from the
technological applications of science. But the successes of these applications do not prove that this
ideology is true. Penicillin will go on killing bacteria, jet planes will keep on flying and mobile
telephones will still work if scientists move on to wider views of nature.
No one can foresee how the sciences will evolve, but I believe recognizing that “science” is not one
thing will facilitate their development. “Science” has given way to “the sciences.” By moving beyond
physicalism, the status of physics has changed. By freeing the sciences from the ideology of
materialism, new opportunities for debate and dialogue open up, and so do new possibilities for
research.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:41:46
Folks :
You all should try to learn about what science proper  really  is all about , what its limitations are , what its nature , function and role are ....
You can't just go on confusing science proper , scientific results , scientific approaches ...with materialism as a false conception of nature , materialism that has thus absolutely nothing to do with science proper , scientific results or scientific approaches whatsoever ...once again .
I see no real challenges here coming from you ,guys , so, i am just gonna head for Scientific American ,for a while,  in order to try to make those silly materialists there wake up from their ideological false outdated materialist  ...slumber , or big lie ....science proper , or rather all sciences for that matter , must be liberated from ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 19:09:54
Materialism will not only be laughable , ridiculed as it is the case now already in fact , but will be also despised by the next generations , simply because materialism  as a false ideology at least  has been deceiving people since the 19th century at least , in the name of science , the latter has aboslutely nothing to do with ...by pretending to be "scientific " ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/10/2013 19:29:43
You all should try to learn about what science proper  really  is all about , what its limitations are , what its nature , function and role are ....
You can't just go on confusing science proper , scientific results , scientific approaches ...with materialism as a false conception of nature , materialism that has thus absolutely nothing to do with science proper , scientific results or scientific approaches whatsoever ...once again .
Some of us have actually worked as scientists, doing real research. You haven't yet clearly defined 'science proper', but all the indications are that it is not something the vast majority of working scientists would recognise or agree with. So, do you get to define science proper, or should it be the consensus of the majority of working scientists? To save confusion, you might be better calling your 'science proper' something else (magic? nonsense?).
 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 19:40:06
You all should try to learn about what science proper  really  is all about , what its limitations are , what its nature , function and role are ....
You can't just go on confusing science proper , scientific results , scientific approaches ...with materialism as a false conception of nature , materialism that has thus absolutely nothing to do with science proper , scientific results or scientific approaches whatsoever ...once again .
Some of us have actually worked as scientists, doing real research. You haven't yet clearly defined 'science proper', but all the indications are that it is not something the vast majority of working scientists would recognise or agree with. So, do you get to define science proper, or should it be the consensus of the majority of working scientists? To save confusion, you might be better calling your 'science proper' something else (magic? nonsense?).

You're the ones using magic in science ,obviously,  via materialism ,dude , via that magical materialist magical approach of life , consciousness, mind, memory , human cognition , feelings , emotions, love , conscience ....their origins evolution and emergence , don't you see just that yet ?
How can you call yourself a scientist ,if you cannot see these obvious facts ? I wonder ...

Well, since you all, obviously , still cannot but confuse materialism with science after all these kilometers long pages of this thread , then, it's pretty logical to question your own understanding or perception of what science proper is or might be  , don't you think ?
Besides, does it ever occur to you that the "consensus of the majority of working scientists " , as you put it at least, or the mainstream dominating political-correct right -thinking consensus in science might be  wrong ?
Science is not a matter of the opinions of the majority , dude , not a democracy ...Come on .
Unbelievable lack of understanding , unbelievable denials of obvious facts : and you do dare have the nerve to say that some of you, guys , are working scientists doing research ?????????
I do fear the worst for science in your hands , obviously , logically ...

I think that your next remarks or questions will be as follows :
What is the alternative to materialism , right ?
Well, dude , that alternative should be , was and has been delivered by some scientists , thinkers ...even though it is still vague ....still in the making thus ...
But , that's not the point :
The point is : one should first define or detect the problem or rather the disease and its sympthoms   first , via the right diagnosis , research , analysis and depistation : the disease and its sympthoms =  materialism and its extensions in all sciences , if one wants to resolve the problem or to cure the disease in question and its sympthoms at least ...don't you think ?

Materialism in science is an incurable lethal disease  in fact  , a bit like cancer , even though some forms of cancer can be cured indeed : the only alternative to rid science from the materialist lethal cancer disease is by eradicating materialism from science ,from all sciences for that matter , by eradicating its symthoms extensions   also in all sciences thus  , and all its left-overs and  traces as well  in all sciences and elsewhere  .............if one wants to have a real healthy science or sciences as a result at least...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2013 22:20:08
Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.
As I understand it, it affects the patient's subjective perceived and/or reported symptoms (i.e. they feel it has helped). Meta-studies show no evidence overall for a placebo effect on objectively measured outcomes (although one might have expected a small effect for stress or mood-related physiological problems). They show minor improvements in subjective outcomes, particularly pain.

Yes, that's how I always interpreted it. They also include patients who get neither, but there are so many unidentifiable variables to control for in drug studies. Is a person getting the drug (or what they think is a drug) more careful about what they eat and drink? Do they become more "health minded" because they are being treated for something? Do they they have more overall contact with health professionals and get treated early for other, unrelated, potentially harmful conditions? So inexperiments they try to make the over conditions as similar as possible.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/10/2013 22:57:14
... you do dare have the nerve to say that some of you, guys , are working scientists doing research ?????????
It takes no special nerve to be a scientist, although an appropriate qualification helps. In my case, it was many years ago, but, as the man said, it was what they paid me for; even had my name on some cited papers (http://www.clinsci.org/cs/051/cs0510297.htm).

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I do fear the worst for science in your hands , obviously , logically ...
Meh; some of the kit I helped design and build is still saving lives (on the Hajj, ironically enough), which puts your distain and 'fears for science' into some perspective.

Quote
Materialism in science is an incurable lethal disease  in fact  , a bit like cancer , even though some forms of cancer can be cured indeed : the only alternative to rid science from the materialist lethal cancer disease is by eradicating materialism from science ,from all sciences for that matter , by eradicating its symthoms extensions   also in all sciences thus  , and all its left-overs and  traces as well  in all sciences and elsewhere  .............if one wants to have a real healthy science or sciences as a result at least...
Healthy science as a result? very amusing - confusing a healthy body for a tumour and amputating it to save the head; ouch! should have gone to SpecSavers... The world is grateful you're not a surgeon :) 

Which puts me in mind of the old adage, "The operation was a great success, but the patient died".
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/10/2013 23:03:51
... there are so many unidentifiable variables to control for in drug studies. Is a person getting the drug (or what they think is a drug) more careful about what they eat and drink? Do they become more "health minded" because they are being treated for something? Do they they have more overall contact with health professionals and get treated early for other, unrelated, potentially harmful conditions? So inexperiments they try to make the over conditions as similar as possible.
Yup, it's a minefield; hard enough to design a robust study, but implementing & controlling one is hard work, very expensive, and very time-consuming, which is why they're very often less than ideal, and why drug companies like to hide negative results.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2013 23:30:19
Regarding Sheldrake's criticisms of materialist explanation of memories in the brain:


It was once thought that memory was distributed "across the brain," and that you could not remove a particular cell that would make you forget the day you got married. And I am familiar with the hologram analogy. But now it seems more likely that memories are stored in multiple ways in different areas of the brain. There are brain areas responsible for things, shape of things, the identifying characteristics of things. There brain areas responsible for events that happened to you, called episodic memory. Several different parts of the brain may contribute to the overall memory of your wedding day, so you'd have to destroy a large part of brain to completely wipe it out.

It is, however, surprising how specifically located some memory is in the brain. One lady in a medical study who suffered a stroke  could not identify or remember the names of fruit. Her intelligence, vocabulary and memory seemed normal in every other respect, and she could identify other common house hold objects - a spoon, a hammer, a chair, a toaster, a tooth brush. But bananas, apples, oranges, or any other kind of fruit were all gone from her memory. A person I knew personally had brain surgery for an aneurysm. She said she felt normal, the only thing she noticed afterwords was she could no longer tell time from a dial face clock. She could from a digital one, but not the one with the numbers in a circle and big and small hands that she understood since she was five years old. That is just anecdotal evidence, but I thought it was interesting, none the less.

As for the comment that memory cannot exist in the brain because of molecular turnover, I question it for several reasons. The bones in your body are not the same ones you had in your body five, ten or 30 years ago. There is constant remodeling,  and yet they maintain their form and size and arrangement, with some wear and tear, perhaps a loss of density as you age. Patterns can be replicated.  There is also research that suggests that a memory is not like a file that records the original event and is stored forever. They do fade with time, and the ones that remain do so because you access them, and think about them, and store not the original memory but the newly recalled version of it. When you re-record it, you may re-record a slightly different version of it with missing information,  new embellishments or interpretations of it. That is the basis of false memories, as well as therapeutic techniques to help PTSD patients.

If memory is based on morphic resonance, why should memories fade at all? Why should some memories fade but not others, and why should they not be completely accurate? 

One problem with talking about consciousness is the habit of thinking of it as a "thing" and not a process or an action.  I notice that in discussing consciousness, people like Sheldrake point and say "show me  where a memory is in the brain," but I could just as easily point to your lower limbs and say "Show me where walking is in the legs." A lot of complicated things have to happen together in a precise way, or you're not going anywhere.
 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/10/2013 00:23:02
The Skeptic's Dictionary has a good summary of Sheldrake's great idea and his current position (http://www.skepdic.com/morphicres.html).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 17:54:33
Regarding Sheldrake's criticisms of materialist explanation of memories in the brain:


It was once thought that memory was distributed "across the brain," and that you could not remove a particular cell that would make you forget the day you got married. And I am familiar with the hologram analogy. But now it seems more likely that memories are stored in multiple ways in different areas of the brain. There are brain areas responsible for things, shape of things, the identifying characteristics of things. There brain areas responsible for events that happened to you, called episodic memory. Several different parts of the brain may contribute to the overall memory of your wedding day, so you'd have to destroy a large part of brain to completely wipe it out.

It is, however, surprising how specifically located some memory is in the brain. One lady in a medical study who suffered a stroke  could not identify or remember the names of fruit. Her intelligence, vocabulary and memory seemed normal in every other respect, and she could identify other common house hold objects - a spoon, a hammer, a chair, a toaster, a tooth brush. But bananas, apples, oranges, or any other kind of fruit were all gone from her memory. A person I knew personally had brain surgery for an aneurysm. She said she felt normal, the only thing she noticed afterwords was she could no longer tell time from a dial face clock. She could from a digital one, but not the one with the numbers in a circle and big and small hands that she understood since she was five years old. That is just anecdotal evidence, but I thought it was interesting, none the less.

As for the comment that memory cannot exist in the brain because of molecular turnover, I question it for several reasons. The bones in your body are not the same ones you had in your body five, ten or 30 years ago. There is constant remodeling,  and yet they maintain their form and size and arrangement, with some wear and tear, perhaps a loss of density as you age. Patterns can be replicated.  There is also research that suggests that a memory is not like a file that records the original event and is stored forever. They do fade with time, and the ones that remain do so because you access them, and think about them, and store not the original memory but the newly recalled version of it. When you re-record it, you may re-record a slightly different version of it with missing information,  new embellishments or interpretations of it. That is the basis of false memories, as well as therapeutic techniques to help PTSD patients.

If memory is based on morphic resonance, why should memories fade at all? Why should some memories fade but not others, and why should they not be completely accurate? 

One problem with talking about consciousness is the habit of thinking of it as a "thing" and not a process or an action.  I notice that in discussing consciousness, people like Sheldrake point and say "show me  where a memory is in the brain," but I could just as easily point to your lower limbs and say "Show me where walking is in the legs." A lot of complicated things have to happen together in a precise way, or you're not going anywhere.

I do not agree with Sheldrake's morphic resonance theory ,as i said earlier , simply because it sounds too magical to me to be true  ,but to say that memory is stored in the brain is the epitome of stupidity , or materialist magic .
Sheldrake just replaces the materialist magic by his own in that regard .
But , that does not make the fact go away that materialism is a magical false conception of nature in science .
We'll thus have to wait for future non-materialist approaches of consciousness, life , memory , feelings , emotions, human cognition , ...............their origins emergence and evolution ,after the removal of those materialist cancer  cells and materialist cancer tumors from the brain body and sipirit of science thus .
I cannot yet conceive of any non-materialist approaches of the above yet though ...
Maybe , someone here or elsewhere would succeed in inspiring me someday on the subject , who knows ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:11:12
... you do dare have the nerve to say that some of you, guys , are working scientists doing research ?????????
It takes no special nerve to be a scientist, although an appropriate qualification helps. In my case, it was many years ago, but, as the man said, it was what they paid me for; even had my name on some cited papers (http://www.clinsci.org/cs/051/cs0510297.htm).

What's your name then ? I would be interested in following your work .
Ok, but i was mainly talking about the fact that you do still confuse science with materialism in science , a fact you cannot deny as such , a fact you should have acknowledged and recognized as such a long time ago , as a scientist, don't you think ?
But , you do act think and behave in a worse manner than just the above : you continue "defending "   the obviously undeniably indefensible materialism in science , by continuing to see materialism as  being  "scientific " ...
If you cannot or do not want to accept obvious undeniable facts as such , regarding the fact that materialism is an ideology that has been dominating and hijacking science since the 19 century at least , what kindda scientist are you then ? if you cannot accept such obvious undeniable facts ?
Materialism that has absolutely nothing to do with science , once again .

Quote
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I do fear the worst for science in your hands , obviously , logically ...
Meh; some of the kit I helped design and build is still saving lives (on the Hajj, ironically enough), which puts your distain and 'fears for science' into some perspective.

You do not get yet again :
I was mainly talking about materialism in science , not about science : in the sense that you still continue to confuse the 2 with each other : one can do or build what you said you built while being an alien from Mars practicing science : science does not care by whom it is practiced ...but, science would be free indeed under a potentially valid conception of nature, as an alternative to materialism in science ...instead of keeping science  confined to that materialist prison,it gotta be liberated from , if science wanna evolve and progress at least : science or rather the sciences , in plural, that have been  even  superseding that outdated false materialism  ,once again  .

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Materialism in science is an incurable lethal disease  in fact  , a bit like cancer , even though some forms of cancer can be cured indeed : the only alternative to rid science from the materialist lethal cancer disease is by eradicating materialism from science ,from all sciences for that matter , by eradicating its symthoms extensions   also in all sciences thus  , and all its left-overs and  traces as well  in all sciences and elsewhere  .............if one wants to have a real healthy science or sciences as a result at least...
Healthy science as a result? very amusing - confusing a healthy body for a tumour and amputating it to save the head; ouch! should have gone to SpecSavers... The world is grateful you're not a surgeon :) 

Which puts me in mind of the old adage, "The operation was a great success, but the patient died".

What kindda scientist are you that twists or distorts people's words beyond any recognition repeatedly ? Unbelievable .
I see a pattern there ...
Materialism and its materialist extensions in science are the cancer cells or cancer tumors and their sympthoms that should be urgently removed from the body brain and spirit of science , if one wanna have a progressive evolving healthy science as a result at least : that's what i meant   by my above mentioned words you should have easily understood , if you only took the time to read them carefully ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:34:19
"Science Set Free , 10 Paths to New Discovery "  by R.Sheldrake , Chapter 8 : "Are Minds Confined To Brains ?":



Are Minds Confined to Brains?
Materialism is the doctrine that only matter is real. Hence minds are in brains, and mental activity is
nothing but brain activity. This assumption conflicts with our own experience. When we look at a
blackbird, we see a blackbird; we do not experience complex electrical changes in our brains. But
most of us accepted the mind-within-the-brain theory before we ever had a chance to question it. We
took it for granted as children because it seemed to be supported by all the authority of science and the
educational system.
In his study of children’s intellectual development, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget found that
before about the age of ten or eleven, European children were like “primitive” people. They did not
know that the mind was confined to the head; they thought it extended into the world around them. But
by about the age of eleven, most had assimilated what Piaget called the “correct” view: “Images and
thoughts are situated in the head.”1
Educated people rarely question this “scientifically correct” view in public, perhaps because they do
not want to be thought stupid, childish or primitive. Yet the “correct” view conflicts with our most
immediate experience every time we look around us. We see things outside our bodies; we do not
experience images inside our heads. The materialist theory dominated academic psychology for most
of the twentieth century. The long-dominant behavioralist school explicitly denied the reality of
consciousness. The leading American behavioralist, B. F. Skinner, proclaimed in 1953 that mind and
consciousness were non-existent entities “invented for the sole purpose of providing spurious
explanations … Since mental or psychic events are asserted to lack the dimensions of physical
science, we have an additional reason for rejecting them.”2 As discussed in Chapter 4, a similar denial
of conscious experience is still advocated by contemporary philosophers of the school known as
“eliminative materialism.” Paul Churchland, for example, argues that subjectively experienced mental
states should be regarded as non-existent because descriptions of such states cannot be reduced to the
language of neuroscience.3
Likewise, many leading scientists regard conscious experience as nothing but the subjective
experience of brain activity (see Chapter 4). Francis Crick called this the Astonishing Hypothesis:
“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal
identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and
their associated molecules … This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today
that it can truly be called astonishing.4
This is, indeed, an astonishing claim. But within institutional science it is commonplace. Crick was no
revolutionary: he spoke for the mainstream. Susan Greenfield, an influential neuroscientist, looked at
an exposed brain in an operating theater and reflected, “This was all there was to Sarah, or indeed to
any of us … We are but sludgy brains, and … somehow a character and a mind are generated in this
soupy mess.”5
The traditional alternative to materialism is dualism, the doctrine that minds and brains are
radically different: minds are immaterial and brains are material; minds are outside time and space,
matter is inside time and space. Dualism makes better sense of our experience but makes no sense in
terms of mechanistic science, which is why materialists reject it so vehemently (see Chapter 4).
We need not stay stuck in this materialist-dualist contradiction. There is a way out: a field theory of
minds. We are used to the fact that fields exist both within and outside material objects. The field of a
magnet is inside it and also extends beyond its surface. The gravitational field of the earth is inside the
earth and also stretches out far beyond it, keeping the moon in its orbit. The electromagnetic field of a
mobile phone is both inside it and extends all around it. In this chapter I suggest that the fields of
minds are within brains and extend beyond them.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:36:06
Extended Minds :



Extended minds:
If we follow Francis Crick and treat materialism as a hypothesis, rather than a philosophical dogma, it
should be testable. As Carl Sagan liked to say, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary
evidence.” Where is the extraordinary evidence for the materialist claim that the mind is nothing but
the activity of the brain?
There is very little. No one has ever seen a thought or image inside someone else’s brain, or inside
his or her own.6 When we look around us, the images of the things we see are outside us, not in our
heads. Our experiences of our bodies are in our bodies. The feelings in my fingers are in my fingers,
not in my head. Direct experience offers no support for the extraordinary claim that all experiences
are inside brains. Direct experience is not irrelevant to the nature of consciousness: it is
consciousness.
Extended minds are implicit in our language. The words “attention” and “intention” come from the
Latin root tendere, to stretch, as in “tense” and “tension.” “Attention” is ad + tendere, “to stretch
toward”; “intention,” in + tendere, “to stretch into.”
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:38:49
How Does Vision Work ? :


How does vision work?:
A debate about the nature of vision was going on in ancient Greece 2,500 years ago. It was taken up in
the Roman Empire and in the Islamic world, and continued in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. The debate played an important part in the birth of modern science, and is still alive
today.
There were three main theories of how we see. The first was that vision involves an outward
projection of invisible rays through the eyes. This is often called the “extramission” theory, which
literally means “sending out.” Second was the idea of a “sending in” of images through light into the
eyes, the “intromission” theory. The third theory, a combination of the other two, states that there is
both an inward movement of light and an outward movement of attention.
The extramission theory agrees with people’s experience of vision as an active process. We look at
things, and can decide where to direct our attention. Vision is not passive. Plato supported this theory
of vision, and around 300 BC Euclid, famous for his works on geometry, worked it out in mathematical
detail. He showed how projection of virtual images from the eye could explain how we see images in
mirrors. Unlike light itself, which is reflected by mirrors, visual projections go straight through them.
They are not material.
Isaac Newton accepted Euclid’s theory, and illustrated it in 1704 in his book Opticks (Figure 8.1).
Essentially the same diagram is used in science textbooks today. A typical British physics textbook
for secondary schools describes the process as follows: “Rays from a point on the object are reflected
at the mirror and appear to come from a point behind the mirror where the eye imagines the rays
intersect when produced backwards.”7 There is no discussion of how the eye “imagines” rays
intersecting, or how it produces them backwards. This is essentially Euclid’s extramission theory of
virtual images, but its implications are left implicit.
Since the early seventeenth century the intromission theory has been scientifically orthodox, largely
thanks to the work of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), best known for his discoveries in astronomy.
Kepler realized that light entering the eye through the pupil was focused by the lens, and produced an
inverted image on the retina. He published his theory of the retinal image in 1604. Although this was a
major triumph, and a landmark in the development of modern science, it raised questions that Kepler
could not answer, and are still unanswered today. The problem was that the images on the retinas of
both eyes were inverted and reversed; in other words, they were upside down and the left side was at
the right, and vice versa. Yet we do not see two small, inverted, reversed images.8
FIGURE 8.1. Isaac Newton’s diagram of reflection in a plane mirror: “If an Object A can be seen by
Reflexion of a Looking-glass mn, it shall appear, not in its proper place A, but behind the Glass at a.”
(Newton, 1704, Fig. 9)
The only way Kepler could deal with this problem was by excluding it from optics. Once the image
had been formed on the retina, it was someone else’s business to explain how we actually see it.9
Vision itself was “mysterious.” Ironically, the triumph of the intromission theory was achieved by
leaving the experience of seeing unexplained. This problem has haunted science ever since.
Kepler’s contemporary, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), likewise withdrew perceptions from the
external world and squeezed them into the brain. He made a distinction between what he called
primary and secondary qualities of objects. The primary qualities were those that could be measured
and treated mathematically, such as size, weight and shape. These were the concern of objective
science. The secondary qualities, such as color, taste, texture and smell, were not within matter itself.
They were subjective rather than objective. And subjective meant within the brain. Thus our direct
experience of the world was split into two separate poles, the objective, out there, and the subjective,
within the brain.
After four hundred years of mechanistic science, there has been almost no progress in
understanding how the brain produces subjective experience, although many details have been
discovered about the activities of different regions of the brain. The orthodox assumption is that the
brain constructs a picture or model of the world inside itself. This is how an authoritative textbook
called Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior described the process:
[T]he brain constructs an internal representation of external physical events after first analyzing
them into component parts. In scanning the visual field the brain simultaneously but separately
analyzes the form of objects, their movement, and their color, all before putting together an
image according to the brain’s own rules.10
Most contemporary metaphors for the activity of the brain are derived from computers, and “internal
representations” are commonly conceived of as “virtual reality” displays. As the psychologist Jeffrey
Gray put it succinctly, “The ‘out there’ of conscious experience isn’t really out there at all; it’s inside
the head.” Our visual perceptions are a “simulation” of the real world that is “made by, and exists
within, the brain.”11
The idea of visual experiences as simulations inside heads leads to strange consequences, as the
philosopher Stephen Lehar has pointed out.12 It means that when I look at the sky, the sky I see is
inside my head. My skull is beyond the sky!
I propose that out beyond the farthest things you can perceive in all directions, i.e. above the
dome of the sky, and below the solid earth under your feet, or beyond the walls and ceiling of the
room you see around you, is located the inner surface of your true physical skull, beyond which is
an unimaginably immense external world of which the world you see around you is merely a
miniature internal replica. In other words, the head you have come to know as your own is not
your true physical head, but only a miniature perceptual copy of your head in a perceptual copy
of the world, all of which is contained within your real head.13
Despite the theories of academic scientists and philosophers, most people do not accept that all their
experiences are located inside their heads. They think they are where they seem to be, outside their
heads.
In the 1990s, Gerald Winer and his colleagues in the psychology department at Ohio State
University investigated people’s beliefs about the nature of vision through a series of questionnaires
and tests. They were surprised that extramission beliefs were common among children, and “shocked”
when they discovered that they were also widespread among college students, even among those
studying psychology, who had been taught the “correct” theory of vision.14 Among schoolchildren
from grades five to eight, more than 70 percent believed in a combined intromission-extramission
theory, and among college students 59 percent.15 Winer and his colleagues called this a “striking
instance of a scientific misconception.”16 Education had failed to convert most of the students to the
correct belief:
Given that extramissionists in our studies affirm extramission even though they have been taught
about vision, our attention is now directed to understanding whether education can eradicate
these odd, but seemingly powerful, intuitions about perception.17
Winer and his colleagues seem doomed to failure in their crusade for intellectual cleansing. These
“odd” intuitions about perception persist because they are closer to experience than the official
doctrine, which leaves so much unexplained—including consciousness itself.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:41:08
Images Outside Bodies :


Images outside bodies:
Not all philosophers and psychologists believe the mind-in-the-brain theory, and over the years a
minority has always recognized that our perceptions may be just where they seem to be, in the
external world outside our heads, rather than representations inside our brains.18 In 1904, William
James wrote:
[T]he whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’ time downwards has been just one long
wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both
in outer space and in a person’s mind. “Representative” theories of perception avoid the logical
paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life which knows no intervening
mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately as they physically exist.19
As Alfred North Whitehead expressed it in 1925, “sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe
appropriate bodies in external nature.”20
A recent proponent of the extended mind is the psychologist Max Velmans. In his book
Understanding Consciousness (2000), he proposed a “reflexive model” of the mind, which he
illustrated by this discussion of a subject (S) looking at a cat:
According to reductionists there seems to be a phenomenal cat “in S’s mind,” but this is really
nothing more than a state of her brain. According to the reflexive model, while S is gazing at the
cat, her only visual experience of the cat is the cat she sees out in the world. If she is asked to
point to this phenomenal cat (her “cat experience”), she should point not to her brain but to the
cat as perceived, out in space beyond the body surface.21
Velmans suggested that this image might be like “a kind of neural ‘projection hologram’. A projection
hologram has the interesting quality that the three-dimensional image it encodes is perceived to be out
in space, in front of its two-dimensional surface.”22 But Velmans was ambiguous about the nature of
this projection. A hologram is, after all, a field phenomenon. He called it “psychological” rather than
“physical” and in the end said he did not know how it happened, but added, “not fully understanding
how it happens does not alter the fact that it happens.”
My own suggestion is that the outward projection of visual images is both psychological and
physical. It occurs through perceptual fields. These are psychological, in the sense that they underlie
our conscious perceptions, and also physical or natural in that they exist outside the brain and have
detectable effects. Human perception is not unique in being extended through seeing and hearing.
Other animals see things through fields projected beyond the surfaces of their bodies, and hear things
through projected auditory fields. We are like other animals.
The senses are not static. The eyes move as we look at things, and our heads and entire bodies move
around in our environments. As we move, our perceptual fields change. Perceptual fields are not
separate from our bodies, but include them. We can see our own outer surface, our skin, hair and
clothing. We are inside our fields of vision and action. Our awareness of three-dimensional space
includes our own bodies within it, and our movements and intentions in relation to what is around us.
Like other animals, we are not passive perceivers but active behavers, and our perceptions and
behavior are closely linked.23
Some neuroscientists and philosophers agree that perceptions depend on the close connection
between perception and activity, linking an animal or person to the environment. One school of
thought advocates an “enactive” or “embodied” or “sensorimotor” approach. Perceptions are not
represented in a world-model inside the head, but are enacted or “brought forth” as a result of the
interaction of the organism and its environment. As Francisco Varela and his colleagues expressed it,
“perception and action have evolved together … perception is always perceptually guided activity.”24
As the philosopher Arva Noë put it, “We are out of our heads. We are in the world and of it. We are
patterns of active engagement with fluid boundaries and changing components. We are distributed.”25
The psychologist Kevin O’Regan, a committed materialist, prefers this approach to the mind-in-thebrain
theory precisely because he wants to expel all magic from the brain. He does not accept that
seeing is in the brain, because this would “put you in the terrible situation of having to postulate some
magical mechanism that endows the visual cortex with sight, and the auditory cortex with hearing.”26
Henri Bergson anticipated the enactive and sensorimotor approaches more than a century ago. He
emphasized that perception is directed toward action. Through perception, “The objects which
surround my body reflect its possible action upon them.”27 The images are not inside the brain:
The truth is that the point P, the rays which it emits, the retina and the nervous elements affected,
form a single whole; that the luminous point P is a part of this whole; and that it is really in P,
and not elsewhere, that the image of P is formed and perceived.28
My own interpretation is that vision takes place through extended perceptual fields, which are both
within the brain and stretch out beyond it.29 Vision is rooted in the activity of the brain, but is not
confined to the inside of the head. Like Velmans, I suggest that the formation of these fields depends
on changes in various regions of the brain as vision takes place, influenced by expectations, intentions
and memories. These are a kind of morphic field and, like other morphic fields, connect together parts
within wholes, and have an inherent memory given by morphic resonance from similar fields in the
past (see Chapter 3). When I look at a person or an animal, my perceptual field interacts with the field
of the person or animal I am looking at, enabling my gaze to be detected.
Our experience certainly suggests that our minds are extended beyond our brains. We see and hear
things in the space around us. But there is a strong taboo against anything that suggests that seeing and
hearing might involve any kind of outward projection. This issue cannot be resolved by theoretical
arguments alone, or else there would have been more progress over the last century—or even over the
last 2,500 years.
I am convinced that the way forward is to treat fields of the mind as a testable scientific hypothesis
rather than a philosophical theory. When I look at something, my perceptual fields “clothe” what I am
looking at. My mind touches what I am seeing. Therefore I might be able to affect another person just
by looking. If I look at someone from behind when she cannot hear me, or see me, and does not know I
am there, can she feel my gaze?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:46:58
The Detection of Stares:


The detection of stares:
Most people have felt someone looking at them from behind, turned around and met the person’s eyes.
Most people have also experienced the converse: they have sometimes made people turn round by
staring at them. In extensive surveys in Europe and North America, between 70 and 97 percent of
adults and children reported experiences of these kinds.30
In surveys I carried out in Britain, Sweden and the United States, these experiences seemed to be
most common when people were being stared at by strangers in public places, such as streets and bars.
They happened more when people felt vulnerable than when they felt secure.
When people made others turn around by staring at them, both men and women said that curiosity
was their most frequent reason for staring, followed by a desire to attract the other person’s attention.
Other motives included sexual attraction, anger and affection.31 In short, the ability to detect
someone’s attention was associated with a range of motives and emotions.
In some Oriental martial arts, students are trained to increase their sensitivity to being looked at
from behind.32 And some people observe others for a living. The sense of being stared at is well
known to many police officers, surveillance personnel and soldiers, as I found through a series of
interviews with professionals. Most felt that some people they were watching seemed to know, even
though the watchers were well hidden. For example, a narcotics officer in Plains, Texas, said, “I’ve
noticed that a lot of times the crook will just get a feeling that things aren’t right, that he’s being
watched. We often have somebody look right in our direction even though he can’t see us. A lot of
times we’re inside a vehicle.” When detectives are trained to follow people, they are told not to stare
at their backs any more than necessary because otherwise the person might turn around, catch their
eye and blow their cover.33
According to experienced surveillance officers, this sense also works at a distance when people are
watched through binoculars. Several soldiers told me that some people could tell when they were
being looked at through telescopic sights. For example, a soldier in the US Marine Corps served as a
sniper in Bosnia in 1995, where he was assigned to shoot “known terrorists.” While aiming through
the telescopic sight of his rifle, he found that people seemed to know when he was aiming at them.
“Within one second prior to actual termination, a target would somehow seem to make eye contact
with me. I am convinced that these people somehow sensed my presence at distances over one mile.
They did so with uncanny accuracy, in effect to stare down my own scope.”
Many celebrity photographers have had similar experiences. One long-lens photographer who
worked for the Sun, the most popular tabloid newspaper in Britain, said that he was amazed by how
many times his quarries would “turn round and look right down the lens,” even if they were looking in
the opposite direction to start with. He did not think they could see him or detect his movements. “I
am talking about taking pictures at distances of up to half a mile away in situations where it is quite
impossible for people to see me, although I can see them. They are so aware it is uncanny.”34
Many species of non-human animals also seem able to detect looks. Some hunters and wildlife
photographers are convinced that animals can detect their gaze even when they are hidden and looking
at the animals through telescopic lenses or sights. One British deer hunter found that the animals
seemed to detect his intention, especially if he delayed shooting when he had them in his rifle sights:
“If you wait a fraction too long, it will just take off. It’ll sense you.”
Several bird photographers told me that when they were in hides, invisible to the birds they were
watching, the birds still seemed to know when they were being looked at. One said, “I spend a lot of
time in hides and it is uncanny how birds can just seem to sense you are there, become agitated, even
though you know you haven’t moved. With herons you can tell instantly that they are alert to danger.
Very often the lens is completely still and they suddenly seem to realize that there is something
looking at them, and their heads go up and they go very stiff and wait to see if they can see anything
else.”35
Conversely, some photographers and hunters had felt wild animals looking at them.36 The naturalist
William Long wrote that when he was sitting in the woods alone,
I often found within myself an impression which I expressed in the words, “Something is
watching you.” Again and again, when nothing stirred in my sight, that curious warning would
come; and almost invariably, on looking around, I would find some bird or fox or squirrel which
had probably caught a slight motion of my head and had halted his roaming to creep near and
watch me inquisitively.37
Some pet owners claim that they can wake their sleeping dogs or cats by staring at them. Others have
found it works the other way round and that their animals can wake them by staring.
In their surveys in Ohio, Winer and his colleagues found that more than a third of their respondents
said they had felt when animals were looking at them. About half believed that animals could feel
their looks, even when the animals could not see their eyes.38
If the sense of being stared at is real, then it must have been subject to evolution by natural
selection. How might it have evolved? The most obvious possibility is in the context of predator-prey
relations. Prey animals that detected when predators were looking at them would stand a better chance
of surviving than those that did not.39
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:49:39
Experimental Tests:


Experimental tests:
Since the 1980s the sense of being stared at has been investigated experimentally both through direct
looking and also through closed circuit television (CCTV). In the scientific literature it is variously
referred to as “unseen gaze detection” or “remote attention” or “scopaesthesia” (from Greek skopein,
to view, and aisthetikos, sensitive).
In direct-looking experiments, people work in pairs, with a subject and a looker. In a randomized
series of trials, blindfolded subjects sit with their backs to the lookers, who either stare at the back of
their necks, or look away and think of something else. A mechanical signal—a click or a beep—marks
the beginning of each trial. Within a few seconds the subjects guess whether they are being looked at
or not. Their guesses are either right or wrong, and are recorded immediately. A test usually consists
of twenty trials.
These tests are so simple that a child can do them, and thousands of children already have. In the
1990s, this research was popularized through New Scientist magazine, BBC TV and Discovery
Channel TV, and many tests were conducted in schools and as student projects at universities.
Altogether, tens of thousands of trials were carried out.40 The results were remarkably consistent.
Typically, about 55 percent of the guesses were right, as opposed to 50 percent expected by chance.
Although the effect was small, because it was so widely replicated it was highly significant
statistically. In more rigorous experiments subjects and starers were separated by windows or one-way
mirrors, eliminating the possibility of subtle cues by sound or even smell. They were still able to tell
when they were being watched.41
The largest experiment on the sense of being stared at began in 1995 at the NEMO Science Centre
in Amsterdam. More than eighteen thousand pairs took part, with positive results that were highly
significant statistically.42 The most sensitive subjects were children under the age of nine.43
Surprisingly, the sense of being stared at works even when people are looked at on screens, rather
than directly. CCTV systems are routinely used for surveillance in shopping malls, banks, airports,
streets and other public spaces. My assistants and I interviewed surveillance officers and security
personnel whose job it was to observe people on screens. Most were convinced that some people could
feel when they were being watched.44 The security manager in a large firm in London had no doubt
that some people have a sixth sense: “They can have their backs to the cameras, or be scanned using
hidden devices, yet they still become agitated when the camera is trained on them. Some move on,
some look around for the camera.”
In laboratory tests, many people respond physiologically to being watched through CCTV, even
though they are unconscious of their response. In these experiments, the researchers put a subject in
one room and a looker in another, where the subject could be watched through CCTV. The subjects’
galvanic skin response was recorded, as in lie-detector tests, enabling emotional changes to be
detected through differences in sweating; wet skin conducts electricity better than dry skin. In a
randomized series of trials, the starers either looked at the subject’s image on the TV monitor, or
looked away and thought of something else. The subjects’ skin resistance changed significantly when
they were being looked at.45
The fact that gaze detection works through CCTV shows that people can detect other people’s
attention even when they are not being watched directly.
The effects of attention at a distance show that minds are not confined to the insides of brains.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:51:35
Minds Extended in Time :



Minds extended in time:
Minds extend beyond brains in time as well as space. We are connected to the past by memory and
habit, and to the future by desires, plans and intentions. Are these memories and virtual futures
contained materially within brains in the present, or are minds connected to the past and future by
non-material links?
The conventional answer is that our memories and intentions must be inside brains in the present.
Where else could they be? The computer metaphor reinforces this way of thinking. A computer’s
memories are stored on magnetic or optical disks, or in solid-state memory systems. These memories
are material structures or patterns in the present. And just as the computer’s memories exist
physically in its present, so its programmed goals are present in it too. Past and future are both
physically present. By analogy, memories, goals, plans and intentions are physically present in brains.
The assumption that memories are stored materially inside brains was discussed in the previous
chapter. The assumption that future goals are inside brains is equally questionable. They exist in a
realm of possibility; they are virtual futures. Possibilities are not material. In quantum physics, the
wave function that describes how electrons or other particles might behave is a mathematical model in
a multi-dimensional space based on “complex numbers” that include an imaginary number, the square
root of -1. The wave function maps possible future states of the system in terms of probabilities.
When a quantum particle such as an electron interacts with a physical system, for example in a
process of being measured in a laboratory, the wave function collapses into one of its many possible
outcomes. Many possibilities are reduced to an objectively observable fact, just as they are when a
person takes a decision and acts on it. But the wave function itself is not material; it is a mathematical
description of possibilities.
As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead suggested, minds and matter are related as processes in
time, rather than in space (see Chapter 4). The subject chooses among its potential futures, and the
direction of mental causation runs from potential futures to the present. Neither the future nor the past
is material, but both have effects in the present through memories, habits and choices.
According to the hypothesis of morphic resonance, similar processes occur at all levels of
organization, including biological morphogenesis. As a carrot seed develops into a carrot plant, it is
shaped by its morphogenetic fields, inherited from previous carrot plants by morphic resonance. These
morphogenetic fields contain the attractors and chreodes that channel its development toward the form
of a mature plant (see Chapters 5 and 6). Neither inherited habits nor future goals are material
structures present in the plant; instead they are patterns of goal-directed activity. In a similar way
neither memories nor purposes are contained in brains, although they influence brain activity.
Most of our mental activity is habitual and unconscious. Conscious mental activity is largely
concerned with possible actions, including speaking. Our conscious minds inhabit the realm of
possibility, and languages greatly expand the possibilities they can entertain. Think of hearing a story.
Our minds can embrace possibilities that go far beyond our own experience. Conscious minds choose
among possibilities, and their choices collapse possibilities into actions that are objectively
observable in the physical world. The arrow of causation is from the virtual future, going “backward”
in time. In this sense minds act as final causes, setting goals and purposes.
In order to make choices, minds must contain alternative possibilities: coexisting at the same time.
In the language of quantum physics, these possibilities are “superposed.” The physicist Freeman
Dyson wrote, “The processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the
processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when made by electrons.”46
According to the hypothesis of morphic resonance, all self-organizing systems, including protein
molecules, Acetabularia cells, carrot plants, human embryos and flocks of birds, are shaped by
memory from previous similar systems transmitted by morphic resonance and drawn toward attractors
through chreodes. Their very being involves an invisible presence of both past and future. Minds are
extended in time not because they are miraculously different from ordinary matter, but because they
are self-organizing systems. All self-organizing systems are extended in time, shaped by morphic
resonance from the past, and drawn toward attractors in the future.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 18:53:56
What Difference does it Make ?:



What difference does it make?:
Liberating minds from confinement in heads is like being released from prison. Most people have
already broken out in secret. Even most materialists are not true believers when it comes to
themselves; they effectively ignore the materialist theory in their private lives. They do not take
seriously the idea that their skulls are beyond the sky. In practice, they are dualists who believe they
make free choices.
Those who take their materialist faith seriously ought to believe that they are like robots with no
free will. And some materialists actually want to experience themselves as automata. For example, the
psychologist Kevin O’Regan told his fellow materialist Susan Blackmore, “Ever since I’ve been a
child I’ve wanted to be a robot. I think one of the great difficulties of human life is that one’s life is
inhabited by uncontrollable desires and that if one could only be master of those and become more
like a robot one would be much better off.” He thought everyone else was a robot too, but “just
labouring under the illusion that they weren’t.” But as Blackmore pointed out, a robot with emotions it
could control would be an unusual kind of robot.47 O’Regan is exceptional in extending materialist
theories to the realm of private life, but nevertheless he endowed his robot-self with a desire to be
master of his emotions, implying both conscious experience and choice.
Materialism is unpersuasive if one takes one’s own experience into account. But because it is the
creed of established science, its authority is enormous. That is why so many educated people try to
resolve this dilemma by adopting a materialist persona in scientific discourse, while in private
accepting the reality of conscious experience and choice.
A field theory of minds and bodies liberates us from this stalemate. Minds are closely connected to
fields that extend beyond brains in space, and also extend beyond brains in time, linked to the past by
morphic resonance and to virtual futures through attractors.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/10/2013 18:56:49
Face it , dude , you are  just  a vulgar liar : if you are a scientist , then i am Lady Gaga or Madonna also,not just Elvis  .

Should be quite a gig, then.

Alan M Calverd MA(Cantab), PhD(Warwick), CPhys, MInstP, MIPEM, CertRPA
State Registered Clinical Physicist

...and part-time musician
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 19:02:25
Face it , dude , you are  just  a vulgar liar : if you are a scientist , then i am Lady Gaga or Madonna also,not just Elvis  .

Should be quite a gig, then.

Alan M Calverd MA(Cantab), PhD(Warwick), CPhys, MInstP, MIPEM, CertRPA
State Registered Clinical Physicist

...and part-time musician

Whatever :
You still need to correct many of your views concerning science and materialism, concerning the illusion of objectivity in science , concering the nature function and role of science ...to say just that .
Good luck indeed.
P.S.: Why don't you try to enlighten us , as a presumed scientist then, regarding the above ?
I saw nothing but empty remarks, insults , silly egocentric behaviour,empty rhetorics, irrelevant silly sarcasm   ...from you so far on this thread .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/10/2013 20:07:48
... In my case, it was many years ago, but, as the man said, it was what they paid me for; even had my name on some cited papers (http://www.clinsci.org/cs/051/cs0510297.htm).
What's your name then ? I would be interested in following your work .
Can you not even follow a link? (hint: compare my user name with the authors) As it happens, that's the only paper of mine I can find online - it was a long time ago, in my first career. We did a bunch of stuff under Joe Weiner (of Piltdown Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man#Exposure) fame), from creating a heat-stroke treatment bed for the Hajj (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6102233) (for Sudan & Saudi Arabia), to hypothermia in the elderly (one colleague was asked onto BBC TV each winter to give his advice to the elderly: "wrap up well, & keep warm"!), to studying recovery from leg fractures & knee surgery.

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i was mainly talking about the fact that you do still confuse science with materialism in science , a fact you cannot deny as such , a fact you should have acknowledged and recognized as such a long time ago , as a scientist, don't you think ?
Until you can suggest some way of observing and measuring the non-material, science will continue productively discovering and learning more about the observable and measurable world. [Incidentally, if, as you appeared to suggest earlier, you feel that quantum mechanics somehow involves the non-material, then science is already involved in the non-material. Most physicists would disagree with that attribution, but you seem to have your own definitions for these things].

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But , you do act think and behave in a worse manner than just the above : you continue "defending "   the obviously undeniably indefensible materialism in science , by continuing to see materialism as  being  "scientific " ...
Science involves learning about, describing, and explaining the observable world. Currently it can only observe material things. If you know how the scientific method can be applied to observing and measuring the non-material, science will happily include it, and you'll probably be up for a Nobel prize. Nobody's 'defending' anything, we're just telling you what the current situation is. Sadly, you don't listen or can't understand, so you keep on your hobby horse, tilting at windmills and attacking straw men, with your bonnet full of bees...

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If you cannot or do not want to accept obvious undeniable facts as such , regarding the fact that materialism is an ideology that has been dominating and hijacking science since the 19 century at least , what kindda scientist are you then ?
I was a human physiologist & environmental biologist. What kindda scientist are you?

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if you cannot accept such obvious undeniable facts ?
Materialism that has absolutely nothing to do with science , once again .
While you whine and whinge about ideologies and 'undeniable facts', the undeniable fact is, scientists around the world are making discoveries in a multitude of fields, increasing the sum total of human knowledge, and generating the technologies that can feed you, make you comfortable, keep you alive, and allow you to communicate with almost anyone on the planet.

It's a human enterprise, so of course it's imperfect; if you have anything practical to contribute why not get off your backside and get your hands dirty making a contribution, instead of sitting around bleating that you don't like how it's being done?

Let me guess - you don't have a clue how science is actually done, or what drives scientists to do it. Just like you post up whole chapters of other people's books in place of presenting arguments of your own.

You remind me of those fat couch potatoes watching the TV with a beer in one hand and a pizza in the other, telling the world's elite athletes what they're doing wrong... It's quite sad really - but also quite funny!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/10/2013 20:17:23
I saw nothing but empty remarks, insults , silly egocentric behaviour,empty rhetorics, irrelevant silly sarcasm   ...from you so far on this thread .
Dang! there goes another irony meter. I'm going to have to use disposables for this thread :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 20:47:24
I saw nothing but empty remarks, insults , silly egocentric behaviour,empty rhetorics, irrelevant silly sarcasm   ...from you so far on this thread .
Dang! there goes another irony meter. I'm going to have to use disposables for this thread :)

Boring .
Your mechanic soulless so-called irony meter  is false outdated and therefore can't handle  my irony  haha , (i am called the king of irony haha by friends relatives loved ones ...no pretences or arrogance .),can't detect subtle irony - can't detect humour , can't detect some facts .............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 08/10/2013 21:29:16
The Detection of Stares:

The detection of stares:
Most people have felt someone looking at them from behind, turned around and met the person’s eyes ...

But proper scientific experiments show this power doesn't actually exist ... http://www.csicop.org/si/show/psychic_staring_effect_an_artifact_of_pseudo_randomization/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopaesthesia

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2013 21:43:18
... In my case, it was many years ago, but, as the man said, it was what they paid me for; even had my name on some cited papers (http://www.clinsci.org/cs/051/cs0510297.htm).
What's your name then ? I would be interested in following your work .
Can you not even follow a link? (hint: compare my user name with the authors) As it happens, that's the only paper of mine I can find online - it was a long time ago, in my first career. We did a bunch of stuff under Joe Weiner (of Piltdown Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man#Exposure) fame), from creating a heat-stroke treatment bed for the Hajj (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6102233) (for Sudan & Saudi Arabia), to hypothermia in the elderly (one colleague was asked onto BBC TV each winter to give his advice to the elderly: "wrap up well, & keep warm"!), to studying recovery from leg fractures & knee surgery.

Sounds interesting : i will look at that .I saw 2 or 3 names there quickly , so .

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i was mainly talking about the fact that you do still confuse science with materialism in science , a fact you cannot deny as such , a fact you should have acknowledged and recognized as such a long time ago , as a scientist, don't you think ?
Until you can suggest some way of observing and measuring the non-material, science will continue productively discovering and learning more about the observable and measurable world. [Incidentally, if, as you appeared to suggest earlier, you feel that quantum mechanics somehow involves the non-material, then science is already involved in the non-material. Most physicists would disagree with that attribution, but you seem to have your own definitions for these things].

(What about Sheldrake's work and views on the subject ,Nagel's ...views on the subject ? missed that ? hallooo )

I am not talking about science , once again , just about that false outdated materialism in science : can't you get just that ? Come on.

Science does not have to be materialistic , science will continue functioning and delivering results without materialism ....the latter that has absolutely nothing to do with science .
Science will be free from materialism ...
See some quotes i did post from Sheldrake's above mentioned book , regarding how the observer changes his/her  observations and scientific experiments , just by looking at them ......
I will try to find those relevant Sheldrake's quotes regarding that and therefore regarding also quantum physics ,the latter that has been superseding materialism as well .

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But , you do act think and behave in a worse manner than just the above : you continue "defending "   the obviously undeniably indefensible materialism in science , by continuing to see materialism as  being  "scientific " ...
Science involves learning about, describing, and explaining the observable world. Currently it can only observe material things. If you know how the scientific method can be applied to observing and measuring the non-material, science will happily include it, and you'll probably be up for a Nobel prize. Nobody's 'defending' anything, we're just telling you what the current situation is. Sadly, you don't listen or can't understand, so you keep on your hobby horse, tilting at windmills and attacking straw men, with your bonnet full of bees...

God ...
Anyway :
Science is all about understanding and explaining the universe , so, when science is imprisoned by  a false conception of nature such as materialism, science is logically crippled in its effective and unparalleled capabilities methods or approaches to understand and explain nature or the universe  (There are in fact multiple forms of the scientific method , not just one ,: cosmology , for example ,cannot experiment with stars, galaxies , planets ....by putting them in the lab and by subjecting them to experiments ...).
You're the one who do not wanna understand that materialism is just a false outdated ideology secular religion in science , that has been crippling science , the latter can perfectly function and deliver results without materialism : can't you get just that ?
Non-reductionist naturalism might be an option for science , i dunno, Nagel and others talked about , even though it is still a vague vision in the making , once again .


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If you cannot or do not want to accept obvious undeniable facts as such , regarding the fact that materialism is an ideology that has been dominating and hijacking science since the 19 century at least , what kindda scientist are you then ?
I was a human physiologist & environmental biologist. What kindda scientist are you?

Good to know what kindda scientist you are indeed : interesting : i will take your word for it , at face value .
But , that was not the point :
The point was/ is :

"What kindda scientist are you ...." was not a question ,hallloooo.
what kindda scientist are you , if you cannot accept obvious undeniable facts regarding the false outdated nature of materialism in science ...that's what i meant .

As of my field of study , i will keep it as a secret , untill  i see we are getting somewhere on this thread : just be patient with me : i will reveal the purpose of just why i keep that as a secret , for the time being at least , in due time .

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if you cannot accept such obvious undeniable facts ?
Materialism that has absolutely nothing to do with science , once again .
While you whine and whinge about ideologies and 'undeniable facts', the undeniable fact is, scientists around the world are making discoveries in a multitude of fields, increasing the sum total of human knowledge, and generating the technologies that can feed you, make you comfortable, keep you alive, and allow you to communicate with almost anyone on the planet.

Unbelievable : you do not get it yet : what a shame for a self-declared scientist .
God...
Anyway :
I am not talking about science ,or about its effective wonderful amazing ...you name it ....unparalleled method that's like no other , i am not talking about the amazing "miracles " achieved by science , materialism has absolutely nothing to do with = materialism that's been just taking a free ride on the unwilling back of science and has been confining science to its materialist prison .
I was not talking about modern science itself (or about its huge and unparalled achievements ), that's been a unique unparalleled effective human activity "discovery or invention " ,tool or instrument that has been transforming this world and ourselves in the process , and will continue to do so with or without materialism, in ways humanity had / has and will never be able to imagine .
I have ben talking only about materialism in science as a false deceptiive outdated orthodox primitive backward secular religion and false conception of nature in science , that has been hijacking an imprisoning science within its ideological walls , materialism that has been deliberately deceiving humanity in the name of science , by pretending to be "scientific " , by selling its materialist false conception of nature in all sciences for that matter and elsewhere ,and elsewhere  including in art , literature ..........(.i deliberately repeat " and elsewhere " for you ,so , in order to avoid being accused by yourself potentially eventually of labelling art and literature as ..."sciences " , since you seem to be the champion of distorting twisting people's words .), by selling thus its materialist false and outdated ideological misconception of nature in science , as science proper , as scientific facts , as scientific results or as scientific approaches : Get that ? You're really exhausting = an understatement thus= i wanna remain polite with you, out of respect for your purely scientific qualifications  .

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It's a human enterprise, so of course it's imperfect; if you have anything practical to contribute why not get off your backside and get your hands dirty making a contribution, instead of sitting around bleating that you don't like how it's being done?

What do you think i have been doing here and elsewhere? , you have no idea .
Besides, helping science get rid of that materialist magical ideological bullshit prison  is a noble great thing to do also ...that would help science florish blossom prosper progress evolve in unimaginable ways yet , you have no idea , by breaking free from that materialist prison ...= whole new unparalleled unimaginable-yet vistas would open for science as a result , you have no idea = the fact that the possible probable alternatives to materialism are still so vague and in the making , does/will not prevent science from making that ultimate  freedom dream come true , in ways we can still not imagine yet ...
Only the future will tell indeed .

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Let me guess - you don't have a clue how science is actually done, or what drives scientists to do it. Just like you post up whole chapters of other people's books in place of presenting arguments of your own.

No, wrong again , as often is the case with you, i see : my own quick humble input , due to my tight time-frame and due to the nature of this exchange also , did ,obviously , not help making you, people, get my points , so, i have been resorting to quoting some relevant well -informed sources to support my allegations and claims .

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You remind me of those fat couch potatoes watching the TV with a beer in one hand and a pizza in the other, telling the world's elite athletes what they're doing wrong... It's quite sad really - but also quite funny!

Wrong again, as usual : you have no idea of what i have been doing or who i might be ...no pretences or arrogance , no false ones either .
Besides, delivering science from that materialist bullshit prison is worth a while , and beyond that , you have still no idea ................
God...
Amazing ...
I am speechless ...
Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/10/2013 22:19:59
The Detection of Stares:

The detection of stares:
Most people have felt someone looking at them from behind, turned around and met the person’s eyes ...

But proper scientific experiments show this power doesn't actually exist ... http://www.csicop.org/si/show/psychic_staring_effect_an_artifact_of_pseudo_randomization/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopaesthesia
Sheldrake can't let go of morphic resonance. The rest of the community looked at it quite carefully when he first came up with the idea, found no evidence whatsoever for it, and moved on. Sheldrake just can't move on, it was his 'great idea', and so he looks for hidden 'fields' of influence wherever he can, while criticising the scientific community for not joining him. Paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims are a rich hunting ground for such phenomena - and, as he ought to know, if you go looking for something subtle and expecting to find it, if you're not careful you'll often 'find' it whether it's there or not. He wasn't careful, and ironically in this case, underestimated or didn't account for a real 'hidden' human ability - picking up on pseudo-random sequences.

Quite a few scientists seem to wander off-piste into pseudo-science in their late careers, but he's a clever man, and given the numerous misleading distortions of fact he presented in the video posted earlier, I wonder whether he actually knows his case is lost, and the ship is going down, but he keeps paddling and baling rather than sink without trace - and if anything strange does crop up, he can say "I told you so". 

Is that too cynical Don? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/10/2013 22:54:37
Science will be free from materialism ...
Hurrah!

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I will try to find those relevant Sheldrake's quotes regarding that and therefore regarding also quantum physics ,the latter that has been superseding materialism as well .
Please don't trouble yourself. If you think quantum physics supercedes materialism, tell me how it does so in your own words. Who was it said, "when one pretends to know this or that  about something , one gotta prove that to be true"?

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... materialism is just a false outdated ideology secular religion in science , that has been crippling science , the latter can perfectly function and deliver results without materialism...
You're just quite unable to say how, eh?

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As of my field of study , i will keep it as a secret , untill  i see we are getting somewhere on this thread : just be patient with me : i will reveal the purpose of just why i keep that as a secret , for the time being at least , in due time .
Don't bother. As far as I'm concerned, it's your arguments that count here. They add up to a big fat zero so far.

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I have ben talking only about materialism in science as a false deceptiive outdated orthodox primitive backward secular religion and false conception of nature in science , that has been hijacking an imprisoning science within its ideological walls , materialism that has been deliberately deceiving humanity in the name of science , by pretending to be "scientific " , by selling its materialist false conception of nature in all sciences for that matter and elsewhere ,and elsewhere  including in art , literature ..........(.i deliberately repeat " and elsewhere " for you ,so , in order to avoid being accused by yourself potentially eventually of labelling art and literature as ..."sciences " , since you seem to be the champion of distorting twisting people's words .), by selling thus its materialist false and outdated ideological misconception of nature in science , as science proper , as scientific facts , as scientific results or as scientific approaches.
Oh dear, that sounds awful. I'm also strongly against all 'false deceptiive outdated orthodox primitive backward secular religion' (especially that), all 'hijacking an imprisoning science within ... ideological walls', and anything that 'deliberately deceives humanity in the name of science , by pretending to be "scientific "', and 'selling ...  false and outdated ideological misconceptions of nature in science...'.

Looks like we're on the same side after all!  :)

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.. if you have anything practical to contribute why not get off your backside and get your hands dirty making a contribution, instead of sitting around bleating that you don't like how it's being done?
What do you think i have been doing here and elsewhere?
Here? bloviating.

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Besides, helping science get rid of that materialist magical ideological bullshit prison  is a noble great thing to do also ...that would help science florish blossom prosper progress evolve in unimaginable ways yet , you have no idea , by breaking free from that materialist prison ...= whole new unparalleled unimaginable-yet vistas would open for science as a result , you have no idea...
So how are you helping, exactly?

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I am speechless .
That'll be the day!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/10/2013 00:48:22
Whatever :

I'd like to take that as an apology, but then you go and spoil it wth a childish rant.

When you have acquired the humility that underpins the application of science, you will understand a lot more.

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the illusion of objectivity in science

Your illusion, not mine. But it's a harmless one for the most part, especially if the sufferer is not a scientist.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2013 01:45:59
"Science Set Free , 10 Paths to New Discovery "  by R.Sheldrake , Chapter 8 : "Are Minds Confined To Brains ?":



Are Minds Confined to Brains?
Materialism is the doctrine that only matter is real. Hence minds are in brains, and mental activity is
nothing but brain activity. This assumption conflicts with our own experience. When we look at a
blackbird, we see a blackbird; we do not experience complex electrical changes in our brains. But
most of us accepted the mind-within-the-brain theory before we ever had a chance to question it. We
took it for granted as children because it seemed to be supported by all the authority of science and the
educational system.
In his study of children’s intellectual development, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget found that
before about the age of ten or eleven, European children were like “primitive” people. They did not
know that the mind was confined to the head; they thought it extended into the world around them. But
by about the age of eleven, most had assimilated what Piaget called the “correct” view: “Images and
thoughts are situated in the head.”1
Educated people rarely question this “scientifically correct” view in public, perhaps because they do
not want to be thought stupid, childish or primitive. Yet the “correct” view conflicts with our most
immediate experience every time we look around us. We see things outside our bodies; we do not
experience images inside our heads. The materialist theory dominated academic psychology for most
of the twentieth century. The long-dominant behavioralist school explicitly denied the reality of
consciousness. The leading American behavioralist, B. F. Skinner, proclaimed in 1953 that mind and
consciousness were non-existent entities “invented for the sole purpose of providing spurious
explanations … Since mental or psychic events are asserted to lack the dimensions of physical
science, we have an additional reason for rejecting them.”2 As discussed in Chapter 4, a similar denial
of conscious experience is still advocated by contemporary philosophers of the school known as
“eliminative materialism.” Paul Churchland, for example, argues that subjectively experienced mental
states should be regarded as non-existent because descriptions of such states cannot be reduced to the
language of neuroscience.3
Likewise, many leading scientists regard conscious experience as nothing but the subjective
experience of brain activity (see Chapter 4). Francis Crick called this the Astonishing Hypothesis:
“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal
identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and
their associated molecules … This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today
that it can truly be called astonishing.4
This is, indeed, an astonishing claim. But within institutional science it is commonplace. Crick was no
revolutionary: he spoke for the mainstream. Susan Greenfield, an influential neuroscientist, looked at
an exposed brain in an operating theater and reflected, “This was all there was to Sarah, or indeed to
any of us … We are but sludgy brains, and … somehow a character and a mind are generated in this
soupy mess.”5
The traditional alternative to materialism is dualism, the doctrine that minds and brains are
radically different: minds are immaterial and brains are material; minds are outside time and space,
matter is inside time and space. Dualism makes better sense of our experience but makes no sense in
terms of mechanistic science, which is why materialists reject it so vehemently (see Chapter 4).
We need not stay stuck in this materialist-dualist contradiction. There is a way out: a field theory of
minds. We are used to the fact that fields exist both within and outside material objects. The field of a
magnet is inside it and also extends beyond its surface. The gravitational field of the earth is inside the
earth and also stretches out far beyond it, keeping the moon in its orbit. The electromagnetic field of a
mobile phone is both inside it and extends all around it. In this chapter I suggest that the fields of
minds are within brains and extend beyond them.

Wow, this excerpt gives me a whole new level of lack of respect for Sheldrake. The fact that we do not experience photons smacking into our retina and are not conscious of the nervous impulses traveling through the optic nerve hardly contradicts what is known about eye balls and vision.
I also don't see all the codes behind the Windows programs that allow me to interact with you on the Naked Science forum.  Lots of brain processes occur below our level of awareness. I am not conscious of "what it feels like" when my brain regulates my blood pressure, all I get is information about the end results. I'm either okay, or I'm dizzy and about to pass out.

As long as my visual representation of a black bird corresponds some what consistently with what's out there in the world, "real" or not, exactly like yours or not, I can function in the world.

Humans are not born with fully developed brains, the same way they do not hit the ground running like baby giraffes. It does take babies time to learn where they end and the rest of the world begins. It takes time for them to learn what their body parts can do. (One set of new parents took their young baby to the ER because he kept sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes. They were worried he had something stuck in his throat, or was having some weird seizure. The ER doc reassured them "Nope, he's fine. He's just discovered his tongue, and that he can control it -he's trying to look at it, and he's fascinated by it.")

 Babies and children (much younger than 1O or 11!) also develop whats called a theory of mind, that is, they realize that other people think and have feelings like them, but just because they know something, doesn't mean that the other person knows it, and vice versa. Like their body, they discover that their mind and another person's mind are NOT connected. But they also develop the ability to imagine the world from another person's perspective, and to take into account the limits of that person's perspective. To me, that is a sign of intelligence, not brainwashing, as Sheldrake suggests. Even the chimps in the experiments mentioned many posts ago can do it, and they certainly weren't brainwashed by the education system or  Eurocentric materialists. 

Oh, and what is absolutely hilarious is the Crick comment, which Sheldrake has misinterpreted to mean the exact opposite of what it says. Crick was a strict materialist, who was simply trying to convince other materialists that consciousness could be explained and studied through conventional, empirical methods, and worth pursuing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis

As for BF Skinner, that's a straw man argument. Skinner did research in the 50s, before much was known about neurochemistry, before there were brain imagining techniques. He did not deny the existence of subjective experience, he just said, we can't measure or observe it, so let's work on things we can observe and measure and see what that tells us about the brain and how people behave. As limited as his work was, because of the technology of the time, a lot of it still holds up because it was based on empirical observations. Where as other theories in psychology, based on abstract principles (the Id, Ego and Super Ego,) have fallen by the wayside.
But if Sheldrake is going to pick on materialists, he should at least choose some one from this century. I'd like to see him take on Vilayanur S. Ramachandran.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2013 01:56:21
I'd write more cranky responses, but the Northern lights are going crazy here!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2013 04:20:25
The Northern Lights have unfortunately dimmed a bit. So in the mean time, I've been searching for "science proper" on the internet, and strangely found nothing except for a question on a forum by someone named Shibboleth.

Although my knowledge of Islam is quite limited, it doesn't seem that scientists working in traditionally Islamic countries are rabid anti-materialists.

I think scientists working in Africa,Asia, the middle East, or South America, would not consider science, or empirically based, materialist scientific methodology, to be the domain of Eurocentric White devils trying to brain wash them or impose a false misconception of science upon them. The Renaissance in Europe was a long time ago, and many countries and ethnic groups have contributed to materialist scientific findings before and after, often at great personal threat to their safety by religious fundamentalists in their geographical area. The idea that materialism stems from Jesuit tradition is certainly questionable. The Jesuit tradition, as I understand it, (and I'm not Cathothic,) was simply that education had a civilizing effect on people which was overall beneficial . Some Catholic priests may have been more educated than the average person at the time; they knew Latin, and could read, they had time and income to think about science, but they pursued certain scientific findings at their own peril.
But even in Europe, early scientists, who were not associated with the church, like Galileo, or amateur scientists like Leeuwenhoek who looked at semen under a microscope, risked their lives communicating their "materialist"  observations to others. Undoubtably, scientists in Islamic countries encountered the same opposition.

Many religious scientists have attempted to reconcile science and religion, but I suspect Don Quixote's  proposed"paradigm shift" is an attempt to turn the clock back to an essentially medieval view of reality in which materialist science infringes on God's prerogative to alter reality in any way He sees fit.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2013 06:03:50
Question: Why can you never trust an atom?

Because they make up everything!

Hahahahaha.I crack myself up.  Sorry, just a little materialist humor.  And yes I stole that joke.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/10/2013 10:37:36
Many religious scientists have attempted to reconcile science and religion, but I suspect Don Quixote's  proposed"paradigm shift" is an attempt to turn the clock back to an essentially medieval view of reality in which materialist science infringes on God's prerogative to alter reality in any way He sees fit.
I'm sure he'll deny it, but that's the way it comes across. Medieval mysicism & magic substituting for materialism. For 'science', read 'alchemy and incantation' ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/10/2013 10:43:28
I'd write more cranky responses, but the Northern lights are going crazy here!
I wish I could see them from here, but we're too far south in the southern UK...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 17:32:24
Question: Why can you never trust an atom?

Because they make up everything!

Hahahahaha.I crack myself up.  Sorry, just a little materialist humor.  And yes I stole that joke.

_Why can you never trust materialists ?
_Because they deliberately have been deceiving    and  lying to the people in the name of science,since the 19th century at least  .
Because materialists have been chronic centuries -long ...liars , deceivers .......in the name of science ..............

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 17:53:31
The Northern Lights have unfortunately dimmed a bit. So in the mean time, I've been searching for "science proper" on the internet, and strangely found nothing except for a question on a forum by someone named Shibboleth.

Although my knowledge of Islam is quite limited, it doesn't seem that scientists working in traditionally Islamic countries are rabid anti-materialists.

I think scientists working in Africa,Asia, the middle East, or South America, would not consider science, or empirically based, materialist scientific methodology, to be the domain of Eurocentric White devils trying to brain wash them or impose a false misconception of science upon them. The Renaissance in Europe was a long time ago, and many countries and ethnic groups have contributed to materialist scientific findings before and after, often at great personal threat to their safety by religious fundamentalists in their geographical area. The idea that materialism stems from Jesuit tradition is certainly questionable. The Jesuit tradition, as I understand it, (and I'm not Cathothic,) was simply that education had a civilizing effect on people which was overall beneficial . Some Catholic priests may have been more educated than the average person at the time; they knew Latin, and could read, they had time and income to think about science, but they pursued certain scientific findings at their own peril.
But even in Europe, early scientists, who were not associated with the church, like Galileo, or amateur scientists like Leeuwenhoek who looked at semen under a microscope, risked their lives communicating their "materialist"  observations to others. Undoubtably, scientists in Islamic countries encountered the same opposition.

Many religious scientists have attempted to reconcile science and religion, but I suspect Don Quixote's  proposed"paradigm shift" is an attempt to turn the clock back to an essentially medieval view of reality in which materialist science infringes on God's prerogative to alter reality in any way He sees fit.

You do absolutely not know what you're talking about , love :
Don't project your own Eurocentric heritage  , indoctrinations and brainwash on other cultures , religions, thoughtstreams ...please :  materialism was the product of those special Eurocentric cultural philosophic economic social religious ....medieval circumstances that were / are particular to Europe or to the west only = not universal .
See the very certain Islamic origin of the scientific method itself , that did originate directly from the Qur'anic epistemology , i did open a whole topic about .
It was religious extremism mainly , that's obviously alien to Islam itself , that had made the early muslims abandon science , knowledge in the boroader sense ....a historic fact which resulted in their well-deserved decline .
Science is a religious duty in Islam, a form of worship of God ,so, the early muslims who did "invent " and practice the scientific method ,for the first time ever in mankind's history ,thanks to that Qur'anic epistemology they used to interiorize so well  thus ,  by not only laying its philosophic theoretical epistemological and practical foundations , but they also did actively practice it , in full awareness of what the scientific method thus meant on both the abstract and the reality ground .
Those early muslims used to separate science from Islam in the process of course , while trying to get a holistic synthesis from both afterwards :

See that topic of mine on the subject : " What is the real origin of the scientific method ? " in science forums ...:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.0

See this as well , while you are at it :

www.muslimheritage.com
www.1001inventions.com

Science and Islam as the both sides of the same coin , they are necessary to each other , need each other , complete each other ...........

P.S.: The ancient Greek thought was not only unscientific , but was aslo hostile to science , despite all those ancient Greek 'scientists " ' contributions to science , the latter were just the exceptions to the rule who were "practicing  Science " without having any idea about the scientific method as such , or about its epistemological philosophic theoretical basis ....The same goes for all those ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese , Babylonian ........."scientists " ....
Aristotle , for example , used to talk about sense perception, observation, experience, and even induction ...as valid sources of knowledge , but that was just abstract talk that was never practiced on the reality ground :
Aristotle said, for example , once that women had more teeth than men haha , but he never bothered himself to verify that  funny extraordinary claim of his empirically ...see this great epistemological study on the subject + on the above as well :  via google search : free download pdf link = a relatively short concise bright essay you can download for free , first link with PDF lablel:

https://www.google.com/#q=the+islamic+impact+on+western+civilization+reconsidered+by+koshul.pdf

In short :
The Islamic impact on western civilization was so far reaching , as Briffault said ,that above mentioned essay tried to prove to be true , the islamic impact thus on western civilization was so far reaching that there was no single aspect of western growth that could not be traced back to those islamic impacts .
The Islamic impact on western civilization was in fact so far reaching that it did also originate the scientific method itself ,or science itself ..............

Besides, western thought was just an extension of the original Islamic one , western thought that has been taking since its own materialist and other paths though .........
Materialism  as an Eurocentric ideology and false conception of nature , or as a primitive backward degenerate -form-of-christianity secular religion has been making you ,westerners , even dumber , despite all those huge advances of science proper at the level of matter or at the level of material physical and biological processes , materialism had/has absolutely nothing to do with those scientific advances  .............
Materialism in all sciences , in art , literature ...that has been exported to the rest of the world ,thanks to western global domination and power ,is totally alien to those non-western cultures, societies .............
 





.................


Excerpts from "Science Set Free ..." By Sheldrake : Chapter 12 : Scientific Futures :
In other words : dear westerners : you'd better try to get rid of that Eurocentric outdated primitive backward orthodox materialist false secular religion in science, otherwise , you will find yourselves suddenly way behind the rest of the world at the level of the sciences , in plural, at least : you are warned :



The sciences are entering a new phase. The materialist ideology that has ruled them since the
nineteenth century is out of date. All ten of its essential doctrines have been superseded. The
authoritarian structure of the sciences, the illusions of objectivity and the fantasies of omniscience
have all outlived their usefulness.
The sciences will have to change for another reason too: they are now global. Mechanistic science
and the materialist ideology grew up in Europe, and were strongly influenced by the religious disputes
that obsessed Europeans from the seventeenth century onward. But these preoccupations are alien to
cultures and traditions in many other parts of the world.
In 2011, the worldwide expenditure on scientific and technological research and development was
more than $1,000 billion, of which China spent $100 billion.1 Asian countries, especially China and
India, now produce enormous numbers of science and engineering graduates. In 2007, at BSc level
there were 2.5 million science and engineering graduates in India and 1.5 million in China,2 compared
with 515,000 in the United States3 and 100,000 in the UK.4 In addition, many of those studying in the
United States and Europe are from other countries: in 2007, nearly a third of the graduate students in
science and engineering in the United States were foreign, with the majority from India, China and
Korea.5
Yet the sciences as taught in Asia, Africa, the Islamic countries and elsewhere are still packaged in
an ideology shaped by their European past. Materialism gains its persuasive power from the
technological applications of science. But the successes of these applications do not prove that this
ideology is true. Penicillin will go on killing bacteria, jet planes will keep on flying and mobile
telephones will still work if scientists move on to wider views of nature.
No one can foresee how the sciences will evolve, but I believe recognizing that “science” is not one
thing will facilitate their development. “Science” has given way to “the sciences.” By moving beyond
physicalism, the status of physics has changed. By freeing the sciences from the ideology of
materialism, new opportunities for debate and dialogue open up, and so do new possibilities for
research.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 18:37:15
"Casting pearls before ...swine ", no offense , as David Cooper so eloquently metaphorically ironically said earlier indeed:

So much for  our so-called "rational logical scientific  community "  here , my ass , excuse my French , Dutch , English or Arabic ...................
An utter total waste of time ....

My dear fellow, Don Q,

You are casting your pearls before swine. I think you should write all this stuff up as a proper book and make it available on the Kindle where it can be read more comfortably and without being derailed repeatedly by other people with their ludicrous objections.

Nice subtle irony of yours haha , that does have some elements of truth , ironically enough : "DonQ" ? haha , come on .
Hi , buddy : nice to have you back, i mean it  : Philosopher Thomas Nagel is more qualified than i could ever be in that regard .
Well, despite my repeated extensive attempts to clarify my main core point concerning the facts discussed by philosopher Thomas Nagel 's " Mind and cosmos : why the materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " book , these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least : maybe  i was not clear enough , who knows : i did my best though , in that regard at least .
I did even post the introduction, the conclusion , chapter 3 cognition, and chapter 4 consciousness of that book here on this thread for them, in vain .
Not to mention that i also did provide a free download link to most books of Nagel on line , including to that above mentioned book of his .
I really would love to see you forget about our previous little insignificant and meaningless conflict , it was nothing in fact really ,and enrich us with your eventual insights on the subject , seriously .
I would really appreciate it , if you would tell us  your own opinions about Thomas Nagel's book ,or about the main core issue here,as follows  : 

The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist materialist neo_Darwinian conception of nature is false = a misconception of nature , that gotta be replaced by a more or less valid conception of nature in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one , as Nagel proposes in fact ...
Thanks , appreciate .
I really missed your significant presence -personality here and views as well , even though i do not agree with most of your world views ,regarding reductionism in science at least,and its implications for the reductionist approaches of the emergence evolution and origins of life ,the emergence evolution and origins of consciousness ... its implications for the reductionist version of evolution ...  .
Kind regards .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/10/2013 20:10:51
Question: Why can you never trust an atom?

Because they make up everything!

Hahahahaha.I crack myself up.  Sorry, just a little materialist humor.  And yes I stole that joke.

I think everyone deserves that reward for reading this thread.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 20:34:24
Question: Why can you never trust an atom?

Because they make up everything!

Hahahahaha.I crack myself up.  Sorry, just a little materialist humor.  And yes I stole that joke.

I think everyone deserves that reward for reading this thread.

Maybe ,if they happen to be materialists at that in fact : have better ideas ?

And no, atoms do not "make up everything" = that was just the materialist tasteless reductionist magical handicaped  false haha  materialist key-hole  "humor" = that's the whole point of this thread by the way = consciousness is not "made up" by atoms , or rather consciousness is not "made up " by some sort of (magical materialist made up)   strip-tease sexy ritual oscillations vibrations synchronizations haha ...dances of neurons or of ensemble of neurons ,as some "research " provided by some materialist dummy here "proved that to be true "  haha  ...the same goes for all the rest of those non-physical and non-biological processes such as memory , feelings , emotions, human love ,conscience , mind , human cognition  .........................
Physical chemical processes do not "make up " the non-physical and non-biological above mentioned processes , how can they ever do just that ( materialist magic) = they do not "make up " anything"  in fact for that matter , including hallucinations, delusions , fairy tales ...
That materialist   tasteless "joke " is the epitome of stupidity and lack of taste .....= an understatement thus .

P.S.:

Someone asks : how could  all the extremely rich diversity of life on earth evolve from just 1 single so-called original cell  that had suddenly and magically "emerged " from that so-called original "soup "  haha, not my mother's though , via so many "accidents "
 ?
Another answers : well, dummy : we see that happening every single day : 1 single cell (the spermatozoid fusing with the female ovule ) "gives birth" to you , to  me ..........to the rest of mankind , and to most of the rest ...

That's another silly false tasteless reductionist magical materialist "joke " = life is not a matter of just physics and chemistry ..............the latter can certainly and absolutely not account  fully  for life , its emergence evolution and origins = no way .
Plus, The so-called original cell that allegedly "gave birth" to all life  via evolution  , was most probably , if it ever existed in fact , nothing like the current cells ............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 21:12:02
Amazing how that materialist magical reductionist bullshit regarding life , consciousness , memory , feelings , emotions , human love , human cognition , human conscience ............their evolution emergence and origins , gets sold to the people as science proper , as scientific facts , or as scientific approaches ...haha = the epitome os stupidity in science and elsewhere .
Unbelievable ...............
Physics and chemistry can certainly and absolutely not account fully for those above mentioned processes , let alone for their evolution emergence or origins ...
The epitome of stupidity at the heart of science , thanks to materialism ..........
Incredibly amazing ...........
The funniest  and saddest  thing of all about this is that these folks here , and others elsewhere, including the majority of scientists , do not only take that materialist false ridiculous magical bullshit regarding the above for granted without ever questioning its "validity or truth "  , but they also make "jokes " about that hahahahahahahahah

hhhahahahhahahahah

I am speechless again haha ..............

God..............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 21:19:26
hahahahahahhahahahhahahhahaaaaaaaaa
Who laughs last , laughs best ...hahahahahahah
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2013 21:29:53
haha
What a bunch of idiots haha

No wonder that that silly materialist IQ test is a joke .
Heart's intelligence is indeed the highest form of intelligence ,the highest form of intellect : heart as no feelings , emotions, or biological organ ...

hahahahahahahahah
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/10/2013 22:04:16
Wow... I hope that was just an embarrassing outburst, not a public breakdown.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/10/2013 04:26:28
Extended Minds :




 Our experiences of our bodies are in our bodies. The feelings in my fingers are in my fingers,
not in my head. Direct experience offers no support for the extraordinary claim that all experiences
are inside brains. Direct experience is not irrelevant to the nature of consciousness: it is
consciousness.

Well, I'm glad he's not my doctor, anyway. If feeling is in the fingers and not in the brain, why would damage to the brachial nerve plexus in the shoulder, (or a stroke) cause me to lose sensation or movement in my hand? My fingers are just fine! They weren't damaged at all.

 How would one use morphic fields to explain why bright lights or plucking an eyebrow sometimes makes people sneeze? If you don't know that the branching trigeminal cranial nerve receives information from the eyes, nose and upper brow area, and the brain sometimes misinterprets information coming from one as actually coming from another area, it makes no sense. Perception and the experience of sensation is not in the fingers (or the nose in the example above) it's in the brain.

Amputees experience phantom limbs. They experience pain, itchiness, and other sensations from a limb that clearly isn't there. (Perhaps their morphic field is itchy.) Neurologists believe that over time, the part of the brain that used to control the missing arm starts to be utilized for other body parts, and curiously, patients with phantom limb pain or itchiness can often get relief by rubbing their faces, which makes sense since the region devoted to the face is right next door in the somatosensory cortex.

There's a fun experiment called the rubber hand experiment. The participant's real hand is hidden from their sight and replaced with a rubber hand. The experimenter takes two paint brushes and gently strokes the rubber hand and the hidden hand in synchrony. Participants report a bizarre feeling that rubber hand is their hand, even though rationally, they are well aware it's fake. And if the experimenter threatens the rubber hand, with say a sharp knife, or whacks it with a hammer, they reflexively jump or jerk their own hand, even though it was never in any danger.

Another tactile illusion (called the thermal grill illusion) involves temperature receptors in the skin. One kind of temperature receptor responds to cold, 10-30 degrees C. Another responds to warm temperatures, between 30 and 45 degrees C. Both sets respond to scalding hot temperatures. If you take a kitchen fork and place it in cool water, and another in warm water for several minutes, and intertwine the tines of the warm and cool forks and place them against your skin, it creates an uncomfortable burning sensation, since usually that is the only time those receptors fire together. (That's also why your ears burn and itch when you come into a warm house on a cold day)

So what? Well, Sheldrake says direct experience is everything, we should always trust it, and yet it would appear that our consciousness can be fooled rather easily.

It's one thing to ask questions about the "hard problem" of the subjective feeling of consciousness, the unified sense of self, but Sheldrake sounds like he's denying pretty much everything in basic, first year anatomy and physiology book.

ps. I'd tell you some more chemistry jokes, but I only do that periodically. Anyway, the best ones argon.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/10/2013 05:03:25

See the very certain Islamic origin of the scientific method itself , that did originate directly from the Qur'anic epistemology , i did open a whole topic about...
...The Islamic impact on western civilization was so far reaching , as Briffault said ,that above mentioned essay tried to prove to be true , the islamic impact thus on western civilization was so far reaching that there was no single aspect of western growth that could not be traced back to those islamic impacts .
The Islamic impact on western civilization was in fact so far reaching that it did also originate the scientific method itself ,or science itself ..............

Besides, western thought was just an extension of the original Islamic one , western thought that has been taking since its own materialist and other paths though .........
Materialism  as an Eurocentric ideology and false conception of nature , or as a primitive backward degenerate -form-of-christianity secular religion has been making you ,westerners , even dumber , despite all those huge advances of science proper at the level of matter or at the level of material physical and biological processes , materialism had/has absolutely nothing to do with those scientific advances  .............
Materialism in all sciences , in art , literature ...that has been exported to the rest of the world ,thanks to western global domination and power ,is totally alien to those non-western cultures, societies .............
 



Congratulations to you and your people for inventing science. I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 17:37:25
Wow... I hope that was just an embarrassing outburst, not a public breakdown.

Sweet dreams, Alice : your lack of understanding or your amazing tendency to  twisting things  and facts  is extremely staggering for a self-declared scientist..............unbelievable.
I was just having fun ..............at the expense of that laughable materialism ,and at yours as well ....= i couldn't help but doing just that = who could haha = only materialists could ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 17:50:03

See the very certain Islamic origin of the scientific method itself , that did originate directly from the Qur'anic epistemology , i did open a whole topic about...
...The Islamic impact on western civilization was so far reaching , as Briffault said ,that above mentioned essay tried to prove to be true , the islamic impact thus on western civilization was so far reaching that there was no single aspect of western growth that could not be traced back to those islamic impacts .
The Islamic impact on western civilization was in fact so far reaching that it did also originate the scientific method itself ,or science itself ..............

Besides, western thought was just an extension of the original Islamic one , western thought that has been taking since its own materialist and other paths though .........
Materialism  as an Eurocentric ideology and false conception of nature , or as a primitive backward degenerate -form-of-christianity secular religion has been making you ,westerners , even dumber , despite all those huge advances of science proper at the level of matter or at the level of material physical and biological processes , materialism had/has absolutely nothing to do with those scientific advances  .............
Materialism in all sciences , in art , literature ...that has been exported to the rest of the world ,thanks to western global domination and power ,is totally alien to those non-western cultures, societies .............
 



Congratulations to you and your people for inventing science. I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.

Ho, ho , ho : stop your  wild horses , cowgirl :
That was no bragging : how can i brag about something done by others , i cannot even brag about the things i did / do = makes no sense .
Why brag about anything for that matter ...
I said the early muslims   " invented " science : muslims are  no race =   1 of Islam's core messages is to abolish eradicate and refute any kindda discrimination on the basis of belief , race , skin color  , ethnic background, sex , ....in the Islamic sense .

Islam that's against any kindda racism, sectarianism , fascism ...........
Islam was even the first ever to proclaim the equality of all people ,as human beings  regardless of their race , sex , belief , ethnicity ,skin color  ........
I was just trying to respond to that post of yours , in order to correct your obvious   Eurocentric ignorance ,stereotypes, brainwash , prejudice ...on the subject ...that's all .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/10/2013 18:02:03
... I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.
... your German or rather nazi "comparison " or analogy are extremely insulting , disgusting and tasteless + incorrect .Thanks a lot for nothing .

I was just trying to respond to that post of yours , in order to correct your obvious   Eurocentric ignorance ,stereotypes, brainwash , prejudice ...on the subject ...that's all .
Wow, way to miss the point, Don! So keen to take offence and Godwin the thread... maybe you should try reading Cheryl's post again, for comprehension.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 18:19:49
Extended Minds :




 Our experiences of our bodies are in our bodies. The feelings in my fingers are in my fingers,
not in my head. Direct experience offers no support for the extraordinary claim that all experiences
are inside brains. Direct experience is not irrelevant to the nature of consciousness: it is
consciousness.

Well, I'm glad he's not my doctor, anyway. If feeling is in the fingers and not in the brain, why would damage to the brachial nerve plexus in the shoulder, (or a stroke) cause me to lose sensation or movement in my hand? My fingers are just fine! They weren't damaged at all.

 How would one use morphic fields to explain why bright lights or plucking an eyebrow sometimes makes people sneeze? If you don't know that the branching trigeminal cranial nerve receives information from the eyes, nose and upper brow area, and the brain sometimes misinterprets information coming from one as actually coming from another area, it makes no sense. Perception and the experience of sensation is not in the fingers (or the nose in the example above) it's in the brain.

Amputees experience phantom limbs. They experience pain, itchiness, and other sensations from a limb that clearly isn't there. (Perhaps their morphic field is itchy.) Neurologists believe that over time, the part of the brain that used to control the missing arm starts to be utilized for other body parts, and curiously, patients with phantom limb pain or itchiness can often get relief by rubbing their faces, which makes sense since the region devoted to the face is right next door in the somatosensory cortex.

There's a fun experiment called the rubber hand experiment. The participant's real hand is hidden from their sight and replaced with a rubber hand. The experimenter takes two paint brushes and gently strokes the rubber hand and the hidden hand in synchrony. Participants report a bizarre feeling that rubber hand is their hand, even though rationally, they are well aware it's fake. And if the experimenter threatens the rubber hand, with say a sharp knife, or whacks it with a hammer, they reflexively jump or jerk their own hand, even though it was never in any danger.

Another tactile illusion (called the thermal grill illusion) involves temperature receptors in the skin. One kind of temperature receptor responds to cold, 10-30 degrees C. Another responds to warm temperatures, between 30 and 45 degrees C. Both sets respond to scalding hot temperatures. If you take a kitchen fork and place it in cool water, and another in warm water for several minutes, and intertwine the tines of the warm and cool forks and place them against your skin, it creates an uncomfortable burning sensation, since usually that is the only time those receptors fire together. (That's also why your ears burn and itch when you come into a warm house on a cold day)

So what? Well, Sheldrake says direct experience is everything, we should always trust it, and yet it would appear that our consciousness can be fooled rather easily.

It's one thing to ask questions about the "hard problem" of the subjective feeling of consciousness, the unified sense of self, but Sheldrake sounds like he's denying pretty much everything in basic, first year anatomy and physiology book.


My Sheldrake's posted quotes do not necessarily reflect my own opinions  or views  on the subject,as they do not reflect those of this great site either  :
I just wanted to give you, people, his opinions views approaches ...on the subject : you're perfectly free to make of that what you wish to do ...
Despite Sheldrake's flaws , i would prefer him way above the whole majority of the scientific mainstream establishment or community put together ,on the subject , simply because he's honest enough , a man with integrity and courage enough , to condemn and to try to refute that outdated false deceptive materialist dogmatic belief system in science ...to try to liberate science from materialism that way .
He is also brave enough to dare enter a territory that's highly deceptive elusive indeed , by trying to tackle it : i think that , despite his pretty logical   human flaws ,taking into consideration the fact that all sciences and the rest are still under that materialist backward false and outdated dominance , and taking into consideration the temporary scientific data and knowledge of this time and age of ours , he should be , and he might be in the near or far future  , considered by the next generations as  1 of the greatest pioneers scientists  who dared/dare to open up whole new vistas for science away from that materialist dominance prison, science has been confined to for so long now : his work might still seem at the childish or at the embryonary stage maybe , but that's how new eras of science begin ...........others might take it from there ,and might come up with visions approaches views that might revolutionize science , our understanding of science and the universe thus , in still unimaginable -to-us -all ways ...

Quote
ps. I'd tell you some more chemistry jokes, but I only do that periodically. Anyway, the best ones argon.

haha , please do not , for your own sake, credibility  and dignity :
Do not try to risk being ridiculed and embarrassed  , if your ever try to do just that :
I am not a sadist or a cruel person , so, i warn you before hand : i will be unmerciful if you do  that  haha
Atoms do not  make up everything, neither figuratively nor literally , love ;see my post above in question on the subject .
.............
You do not only not realise the fact that those potentially materialist "jokes " , i can provide you with a whole arsenal from   by the way , are not only self-refuting self-defeating ,self-embarrassing , but they are also tasteless and incorrect ;
Worse : materialists think those materialist "jokes " are intelligent or funny = they are neither .
=Materialists cannot even come up with intelligent correct ,tastefull, or "logical " jokes
Pathetic , and tragic -hilarious ,sorry .
Only materialists, idiots or fools can come up with silly "jokes " that hit them back in the face as a launched boomerang that missed its intended target(s).

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 18:24:17
... I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.
... your German or rather nazi "comparison " or analogy are extremely insulting , disgusting and tasteless + incorrect .Thanks a lot for nothing .

I was just trying to respond to that post of yours , in order to correct your obvious   Eurocentric ignorance ,stereotypes, brainwash , prejudice ...on the subject ...that's all .
Wow, way to miss the point, Don! So keen to take offence and Godwin the thread... maybe you should try reading Cheryl's post again, for comprehension.

Coming from Mr. miscomprehension par excellence himself, i cannot but decline this offer : try to correct your own major major major lack of comprehension regarding  what people tell you first , before trying to preach the very same to others = a paradoxical feature of a self-declared scientist ...amazing .

P.S.: Editing : you were right about that 1 thing = what a real "miracle" for  a ...self-declared scientist .....a "miracle" that shouldn't be one  .
If most scientists can make all those lethal errors of comprehension and twisting of facts ,like you do , then, i will be "praying " for science,and for its future as well  .........Amen...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 19:35:47
By the way, folks :
The following is not the kindda materialism i have been talking about all along : just to make sure you do not confuse it with this one :
Cheers :


A Londoner parks his brand new Porsche in front of the office to show it off to his colleagues.

As he's getting out of the car, a lorry comes speeding along too close to the curb and takes off the door before zooming off. More than a little distraught, the Londoner grabs his mobile and calls the police. Five minutes later, the police arrive.

Before the policeman has a chance to ask any questions, the man starts screaming hysterically: "My Porsche, my beautiful silver Porsche is ruined.

No matter how long it's at the panel beaters it'll simply never be the same again!"

After the man finally finishes his rant, the policeman shakes his head in disgust "I can't believe how materialistic you bloody Londoners are," he says. "You lot are so focused on your possessions that you don't notice anything else in your life."

"How can you say such a thing at a time like this?" sobs the Porsche owner.

The policeman replies, "Didn't you realize that your right arm was torn off when the truck hit you?"

The Londoner looks down in horror "cuddling  HELL!" he screams.......

"Where's my Rolex????..."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2013 19:51:27
@ Cheryl : see this forum : Why materialism is false :

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 10/10/2013 20:49:37
Congratulations to you and your people for inventing science. I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.

Oy vey! You think you have troubles, already? Shalom.

But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/10/2013 21:14:36
But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.
Also give him credit that despite the usual ill-mannered insults to me for pointing out his blunder, he did go back and edit his post to remove the offensive 'nazi' reference...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 10/10/2013 23:24:08
Offending nazis is not a crime, surely?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/10/2013 00:23:30
Offending nazis is not a crime, surely?
It was once; different time, different place ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/10/2013 01:43:15

My Sheldrake's posted quotes do not necessarily reflect my own opinions  or views  on the subject,as they do not reflect those of this great site either  :
I just wanted to give you, people, his opinions views approaches ...on the subject : you're perfectly free to make of that what you wish to do ...
Despite Sheldrake's flaws , i would prefer him way above the whole majority of the scientific mainstream establishment or community put together ,on the subject , simply because he's honest enough , a man with integrity and courage enough , to condemn and to try to refute that outdated false deceptive materialist dogmatic belief system in science ...to try to liberate science from materialism that way .
He is also brave enough to dare enter a territory that's highly deceptive elusive indeed , by trying to tackle it : i think that , despite his pretty logical   human flaws ,taking into consideration the fact that all sciences and the rest are still under that materialist backward false and outdated dominance , and taking into consideration the temporary scientific data and knowledge of this time and age of ours , he should be , and he might be in the near or far future  , considered by the next generations as  1 of the greatest pioneers scientists  who dared/dare to open up whole new vistas for science away from that materialist dominance prison, science has been confined to for so long now : his work might still seem at the childish or at the embryonary stage maybe , but that's how new eras of science begin ...........others might take it from there ,and might come up with visions approaches views that might revolutionize science , our understanding of science and the universe thus , in still unimaginable -to-us -all ways ...


If you are going to post long passages from books without any accompanying comments, I can only assume you are using them to support your arguments, and that is why I respond to them the way I do. If you are just posting them to edify or entertain me, thank you. I did give me greater insight into his strange lack of factual knowledge underlying his conclusions.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/10/2013 02:22:07

Ho, ho , ho : stop your  wild horses , cowgirl :
That was no bragging : how can i brag about something done by others , i cannot even brag about the things i did / do = makes no sense .
Why brag about anything for that matter ...
I said the early muslims   " invented " science : muslims are  no race =   1 of Islam's core messages is to abolish eradicate and refute any kindda discrimination on the basis of belief , race , skin color  , ethnic background, sex , ....in the Islamic sense .

Islam that's against any kindda racism, sectarianism , fascism ...........
Islam was even the first ever to proclaim the equality of all people ,as human beings  regardless of their race , sex , belief , ethnicity ,skin color  ........
I was just trying to respond to that post of yours , in order to correct your obvious   Eurocentric ignorance ,stereotypes, brainwash , prejudice ...on the subject ...that's all .


Sorry if I'm a bit touchy on this subject. But whether it's "race" or "ethnicity" or "people whose ancestors came from a certain geographical area sharing certain familiar connections and cultural traditions," it always raises a red flag. When ever I hear certain accomplishments attributed to a race, religion or nation of people, I wonder - really? Were they all sitting in the room together when this was done? I suspect some nerdy scientist, recently or hundreds of years ago, who may have been ignored or even misunderstood by his neighbors or closest blood relatives, would have given anything to talk to any other human interested in the same idea, no matter what his color or religion or gender,  in some foreign land. We take for granted this opportunity. So yes, when I hear some one boasting that this group invented this, or that group discovered that, it irks me a bit and makes me questions their motives in doing so.

On the other hand
, I'd like to point out that Canada (my adopted homeland) invented not only the dental mirror, but the paint roller as well. So there! And they invented Kevlar, so we can safely visit the United States. Those arrogant Americans like to take credit for the invention of the telephone, but Alexander Graham Bell was actually a Canadian, and his first words into it were not  "Watson, come here, I want to see you."  It was "Watson, we're out of beer. I want to see you." Necessity is the mother of invention, and after 200 stitches to his face, four broken noses, a fractured cheek and jawbone, and several concussions, hockey player Jaques Plante invented the goalie mask. (sheer brilliance!) Canadians also invented the snow mobile, snow plow and snow blower, after getting stranded in drifts for about 300 years. (Okay, they're not quick, but they do eventually come up with something.)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/10/2013 15:42:28
Congratulations to you and your people for inventing science. I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.

Oy vey! You think you have troubles, already? Shalom.


Yes, I'm sorry about that. Although I don't know why since my German ancestors wandered over to North America in 1700/ 1800s, mixed it up with the English and Scots, and one native American. Still, I'm sure I share the arm of one  chromosome or another with somebody who did something awful to somebody else, either in Europe or over in America. Genetic guilt is probably as irrational as genetic pride, but it does, as I was trying explain to Don, have a tempering effect on the desire to base ones identity on affiliation with various groups, genetic or cultural.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 17:10:17

Ho, ho , ho : stop your  wild horses , cowgirl :
That was no bragging : how can i brag about something done by others , i cannot even brag about the things i did / do = makes no sense .
Why brag about anything for that matter ...
I said the early muslims   " invented " science : muslims are  no race =   1 of Islam's core messages is to abolish eradicate and refute any kindda discrimination on the basis of belief , race , skin color  , ethnic background, sex , ....in the Islamic sense .

Islam that's against any kindda racism, sectarianism , fascism ...........
Islam was even the first ever to proclaim the equality of all people ,as human beings  regardless of their race , sex , belief , ethnicity ,skin color  ........
I was just trying to respond to that post of yours , in order to correct your obvious   Eurocentric ignorance ,stereotypes, brainwash , prejudice ...on the subject ...that's all .


Sorry if I'm a bit touchy on this subject. But whether it's "race" or "ethnicity" or "people whose ancestors came from a certain geographical area sharing certain familiar connections and cultural traditions," it always raises a red flag. When ever I hear certain accomplishments attributed to a race, religion or nation of people, I wonder - really? Were they all sitting in the room together when this was done? I suspect some nerdy scientist, recently or hundreds of years ago, who may have been ignored or even misunderstood by his neighbors or closest blood relatives, would have given anything to talk to any other human interested in the same idea, no matter what his color or religion or gender,  in some foreign land. We take for granted this opportunity. So yes, when I hear some one boasting that this group invented this, or that group discovered that, it irks me a bit and makes me questions their motives in doing so.


I told you i was just responding to that post of yours earlier , didn't i?
I see no point in repeating myself .
I do even reject such  notions or  rather  illusions such as  nationality, nationalism , patriotism ....not to mention all those illusionary ridiculous "identities " based on race (White supremacists ....ku kulx klan haha , neo-nazis, skin heads ....Arab nationalism ....the mainstream global dominance of  white Eurocentrism and white Eurocentric materialism ...Chinese nationalism , Turkish nationalism ...Russian nationalism ...), ethnicity , geography, belief .............

P.S.: There are actually muslims from all nationalities, races, ethnic groups , skin color , sex, from different cultures, nations,geographies  ..............

Once again, universal Islam happened/ happens and will continue to happen proclaiming the obvious God-given equality of all peoples , regardless of their race , skin color, sex , belief , ethnicity .............



Quote
Quote

On the other hand
, I'd like to point out that Canada (my adopted homeland) invented not only the dental mirror, but the paint roller as well. So there! And they invented Kevlar, so we can safely visit the United States. Those arrogant Americans like to take credit for the invention of the telephone, but Alexander Graham Bell was actually a Canadian, and his first words into it were not  "Watson, come here, I want to see you."  It was "Watson, we're out of beer. I want to see you." Necessity is the mother of invention, and after 200 stitches to his face, four broken noses, a fractured cheek and jawbone, and several concussions, hockey player Jaques Plante invented the goalie mask. (sheer brilliance!) Canadians also invented the snow mobile, snow plow and snow blower, after getting stranded in drifts for about 300 years. (Okay, they're not quick, but they do eventually come up with something.)

In the above first part of this post of yours , you expressed  your legetimate suspicion skepticism and aversion regarding any race ,nationality ,geography . culture...based ideologies or manufactured illusionary "identities " based on race , ethnicity , sectarianism, geography , cultures , nationalities ...and rightly so, but ,then again, you immediatly went on boosting about the Canadian achievements ...= how paradoxical can you be ?

Try to read this interesting book on the subject , you can find on line, written by the Indian-British famous economist who won the nobel prize for economy : Amartya Sen : " Identity and Violence  , the illusion of destiny " , even though it's just a liberal view .
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Identity-Violence-Illusion-Amartya-Sen/dp/0141027800
Here is the book review , to give you a first taste or flavour of the book in question :  very actual book indeed , regarding the rise of nationalism, ethnicism, sectarianism , racism, xenophoby , muslim and other religious extremism ..............as a result of globalism , i guess :
http://www.gobookee.org/get_book.php?u=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tdW5pdHktcmVsYXRpb25zLm9yZy51ay9mcy9kb2MvYm9vay1yZXZpZXcucGRmCklkZW50aXR5IGFuZCBWaW9sZW5jZTogdGhlIGlsbHVzaW9uIG9mIGRlc3Rpbnk=
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 17:34:05
Congratulations to you and your people for inventing science. I've never been tempted to brag about my racial heritage; it just seems to get Germans into all sorts of trouble when they start doing that, and then no one wants to sit next to them at a dinner parties.

Oy vey! You think you have troubles, already? Shalom.

But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.

Haha
If i am a sinistral. as you put it at least , and you like that joke , then , you are a sinistral as well , logically .
I did just post that  joke regarding another kind of materialism that should not be confused with the philosophical one i was talking about all along ...

I have been accused of many things during my relatively short life up untill now , but i was never accused of being a sinistral before haha ..............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 17:38:01

My Sheldrake's posted quotes do not necessarily reflect my own opinions  or views  on the subject,as they do not reflect those of this great site either  :
I just wanted to give you, people, his opinions views approaches ...on the subject : you're perfectly free to make of that what you wish to do ...
Despite Sheldrake's flaws , i would prefer him way above the whole majority of the scientific mainstream establishment or community put together ,on the subject , simply because he's honest enough , a man with integrity and courage enough , to condemn and to try to refute that outdated false deceptive materialist dogmatic belief system in science ...to try to liberate science from materialism that way .
He is also brave enough to dare enter a territory that's highly deceptive elusive indeed , by trying to tackle it : i think that , despite his pretty logical   human flaws ,taking into consideration the fact that all sciences and the rest are still under that materialist backward false and outdated dominance , and taking into consideration the temporary scientific data and knowledge of this time and age of ours , he should be , and he might be in the near or far future  , considered by the next generations as  1 of the greatest pioneers scientists  who dared/dare to open up whole new vistas for science away from that materialist dominance prison, science has been confined to for so long now : his work might still seem at the childish or at the embryonary stage maybe , but that's how new eras of science begin ...........others might take it from there ,and might come up with visions approaches views that might revolutionize science , our understanding of science and the universe thus , in still unimaginable -to-us -all ways ...


If you are going to post long passages from books without any accompanying comments, I can only assume you are using them to support your arguments, and that is why I respond to them the way I do. If you are just posting them to edify or entertain me, thank you. I did give me greater insight into his strange lack of factual knowledge underlying his conclusions.

Well, since you were asking for non - materialist approaches and views  , i just provided you with Sheldrake's , Nagel's ...so.
Sheldrake's unorthodox approaches might be the genesis of the new era  of science ...who knows ...

P.S.: What do you think of that link i provided you with earlier , concerning "Why materialism is false ?" .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 17:46:16
Offending nazis is not a crime, surely?

Sure : who did offend the nazis here anyway ?
Offending the zionazis neither : Shalom.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 18:00:53
But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.
Also give him credit that despite the usual ill-mannered insults to me for pointing out his blunder, he did go back and edit his post to remove the offensive 'nazi' reference...

Thanks for noticing : what a miracle .
What offensive nazi reference by the way ?
I just thought that Cheryl was alluding to the nazis when she talked about those bragging Germans about their racial heritage = my blunder and mistake  , so, i just said that that nazi "comparison or analogy " was disgusting , insulting ............
What, on earth, is wrong with your comprehension skills, friend ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 18:08:36
@ Cheryl :
Why Materialism is False ? :


Source : http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False

Prior Note :

The following article does not necessarily reflect my own opinions or views on the subject :

The critique of materialism goes way beyond what the following article tries to approach ,summarize or tackle  :
-I-I do not agree with the author's allegations that materialism has succeeded in "solving " the challenge or hard problem of life , design, thought , morality ...
0_Materialism is just a dogmatic belief system or rather a false secular religion ideology  in science , a misconsception of nature in science , that has absolutely nothing to do with science thus , and that just tries to "validate " itself through science , in vain of course , logically and per-definition .
I_Those so-called neurocomputation mechanisms cannot account for such  non-physical non-biological  processes such as thought either .
II-Darwin's theory of evolution is only and exclusively biological physical , so, it tackles only the physical biological side of evolution, but materialists , per definition, just try to extend it to non-physical non-biological processes ,for obvious materialist ideological "reasons " that have ,obviously , nothing to do with science  .
III- That life can be approached via physics and chemistry does not mean that life is just that .
IV_ Materialism cannot , per definition, succeed in "refuting " the existence of God, design ................behind all those laws of physics ............

V-Neither the materialist version or rather the materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution , nor Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution can account for human morality, cognition,  life or of consciousness "fully" ........let alone their  evolution .
VI-Materialism can, per definition , not account for consciousness, life ,feelings , emotions,  human cognition , human conscience , human morality , ...."fully" , let alone their origins evolution or emergence .
_VII-The brain does not cause consciousness : that alleged causality that's ,obviously , just a materialist misinterpretation of that   mutual actual factual correlation or interaction between the brain and consciousness thus  , was never proven to be true, ever , that's just a materialist belief assumption : causation is no explanation either .
VIII-There is a lot more to say on the subject , so, i will just leave it at that ,for the time being at least .

Quote :

" Why Materialism is False:

    In short, I think materialism is false. Below is why, with a detour through the reasons why Materialism isn't false.

    I don't mind if you read this or not, just thought I'd share for anyone remotely interested. No, it's not particularly well written or well structured, and there is so much more that could be said on this topic, but ... meh.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Materalism, I define as follows:
    'The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.' - Answers.com
    First, there is an important distinction to be made. Materialism and Science are not the same thing. Science is the study of the natural world, so Science has no jurisdiction over any theory regarding that which cannot be empirically tested.

    For example, suppose a Theist were to conjecture that God is the law enforcer of the universe, ensuring that at every moment, at every place, all physical occurrences obeyed the laws that God has decreed. This conjecture is impossible to test scientifically, since all possible experimental observations are consistent with its predictions. However, the unscientific character of our Theist's conjecture does not mean that it is false; the answer to the question is simply outside of the jurisdiction of the Scientific method.

    The philosophy of Materialism goes beyond the Scientific Method, postulating that only the material exists. This would place the Materialist in disagreement with our Theist. If it is true that only the material exists, then the Theist's law enforcer God does not exist, since that God would qualify as immaterial.

    The above constitutes the important distinction between Materialism and Science, whilst also explaining why Materialists are always Scientists. However the philosophy of Materialism should not be conflated with that of Science, as it is possible to both be a Scientist and not be a Materialist.

    _______________________________________________________________


    Materialism has always been an unpopular philosophy, with critics branding it as cold, uncaring and fundamentally amoral. The philosophy has had its most bitter rivals in that of Theism, as Materialism denies the truth of religious scripture, denying the existence of God, the afterlife and the immortal soul. Despite this, Materialism has stumbled on, with proponents offering Materialistic solutions to many of the long standing problems in philosophy. The problems listed below have stood as criticisms to the Materialistic philosophy now and in the past. The list is not comprehensive, but does reflect what I believe to have been the key problems that Materialism has overcome.

    1) The problem of life
    2) The problem of design
    3) The problem of thought
    4) The problem of morality
    Here I will sketch a brief overview of what each problem is and how I believe the Materialist can solve it.

    The first and easiest is the problem of life. The problem arises from the unique properties and capabilities of living organisms; it had seemed incomprehensible that the mechanical world of physics could explain the biological. Something else was needed, so it was postulated that a vital force animated living matter, imbuing it with lifelike qualities. The doctrine held that life was inexplicable in terms of physicochemical interactions. If the Materialist could not explain life, then Materialism must be false.

    The Materialist did not get his answer to this problem in one sweeping theory, but rather a cumulation of experimental findings, from William Harvey's discovery that the circularitory system was a cleverly engineered mechanism to pump blood around the body, to Fracis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The march of scientific progress has unveiled the fine structure of cellular machinery, all working impeccably from physicochemical laws without the need for a vital animating force.

    Here the Materialist can explain how life works without appealing to any immaterial vital essence, but there still remains another problem to be solved. This is the problem of design. How is it that this incredible arrangement of organised matter came into being? The odds that such organisation would occur by chance are astronomically low, but life is bustling all around us in a multitude of forms. If the Materialist cannot explain this design, then Materialism must be false.

    In 1859, in a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace that explanation was provided. The Materialist now had The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection i.e. The gradual accumulation of adaptive organisation by selective advantage. This elegant theory has provided the Materialist with an answer to the problem of design, which has in time been corroborated by a vast amount of evidence, from practically every field of scientific study.

    The problem of design had been solved, but an interesting disagreement between Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin persisted. The problem of thought presented itself. To Wallace, the human capacity for reasoned thought was beyond the reach of evolution, a feat which could simply not have been achieved by anything other than supernatural intervention, or in other words: God given. How could it be that a physical system could possibly think? If Materialism cannot explain how it is that we think, then Materialism must be false.

    The answer to the problem today is all around us, in front of anyone reading this at this very moment, i.e. computation. Alan Turing's Turing machine and the advent of modern electronics are a vivid illustration that complex computational architecture, obeying only the laws of physics can perform intelligent operations. The Materialist can now look to neurobiology, where cognition is explained as the consequent of neurocomputations occurring in parallel throughout the central nervous system. The Materialist now has his answer to Wallace's conjecture that the capacity for reason is unevolvable and must be God given.

    So the Materialist has provided powerful arguments to solve the problem of life, the problem of design and the problem thought. Unlike these three problems, the final problem on my list cannot refute Materialism. If Materialism is indeed amoral, it would be a nonsequitor to conclude from Materialism's amorality that it is false. For this reason, the problem of morality is a special case, but nonetheless very powerful. Briefly, the argument claims that if we are nothing but an unintentional consequence of natural selection, nothing but elaborate machines and built by selfish genes, then there is no reason to work for a higher purpose. For what reason should we treat our fellow man with compassion? What becomes of right and wrong with no God?

    The answer to this problem is the combined product of evolutionary biology, neurobiology and philosophy. The combined solutions to the previous three problems set the stage for solving the problem of morality. First, evolutionary biology, far from undermining the basis of morality, can explain why we have a moral sense in the first place. Second, neurobiology has provided scientists with evidence of how the human brain computes moral decisions. Finally, philosophers have raised objections to the accusation that Materialism is inherently amoral, refuting the accusations with powerful solutions and counterarguments.

    Note: I am sure many reading this may object to the solutions I have presented to the 'four problems,' such objections are welcome and I encourage further criticism.

    ________________________________________________________________

    I have taken this detour through the successes of Materialism to drive home that I have no political agenda against the philosophy, religiously motivated or otherwise. I now wish to draw attention to my fifth problem for Materialism:

    5) The problem of consciousness
    A single element of conscious experience is called a quale, a group of quale are known as qualia. A quale might be the subjective experience of red, cold or pain. All quale are symbolic representations of frequencies and angles. The problem for Materialism is explaining qualia, the subjective experience of life, the very subjective experience without which we cannot imagine life being worth living at all. How can a physical system such as the brain be responsible for consciousness?. This is no small problem, for if Materialism cannot explain consciousness, then Materialism is false.

    The problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers for centuries. To clarify the problem, imagine opening up my brain whilst displaying a large red circle to my eyes. After some probing, you discover a cluster of neurons whose combined activity is responsible for my conscious experience of red. However, all you have is my word to go on, there is nothing special about that particular cluster of neurons, no telltale sign that these are responsible for my conscious experience. To the outside observer, the entire neurocomputational system would work exactly the same whether or not I was actually consciously experiencing the red circle. To make make matters more puzzling, even if I am consciously experiencing life, how do you know that what you call red is what I call red? So long as the frequencies and angles which these qualia represent maintain a constant relation to each other, then for all you know my conscious experience of red might be radically different to yours.

    No matter where you look in my brain, even if you are looking at that particular cluster of neurons responsible for my conscious experience of red, you cannot sensibly say that you are looking at the quale redness. The redness I see is qualitively independent of the neural substrate that is responsible for that quale. To put this another way, I would argue that qualia are ontologically irreducible to the neural substrate, that is, qualia have independent qualities which cannot be explained at the physical level. However, I also would argue that consciousness is entirely caused by the neural substrate, that consciousness has no informational content or cognitive ability above that which occurs on the neurocomputational level i.e. consciousness is causally reducible to the neural substrate.

    To clarify, we can play a thought experiment involving two billiard balls. Billiard ball 1 and billiard ball 2. First take these two examples:

    1) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    2) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1. Now, take a third example:

    3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.
    In this thought experiment, ball 2 exists and it's change in velocity is caused by ball 1, but to any observer unable to register ball 2, it remains completely invisible and undetectable. My conjecture is that qualia are like ball 2, which is why the conscious experience of other human beings is impossible to detect, the causal interaction is one way.

    The problem for the Materialist is that consciousness itself is immaterial, the frequencies and angles that make up subjective experience may be caused by, but are not part of the Material world. Thus, I conclude that Materialism is false.

    ________________________________________________________________

    A possible criticism of my theory is that consciousness is an emergent consequence of brain activity. This is a tempting view to take, analogous to the quality of wetness. A body of water is wet, even though no particular element of that body of water is wet. To clarify, a single molecule of H2O cannot be wet, because the quality of wetness is dependent upon the interactions of the constituent parts, without belong to any of those particular constituent parts. Wetness is an emergent property. A critic might conjecture that consciousness is also an emergent property of brain activity.

    I do not think that consciousness is an emergent product of brain activity. The difference between wetness and consciousness is that the quality of wetness follows from the physical laws governing the behavior of H2O, that is, given only the laws of physics I could predict that particular chemical substances would have the emergent property of wetness. The same cannot be said of consciousness. Given only the laws of physics, I could not predict the emergence of consciousness, it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be." End Quote.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/10/2013 18:11:04

Haha
If i am a sinistral. as you put it at least , and you like that joke , then , you are a sinistral as well , logically .
I did just post that  joke regarding another kind of materialism that should not be confused with the philosophical one i was talking about all along ...

I have been accused of many things during my relatively short life up untill now , but i was never accused of being a sinistral before haha ..............


In that case you definitely have an oddly biased view of the world! Most people wear their watch on the left wrist, and the buttons are normally placed that way, but a few "hard lefties" prefer the right.

Quote
Materialism and Science are not the same thing.

except, apparently, in your own ravings.

Beware of selfcontradiction. Remember the fate of the Oozlum bird: not knowing whether it was coming or going, it changed direction so many times that it flew up its own arse and disappeared. Incidentally this is the basis of Continuum String Theory.

Quote
Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1.

What do you mean by "directly experience"? We infer the existence of 2 because of its observed effect on 1. But we inferred the existence of 1 from its interaction with photons that then interacted with our eyes. So what?  It's an everyday observation: many people have heard cuckoos, few have seen them, and only other cuckoos have "directly experienced" a cuckoo, probably during the mating season (they are mostly solitary).

Quote
3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.

It is difficult, and certainly pointless,  to conduct a thought experiment that defies the laws of nature. If momentum is not conserved in your universe, you are clearly not of this world, nor of any other with which we can interact.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 18:42:58

Haha
If i am a sinistral. as you put it at least , and you like that joke , then , you are a sinistral as well , logically .
I did just post that  joke regarding another kind of materialism that should not be confused with the philosophical one i was talking about all along ...

I have been accused of many things during my relatively short life up untill now , but i was never accused of being a sinistral before haha ..............


In that case you definitely have an oddly biased view of the world! Most people wear their watch on the left wrist, and the buttons are normally placed that way, but a few "hard lefties" prefer the right.

Quote
Materialism and Science are not the same thing.

except, apparently, in your own ravings.

Beware of selfcontradiction. Remember the fate of the Oozlum bird: not knowing whether it was coming or going, it changed direction so many times that it flew up its own arse and disappeared. Incidentally this is the basis of Continuum String Theory.

Quote
Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1.

What do you mean by "directly experience"? We infer the existence of 2 because of its observed effect on 1. But we inferred the existence of 1 from its interaction with photons that then interacted with our eyes. So what?  It's an everyday observation: many people have heard cuckoos, few have seen them, and only other cuckoos have "directly experienced" a cuckoo, probably during the mating season (they are mostly solitary).

Quote
3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.

It is difficult, and certainly pointless,  to conduct a thought experiment that defies the laws of nature. If momentum is not conserved in your universe, you are clearly not of this world, nor of any other with which we can interact.

First of all, stop using your grudges , rancune ...."revenge "   feelings or emotions  ,as "arguments " = they are not .

Second : only those dishonest self-deluded die-hard core materialist fanatics , idiots or fools would deny the obvious fact that materialism and science are 2 totally different "things " .

Third : science can only approach the material side of reality , directly empirically , so to speak : the non-material processes or the non-material side of reality can be approached by science , indirectly , via a multitude of ways , especially via approaching their  material basis .

Fourth :what kindda ''answers "  are these then ?
Try to elaborate on that  wilst avoiding judgements of value , dude : those judgements of value of yours you must have been confusing with arguments ....
Insults or toilet language are no arguments either .

P,S.: The fact that offending zionazism is not a crime either (Actually , offending zionazism is the least one can do = an understatement thus )  , a fact you might deny as such , is no "reason " to utter such garbage language on a science forum , as a result .
Shalom ............Amen haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 20:41:29
@ Cheryl :
Science jokes :



http://www.buzzfeed.com/babymantis/20-more-spectacularly-nerdy-science-jokes-1opu

http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/sciencejokes.html


http://chemistry.about.com/u/ua/chemistryfunhumor/Science-Jokes.htm






Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2013 20:52:14
Are You Smart Enough To Get These Nerdy Jokes?



Big Bang Theory best science joke



The Big Bang Theory - Please don't touch my breasts

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/10/2013 00:07:43



I told you i was just responding to that post of yours earlier , didn't i?
I see no point in repeating myself .
I do even reject such  notions or  rather  illusions such as  nationality, nationalism , patriotism ....not to mention all those illusionary ridiculous "identities " based on race (White supremacists ....ku kulx klan haha , neo-nazis, skin heads ....Arab nationalism ....the mainstream global dominance of  white Eurocentrism and white Eurocentric materialism ...Chinese nationalism , Turkish nationalism ...Russian nationalism ...), ethnicity , geography, belief .............

P.S.: There are actually muslims from all nationalities, races, ethnic groups , skin color , sex, from different cultures, nations,geographies  ..............

Once again, universal Islam happened/ happens and will continue to happen proclaiming the obvious God-given equality of all peoples , regardless of their race , skin color, sex , belief , ethnicity .............






Belief? well, as I understand it, you aren't really equal unless you share their religious beliefs and adhere to their practices, so I would say it is a bit a little exclusionary in that sense. Which is fine, their club, their rules.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/10/2013 01:09:17
But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.
Also give him credit that despite the usual ill-mannered insults to me for pointing out his blunder, he did go back and edit his post to remove the offensive 'nazi' reference...

Thanks for noticing : what a miracle .
What offensive nazi reference by the way ?
I just thought that Cheryl was alluding to the nazis when she talked about those bragging Germans about their racial heritage = my blunder and mistake  , so, i just said that that nazi "comparison or analogy " was disgusting , insulting ............
What, on earth, is wrong with your comprehension skills, friend ?


Well, actually I was alluding to Nazis, and I was  comparing your boasts to that sort of thing. So no need to apologize, Don.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/10/2013 01:19:18


In the above first part of this post of yours , you expressed  your legetimate suspicion skepticism and aversion regarding any race ,nationality ,geography . culture...based ideologies or manufactured illusionary "identities " based on race , ethnicity , sectarianism, geography , cultures , nationalities ...and rightly so, but ,then again, you immediatly went on boosting about the Canadian achievements ...= how paradoxical can you be ?



Um, no,  I was just  kidding around. I was not sincerely bragging about the invention of the paint roller, although, it is quite nifty when you need one.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/10/2013 01:50:27

P.S.: What do you think of that link i provided you with earlier , concerning "Why materialism is false ?" .



You know it's curious that you are most comfortable attacking the weaknesses or lack of progress you perceive in materialism, and want me to defend it all. But when you post crazy stuff by Sheldrake or even Nagel, and their alternative theories, and someone attacks them point by point, suddenly you disassociate yourself from them, and say their opinions are not really yours; you are just sharing them to broaden our horizons.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 17:31:22
But give DonQ credit for the joke - I like it. And it also tells us that DonQ is a sinistral.
Also give him credit that despite the usual ill-mannered insults to me for pointing out his blunder, he did go back and edit his post to remove the offensive 'nazi' reference...

Thanks for noticing : what a miracle .
What offensive nazi reference by the way ?
I just thought that Cheryl was alluding to the nazis when she talked about those bragging Germans about their racial heritage = my blunder and mistake  , so, i just said that that nazi "comparison or analogy " was disgusting , insulting ............
What, on earth, is wrong with your comprehension skills, friend ?


Well, actually I was alluding to Nazis, and I was  comparing your boasts to that sort of thing. So no need to apologize, Don.

Well, thanks for your honesty : i see there was / is nothing wrong with my comprehension skills thus ,after all : dlorde  as the miscomprehension champ par excellence here ,brought me on the wrong path thus .
I think, you 're the one who should apologize for comparing my replies to your post to those of the nazis , thanks a lot for nothing = disgusting , and extremely insulting "comparison " + an incorrect and an inappropriate one = an understatement .
I am very disappointed in you, Cheryl : i thought you were a pretty little charming nice and intelligent lady : maybe , i made a mistake in that regard .......

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 18:45:37

P.S.: What do you think of that link i provided you with earlier , concerning "Why materialism is false ?" .



You know it's curious that you are most comfortable attacking the weaknesses or lack of progress you perceive in materialism, and want me to defend it all. But when you post crazy stuff by Sheldrake or even Nagel, and their alternative theories, and someone attacks them point by point, suddenly you disassociate yourself from them, and say their opinions are not really yours; you are just sharing them to broaden our horizons.

Obviously and normally , i should stop replying to your posts ,untill you apologize for your extremely insulting nazi "comparison ", but , i will not , for the time being at least , simply because i still have faith in you , as a nice charming and intelligent lady ....i guess.
Anyway :
You were too  biasly kind to materialism , i see :
I was not attacking only the weaknesses or lack of progress of materialism,as you put it at least (materialism is in fact not only outdated , superseded even by the physical sciences themselves it has been dominating for so long now ,materialism is  not only flase and dead ,but also obviously, and per- definition , unprogressive= backward and primitive = how can it be progressive or lacking progress ... )  : i was stating a fact mainly = materialism in all sciences and elsewhere  is not only false , but has been also hijacking misusing all the sciences + all the rest of those human activities  as well  ,  for ideological materialist purposes , materialism that has been deceiving and lying to the prople for centuries now, in the name of science = an understatement .
The core issue here is thus ,as follows ,once again : materialism is certainly false : i did even post a whole post from another forum on the subject , but you did not address those reasonable,philosophical, moral  and scientific  issues raised by that above displayed  post: instead of that , you just changed the subject, by stating the above = "we almost all prefer to judge and accuse others , in order to avoid being judged and accused ourselves "  .
Besides, i  did not disassociate myself from Nagel and Sheldrake, as you put it at least , simply because there was no association between me and them  in any way, neither figuratively nor literally or intellectually , in the first place to begin with  : i just happened to quote them to support some of my claims , simply because you asked for it , and simply because they go beyond that false materialism , by first refuting it , and then by offering some alternatives to it as well : those non-materialist offered alternatives were / are both still vague , still in the making , and still seem and sound so embryonary,logically  : so, i said , we might be witnessing the genesis of a new science era , away from that materialist prison and materialist belief dogmas in science , the latter has been confined to since the 19 th century at least .........
You have to ask yourself why you make me repeat the same replies to the same questions you asked before i did give answers to ,instead of addressing those true legetimate issues concerning that false materialism .
When one would establish the obvious undeniable fact that science is not materialism,and that materialism is false  ( Amazing how one is forced nowadays to prove obvious and undeniable facts to self-proclaimed scientific people ...unbelievable .) , then, one can take it from there ,and see where  that can lead to : any reasonable person should reject thus false ideas , false conceptions of nature , false hypotheses ...when confronted with the corresponding evidence = you do not = you continue to deny the obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is ...false .
Way to go , "scientific " girl : i cannot say  i can be proud of you in that regard , so to speak then :
Worse : instead of recognizing and acknowledging the obvious undeniable fact that materialism is false , you just avoid that by  accusing and judging Nagel and Sheldrake ,even though i said, many times  here on the occasion  , that the both of them have been at least couragoeus and honest enough  not only to refute the mainstream false materialism supported by the whole majority of scientists , risking their careers , credibilty,integrity  and much more in the process , but they also dared / dare to enter a highly deceptive and elusive territory the approach of which is highly and extremely difficult , if not impossible , in this time and age at least ....no wonder that Nagel and Sheldrake make some blunders and mistakes as a result = pretty logical and normal , considering the fact that they have been entering a still not -yet explored territory , an unknown and highly deceptive and elusive territory that requires new revolutionary and radical approaches , new understandings of science , epistemology and the universe thus that we can only try to imagine in this time and age = beyond our imaginations yet ..................
In other words , and in short :
You do deny the obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false = the universe is not just a matter of physics and chemistry , but , you also try to denigrate such courageous and honest scientist and thinker such as respectively Sheldrake and Nagel , you try to denigrate those men of great honesty , integrity and courage who dared to condemn refute materialism in science , while risking their own careers and much more in the process , who dared / dare even to offer some alternatives to that false materialism ....their own limited human ways that are seriously limited also by the limited nature and quality of the scientific data in this time and age on the subjects of consciousness,memory ,life ,human cognition  ...........................
Those are  the features of a dishonest deceptive hypocrit preacher you have been displaying , i see , unfortunately enough .......not features of a resonable scientific logical human being .......
Way to go, girl = congratulations .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 19:03:30


In the above first part of this post of yours , you expressed  your legetimate suspicion skepticism and aversion regarding any race ,nationality ,geography . culture...based ideologies or manufactured illusionary "identities " based on race , ethnicity , sectarianism, geography , cultures , nationalities ...and rightly so, but ,then again, you immediatly went on boosting about the Canadian achievements ...= how paradoxical can you be ?



Um, no,  I was just  kidding around. I was not sincerely bragging about the invention of the paint roller, although, it is quite nifty when you need one.

Wow, please do not insult my relative intelligence ........by lying and by being dishonest in that regard , come on ........
I should be the one "insulting " you ,by raising the issue of nazism, since you yourself admitted that you have some German "blood " running in your veins , or German "genes " in your body , but i won't do that , simply because not all Germans can be blamed for nazism, especially not those post-war German generations ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 19:29:26



I told you i was just responding to that post of yours earlier , didn't i?
I see no point in repeating myself .
I do even reject such  notions or  rather  illusions such as  nationality, nationalism , patriotism ....not to mention all those illusionary ridiculous "identities " based on race (White supremacists ....ku kulx klan haha , neo-nazis, skin heads ....Arab nationalism ....the mainstream global dominance of  white Eurocentrism and white Eurocentric materialism ...Chinese nationalism , Turkish nationalism ...Russian nationalism ...), ethnicity , geography, belief .............

P.S.: There are actually muslims from all nationalities, races, ethnic groups , skin color , sex, from different cultures, nations,geographies  ..............

Once again, universal Islam happened/ happens and will continue to happen proclaiming the obvious God-given equality of all peoples , regardless of their race , skin color, sex , belief , ethnicity .............






Belief? well, as I understand it, you aren't really equal unless you share their religious beliefs and adhere to their practices, so I would say it is a bit a little exclusionary in that sense. Which is fine, their club, their rules.

No, that's not true : that some muslims today , in the past or even in the future might be accused of discriminating against non-muslims , simply because they happened /happen / will happen to be non-muslims is no 'argument " against Islam in that or in any other regard for that matter , simply because Islam teaches otherwise .............
P.S.: Islam is not an exclusive club = Islam is universal .
Important note : i am not here to talk about or "defend " Islam ,this is a science forum , not a religious one ,  so, i will not be responding to any issues regarding Islam, except if those issues would be raised in relation to the Islamic origin of the scientific method ,or in relation to materialism .....
Instead of attacking Islam  through your Eurocentric brainwash indoctrinations bias prejudice stereotypes ...ignorance , instead of attacking Sheldrake and Nagel, simply because they are anti-materialism ,or simply because they cannot , obviously logically normally , come up with serious alternatives to materialism (The next generations will surely  do just that ,no doubt in my mind about that ) , why don't you just stop denying the obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false = these side issues , exit -strategies , distractions, changing of subjects of yours won't make the obvious undeniable fact go away that materialism is obviously and undeniably false ............


In short :

"We almost all prefer to accuse and judge others , in order to avoid being judged and accused ourselves " French Albert Camus nobel prize winner for literature ...

I might be no exception to that rule, i guess , who knows .
But , fact is : we are not talking here , on this great science forum, about Islam ,or about alternatives to that false materialism that will still be coming in the near or far future ..............we are talking here  mainly about consciousness, and therefore  about the obvious undeniable fact that materialism is false , and must be rejected .....................after establishing that obvious undeniable fact (Amazing how  one is forced , once again, to prove obvious undeniable facts to be true on a science forum = tragic -hilarious , and the saddest thing of all about that is that you, guys , do not only reject that obvious undeniable fact , do not only make silly "jokes" about that , but you also never question the "validity or truth " of materialism in the process ...unbelievable ), after accepting that obvious undeniable fact that materialism is false , then and only then we can talk about potentially valid alternatives to materialism, not earlier ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 20:20:40
I see the replies here of our friends as just being the classical typical cases of study that should be conducted by psychology tout-court, by the psychology of group or crowd psychology : ( Psychology and especially the so-called evolutionary psychology are also dominated by materialism by the way .)
The latter should study these behaviours of our friends here .
Those replies of theirs are not about science , scientific facts , scientific approaches, not even about that false materialism .............it's all about their psyche and group pysche .............
Amazing how they stick to and with each other , even at the expense of science , scientific facts , scientific approaches, logic , reason ..........consciously or sub-consciously ...
It's broadly known in psychology that  the group affects the  thought and the  behaviour thus of its members , even in unreasonable ways sometimes ...
Amazing also how people continue to stick to their beliefs ,no matter what , despite the obvious undeniable evidence against those false beliefs of theirs : or as Nagel said : "The human will to believe is inexhaustible " = the same goes for him also , ironically enough ..
Not to mention that feelings emotions do affect our thought and thus behaviour .
Feelings and emotions are even thoughts-projects -in-the-making in fact :so, that artificial created "wall " or boundary between reason and feelings emotions is just that : artificial .
Besides, the allegation or assumption that reason and feelings emotions are not inseparable  , and that the former  cannot explain the latter are ...history .
In short :
Objectivity is a myth, even at the very level of exact sciences themselves , let alone elsewhere .
Interesting  developments  indeed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/10/2013 20:52:08
Since i have been having a day off today , i think i would better go watching those nice comedy series :
The big bang theory haha..........on youtube.
That's better than wasting my time on these stubborn materialist believers friends of ours here ...
I am afraid that even the most subtle pedagogy out there would fail pathetically to change these people's minds about even obvious undeniable facts that go against their own stubborn irrational materialist beliefs ....
Maybe , some real science or life jokes might change their minds  , or i should just try to draw them some pics on the subject   haha , literally , since i am an amateur painter as well .
Maybe , i should sing them a song , post some more poetry , or just perform some ritual sexy harmonious synchronizations oscillations vibrations strip-tease dances for them ,like neurons or ensemble of neurons seem to "do "  haha .

All the best , folks .
It's been entertaining and educational .........you have no idea .
Thanks a lot for just that .
Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 13/10/2013 01:26:49
Quote
Objectivity is a myth

No, it's a desideratum. Not the same thing at all.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 13/10/2013 03:31:54


In the above first part of this post of yours , you expressed  your legetimate suspicion skepticism and aversion regarding any race ,nationality ,geography . culture...based ideologies or manufactured illusionary "identities " based on race , ethnicity , sectarianism, geography , cultures , nationalities ...and rightly so, but ,then again, you immediatly went on boosting about the Canadian achievements ...= how paradoxical can you be ?



Um, no,  I was just  kidding around. I was not sincerely bragging about the invention of the paint roller, although, it is quite nifty when you need one.

Wow, please do not insult my relative intelligence ........by lying and by being dishonest in that regard , come on ........
I should be the one "insulting " you ,by raising the issue of nazism, since you yourself admitted that you have some German "blood " running in your veins , or German "genes " in your body , but i won't do that , simply because not all Germans can be blamed for nazism, especially not those post-war German generations ...

I'm just not convinced that your attribution of the invention of science to Islam is purely the result of your  historical curiosity. You clearly have an axe to grind, and you couldn't be more obvious about it.  I wasn't calling you, personally,  a Nazi. I was simply making the point I have rarely seen anything good come  from rekindling these ancient rivalries, and trying to prove which group is superior. It never ends well.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 13/10/2013 13:58:15
... the non-material processes or the non-material side of reality can be approached by science , indirectly , via a multitude of ways , especially via approaching their  material basis .
Such as what, for example?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/10/2013 17:04:57


In the above first part of this post of yours , you expressed  your legetimate suspicion skepticism and aversion regarding any race ,nationality ,geography . culture...based ideologies or manufactured illusionary "identities " based on race , ethnicity , sectarianism, geography , cultures , nationalities ...and rightly so, but ,then again, you immediatly went on boosting about the Canadian achievements ...= how paradoxical can you be ?



Um, no,  I was just  kidding around. I was not sincerely bragging about the invention of the paint roller, although, it is quite nifty when you need one.

Wow, please do not insult my relative intelligence ........by lying and by being dishonest in that regard , come on ........
I should be the one "insulting " you ,by raising the issue of nazism, since you yourself admitted that you have some German "blood " running in your veins , or German "genes " in your body , but i won't do that , simply because not all Germans can be blamed for nazism, especially not those post-war German generations ...

I'm just not convinced that your attribution of the invention of science to Islam is purely the result of your  historical curiosity. You clearly have an axe to grind, and you couldn't be more obvious about it.  I wasn't calling you, personally,  a Nazi. I was simply making the point I have rarely seen anything good come  from rekindling these ancient rivalries, and trying to prove which group is superior. It never ends well.

I was just stating an undeniable  historic epistemological fact you can check or verify,so to speak,  via my sources that support that claim in the other thread in question: so, i am not gonna discuss that in this thread  .
Koshul's " The islamic impact on western civilization reconsidered " relatively short essay  on the subject (A relatively short concise brilliant epistemological scientific essay on the subject that tried to prove the fact stated by Robert Briffault to be true in the latter's "The making of humanity " book ), i did provide a direct free download link to there in that thread in question , is a very good and easy start ,if you are really interested in the subject concerning  the real origins of the scientific method : the man made his case brilliantly, epistemologically , historically , scientifically,.....so.
The rest of your speculations are just that :  speculations = irrelevant .
You compared stating a historic epistemological fact to the racial bootsing of nazis = how paradoxical absurd wicked wrong insulting can you be ? = an understatement .
(Do not worry about having a dark wicked side as well, love , we all have that ,without any exceptions :  the nazis, for example , just showed and displayed some of the lowest terrifying wicked qualities we all possess , we are all capable of under certain circumstances : the nazis were / are and will not be the worst humanity can be or do : I am not "defending " them in any way though , no way :
The christian Lebanese great poet Gibran Khlalil Gibran who spent most of his life in the US said on the subject :
in his poetic nice style , the following i will try to display via my own clumsy words ,as follows , or in words to that same effect at least :
The highest saints cannot rise above the noblest  tendencies  ,qualities or dimentions we all have and we are all capable of reaching  , and the wickeddest ones cannot sink below the lowest tendencies dimentions or abilities qualities  we all have and we can all sink to ,or reach the very bottom of  ...)

I am still waiting for your eventual apologies .haha
You know what : just forget about it : do not worry about it = irrelevant .
I should not and i do not feel insulted by such a absurd paradoxical wrong incorrect inappropriate ....nazi "comparison ", i don't and i should not feel like i am concerned by , so = irrelevant .
Just try to be careful next time regarding what you might say to your fellow humans ...

P.S.: Why do you continue playing these kindda distractions , in order to avoid tackling the core issue here concerning consciousness and therefore concerning the very simple obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false : that the universe is not just a matter of physics and chemistry , that the universe is not only and exclusively a matter of ....matter haha ,or of material processes only  ...whatever matter itself or material processes might ever be.

That materialist belief in science or rather that's been imposed on science since the 19th century at least is  the epitome of stupidity in all the history of mankind ever = an understatement :
 How can you believe in such materialist irrational extremely and unbelievably idiotic  materialist belief you do continue to confuse with science , amazignly incredibly unbelievably ironically enough = the human will to believe is inexhaustible ....indeed.

P.S.: I was talking about a historic epistemological fact concerning the undeniable Islamic religious origins of science i am not gonna discuss here in this thread ,once again, but i forgot to mention that history writing has also been dominated by materialism also , since the 19th century at least .
The materialist approach ,or rather the materialist mis-interpretation of history that , obviously and per-definition , excludes any religious or moral ethical teleological explanations or rather interpretations of ...history .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/10/2013 17:17:47
... the non-material processes or the non-material side of reality can be approached by science , indirectly , via a multitude of ways , especially via approaching their  material basis .
Such as what, for example?

Such as trying to figure just that out for yourself via reading Nagel's and Sheldrake's above mentioned books,for example ,or just via reading the multiple  excerpts of those books i did post here , just for your blue lovely scientific eyes  .
I am not gonna do the job for you ,you will not appreciate anyway , so, why should i bother ,  especially when it comes to the fact that  you have turned out to be the unparalleled champ par excellence in twisting my words , distorting them , or miscomprehending them beyond any recognition ...

Otherwise,just try to perform some sexy ritual strip-tease harmonious synchronizations oscillations vibrations under the rain public dances like neurons or ensemble of neurons seem to "do" in their own  electrical-chemical private "forest or habitat " in the brain ............Those neurons cannot join you in those public dances  under the rain  ,simply because they might get electrocuted in the process , so, they will just be assisting and guiding you from their remote private safe brain areas ...they cannot leave...otherwise , you cannot perform those dances , can you ?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/10/2013 17:59:06
Quote
Objectivity is a myth

No, it's a desideratum. Not the same thing at all.

Whatever :
I stopped taking you seriously a long time ago,for obvious reasons  :
You just provided me with some extra ones yesterday ; like your irrational idiotic denial of the obvious undeniable  simple fact that materialism and science are, obviously undeniably ,  2 totally different "things " .
So, i will just say the following , just for the record , not really for your blue ,green or red blind eyes  :
Besides:
The very fact that that false materialism has been dominating all sciences and other human activities since the 19th century at least ,by selling its own materialist dogmatic belief system in science and elsewhere  to the people as scientific  ,  is reason enough to consider the so-called objectivity even at the level of the exact sciences as a ...myth .
Not to mention the fact that the materialist conception of nature in science , the materialist meta-paradigm thus in science , are obviously undeniably false ....
So, tell me where do you detect that objectivity in science under that materialist dominance since the 19th century ...where can you detect that alleged objectivity in science since science results, scientific facts , scientifc approaches ... have been misinterpreted by materialism all that time , since the 19th century ,while those materialist misinterpretations of science have been sold to the people as science .
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that the universe or reality are just only and exclusively material ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that consciousness was just the product of the evolved brain , via some magical "emergence " trick performance ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that life is just a matter of material processes only and exclusively ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that evolution is exclusively biological physical ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution can be extended to non-biological non -physical processes ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that human cognition is just the product of those so-called neurocomputational mechanisms ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that memory ,human cognition,human  conscience,.....or consciousness are somehow stored or localized in the brain ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that memory , consciousness , human cognition, human conscience ....are just biological physical processes ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that life "emerged " suddenly like magic from the dead matter ? let alone how ?
_Did science ever prove the materialist "fact " to be true that all the extremely rich diversity of life on earth at least , did evolve from the so-called original mythical legendary cell ,the latter that allegedly had suddenly emerged from the so-called original soup , not my mother's though once again, via so many atsronomical unbelievable "accidents " ?
...............
I can provide you with yet another still very  very very  long list of materialist "facts " that have never been proven by science to be "true ", ever =   they were / are just materialist belief dogmas sold to the people as scientific facts ,as science , as science results or as scientific approaches .....................
I am afraid , i was just wasting my time on you again, since you are not even able to recognize and acknowledge the very simple obvious undeniable fact that materialism is not ...science .
How can one then ever take you ...seriously for that matter ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/10/2013 00:02:13
... the non-material processes or the non-material side of reality can be approached by science , indirectly , via a multitude of ways , especially via approaching their  material basis .
Such as what, for example?
Such as trying to figure just that out for yourself via reading Nagel's and Sheldrake's above mentioned books,for example ,or just via reading the multiple  excerpts of those books i did post here , just for your blue lovely scientific eyes  .I am not gonna do the job for you ,you will not appreciate anyway , so, why should i bother
A claimed 'multitude of ways', and you still can't come up with one example. Why am I not surprised?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 14/10/2013 00:54:11

P.S.: Why do you continue playing these kindda distractions , in order to avoid tackling the core issue here concerning consciousness and therefore concerning the very simple obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false : that the universe is not just a matter of physics and chemistry , that the universe is not only and exclusively a matter of ....matter haha ,or of material processes only  ...whatever matter itself or material processes might ever be.

That materialist belief in science or rather that's been imposed on science since the 19th century at least is  the epitome of stupidity in all the history of mankind ever = an understatement :
 How can you believe in such materialist irrational extremely and unbelievably idiotic  materialist belief you do continue to confuse with science , amazignly incredibly unbelievably ironically enough = the human will to believe is inexhaustible ....indeed.

As unbelievable as it seems to you that one might not simply accept as a "fact" your assertion that "materialism is false" "irrational" "idiotic" "a mis-conception," and not really science, that is exactly how baffled I am by your unwillingness to accept that your claims for alternative explanations rest on evidence that directly support them, not lack of other kinds of evidence. While you mention that there are ways to test these non-material based hypotheses, whenever dlorde asks how, specifically,  you refuse to answer.

Although you call materialism, "false", on occasion, you have admitted that it has been a successful tool in science, which would seem to imply it is not actually "false" but in your view, incomplete or limited. It hasn't explained everything. I'm sure materialists themselves would agree that everything has not yet been explained.

So, in my view, the real crux of the disagreement is that materialists are saying, well it's worked well so far, lets keep going. And you believe it is a dead end road, and that it will eventually hit a wall, or that it has already, because of what it has not yet explained.

What I don't understand about mystics, though, is why they think they have solved the problem by passing the buck. They are amazed by the worlds complexity, diversity, and beauty, and they feel it can't be explained by atoms and molecules and chemical reactions and neurons firing. So they add something - "It must be God!" Or "it must be natural teleology!" Terrific, but now you are stuck trying to explain how this natural teleology works, how it affects, or interacts with, or determines things, what it predicts. Or you have to explain what God is, what he does or doesn't do, what he wants or doesn't want. All you've really done is replaced "an unknown material mechanism" with an "unknown immaterial mechanism."

Unless, of course, you simply refuse to explain it at all,  and are content with some version of "the unmoved mover," the ultimate cause that does not require explanation, and cannot be explained. And that is essentially what Sheldrake does, he just opts out. In his book The New Science, he says:

“Morphic resonance is non-energetic, and morphogenetic fields themselves are neither a type of mass nor energy. Therefore there seems to be no a priori reason why it should obey the laws that have been found to apply to the movement of bodies, particles and waves. In particular, it need not be attenuated by either spatial or temporal separation between similar systems, it could be just  as effective over 10,000 kilometres as over a centimetre, and over a century as an hour.The assumption that morphic resonance is not attenuated by time and space will be adopted as a provisional working hypothesis, on the ground of simplicity.”

As one critic put it, it's such a ludicrous assumption, explicitly designed to be untestable by science, that there’s really no point going any further.  Like faith, you either have to choose to believe it, or you don't.

To me, that really is a dead end. If materialism does turn out to have limits, at least in the interim it can tell me a lot of interesting and useful stuff about the physical world and human beings, and I just don't see that potential in any of the non-material models you have proposed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2013 18:41:58

P.S.: Why do you continue playing these kindda distractions , in order to avoid tackling the core issue here concerning consciousness and therefore concerning the very simple obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false : that the universe is not just a matter of physics and chemistry , that the universe is not only and exclusively a matter of ....matter haha ,or of material processes only  ...whatever matter itself or material processes might ever be.

That materialist belief in science or rather that's been imposed on science since the 19th century at least is  the epitome of stupidity in all the history of mankind ever = an understatement :
 How can you believe in such materialist irrational extremely and unbelievably idiotic  materialist belief you do continue to confuse with science , amazignly incredibly unbelievably ironically enough = the human will to believe is inexhaustible ....indeed.

As unbelievable as it seems to you that one might not simply accept as a "fact" your assertion that "materialism is false" "irrational" "idiotic" "a mis-conception," and not really science, that is exactly how baffled I am by your unwillingness to accept that your claims for alternative explanations rest on evidence that directly support them, not lack of other kinds of evidence. While you mention that there are ways to test these non-material based hypotheses, whenever dlorde asks how, specifically,  you refuse to answer.

Although you call materialism, "false", on occasion, you have admitted that it has been a successful tool in science, which would seem to imply it is not actually "false" but in your view, incomplete or limited. It hasn't explained everything. I'm sure materialists themselves would agree that everything has not yet been explained.

So, in my view, the real crux of the disagreement is that materialists are saying, well it's worked well so far, lets keep going. And you believe it is a dead end road, and that it will eventually hit a wall, or that it has already, because of what it has not yet explained.

What I don't understand about mystics, though, is why they think they have solved the problem by passing the buck. They are amazed by the worlds complexity, diversity, and beauty, and they feel it can't be explained by atoms and molecules and chemical reactions and neurons firing. So they add something - "It must be God!" Or "it must be natural teleology!" Terrific, but now you are stuck trying to explain how this natural teleology works, how it affects, or interacts with, or determines things, what it predicts. Or you have to explain what God is, what he does or doesn't do, what he wants or doesn't want. All you've really done is replaced "an unknown material mechanism" with an "unknown immaterial mechanism."

Unless, of course, you simply refuse to explain it at all,  and are content with some version of "the unmoved mover," the ultimate cause that does not require explanation, and cannot be explained. And that is essentially what Sheldrake does, he just opts out. In his book The New Science, he says:

“Morphic resonance is non-energetic, and morphogenetic fields themselves are neither a type of mass nor energy. Therefore there seems to be no a priori reason why it should obey the laws that have been found to apply to the movement of bodies, particles and waves. In particular, it need not be attenuated by either spatial or temporal separation between similar systems, it could be just  as effective over 10,000 kilometres as over a centimetre, and over a century as an hour.The assumption that morphic resonance is not attenuated by time and space will be adopted as a provisional working hypothesis, on the ground of simplicity.”

As one critic put it, it's such a ludicrous assumption, explicitly designed to be untestable by science, that there’s really no point going any further.  Like faith, you either have to choose to believe it, or you don't.

To me, that really is a dead end. If materialism does turn out to have limits, at least in the interim it can tell me a lot of interesting and useful stuff about the physical world and human beings, and I just don't see that potential in any of the non-material models you have proposed.

Wow , love :
You have been opening no less than Pandora's box or boxes  ,way to go girl,  in the good positive sense though ,not in the ancient Greek mythical negative "evil " wicked sense haha : or rather you have been trying to open an open  whole huge wide "door "  : a limitless "open " space in fact = we can't really speak of any "opening " regarding that huge space ....I am not sure either we can talk about that as space , not even metaphorically ...
"Human language is way too limited indeed ,too ideological also , too cultural as well,  human language's  origins evolution or emergence that have been also reduced to  just physics and chemistry , thanks to materialism , incredibly enough : some materialist evolutionists even try to "trace back" , so to speak, the very origins and no less than the very nature itself of human language to just prior to modern man 's existence way antique, so to speak, origins = the hand and body gestures of chimps ..........haha"
To go back to our huge limitless "space " you have been trying to "open, there is a lot to say on the "subject" , as there are a lot of "things " that cannot be either said uttered formulated expressed or whatever on the "subject " , if we can call a limitless "space" a 'subject " at least , a defined one = a limitless "space"  cannot , per definition, be limited within or confined to a certain limit , obviously , such as the logical boundaries of a subject or a concept ...
Anyway :
Nevermind whether you do understand the above  or not , i do not either ...haha

(Prior note :
Science , per definition ,  as just an effective limited unparalleled tool , instrument or method practiced by   scientists humans of course  , via their human limited faculties , and via those technological and other relative extensions of those human limited faculties of course  , science thus can only cover a tiny peace of reality : the natural reality , the material side of reality ...
The rest is , per definition, out of reach of science , obviously , otherwise science would be no science as a result , if science would pretend to cover those parts of reality that cannot , obviously , be measured , be tested empirically , be falsifiable verifiable reproducible ....
Science , for example , can approach life , consciousness , feelings , emotions , beauty or aesthetics , art , even literature , human behaviour , love even, music even  ...via their physical or biological basis , but , science can say absolutey nothing about their natures , obviously , let alone that science can account for their emergence , origins or evolution ...fully , just via physics and chemistry , no way .
So, you make it sound as if anything for that matter that's outside of reach of science does not , per definition , exist , come on , do not be silly , please .
Do not brand anything that's outside of the scope or reach of science as being some sort of mysticism , paranormal , supernatural, illusionary , delusionary , non-existent ...or false : the spiritual side of man ,for example , is normal , not really paranormal :  what does "paranormal " mean anyway ? nothing : it's just semantics made up by man .
+ everything is sacred , including the inanimate matter, there is no such a thing such as the ...profane : that's 1 of the reasons why science istelf was/is and will always be  a religious duty , a form of worship of God as well in my belief ,for example .
That silly artificial illusionary manufactured made-up distinction between the religious and the secular is false = there is nothing out there that can be branded as secular or as profane , there is no such a thing like that , everything is sacred , everything has certain respective corresponding degrees of sacredness ... )

My dear charming nice lady :
Normally ,logically, scientifically , reasonably , obviously , ..... once again, when reasonable people , true scientists , true truth seekers  in general  , or whatever , whatever truth might ever be indeed , truth as a dynamic ever-changing, ever -evolving , not a static , process , when they realise the falsehood of their  beliefs , their  hypotheses ....they either reject them  partly or entirely  , or try to improve them if they can at least , otherwise , they look for alternate more or less valid beliefs , more or less valid hypotheses ....instead of sticking to them no matter what, irrationally unscientifically illogically .......like you all do .
But , the one thing they do not do , or cannot do , is to deny the falsehood of their beliefs , hypotheses ....in total contrast with you , guys .
If you cannot see that science is just a human social activity , a form of culture , ...practiced by just humans , all too human, scientists via their human, all too human , limited faculties , via their human shortcomings and flaws , .....despite the fact that modern technology has been extending the scope ,range or reach of those human limited faculties , then , i advise you to reconsider your unrealistic view of science , your understanding of what science might be , what it can and cannot do , what it can and cannot explain , what it can or cannot approach .........
You have to try to realise the very nature , function and role of science , its limits , its boundaries ......
Science that , per definition, cannot explain or approach "everything " ,let alone that science would enable us to know everything there is to know out there , via our limited human faculties ..........there are "things " out there that will always escape the reach of our limited human faculties or that are beyond that , obviously .
So,if you cannot see that materialism is just an  Eurocentric  ideology, a false one at that , that has been dominating all sciences, including the so-called human sciences  + the rest of almost all other human activities such as history, political science , economics , and even art , literature ....since the 19 th century at least , an Eurocentric false ideology that has absolutely nothing to do with science ,obviously,  with scientific results facts or with scientific approaches , after all these kilometers long pages of this thread , after i did post significant parts on this very thread of Sheldrake's and Nagel's books on the subject + other material ....after i said many times on the occasion that potentially valid alternatives to materialism in science are still in their embryonary stages, the next generations might develop further by taking it from there = that's how new eras of science begin , after all that and more , not to mention the very simple obvious undeniable fact that physics and chemistry cannot account fully for life , consciousness , memory , human congnition, human conscience , feelings , emotions , human love ...let alone their emergence , potential evolution and origins ....after all that , you just continue thinking and behaving as if materialism has been behind all those scientific huge advances , while the latter were /are due to just the scientific method itself practiced by scientists , whether they were / are materialists or otherwise , the scientific method that 's an effective and an  unparalleled method like no other , you continue to think and behave as if materialism was/ is scientific , or you just continue to use those features of that "promissory messianic materialism " , in the sense that materialism will be able to "progress " somehow via some magic that might change the very nature and definition of materialism itself , paradoxically, as an obviously undeniably false and dead superseded ideology in science ,you continue to think and behave as if materialism in science will be able to overcome its very false nature and definition by offering scientific explanations for the phenomena ,processses .....materialism cannot explain in this time of age ..........= absurd contradictory paradoxical thinking and behaviour of yours , simply because materialism ,per -definition, cannot and will not be able to overcome its very exclusively physical  and biological material conception of nature, not in a million years , logically , otherwise materialism  would or will be no materialism per-definition , materialism  that's obviously and undeniably, per definition ,  false = physics and chemistry cannot ,logically, scientifically , reasonably  , explain consciousness, life , memory , human cognition, feelings , emotions , human conscience , human morality or ethics human love ..............fully, obviously , not because science has still no sufficient data regarding the above list of processes , phenomena ....no, but simply because physics and chemistry cannot give rise  to  , account for , let alone explain such processes , phenomena ...such as consciousness, life , memory .....exclusively via physics and chemistry , no way , obviously ,so, the nature of reality ,of  nature or of the universe cannot be exclusively material physical biological ,obviouly, no way :....

In short :
Science , all sciences and the rest in fact , must be liberated from that false materialism as a result they have been confined to for centuries now .
Science must change radically revolutionary , must undergo a radical shift of meta-paradigm in order to be able to deal with the parts of reality properly  it can test empirically , a multi-disciplinary holistic approach ,combined with science , might come up with new understandings of epistemology, of science itself , of the universe and of ourselves .
Science , per definition , has a certain  nature,  function and role it cannot go beyond : the  natural reality , or rather the material observable empirical testable measurable verifiable falsifiable reproducible side of reality = the material side of reality : the non-material side of reality must be left outside of science , obviously , but science can shed some light on  some parts of the non-material side of reality as well, by shedding light on its material basis .............

P.S.: Who talked about any "unmoved mover " for that matter anyway ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2013 18:42:31
@ Cheryl :
Why Materialism is False ? :


Source : http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False

Prior Note :

The following article does not necessarily reflect my own opinions or views on the subject :

The critique of materialism goes way beyond what the following article tries to approach ,summarize or tackle  :
-I-I do not agree with the author's allegations that materialism has succeeded in "solving " the challenge or hard problem of life , design, thought , morality ...
0_Materialism is just a dogmatic belief system or rather a false secular religion ideology  in science , a misconsception of nature in science , that has absolutely nothing to do with science thus , and that just tries to "validate " itself through science , in vain of course , logically and per-definition .
I_Those so-called neurocomputation mechanisms cannot account for such  non-physical non-biological  processes such as thought either .
II-Darwin's theory of evolution is only and exclusively biological physical , so, it tackles only the physical biological side of evolution, but materialists , per definition, just try to extend it to non-physical non-biological processes ,for obvious materialist ideological "reasons " that have ,obviously , nothing to do with science  .
III- That life can be approached via physics and chemistry does not mean that life is just that .
IV_ Materialism cannot , per definition, succeed in "refuting " the existence of God, design ................behind all those laws of physics ............

V-Neither the materialist version or rather the materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution , nor Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution can account for human morality, cognition,  life or of consciousness "fully" ........let alone their  evolution .
VI-Materialism can, per definition , not account for consciousness, life ,feelings , emotions,  human cognition , human conscience , human morality , ...."fully" , let alone their origins evolution or emergence .
_VII-The brain does not cause consciousness : that alleged causality that's ,obviously , just a materialist misinterpretation of that   mutual actual factual correlation or interaction between the brain and consciousness thus  , was never proven to be true, ever , that's just a materialist belief assumption : causation is no explanation either .
VIII-There is a lot more to say on the subject , so, i will just leave it at that ,for the time being at least .

Quote :

" Why Materialism is False:

    In short, I think materialism is false. Below is why, with a detour through the reasons why Materialism isn't false.

    I don't mind if you read this or not, just thought I'd share for anyone remotely interested. No, it's not particularly well written or well structured, and there is so much more that could be said on this topic, but ... meh.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Materalism, I define as follows:
    'The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.' - Answers.com
    First, there is an important distinction to be made. Materialism and Science are not the same thing. Science is the study of the natural world, so Science has no jurisdiction over any theory regarding that which cannot be empirically tested.

    For example, suppose a Theist were to conjecture that God is the law enforcer of the universe, ensuring that at every moment, at every place, all physical occurrences obeyed the laws that God has decreed. This conjecture is impossible to test scientifically, since all possible experimental observations are consistent with its predictions. However, the unscientific character of our Theist's conjecture does not mean that it is false; the answer to the question is simply outside of the jurisdiction of the Scientific method.

    The philosophy of Materialism goes beyond the Scientific Method, postulating that only the material exists. This would place the Materialist in disagreement with our Theist. If it is true that only the material exists, then the Theist's law enforcer God does not exist, since that God would qualify as immaterial.

    The above constitutes the important distinction between Materialism and Science, whilst also explaining why Materialists are always Scientists. However the philosophy of Materialism should not be conflated with that of Science, as it is possible to both be a Scientist and not be a Materialist.

    _______________________________________________________________


    Materialism has always been an unpopular philosophy, with critics branding it as cold, uncaring and fundamentally amoral. The philosophy has had its most bitter rivals in that of Theism, as Materialism denies the truth of religious scripture, denying the existence of God, the afterlife and the immortal soul. Despite this, Materialism has stumbled on, with proponents offering Materialistic solutions to many of the long standing problems in philosophy. The problems listed below have stood as criticisms to the Materialistic philosophy now and in the past. The list is not comprehensive, but does reflect what I believe to have been the key problems that Materialism has overcome.

    1) The problem of life
    2) The problem of design
    3) The problem of thought
    4) The problem of morality
    Here I will sketch a brief overview of what each problem is and how I believe the Materialist can solve it.

    The first and easiest is the problem of life. The problem arises from the unique properties and capabilities of living organisms; it had seemed incomprehensible that the mechanical world of physics could explain the biological. Something else was needed, so it was postulated that a vital force animated living matter, imbuing it with lifelike qualities. The doctrine held that life was inexplicable in terms of physicochemical interactions. If the Materialist could not explain life, then Materialism must be false.

    The Materialist did not get his answer to this problem in one sweeping theory, but rather a cumulation of experimental findings, from William Harvey's discovery that the circularitory system was a cleverly engineered mechanism to pump blood around the body, to Fracis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The march of scientific progress has unveiled the fine structure of cellular machinery, all working impeccably from physicochemical laws without the need for a vital animating force.

    Here the Materialist can explain how life works without appealing to any immaterial vital essence, but there still remains another problem to be solved. This is the problem of design. How is it that this incredible arrangement of organised matter came into being? The odds that such organisation would occur by chance are astronomically low, but life is bustling all around us in a multitude of forms. If the Materialist cannot explain this design, then Materialism must be false.

    In 1859, in a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace that explanation was provided. The Materialist now had The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection i.e. The gradual accumulation of adaptive organisation by selective advantage. This elegant theory has provided the Materialist with an answer to the problem of design, which has in time been corroborated by a vast amount of evidence, from practically every field of scientific study.

    The problem of design had been solved, but an interesting disagreement between Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin persisted. The problem of thought presented itself. To Wallace, the human capacity for reasoned thought was beyond the reach of evolution, a feat which could simply not have been achieved by anything other than supernatural intervention, or in other words: God given. How could it be that a physical system could possibly think? If Materialism cannot explain how it is that we think, then Materialism must be false.

    The answer to the problem today is all around us, in front of anyone reading this at this very moment, i.e. computation. Alan Turing's Turing machine and the advent of modern electronics are a vivid illustration that complex computational architecture, obeying only the laws of physics can perform intelligent operations. The Materialist can now look to neurobiology, where cognition is explained as the consequent of neurocomputations occurring in parallel throughout the central nervous system. The Materialist now has his answer to Wallace's conjecture that the capacity for reason is unevolvable and must be God given.

    So the Materialist has provided powerful arguments to solve the problem of life, the problem of design and the problem thought. Unlike these three problems, the final problem on my list cannot refute Materialism. If Materialism is indeed amoral, it would be a nonsequitor to conclude from Materialism's amorality that it is false. For this reason, the problem of morality is a special case, but nonetheless very powerful. Briefly, the argument claims that if we are nothing but an unintentional consequence of natural selection, nothing but elaborate machines and built by selfish genes, then there is no reason to work for a higher purpose. For what reason should we treat our fellow man with compassion? What becomes of right and wrong with no God?

    The answer to this problem is the combined product of evolutionary biology, neurobiology and philosophy. The combined solutions to the previous three problems set the stage for solving the problem of morality. First, evolutionary biology, far from undermining the basis of morality, can explain why we have a moral sense in the first place. Second, neurobiology has provided scientists with evidence of how the human brain computes moral decisions. Finally, philosophers have raised objections to the accusation that Materialism is inherently amoral, refuting the accusations with powerful solutions and counterarguments.

    Note: I am sure many reading this may object to the solutions I have presented to the 'four problems,' such objections are welcome and I encourage further criticism.

    ________________________________________________________________

    I have taken this detour through the successes of Materialism to drive home that I have no political agenda against the philosophy, religiously motivated or otherwise. I now wish to draw attention to my fifth problem for Materialism:

    5) The problem of consciousness
    A single element of conscious experience is called a quale, a group of quale are known as qualia. A quale might be the subjective experience of red, cold or pain. All quale are symbolic representations of frequencies and angles. The problem for Materialism is explaining qualia, the subjective experience of life, the very subjective experience without which we cannot imagine life being worth living at all. How can a physical system such as the brain be responsible for consciousness?. This is no small problem, for if Materialism cannot explain consciousness, then Materialism is false.

    The problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers for centuries. To clarify the problem, imagine opening up my brain whilst displaying a large red circle to my eyes. After some probing, you discover a cluster of neurons whose combined activity is responsible for my conscious experience of red. However, all you have is my word to go on, there is nothing special about that particular cluster of neurons, no telltale sign that these are responsible for my conscious experience. To the outside observer, the entire neurocomputational system would work exactly the same whether or not I was actually consciously experiencing the red circle. To make make matters more puzzling, even if I am consciously experiencing life, how do you know that what you call red is what I call red? So long as the frequencies and angles which these qualia represent maintain a constant relation to each other, then for all you know my conscious experience of red might be radically different to yours.

    No matter where you look in my brain, even if you are looking at that particular cluster of neurons responsible for my conscious experience of red, you cannot sensibly say that you are looking at the quale redness. The redness I see is qualitively independent of the neural substrate that is responsible for that quale. To put this another way, I would argue that qualia are ontologically irreducible to the neural substrate, that is, qualia have independent qualities which cannot be explained at the physical level. However, I also would argue that consciousness is entirely caused by the neural substrate, that consciousness has no informational content or cognitive ability above that which occurs on the neurocomputational level i.e. consciousness is causally reducible to the neural substrate.

    To clarify, we can play a thought experiment involving two billiard balls. Billiard ball 1 and billiard ball 2. First take these two examples:

    1) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    2) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1. Now, take a third example:

    3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.
    In this thought experiment, ball 2 exists and it's change in velocity is caused by ball 1, but to any observer unable to register ball 2, it remains completely invisible and undetectable. My conjecture is that qualia are like ball 2, which is why the conscious experience of other human beings is impossible to detect, the causal interaction is one way.

    The problem for the Materialist is that consciousness itself is immaterial, the frequencies and angles that make up subjective experience may be caused by, but are not part of the Material world. Thus, I conclude that Materialism is false.

    ________________________________________________________________

    A possible criticism of my theory is that consciousness is an emergent consequence of brain activity. This is a tempting view to take, analogous to the quality of wetness. A body of water is wet, even though no particular element of that body of water is wet. To clarify, a single molecule of H2O cannot be wet, because the quality of wetness is dependent upon the interactions of the constituent parts, without belong to any of those particular constituent parts. Wetness is an emergent property. A critic might conjecture that consciousness is also an emergent property of brain activity.

    I do not think that consciousness is an emergent product of brain activity. The difference between wetness and consciousness is that the quality of wetness follows from the physical laws governing the behavior of H2O, that is, given only the laws of physics I could predict that particular chemical substances would have the emergent property of wetness. The same cannot be said of consciousness. Given only the laws of physics, I could not predict the emergence of consciousness, it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be." End Quote.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/10/2013 19:41:26
Quote
I am afraid , i was just wasting my time on you again, since you are not even able to recognize and acknowledge the very simple obvious undeniable fact that materialism is not ...science .

You are indeed, since I never said it was. No "ism" can be science, by definition.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2013 20:27:50
Quote
I am afraid , i was just wasting my time on you again, since you are not even able to recognize and acknowledge the very simple obvious undeniable fact that materialism is not ...science .

You are indeed, since I never said it was. No "ism" can be science, by definition.

Is that all you have to say ? no wonder ....
Anyway , you did not say that explicitly at least , but you meant it implicitly ,consciously or sub-consciously :  when you said the following , i will reproduce for you here below : sometimes , we all say the exact opposite of what we mean to say that reveals our own true positions on the given  subject : our words are ,sometimes, "wiser" than ourselves , either way ...
You accused me , apparently , of  confusing science with materialism haha , ironically enough , while i have been the one accusing you, guys , of doing just that : hilarious .

I have not been talking about science , just about materialism in science , materialism that gets sold to the people as science : your own failure to notice or see grasp just that means that you cannot separate science from materialism, obviously thus , despite my latter  provided relatively  long list of materialist "facts " in science that get sold to the people as scientific results facts or as scientific approaches at least = you cannot but confuse materialism with science , logically , as a result = it's like saying there is no difference between the 2 , despite what you said here above, to the contrary  : Comprende , amigo ?

Here you go :

Quote
  DonQuichotte : Materialism and Science are not the same thing.

Quote
Alancalverd : except, apparently, in your own ravings.

Beware of selfcontradiction. Remember the fate of the Oozlum bird: not knowing whether it was coming or going, it changed direction so many times that it flew up its own arse and disappeared. Incidentally this is the basis of Continuum String Theory.

Shalom ...Mr. what's the English name of that animal which buries its head in the sand again , come again ....
I am not trying to "offend " you by calling you by the name of that animal, no , since our materialist evolutionists see us  all , human beings ,  as being just ...animals, the bloody ...animals haha  .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2013 20:41:26
@ Cheryl :

Since you do seem to love and appreciate high poetry ,see the following : a gift to you, even though it's not mine , i wish : cheers :

You can download it for free, in different formats , including kindle ,  from this nice great site :

http://fr.feedbooks.com/book/2843/the-prophet

P.S.: The following are the exact poetic words of Gibran, i did misquote here above , in an earlier post of mine to you , i quote here below :

Quote :
" ....But i say that even as the holy and righteous   cannot rise beyond  the highest which is in each  one of you ,
So, the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also ...." End quote .


Source : "The Prophet"  by Gibran Khalil Gibran : Chapter 12 : "On Crime and punishment" = a totally different moral ethical view , a so true  beautiful -ugly  one  in comparison with the rest , or just with that  sick pathological morality  contained in  Dostoyevsky 's " Crime and Punishment " book you can also download from that same site for free , and much more ..... .

Beautiful, ugly,awesome , and so true ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/10/2013 20:51:12
...  the non-material side of reality must be left outside of science , obviously , but science can shed some light on  some parts of the non-material side of reality as well, by shedding light on its material basis ...
So non-material reality has a material basis?

Is consciousness part of non-material reality?

If so, does that mean science can shed light on it by shedding light on its material basis? if not, why not?

On the other hand, if consciousness is part of material reality, science can shed light on it directly...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2013 21:07:34
...  the non-material side of reality must be left outside of science , obviously , but science can shed some light on  some parts of the non-material side of reality as well, by shedding light on its material basis ...
So non-material reality has a material basis?

Is consciousness part of non-material reality?

If so, does that mean science can shed light on it by shedding light on its material basis? if not, why not?

On the other hand, if consciousness is part of material reality, science can shed light on it directly...

I will try to correct my earlier clumsy formulations, as follows :

Obviously , we are body and mind , matter and spirit :
The position of any given person regarding just that depends largely on his/her philosophical  secular , philsophical religious , or just on the religious view of the person in question regarding body and mind : dualism, monism , idealism ...
The materialist dominance in science has just choosen to turn that monism of Spinoza on the subject to materialist monism in science ...

The "view" of Islam , for example , as i understand it to be at last , is neither monistic , nor dualistic , or idealistic = it is neither : sees mind and body , or matter and spirit as 2 different 'things " or rather processes in one or as one ... : 2 = 1....i dunno .

So, the  approach of the  issue or hard problem of consciousness depends thus largely on the world view of the approacher in question ,so to speak .

I think that science cannot say much about consciousness as such ,or rather almost nothing at all ,  simply because consciousness  is immaterial , but science can help us shed some light on the physical biological brain as the kindda "receiver " or   as the executive material power of consciousness, i dunno  : basis was a wrong mistaken word : human language is too limited , too ideological, too cultural , too local ...so.

How the physical material biological brain and the immaterial non-physical and non-biological consciousness do interact correlate with each other is anybody's guess : beat me ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/10/2013 22:41:31
Quote
you cannot but confuse materialism with science , logically , as a result

Speak for yourself. I have no problem distinguishing betwen the two. Science is a process, materialism is a belief or a way of life. No similarity, no connection. I'm sorry for those who find such a simple distinction confusing but that's not my problem.

All I can advise is that if you fill your head with isms, religion or philosophy, you will waste an otherwise satisfying and productive life, and possibly learn to despise others or hold them in contempt. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/10/2013 22:43:45
How the immaterial, non-physical, non-biological can affect or influence the material, physical, biological does seem to be a serious challenge for the immaterial consciousness idea. To influence the material means having a material effect, which suggests a material basis, but to be immaterial suggests the opposite.

Conversely, for immaterial consciousness to be aware of what's coming in through the senses and what is going on in the brain, it must be influenced or affected by material brain activity. A control system can't operate 'blind', without feedback.

Which raises the question, if something can both affect and be affected by the material, in what sense is it not material?

And if the non-material can both affect and be affected by the material, the assertion that it can't have a material basis seems fatally undermined.

These appear to be fundamental problems for the idea of immaterial consciousness, but the idea is testable, if not entirely falsifiable.

If consciousness is immaterial and controls all voluntary behaviours, such as memory, judgment, planning, personality, etc., we might expect to observe apparently spontaneous neural activity arising as the appropriate neurons are somehow influenced by consciousness to cause or modify these activities, and we would not expect to see changes consistent with consciousness being a process of the material brain, such as broad or non-specific influences on the brain (e.g. narcotics, stimulants, sedatives), having correspondingly broad influences on the functions of consciousness; or local and specific influences on the brain (e.g. localised damage or stimulation) having correspondingly specific effects on consciousness. 

However, when we examine the evidence, we don't see the levels of spontaneous activity that we might expect if some external influence was supplying memory, judgment, planning, etc. But the brain is extremely complex, so we can't be certain this influence is absent.

On the other hand, we do see that both specific local and broad non-specific influences on the brain have effects on consciousness entirely consistent with consciousness being the product of brain activity, and inconsistent with the immaterial consciousness idea.

So what would a reasonable person prefer:

the idea (immaterial consciousness) that has a fundamental contradiction or inconsistency at its core (how material & non-material can interact, and if they can, what differentiates them), for which there is no supporting evidence, explanatory model or mechanism, and which is not consistent with the available evidence...

Or the idea (consciousness materially generated) that is consistent with the available evidence, has an increasingly detailed model and explanatory mechanism and has at its core not a contradiction or inconsistency, but an as yet unanswered question?

Your choice; are you a reasonable person?


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/10/2013 23:28:34
It's all been done before, and more succinctly:

Quote
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Boswell: The Life of Dr Johnson
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 14/10/2013 23:42:55
It's all been done before, and more succinctly:

Quote
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Boswell: The Life of Dr Johnson
True - one of my favourite stories; empirical, pragmatic, and succinct.

But then, of course, Bishop Berkeley would have grasped his point without elaboration.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 15/10/2013 02:22:00


Source : http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False

Prior Note :

The following article does not necessarily reflect my own opinions or views on the subject :



    ....In short, I think materialism is false. Below is why, with a detour through the reasons why Materialism isn't false.....

   
...The first and easiest is the problem of life. The problem arises from the unique properties and capabilities of living organisms; it had seemed incomprehensible that the mechanical world of physics could explain the biological. Something else was needed, so it was postulated that a vital force animated living matter, imbuing it with lifelike qualities. The doctrine held that life was inexplicable in terms of physicochemical interactions. If the Materialist could not explain life, then Materialism must be false.

    The Materialist did not get his answer to this problem in one sweeping theory, but rather a cumulation of experimental findings, from William Harvey's discovery that the circularitory system was a cleverly engineered mechanism to pump blood around the body, to Fracis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The march of scientific progress has unveiled the fine structure of cellular machinery, all working impeccably from physicochemical laws without the need for a vital animating force.

    Here the Materialist can explain how life works without appealing to any immaterial vital essence, but there still remains another problem to be solved. This is the problem of design. How is it that this incredible arrangement of organised matter came into being? The odds that such organisation would occur by chance are astronomically low, but life is bustling all around us in a multitude of forms. If the Materialist cannot explain this design, then Materialism must be false.

    In 1859, in a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace that explanation was provided. The Materialist now had The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection i.e. The gradual accumulation of adaptive organisation by selective advantage. This elegant theory has provided the Materialist with an answer to the problem of design, which has in time been corroborated by a vast amount of evidence, from practically every field of scientific study.

    The problem of design had been solved, but an interesting disagreement between Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin persisted. The problem of thought presented itself. To Wallace, the human capacity for reasoned thought was beyond the reach of evolution, a feat which could simply not have been achieved by anything other than supernatural intervention, or in other words: God given. How could it be that a physical system could possibly think? If Materialism cannot explain how it is that we think, then Materialism must be false.

    The answer to the problem today is all around us, in front of anyone reading this at this very moment, i.e. computation. Alan Turing's Turing machine and the advent of modern electronics are a vivid illustration that complex computational architecture, obeying only the laws of physics can perform intelligent operations. The Materialist can now look to neurobiology, where cognition is explained as the consequent of neurocomputations occurring in parallel throughout the central nervous system. The Materialist now has his answer to Wallace's conjecture that the capacity for reason is unevolvable and must be God given.

    So the Materialist has provided powerful arguments to solve the problem of life, the problem of design and the problem thought. Unlike these three problems, the final problem on my list cannot refute Materialism. If Materialism is indeed amoral, it would be a nonsequitor to conclude from Materialism's amorality that it is false. For this reason, the problem of morality is a special case, but nonetheless very powerful. Briefly, the argument claims that if we are nothing but an unintentional consequence of natural selection, nothing but elaborate machines and built by selfish genes, then there is no reason to work for a higher purpose. For what reason should we treat our fellow man with compassion? What becomes of right and wrong with no God?

    The answer to this problem is the combined product of evolutionary biology, neurobiology and philosophy. The combined solutions to the previous three problems set the stage for solving the problem of morality. First, evolutionary biology, far from undermining the basis of morality, can explain why we have a moral sense in the first place. Second, neurobiology has provided scientists with evidence of how the human brain computes moral decisions. Finally, philosophers have raised objections to the accusation that Materialism is inherently amoral, refuting the accusations with powerful solutions and counterarguments.

    Note: I am sure many reading this may object to the solutions I have presented to the 'four problems,' such objections are welcome and I encourage further criticism.

    ________________________________________________________________

    I have taken this detour through the successes of Materialism to drive home that I have no political agenda against the philosophy, religiously motivated or otherwise. I now wish to draw attention to my fifth problem for Materialism:

    5) The problem of consciousness
    A single element of conscious experience is called a quale, a group of quale are known as qualia. A quale might be the subjective experience of red, cold or pain. All quale are symbolic representations of frequencies and angles. The problem for Materialism is explaining qualia, the subjective experience of life, the very subjective experience without which we cannot imagine life being worth living at all. How can a physical system such as the brain be responsible for consciousness?. This is no small problem, for if Materialism cannot explain consciousness, then Materialism is false.

 
    No matter where you look in my brain, even if you are looking at that particular cluster of neurons responsible for my conscious experience of red, you cannot sensibly say that you are looking at the quale redness. The redness I see is qualitively independent of the neural substrate that is responsible for that quale. To put this another way, I would argue that qualia are ontologically irreducible to the neural substrate, that is, qualia have independent qualities which cannot be explained at the physical level. However, I also would argue that consciousness is entirely caused by the neural substrate, that consciousness has no informational content or cognitive ability above that which occurs on the neurocomputational level i.e. consciousness is causally reducible to the neural substrate.

   
    ________________________________________________________________

    A possible criticism of my theory is that consciousness is an emergent consequence of brain activity. This is a tempting view to take, analogous to the quality of wetness. A body of water is wet, even though no particular element of that body of water is wet. To clarify, a single molecule of H2O cannot be wet, because the quality of wetness is dependent upon the interactions of the constituent parts, without belong to any of those particular constituent parts. Wetness is an emergent property. A critic might conjecture that consciousness is also an emergent property of brain activity.

    I do not think that consciousness is an emergent product of brain activity. The difference between wetness and consciousness is that the quality of wetness follows from the physical laws governing the behavior of H2O, that is, given only the laws of physics I could predict that particular chemical substances would have the emergent property of wetness. The same cannot be said of consciousness. Given only the laws of physics, I could not predict the emergence of consciousness, it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be." End Quote.

I doubt octopi and aardvarks could be predicted from fundamental particles either, so consciousness is not special in that regard.
Materialism is not the same as reductionism. As I mentioned earlier, probability and statistics has studied higher order relationships since the 1800s. It is rooted in empirical data, measurements of observable events, but a single dot on the graph tells you nothing.  You cannot predict the traffic patterns in Los Angeles, when and where accidents are most likely to occur, by looking at the length of screws in cars, the construction of tires, the components of the internal combustion engine.  Those are the wrong levels of organization for obtaining the information you are looking for.

I’m not crazy about “wetness” as an example of an emergent property, as it would involve a circular definition, the property of having  a lot of water or some other liquid in it or on its surface. But I do like dlorde’s example of brass being stronger than either tin or copper. David Cooper said a while back that a system cannot have properties that are not in its components, but I disagree. None of the cells in a bird are capable of flight, but a bird flies. So, if offered a choice, should I believe that flight is a property that emerges from the bird’s interacting components?   Or should I believe that a bird becomes infused with the non-material spirit of flight, or is somehow given flight by non material morphic resonance?

Flight is also the result of the bird's physical interaction with its environment, the air pressure difference above and below the wing. One thing we have not discussed very much, if at all, in this thread is the effect of environment on the brain. Not everything the brain does can be accounted for by its parts because it does not exist in isolation. Genes are big factor in human behaviour and ability, but environment has a major influence on how this is manifested. Several gene variants have been associated with things like anti-social behaviour disorder (aggression, violence, criminality.) Statistically speaking, the genes alone do not predict anti-social behaviour unless combined with an abusive, neglectful childhood. To put it simply, bad genes, good home: you’re fine. Good genes, bad home: still fine. Bad genes, bad home: disaster.

Another higher order, environmental effect is learning, which changes both the structure of the brain and its function. It also changes consciousness, or what you are conscious of. When you were first learning to type, you had to look down and hunt for every letter. Now your fingers seem to fly effortlessly over the keyboard, as you focus on what you want to say and how you next want to insult me. Curiously, if I asked you where the letter “V” is on the key board, you will probably have to look, or at the very least think about it a lot longer than you do when you are typing. Why? One explanation is that a learned skill is first obtained consciously, but its execution eventually becomes a process that happens just below the level of conscious awareness, where it works faster and more efficiently, and incidentally, with less energy consumption. So why doesn’t the entire brain function by these automatic processes?

One possible reason is that automatic programs are inflexible. A rat in a cage where there is both a juicy morsel of food and an electric shock will approach, withdraw, approach and withdraw. He becomes stuck in the middle of the cage. One thing that distinguishes humans (and even chimps and dogs) from, say, reptiles is the number and variety of ways they can respond to a stimulus or situation, a kind of flexibility. But flexibility requires a number of things, a way to switch back and forth between programs, and acquire new ones.
 Consciousness seems most active, not just in terms of certain types of brain activity on imaging, but also from people’s subjective experience of it (which you are so fond of,) when the environment violates your brain's expectations. If hitting the letter V on the keyboard started producing a T every time, you would stop thinking about the falseness of materialism, become aware of what your fingers were doing, and look down at the keyboard, puzzled. You can drive down the road, thinking of other things, barely remembering what you saw the last few miles, unless there’s a car flipped over in the ditch. When someone across a noisy room mentions your name, you hear it, and turn around, even though you have no recollection what else they were saying and feel as though you weren’t even listening to them. Neuroscience can explain these things, rather specifically. I don’t know about morphic resonance. But my main point is, that the statement in the article you posted: “it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be” is not a reasonable assumption.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/10/2013 12:44:03
,,,But my main point is, that the statement in the article you posted: “it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be” is not a reasonable assumption.
Indeed; and there's something about the phrasing of that statement that seems curiously ambiguous in isolation.

It also seems to me that the alternative, the immaterial ghost in the machine, the Cartesian theater, is far more unsatisfactory, raising more unanswerable questions than it attempts to answer; at the analytical extreme it results in an infinite recursion of theaters and viewers, and at the the other extreme, a hand-waving vagueness of indeterminate ontology and epistemological vacuity, that effectively limits rational enquiry in much the same way as the god idea terminates rational enquiry into the chain of causality. Whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic, I've yet to see anything to dissuade me that the god idea and the immaterial consciousness are lazy philosophical bedfellows of causal abrogation without explanatory or predictive utility.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 17:13:42
,,,But my main point is, that the statement in the article you posted: “it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be” is not a reasonable assumption.
Indeed; and there's something about the phrasing of that statement that seems curiously ambiguous in isolation.

It also seems to me that the alternative, the immaterial ghost in the machine, the Cartesian theater, is far more unsatisfactory, raising more unanswerable questions than it attempts to answer; at the analytical extreme it results in an infinite recursion of theaters and viewers, and at the the other extreme, a hand-waving vagueness of indeterminate ontology and epistemological vacuity, that effectively limits rational enquiry in much the same way as the god idea terminates rational enquiry into the chain of causality. Whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic, I've yet to see anything to dissuade me that the god idea and the immaterial consciousness are lazy philosophical bedfellows of causal abrogation without explanatory or predictive utility.


The core point is :

The materialist magical approach of consciousness ,life ....and materialism itself are false ,so, one should try to look for alternatives to materialism :
That the potentially alternatives to materialism seem unsatisfactory to you , won't make the fact go away that materialism is false : comprende , amigo ?
Once again, i think that the immaterial side of reality , including consciousness , are , per definition, out of reach of the current conventional science :
I do not see either how any kindda evolved science in the future , via a so-called non-reductionist naturalism in science , can approach that immaterial side of reality ...directly , that you call paranormal , the latter is normal though ,not paranormal : paranormal is just made-up by man meaningless semantics .
Science can approach the immaterial side of reality though ,indirectly , via approaching the material side of reality , by shedding light on the brain as the "receiver " of consciousness ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 17:25:54
It's all been done before, and more succinctly:

Quote
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Boswell: The Life of Dr Johnson
True - one of my favourite stories; empirical, pragmatic, and succinct.

But then, of course, Bishop Berkeley would have grasped his point without elaboration.

(Idealism is partly true though , partly wrong ...= the universe is matter and spirit , not only spirit .
Materialism is the exact opposite of idealism : materialism that assumes or rather believes that the universe is exclusively material , a materialist idiotic assumption and belief that are obviously ...false ...

Materialism is thus no better than that idealism of that silly bishop= they stand at the same level = oh no, rectification correction = mind or spirit are way too fundamental than matter can ever be = materialism is even lower or is rather a degenerate form of ....idealism also ... )

Wrong : there is nothing true , empirical pragmati succint regarding the alleged refutation of that story :
Science can neither prove nor disprove the silly allegations of that bishop ,obviously ....reason , logic ...neither .
It does not mean that idealism is true though ,as i said above ....
I can say that God is behind everything and at every moment in the universe and beyond : empirical science can say nothing about this allegation of mine , simply because science has no jurisdiction, so to speak, on that ....= that 's outside of the natural realm of science = in fact , that' s outside of the material side of reality as the domain or realm of science ....

Your unnuanced unrelative Russell's tea pot argument does not cover what i said here above ....= the simplest and best obvious answer to our existential questions is simply ...God = occam's razor ...



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 17:35:24
Quote
you cannot but confuse materialism with science , logically , as a result

Speak for yourself. I have no problem distinguishing betwen the two. Science is a process, materialism is a belief or a way of life. No similarity, no connection. I'm sorry for those who find such a simple distinction confusing but that's not my problem.

No, you do , obviously , confuse science with materialism , as the majority of scientists do , a fact you cannot deny as such , a fact i have been extracting from your own replies on this and on other threads as well, all along .

Do you think that reality   is exclusively material, for example ? If you do, and i think you do , then you are a materialist who happens to confuse his materialism with the material side of reality , the latter as the domain or realm of science .

Quote
All I can advise is that if you fill your head with isms, religion or philosophy, you will waste an otherwise satisfying and productive life, and possibly learn to despise others or hold them in contempt.

My friend , everyone on this planet , including you me and our friends here , have their own beliefs , materialist beliefs or otherwise , world views .....
So, do not make it sound as if you are some unique special exception of that general rule that applies to every human on this planet , consciously or sub-consciously ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/10/2013 18:01:08
Don, I notice you still haven't addressed my earlier post where I asked:
Quote
... So what would a reasonable person prefer:

the idea (immaterial consciousness) that has a fundamental contradiction or inconsistency at its core (how material & non-material can interact, and if they can, what differentiates them), for which there is no supporting evidence, explanatory model or mechanism, and which is not consistent with the available evidence...

Or the idea (consciousness materially generated) that is consistent with the available evidence, has an increasingly detailed model and explanatory mechanism and has at its core not a contradiction or inconsistency, but an as yet unanswered question?

Your choice; are you a reasonable person?
Fancy a go? :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 18:29:14
How the immaterial, non-physical, non-biological can affect or influence the material, physical, biological does seem to be a serious challenge for the immaterial consciousness idea. To influence the material means having a material effect, which suggests a material basis, but to be immaterial suggests the opposite.


Lethal thought error, and false materialist premise  :

You're looking at consciousness from the materialist point of view , dude , in order to prove the materialist magical approach of consciousness haha : very convenient indeed .
It's like saying i know, as many people do , that  i am a false pathological chronic deceptive manipulative liar , so, i will prove i am indeed  .
Since materialism is false , do not try to apply it to non-physical non -biological processes , as you do here above :

You cannot apply a false premise or a false hypothesis ,in order to prove your false premise , false hypothesis or materialist belief to be "true " = makes no sense .

So, I will turn this materialist non-sense of yours upside down : you cannot but "think" materialistically , i see :

Thoughts of a scientist observer can influence or change the activity of atoms he/ she is "looking " at or "observing" : do you think that those thoughts that are immaterial of course do just that to atoms ,via some material way  haha ,RU nuts  ? How then ?
By sending some invisible undetectable "energy" or remote 'signals "  from the brain to those atoms , like a tv remote control device do to the tv ?  haha

We can detect those signals sent by the remote control device to the tv at least though .



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Conversely, for immaterial consciousness to be aware of what's coming in through the senses and what is going on in the brain, it must be influenced or affected by material brain activity. A control system can't operate 'blind', without feedback.

How did you deduce from that silly reasoning of yours that consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain ? does not add up :

Did you read the book or watched the movie concerning the extremely inspiring story of Helen Keller : The story of my life ?
She was born blind and deaf.....
Consciousness exists even without our senses ....

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Which raises the question, if something can both affect and be affected by the material, in what sense is it not material?

You're building your reasoning on a false premise , amigo ?
Who said consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain through our senses ? Why not say that consciousness gets somehow informed by the brain via the senses ,or something like that , instead of assuming that consciousness gets affected and influenced by the brain through the senses , in order to get where you wanna get , as Thomas Aquinas used to do haha , regarding his silly attempts to prove the existence of God , for example ............very convenient .


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And if the non-material can both affect and be affected by the material, the assertion that it can't have a material basis seems fatally undermined.

False premise = false reasoning = false conclusions .

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These appear to be fundamental problems for the idea of immaterial consciousness, but the idea is testable, if not entirely falsifiable.

How can you test that then at least ? or make that partly falsifiable ?

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If consciousness is immaterial and controls all voluntary behaviours, such as memory, judgment, planning, personality, etc., we might expect to observe apparently spontaneous neural activity arising as the appropriate neurons are somehow influenced by consciousness to cause or modify these activities, and we would not expect to see changes consistent with consciousness being a process of the material brain, such as broad or non-specific influences on the brain (e.g. narcotics, stimulants, sedatives), having correspondingly broad influences on the functions of consciousness; or local and specific influences on the brain (e.g. localised damage or stimulation) having correspondingly specific effects on consciousness. 

False premises again : what makes you think that consciousness gets affected or influenced by all that you mentioned ?
Why not think of the brain as some sort of a receiver then ?

What do you mean by spontaneous ? = something arising out of or emerging from nothing ..............
RU gonna send us back to that refuted  silly spontaneous generation?

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However, when we examine the evidence, we don't see the levels of spontaneous activity that we might expect if some external influence was supplying memory, judgment, planning, etc. But the brain is extremely complex, so we can't be certain this influence is absent.

Brain and consciousness do interact and correlate with each other , how ? = that's anyone's guess , once again ...

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On the other hand, we do see that both specific local and broad non-specific influences on the brain have effects on consciousness entirely consistent with consciousness being the product of brain activity, and inconsistent with the immaterial consciousness idea.

False  magical materialist bullshit  premises again .
Interaction or correlation between brain and consciousness = no causation .
Even the alleged causation is no explanation , simply because causation is no explanation .


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So what would a reasonable person prefer:

the idea (immaterial consciousness) that has a fundamental contradiction or inconsistency at its core (how material & non-material can interact, and if they can, what differentiates them), for which there is no supporting evidence, explanatory model or mechanism, and which is not consistent with the available evidence...

You start with materialist false premises ,in order to prove those materialist false premises haha : How silly can you be ? : you're no better than Thomas Aquinas ...

You start with a false materialist hypothesis , just to get where you want = false premises = false reasoning = false conclusions .

A reasonable person should reject that false idiotic materialism ,obviously , unless one finds himself / herself comfortable in that materialist false idiotic belief = the human will to believe is inexhaustible indeed.

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Or the idea (consciousness materially generated) that is consistent with the available evidence, has an increasingly detailed model and explanatory mechanism and has at its core not a contradiction or inconsistency, but an as yet unanswered question?

It's not a matter of preference or taste , like- dislike ...it's a matter of the truth we are talking about here , no matter what the truth might ever be .

Do not be stupid :
Physics and chemistry cannot , magically , give rise to consciousness ....thought , feelings , emotions ,...otherwise , we can build machines that would really think feel experience things , love ...exactly like humans do , not just simulate all that = cannot be done, for obvious reasons .

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Your choice; are you a reasonable person?

You're a stupid person, blinded by the irrational false materialist faith, despite your relative intelligence , scientific qualifications , ...in the same fashion Stephen Hawking , Dawkins and all the rest of those materialists are ..............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 15/10/2013 18:35:03
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I can say that God is behind everything and at every moment in the universe and beyond

....and I can say "bullshit". Since my statement involves nothing undefined, nothing unprovable, and no assumptions, it is a better statement than yours, and more likely to be true. Occam's Razor is a very sharp tool.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 18:39:10
Don, I notice you still haven't addressed my earlier post where I asked:
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... So what would a reasonable person prefer:

the idea (immaterial consciousness) that has a fundamental contradiction or inconsistency at its core (how material & non-material can interact, and if they can, what differentiates them), for which there is no supporting evidence, explanatory model or mechanism, and which is not consistent with the available evidence...

Or the idea (consciousness materially generated) that is consistent with the available evidence, has an increasingly detailed model and explanatory mechanism and has at its core not a contradiction or inconsistency, but an as yet unanswered question?

Your choice; are you a reasonable person?
Fancy a go? :
)


See above :
Why do you think it's not possible that the immaterial consciousness can interact and correlate with the brain via unknown immaterial ways , either way ?

The immaterial consciousness and the immaterial side of reality are , per definition, out of reach of ...science .
You cannot just decide to turn the immaterial to the material ,via some magic , just to suit your own materialist beliefs: that's something that cannot be bought by really intelligent folks :
Go sell that  materialist non-sense to the ...atoms or to the inanimate matter : even those would not buy it , simply because even those are not just matter or just material processes...= everything in this universe is matter and spirit with  relative respective degrees of spirit ..............or consciousness...
Even atoms are conscious ,their own atomic degree of consciousness .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 18:44:11
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I can say that God is behind everything and at every moment in the universe and beyond

....and I can say "bullshit". Since my statement involves nothing undefined, nothing unprovable, and no assumptions, it is a better statement than yours, and more likely to be true. Occam's Razor is a very sharp tool.

The only reasonable logical answer to the existential question is ...God .
That's the most simplest and best sort of occam's razor explanation .
If you wanna confuse what i said with that Russell's tea pot argument , the latter does not "cover" the former  , you're free to do so = it does not mean you're right : you're simply wrong= occam's razor  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/10/2013 20:08:32
How did you deduce from that silly reasoning of yours that consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain ?
If consciousness is not affected or influenced by what's happening in the brain, how does does it know what's happening?

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Did you read the book or watched the movie concerning the extremely inspiring story of Helen Keller : The story of my life ?
She was born blind and deaf.....
And she used her other senses, especially touch, and proprioception.

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Who said consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain through our senses ? Why not say that consciousness gets somehow informed by the brain via the senses ,or something like that , instead of assuming that consciousness gets affected and influenced by the brain through the senses
Informed, affected, influenced - makes no difference to the point. If you are informed by something it affects and/or influences you - it gives you information that informs you.

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Brain and consciousness do interact and correlate with each other , how ? = that's anyone's guess , once again ...
And that's the problem - the logical problem of material and immaterial interacting. I think you're deliberately ignoring it.

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You're a stupid person, blinded by the irrational false materialist faith, despite your relative intelligence , scientific qualifications , ...in the same fashion Stephen Hawking , Dawkins and all the rest of those materialists are ..............
Insults and ad-hominems don't address the arguments, they just make you look puerile.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/10/2013 20:12:40
Why do you think it's not possible that the immaterial consciousness can interact and correlate with the brain via unknown immaterial ways , either way ?
Can't you see I'm questioning what you mean by immaterial if it can be influenced (informed) by the material and itself influence the material? in what sense can it then be non-material?

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Even atoms are conscious ,their own atomic degree of consciousness .
How do you know that?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 20:43:21


I doubt octopi and aardvarks could be predicted from fundamental particles either, so consciousness is not special in that regard.
Materialism is not the same as reductionism. As I mentioned earlier, probability and statistics has studied higher order relationships since the 1800s. It is rooted in empirical data, measurements of observable events, but a single dot on the graph tells you nothing.  You cannot predict the traffic patterns in Los Angeles, when and where accidents are most likely to occur, by looking at the length of screws in cars, the construction of tires, the components of the internal combustion engine.  Those are the wrong levels of organization for obtaining the information you are looking for.

Materialism can , per definition,logically , obviously , intrinsically inherently ,  only be reductionist , and can only lead to reductionism  and atheism ,obviously,  simply because materialism reduces everything in the universe to just matter or material processes , to just physics and chemistry .
Besides, what do have logics , maths , all sciences and the rest to do with ...materialism ? = absolutely nothing = materialism is just an Eurocentric false world view ideology -conception of nature = a secular religion belief imposed on science as science for so long now  .


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I’m not crazy about “wetness” as an example of an emergent property, as it would involve a circular definition, the property of having  a lot of water or some other liquid in it or on its surface. But I do like dlorde’s example of brass being stronger than either tin or copper. David Cooper said a while back that a system cannot have properties that are not in its components, but I disagree. None of the cells in a bird are capable of flight, but a bird flies. So, if offered a choice, should I believe that flight is a property that emerges from the bird’s interacting components?   Or should I believe that a bird becomes infused with the non-material spirit of flight, or is somehow given flight by non material morphic resonance?

dlorde did raise this false incorrect premise or false issue also previously , i did respond to :

You're confusing the purely physical biological true emergence phenomena with that materialist "emergence " magical trick performance regarding consciousness , or rather you're extending those purely biological physical emergence phenomena to non-physical non -biological phenomena such as consciousness, as materialists do :
So, David Cooper was right about what he said : bird's flight is just a purely physical biological emergence property that arose from  the evolutionary complexity of  its purely physical biological components = the immaterial consciousness is totally unlike any of its complex alleged purely physical biological so-called evolved brain "components" that allegedly "gave rise " to it  .
Besides, can't you just see the obvious simple undeniable fact that physics and chemistry cannot give rise to, fully explain , account for ...fully , such processes such as life , consciousness , feelings , emotions, love .................let alone their evolution emergence origins ,fully,  come on : their material physical biological side is not all there is to them, obviously .
Your irrational false materialist belief is affecting your relative intelligence ,as all irrational false beliefs do to all people who happen to believe in them unconditinally without ever questioning their beliefs ' "validity or truth " , as you  do = materialism turns you, guys , into unbelievable stupid, sorry , naive irrational unscientific illogical inconsistent incoherent fools  zombies  , as a result , despite your relative intelligence , qualifications, life and other experiences ...amazing how false irrational beliefs can do just that to people ...those specific irrational false beliefs do act like biological viruses indeed ....not the real true ones , i must correct those lunatic fanatic materialist Dawkins and co  jesuite missionaries on a crusade mission on this :they are themselves infected with that irrational false materialist deadly virus = no wonder that they project that materialist irrational false belief virus of theirs on all religions for that matter , the false or true ones :
In fact , all religions do have some elements of truth , relatively speaking , including materialism , simply because the latter is concerned only about the existing true material side of reality it takes as the only true reality out there , but that does not mean that all those religions are true , no , either religious or secular , no , there can be only a completely true religion  , not 3567899...........every  one of us must figure that out for himself / herself , right or wrong = an endless dynamic restless journey .
To me is ,Islam that completely true belief , i might be wrong or right about just that , but that's my own journey i have to take and decide to pursue relentlessly honestly restlessly , reasonably , ....via my whole unique being , i do not try to impose on anyone for that matter = everyone must decide for himself/ herself what path in life to take = i have no right to determin impose or decide just that on behalf of anyone , unlike materialism that's been dominating in all sciences and elsewhere as the one and only "truth " , as the one and only "scientific  truth " , by lying to the people , by deceiving them , in the name of science ,the latter that has absolutely nothing to do with, obviously  .


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Flight is also the result of the bird's physical interaction with its environment, the air pressure difference above and below the wing. One thing we have not discussed very much, if at all, in this thread is the effect of environment on the brain. Not everything the brain does can be accounted for by its parts because it does not exist in isolation. Genes are big factor in human behaviour and ability, but environment has a major influence on how this is manifested. Several gene variants have been associated with things like anti-social behaviour disorder (aggression, violence, criminality.) Statistically speaking, the genes alone do not predict anti-social behaviour unless combined with an abusive, neglectful childhood. To put it simply, bad genes, good home: you’re fine. Good genes, bad home: still fine. Bad genes, bad home: disaster.

Honey , life or the universe , or us , as human beings , are not just DNA environment nurture : we are way much more than just that : we have minds that are way too fundamental than matter can ever be = that's what makes us humans in fact , not our genes environment nurture only ...
We are not just physics and chemistry : otherwise try to make a machine that really thinks feels experiences -things , loves , ..exactly like we do , not just simulate all that = cannot be done, for obvious reasons, not now and not in a trillion years to come either  .

Your human mind and imagination, creativity , unparalleled intelligence , the latter in comparison with other species = no comparison in fact , just an analogy , can make you fly ,figuratively and even literally  (that's how the human mind , imagination , creativity ... have been  creating  jet planes , and the rest of those wonderful scientific technological achievements, that's how you can create and enjoy high poetry , easthetics , art, music , literature ... ) , your mind thus can make you fly , both literally and figuratively better than any bird animal or machine can ever do ....

Just tell me how physics and chemistry only can account fully for such human delights ,xtacy, marvel ... at the sight ,smell, or touch of a flower , at the sight of a beautiful face or beautiful woman  , beautiful breath-taking landscape .............come on .

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Another higher order, environmental effect is learning, which changes both the structure of the brain and its function. It also changes consciousness, or what you are conscious of. When you were first learning to type, you had to look down and hunt for every letter. Now your fingers seem to fly effortlessly over the keyboard, as you focus on what you want to say and how you next want to insult me. Curiously, if I asked you where the letter “V” is on the key board, you will probably have to look, or at the very least think about it a lot longer than you do when you are typing. Why? One explanation is that a learned skill is first obtained consciously, but its execution eventually becomes a process that happens just below the level of conscious awareness, where it works faster and more efficiently, and incidentally, with less energy consumption. So why doesn’t the entire brain function by these automatic processes?

To make a long story short :
Our consciousness mind ,brain's elasticity flexibility ,  memory , feelings , emotions ....do change indeed while we are growing up, while experiencing life and other experiences , while learning , while loving , hating , fighting , while being sad , happy , depressed , enthusiastic ...................while we fall and stand up again ....through tears blood and sweat , through delusions, desillusions , inspirations , set backs ..............our whole beings do change , not just our physical bodies or brains , our whole minds and consciousness = our whole beings , but , our core "I" or me remains the same , otherwise , we cannot have that sense of me , that sense of identity or self-identity that gets extended to our cultures ,beliefs , convictions, positions , flaws , shortcomings , love and hate , likes and dislikes.... ........you name it...... , without that sense of identity or self-identity we cannot survive , let alone live or progress , develop , prosper : that sense of self-identity or consciousness awareness self-awareness that 's not only shaped by biology environment nurture culture beliefs , personal experiences . social interactions .........but also mainly fundamentally by our ...minds , the latter is way too fundamental than matter  can ever be  , than material processes or physics and chemistry= our spiritual side or lack of it are very fundamental and decisive in all that, either way .

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One possible reason is that automatic programs are inflexible. A rat in a cage where there is both a juicy morsel of food and an electric shock will approach, withdraw, approach and withdraw. He becomes stuck in the middle of the cage. One thing that distinguishes humans (and even chimps and dogs) from, say, reptiles is the number and variety of ways they can respond to a stimulus or situation, a kind of flexibility. But flexibility requires a number of things, a way to switch back and forth between programs, and acquire new ones.

Our physical biological side is what we mainly have in common with the other species , and everything in this universe is made of their corresponding  same more or less matter arrangements , our highest unparalleled and unique human degree of consciousness awareness self-awareness are mainly what make us humans , other species and inanimate matter can never be able to match , not even remotely close , even though everything in this universe is conscious via their respective relative corresponding degrees of consciousness ........
Our "material, animal , vegetative... " sides are the ones that deluded or have been deluding  materialists and others into thinking feeling behaving acting "loving " , "living " ...as if we were / are just that = just physics and chemistry = they miss or lack and they have been neglegting under-developing their most fundamental and most important side as human beings = their spiritual side .

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Consciousness seems most active, not just in terms of certain types of brain activity on imaging, but also from people’s subjective experience of it (which you are so fond of,) when the environment violates your brain's expectations. If hitting the letter V on the keyboard started producing a T every time, you would stop thinking about the falseness of materialism, become aware of what your fingers were doing, and look down at the keyboard, puzzled. You can drive down the road, thinking of other things, barely remembering what you saw the last few miles, unless there’s a car flipped over in the ditch. When someone across a noisy room mentions your name, you hear it, and turn around, even though you have no recollection what else they were saying and feel as though you weren’t even listening to them. Neuroscience can explain these things, rather specifically. I don’t know about morphic resonance. But my main point is, that the statement in the article you posted: “it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be” is not a reasonable assumption.

We are not just physics and chemistry , my lady : we are not just matter and material processes , obviously , as that false ideological materialism wanna make you believe we are :
Brain damage , brain diseases , genetic deficiencies ....are no evidence for that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the emergence or origins evolution of consciousness = physical or biological systems cannot , per definition , "create " consciousness that's , per definition and nature , immaterial = totally different from its alleged components :
If you can't understand all that , i do not see any other explanation for these  irrational stubborn repeated unmovable unchangeable static dry-rock-solid soulless heartless insensitive unprogressive denials of yours regarding the obvious falsehood of materialim in science ,than this one :
= your irrational unconditional blind faith in that false irrational materialism secular religion .

In Short :
It's useless to try to make people see the falsehood of their beliefs = cannot be done , simply because those false irrational blind beliefs of theirs would not let them listen to any evidence , to any arguments ....that might be against their false beliefs :

This huge issue of stubborn irrational blind belief and its amazing pathological effects on the people that happen to believe in  it blindly , applies thus not only to most religious people  today  ,but also to ...atheists and to so-called secularists , agnostics ...
No wonder that you , guys , attack ridicule , make fun of , "offend insult " ....religions ,while despising them , while having contempt for them = you are just projecting :

= "We almost all prefer to accuse and judge others , in order to avoid being accused and judged ourselves "

No wonder that materialists ,atheists = in fact materialism is atheism ,and can lead thus only to atheism and reductionism, obviously , no wonder that the hard core fanatics materialists such as  Dawkins  and the rest are so fanatic in relation to religion, obviously , logically = they have been fighting their own irrational fanatic blind materialist faith they have been projecting on ....religions = they have been fighting against themselves while  exteriorizing that inner fight and projecting it on religions , instead of dealing with their own demons = they are not brave or intelligent honest enough to deal with their own demons , so , they attack other false or true similar -to-theirs-demons instead = science has absolutely nothing , per definition and nature , to do with any of all that =

Take my word for it , read my lips , dear :
The materialist false secular religion in science has been turning science into a kindda ...exclusive religion  since the 19th century at least , metaphorically and relatively speaking , but the great and amazing self - rejuvenating flexible dynamic evolutionary nature of science and thus of its effective and unaparalleled method has been able to make science rise above that materialist secular false religion prison it has been confined to for so long now , after all, and despite all that : that's the great amazing wonderful unparalleled power beauty and strength of science that will enable it , without a shadow of a doubt , to reject that false dead materialism , sooner or later , and move on beyond it = inevitable = just a question of time ...
Only time will tell then .............. . 


Good night , love .
Thanks , appreciate indeed .
Kind warm regards .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 20:50:09
Dear folks :
I am really exhausted by having to reply to more or less lengthy posts from the 3 of you , guys , against just me , just 1 , that do robb me from a lots of time i can hardly afford .
So, just try to keep it short next time, please  .
My apologies for the inevitable potential multiple logical grammatical and other errors you might detect in  my replies ...
Thanks, appreciate , indeed .
Good night to you all .
Best wishes .
I have a special occasion -holiday to attend to, so .
Bye
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 20:57:36
Why do you think it's not possible that the immaterial consciousness can interact and correlate with the brain via unknown immaterial ways , either way ?
Can't you see I'm questioning what you mean by immaterial if it can be influenced (informed) by the material and itself influence the material? in what sense can it then be non-material?

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Even atoms are conscious ,their own atomic degree of consciousness .
How do you know that?

That's 1 of the reasons  why  i said that the immaterial side of reality ,including the immaterial consciousness of course , including the immaterial side of life in general , .....must be kept , as they actually should be , outside of the natural realm of science .....science that's only concerned with the material side of reality ...obviously .
To try to turn the immaterial side of reality to a material one ,as materialism has been doing  , via some magical materialist assumptions or via some dogmatic materialist irrational unscientific false beliefs  only  materialism  can perform ,to try to perform just that materialistic magical trick  is not only incorrect false , but also unscientific ,obviously ,so.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2013 21:29:10
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How did you deduce from that silly reasoning of yours that consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain ?
If consciousness is not affected or influenced by what's happening in the brain, how does does it know what's happening?

Quote
Did you read the book or watched the movie concerning the extremely inspiring story of Helen Keller : The story of my life ?
She was born blind and deaf.....
And she used her other senses, especially touch, and proprioception.

Quote
Who said consciousness can be affected and influenced by the brain through our senses ? Why not say that consciousness gets somehow informed by the brain via the senses ,or something like that , instead of assuming that consciousness gets affected and influenced by the brain through the senses
Informed, affected, influenced - makes no difference to the point. If you are informed by something it affects and/or influences you - it gives you information that informs you.

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Brain and consciousness do interact and correlate with each other , how ? = that's anyone's guess , once again ...
And that's the problem - the logical problem of material and immaterial interacting. I think you're deliberately ignoring it.

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You're a stupid person, blinded by the irrational false materialist faith, despite your relative intelligence , scientific qualifications , ...in the same fashion Stephen Hawking , Dawkins and all the rest of those materialists are ..............
Insults
and ad-hominems don't address the arguments, they just make you look puerile.

Time up, sorry : I have already sacrificed a lots of time today here ,too much time than usual in fact ,  i can hardly afford , as you can see , on this page :
So,see my reply to you right here above on the subject :
It is a logical reasonable fact , no pueril insult , that materialism as an irrational unscientific- even  (Any belief for that matter is , per definition unscientific , but not necessarily false , as materialism actually is , obviously ),that materialist  false belief secular religion , has been turning you , guys , into unbelievable dummies-zombies  ,obviouly ....

Irrational unconditional blind false beliefs, either secular or religious , including materialism itself, obviously ,  do act as a deadly non-biological and non-physical virus infecting the minds hearts and souls of its hosts inevitably , for every truely intelligent reader or watcher here to see :
That's why and how those infected haha Dawkins and co. have been projecting and and have been so eager to spread that non-physical non -biological, ironically enough for materialists haha , virus of theirs they are , obviously , infected by to all .......religions- the true or false ones alike haha.

You know :
I cannot resist the following temptation, despite the fact that i am exhausted and running way  out  of time :

That non-physical non-biological virus represented and personified "reincarnated " by all irrational false religions, either the secular or religious ones, including materialism itself thus , have been reminding me of that 2013 -US movie i saw lately :

World War Z , i guess , featuring Brad Pit ............( The other similar one is :Warm bodies ,nice deep one also,  i can turn its core message or logic upside down as well , to fit my purpose ) .

I think the only way, that was "whispered" to me by world war z movie thus ,  to try to get rid of that immaterial irrational false belief virus , either religious or secular , that has been infecting many people on this planet , risking to infect the rest of humanity as a result and in the process , simply because it is so contagious , the only way to "fight " against it , is by deliberatly and voluntarily getting infected by it or by some similar-to-it irrational false belief-virus  that might make us, the healthy people among us at least ,  immune to the original former virus , either the religious or the secular one , once again , just to be able to win some time ....by becoming "invisible or undetectable " to that original former virus i have ben talking about : that of materialism of course + its religious fanatic twin or soul-mate .

Note : i do not regard my own belief as  being an  irrational  false belief immaterial-virus , otherwise , i would have rejected it immediatly , without mercy,without any remorse or regret whatsoever  haha ...


Cheers .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/10/2013 21:43:12
Meh; just the same unsupported assertions. Arguments notably lacking as usual.

Disappointing but not unexpected.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/10/2013 00:11:34

Science can approach the immaterial side of reality though ,indirectly , via approaching the material side of reality , by shedding light on the brain as the "receiver " of consciousness ...


I'm surprised to hear you say that. If materialism is false, not just incomplete or limited, but as you say, false, and cannot even provide reliable information about the material world, how can it be used to understand anything about the immaterial, or the link between the material or immaterial? Surely you can see the contradiction there. You will probably say, once again, that I am confusing materialism with real science but like it or not, science investigates things with material processes, observing either directly or with instruments, measuring, counting, controlling variables, while changing one. Give me some examples of science experiments that don't. Thought experiments might be one, but even Einstein's were eventually backed up with empirical data. And Einstein's also had a mathematical support, which your theories or Sheldrake's do not have.

If materialism is false, and we've been doing everything wrong all along, how should we have investigated diabetes, if not by dissecting the body, finding the pancreas, discovering beta cells, figuring out what the hormone insulin does, identifying the receptors on tissue cells, etc. ?

Or is materialism "not false"  for some things, but "false" for others, and are you sure you know where to draw that line?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/10/2013 01:03:38

You're confusing the purely physical biological true emergence phenomena with that materialist "emergence " magical trick performance regarding consciousness , or rather you're extending those purely biological physical emergence phenomena to non-physical non -biological phenomena such as consciousness, as materialists do :
So, David Cooper was right about what he said : bird's flight is just a purely physical biological emergence property that arose from  the evolutionary complexity of  its purely physical biological components = the immaterial consciousness is totally unlike any of its complex alleged purely physical biological so-called evolved brain "components" that allegedly "gave rise " to it  .


So are you saying that there can be emergent properties in biological systems? That is what I take to mean by "purely physical biological true emergence phenomena". You at least agree to that much? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/10/2013 10:55:33
... science investigates things with material processes, observing either directly or with instruments, measuring, counting, controlling variables, while changing one. Give me some examples of science experiments that don't. Thought experiments might be one, but even Einstein's were eventually backed up with empirical data. And Einstein's also had a mathematical support, which your theories or Sheldrake's do not have.
Thought experiments are generally a means for generating testable hypotheses, directly or indirectly inspired by observation, so they are only part of the process; the observations involve the material (i.e. what can be observed), and, as you say, the hypotheses must be tested, which is a material process also involving observation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 16/10/2013 11:13:31

The only reasonable logical answer to the existential question is ...God .


OK, I'm intrigued. What is the existential question and how do you know this is the answer?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 16/10/2013 15:28:59
God, when he puts his scientist's hat on, recognises that he cannot qualify as God.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 16:27:11

You're confusing the purely physical biological true emergence phenomena with that materialist "emergence " magical trick performance regarding consciousness , or rather you're extending those purely biological physical emergence phenomena to non-physical non -biological phenomena such as consciousness, as materialists do :
So, David Cooper was right about what he said : bird's flight is just a purely physical biological emergence property that arose from  the evolutionary complexity of  its purely physical biological components = the immaterial consciousness is totally unlike any of its complex alleged purely physical biological so-called evolved brain "components" that allegedly "gave rise " to it  .


So are you saying that there can be emergent properties in biological systems? That is what I take to mean by "purely physical biological true emergence phenomena". You at least agree to that much?

Of course i do  agree  : that goes without saying .
Of course there are emergent properties at the physical and biological levels ....
But , that magical materialist "emergence " trick regarding the immaterial consciousness is obviously false : the immaterial consciousness cannot , obviously , rise from its totally different material physical biological alleged components ,as David Cooper was so right about saying .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 16:39:59


The only reasonable logical answer to the existential question is ...God .

OK, I'm intrigued. What is the existential question and how do you know this is the answer?

Do not be lazy : take a dictionary and look for the word "existential " .

I will give you the following obvious hint :

In his "Selfish Gene " , lunatic Dawkins quotes some materialist scientist  saying :

or in words to that same effect at least :

"...Darwin's theory of evolution is the only valid answer to our existential question .All pre-Darwinian attempts to answer just that were /are not only worthless , but they must be totally dicarded as well "

That lunatic materialist scientist was not realising the fact that he was not stating a scientific fact , as he might have thought to have been  doing , he was just stating a materialist dogmatic belief= unscientific  .

Evolution itself is not only physical biological , not just physics and chemistry ,despite the fact that Darwin's theory of evolution was / is exclusively biological physical .

Darwin's purely  and exclusively  biological physical theory of evolution is indeed scientific , and only when it does not cross the boundaries of the realm of science = the material side of reality thus .

So, those materialists evolutionists can , logically only say the above .

God is in fact behind evolution itself , the laws of physics ....= this is no scientific statement of course  either  , that above mentioned materialist statement of that materialist scientist evolutionist neither .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 16:48:04
God, when he puts his scientist's hat on, recognises that he cannot qualify as God.

Our dear friend David Cooper   here has been  so scared of risking his fingers to be burned by participating to this thread , that he just "hits and runs " , in order to avoid getting his fingers burned ,and in order to avoid the heat under his feet haha , via these kindda "hit and run " dances of his haha, dances like those alleged ones performed by  our neurons or ensemble of neurons  .

Since God has been creating all things and beings , including science , the laws of physics , evolution and the rest , obviously = occam's razor simplest "explanation "= no scientific one of course , but not necessarily false though  , God can be "anything or anyone or otherwise " He wants to be ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 16:52:37
Meh; just the same unsupported assertions. Arguments notably lacking as usual.

Disappointing but not unexpected.

Meh : once again :
The immaterial side of reality , including the immaterial consciousness thus , including the immaterial side of life,including the immaterial side of evolution  ..........are outside of reach of science = outside of science's jurisdiction , simply because they cannot be tested empirically , cannot be falsifiable, verifiable, observable, reproducible, measurable ....obviously, and simply because the material side of reality only ,is the realm of science  = the immaterial side of reality is outside of that material realm of science ,once again .

Which parts of those statements of mine you cannot understand then ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 17:32:50

Science can approach the immaterial side of reality though ,indirectly , via approaching the material side of reality , by shedding light on the brain as the "receiver " of consciousness ...


I'm surprised to hear you say that. If materialism is false, not just incomplete or limited, but as you say, false, and cannot even provide reliable information about the material world, how can it be used to understand anything about the immaterial, or the link between the material or immaterial? Surely you can see the contradiction there. You will probably say, once again, that I am confusing materialism with real science but like it or not, science investigates things with material processes, observing either directly or with instruments, measuring, counting, controlling variables, while changing one. Give me some examples of science experiments that don't. Thought experiments might be one, but even Einstein's were eventually backed up with empirical data. And Einstein's also had a mathematical support, which your theories or Sheldrake's do not have.

See ? This is exactly what i have been meaning by saying that you, guys , cannot but confuse materialism with science , obviously ,despite all my extensive attempts and my posted material's to explain just that obvious simple undeniable fact to you, guys = that's a purely western Eurocentric cultural historic thing i cannot really blame you for , that has been exported to the rest of the world, thanks to western domination , : but , westerners and others such as Sheldrake ,Nagel and many others were / are capable of  rising  above that Eurocentric materialist cultural historic thing , but you still cannot = unbelievable :
Materialism is just a dogmatic belief false assumption false conception of nature that assumes that reality nature or the universe are exclusively material .
Science 's natural realm is the material side of reality : so, do not confuse between science and materialism = they are totally different + materialism is obviously unscientific , as all beliefs are by the way , either the religious or the secular ones , but not all beliefs are necessarily false , once again .

Besides, science has been accomplishing all those  huge scientific achievements, thanks only to its effective and unparalleled method that's like no other = materialism as a false secular religion, as a misconception of nature ...you name it ....has absolutely nothing to do with science , obviously = materialism has just been taking a free ride , once again, on the unwilling back of science since the 19th century at least , in order to try to "validate " itself in the process  through science  , in vain of course .
Materialism is like a virus whose host has been ....science, but the latter's amazing rejuvenating capacity strength and power have  been enabling science to rise above the unscientific materialist belief in science , despite the fact that the majority of scientists are materialists , and that science 's wonderful intrinsic methodic inherent capacity and nature will of course enable science to reject and move beyond that virus = materialism in science , as all sciences have been superseding materialism in science istelf ...   


Quote
If materialism is false, and we've been doing everything wrong all along, how should we have investigated diabetes, if not by dissecting the body, finding the pancreas, discovering beta cells, figuring out what the hormone insulin does, identifying the receptors on tissue cells, etc. ?

...See above : well, science has been doing all that you mentioned and the rest , thanks only to its wonderful effective method that's like no other , once again = materialism as a false belief , that's obviously an unscientific one of course and per definition , as all beliefs for that matter are , whether they are religious or secular beliefs , ...materialism has thus nothing to do with science whatsoever ...
God ...

Many great achievements of science were  accomplished  / are  being accomplished  / have been accomplished / and will  be accomplished by many non-materialist scientists as well ,as many scientists today , yesterday , and tomorrow are / were / and will be non-materialists , as science does not , per definition, have to be materialistic , as it is the case today ...

Quote
Or is materialism "not false"  for some things, but "false" for others, and are you sure you know where to draw that line?

Materialism assumes that reality nature or the universe the world ...are just exclusively material , that's why materialism has been dominating and misusing science whose realm is the material side of reality , in order to "validate " itself through science , in vain .
Materialism as a belief , a secular one , is thus , per definition , unscientific , as all beliefs are , but not all beliefs are necessarily false , as materialism is :
All beliefs , secular or religious beliefs , do have some elements of truth , relatively speaking , but that does not mean they are all true , no , as they are not necessarily false , as materialism actually is .

Which particular belief is the one and only completely true one ,simply because there can only be 1 and only true belief out there of course , not 7473893939393,  that 's something any given individual should find out for himself/herself .
Materialism is obviously undeniably false , simply because reality nature the universe ...are not exclusively material ..........= the hard problems such as life , consciousness, feelings emotions, human love , human cognition, memory , human conscience .....their evolution emergence and origins have been proving just that fact ...that materialism is false = reality is not exclusively material,= reality is not exclusively material , obviously and undeniably .....God ...give me some more patience  haha  , compassion , wisdom , kindness ....,generosity ..., so, i can remain relatively polite haha in relation to  these  poor lost  ignorant creatures of yours  ....May God have mercy on you all ...= The God parts of my statements here are unscientific of course though= they are outside of the material realm  of science ,  or rather outside the jurisdiction of science indeed  , but not necessarily ...false . .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/10/2013 18:17:11
God, when he puts his scientist's hat on, recognises that he cannot qualify as God.

Our dear friend David Cooper   here has been  so scared of risking his fingers to be burned by participating to this thread , that he just "hits and runs " , in order to avoid getting his fingers burned ,




I hardly think he is afraid of getting burned. Probably just realizes that this discussion is a pointless waste of time.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/10/2013 18:33:01

The immaterial side of reality , including the immaterial consciousness thus , including the immaterial side of life,including the immaterial side of evolution  ..........are outside of reach of science = outside of science's jurisdiction , simply because they cannot be tested empirically , cannot be falsifiable, verifiable, observable, reproducible, measurable ....obviously, and simply because the material side of reality only ,is the realm of science  = the immaterial side of reality is outside of that material realm of science ,once again .



I'm just shocked that you finally came out and said this, which illustrates perfectly why this discussion is pointless.  The above comment demonstrates perfectly that your position really has nothing to do with science at all - its about belief vs non-belief in God. It belongs on a religious forum.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 19:02:04
God, when he puts his scientist's hat on, recognises that he cannot qualify as God.

Our dear friend David Cooper   here has been  so scared of risking his fingers to be burned by participating to this thread , that he just "hits and runs " , in order to avoid getting his fingers burned ,




I hardly think he is afraid of getting burned. Probably just realizes that this discussion is a pointless waste of time.

Haha
Speak for yourself , "ungrateful " lady ,kidding, ( I have just been trying to deliver you , folks, from that materialist darkness you have been confined to , you have been confusing with the bright lights of science ) ,  not on behalf of others :  why do you keep on coming back to this thread then ? ,  i am not sure Cooper would find this discussion a waste of time though, since he , himself , cannot buy that materialist magical "emergence " trick regarding consciousness , feelings , emotions , human cognition ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 19:16:50

The immaterial side of reality , including the immaterial consciousness thus , including the immaterial side of life,including the immaterial side of evolution  ..........are outside of reach of science = outside of science's jurisdiction , simply because they cannot be tested empirically , cannot be falsifiable, verifiable, observable, reproducible, measurable ....obviously, and simply because the material side of reality only ,is the realm of science  = the immaterial side of reality is outside of that material realm of science ,once again .



I'm just shocked that you finally came out and said this, which illustrates perfectly why this discussion is pointless.  The above comment demonstrates perfectly that your position really has nothing to do with science at all - its about belief vs non-belief in God. It belongs on a religious forum.

Yeah, right : just keep on projecting , instead of dealing with facts :

What do you mean i came out ? Is the immaterial the realm of science then ? come on .

Just "accuse and judge others , in order to avoid getting accused and judged yourself ", my disappointing lady :
It is in fact materialism in science , materialism as a belief , as a secular religion in science , that's obviously unscientific,that does not belong in either science or in any science forum for that matter in fact , materialism that's obviously unscientific  as all beliefs for that matter are ,once again  = i was just reminding you, guys , of the obvious realm and boundaries of science = the material side of reality .

And i was just reminding you of the fact that the immaterial side of reality is , per definition, unscientific = outside of the jurisdiction of science , but not necessarily false , that's all .


Try to get science rid of that materialist false secular religion virus then in science , instead of accusing me falsely ...

I did say what was scientific and what was not regarding  my statements , so .

But you, guys , keep on believing that materialism = science , ironically enough , implicitly, if not explicitly :

Who's the one to blame here of being "religious " here on a science forum ? you or i ? :

Note that there are religious and there are also secular beliefs , the latter such as ...materialism in science of course = materialism as a secular false religion in science ...Who's using then religion or a materialist belief in science , me or you , the rest of the other materialists ...that's obviously no ...question .


Very disappointing developments : i have been  accusing materialism all along ,and rightly obviously undeniably so,  for being a secular religion in science , and this Cheryl turns the table on me , by accusing me falsely of using religion in a science forum , ironically enough , while in fact i did myself clearly stated that my religious statements were not scientific ,obviously , but not necessarily false = outside of the jurisdiction of science ...
Unbelievable  non-sensical turn of events  ...

I am the one here who would be and should be completely right to say , i have been wasting my time here from day 1 , as i have been realising   and knowing just that fact all along , from day 1 ....

Unbelievable ...




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 19:37:21
@ Cheryl :
Why Materialism is False ? :


Source : http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False

Prior Note :

The following article does not necessarily reflect my own opinions or views on the subject :

The critique of materialism goes way beyond what the following article tries to approach ,summarize or tackle  :
-I-I do not agree with the author's allegations that materialism has succeeded in "solving " the challenge or hard problem of life , design, thought , morality ...
0_Materialism is just a dogmatic belief system or rather a false secular religion ideology  in science , a misconsception of nature in science , that has absolutely nothing to do with science thus , and that just tries to "validate " itself through science , in vain of course , logically and per-definition .
I_Those so-called neurocomputation mechanisms cannot account for such  non-physical non-biological  processes such as thought either .
II-Darwin's theory of evolution is only and exclusively biological physical , so, it tackles only the physical biological side of evolution, but materialists , per definition, just try to extend it to non-physical non-biological processes ,for obvious materialist ideological "reasons " that have ,obviously , nothing to do with science  .
III- That life can be approached via physics and chemistry does not mean that life is just that .
IV_ Materialism cannot , per definition, succeed in "refuting " the existence of God, design ................behind all those laws of physics ............

V-Neither the materialist version or rather the materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution , nor Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution can account for human morality, cognition,  life or of consciousness "fully" ........let alone their  evolution .
VI-Materialism can, per definition , not account for consciousness, life ,feelings , emotions,  human cognition , human conscience , human morality , ...."fully" , let alone their origins evolution or emergence .
_VII-The brain does not cause consciousness : that alleged causality that's ,obviously , just a materialist misinterpretation of that   mutual actual factual correlation or interaction between the brain and consciousness thus  , was never proven to be true, ever , that's just a materialist belief assumption : causation is no explanation either .
VIII-There is a lot more to say on the subject , so, i will just leave it at that ,for the time being at least .


Quote :

" Why Materialism is False:

    In short, I think materialism is false. Below is why, with a detour through the reasons why Materialism isn't false.

    I don't mind if you read this or not, just thought I'd share for anyone remotely interested. No, it's not particularly well written or well structured, and there is so much more that could be said on this topic, but ... meh.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Materalism, I define as follows:
    'The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.' - Answers.com
    First, there is an important distinction to be made. Materialism and Science are not the same thing. Science is the study of the natural world, so Science has no jurisdiction over any theory regarding that which cannot be empirically tested.

    For example, suppose a Theist were to conjecture that God is the law enforcer of the universe, ensuring that at every moment, at every place, all physical occurrences obeyed the laws that God has decreed. This conjecture is impossible to test scientifically, since all possible experimental observations are consistent with its predictions. However, the unscientific character of our Theist's conjecture does not mean that it is false; the answer to the question is simply outside of the jurisdiction of the Scientific method.

    The philosophy of Materialism goes beyond the Scientific Method, postulating that only the material exists. This would place the Materialist in disagreement with our Theist. If it is true that only the material exists, then the Theist's law enforcer God does not exist, since that God would qualify as immaterial.

    The above constitutes the important distinction between Materialism and Science, whilst also explaining why Materialists are always Scientists. However the philosophy of Materialism should not be conflated with that of Science, as it is possible to both be a Scientist and not be a Materialist.

    _______________________________________________________________


    Materialism has always been an unpopular philosophy, with critics branding it as cold, uncaring and fundamentally amoral. The philosophy has had its most bitter rivals in that of Theism, as Materialism denies the truth of religious scripture, denying the existence of God, the afterlife and the immortal soul. Despite this, Materialism has stumbled on, with proponents offering Materialistic solutions to many of the long standing problems in philosophy. The problems listed below have stood as criticisms to the Materialistic philosophy now and in the past. The list is not comprehensive, but does reflect what I believe to have been the key problems that Materialism has overcome.

    1) The problem of life
    2) The problem of design
    3) The problem of thought
    4) The problem of morality
    Here I will sketch a brief overview of what each problem is and how I believe the Materialist can solve it.

    The first and easiest is the problem of life. The problem arises from the unique properties and capabilities of living organisms; it had seemed incomprehensible that the mechanical world of physics could explain the biological. Something else was needed, so it was postulated that a vital force animated living matter, imbuing it with lifelike qualities. The doctrine held that life was inexplicable in terms of physicochemical interactions. If the Materialist could not explain life, then Materialism must be false.

    The Materialist did not get his answer to this problem in one sweeping theory, but rather a cumulation of experimental findings, from William Harvey's discovery that the circularitory system was a cleverly engineered mechanism to pump blood around the body, to Fracis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The march of scientific progress has unveiled the fine structure of cellular machinery, all working impeccably from physicochemical laws without the need for a vital animating force.

    Here the Materialist can explain how life works without appealing to any immaterial vital essence, but there still remains another problem to be solved. This is the problem of design. How is it that this incredible arrangement of organised matter came into being? The odds that such organisation would occur by chance are astronomically low, but life is bustling all around us in a multitude of forms. If the Materialist cannot explain this design, then Materialism must be false.

    In 1859, in a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace that explanation was provided. The Materialist now had The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection i.e. The gradual accumulation of adaptive organisation by selective advantage. This elegant theory has provided the Materialist with an answer to the problem of design, which has in time been corroborated by a vast amount of evidence, from practically every field of scientific study.

    The problem of design had been solved, but an interesting disagreement between Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin persisted. The problem of thought presented itself. To Wallace, the human capacity for reasoned thought was beyond the reach of evolution, a feat which could simply not have been achieved by anything other than supernatural intervention, or in other words: God given. How could it be that a physical system could possibly think? If Materialism cannot explain how it is that we think, then Materialism must be false.

    The answer to the problem today is all around us, in front of anyone reading this at this very moment, i.e. computation. Alan Turing's Turing machine and the advent of modern electronics are a vivid illustration that complex computational architecture, obeying only the laws of physics can perform intelligent operations. The Materialist can now look to neurobiology, where cognition is explained as the consequent of neurocomputations occurring in parallel throughout the central nervous system. The Materialist now has his answer to Wallace's conjecture that the capacity for reason is unevolvable and must be God given.

    So the Materialist has provided powerful arguments to solve the problem of life, the problem of design and the problem thought. Unlike these three problems, the final problem on my list cannot refute Materialism. If Materialism is indeed amoral, it would be a nonsequitor to conclude from Materialism's amorality that it is false. For this reason, the problem of morality is a special case, but nonetheless very powerful. Briefly, the argument claims that if we are nothing but an unintentional consequence of natural selection, nothing but elaborate machines and built by selfish genes, then there is no reason to work for a higher purpose. For what reason should we treat our fellow man with compassion? What becomes of right and wrong with no God?

    The answer to this problem is the combined product of evolutionary biology, neurobiology and philosophy. The combined solutions to the previous three problems set the stage for solving the problem of morality. First, evolutionary biology, far from undermining the basis of morality, can explain why we have a moral sense in the first place. Second, neurobiology has provided scientists with evidence of how the human brain computes moral decisions. Finally, philosophers have raised objections to the accusation that Materialism is inherently amoral, refuting the accusations with powerful solutions and counterarguments.

    Note: I am sure many reading this may object to the solutions I have presented to the 'four problems,' such objections are welcome and I encourage further criticism.

    ________________________________________________________________

    I have taken this detour through the successes of Materialism to drive home that I have no political agenda against the philosophy, religiously motivated or otherwise. I now wish to draw attention to my fifth problem for Materialism:

    5) The problem of consciousness
    A single element of conscious experience is called a quale, a group of quale are known as qualia. A quale might be the subjective experience of red, cold or pain. All quale are symbolic representations of frequencies and angles. The problem for Materialism is explaining qualia, the subjective experience of life, the very subjective experience without which we cannot imagine life being worth living at all. How can a physical system such as the brain be responsible for consciousness?. This is no small problem, for if Materialism cannot explain consciousness, then Materialism is false.

    The problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers for centuries. To clarify the problem, imagine opening up my brain whilst displaying a large red circle to my eyes. After some probing, you discover a cluster of neurons whose combined activity is responsible for my conscious experience of red. However, all you have is my word to go on, there is nothing special about that particular cluster of neurons, no telltale sign that these are responsible for my conscious experience. To the outside observer, the entire neurocomputational system would work exactly the same whether or not I was actually consciously experiencing the red circle. To make make matters more puzzling, even if I am consciously experiencing life, how do you know that what you call red is what I call red? So long as the frequencies and angles which these qualia represent maintain a constant relation to each other, then for all you know my conscious experience of red might be radically different to yours.

    No matter where you look in my brain, even if you are looking at that particular cluster of neurons responsible for my conscious experience of red, you cannot sensibly say that you are looking at the quale redness. The redness I see is qualitively independent of the neural substrate that is responsible for that quale. To put this another way, I would argue that qualia are ontologically irreducible to the neural substrate, that is, qualia have independent qualities which cannot be explained at the physical level. However, I also would argue that consciousness is entirely caused by the neural substrate, that consciousness has no informational content or cognitive ability above that which occurs on the neurocomputational level i.e. consciousness is causally reducible to the neural substrate.

    To clarify, we can play a thought experiment involving two billiard balls. Billiard ball 1 and billiard ball 2. First take these two examples:

    1) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    2) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1. Now, take a third example:

    3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.
    In this thought experiment, ball 2 exists and it's change in velocity is caused by ball 1, but to any observer unable to register ball 2, it remains completely invisible and undetectable. My conjecture is that qualia are like ball 2, which is why the conscious experience of other human beings is impossible to detect, the causal interaction is one way.

    The problem for the Materialist is that consciousness itself is immaterial, the frequencies and angles that make up subjective experience may be caused by, but are not part of the Material world. Thus, I conclude that Materialism is false.

    ________________________________________________________________

    A possible criticism of my theory is that consciousness is an emergent consequence of brain activity. This is a tempting view to take, analogous to the quality of wetness. A body of water is wet, even though no particular element of that body of water is wet. To clarify, a single molecule of H2O cannot be wet, because the quality of wetness is dependent upon the interactions of the constituent parts, without belong to any of those particular constituent parts. Wetness is an emergent property. A critic might conjecture that consciousness is also an emergent property of brain activity.

    I do not think that consciousness is an emergent product of brain activity. The difference between wetness and consciousness is that the quality of wetness follows from the physical laws governing the behavior of H2O, that is, given only the laws of physics I could predict that particular chemical substances would have the emergent property of wetness. The same cannot be said of consciousness. Given only the laws of physics, I could not predict the emergence of consciousness, it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be." End Quote.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 16/10/2013 19:44:44
The reality is that most people hardly ever change their mind about anything that matters to them because they're only interested in taking up those ideas that agree with what they already believe while they reject the rest. It doesn't matter how much you prove them wrong, they will resolutely refuse to see it. It happens in every field and at every level, and because this phenomenon is something I study (Natural General Intelligence and how it goes wrong), I'm still skim-reading this thread, but there's no way I'll be dragged back into wasting any more time writing long posts for it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 19:50:16
This stubborn unbelievable irrational illogical unscientific -even denial of this obvious undeniable false materialist belief  issue in science  by these and other folks ,  is evidence enough to state the fact that cognitive intelligence is certainly way below the real human unparalleled intelligence : that of the heart , heart's intelligence as the highest form of intelligence , as the highest form of intellect ,even materialist apparent genuises such as Stephen Hawking, Dawkins and the rest of those materialists do, obviously , lack ....= they are obviously existentially spiritually intuitively ...stupid or under-developed in that regard at least ,despite their great cognitive intelligence , scientific qualifications  ....

Heart's intelligence = heart as no emotions, feelings or biological organ = informed developed experienced trained intuition....not the unreliable intuition ...

These folks here do have no sense of humor , no imagination, no creativity ....they are as dry as the desert sand , as inflexible uncompromissory and deaf as solid-rocks , even though water can even flow from the latter ...

Unbelievable how that irrational unscientific illogical inconsistent incoherent materialist  false  belief virus can turn  its voluntary hosts  to complete dummies zombies ,amazing ..............

A very interesting study case indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/10/2013 20:01:41

What do you mean i came out ? Is the immaterial the realm of science then ? come on .



No, it's not. But that was what you had been saying for about 23 pages. Do I have to go back and show you all the quotes?

So there's really nothing left to discuss at this point.

 Here's one last joke though:
Ironically, the God particle still can't explain why the Catholic Church has mass.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 20:05:50
The reality is that most people hardly ever change their mind about anything that matters to them because they're only interested in taking up those ideas that agree with what they already believe while they reject the rest. It doesn't matter how much you prove them wrong, they will resolutely refuse to see it. It happens in every field and at every level, and because this phenomenon is something I study (Natural General Intelligence and how it goes wrong), I'm still skim-reading this thread, but there's no way I'll be dragged back into wasting any more time writing long posts for it.

(I was just kidding above , in that post of mine to you , i did even  deliberately wrote  many haha there , but Cheryl missed that all , by taking that literally , no wonder ...)
Exactly :
I would be really interested in any potentially  really non-materialist purely scientific studies concerning how beliefs do that to people, since i am a believer too , really .
"The believing brain " by materialist  =atheist Michael Schermer  does contain some truths like the fact that we all prefer certain ideas to other ones, certain beliefs to other ones, via our likes and dislikes that are mainly shaped by psychological cultural nurtural environmental factors .... :but,  i cannot buy his materialist belief non-sense he also does confuse with science , obviously .

Do you have any suggestions regarding any links , non-materialist purely scientific studies concerning how beliefs affect people's intelligence haha ....?  seriously .

P.S.: If reality is exclusively material (It is obviously undeniably not ) = just a matter of physics and chemistry as materialism makes people believe it is  , then we can make sentient machines easily haha = cannot be done, obviously , not today , not tomorrow, and not in a trillion years to come either , simply because reality is not exclusively material physical, obviously ...

So, only hard core fanatic materialists, idiots or fools would deny the obvious undeniable falsehood of materialism , the latter as a secular religion in science ...



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2013 20:17:51

What do you mean i came out ? Is the immaterial the realm of science then ? come on .



No, it's not. But that was what you had been saying for about 23 pages. Do I have to go back and show you all the quotes?

So there's really nothing left to discuss at this point.

 Here's one last joke though:
Ironically, the God particle still can't explain why the Catholic Church has mass.

(Now that you cannot handle the obvious undeniable fact that the emperor is really naked , you just resort to silly stupid sarcasm , sarcasm that's mostly made up by losers by the way , through their frustrations, envy ,impotence ,  ..., silly stupid sarcasm   that misses its intended target,obviously  ...= pathetic .)

You're a lousy reader , i see : and you're not intelligent , imaginative , creative, sensitive  ...you name it ...enough, not even averagely, sorry,  to grasp my so easy obvious simple undeniable  to grasp statements and facts though, concerning all beliefs , including materialism , that must not be confused with science,obviously   :
I have been the one  who's been wasting my  time on you, guys , all along , from day 1 , in vain = an utter total waste of time, as every truely intelligent decent honest fair ...reader or watcher of this thread can easily obviously see : except you, guys , obviously , Cooper has been a relative exception to that rule concerning just the 3 of you, guys , here participating to this thread : .

I did clearly state the fact that all beliefs are , per definition, unscientific, either religious or secular beliefs for that matter , including that materialist false secular religion in science thus, but are not all necessarily false , as materialism is, as the guy who wrote that article i did display here above for you  again , clearly states and shows  = all beliefs for that matter should be thus left outside of the realm of science = outside of the jurisdiction of science ,including that materialist false secular religion in science , that has been dominating science for so long now ...

P.S.: That materialist = not scientific , obviously , you cannot separate between science and materialism , as i see once again, that materialist = unscientific silly tasteless "joke " is stupid in fact and false , as materialism is : but you're not intelligent enough to understand just that easy obvious undeniable fact ....pathetic.
 I see , once again, that materialists cannot even come up with coherent consistent  "correct " funny  jokes : pathetic indeed .

Worst : those materialist stupid silly not-funny jokes do make materialists laugh haha : they do not even realise the fact that their silly "jokes " do hit them back right in the face , exactly like a boomerang might do, a launched boomerang that misses , obviously , its intended target(s).


Pathetic ...You're so stupid that i cannot but erase you from the pic, no sorry , no thanks for nothing ...

pfff...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/10/2013 23:34:02
Some years past: characters: DC: Dan Coyote; RM: Reasonable Man

DC: There is no doubt - materialism is a false (and heretical) doctrine!

RM: Why think you so?

DC: Why? Sir, it cannot explain flames; is that not reason enough?

RM: Some say that flames are the volatile fluid phlogiston, contained within the burning materials, and released by combustion thereof.

DC: Phlogiston? Pah! Mere alchemy. It is inconceivable; no material force can explain that hot, bright, ephemeral, animated phenomenon - that form akin to life itself; it is obvious the explanation lies not with mundane materialism. No; it is certain: flames are caused by dragons.

RM: But I see no dragons...

DC: They are dragons of a world beyond. They remain forever beyond our reach, outside our ken, outwith alchemy's domain, commanded only by God.

RM: How then can we know of them?

CD: 'Tis obvious; for there is extraordinary flame, and upon this fact materialism says nothing and does remain silent; and dragons do breathe flame. Surely therefore, dragons. Where are your wits?

RM: Er, As you will... methinks a continuing pursuit of alchemy, poor though it is, has more prospect - for the pursuit of that which is beyond pursuit is a surely a fool's errand - and like the apprentice dispatched for a 'long weight', we should have a long wait before we did get satisfaction.

CD: Hah! as I thought! fools thou art which cannot see the invisible, for 'tis there before your unseeing eyes... etc.

Exit, foam-flecked, gesticulating.



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 16/10/2013 23:54:32
Quote
Do not be lazy : take a dictionary and look for the word "existential " .

I will give you the following obvious hint :

In his "Selfish Gene " , lunatic Dawkins quotes some materialist scientist  saying :

or in words to that same effect at least :

"...Darwin's theory of evolution is the only valid answer to our existential question .All pre-Darwinian attempts to answer just that were /are not only worthless , but they must be totally dicarded as well "

Sorry, chum, quoting somebody else's answer is not the same as asking the question.

Here's my answer to the most important question I can think of: 4.

Now, to quote you, don't be lazy, go and look up the question.

I have a strong suspicion that you don't know what the "existential question" is either.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 17:15:29
Some years past: characters: DC: Dan Coyote; RM: Reasonable Man

DC: There is no doubt - materialism is a false (and heretical) doctrine!

RM: Why think you so?

DC: Why? Sir, it cannot explain flames; is that not reason enough?

RM: Some say that flames are the volatile fluid phlogiston, contained within the burning materials, and released by combustion thereof.

DC: Phlogiston? Pah! Mere alchemy. It is inconceivable; no material force can explain that hot, bright, ephemeral, animated phenomenon - that form akin to life itself; it is obvious the explanation lies not with mundane materialism. No; it is certain: flames are caused by dragons.

RM: But I see no dragons...

DC: They are dragons of a world beyond. They remain forever beyond our reach, outside our ken, outwith alchemy's domain, commanded only by God.

RM: How then can we know of them?

CD: 'Tis obvious; for there is extraordinary flame, and upon this fact materialism says nothing and does remain silent; and dragons do breathe flame. Surely therefore, dragons. Where are your wits?

RM: Er, As you will... methinks a continuing pursuit of alchemy, poor though it is, has more prospect - for the pursuit of that which is beyond pursuit is a surely a fool's errand - and like the apprentice dispatched for a 'long weight', we should have a long wait before we did get satisfaction.

CD: Hah! as I thought! fools thou art which cannot see the invisible, for 'tis there before your unseeing eyes... etc.

Exit, foam-flecked, gesticulating.

What , on earth, are you talking about again ?

What exit ? what foam-flecked......? RU hallucinating ?

Coming from a so-called  scientist , this is really ludicrous : don't be stupid or biased :
As a scientist , you should at leat try to be relatively objective fair honest unbiased , as much as possible though , even though objectivity is a myth , even at the level of exact sciences, let alone elsewhere .
Did science ever prove the "fact ", or rather the materialist belief assumption,  to be "true "  that the universe or reality are exclusively material ?
Absolutely not , never , ever = how can science  ever  go beyond its material realm for that matter, science's material realm that's not what all there is out there , obviously  .

Once again, all beliefs are ,per definition , unscientific ,whether they happen to be religious or secular beliefs , including that materialist secular religion in science thus , but they are not all necessarily false , as materialism ,obviously undeniably , is .
In short :
All beliefs , the secular and the religious ones  alike , should be kept outside of science ,and outside of the jurisdiction of science ...

Is that so difficult to understand ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 17:25:37
Quote
Do not be lazy : take a dictionary and look for the word "existential " .

I will give you the following obvious hint :

In his "Selfish Gene " , lunatic Dawkins quotes some materialist scientist  saying :

or in words to that same effect at least :

"...Darwin's theory of evolution is the only valid answer to our existential question .All pre-Darwinian attempts to answer just that were /are not only worthless , but they must be totally dicarded as well "

Sorry, chum, quoting somebody else's answer is not the same as asking the question.

Here's my answer to the most important question I can think of: 4.

Now, to quote you, don't be lazy, go and look up the question.

I have a strong suspicion that you don't know what the "existential question" is either.

Chum ?

Did  your dear mum not teach you how to behave properly ?
Or did you just unlearn just that ?
Try to learn how to behave properly again, then, and only then , i would be willing to engage your silly obvious non-sense you seem to confuse with "wisdom " , informed opinion , facts .........
Deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 17:30:19
One of the core issues here are , as follows , folks :

Has science ever proved the "fact ", or rather materialist belief assumption , to be "true " , that reality is exclusively ...material ? Obviously...not .

Is that so difficult to understand ?

A materialist is just like someone who happens to look at reality through a key hole , that's all, while declaring to and trying to make  the rest of the world believe that that subjective materialist belief key-hole assumption is all what there is out there haha .

Worse : our materialist in question wanna make the people believe that his / her subjective materialist belief key-hole assumption  is a "scientific fact " .....haha

Worst : our materialist in question cannot but apply some sort of elaborate magical   "emergence " trick performance , in order to reduce reality to just matter or material processes = physics and chemistry , through science , turning science into magic , into a belief = a paradox = any belief for that matter is ,per definition , unscientific , but not necessarily false as materialism, obviously undeniably, is .

But , even that materialist extraordinary unscientific magical "emergence " trick performance , cannot make the other more important part of reality go away of course , so, our materialist in question just wishes that that immaterial part of reality will just vanish by itself some day haha

In short :

True reality as a whole has been disproving materialism all along , all sciences for that matter have  been doing the same to materialism too ,  obviously and undeniably , so, only materialists , fools and idiots would believe in that  materialist belief magical key-hole assumption , that's obviously and undeniably , not only false , but also and per-definition ...unscientific = a materialist belief assumption thus .

Final note :

Our materialists founding -fathers haha knew all along  that their materialist key-hole belief assumption vision ( a secular materialist form of Paulus' christian religious alleged vision near Damascus )  was of course  false and unscientific , so,they decided to dominate science from that time on, in order to sell their materialist belief to the people in a scientific package, in order to turn  that materialist magical belief to a "scientific " one : that way , materialism  can therefore be easily bought by the people : so, any attempts from any non-materialist beliefs to try to approach the immaterial side of reality science can ,obviously undeniably and per -definition, not approach as such , any of those non-materialist beliefs , especially the religious ones , would be logically branded as .....false ,as supernatural paranormal superstitious ,  or as magic , God delusions, fairy tales , or worse , as our dlorde here above shows ...

How convenient  and elaborate has that materialist magical trick belief key-hole assumption vision been  all along indeed .......

= replacing its Eurocentric medieval christian religion  by its materialist magical one , replacing the christian theology and magic by  the materialist ones in no less than science  ....amazing indeed ..= THE biggest scam and the ultimate con in all the history of mankind = an understatement .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 18:40:38
A very typical case of the mainstream materialist belief   at work  in science : The "Brain Creates Consciousness " haha :  on Scientific American :  Aunt Millie's  Mind by Michael Schermer :

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2012/07/aunt-millies-mind/

It's like saying that Obama, for example , or CNN... appearing on tv were / are created by the tv set where they happen to  appear ,or that they do live inside the tv ,so, when the tv is damaged , or just some specific parts of it at least , which results in making the tv stop 'displaying " Obama,CNN, .... for example, or any other specific images for that matter , then , that means that the tv used to create those tv images haha , when it used to function ....= the magical materialist  belief assumption "emergent property " trick regarding the origins or nature of consciousness haha = the brain creates consciousness = consciousness is just an emergent property from the evolved complexity of the brain = consciousness is just physics and chemistry or neuro-chemistry = unbelievable  unscientific bullshit , in science  haha .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 17/10/2013 19:28:49

Chum ?

Deal ?


I ask the questions here. You simply refuse to answer them.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 20:06:06
Dear folks :

I will tell you a story that will , hopefully , clarify or explain how humanity got stuck in this current materialist predicament in science   and elsewhere , as follows :

via this "caricature " of those historic cultural intellectual social economic political ...Eurocentric events :

Once upon a time , there was a barbaric ignorant superstitious medieval Europe where the one and only existing authority and ultimate source of knowledge was personified by  the catholic church  only  , anyone who would have dared to challenge the church's ultimate authority would have been branded as a heretic , would get put to death , imprisoned , banned ....burned alive as a result ,as Galileo and many others were literally burned  alive  to death , just for challenging some of the dogmas of the church .....so, the people  who happened to find hemselves under the supremacy of the medieval church lived in fear , ignorance , backwardness, superstition, magic  ...and knew nothing about  the universe and about themselves except  through the church ....

There was another religious civilization in the East that happened to be advanced , florishing , prospering ....both at the material intellectual cultural scientific and at other fields as well ...

The new born Eastern religious civilization was expanding and therefore threatening the supremacy of the church on its own territory ,both literally and figuratively ,  threatening to wipe out the authority of the church as well , such an authority of the church that was the only source of subjecting its followers via fear  , intimidation, oppression, ignorance , superstition ....

Our medieval church declared war to our newly born Eastern advanced progressive religious revolutionary civilization : centuries of war  sealed the hatred , hostility , rivalry ...between the 2 from that time on : those historic mutual hatred , hostility , rivalry .. products of those bloody christian -muslim wars were inherited later on by the western secular 'enlightenment " movement ...
That eastern religious civilization "invented " science even , science that represented 1 of its  most major and powerful secret weapons ,together with rational moderate faith , tolerance , equality for all human beings , religious tolerance , freedom in the Islamic sense at least ,reason, logics , maths .....

Those bloody encounters between the 2 made the medieval christians learn a lot from our Eastern tolerant progressive revolutionary developed advanced religious civilization in many ways : which  triggered the Italian renaissance ,the protestant reformation and most , if not all, of that so-called Eurocentric 'enlightenment " movement that paved the way to modernity ,via reason logic maths , via science mostly , science  and the rest  Europeans inherited from that advanced religious  Eastern  civilization, the latter that went down later on , as a result of the fact that its followers went into the dangerous lethal slumber of self-confidence , power and certainty ,decadence, .... by neglecting the pursue of science they "invented " and practiced , by turning their backs to the pursue of knowledge in the broader sense .....facts which resulted in their intellectual religious spititual social intellectual philosophical material military political economic ...decline , while Europe was waking up from its slumber at the same time , thanks to those priceless contributions of that declining Eastern religious civilization  .
The dark auhtority of the church was no match watsoever , not even remotely close thus , for the wonderful lights of reason logic maths , no match for the wonderful bright lights of science ...
Our Europeans at that time could easily debunk the false dark ignorant superstitious ...authority of the church ,and reject it as a result .

Since christianity was rejected ,thanks to science , reason , logic ...Europeans doubted everything that could not  be measured , observable , falsifiable , reproducible , empirical .......

One dominant current of thought was represented by mechanistic materialism  which gave birth to both liberalism and marxism, among other currents of thought extensions  of materialism and secularism thus , mechanistic materialism that was introduced to Europe for the first time by Descartes at the level of the natural sciences , while leaving the mind to the church ,leaving the mind to the church  for fear of meeting the earlier fate of all the previous Galileos victims of the church's intolerance and fascism , which resulted in the creation of modern philosophy ...

materialism was then extended to philosphy and to the rest , later on ....including to all sciences ,despite the fact that almost , if not all , those European "enlightenment ideals " were borrowed originally from that advanced Eastern religious civilization , including the scientific method thus .
Dualism in the philosophy of mind was thus rejected and was replaced by Spinoza's monism that was turned into materialist monism , later on , in science .
William James' pragmatism in philosophy , in science and elsewhere was another development among many , later on ...
All that , and especially science gave Europe so much power , knowledge and more at the military material technological industrial economic scientific philosophic cultural intellectual social ...levels that Europe felt it was strong enough to subject the rest of humanity  under the 'enlightenment " pretext ( almost in the same fashion when US Bush junior invaded Irak ,for example ) , while in fact Europe was just motivated by subjecting and enslaving  the non-western peoples ,via imposing its own  'enlightenment "  ideals values and principles , just in order to steal their resources its economies and growth needed so much ...to complete its global domination , as almost all empires and imperialists do to other weaker nations, peoples, civilizations  .....

Materialism ,  secularism,  "democracy " ...became the new religions,   secular ones , replacing the medieval christianity , as the newly established concept of the "nation-state " was replacing the church , and the concept of the "good citizen " was replacing the medieval christian concept of the "good believer ", among many other radical changes ,that did establish the secular , materialist ...establishment as the new supreme ultimate authority ,while  taking a free ride on the unwilling backs of reason, logic maths , science ...to the point where secularism and materialism could not be differentiated from them = they were one : reason ,logic ...science have become secular materialist atheist , together with the rest of all sciences ,all so-called human sciences ,  together with philosophy, art , literatures ...while so generously haha leaving just a tiny piece of the rich delicious cake to the church at the level of the private domain of man ......
Christianity was obvioulsy exluded from politics ,from the public domain and from the rest as well , while the church was only allowed to clean the spiritual and other messes caused by secularism materialism atheism that have become the new rulers , the new ultimate authority and power ...in the name of reason, logic , science , 'enlightenment " ...
The rest is ...history ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2013 20:24:16

Chum ?

Deal ?


I ask the questions here. You simply refuse to answer them
.

Easy , dude : do not be brutal or patronizing : we are not here in court , in a police station, we are not gangsters haha ...

Do not try to put any kindda gun on my head ...that's not how things go .

Ok, sorry indeed : i thought chum was an insult , i looked it up , it was/is  not , i think , ok .

The existential question means : who are we ,as human beings , where do we come from , how did we come to exist , in the first place to begin with ...how did we get here , on earth ...

Materialists , obviously , think that their own materialist version of evolution , or their belief materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical scientific theory of evolution , materialists think thus that their own belief materialist version of evolution was / is "the only valid answer to our human existential question , and that all pre-Darwinian attempts to answer just that question , especially those delivered by religions, are not only worthless and false , but must also be totally discarded " .

Reducing everything to just matter and to material processes = physics and chemistry , including evolution itself , life , consciousness ,human language , feelings , emotions , reality  as a whole thus + their origins evolution and emergence  ....our silly lunatics materialists think they have been debunking religions , via science , which is absolutely not the case , obviously thus .

Materialists are thus completely wrong , simply because beliefs , either secular or religious , the immaterial side of reality ...are outside of the material realm and jurisdiction of science and :
simply because all beliefs are , per definition, unscientific , either the religious or the secular ones, including materialism thus , but not all beliefs are necessarily false , as materialism is .

Comprende , chum amigo ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2013 21:07:45
Dear folks :

I will tell you a story that will , hopefully , clarify or explain how humanity got stuck in this current materialist predicament in science   and elsewhere , as follows :

via this "caricature " of those historic cultural intellectual social economic political ...Eurocentric events :

Once upon a time , there was a barbaric ignorant superstitious medieval Europe where the one and only existing authority and ultimate source of knowledge was personified by  the catholic church  only  , anyone who would have dared to challenge the church's ultimate authority would have been branded as a heretic , would get put to death , imprisoned , banned ....burned alive as a result ,as Galileo and many others were literally burned  alive  to death , just for challenging some of the dogmas of the church ..



Actually, it was Giordano Bruno who got burned at the stake. Bruno was a Franciscan Friar. He believed, like Copernicus, that the Earth rotated around the sun. He said the sun was just a star and the universe had lots of them. He even wondered whether there were other planets with people on them out there. So they burned him.

Galileo just got house arrest. (He recanted rather than die) I guess he didn't care whether theologians believed his empirical findings - no skin off his nose. While under house arrest he wrote "Two New Sciences" about his experiments with motion and materials.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/10/2013 21:47:51
...
As a scientist , you should at leat try to be relatively objective fair honest unbiased , as much as possible though , even though objectivity is a myth , even at the level of exact sciences, let alone elsewhere .
I completely agree.

Quote
Did science ever prove the "fact ", or rather the materialist belief assumption,  to be "true "  that the universe or reality are exclusively material ?
Absolutely not , never , ever
Of course not; the 'materialist belief assumption' is not verifiable or falsifiable. If the immaterial is undetectable to science, it is immaterial to science, which can deal only with the observable; and if you can observe something it's not immaterial - is it?

Quote
... how can science  ever  go beyond its material realm for that matter, science's material realm that's not what all there is out there , obviously  .
Agreed. Science is limited to the material realm, and I'm fine with that. We'll just carry on observing, learning, and explaining how palpable reality works, just as always. You're welcome to ponder the impalpable & immaterial in peace.

Quote
All beliefs , the secular and the religious ones  alike , should be kept outside of science ,and outside of the jurisdiction of science ...
Is that so difficult to understand ?
I completely agree.  Science should continue to observe, make testable hypotheses, test the hypotheses, learn. It need only concern itself with the observable.

I hadn't realised we agree on so much! :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2013 22:31:52

....Materialists , obviously , think that their own materialist version of evolution , or their belief materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical scientific theory of evolution...


"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."   - Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/10/2013 00:49:51
Quote
The existential question means : who are we ,as human beings , where do we come from , how did we come to exist , in the first place to begin with ...how did we get here , on earth ...

To which the answer is: we are naked apes; we evolved and diverged from other apes in east Africa; and as yet we haven't traced our ancestry back to the first living cell or been able to replicate biogenesis, but we've only been unravelling the puzzle for a few years whereas nature has been complicating it for ever, so don't expect too much progress too soon - and the fog of mysticism promulgated by religious parasites hasn't helped.

The honest scientific answer to many questions is "I don't know - yet." Compare that with the dishonest religious answers "You can't possibly know" or "It was all done by a man with a beard in the sky, who you can't see but I know exists, for reasons that only he can comprehend. But because I know he exists, I have authority over your behaviour" and you will see why I have a deep disdain for mysticism, faith, and all that crap.   

Quote
Once upon a time , there was a barbaric ignorant superstitious medieval Europe where the one and only existing authority and ultimate source of knowledge was personified by  the catholic church  only  , anyone who would have dared to challenge the church's ultimate authority would have been branded as a heretic , would get put to death , imprisoned , banned ....burned alive as a result

and just this week the government of Malaysia has decreed that only muslims may use the word Allah. I'm not sure what the penalty is for other people saying or writing it, but plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose in the world of barbaric ignorant superstition.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2013 00:00:28
The reality is that most people hardly ever change their mind about anything that matters to them because they're only interested in taking up those ideas that agree with what they already believe while they reject the rest. It doesn't matter how much you prove them wrong, they will resolutely refuse to see it. It happens in every field and at every level, and because this phenomenon is something I study (Natural General Intelligence and how it goes wrong), I'm still skim-reading this thread, but there's no way I'll be dragged back into wasting any more time writing long posts for it.

Thoughts on Bias:

It does seem true that people rarely change their positions even with contradictory evidence. Bias is a tricky problem to control and creeps into experiments in unexpected ways. Pollsters, at least those ones sincerely interested in finding out what people think, and not collecting evidence to build a case, often rephrase the same question a dozen different ways in case the wording influences people to chose one answer over another.

I can think of times when I absolutely and completely changed my mind about something. When I was fifteen, I believed in astrology. The reason why I came to believe in it was because  there was a neighbor lady who was an astrologer, and I liked her, and astrology seemed to explain why people had different personalities. We had to write a paper in my freshman biology class and that was the topic I chose, carefully citing many references about the moon's effect on emergency room visits and the tides, etc. I don't remember the grade I got; I think it was a B- or something. But I do remember that Mr. Soldo did not laugh at me, or embarrass me, or throw a hundred statistics at me that proved I was wrong. He said it was thoughtful and well written, but mentioned a few things that planted a seed of doubt in my mind, and then I went on to learn about photosynthesis and glycolysis and evolution in that class, and that is really when my mind changed. I understood, on my own, that this old idea wasn't compatible with my new ones. They could not co-exist if they were contradictory.But I really liked photosynthesis and glycolysis better. I had a crush on science. 

I can think of examples of other people changing their beliefs. It is usually slowly, by qualifying a belief in some way, and making exceptions. This is sometimes true for racism, and although some people see others who harbor any racist beliefs as "closet racists," I see it as a transition from one concept to another. A racist begins believing "people of different races are different or inferior in important ways." But he meets a person of another race who violates his expectations. So, he concludes "People of that race are inferior, but Bob is an exception. Bob is special." Then perhaps he meets more people like Bob, and decides "There are two types of people of that race, good ones and bad ones." Finally it becomes, "Maybe race has nothing to do with the qualities I dislike in people."  That is the pattern most people follow.

I can think of times, when I  very quickly changed my opinion, when it was easy, with out shifting gradually. This summer I worked for an elderly couple. She seemed like a very nice old lady, sweet, talkative, baked cookies, but kind of "simple minded.". After about nine weeks, she casually mentioned that she used to be a computer programmer in aeronautics. She worked with Univac. My impression of her, who she was and her interests,  wasn't just a little off, it was way, way,  almost a 100%, wrong.

So why is it so easy to radically changes ones mind in some cases but not others? Because the beliefs were only held for a short time? Because it doesn't threaten the ego or self worth? Because one has nothing to gain or lose either way? Because the evidence seems more factual and not fuzzy or interpretable in multiple ways?

When choosing his cabinet members, Abraham Lincoln picked adversaries like William Seward and Salmon Chase. (They weren't adversaries to him, they were adversaries to one another.) Likewise, in 2009, Chinese president Hu Jintao picked two opposing faction leaders, Xi Jimping and Li Keqiang, to make decisions about Chinese economic policy. As long as one still has control, it's an advantage to let a team of rivals present their best arguments, and fight it out. It saves you a lot of work. And even if you have a bias towards one position or another, somehow ones ego is less threatened when that position is being presented, and attacked by someone else. You can just sit back and listen, and see how it plays out.

Some neuroscientists suggest that that is how the brain works - separate components that are like a team of rivals, each trying to interpret information or solve a problem in their own way, each vying for attention and control. Is there a "you" that decides? Is there an Abraham Lincoln of the brain? Or is the "you" whomever presents the best argument at that moment to the body? Whether you are a materialist like me, or a mystic like Don, that really is the big question, the essence of the hard problem of consciousness.




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 19/10/2013 13:26:49
Excellent post, Cheryl!

As for the last part, I think there is a 'you' that decides, but it does so as a composite (i.e. I don't think there's a single conscious controller , it just often feels that way) .

Currently I lean towards the idea that consciousness, which seems to depend on the breadth of synchronised activity across the brain, and the number of regions involved, becomes increasingly active when there is no clear 'winner' among the possible solutions from competing processes, or when high-level deliberative thought is required, and so the cogitation is opened to a wider selection of contributing brain areas, e.g. those with less direct influence, to achieve a broader consensus.

When the areas involving planning, behavioural modelling, linguistic and high-level abstraction processing are all involved, we have a higher level of consciousness than when they are not. These features are important to sophisticated social coordination and interaction, and a sense of self is particularly useful here, both as a consistent representation or avatar for the individual in different contexts, and for what-if modelling of social interactions.

For me, the feeling that the verbal, deliberative, consciously aware self is the 'real' you, and in control, is the main illusion of consciousness; it seems quite reasonable that processing should be arranged to express relevant aspects of behaviour through the convenient & unitary representative 'avatar' of the concept of self. In other words, the conscious self is less a controller than an (apparently) integrated representative and spokesman for the underlying composite of processes.

These ideas are all speculative and open to revision. Your mileage may vary ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 17:50:58
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The existential question means : who are we ,as human beings , where do we come from , how did we come to exist , in the first place to begin with ...how did we get here , on earth ...

To which the answer is: we are naked apes; we evolved and diverged from other apes in east Africa; and as yet we haven't traced our ancestry back to the first living cell or been able to replicate biogenesis, but we've only been unravelling the puzzle for a few years whereas nature has been complicating it for ever, so don't expect too much progress too soon - and the fog of mysticism promulgated by religious parasites hasn't helped.


First of all :

Try to read carefully what i am saying : clear formulations concerning  what one tries to discuss here regarding evolution, consciousness, life , beliefs , science , materialism ...are very decisive , if one wanna understand what's going on at those   latter specific levels, and if one wanna progress in this dicussion  :
I think that the  exclusively  material side of evolution represented by the scientific Darwin's exclusively biological physical material theory of evolution , when Darwin's scientific   material (Do not confuse material with materialism ) theory of evolution thus does not cross the boundaries of the material realm and jurisdiction of science at leat , can tell us only about the material side of evolution though ....relatively speaking then , relatively speaking , simply because there is still a lot to be known and discovered about all those missing links and gaps Darwin's scientific exclusively biological material physical theory of evolution and all its scientific post-Darwin updates up untill now cannot yet answer yet ....

Second : Do not confuse the materialist version of evolution = the materialist belief assumption -misinterpretation of evolution , with Darwin's purely scientific exclusively biological physical theory of evolution , the latter when it does not cross the boundaries of the material realm or the jurisdiction of science :
There are actually many missing "links " regarding the alleged "fact " , or rather the materialist belief assumption that homo-spaiens allegedly do share the same ancestors with chimps , despite the fact that human and chimps do seem to share 99 % DNA material with each other = humans are not just DNA biology physiology environment nurture = DNA "did not create " man's body and mind ...as such lunatics materialists such as Dawkins and co say ...= we are not just machines driven or "created shaped " by our genes DNA through the natural selection of evolution , otherwise , try to explain to me how consciousness, life ,....came to exist just via physics and chemistry as those materialist magical "emergent " trick performances wanna make you believe they were / are ...

What do you make of the human mind or consciousness in all this then ?  what do you make of life ...?
Can either the materialist neo-Darwinian version of evolution, or Darwin's materialist version of evolution ( The latter that should not be confused with Darwin's purely scientific exclusively material theory of evolution though ) , let alone Darwin's purely scientific exclusively biological physical theory of evolution ,account for such processes fully such as life , consciousness , memory , human cognition, human conscience ....let alone their evolution emergence and origins , just via physic and chemistry ?
Do you see how we get back to the same square zero , regarding the fact that science's realm is exclusively material , while materialism in science as a secular belief = unscientific per definition , while the materialist belief in science goes beyond the scientific method by reducing life , consciousness, human cognition .....to just physics and chemistry ?  ...

Do not confuse also Darwin's  purely scientific exclusively biological physical material theory of evolution , with Darwin's materialist version of evolution, while you are at it , and tell me then how consciousness in general in all species and in inanimate matter , including human consciousness, the evolution of life ,  can be  fully explained by either  the unscientific materialist belief assumptions in science , or by science whose realm is exclusively material ? 

Finally : do not confuse the origins of life , with the evolution of life , the latter's material side is covered by Darwin's purely scientific theory of evolution ...


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The honest scientific answer to many questions is "I don't know - yet." Compare that with the dishonest religious answers "You can't possibly know" or "It was all done by a man with a beard in the sky, who you can't see but I know exists, for reasons that only he can comprehend. But because I know he exists, I have authority over your behaviour" and you will see why I have a deep disdain for mysticism, faith, and all that crap.   

Science is not about hoonesty or about any other judgements of value , ethics ....Science is all about facts , a matter of facts when it science is pure science = when science is delivered from any belief fo that matter , such as materialism in science , once again , science is not a matter of opinion or of belief thus .
So, before talking about religions that are , per definition and nature , unscientific , unscientific in the modern scientific sense at least , ( Religions are another kindda science , positive science , in the sense that they trigger and rely on the individual and collective religious experiences of their followers both on the material reality ground , and on the spiritual side of man or of reality ...Long story thus ) , so, before talking about religions and science = 2 totally different " things " or rather processes qua nature definition function and role , you have to be aware , first ,of that materialist secular religion dominating in science today , you still do confuse with science ........

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Once upon a time , there was a barbaric ignorant superstitious medieval Europe where the one and only existing authority and ultimate source of knowledge was personified by  the catholic church  only  , anyone who would have dared to challenge the church's ultimate authority would have been branded as a heretic , would get put to death , imprisoned , banned ....burned alive as a result

and just this week the government of Malaysia has decreed that only muslims may use the word Allah. I'm not sure what the penalty is for other people saying or writing it, but plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose in the world of barbaric ignorant superstition.

That's another totally different issue  : irrelevant to our present discussion thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2013 18:22:13

...I think that the  exclusively  material side of evolution represented by the scientific Darwin's exclusively biological physical material theory of evolution , when Darwin's scientific   material (Do not confuse material with materialism ) theory of evolution thus does not cross the boundaries of the material realm and jurisdiction of science at leat , can tell us only about the material side of evolution though ....relatively speaking then , relatively speaking , simply because there is still a lot to be known and discovered about all those missing links and gaps Darwin's scientific exclusively biological material physical theory of evolution and all its scientific post-Darwin updates up untill now cannot yet answer yet ....

Second : Do not confuse the materialist version of evolution = the materialist belief assumption -misinterpretation of evolution , with Darwin's scientific exclusively biological physical theory of evolution ,


Well, if we are confused about the theory of evolution, apparently Darwin was as well. Too bad you weren't there to correct him.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 18:37:51

...I think that the  exclusively  material side of evolution represented by the scientific Darwin's exclusively biological physical material theory of evolution , when Darwin's scientific   material (Do not confuse material with materialism ) theory of evolution thus does not cross the boundaries of the material realm and jurisdiction of science at leat , can tell us only about the material side of evolution though ....relatively speaking then , relatively speaking , simply because there is still a lot to be known and discovered about all those missing links and gaps Darwin's scientific exclusively biological material physical theory of evolution and all its scientific post-Darwin updates up untill now cannot yet answer yet ....

Second : Do not confuse the materialist version of evolution = the materialist belief assumption -misinterpretation of evolution , with Darwin's scientific exclusively biological physical theory of evolution ,


Well, if we are confused about the theory of evolution, apparently Darwin was as well. Too bad you weren't there to correct him.

I was afraid i would get these sort of answers , that's why i said to our friend here above that he should read carefully what i was saying ....

Darwin and his neo-Darwinian followers as well ,were / are materialists who do confuse the material realm and material jurisdiction of science , with their own subjective materialist belief assumptions , or rather with their own materialist subjective conception of nature , the latter in the sense that nature is exclusively material = a materialist subjective belief assumption that has nothing to do with science= science has never , so to speak, proved the materialist "fact " to be "true" , or rather the materialist belief assumption   to be "true " , that reality nature or the universe are exclusively ...material  .

Darwin's scientific   exclusively material physical biological theory of evolution is just that : material = confined within the material realm and material jurisdiction of science , but materialists like Darwin, Dawkins and the rest of those materialists thus , do extend Darwin's scientific exclusively material theory of evolution to the immaterial side of reality as well, simply because they do not not believe , per definition, in the existence of the immaterial side of nature , obviously , the latter they reduce to just matter ...

So, when Darwin's scientific exclusively material theory of evolution crosses the  "natural "  boundaries or material realm, material jurisdiction of science , including Darwin's own materialist belief assumptions regarding evolution  , Darwin's theory of evolution  becomes thus unscientific, when it crosses or goes beyond the natural material boundaries and jurisdiction of science , obviously  :
Example , when Dawkins , Darwin hismelf  or any other materialist scientist would say that evolution has debunked religions , they become unscientific, simply because they involve  their own subjective materialist belief assumptions in science  ...materialist belief assumptions that should be kept outside of science , as any belief assumptions for that matter should be , either religious or secular belief assumptions for that matter .....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: grizelda on 19/10/2013 19:03:35
You could say that there are four frames of reference, say, reason, materialism, existentialism and empiricism. Because they are frames of reference, they don't overlap. So you can't use your existentialist poetry to criticize materialism and materialism has no business belittling your existentialist poetry. Mixing frames of reference is probably a major cause of misunderstanding.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 19:18:10
Excellent post, Cheryl!

As for the last part, I think there is a 'you' that decides, but it does so as a composite (i.e. I don't think there's a single conscious controller , it just often feels that way) .

Currently I lean towards the idea that consciousness, which seems to depend on the breadth of synchronised activity across the brain, and the number of regions involved, becomes increasingly active when there is no clear 'winner' among the possible solutions from competing processes, or when high-level deliberative thought is required, and so the cogitation is opened to a wider selection of contributing brain areas, e.g. those with less direct influence, to achieve a broader consensus.

When the areas involving planning, behavioural modelling, linguistic and high-level abstraction processing are all involved, we have a higher level of consciousness than when they are not. These features are important to sophisticated social coordination and interaction, and a sense of self is particularly useful here, both as a consistent representation or avatar for the individual in different contexts, and for what-if modelling of social interactions.

For me, the feeling that the verbal, deliberative, consciously aware self is the 'real' you, and in control, is the main illusion of consciousness; it seems quite reasonable that processing should be arranged to express relevant aspects of behaviour through the convenient & unitary representative 'avatar' of the concept of self. In other words, the conscious self is less a controller than an (apparently) integrated representative and spokesman for the underlying composite of processes.

These ideas are all speculative and open to revision. Your mileage may vary ;)

In short :
Despite all your above unscientific speculations , that do go beyond the scientific method , and beyond the material realm and jurisdiction of science thus :
The brain does not create consciousness, the brain is not consciousness, you are not your brain, so to speak, the latter makes most people's lives miserable by "generating " false negative deceptive messages....the uncontrolled mind does the latter in fact , not the brain : the physical brain is the wrong place where you should be looking for answers regarding consciousness at least ...the physical brain is just a kindda "receiver " and delegate regulator of instincts , reflexes , survival mechanisms ...
Those ideas of yours are just materialist belief assumptions = unscientific .
=The stubborn materialist unscientific magical belief assumption that " the brain creates consciousness " , via some magical materialist theology trick performance .
Tell me then , what the self is ? since you seem to have been so intimate with its alleged brain wiring or circuits and activity that you do seem to know what the self or consciousness exactly are .

I've read some parts of "The master mind ..." By Theron Q.Dumont , despite the fact that i do not agree with many of his allegations on the subject : he states there the fact that most people on this planet are not masters of their minds ,obviously , only a few minority of people are in fact : most people are driven by their sub- and conscious drives , reflexes , conditioning , instincts , feelings emotions ...= they are zombies in fact , despite the fact that most of them think , rationalize things , seem to analyze themselves and evaluate their "decisions " ...

So, it takes hard training , self-development , experience , knowledge , hard work ...to try to be the relative master of your own home- mind and body .

No knowledge of the functioning of the brain alone ,no matter how advanced or sophisticated it might ever be ,  can make you able to be the master of your mind , via your true self , not via your false ego ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 19:28:12
You could say that there are four frames of reference, say, reason, materialism, existentialism and empiricism. Because they are frames of reference, they don't overlap. So you can't use your existentialist poetry to criticize materialism and materialism has no business belittling your existentialist poetry. Mixing frames of reference is probably a major cause of misunderstanding.

Welcome , even though we have enough materialist magicians here already haha
What , on earth , are you talking about ?
Materialism and existeialism are just philosophies , world views , beliefs ....they do not belong in science , as all beliefs for that matter do not , obviously , either the religious or the secular beliefs ...

P.S.: We are trying here to talk ...science , pure science : the first thing to do is : purify science by distillating it haha , by rejecting the unscientific materialist belief assumptions in science that have been dominating science  for so long now :
Worse : those unscientific materialist belief assumptions or the materialist dogmatic belief system have been presented and sold to the people as ...science , ironically enough .

P.S.: All beliefs , either religious or secular , should be kept outside of science and outside of science's jurisdiction , science whose realm is just the material side of reality , the immaterial side of reality is thus a matter of ...beliefs , not a matter of science , obviously :
Anyone is entitled to believe in anything one wants to believe in , as long as all beliefs are kept outside of science and outside of the jurisdiction of science as well, including materialism existentialism and all the rest of those beliefs and "isms " ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 19:58:19
The reality is that most people hardly ever change their mind about anything that matters to them because they're only interested in taking up those ideas that agree with what they already believe while they reject the rest. It doesn't matter how much you prove them wrong, they will resolutely refuse to see it. It happens in every field and at every level, and because this phenomenon is something I study (Natural General Intelligence and how it goes wrong), I'm still skim-reading this thread, but there's no way I'll be dragged back into wasting any more time writing long posts for it.

Thoughts on Bias:

It does seem true that people rarely change their positions even with contradictory evidence. Bias is a tricky problem to control and creeps into experiments in unexpected ways. Pollsters, at least those ones sincerely interested in finding out what people think, and not collecting evidence to build a case, often rephrase the same question a dozen different ways in case the wording influences people to chose one answer over another.

I can think of times when I absolutely and completely changed my mind about something. When I was fifteen, I believed in astrology. The reason why I came to believe in it was because  there was a neighbor lady who was an astrologer, and I liked her, and astrology seemed to explain why people had different personalities. We had to write a paper in my freshman biology class and that was the topic I chose, carefully citing many references about the moon's effect on emergency room visits and the tides, etc. I don't remember the grade I got; I think it was a B- or something. But I do remember that Mr. Soldo did not laugh at me, or embarrass me, or throw a hundred statistics at me that proved I was wrong. He said it was thoughtful and well written, but mentioned a few things that planted a seed of doubt in my mind, and then I went on to learn about photosynthesis and glycolysis and evolution in that class, and that is really when my mind changed. I understood, on my own, that this old idea wasn't compatible with my new ones. They could not co-exist if they were contradictory.But I really liked photosynthesis and glycolysis better. I had a crush on science. 

I can think of examples of other people changing their beliefs. It is usually slowly, by qualifying a belief in some way, and making exceptions. This is sometimes true for racism, and although some people see others who harbor any racist beliefs as "closet racists," I see it as a transition from one concept to another. A racist begins believing "people of different races are different or inferior in important ways." But he meets a person of another race who violates his expectations. So, he concludes "People of that race are inferior, but Bob is an exception. Bob is special." Then perhaps he meets more people like Bob, and decides "There are two types of people of that race, good ones and bad ones." Finally it becomes, "Maybe race has nothing to do with the qualities I dislike in people."  That is the pattern most people follow.

I can think of times, when I  very quickly changed my opinion, when it was easy, with out shifting gradually. This summer I worked for an elderly couple. She seemed like a very nice old lady, sweet, talkative, baked cookies, but kind of "simple minded.". After about nine weeks, she casually mentioned that she used to be a computer programmer in aeronautics. She worked with Univac. My impression of her, who she was and her interests,  wasn't just a little off, it was way, way,  almost a 100%, wrong.

So why is it so easy to radically changes ones mind in some cases but not others? Because the beliefs were only held for a short time? Because it doesn't threaten the ego or self worth? Because one has nothing to gain or lose either way? Because the evidence seems more factual and not fuzzy or interpretable in multiple ways?

When choosing his cabinet members, Abraham Lincoln picked adversaries like William Seward and Salmon Chase. (They weren't adversaries to him, they were adversaries to one another.) Likewise, in 2009, Chinese president Hu Jintao picked two opposing faction leaders, Xi Jimping and Li Keqiang, to make decisions about Chinese economic policy. As long as one still has control, it's an advantage to let a team of rivals present their best arguments, and fight it out. It saves you a lot of work. And even if you have a bias towards one position or another, somehow ones ego is less threatened when that position is being presented, and attacked by someone else. You can just sit back and listen, and see how it plays out.

Some neuroscientists suggest that that is how the brain works - separate components that are like a team of rivals, each trying to interpret information or solve a problem in their own way, each vying for attention and control. Is there a "you" that decides? Is there an Abraham Lincoln of the brain? Or is the "you" whomever presents the best argument at that moment to the body? Whether you are a materialist like me, or a mystic like Don, that really is the big question, the essence of the hard problem of consciousness.

(Prior note :
Science just covers a tiny piece of the material side of reality , the known one at least , there is way a lot more to man , life , the universe out there , than just what our poor science  can ever reveal or approach  , no matter how wonderful effective and unparalleled successful the latter has ever been and will ever be .)

That said :
You are confusing many things with each other , dear lady :

Human consciousness is THE key to approach mot of all the above , and much more , is THE key to most , if not all, mysteries of the universe and of ourselves :

Human consciousness that's an immaterial process = outside of science and outside of science's jurisdiction  as well , obviously .

You're also confusing the human sub-consciousness with consciousness , not to mention that you are confusing purely survival instinctual reflexory drives with consciousness ...
Oh , dear , i would not rely much on neurologists ,or on materialism in science or elsewhere in general , i would not even rely much on pure science itself ,including psychology as a pseudo-science , or on any human sciences for that matter , under materialist or under non-materialist supremacy ,  to fully explain how beliefs settle in , how ignorance , greed , power lust ,machiavellism, opportunism,  political and other intrigues ,social interactions, ambitions,  cunning , malice ,   how prejudice stereotypes, how cultural and other beliefs , either secular or religious , and their inherent indoctrinations , how people's likes and dislikes , how nurture the environment, propaganda , how the cultural right-thinking consenus such as that of materialism in science  and elsewhere ....do relatively shape our thought and behaviour , simply because the poor neurologists are just confined to the material brain that's not as fundamental as consciousness is , not even remotely close thus .
Beliefs in general, for example , do  lay outside of science and of its jurisdiction, per definition ...

There are many factors that do shape our thought and thus behaviour : cultural psychological social biological environmental nurtural.............

The major fact concerning the chronic pathological domination of the materialist dogmatic belief system , and its meta-paradigm  in all sciences and elsewhere as well  , is reason enough to conclude that objectivity does not exist ,not even at the level of  the exact sciences , let alone elswhere : objectivity is a myth .

Not to mention the fact that man as a whole being cannot be divided into  separate 'entities " or rather processes such as cognition feelings emotions intuitions, instincts drives reflexes, brain mind body  ....= man functions via his / her whole being , including in science = proof ? : the dogmatic materialist belief system dominating in science ....
a subjective materialist belief taken as , and imposed on people as ..."objective " science .

P.S.: See also , while you are at it , how all those Eurocentric "enlightenment  ideals  " , all isms , materialism secularism and their liberal marxist , communist , nazi , fascist ...and other extensions beliefs , have been doing to humanity and to this world environment , eco-systems....in the name of science , reason , logic ...........by imposing their own Eurocentric and other  cultural belief assumptions values norms principles , on the rest of humanity , just to steal their resources , by subjecting and enslaving them, during the last 3 centuries at least  ...in the name of science , reason , logic ............in ways way worse than those of any church out there in the name of God, during all the history of mankind  ...Come on .

See how the Eurocentric "enlightenment " movement had/has racist roots and core , even at the high levels represented by its intellectual prominent elite, from Descartes , Darwin, Voltaire , Kant , through and beyond the rest , including giants of literature such as  Charles Dickens ...including the "pioneers of the so-called scientific racism " ...

Powerful and extremely shocking and so-true a top docu :
Discretion is advised , contains shocking graphics ...
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/racism-history/

So much for the so-called scientific rational logical ...western "civilization "...

Final note : not to mention how the Eurocentric " Orientalism", anthropology ....were not only not scientific , but mainly racist and imperialist ...
.......................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: grizelda on 19/10/2013 20:10:15
Anyone is entitled to believe in anything one wants to believe in


So your beliefs are material but your wants are existential. You've mixed up your frames of reference. No wonder you're confused.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 20:56:03
...
As a scientist , you should at leat try to be relatively objective fair honest unbiased , as much as possible though , even though objectivity is a myth , even at the level of exact sciences, let alone elsewhere .
I completely agree
.

No, you do not completely agree on that , otherwise you would not have been confusing the unscientific materialism with science , for example .
Otherwise , you would not have been believing in that  obviously and undeniably false materialist belief  in no-less than science  ...

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Did science ever prove the "fact ", or rather the materialist belief assumption,  to be "true "  that the universe or reality are exclusively material ?
Absolutely not , never , ever
Of course not; the 'materialist belief assumption' is not verifiable or falsifiable. If the immaterial is undetectable to science, it is immaterial to science, which can deal only with the observable; and if you can observe something it's not immaterial - is it?

Materialism is undeniably and obviously false ( the very nature of consciousness, life , memory , feelings , emotions , human cognition, human conscience ....let alone their evolution emergence and origins , everyday's life ....the very nature of the universe... are reasons and evidence enough for that )  , as there are false and true beliefs ....there can be in fact only 1 true belief  in fact indeed , logically , despite the fact that all beliefs do have some elements of truth , to some extent at least .
Why do you keep on confusing the unscientific materialism with science , obviously , then ?
Why do you keep on believing in that materialist unscientific magical " emergent " belief assumption trick performance then ? You do even defend it as allegedly being the one and only hypothesis that's supported by the evidence or scientific data to date , come on .
Besides, religions do encourage stimulate and rely on the individual and collective religious active experiences of their followers ,both on the material , moral ethical and spiritual reality grounds = they are another kind of science , so to speak , simply put .
No wonder that science itself originated from Islam mainly, in order to deal with the practical pragmatic social and other material side of reality  , material side of reality religion or , just Islam, in this case also relies on, not just on the spiritual moral ethical one ...otherwise , there is no need purpose meaning function role ...of Islam on earth , if Islam cannot be rooted in the material side of reality also, on the reality ground on this earth   .

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... how can science  ever  go beyond its material realm for that matter, science's material realm that's not what all there is out there , obviously  .
Agreed. Science is limited to the material realm, and I'm fine with that. We'll just carry on observing, learning, and explaining how palpable reality works, just as always. You're welcome to ponder the impalpable & immaterial in peace.

Just stop  confusing  science with that unscientific materialist belief in science  then .

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All beliefs , the secular and the religious ones  alike , should be kept outside of science ,and outside of the jurisdiction of science ...
Is that so difficult to understand ?
I completely agree.  Science should continue to observe, make testable hypotheses, test the hypotheses, learn. It need only concern itself with the observable.

Just stop confusing  the unscientific  materialism with science then .

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I hadn't realised we agree on so much! :)

No, in fact , we do not agree that much with each other , as long as you keep on confusing the unscientific materialism with science, in lo less -than science , turning science into a belief , into magic ...in the process  .

Try to keep your own unscientific and false materialism outside of science and outside of the jurisdiction of science as well , then and only then , i can call you a true scientist , not earlier = you are not a true scientist , as the majority of scientists today are not , as long as you keep on confusing your own untrue and unscientific materialism with science , in no-less than ...science .

I think you cannot but agree with i have been saying ....if you strive to be a true scientist at least , a true scientist you , obviously and undeniably , are not at this point at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/10/2013 21:00:28
Anyone is entitled to believe in anything one wants to believe in


So your beliefs are material but your wants are existential. You've mixed up your frames of reference. No wonder you're confused.

I see that we are lucky and honored enough to have a new genius such as yourself in house :
A belief is not a "thing ", that was just a figure of speech , darling .
Are any beliefs for that matter material ?
Where are they then ? can you touch them, see them....capture them for us ...put them under the microscope , scanner ...can you measure them, observe them , test them , verify falsify them, reproduce them ... put them in the lab ...?
When you do , tell me then ...
I think that the Nobel prize is made for you ...
God ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2013 23:11:10
You could say that there are four frames of reference, say, reason, materialism, existentialism and empiricism. Because they are frames of reference, they don't overlap. So you can't use your existentialist poetry to criticize materialism and materialism has no business belittling your existentialist poetry. Mixing frames of reference is probably a major cause of misunderstanding.

Welcome , even though we have enough materialist magicians here already haha
What , on earth , are you talking about ?
Materialism and existeialism are just philosophies , world views , beliefs ....they do not belong in science , as all beliefs for that matter do not , obviously , either the religious or the secular beliefs ...

P.S.: We are trying here to talk ...science , pure science : the first thing to do is : purify science by distillating it haha , by rejecting the unscientific materialist belief assumptions in science that have been dominating science  for so long now :
Worse : those unscientific materialist belief assumptions or the materialist dogmatic belief system have been presented and sold to the people as ...science , ironically enough .

P.S.: All beliefs , either religious or secular , should be kept outside of science and outside of science's jurisdiction , science whose realm is just the material side of reality , the immaterial side of reality is thus a matter of ...beliefs , not a matter of science , obviously :
Anyone is entitled to believe in anything one wants to believe in , as long as all beliefs are kept outside of science and outside of the jurisdiction of science as well, including materialism existentialism and all the rest of those beliefs and "isms " ...


No need to be rude.

Anyway, Grizelda is right, and actually agreeing with you in a way. If something is, as you say, outside of the realm of science, then it's pointless to try to have a scientific discussion about it. It is like trying to prove scientifically that John Updike's last novel was better than Alice Munroe's. It is like attempting to write a business proposal in haiku poetry (although that might be amusing).

But you can't have it both ways - You can't say that something is outside the realm of science but also inside the realm of science.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2013 23:29:25
In other words, the conscious self is less a controller than an (apparently) integrated representative and spokesman for the underlying composite of processes.


The idea of consciousness as more of a spokesperson than an initiator is an interesting one, and seems more compatible with fMRI experiments that show activity in the brain before some one is aware of their decision to act. It also is compatible with confabulation in split brain patients, in which they make up stories to explain movements or choices made by the other half of the brain that is no longer sharing information.

There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: grizelda on 20/10/2013 00:12:38
Are any beliefs for that matter material ?
Where are they then ? can you touch them, see them....capture them for us ...put them under the microscope , scanner ...can you measure them, observe them , test them , verify falsify them, reproduce them ... put them in the lab ...?
When you do , tell me then ...


You have been invited many times to tell us what you believe, but never did: Were they too material? You've blown off half your brain cells deriding scientists' materialist beliefs, now you say beliefs aren't material. Tell us your beliefs and I'll show you your materialism.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/10/2013 11:28:54
There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.
That's quite reasonable if thoughts are the patterns of activation of neurons across the brain. Each pattern of activation will trigger the next (although the patterns are dynamic, so the transitions are continuous). The difficulty many people have is in grasping that thoughts are these patterns of neural activation flowing across/through the brain, they're not something separate that causes neural activity, and they're only 'caused by' neural activity in the loose sense that a wave is 'caused by' water; waves are a patterns of water movement, and thoughts are patterns of neural activity. 

Douglas Hofstadter discusses recursion and consciousness at length in his book 'I am a Strange Loop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030793)', where one of his themes is the use of feedback to generate complexity (e.g. video feedback, where the camera points at the screen showing its own output).

I see the emergence and interaction of patterns of neural activation in the brain as analogous to the emergence of interacting patterns in Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), where the individual units are static, with binary states, but the emergent patterns of their composite activities have emergent structure and interaction (oscillators, spaceships, etc). As if to emphasize the potential of such emergent complexity, these GOL patterns can themselves be used to emulate the GOL itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8) and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2011/01/turing_machines_1.htm) (programmable computers) and computer/constructors (http://lhttp://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html) that can be programmed to replicate themselves (http://b3s23life.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/replicator-redux.html).

If a system with such simple rules and limited degrees of freedom as GOL can generate multiple levels of emergent complexity, to the extent that it can generate replicators and emulate anything computable, it seems less surprising that a system with many more degrees of freedom and more complex rules can, given a suitable environment and couple of billion years of selection pressures,  evolve structures like mammalian brains.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 20/10/2013 15:54:34
A scientist named Marder isolated the entire pattern of the network of every single neuron in the lobster gut, and all of the neurotransmitters of every synapse. In theory that should tell you everything you need to predict what happens in a spiny lobster gut. The interesting thing is in her small system there are 20 million possible network combinations. There are 100,000 to 200,00 different ways to get the exact same behavior, which seems wildly redundant. In talking about the brain it is easy to lose sight of the huge numbers involved, the same way people forget about the vast amounts of time in evolution. More is sometimes different.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 17:26:46
You could say that there are four frames of reference, say, reason, materialism, existentialism and empiricism. Because they are frames of reference, they don't overlap. So you can't use your existentialist poetry to criticize materialism and materialism has no business belittling your existentialist poetry. Mixing frames of reference is probably a major cause of misunderstanding.

Welcome , even though we have enough materialist magicians here already haha
What , on earth , are you talking about ?
Materialism and existeialism are just philosophies , world views , beliefs ....they do not belong in science , as all beliefs for that matter do not , obviously , either the religious or the secular beliefs ...

P.S.: We are trying here to talk ...science , pure science : the first thing to do is : purify science by distillating it haha , by rejecting the unscientific materialist belief assumptions in science that have been dominating science  for so long now :
Worse : those unscientific materialist belief assumptions or the materialist dogmatic belief system have been presented and sold to the people as ...science , ironically enough .

P.S.: All beliefs , either religious or secular , should be kept outside of science and outside of science's jurisdiction , science whose realm is just the material side of reality , the immaterial side of reality is thus a matter of ...beliefs , not a matter of science , obviously :
Anyone is entitled to believe in anything one wants to believe in , as long as all beliefs are kept outside of science and outside of the jurisdiction of science as well, including materialism existentialism and all the rest of those beliefs and "isms " ...


No need to be rude.

Anyway, Grizelda is right, and actually agreeing with you in a way. If something is, as you say, outside of the realm of science, then it's pointless to try to have a scientific discussion about it. It is like trying to prove scientifically that John Updike's last novel was better than Alice Munroe's. It is like attempting to write a business proposal in haiku poetry (although that might be amusing).

But you can't have it both ways - You can't say that something is outside the realm of science but also inside the realm of science.

I was not rude , i was just being sarcastic ironic in relation to that stupid statement of that member i responded to : can't you see the sifference ?

What , on earth , are you talking about again then ?
Please , do try to think before responding , appreciate indeed .
When then did i ever say that something that should be kept outside of science , and outside of the jurisdiction  of science as well , can be inside of science or inside of the jurisdiction of science ? = an unscientific illogic irrational  paradox i am  the one who has been accusing you , guys , of , ironically anough , and rightly so, simply because you are the ones who happen to confuse the materialist dogmatic belief ssystem in science , with science , together with all those  extensions of materialism in science , such as those  materialist magical 'emergence " and computational trick performances regarding consciousness, memory , human cognition , human language (I just did start a thread concerning the origins of the human language by the way ) ...
So, you are , obviously the ones , who have been not only introducing and invloving the materialist belief in science as science , but you also do confuse the materialist belief in science with the jurisdiction of science , the latter when all materialists for that matter think they have been debunking all non-materialist beliefs through science and through the jurisdiction of science , while science's realm and jurisdiction are just exclusively ...material .

P.S.: I think that beliefs or belief assumptions cannot be kept outside of science in fact , that's a human unavoidable thing : proof ? = materialism in science , the latter that will be just replaced by yet another false naturalist  non -reductionist conception of nature in science, as Nagel said in that book of his = the human will to believe is inexhaustible indeed 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 20/10/2013 17:42:42
DQ: you clearly didn't read or understand what I wrote, so I'll quote it again

Quote
The honest scientific answer to many questions is "I don't know - yet." Compare that with the dishonest religious answers "You can't possibly know" or "It was all done by a man with a beard in the sky, who you can't see but I know exists, for reasons that only he can comprehend. But because I know he exists, I have authority over your behaviour" and you will see why I have a deep disdain for mysticism, faith, and all that crap. 

If you had understood it, you wouldn't have wasted your time typing out a load of mysticism in response.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 18:02:42
A scientist named Marder isolated the entire pattern of the network of every single neuron in the lobster gut, and all of the neurotransmitters of every synapse. In theory that should tell you everything you need to predict what happens in a spiny lobster gut. The interesting thing is in her small system there are 20 million possible network combinations. There are 100,000 to 200,00 different ways to get the exact same behavior, which seems wildly redundant. In talking about the brain it is easy to lose sight of the huge numbers involved, the same way people forget about the vast amounts of time in evolution. More is sometimes different.

The whole is not the sum of its parts , silly :

This is yet another silly unscientific kind of mechanistic reductionism in science in relation to life or brain processes at least , in the sense that one can try to reverse -engineer the brain or life , in order to understand and explain how they might work : that mechanistic reductionist approach might and does work , sometimes , regarding machines , but not regarding living organisms that are , obviously, no machines ,as Sheldrake said in his "Science Set Free ..." book :

Living organisms that do inherently intrinsically possess self-organizing , self-replicating , self-sustaining ,self-maintaining ....flexible and adaptative creative qualities , no human- made machine ever can be able to match, not even remotely close thus , no matter how sophisticated or advanced it might ever be .

Have you ever seen any human-made machine for that matter that's capable of growing from its smallest and fundamental parts or cells genes , that's capable of replicating , reproducing itself , that's capable of flexibility, creativity , adaptation , evolution ....?  Come on .

Imagine trying to reverse -engineer a computer or a tv set , by dismanteling it all the way to its fundamental "particles " or components : you might learn how the computer or tv set is arranged , what is it made of ....but, you cannot possibly know that way alone how the computer or tv set might function or how they  really function as a whole .
Reducing everything to their parts is no scientific way to approach life , the brain , simply because you have wholes inside of  wholes inside of  wholes inside of  wholes ...all the way down to neurons cells , molecules , atoms , all the way to the sub-atoms "particules " ...that work all as one ...

Even mapping our whole human genome is no guarantee that we will understand how man  or life do  function fully , how man life do evolve fully , how man life do behave fully ...

You have whole living organisms that have whole organs inside of them , the latter have other wholes inside of them such as molecules composed of specific arragements of atoms , then you have atoms composed of a nucleus each and electrons "dancing " around it , the atomic nucleus is composed of arrrangements of protons and neutrons ,the latter are composed of hundred of quarks ...= wholes inside of wholes inside of wholes inside of wholes ....that do work together as a whole = the living organism as a whole that cannot be reduced to its parts = the whole is not the sum of its parts ...

Life or living organisms are a bit like the metaphoric mythical Pandora's box : many boxes inside of many boxes inside of many boxes ....
Isolating the specific boxes and therefore trying to explain the whole Pandora's box is a false assumption that explains nothing in fact , just some of Pandora"s  box parts , partly :
simply because the parts behave differently and become almost entirely different from their original components qua degree of difference , not qua kind or genre of difference though, when they interact with other parts (At the physical material biological levels at least : emergent property theory ) , not to mention that those parts all do have immaterial sides to them as well, science can , per definition and nature , not approach as such ......immaterial sides such as consciousness, such as memory , such as the immaterial side of life istelf, such as the immaterial side of evolution ................= that complicates the whole Pandora's box of life exponentially , whose extremely complex and limitless variables no advanced computer ever can cover ...as a whole, not even remotely close thus ....= an understatement .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 20/10/2013 18:11:37

The whole is not the sum of its parts , silly :


yeah, that's the point.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 18:16:52
DQ: you clearly didn't read or understand what I wrote, so I'll quote it again

Quote
The honest scientific answer to many questions is "I don't know - yet." Compare that with the dishonest religious answers "You can't possibly know" or "It was all done by a man with a beard in the sky, who you can't see but I know exists, for reasons that only he can comprehend. But because I know he exists, I have authority over your behaviour" and you will see why I have a deep disdain for mysticism, faith, and all that crap. 

If you had understood it, you wouldn't have wasted your time typing out a load of mysticism in response.

You're the one who ,obviously , did not read or understand what i was saying so clearly :
Religion do not tell us everything there is to know = not even remotely close thus , logically and obviously :
That's 1 of the reasons , i guess, why God blessed us with minds hearts and souls , in order to make that endless dynamic restless journey-search for the "truth ", on earth , both via science reason logic ....and via personally individually and collectively socially spiritual quest , both on the material and immaterial reality grounds .

Religion does not tell us anything for that matter about cells, DNA , atoms , black holes or "white holes " haha out there , we have to find out about all that and much more via science mainly , the latter whose realm and jurisdiction are exculsively material , while the immaterial and spiritual moral ethical teleological side of reality are a matter of beliefs , each and every one of us should decide for himself / herself , in total freedom and safety security, not via coercion ...or via any kindda authority ...

"I do not know , i wanna know, how can i know ?  " are   core belief assumptions and facts as well at the heart of any religion for that matter as a result , obviously : religion just gives us some essential or fundamental hints or general threads paradigms to start our own journey from , a bit like true science whenever  it is guided by true or valid conceptions of nature , not when science  is guided by that false materialist conception of nature and therefore by its false materialist meta-paradigm....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 18:25:51

The whole is not the sum of its parts , silly :


yeah, that's the point.

Ensemble of neurons ' behaviour is mostly, if not completely ,unlike the behaviour of each of its individual isolated neurons and the latter's individual multiple sequences , synapses , interactions ....
You can isolate any single neuron or enesemble of neurons you like , map their sequences, synapses ... and behaviour , but you can never be able to predict  that way alone  , let alone know , how those single neurons or ensemble of neurons would behave in their real collective environment , not even via the emergent property ...

You can map the whole human genome , but you can never know that way  alone  , how the whole human genome functions  as a whole in its own natural environment  : you cannot just deduce the latter  from the former  , no way .

That would be  a bit  like studying some of your own specific personal behaviours in relation to just some limited people and events in society or by putting you alone in isolation , Cheryl, and then pretending to be able to deduce from that all your potential present past and future behaviours = ludicrous , let alone that it is "scientific" .

You cannot explain life , let alone its evolution emergence or origins , just via isolating neurons , genes, atoms , molecules ....as you cannot explain human societies just by isolating and trying to explain the behaviours of its isolated individuals .....or the world as a whole just by isolating its countries continents .....let alone via just physics and chemistry .
As you cannot explain the whole functioning of a car just by isolating  and studying  its fundamental components , let alone its atoms , ....

Can neurons explain politics , society , culture , creativity , consciousness, human language , memory , music , art , literature, economics  ...sex ...?

Incredibly unbelievably tragic -hilariously enough , that's exactly what physicists materialist think they can do by "developing creating inventing ,making -up , ...a potential eventual mathematical theory of everything " , that would ,obviously , explain nothing .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 18:50:15
In other words, the conscious self is less a controller than an (apparently) integrated representative and spokesman for the underlying composite of processes.


The idea of consciousness as more of a spokesperson than an initiator is an interesting one, and seems more compatible with fMRI experiments that show activity in the brain before some one is aware of their decision to act. It also is compatible with confabulation in split brain patients, in which they make up stories to explain movements or choices made by the other half of the brain that is no longer sharing information.

There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.

Just tell me how do you deduce "thiought processing " , behaviour , "decision -making " ...from the neurochemical activity of the brain , or how the physical brain allegedly generates immaterial thought , magically ...?

Is the eventual correlation or interaction between brain and consciousness = causation ? Even the alleged causation is no explanation

Just try to 'compare " what you were saying with the tv set and its "created " images then haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 18:56:02
There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.
That's quite reasonable if thoughts are the patterns of activation of neurons across the brain. Each pattern of activation will trigger the next (although the patterns are dynamic, so the transitions are continuous). The difficulty many people have is in grasping that thoughts are these patterns of neural activation flowing across/through the brain, they're not something separate that causes neural activity, and they're only 'caused by' neural activity in the loose sense that a wave is 'caused by' water; waves are a patterns of water movement, and thoughts are patterns of neural activity. 

Douglas Hofstadter discusses recursion and consciousness at length in his book 'I am a Strange Loop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030793)', where one of his themes is the use of feedback to generate complexity (e.g. video feedback, where the camera points at the screen showing its own output).

I see the emergence and interaction of patterns of neural activation in the brain as analogous to the emergence of interacting patterns in Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), where the individual units are static, with binary states, but the emergent patterns of their composite activities have emergent structure and interaction (oscillators, spaceships, etc). As if to emphasize the potential of such emergent complexity, these GOL patterns can themselves be used to emulate the GOL itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8) and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2011/01/turing_machines_1.htm) (programmable computers) and computer/constructors (http://lhttp://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html) that can be programmed to replicate themselves (http://b3s23life.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/replicator-redux.html).

If a system with such simple rules and limited degrees of freedom as GOL can generate multiple levels of emergent complexity, to the extent that it can generate replicators and emulate anything computable, it seems less surprising that a system with many more degrees of freedom and more complex rules can, given a suitable environment and couple of billion years of selection pressures,  evolve structures like mammalian brains.

Pure unscientific materialist bullshit , sorry :

Just explain to me then how thoughts or consciousness are generated by the neurochemical activity of the brain ....Ludicrous .

If consciosuness , thoughts ...are just neuro-chemistry , then, please , do catch them for me , so i can see them or how they look like = pueril non-sense .

How do you deduce all that from the neuro-chemistry of the physical brain then ? Right , via the materialist magic in science of course , silly me .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 19:00:47
Are any beliefs for that matter material ?
Where are they then ? can you touch them, see them....capture them for us ...put them under the microscope , scanner ...can you measure them, observe them , test them , verify falsify them, reproduce them ... put them in the lab ...?
When you do , tell me then ...


You have been invited many times to tell us what you believe, but never did: Were they too material? You've blown off half your brain cells deriding scientists' materialist beliefs, now you say beliefs aren't material. Tell us your beliefs and I'll show you your materialism.

Go see a shrink, sis or bro ...or just try to buy some brain from the black market , since consciousness or mind are "created " by the brain then ....
Do not forget to buy some beliefs also = they are just "products of the brain , obviously " = "material " ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 20/10/2013 19:47:15

That's 1 of the reasons , i guess, why God blessed us with minds hearts and souls

What? When? How? How do you know?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 20:38:59

That's 1 of the reasons , i guess, why God blessed us with minds hearts and souls

What? When? How? How do you know?

Why don't you address or rather dare to engage my earlier allegations then first ?
That was an unscientific statement of mine though , per definition , a belief assumption, obviously , no scientific one, but not necessarily false , as materialism is .  haha

Where do they come from ? Did goddess evolution  or mother fortuna  Theresa  nature  made them and how exactly ?

Since materialism in science pretends to be "scientific " , materialism you still do confuse with science , obviously , you would easily encounter no problem or challenge in trying to explain how heart (not the biological one though ) soul and mind  emerged evolved  ..... from just physics and chemistry haha

Dare to take the challenge ?
Oh, boy : that's mission impossible for you ,per definition,  since materialism in science is just a belief , a secular one , a false one at that = unscientific also , per definition .

Man can never be able to ban beliefs from science and from elsewhere  either  , obviously :   cannot be done : materialism in science will just be replaced by another probably false one at that also = the human will to believe is inexhaustible ....indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/10/2013 20:45:41
Just explain to me then how thoughts or consciousness are generated by the neurochemical activity of the brain ....Ludicrous .
Did I mention neurochemistry? If you didn't understand the explanation the first time, you could try thinking about what was actually said, rather than taking fright at the reflection of your own projected misconceptions. Otherwise, I'm afraid you may be better off focusing on mysticism, or theology, where that kind of thing doesn't make much difference.

Quote
If consciosuness , thoughts ...are just neuro-chemistry , then, please , do catch them for me , so i can see them or how they look like = pueril non-sense .
Yup; you clearly failed to grasp any of it... 'Whoosh!', as they say.

Quote
How do you deduce all that from the neuro-chemistry of the physical brain then ? Right , via the materialist magic in science of course , silly me .
It wasn't deduced from neurochemistry. I can only hope, for your sake, you weren't being serious.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2013 21:03:29
Just explain to me then how thoughts or consciousness are generated by the neurochemical activity of the brain ....Ludicrous .
Did I mention neurochemistry? If you didn't understand the explanation the first time, you could try thinking about what was actually said, rather than taking fright at the reflection of your own projected misconceptions. Otherwise, I'm afraid you may be better off focusing on mysticism, or theology, where that kind of thing doesn't make much difference.

Quote
If consciosuness , thoughts ...are just neuro-chemistry , then, please , do catch them for me , so i can see them or how they look like = pueril non-sense .
Yup; you clearly failed to grasp any of it... 'Whoosh!', as they say.

Quote
How do you deduce all that from the neuro-chemistry of the physical brain then ? Right , via the materialist magic in science of course , silly me .
It wasn't deduced from neurochemistry. I can only hope, for your sake, you weren't being serious.

Oh , mama mamia : for my own sake ? should i get the guillotine for that ? haha :

I did not read your stuff ,to be honest , i must admit , sorry,  i just took a quick glance at it , while assuming that you , as a reductionist , would only come up with materialist magical stuff , that's all .
I will try to read your stuff ,later on :
Can you summarize for  me , in few words , what you were trying to say  via all those links of yours ?

P.S.: If neuro-chemistry has not "created " consciousness , what 'did " ? and how ?
Later , alligator .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/10/2013 22:59:56
I did not read your stuff ,to be honest , i must admit , sorry,  i just took a quick glance at it , while assuming that you , as a reductionist , would only come up with materialist magical stuff , that's all .
I will try to read your stuff ,later on :
Can you summarize for  me , in few words , what you were trying to say  via all those links of yours ?
Yes, I can; but this isn't Reader's Digest. Be a big boy and read the post.

Btw, commenting on posts you haven't read really doesn't help your credibility  <:o)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2013 00:20:32


The whole is not the sum of its parts , silly :

This is yet another silly unscientific kind of mechanistic reductionism in science in relation to life or brain processes at least , in the sense that one can try to reverse -engineer the brain or life , in order to understand and explain how they might work : that mechanistic reductionist approach might and does work , sometimes , regarding machines , but not regarding living organisms that are , obviously, no machines ,as Sheldrake said in his "Science Set Free ..." book :

Living organisms that do inherently intrinsically possess self-organizing , self-replicating , self-sustaining ,self-maintaining ....flexible and adaptative creative qualities , no human- made machine ever can be able to match, not even remotely close thus , no matter how sophisticated or advanced it might ever be .




Strange as it might seem, materialists are not in disagreement with you on this point. A reductionist hypothesis does not imply a constructionist one. The ability to reduce everything to fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from fundamental laws and reconstruct the universe, or even a squirrel.  Why does it not work the same backwards or forwards? Your answer is actually not that nature is self organizing, your answer is "God does it."   A materialist would explain it differently, that the nonlinear mathematics of complex systems does not allow exact predictions of future states. A materialist does not see anything magical about the emergence of properties when you go from one level of organization to another, although you obviously do. I could give you dozens of examples of emergent properties, and dlorde could probably even give you better ones, but I doubt it would convince you that it is not a magic process. That doesn't prove consciousness is an emergent property, but it seems more likely to me, than "God does it", an explanation that also effectively ends any attempt at a deeper or more detailed understanding, at least scientifically.

You repeatedly mention things like "emotions" or "memories" as being unexplainable with materialism. I sometimes wonder if you have ever bothered to think about what an emotion or memory or thought is. Even within your own conceptual framework of the brain as receiver of immaterial consciousness, I suspect you would have difficulty sorting various mental processes into either the "biological/brain/receiver box" or into the "immaterial consciousness from God box". But with your tendency to oversimplify and define things rather vaguely, it probably does not seem necessary.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 21/10/2013 00:56:05
Quote
Why don't you address or rather dare to engage my earlier allegations then first ?

I have no interest in allegations, only facts and hypotheses substantiated by facts. Alas, you have not proffered any. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Pmb on 21/10/2013 15:57:37
Quote from: cheryl j
Here's one last joke though:
Ironically, the God particle still can't explain why the Catholic Church has mass.
Cute. From Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics by Max Jammer, page 7
Quote
Our modern word "mass" ..., as used in physics, thus undoubtedly derived from the Latin massa, meaning originally a lump of dough or paste. As in the modern languages of today, so already in Middle English the term signified a lump in a more general sense, a conglomeration or aggregation of bodies. Such was also the meaning that the word had in the Latin for the Church.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/10/2013 16:41:53
Quote from: cheryl j
Ironically, the God particle still can't explain why the Catholic Church has mass.
Cute. From Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics by Max Jammer, page 7
Quote
Our modern word "mass" ..., as used in physics, thus undoubtedly derived from the Latin massa, meaning originally a lump of dough or paste. As in the modern languages of today, so already in Middle English the term signified a lump in a more general sense, a conglomeration or aggregation of bodies. Such was also the meaning that the word had in the Latin for the Church.

Ha! excellent! what goes around comes around...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2013 18:31:23
There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.
That's quite reasonable if thoughts are the patterns of activation of neurons across the brain. Each pattern of activation will trigger the next (although the patterns are dynamic, so the transitions are continuous). The difficulty many people have is in grasping that thoughts are these patterns of neural activation flowing across/through the brain, they're not something separate that causes neural activity, and they're only 'caused by' neural activity in the loose sense that a wave is 'caused by' water; waves are a patterns of water movement, and thoughts are patterns of neural activity. 

Douglas Hofstadter discusses recursion and consciousness at length in his book 'I am a Strange Loop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030793)', where one of his themes is the use of feedback to generate complexity (e.g. video feedback, where the camera points at the screen showing its own output).

I see the emergence and interaction of patterns of neural activation in the brain as analogous to the emergence of interacting patterns in Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), where the individual units are static, with binary states, but the emergent patterns of their composite activities have emergent structure and interaction (oscillators, spaceships, etc). As if to emphasize the potential of such emergent complexity, these GOL patterns can themselves be used to emulate the GOL itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8) and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2011/01/turing_machines_1.htm) (programmable computers) and computer/constructors (http://lhttp://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html) that can be programmed to replicate themselves (http://b3s23life.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/replicator-redux.html).

If a system with such simple rules and limited degrees of freedom as GOL can generate multiple levels of emergent complexity, to the extent that it can generate replicators and emulate anything computable, it seems less surprising that a system with many more degrees of freedom and more complex rules can, given a suitable environment and couple of billion years of selection pressures,  evolve structures like mammalian brains.

You know :
I did download the kindle version of "I am a strange loop " , yesterday : I have been enjoying a short work-holiday ,so to speak, so, i have read some parts of that disappointing book  that seemed , at first sight , so promissing , and so worthy of all the praise it did get  :

That book sounds like an authentic human and humanistic true confession, humanism extended to other species , confession  whose authenticity was its major 'argument " (You gotta be authentic to sell your products , yourself and your views and ideas : authenticity in art is a major must  also  , if you wanna be a successful artist ....The author of that book in question was clever enough to use all those powerful symbols of authenticity , true confession ...humanistic side .....)
The author's sophisticated mathematical maze and high abstractions regarding the patterns of thought that are allegedly created by the neuronal computation and emergence qualities properties ,are nothing new in fact :

I have read so many similar materialist magical non-sense on the subject of thought , consciousness ,....that i cannot but see how materialists try to sell their similar materialist belief asumptions in science  to the people  , in a mathematical high abstractions elaborate and sophisticated make-believe scientific theories package ,  that compare  or rather make those materialist machine and computers analogies regarding  the human mind and brain , life in general .....
So, it all comes down to those materialist magical computational and "emergent " tricks performances regarding human thought , consciousness, memory , feelings , emotions , life in general ...as if humans and life in general are just some sort of machines ,despite the fact that that machine metaphor regarding life is so outdated and false , obviously = it all comes down to  physics , chemistry and neurochemistry , despite your outraged denials:  emergent thought patterns are just macroscopic  emergent computational higher levels of causation , while their core atomic molecular physical chemical roots can be discarded at that macroscopic level ,simply because humans are mostly concerned only by their macroscopic side of everyda's life  .
Living organisms do possess self -organizing , self -replicating or self-reproducing , self -maintaining , creativity , flexibility , adaptation, unique metabolism  ...qualities.
Have you ever seen any human -made machine for that matter that's capable of all that , capable of growing from its smallest fundamental parts or cells genes , capable of creativity flexibility , self-organization , capable of reproduction replication, capable of adaptation evolution ....?

In short or in other words :

As the author of "I am a strange loop " stated in his final chapter :
regarding the hard problem of mind vs body , or consciousness or soul:  we either believe that consciousness or the soul are just products of the laws of physics at their ultimate core , or we believe that the soul is outside of the laws of physics = dualism .

As a materialist , he cannot believe in that magical , as he put it at least , dualism that does raise many unanswerable questions than give answers (Who said anyway that dualism can give all answers : we don't know what the soul is , let alone how the mind -body interaction takes place ....among many other things we do not know on the subject ) ,so, he cannot but keep on going on the materialist path , regardless of where it might lead him to , despite all the inherent intrinsic incoherence inconsistency of materialism ,i say : like how the unconscious matter (IF it happens to be unconscious at least ) can give rise to the ,obviously , immaterial non-physical consciousness , human cognition ,to the immaterial side of  life , to the immaterial side of human language ...
The author just avoids that inherent intrinsic materialist paradox ,regarding the obvious undeniable impossibility that physics and chemistry cannot , per definition and nature ,  give rise to non-physical and non-material processes , he just avoids that , by taking refuge in a higher level of alleged causation : emeregent computational thought patterns that are allegedly caused by the brain via its complex neurons' interactions   , an alleged causation that neither he nor any other materialist cares to prove to be true : they just take us with them into that highly complicated mathematical and other abstract forest maze  to the point where we would confuse the tree with the forest  , the latter metaphor he used himself , ironically enough , when he said , and rightly so, that reducing man ,life or the brain to just atomic molecular reductionist processes , instead of studying the whole thing , not just via its parts , would make us miss the whole picture .
Well, he , obviously , misses and cannot see the whole picture either , either via or thanks to his highly mathematical patterns abstractions : a mirage he takes for the whole real picture , or for water , a mirage that cannot satisfy his own thirst ,obviously ,  let alone others'  .

To say that the alleged emergence of consciousness  or thought , is analogous to that of the  water's waves is not only a false analogy , a materialist existential symbolic sub-conscious one at that , simply because water and its waves are both material , simply because the emergent phenomena just occurs at the physical and biological material levels ,  but , also because the mirage created by those alleged emergent thought patterns that were allegedly caused by neurons , the former that does activate allegedly also the latter , those alleged emergent thought patterns are just like a mirage created in the materialists' brains or rather in their materialist believing minds , sub-consciously existentially  symbolically  ,  they take for real water , or  rather  for real water 's waves , leaving themselves and ourselves in the process , ...thirsty ,as a result , by confusing their materialist believing mind's mirage represented by their materialist belief assumption that thought patterns are emeregent properties of neurons , with water waves or with water , leaving us all at the mercy of the pursuit of their created mirage that would , per definition, never be able to satisfy ...our thirst or theirs ...



So, tell me now how you and the rest of those materialists do "deduce " from all the above you have been talking about , that thought patterns are created somehow by neuronal computation or "emergent " property then ?
Thought patterns as allegedly  high level causations ...caused by the brain ,via its neurons ...causation that does , per definition, explains nothing by itself .
Why not say correlation or interaction, instead of causation , why causation specifically then ? = right , just to be able to prove the materialist belief assumption to be "true " that "brain creates or causes consciousness " of course : how convenient .
How can those thought patterns be created by just neurons via their neuro-chemistry = via just physics and chemistry ? = the machine or computer analogy is , obviously , incorrect regarding life in general, let alone regarding the human brain and the soul ..................

Final note :

The hard  problem of consciousness , soul ....is just a matter of belief , either way , whether it is  a materialist or a non-materialist belief issue :  science has nothing to do with it :

Materialists though , since they pretend that their materialism is scientific (a joke ) , cannot but act and think behave like our old fellow Thomas Aquinas at the level of his scholastics at least when he tried to prove his belief in the existence of God to be true , by "proving it to be true " haha , simply put : (In fact , God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ) :
Materialists thus just try to prove their materialist belief to be "true " through science = a paradox = science is not about either proving or disproving any beliefs for that matter , materialists try to prove their materialist belief assumptions regarding human consciousness, human cognition , memory , life , nature ...or rather their whole materialist conception of nature to be "true " via science haha, via those computational emergence magical  performances  = a paradox = materialist magic in science = science can neither prove nor disprove any beliefs for that matter , once again .

Dualists can and should also not try to prove their dualistic belief to be "true " through science either = that would be unscientific , as that materialist attempt to try to prove its conception of nature to be "true " through science ...is = unscientific , despite its highly complicated fancy sophisticated elaborate computer -like , machine -like mathematical abstractions , the latter that can fool only ....idiots , materialists ,fools or ignorant people ...

Comprende , amigo .

 

 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2013 18:42:36
Quote from: cheryl j
Here's one last joke though:
Ironically, the God particle still can't explain why the Catholic Church has mass.
Cute. From Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics by Max Jammer, page 7
Quote
Our modern word "mass" ..., as used in physics, thus undoubtedly derived from the Latin massa, meaning originally a lump of dough or paste. As in the modern languages of today, so already in Middle English the term signified a lump in a more general sense, a conglomeration or aggregation of bodies. Such was also the meaning that the word had in the Latin for the Church.



You're using just semantics or latin ones to prove your point ? wao .
What is matter then really ? Have quantum physics themselves not revolutionized our very conventional old outdated understanding of what mass or matter might be ?

Mass that's just a matter of gravity ...Have you ever been to the moon or to space ,to see how much "mass " you have left ? in comparison with yours on earth ?

Matter can just be some sort of energy , deep down in its ultimate core : "Matter is not made of matter " , as some scientist said .

Not to mention the ludicrous materialist statement of our dear chick here : the so-called "God particle " = how can physics and chemistry account for such processes such as consciousness, human cognition , the immaterial side of life , the immaterial side of reality in general, .....let alone ...God .
God ...

Materialism has been turning you , guys, into complete fools dummies soulless zombies, no wonder  .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2013 19:11:37


The whole is not the sum of its parts , silly :

This is yet another silly unscientific kind of mechanistic reductionism in science in relation to life or brain processes at least , in the sense that one can try to reverse -engineer the brain or life , in order to understand and explain how they might work : that mechanistic reductionist approach might and does work , sometimes , regarding machines , but not regarding living organisms that are , obviously, no machines ,as Sheldrake said in his "Science Set Free ..." book :

Living organisms that do inherently intrinsically possess self-organizing , self-replicating , self-sustaining ,self-maintaining ....flexible and adaptative creative qualities , no human- made machine ever can be able to match, not even remotely close thus , no matter how sophisticated or advanced it might ever be .




Strange as it might seem, materialists are not in disagreement with you on this point. A reductionist hypothesis does not imply a constructionist one. The ability to reduce everything to fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from fundamental laws and reconstruct the universe, or even a squirrel.  Why does it not work the same backwards or forwards? Your answer is actually not that nature is self organizing, your answer is "God does it."   A materialist would explain it differently, that the nonlinear mathematics of complex systems does not allow exact predictions of future states. A materialist does not see anything magical about the emergence of properties when you go from one level of organization to another, although you obviously do. I could give you dozens of examples of emergent properties, and dlorde could probably even give you better ones, but I doubt it would convince you that it is not a magic process. That doesn't prove consciousness is an emergent property, but it seems more likely to me, than "God does it", an explanation that also effectively ends any attempt at a deeper or more detailed understanding, at least scientifically.

You repeatedly mention things like "emotions" or "memories" as being unexplainable with materialism. I sometimes wonder if you have ever bothered to think about what an emotion or memory or thought is. Even within your own conceptual framework of the brain as receiver of immaterial consciousness, I suspect you would have difficulty sorting various mental processes into either the "biological/brain/receiver box" or into the "immaterial consciousness from God box". But with your tendency to oversimplify and define things rather vaguely, it probably does not seem necessary.

(Prior note :
Don't you see that physicists materialists scientists are the ones who pretend to be able to explain everything = nothing , just in terms of physics and chemistry , just in terms of atoms , molecules ....and their interactions , properties ....via a so-called "theory of everything = theory of nothing ? : Did you read Stephen Hawking 's " A brief history of time " in that regard , to mention just that one on the subject ? )

Why do you distort my words or keep on misunderstanding them, just to fit your purpose ?

Are you stupid , or do you just deliberately play silly games with me ?

All i am saying is that reality is both material and immaterial = that's my own belief assumption = unscientific , per definition, but not necessarily false , as materialism is ,  but materialism just assumes or rather believes  that reality is exclusively material = a materialist "fact " or rather materialist belief assumption that was / is and will never be proved to be "true " by science , never , ever, per definition   : science , per definition, can only appoach the material side of reality , the immaterial one is just a matter of beliefs that should be kept outside of science and outside of its jurisdiction  as well  .
But , materialism , per definition, reduces the universe to just a material one .
Worse : materialism in science is , obvioulsy and per definition, just a belief = unscientific , per definition, , materialism is just a secular  belief  in science , a materialist secular belief religion that should be kept outside of science and outside of its jurisdiction as well :

Can't you understand just that ?

Why do you think science itself originated from the very heart and spirit of Islam itself then ?

P.S.: materialists explain everyhting= nothing  in terms of physics and chemistry alone , including via all those  extensions of materialism in science and elsewhere at the macroscopic levels , such as the so-called emergence of those thought patterns and consciousness that are allegedly created by the evolved complexity of the brain via its neurons .....

I just wanna make you, folks , realise that materialism and science are not the same thing , obviously ...but , you refuse to see that obvious undeniable fact .
Your problem, not mine .

Religious believers  can and should try to explain and understand the universe via science , reason , logic ...while assuming that God is behind all that = science is no exclusive materialist "property " or monopoly = one can be a believer and a scientist at the same time ,many scientific great achievements were / are and will be as well put under the signature of many religious believers scientists  ,as a materialist is a believer and a scientist at the same time , but the difference between the 2 different believers  scientists  , the religious and the secular materialist ones, is that religious believers scientists do keep their religious beliefs as they should do outside of science and outside of science's jurisdiction as well , but materialists believers scientists  do not only do the exact opposite by involving their own materialist beliefs in science , but they also sell them to the people as science .

Who's to blame here for turning science into a belief = into magic = into the materialist false belief ? obviously ...

Unbelievable ...




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2013 20:13:27
The hard problem of consciousness remains as unsolved as it was the case thousands of years ago, and will most probably remain unsolved for yet trillions of years to come as well , maybe , who knows  :
The hard problem of consciousness that can only be , obviously , approached via world views , conceptions of nature , or beliefs only ,  by  both  the secular and  the religious ones .

Beliefs or world views , conceptions of nature , that are and should be kept outside of science , and outside of science's jurisdiction as well .

But , materialists cannot let go of their desperate attempts to try to prove their materialist belief assumptions to be "true " , regarding the origins , emergence ,evolution and nature of consciousness ,regarding their materialist conception of nature as a whole ,   through no-less than science , paradoxically , materialist belief assumptions they do deliberately sell to people as ...science , ironically paradoxically enough .

In fact , human beliefs cannot be kept outside of all sciences , obviously : Proof ? : materialism in all sciences and elsewhere : and the false materialism will just be replaced by yet another false conception of nature in all sciences  and elsewhere as well = "The human will to believe is ...inexhaustible ...indeed .


What a predicament ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 21/10/2013 22:34:58
Quote from: DonQuichotte
... tl;dr ...
Yes, but how do you feel about materialism in science?   ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 22/10/2013 02:11:53


But , materialists cannot let go of their desperate attempts to try to prove their materialist belief assumptions to be "true " , regarding the origins , emergence ,evolution and nature of consciousness ,regarding their materialist conception of nature as a whole ,   through no-less than science , paradoxically , materialist belief assumptions they do deliberately sell to people as ...science , ironically paradoxically enough .


Well, one could apply your anti-materialist reasoning to almost every kind of change or transformation in science:
 Do not try to convince me that water, which is a liquid, can be transformed into ice, which is solid, through your magical materialist temperature change! No way, no how! You are obviously confusing materialism with science proper to think that sunlight is magically transformed via the strip tease of photosynthesis into the energy locked in bonds of glucose molecules, or that you can some how magically change this with mere chemical reactions inside cells in a way that allows you peddle a bicycle! The sun cannot peddle your bicycle! Can't you understand just that? Are you really that stupid? Unbelievable! You cannot possibly through your materialist reductionist magic explain how a tornado "emerges" from atoms of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and hydrogen! And Mass that's just a matter of gravity. Have you ever been to the moon or to space ,to see how much "mass " you have left ? in comparison with yours on earth?

(I didn't even have to make up the last example)

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: CPT ArkAngel on 22/10/2013 03:51:36
To be a good scientist, you have to split your personality in two halves, one defending anti-materialism and one defending materialism. How much are they incompatible?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/10/2013 14:07:22
Well, one could apply your anti-materialist reasoning to almost every kind of change or transformation in science:
 Do not try to convince me that water, which is a liquid, can be transformed into ice, which is solid, through your magical materialist temperature change! No way, no how! You are obviously confusing materialism with science proper to think that sunlight is magically transformed via the strip tease of photosynthesis into the energy locked in bonds of glucose molecules, or that you can some how magically change this with mere chemical reactions inside cells in a way that allows you peddle a bicycle! The sun cannot peddle your bicycle! Can't you understand just that? Are you really that stupid? Unbelievable! You cannot possibly through your materialist reductionist magic explain how a tornado "emerges" from atoms of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and hydrogen! And Mass that's just a matter of gravity. Have you ever been to the moon or to space ,to see how much "mass " you have left ? in comparison with yours on earth?
Bravo Cheryl! eerily familiar, and every bit as informative as the real thing :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 17:13:31
I honestly cannot understand how one can attack materialism and reductionism, blithely dismiss things like emergent properties and offer absolutely nothing better in terms of explanation of phenomena.
You don't need such explanations if you have faith. Apparently it's beyond logic, reason, and science...

Come on : this is neither fair nor objective , let alone true , what you have been saying , you and Cheryl for that matter , regarding my own replies on the subject of emergent phenomena at least = i did state clearly to the both of you that i do not reject the emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ,on the contrary ,  i just reject that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness only+ i do reject that materialist mechanistic so-called computational mechanism regarding human thought or cognition .
Did i not say that to the both of you cristal-clearly earlier , when the both of you asked me about just that ?
I did clearly state that to you , dlorde , cristal -clearly  when you did distort my words beyond any recognition on the very same subject = you do the same distortion of my words again ...Why then ?
Do you happen to suffer from some sort of selective amnesia or what ?

Unbelievable ...

A mod warned me about "insulting " the members of this forum : I say to that mod :

Try to read how these people distort my words beyond any recognition repeatedly , despite my extensive and repeated explanations of what i was saying = I gotta be a superhuman not to insult you , guys , as a result ?
I am not a superman though = i am just a human , all too human being , with limited patience ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 17:31:51


But , materialists cannot let go of their desperate attempts to try to prove their materialist belief assumptions to be "true " , regarding the origins , emergence ,evolution and nature of consciousness ,regarding their materialist conception of nature as a whole ,   through no-less than science , paradoxically , materialist belief assumptions they do deliberately sell to people as ...science , ironically paradoxically enough .


Well, one could apply your anti-materialist reasoning to almost every kind of change or transformation in science:
 Do not try to convince me that water, which is a liquid, can be transformed into ice, which is solid, through your magical materialist temperature change! No way, no how! You are obviously confusing materialism with science proper to think that sunlight is magically transformed via the strip tease of photosynthesis into the energy locked in bonds of glucose molecules, or that you can some how magically change this with mere chemical reactions inside cells in a way that allows you peddle a bicycle! The sun cannot peddle your bicycle! Can't you understand just that? Are you really that stupid? Unbelievable! You cannot possibly through your materialist reductionist magic explain how a tornado "emerges" from atoms of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and hydrogen! And Mass that's just a matter of gravity. Have you ever been to the moon or to space ,to see how much "mass " you have left ? in comparison with yours on earth?

(I didn't even have to make up the last example)

God...

The purely exclusively biological physical material emergent properties are scientific facts , not materialist belief assumptions = can you see the difference ?

See my reply to dlorde here above , on the same subject :
I absolutely do not reject the emergent phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels= only fools idiots or ignorant folks might do just that  , i do just reject that materialist magical =  unscientific  "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness, that's all :
You asked me about just that , earlier , and i did give you this same answer .
I also do ,obviously , reject that materialist = unscientific computational mechanism regarding the origin or nature of human thought or cognition also , simply because that machine or computer analogy does not apply to living organisms , the latter that are unlike any man-made machne computer for that matter , living organisms that are capable of self-organisation, reproduction replication, self-maintenance , unique metabolism ...capable of creativity flexibility evolution ...

Once again, have you ever seen any man-made machine for that matter , that's capable of all the above listed properties and qualities of living organisms , have you ever seen any man-made machine that's capable of growing from   some of its smallest components cells genes , that's capapable of reproduction replication, self-replication, self-reproduction, creativity, flexibility , self-organisation, that's capable of adaptation evolution ...?

Amazing folks you are ,really ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/10/2013 18:46:26
You don't need such explanations if you have faith. Apparently it's beyond logic, reason, and science...

Come on : this is neither fair nor objective , let alone true , what you have been saying , you and Cheryl for that matter...
Wow, been trawling? those posts are 7 weeks old... but it still seems fair comment - you did actually say that:
human consciousness, our subjective inner lives ...do escape any reason, logic, science..

Quote
.. regarding my own replies on the subject of emergent phenomena at least = i did state clearly to the both of you that i do not reject the emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ,on the contrary ,  i just reject that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness only+ i do reject that materialist mechanistic so-called computational mechanism regarding human thought or cognition .
I think we both acknowledge your position. What we're after is the argument supporting it, the plausible explanation you might use to persuade us that consciousness cannot be emergent from the functioning of the material brain.

"It is obvious" isn't an argument; at present, it just looks like a mixture of incredulity and special pleading.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 18:56:15
You don't need such explanations if you have faith. Apparently it's beyond logic, reason, and science...

Come on : this is neither fair nor objective , let alone true , what you have been saying , you and Cheryl for that matter...
Wow, been trawling? those posts are 7 weeks old... but it still seems fair comment - you did actually say that:
human consciousness, our subjective inner lives ...do escape any reason, logic, science..

Quote
.. regarding my own replies on the subject of emergent phenomena at least = i did state clearly to the both of you that i do not reject the emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ,on the contrary ,  i just reject that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness only+ i do reject that materialist mechanistic so-called computational mechanism regarding human thought or cognition .
I think we both acknowledge your position. What we're after is the argument supporting it, the plausible explanation you might use to persuade us that consciousness cannot be emergent from the functioning of the material brain.

"It is obvious" isn't an argument; at present, it just looks like a mixture of incredulity and special pleading.



The hard problem of consciousness remains as unsolved as it was the case thousands of years ago, and will most probably remain unsolved for yet trillions of years to come as well , maybe , who knows  :
The hard problem of consciousness that can only be , obviously , approached via world views , conceptions of nature , or beliefs only ,  by  both  the secular and  the religious ones .

Beliefs or world views , conceptions of nature , that are and should be kept outside of science , and outside of science's jurisdiction as well .

But , materialists cannot let go of their desperate attempts to try to prove their materialist belief assumptions to be "true " , regarding the origins , emergence ,evolution and nature of consciousness ,regarding their materialist conception of nature as a whole ,   through no-less than science , paradoxically , materialist belief assumptions they do deliberately sell to people as ...science , ironically paradoxically enough .

In fact , human beliefs cannot be kept outside of all sciences , obviously : Proof ? : materialism in all sciences and elsewhere : and the false materialism will just be replaced by yet another false conception of nature in all sciences  and elsewhere as well = "The human will to believe is ...inexhaustible ...indeed .


What a predicament ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 19:00:01
There's a weird recursiveness about consciousness, where brain states generate thoughts but those thoughts seem to effect the next brain state that generates the next thought.
That's quite reasonable if thoughts are the patterns of activation of neurons across the brain. Each pattern of activation will trigger the next (although the patterns are dynamic, so the transitions are continuous). The difficulty many people have is in grasping that thoughts are these patterns of neural activation flowing across/through the brain, they're not something separate that causes neural activity, and they're only 'caused by' neural activity in the loose sense that a wave is 'caused by' water; waves are a patterns of water movement, and thoughts are patterns of neural activity. 

Douglas Hofstadter discusses recursion and consciousness at length in his book 'I am a Strange Loop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030793)', where one of his themes is the use of feedback to generate complexity (e.g. video feedback, where the camera points at the screen showing its own output).

I see the emergence and interaction of patterns of neural activation in the brain as analogous to the emergence of interacting patterns in Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life), where the individual units are static, with binary states, but the emergent patterns of their composite activities have emergent structure and interaction (oscillators, spaceships, etc). As if to emphasize the potential of such emergent complexity, these GOL patterns can themselves be used to emulate the GOL itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8) and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2011/01/turing_machines_1.htm) (programmable computers) and computer/constructors (http://lhttp://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html) that can be programmed to replicate themselves (http://b3s23life.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/replicator-redux.html).

If a system with such simple rules and limited degrees of freedom as GOL can generate multiple levels of emergent complexity, to the extent that it can generate replicators and emulate anything computable, it seems less surprising that a system with many more degrees of freedom and more complex rules can, given a suitable environment and couple of billion years of selection pressures,  evolve structures like mammalian brains.

You know :
I did download the kindle version of "I am a strange loop " , yesterday : I have been enjoying a short work-holiday ,so to speak, so, i have read some parts of that disappointing book  that seemed , at first sight , so promissing , and so worthy of all the praise it did get  :

That book sounds like an authentic human and humanistic true confession, humanism extended to other species , confession  whose authenticity was its major 'argument " (You gotta be authentic to sell your products , yourself and your views and ideas : authenticity in art is a major must  also  , if you wanna be a successful artist ....The author of that book in question was clever enough to use all those powerful symbols of authenticity , true confession ...humanistic side .....)
The author's sophisticated mathematical maze and high abstractions regarding the patterns of thought that are allegedly created by the neuronal computation and emergence qualities properties ,are nothing new in fact :

I have read so many similar materialist magical non-sense on the subject of thought , consciousness ,....that i cannot but see how materialists try to sell their similar materialist belief asumptions in science  to the people  , in a mathematical high abstractions elaborate and sophisticated make-believe scientific theories package ,  that compare  or rather make those materialist machine and computers analogies regarding  the human mind and brain , life in general .....
So, it all comes down to those materialist magical computational and "emergent " tricks performances regarding human thought , consciousness, memory , feelings , emotions , life in general ...as if humans and life in general are just some sort of machines ,despite the fact that that machine metaphor regarding life is so outdated and false , obviously = it all comes down to  physics , chemistry and neurochemistry , despite your outraged denials:  emergent thought patterns are just macroscopic  emergent computational higher levels of causation , while their core atomic molecular physical chemical roots can be discarded at that macroscopic level ,simply because humans are mostly concerned only by their macroscopic side of everyda's life  .
Living organisms do possess self -organizing , self -replicating or self-reproducing , self -maintaining , creativity , flexibility , adaptation, unique metabolism  ...qualities.
Have you ever seen any human -made machine for that matter that's capable of all that , capable of growing from its smallest fundamental parts or cells genes , capable of creativity flexibility , self-organization , capable of reproduction replication, capable of adaptation evolution ....?

In short or in other words :

As the author of "I am a strange loop " stated in his final chapter :
regarding the hard problem of mind vs body , or consciousness or soul:  we either believe that consciousness or the soul are just products of the laws of physics at their ultimate core , or we believe that the soul is outside of the laws of physics = dualism .

As a materialist , he cannot believe in that magical , as he put it at least , dualism that does raise many unanswerable questions than give answers (Who said anyway that dualism can give all answers : we don't know what the soul is , let alone how the mind -body interaction takes place ....among many other things we do not know on the subject ) ,so, he cannot but keep on going on the materialist path , regardless of where it might lead him to , despite all the inherent intrinsic incoherence inconsistency of materialism ,i say : like how the unconscious matter (IF it happens to be unconscious at least ) can give rise to the ,obviously , immaterial non-physical consciousness , human cognition ,to the immaterial side of  life , to the immaterial side of human language ...
The author just avoids that inherent intrinsic materialist paradox ,regarding the obvious undeniable impossibility that physics and chemistry cannot , per definition and nature ,  give rise to non-physical and non-material processes , he just avoids that , by taking refuge in a higher level of alleged causation : emeregent computational thought patterns that are allegedly caused by the brain via its complex neurons' interactions   , an alleged causation that neither he nor any other materialist cares to prove to be true : they just take us with them into that highly complicated mathematical and other abstract forest maze  to the point where we would confuse the tree with the forest  , the latter metaphor he used himself , ironically enough , when he said , and rightly so, that reducing man ,life or the brain to just atomic molecular reductionist processes , instead of studying the whole thing , not just via its parts , would make us miss the whole picture .
Well, he , obviously , misses and cannot see the whole picture either , either via or thanks to his highly mathematical patterns abstractions : a mirage he takes for the whole real picture , or for water , a mirage that cannot satisfy his own thirst ,obviously ,  let alone others'  .

To say that the alleged emergence of consciousness  or thought , is analogous to that of the  water's waves is not only a false analogy , a materialist existential symbolic sub-conscious one at that , simply because water and its waves are both material , simply because the emergent phenomena just occurs at the physical and biological material levels ,  but , also because the mirage created by those alleged emergent thought patterns that were allegedly caused by neurons , the former that does activate allegedly also the latter , those alleged emergent thought patterns are just like a mirage created in the materialists' brains or rather in their materialist believing minds , sub-consciously existentially  symbolically  ,  they take for real water , or  rather  for real water 's waves , leaving themselves and ourselves in the process , ...thirsty ,as a result , by confusing their materialist believing mind's mirage represented by their materialist belief assumption that thought patterns are emeregent properties of neurons , with water waves or with water , leaving us all at the mercy of the pursuit of their created mirage that would , per definition, never be able to satisfy ...our thirst or theirs ...



So, tell me now how you and the rest of those materialists do "deduce " from all the above you have been talking about , that thought patterns are created somehow by neuronal computation or "emergent " property then ?
Thought patterns as allegedly  high level causations ...caused by the brain ,via its neurons ...causation that does , per definition, explains nothing by itself .
Why not say correlation or interaction, instead of causation , why causation specifically then ? = right , just to be able to prove the materialist belief assumption to be "true " that "brain creates or causes consciousness " of course : how convenient .
How can those thought patterns be created by just neurons via their neuro-chemistry = via just physics and chemistry ? = the machine or computer analogy is , obviously , incorrect regarding life in general, let alone regarding the human brain and the soul ..................

Final note :

The hard  problem of consciousness , soul ....is just a matter of belief , either way , whether it is  a materialist or a non-materialist belief issue :  science has nothing to do with it :

Materialists though , since they pretend that their materialism is scientific (a joke ) , cannot but act and think behave like our old fellow Thomas Aquinas at the level of his scholastics at least when he tried to prove his belief in the existence of God to be true , by "proving it to be true " haha , simply put : (In fact , God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ) :
Materialists thus just try to prove their materialist belief to be "true " through science = a paradox = science is not about either proving or disproving any beliefs for that matter , materialists try to prove their materialist belief assumptions regarding human consciousness, human cognition , memory , life , nature ...or rather their whole materialist conception of nature to be "true " via science haha, via those computational emergence magical  performances  = a paradox = materialist magic in science = science can neither prove nor disprove any beliefs for that matter , once again .

Dualists can and should also not try to prove their dualistic belief to be "true " through science either = that would be unscientific , as that materialist attempt to try to prove its conception of nature to be "true " through science ...is = unscientific , despite its highly complicated fancy sophisticated elaborate computer -like , machine -like mathematical abstractions , the latter that can fool only ....idiots , materialists ,fools or ignorant people ...

Comprende , amigo .

 

 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 22/10/2013 19:06:08

Quote
The hard problem of consciousness remains...
...that it is undefined. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 19:17:18

Quote
The hard problem of consciousness remains...
...that it is undefined.

What is  then ?
Stop palying silly games , please , be serious .
Every sane intelligent person knows that consciousness is a hard problem in science and elsewhere .Don't be silly .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2013 19:47:19
Dear folks :
Just watch and listen to the following on the subject   of science and materialism in science and elsewhere , materialism in  science  the majority of scientists today do confuse with science :


SCIENCE SET FREE - Rupert Sheldrake





Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion | London Real


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/10/2013 01:13:32


Come on : this is neither fair nor objective , let alone true , what you have been saying , you and Cheryl for that matter , regarding my own replies on the subject of emergent phenomena at least = i did state clearly to the both of you that i do not reject the emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ,on the contrary ,  i just reject that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness only+ i do reject that materialist mechanistic so-called computational mechanism regarding human thought or cognition .



And it doesn't seem at all odd to you that human consciousness is this one, special exception? You accept very complex changes and transformations in any area of biology or science, without the hand of God helping it along, except human consciousness? And at what point did God intervene in our evolutionary history?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/10/2013 03:18:04
Dear folks :
Just watch and listen to the following on the subject   of science and materialism in science and elsewhere , materialism in  science  the majority of scientists today do confuse with science :


SCIENCE SET FREE - Rupert Sheldrake





Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion | London Real



I have listened to Sheldrake. Have you bothered to investigate what neuroscience says about emotion or intuition? That they are not just the ephemeral subjective feelings you assume? That they actually are an important brain processes in reasoning, interpreting sensory perceptions, and motivation to act or not? Or do you just assume "I don't need to learn anything more about emotion or intuition because I've already 'felt' it for myself. Science can't tell me anything more. My subjective impression of them is enough" ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 23/10/2013 09:04:25

Quote
The hard problem of consciousness remains...
...that it is undefined.

What is  then ?
Stop palying silly games , please , be serious .
Every sane intelligent person knows that consciousness is a hard problem in science and elsewhere .Don't be silly .


On the contrary, I am sane - I have doctors' certificates to prove it. But I have never encountered anyone who would complete the sentence "consciousness is....." or "consciousness is that which....." in a meaningful way. You are just another of many, so far.

Why not redeem yourself (and rise in my estimation) with a few words instead of evading the issue?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 17:21:49
Dear folks :
Just watch and listen to the following on the subject   of science and materialism in science and elsewhere , materialism in  science  the majority of scientists today do confuse with science :


SCIENCE SET FREE - Rupert Sheldrake





Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion | London Real



I have listened to Sheldrake. Have you bothered to investigate what neuroscience says about emotion or intuition? That they are not just the ephemeral subjective feelings you assume? That they actually are an important brain processes in reasoning, interpreting sensory perceptions, and motivation to act or not? Or do you just assume "I don't need to learn anything more about emotion or intuition because I've already 'felt' it for myself. Science can't tell me anything more. My subjective impression of them is enough" ?

I might happen to know more than you could ever do , regarding neuro-science ...
So, just stop these sort of silly assumptions of yours then .

I did post Sheldrake's videos again, just in relation to that false materialism in science , that's all .
Nobody is denying the scientific approach of emotions and intuition  at their physical biological material levels  , it's just that science cannot , per definition , tell us what the natures of feelings emotions intuitions are :  what feeling emotion exactly are  , what pain is .....
Feelings emotions intuitions , love ...that cannot be accounted  for fully via just physics and chemistry ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 17:29:41


Come on : this is neither fair nor objective , let alone true , what you have been saying , you and Cheryl for that matter , regarding my own replies on the subject of emergent phenomena at least = i did state clearly to the both of you that i do not reject the emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ,on the contrary ,  i just reject that materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origin or nature of consciousness only+ i do reject that materialist mechanistic so-called computational mechanism regarding human thought or cognition .



And it doesn't seem at all odd to you that human consciousness is this one, special exception? You accept very complex changes and transformations in any area of biology or science, without the hand of God helping it along, except human consciousness? And at what point did God intervene in our evolutionary history?

Nature or the universe are not just a matter of material processes= nature or the universe are not just exclusively material  ,as materialism wanna make you believe  they are = an unscientific, per definition,  materialist belief assumption or conception of nature  ,a fasle one at that  sis , once again :

And science is only concerned with  material physical biological processes  ...no less , no more .

If you wanna keep on seeing everything in the universe and nature as just material biological physical processes ,including consciousness, feelings , emotions, memory ...That's your problem, not mine .

Science cannot , per definition, tell us what feelings emotions pain exactly are , or how they can be connected to their biological side , science cannot account for such processes via just physics and chemistry , let alone regarding consciousness :
The metarialist machine metaphor regarding life that 's dominating in science is false , obviously .

Living organisms are no machines or computers ,otherwise we can make 'sentient alive " machines easily = cannot be done , obviously .


A very typical case of the mainstream materialist belief   at work  in science : The "Brain Creates Consciousness " haha :  on Scientific American :  Aunt Millie's  Mind by Michael Schermer :

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2012/07/aunt-millies-mind/

It's like saying that Obama, for example , or CNN... appearing on tv were / are created by the tv set where they happen to  appear ,or that they do live inside the tv ,so, when the tv is damaged , or just some specific parts of it at least , which results in making the tv stop 'displaying " Obama,CNN, .... for example, or any other specific images for that matter , then , that means that the tv used to create those tv images haha , when it used to function ....= the magical materialist  belief assumption "emergent property " trick regarding the origins or nature of consciousness haha = the brain creates consciousness = consciousness is just an emergent property from the evolved complexity of the brain = consciousness is just physics and chemistry or neuro-chemistry = unbelievable  unscientific bullshit , in science  haha .





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 17:34:07
Editing :

A relatively short farewell note :


Dear fellow human beings  :

(I do not see you , dear folks, as being some sort of machines ,computers , as evolved animals , or as just physics and chemistry , materialism has been trying so desperately to reduce you to ,for obvious materialist ideological purposes ,  no way : human beings are way too unique to be reduced to just physics and chemistry , no way , obviously and undeniably .).

I think i will just follow that wise intelligent decision made by David Cooper , indeed , i will no longer write any long posts for this thread : it is useless to try to change people's irrational stubborn beliefs.....
Editing :
I will have to leave this forum altogether  in fact ,and definitively at that  , i think : that would be the wisest and most intelligent thing to do , i guess , since people here cannot but confuse materialism with science ,obviously, and since i do have much better things to do as well , than continue hanging out here for nothing : it would be like a cry in the desert ,for nobody to hear ,a total waste ,  since you turned out to be ,folks , totally deaf regarding obvious and indeniable facts in relation to that obviously and undeniably false and unscientific materialism in all sciences ,and elsewhere as well  .
I will no longer  waste my time here any longer ,for nothing , as it has been  , obviously , the case   all along , from day 1 onward ,unfortunately enough .
I came here to try to make you realise , folks, that materialism is not science , obviously , and then after establishing that obvious undeniable fact , we could talk ...pure science afterwards : but , i see , that it is mission impossible to try to talk you out of that false and unscientific materialism, that has been dominating in and hijacking science since the 19 th century at least , obviously :
It is indeed useless to try to change people's irrational stubborn beliefs , the more when those beliefs, the materialist ones at that ,  are sold to the people in a scientific package , as science, ironically and paradoxically enough  .

It's been really very interesting ,educational, entertaining, frustrating irritating disappointing ...also haha  ....you have no idea ...to talk to you, guys :

("The loss is worth the gain " , you have no idea , as the writer of " I am a strange loop"  said ,in his final chapter of that disappointing book of his , but in a totally different context than this one of mine though .)

My sincere and genuine apologies for having to be rude to some people here .
I am just human, too human ...a person ,so.

Nice to have been knowing you somehow ,folks,  and to have been  talking  to you as well , anyway thus .

Thanks a lot for everything , appreciate indeed .

Best wishes .

Enjoy life ,dear folks,  have fun : life is too short to be wasted ....

Bye

Abdel
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 23/10/2013 18:19:21
Quote
I came here to try to make you realise , folks, that materialism is not science

I rather think that most of us knew that already.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 20:43:55
Quote
I came here to try to make you realise , folks, that materialism is not science

I rather think that most of us knew that already.

No, you did not ...abvioulsy , and you still do not ...either ...

Ciao, amigo.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 20:50:08
Editing :

A relatively short farewell note :


Dear fellow human beings  :

(I do not see you , dear folks, as being some sort of machines ,computers , as evolved animals , or as just physics and chemistry , materialism has been trying so desperately to reduce you to ,for obvious materialist ideological purposes ,  no way : human beings are way too unique to be reduced to just physics and chemistry , no way , obviously and undeniably .).

I think i will just follow that wise intelligent decision made by David Cooper , indeed , i will no longer write any long posts for this thread : it is useless to try to change people's irrational stubborn beliefs.....
Editing :
I will have to leave this forum altogether  in fact ,and definitively at that  , i think : that would be the wisest and most intelligent thing to do , i guess , since people here cannot but confuse materialism with science ,obviously, and since i do have much better things to do as well , than continue hanging out here for nothing : it would be like a cry in the desert ,for nobody to hear ,a total waste ,  since you turned out to be ,folks , totally deaf regarding obvious and indeniable facts in relation to that obviously and undeniably false and unscientific materialism in all sciences ,and elsewhere as well  .
I will no longer  waste my time here any longer ,for nothing , as it has been  , obviously , the case   all along , from day 1 onward ,unfortunately enough .
I came here to try to make you realise , folks, that materialism is not science , obviously , and then after establishing that obvious undeniable fact , we could talk ...pure science afterwards : but , i see , that it is mission impossible to try to talk you out of that false and unscientific materialism, that has been dominating in and hijacking science since the 19 th century at least , obviously :
It is indeed useless to try to change people's irrational stubborn beliefs , the more when those beliefs, the materialist ones at that ,  are sold to the people in a scientific package , as science, ironically and paradoxically enough  .

It's been really very interesting ,educational, entertaining, frustrating irritating disappointing ...also haha  ....you have no idea ...to talk to you, guys :

("The loss is worth the gain " , you have no idea , as the writer of " I am a strange loop"  said ,in his final chapter of that disappointing book of his , but in a totally different context than this one of mine though .)

My sincere and genuine apologies for having to be rude to some people here .
I am just human, too human ...a person ,so.

Nice to have been knowing you somehow ,folks,  and to have been  talking  to you as well , anyway thus .

Thanks a lot for everything , appreciate indeed .

Best wishes .

Enjoy life ,dear folks,  have fun : life is too short to be wasted ....

Bye

Abdel
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/10/2013 20:54:36
Everyone seems to have a world-shattering book to sell, and Don Abdel does their online marketing... I hope he's getting his cut.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 23/10/2013 21:00:40
One of the rules of a discussion is that you don't send people off to read books or watch videos. If you've got a case, you express it directly yourself and in as compact a way as you can so as to avoid making other people waste time on piles of junk. The tonnage of stuff being flung into the ring by Abdel was the main problem with the discussion here. 99.9% of it wasn't helpful and it made it impossible to keep on top of what was going on in the tiny part of the discussion that might still have been on track.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 21:04:12
Everyone seems to have a world-shattering book to sell, and Don Abdel does their online marketing... I hope he's getting his cut.

Very last post :
I am not getting anything but the priceless reward of ...new insights , such as the one below, relatively speaking then  :

The Biggest Error Ever Made in the Name of Science


Note that i do not necessarily share all the views of that idealist ....

See ya later (in another life ,maybe ) , alligator .

Take care

All the best .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 21:12:08
One of the rules of a discussion is that you don't send people off to read books or watch videos. If you've got a case, you express it directly yourself and in as compact a way as you can so as to avoid making other people waste time on piles of junk. The tonnage of stuff being flung into the ring by Abdel was the main problem with the discussion here. 99.9% of it wasn't helpful and it made it impossible to keep on top of what was going on in the tiny part of the discussion that might still have been on track.


The really very last post :  no kidding :

Well, just start by reading Nagel's and Sheldrake's books then , as well as this thread ,while you are at it .

Everyone considers as junk ,relatively speaking , all insights , ideas , currents of thought ...coming from other conceptions of nature than his /hers , per definition , mostly then ...

It is useless to try to bring people to their senses , by trying to make them change their irrational beliefs ....or to make them realise the very obvious and undeniable falsehood of their own beliefs ...

As Nagel said :  " The human will to believe is inexhaustible."

Take care , alligator .

Best wishes to you all , on your own search path journey ...


I am on my way  out  .....going ....gone .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2013 21:36:30
I can't resist the temptation regarding  posting this last link :

"If materialism is wrong , what can replace it ? "  :



http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2012/11/if-materialism-is-wrong-what-can-replace-it/

A viewpoint coming from your own christian evengelists , talking about Nagel's " Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is ...false " book :

Note that i can chase and hunt down the truth, whatever the latter might be , the truth as an ever -changing , elusive ,deceptive,  ever -evolving process at that , even in the darkest terrifying ugly heart and spirit of the devil itself haha :

I am not saying that our dear christian evengelists are "devils " , no way :

"...But i say that even as the holy and the rightoeus cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you ,
So, the wicked and the weak cannot fall below the lowest which is in you also ..." Gibran Khalil Gibran .


I think that all cultures, beliefs , currents of thought ...do have some elements of truth , relatively speaking , but  they are not  all   necessarily ...true , logically .


Bye bye blue sky .....






Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 23/10/2013 23:26:06
Well, just start by reading Nagel's and Sheldrake's books then , as well as this thread ,while you are at it .

I don't have time to read a deluge of diversions. In an argument, you're supposed to extract one piece at a time that might add something useful and put that across clearly without all the unnecessary bloat.

Quote
Everyone considers as junk ,relatively speaking , all insights , ideas , currents of thought ...coming from other conceptions of nature than his /hers , per definition , mostly then ...

It's junk when it's either telling people what they already know or repeating things over and over again that have already shown to be wrong.

Quote
It is useless to try to bring people to their senses , by trying to make them change their irrational beliefs ....or to make them realise the very obvious and undeniable falsehood of their own beliefs ...

Cut out all the unnecessary bloat and you might get somewhere. I get this from both sides in this kind of discussion. One side wants me to read a ton of quackery while the other wants me to read a ton of stuff about neuroscience which is based squarely on the assumption that consciousness is real and which never stops to question that. The neuroscience is at least science for the most part, but they are determined to shoehorn consciousness into it at every turn with no justification for doing so beyond their own belief that it must be in there. Both sides (not necessarily the people in this thread - I'm refering to many conversations on this subject in many places with people who think they have scientific minds) simply refuse to recognise the point where there is a clear barrier to getting information systems to interact with qualia. They cannot demonstrate any way past this barrier, but assert over and over again that it can be done and that the answer as to how it is done is set out in some book or other on neuroscience, that answer invariably being that these feelings must be there because they are there, emerging out of feedback loops and complexity. I don't care what kind of voodoo they want to use to generate feelings or what they want them to be generated in, because that is unimportant. What really matters is that they cannot even begin to set out a diagram showing in cause and effect terms how these experiences of qualia make themselves known in the form of data in information systems, and yet they repeatedly assert that they have done so. They often assert that qualia can exist as data and that ordinary computers could be conscious if they ran the right software, even once it's been proved to them repeatedly and by multiple methods that this is completely impossible. You cannot get anywhere with such people because they refuse to present their ideas as a mechanistic system and deny that there is any need to do so, but this applies to both sides - those who bring in exotic solutions to consciousness involving gods, fairies or universes in which ideas are primary also need to provide mechanisms by which demonstrably mechanistic information systems can generate information about qualia/consciousness where that data is actually driven by qualia/consciousness rather than just being generated fictions about them which have been constructed mechanistically by a system which merely builds baseless assertions. Anyone who thinks they have an answer to how consciousness works needs to show in precise steps how it can get past the barrier between experience of qualia and the generation of data about qualia in such a way that the generation of that data is steered by the experience of qualia to the point that the data documenting that experience of qualia can be guaranteed to be true.

Here's the real challenge. Imagine that everything is conscious. Material is conscious, energy is conscious, data is conscious, the act of processing is conscious, etc. - anything you want to think of as conscious can be conscious. Now build a machine or program a machine to try to hook into that consciousness and describe it without having to resort to making it all up. Show me an information system that can do qualia. Here's a register that can feel. Here's a piece of data in it that can feel. Here's a process that can feel. Here is a piece of neural net which can feel. But how can this system ever generate any data that actually informs us about these experiences other than by resorting to making it all up? The only approach that could work is to remove the limitations of information systems by declearing that they do not function in the way we think they do - they create an illusion of functioning by applying rules which are supposed to constrain their behaviour, but they actually break the rules whenever we aren't looking, and even if we do look, they simply change our recollection of history to make us think the rules were followed. This kind of interference could be going on within every scientific experiment we ever do, making us think that things always work in a certain way when they don't work that way at all. If this is in some way the case, consciousness could be 100% real and 100% impossible for us and intelligent machines ever to get a handle on it. [Note: this paragraph may contradict the previous one, but it's because it contains an idea which occurred to me as I was writing it and I can't be bothered going back to rewrite the earlier part to match.]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 24/10/2013 16:29:52
The other day I was thinking about that experiment at University of Washington where one researcher was able to move another researcher's hand across campus by thinking about it. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130827122713.htm)

What if you had a person (Bob) who had never seen color, either because of an eye dysfunction, color blindness, may be he had been some how living  in a place where one only saw black and white objects, and then you hooked Bob's brain up to another person's brain (Bill) who can see color, and  Bill stared at a red apple. Would Bob say "oh, that is what red is like." ?If that happens, what's being transferred through the connection? Or is nothing being transferred? Is it already there in Bob's brain, waiting to be stimulated in some precise way?

Now let's say you unwire them, and  fixed Bob's eye problem, or he was allowed to leave the black and white place, and see the apple for himself.


What would would it mean if Bob's experience of color was exactly the same both times?
What would it mean if they were different? What does it mean if you get no results at all because Bob's brain never developed, or lost, the machinery needed to experience color? Or does it even matter as far the qualia question is concerned? Is qualia still unlinkable to the physical process, regardless of what results you get?

(I realize that this imaginary experiment isn't really the same thing as  the motor movement one, and perhaps not even possible)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2013 17:35:12
What if you had a person (Bob) who had never seen color, either because of an eye dysfunction, color blindness, may be he had been some how living  in a place where one only saw black and white objects, and then you hooked Bob's brain up to another person's brain (Bill) who can see color, and  Bill stared at a red apple. Would Bob say "oh, that is what red is like." ?If that happens, what's being transferred through the connection? Or is nothing being transferred? Is it already there in Bob's brain, waiting to be stimulated in some precise way?

Now let's say you unwire them, and  fixed Bob's eye problem, or he was allowed to leave the black and white place, and see the apple for himself.

What would would it mean if Bob's experience of color was exactly the same both times?
What would it mean if they were different? Or does it even matter?

(I realize that this imaginary experiment isn't really the same thing as to the motor movement one, and perhaps not even possible)
If Bob's problem was with the eyes themselves, then he might really get to see colors for the first time - unless there is some critical developmental period for color processing to develop (e.g. if appropriate input is not received, some color processing pathways might not develop properly), or if the neurons in the color processing pathways had degenerated through lack of stimulation.

What would be transferred would depend on precisely which part of the Bill's optical pathways were the source of the data, but color processing has its own dedicated areas, and it would make sense to transfer the color information immediately after encoding, but before higher level processing (integration & mapping onto the visual field representation), so it's conceivable a feed could established between the appropriate color-opponent cells in the visual pathways of the two brains (e.g. the parvocelluar ganglion output of the retina, or the lateral geniculate nucleus, or visual cortex area V4; where there are color-opponent cells, and where damage causes impairs color discrimination). But whatever the location, it would probably be the neural pulses representing the triplex color coding vectors (blue/yellow, red/green, black/white). One would expect (hope!) that in color encoding, the output color coding vectors would be common to both individuals.

Assuming Bob's brain had developed normally despite the absence of color input, all the pathways would be present for integrating and mapping the color vector information onto the content of the visual field representation in the cortex.

If Bob saw precisely the same colors using his own repaired eyes, it would confirm that the color-coding vectors are the same and have the same values across the range of each axis (blue/yellow, red/green, black/white). It wouldn't say anything about whether Bob perceives the same colour qualia as Bill. I don't think that's even a meaningful question.

For a good article on how we perceive colors, with examples of how you can see entirely novel colors ('impossible' and 'chimerical') that are outside our normal color experience (you'll need a decent photo printer for that), have a look at Churchland's 'Chimerical Colors' paper (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cogsci/private/Churchland-chimeric-colors.pdf). You may need to skip some of the more technical bits, but it's a rewarding read.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 24/10/2013 18:47:45
In some ways, I find the question of qualia less troublesome than the unified sense of self in consciousness.

But I also wonder how long you could maintain a sense of self with no sensory input or interaction with the outside world. Could you really maintain a sense of self or consciousness in an otherwise healthy disembodied brain? I know people have sensory hallucinations from sensory deprivation, but how long would the brain keep that up?  Would even memories or imaginary concepts and images start to deteriorate as well, or would the brain keep it going, locked in a sleep-like, dreaming state. Actually, I have had peculiar dreams in which "I" am not in them, sort of like watching a movie. But in the dream there is no sense of being an observer on the sidelines, until I wake up.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2013 19:49:48
... I also wonder how long you could maintain a sense of self with no sensory input or interaction with the outside world. Could you really maintain a sense of self or consciousness in an otherwise healthy disembodied brain? I know people have sensory hallucinations from sensory deprivation, but how long would the brain keep that up?  Would even memories or imaginary concepts and images start to deteriorate as well, or would the brain keep it going, locked in a sleep-like, dreaming state.
I don't know... and I don't really want to find out!

Quote
Actually, I have had peculiar dreams in which "I" am not in them, sort of like watching a movie. But in the dream there is no sense of being an observer on the sidelines, until I wake up.
Yes, me too. I also get dreams where I switch from one dream character to another; not just seeing through their eyes, or playing their role, but thinking, acting, and feeling quite differently; maybe empathy practice. Conversely, I sometimes find myself occupying someone else's body, with no idea what to do; an anxiety dream.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/10/2013 15:47:56
The reconstruction of images from neuroimagining is pretty interesting stuff. It is striking how well some of the images match up between what the subject was looking at and the comp0uter's data base, as well as the video clips showing movement of objects as well as form. If anyone is interested, this is a fun website. http://gallantlab.org

I supposed that does not address "the feeliness" of qualia, but it certainly encroaches on the private, subjectivity of brain experience, and if everyone was truly unique, and our internal experiences ineffable, it shouldn't work at all.

The other thing I thought about last night when I was interrupted doing something, was the interruptability of the brain. Ramachandran says qualia makes information "stand out." Red berries stand out from green leaves, loud sounds stand out from quiet ones, the pain of appendicitis compared to other sensations, but it always depends on context, and the same stimulus doesn't always have the same outcome. We also adapt to ignore repeated ones over time. And things stand out not just according to contrast, but in a qualitative way.

We can't control certain autonomic nerve processes, and it's hard to stop yourself midsneeze, although you can sometimes override reflex arcs. With more conscious activity, one switches gears constantly, depending on the type of stimulus, its strength or whether it violates our expectations.

But I don't know enough about computers /artificial intelligence to make any comparisons. I don't know how things are prioritized, or what can be interrupted when, or the extent to which the same input can have different results depending on other inputs.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2013 18:36:43
Well, just start by reading Nagel's and Sheldrake's books then , as well as this thread ,while you are at it .

I don't have time to read a deluge of diversions. In an argument, you're supposed to extract one piece at a time that might add something useful and put that across clearly without all the unnecessary bloat.

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Everyone considers as junk ,relatively speaking , all insights , ideas , currents of thought ...coming from other conceptions of nature than his /hers , per definition , mostly then ...

It's junk when it's either telling people what they already know or repeating things over and over again that have already shown to be wrong.

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It is useless to try to bring people to their senses , by trying to make them change their irrational beliefs ....or to make them realise the very obvious and undeniable falsehood of their own beliefs ...

Cut out all the unnecessary bloat and you might get somewhere. I get this from both sides in this kind of discussion. One side wants me to read a ton of quackery while the other wants me to read a ton of stuff about neuroscience which is based squarely on the assumption that consciousness is real and which never stops to question that. The neuroscience is at least science for the most part, but they are determined to shoehorn consciousness into it at every turn with no justification for doing so beyond their own belief that it must be in there. Both sides (not necessarily the people in this thread - I'm refering to many conversations on this subject in many places with people who think they have scientific minds) simply refuse to recognise the point where there is a clear barrier to getting information systems to interact with qualia. They cannot demonstrate any way past this barrier, but assert over and over again that it can be done and that the answer as to how it is done is set out in some book or other on neuroscience, that answer invariably being that these feelings must be there because they are there, emerging out of feedback loops and complexity. I don't care what kind of voodoo they want to use to generate feelings or what they want them to be generated in, because that is unimportant. What really matters is that they cannot even begin to set out a diagram showing in cause and effect terms how these experiences of qualia make themselves known in the form of data in information systems, and yet they repeatedly assert that they have done so. They often assert that qualia can exist as data and that ordinary computers could be conscious if they ran the right software, even once it's been proved to them repeatedly and by multiple methods that this is completely impossible. You cannot get anywhere with such people because they refuse to present their ideas as a mechanistic system and deny that there is any need to do so, but this applies to both sides - those who bring in exotic solutions to consciousness involving gods, fairies or universes in which ideas are primary also need to provide mechanisms by which demonstrably mechanistic information systems can generate information about qualia/consciousness where that data is actually driven by qualia/consciousness rather than just being generated fictions about them which have been constructed mechanistically by a system which merely builds baseless assertions. Anyone who thinks they have an answer to how consciousness works needs to show in precise steps how it can get past the barrier between experience of qualia and the generation of data about qualia in such a way that the generation of that data is steered by the experience of qualia to the point that the data documenting that experience of qualia can be guaranteed to be true.

Here's the real challenge. Imagine that everything is conscious. Material is conscious, energy is conscious, data is conscious, the act of processing is conscious, etc. - anything you want to think of as conscious can be conscious. Now build a machine or program a machine to try to hook into that consciousness and describe it without having to resort to making it all up. Show me an information system that can do qualia. Here's a register that can feel. Here's a piece of data in it that can feel. Here's a process that can feel. Here is a piece of neural net which can feel. But how can this system ever generate any data that actually informs us about these experiences other than by resorting to making it all up? The only approach that could work is to remove the limitations of information systems by declearing that they do not function in the way we think they do - they create an illusion of functioning by applying rules which are supposed to constrain their behaviour, but they actually break the rules whenever we aren't looking, and even if we do look, they simply change our recollection of history to make us think the rules were followed. This kind of interference could be going on within every scientific experiment we ever do, making us think that things always work in a certain way when they don't work that way at all. If this is in some way the case, consciousness could be 100% real and 100% impossible for us and intelligent machines ever to get a handle on it. [Note: this paragraph may contradict the previous one, but it's because it contains an idea which occurred to me as I was writing it and I can't be bothered going back to rewrite the earlier part to match.]
[/quote]

I cannot but respond to this highly interesting post of yours , that's relatively consistent with your earlier  core true correct logical analysis on the subject  that did grab my attention  from the very start  ,i cannot but respond to this post of yours thus ,  despite my earlier decision to leave this forum : a decision that gets confirmed by this interesting post of yours in fact , in the sense that we are just wasting our time here to try to figure out what consciousness, feelings , emotions ,life  as a whole , memory , human reason, human conscience , human love     ....as such really are , what their true core natures are actually  , let alone how they function , how they emerged , how they came to exist , or how they might have evolved = cannot be done via science  "fully "  , obviously .
Darwin's theory of evolution, for example , is exclusively biological physical material ,despite the materialist intrinsic attempts, via its  materialist   false and unscientific  exclusively material conception of nature or meta-paradigm in science  ,  to extend it to the non-physical non-biological non-material sides of reality as a whole , to the non-material sides of life as a whole, to the non-material side of feelings , emotions , to the non-material nature of consciousness, to the non-material nature of human reason, to the non-material side of evolution itself  ... , materialist attempts or rather  the materialist core intrinsic and absurd belief assumptions that  cannot thus account for how those above listed processes came to exist, like how life as a whole came to exist , how it emerged ,for example , what the natures of all the above listed processes might be ,let alone how they eventually evolved as such  = cannot be done just via physics and chemistry , obviously .
You and i , do agree on the core issues here indeed , despite some of the intrinsic contradictions contained in this brilliant post of yours:

That silly outdated and false machine metaphor that has been dominating in science for so long now , thanks to that false and unscientific materialism in science as a whole , cannot account for how life , consciousness, feelings , emotions , human reason (This issue is more impossible than consciousness is ) , memory , human conscience , human ethics , human love , ....you name it ....how they all could be connected to  the system data , as you put it at least .

Neither the materialist exclusively physical biological material approach of all those processes , their eventual evolution emergence and origins , nor the idealist or the dualist approaches of those same above listed processes  , can explain scientifically just how  consciousness, feelings , emotions , human reason, life as a whole , human language for that matter ...could exist in any biological physical material 'systems " for that matter , let alone that they can account for their eventual evolution, origins and emergence fully , via science .

In short :

Consciousness , feelings , emotions, human conscience , human reason, human language , memory , human love, life as a whole , or reality as a whole  .....are impossible, impossible in the sense that they cannot be fully approached or accounted for by the physical sciences , in the sense that they cannot be approached scientifically :

Only world views beliefs ,conceptions of nature can try to approach them , but since all beliefs , either the secular or the religious ones, cannot be all true , logically , so, each and every one of us should try to figure out for himself/herself what kind of belief might be true regarding the natures of all those above listed processes, regarding the true nature of reality as a whole indeed  , the approach of which  is more a matter of belief , than a matter of science , the latter that can inform us only about the material physical and biological side of reality thus .
Science can tell us only thus about the physical biological material processes, that's all , science cannot thus tell us anything concerning how the system data , as you put it at least , can account for qualia , for feelings , emotions , as such ...let alone what human reason is , or how the latter can be accounted for via  any system data for that matter  ....

P.S.: Sheldrake's and Nagel's books concerning the obviously and undeniably false and unscientific materialism in all sciences and elsewhere , do reflect only the respective views of those authors , via their own belief assumptions, regarding the nature of reality as a whole  .
But , that does not make the fact go away , that does not make the fact less of a fact that materialism is obviously and undeniably false , unscientific and absurd , materialism that has been dominating in all sciences for that matter and elsewhere as well , since the 19th century at least :
materialism whose false ,absurd and unscientific conception of nature gets sold to the people as science , by the majority of scientists today .

Materialism in science that will just be replaced by yet another false conception of nature in science = human beliefs are unavoidable in science , obviously = the human will to believe is inexhaustible indeed .... = truth is the main victim = objectivity is a myth , even and especially in science thus .

Finally :

See how these friends of ours here above still do not even understand , let alone that they would realise the  obvious simple and undeniable  fact that the system data , as you put it at least , cannot , obviously , account for such processes such as consciousness, feelings , emotions , life as a whole , reality as a whole, let alone human reason as such as a whole , ....as such, let alone just via physics and chemistry as the alleged ultimate core of "everything" within and without  , let alone via those materialist magical "emergence or computational " tricks performances , the latters that are absurd at the level of life as a whole, reality as a whole ...............life or living organisms that cannot be analogous to machines, computers , obviously thus ....

Amazing and extremely puzzling  how people not only do stick to their own obviously and undeniably irrational inconsistent incoherent absurd false and unscientific materialist and other beliefs , the more when those same people  try to sell their own materialist beliefs on the subject to the people, as science , as the majority of scientists today do , unfortunately enough ..............= Tragic-hilarious , silly and pathetic attitude , in the name of ...science , the latter that has nothing to do with , obviously .


The more reasons to leave this forum thus indeed .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 25/10/2013 20:49:55
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human reason (This issue is more impossible than consciousness is )

Not so - human reason is not a problem and can be explained through materialism. The same applies to language - both of these things can be done on conventional computers (and it is this that my work centres upon - there are no barriers to matching human intelligence on today's hardware beyond getting all the hard work done in designing and building AGI systems). The only difficulty is with consciousness, because if it is a real phenomenon, it absolutely cannot be done on any machine which is merely Turing complete. If consciousness is real, there must be another kind of processing waiting to be discovered which can take computers beyond merely being Turing complete.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2013 21:13:29
Quote
human reason (This issue is more impossible than consciousness is )

Not so - human reason is not a problem and can be explained through materialism. The same applies to language - both of these things can be done on conventional computers (and it is this that my work centres upon - there are no barriers to matching human intelligence on today's hardware beyond getting all the hard work done in designing and building AGI systems). The only difficulty is with consciousness, because if it is a real phenomenon, it absolutely cannot be done on any machine which is merely Turing complete. If consciousness is real, there must be another kind of processing waiting to be discovered which can take computers beyond merely being Turing complete.
[/quote]

Living organisms are no machines, obviously , human intellect neither : human intellect that tries to apprehend reality , that tries to "capture " the intelligible universe from within and without beyond its external appearances : seen any machine computer doing just that via computational mechanisms , come on .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 25/10/2013 23:03:02
Living organisms are no machines, obviously ,

A non-conscious plant is just a chemical machine. There's no magic about life itself, any more than there is about chemistry. It's when you add consciousness to the system that the problem begins, but if you strip that away it can all be understood through materialism.

Quote
human intellect neither : human intellect that tries to apprehend reality , that tries to "capture " the intelligible universe from within and without beyond its external appearances : seen any machine computer doing just that via computational mechanisms , come on .

Not yet, but it will happen soon.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2013 00:48:23
The reconstruction of images from neuroimagining is pretty interesting stuff. It is striking how well some of the images match up between what the subject was looking at and the comp0uter's data base, as well as the video clips showing movement of objects as well as form. If anyone is interested, this is a fun website. http://gallantlab.org
Yes, fascinating stuff...

Quote
I supposed that does not address "the feeliness" of qualia, but it certainly encroaches on the private, subjectivity of brain experience, and if everyone was truly unique, and our internal experiences ineffable, it shouldn't work at all.
I don't think that's necessarily true - they build a database of each individual's brain responses to images before they can 'read' them back, so the system effectively learns and averages each individual's responses. I doubt there's much commonality between individuals except at the crudest 'light or dark' level - but of course I could be wrong...


Quote
The other thing I thought about last night when I was interrupted doing something, was the interruptability of the brain. Ramachandran says qualia makes information "stand out." Red berries stand out from green leaves, loud sounds stand out from quiet ones, the pain of appendicitis compared to other sensations, but it always depends on context, and the same stimulus doesn't always have the same outcome. We also adapt to ignore repeated ones over time. And things stand out not just according to contrast, but in a qualitative way.

We can't control certain autonomic nerve processes, and it's hard to stop yourself midsneeze, although you can sometimes override reflex arcs. With more conscious activity, one switches gears constantly, depending on the type of stimulus, its strength or whether it violates our expectations.

But I don't know enough about computers /artificial intelligence to make any comparisons. I don't know how things are prioritized, or what can be interrupted when, or the extent to which the same input can have different results depending on other inputs.
Computer systems have been interruptible almost from the start, and task-switching or multi-tasking for nearly as long. Tasks can be managed, given priorities, which can be context dependent, and which are allocated corresponding amounts of processing time. They can share and exchange data and make requests of each other; they can do different things given the same inputs depending on other inputs, etc.

All things that superficially seem to find an echo in the way the brain functions, but the brain's neural networks function very differently, and it's too easy to impose a familiar systems interpretation on them. Also, the brain is very flexible & adaptable in its operation, while computer systems are designed for specific purposes, so there are major qualitative differences (mechanism, goals) as well as quantitative (processors) .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 26/10/2013 00:49:30
Before this discussion fizzsles out, one idea I would like to put forth is that emotions are not side effect of qualia. It is often suggested that there is no way to account for human “feelings” like love, or anger, appreciation of art, or a sunset, and therefore, consciousness is unknowable. It may be true that consciousness is as yet inexplicable, but emotions are not necessarily part of that “unknowable” consciousness even though they are “feely” like qualia.
A computer can replicate human reasoning, but as of yet, it does not care if you bash its hard drive in with a hammer. Living things that didn’t care, or couldn’t know, whether you bashed it to pieces, didn’t survive. So how ever you account for this ability, it was selected for. Emotion is motivational, it tags stimuli with internally generated “good” or “bad” sensations not necessarily physically received with the stimuli itself.  It causes living things to act in one way or another, to be aggressive or play dead, to run - to choose.
Experiments show that when brain damaged patients lose the ability to experience or display emotion, they do not become “super rational.” They actually become unable to make decisions, especially when alternatives seem arbitrary, or the benefits of either action are not yet obvious. These people become slow to act and are stuck in loops of conscious reasoning. They stand in aisle of the grocery store unable to pick Honey Nut Cheerios or Raisin Bran, and can’t decide whether to use a blue pen or a black pen to sign a form.
Would it be impossible to program a computer to be self protective? Would it be impossible to program a computer with the desire to survive regardless of its other instructions? If speed was an advantage, would it be possible to make a computer choose randomly between one option or another, before the advantages of doing one or the other were calculated? If you could do that, you could replicate emotion as much as reasoning.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2013 00:51:28
The more reasons to leave this forum thus indeed .
That'll be the day... ;)

Can't bear to leave, or returning to haunt? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2013 00:58:14
Would it be impossible to program a computer to be self protective? Would it be impossible to program a computer with the desire to survive regardless of its other instructions? If speed was an advantage, would it be possible to make a computer choose randomly between one option or another, before the advantages of doing one or the other were calculated? If you could do that, you could replicate emotion as much as reasoning.
You could certainly replicate emotional behaviours. But you might want to give some appearance of emotion without the full unpredictability and uncertainty of human responses, e.g. for companion systems.

I believe there are experimental systems that are exploring learning by example and by association, that could be organised so that contexts with various goal-related values could be associated with appropriate emotional responses and behaviours.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2013 19:10:19
The more reasons to leave this forum thus indeed .
That'll be the day... ;)

Can't bear to leave, or returning to haunt?

I am not a ghost to come back and haunt you :
I might haunt you though , in the sense that even physics and chemistry are not just physics and chemistry = see what modern physics have been saying about what matter might be .
 Let alone that one can reduce consciousness to just matter .
I just can't but try to make you , folks , realise the absurdity and paradox of your materialist belief assumptions in science , and those of your materialist misinterpretations of science ,that's all
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2013 19:26:50
Living organisms are no machines, obviously ,

A non-conscious plant is just a chemical machine. There's no magic about life itself, any more than there is about chemistry. It's when you add consciousness to the system that the problem begins, but if you strip that away it can all be understood through materialism
.

What makes you so sure that any plant for that matter is unsconscious then ?
Life is , per definition, conscious : life is a whole package = mind and body = mind + physics and chemistry .

Some scientists even say that even the inanimate matter is conscious = even physics and chemistry are not just physics and chemistry thus .

I see consciousness as the conscious Mind with a big T = contains the mind with a small t + emotions feelings intuition ...

You cannot just isolate life's physical chemical biological material processes from their conscious states = the whole is not the sum of its parts .

Quote
Quote
human intellect neither : human intellect that tries to apprehend reality , that tries to "capture " the intelligible universe from within and without beyond its external appearances : seen any machine computer doing just that via computational mechanisms , come on .

Not yet, but it will happen soon.

What you fail to see so far is that physics and chemistry cannot account for the natures and emergence of consciousness, feelings , emotions .....let alone for the nature and emergence of human reason, memory ....just via physics and chemistry = one cannot reduce the conscious intelligent life to just physics and chemistry or to machinery ...no way ,dude :
Otherwise , try to create life , or just some 'sentient alive " machines ...then.

Consciousness is inherent intrinsic fundamental to life and to the inanimate matter = you cannot just isolate consciousness from its physical chemical organism  = the whole is not the sum of its parts + even the inanimate matter is not just physics and chemistry = even physics and chemistry are not just physics and chemistry ...

Otherwise , just tell me what the inanimate matter or the organic one are exactly , just from the points of view of modern physics then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2013 19:34:12
Cheryl + dlorde :

There is a big difference between the materialist misinterpretations of science ,of science results , science experiments , science approaches , and pure science .

Major example ? = materialist reductionism in science+ its materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences and elsewhere  .

Example :

There are some scientific experiments concerning the fact that handicaped people might be able , in the near or far future , to  move their paralyzed , dysfunctional , amputated or other ...limbs, bodies ....via some implanted chips in the brain , or via some robots those handicaped people might get connected to via their brains' activity  .

There are also scientific facts that prove the fact to be true that people might be able , in the near or far future , to drive their own cars , move robots or machines ,just via their brain's activity or via their thoughts ...

Does that mean that human thought or consciousness are just the products of the brain's neuronal activity ?

No way .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2013 21:43:58
Cheryl + dlorde :

There is a big difference between the materialist misinterpretations of science ,of science results , science experiments , science approaches , and pure science .

Major example ? = materialist reductionism in science+ its materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences and elsewhere  .

Example :

There are some scientific experiments concerning the fact that handicaped people might be able , in the near or far future , to  move their paralyzed , dysfunctional , amputated or other ...limbs, bodies ....via some implanted chips in the brain , or via some robots those handicaped people might get connected to via their brains' activity  .

There are also scientific facts that prove the fact to be true that people might be able , in the near or far future , to drive their own cars , move robots or machines ,just via their brain's activity or via their thoughts ...

Does that mean that human thought or consciousness are just the products of the brain's neuronal activity ?

No way .


Yup - surprisingly, I agree with all of that (except that scientific 'facts' are provisional and don't strictly 'prove' anything).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2013 21:45:20
I am not a ghost to come back and haunt you :
How can I miss you if you won't go away?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2013 17:22:51
I am not a ghost to come back and haunt you :
How can I miss you if you won't go away?

I do go away every single day that God makes : i do not live in here .so.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2013 17:27:34
Cheryl + dlorde :

There is a big difference between the materialist misinterpretations of science ,of science results , science experiments , science approaches , and pure science .

Major example ? = materialist reductionism in science+ its materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences and elsewhere  .

Example :

There are some scientific experiments concerning the fact that handicaped people might be able , in the near or far future , to  move their paralyzed , dysfunctional , amputated or other ...limbs, bodies ....via some implanted chips in the brain , or via some robots those handicaped people might get connected to via their brains' activity  .

There are also scientific facts that prove the fact to be true that people might be able , in the near or far future , to drive their own cars , move robots or machines ,just via their brain's activity or via their thoughts ...

Does that mean that human thought or consciousness are just the products of the brain's neuronal activity ?

No way .


Yup - surprisingly, I agree with all of that (except that scientific 'facts' are provisional and don't strictly 'prove' anything).
[/quote]

Well, you do misinterpret scientific experiments , scientific data ....every single day :
Major example : consciousness is allegedly created by the brain activity ,memory also, human reason or intellect also  ....to mention just that ...and that one can explain everything in terms of just physics and chemistry ...

How absurd paradoxical and unscientific can you be indeed , together with the majority of scientists today ...

See below : read that on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2013 18:49:02
dlorde :

What do you have to say regarding what Sheldrake stated here below , regarding materialism in science : (That post of mine in question was removed for no reason really : that post is relevant to all sciences in fact ...since materialism has been dominating in all sciences and elsewhere ,for so long now ) :

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49378.new#top
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2013 21:31:14
What do you have to say regarding what Sheldrake stated...
Many of his 'ten core beliefs' of scientists are deliberately provocative straw men, misrepresentations, & red herrings (e.g.  number 1 includes a blatant false dichotomy). The few that are close to the reality are features of working models, provisional, & hypotheses based on empirical evidence. The core beliefs axioms of science are that there exists an observable, testable, objective reality, and that it behaves consistently in some respects. Scientists are a diverse bunch, but if more than a small minority of them subscribe to the essence of all those 'core beliefs', some of Sheldrake's criticism may indeed be relevant to them.

The rest of that article is a rehash of critiques of 'the problems with science' done better elsewhere, but with extra fallacies & vague handwaving. The most obvious fallacy is the common conflation of 'unexplained' with 'inexplicable' with regard to a particular methodology.

In general, I refer you to my previous post on Sheldrake (#493) (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg420567;topicseen#msg420567).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2013 17:23:40
What do you have to say regarding what Sheldrake stated...
Many of his 'ten core beliefs' of scientists are deliberately provocative straw men, misrepresentations, & red herrings (e.g.  number 1 includes a blatant false dichotomy). The few that are close to the reality are features of working models, provisional, & hypotheses based on empirical evidence. The core beliefs axioms of science are that there exists an observable, testable, objective reality, and that it behaves consistently in some respects. Scientists are a diverse bunch, but if more than a small minority of them subscribe to the essence of all those 'core beliefs', some of Sheldrake's criticism may indeed be relevant to them.

The rest of that article is a rehash of critiques of 'the problems with science' done better elsewhere, but with extra fallacies & vague handwaving. The most obvious fallacy is the common conflation of 'unexplained' with 'inexplicable' with regard to a particular methodology.

In general, I refer you to my previous post on Sheldrake (#493) (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg420567;topicseen#msg420567).
[/quote]

Weak "argumentation " : how can you deny that materialism as a secular false belief has been dominating in all aciences and elsewhere,for so long now  ?
How can you deny the fact that  the mechanistic materialist world view ideology has been taken for  granted without question but the mainstream scientific extablishment or community ?
The mechanistic materialist world view-ideology  that dates back to the 19th century at least , that remains not only largely taken for granted , but also remains largely considered  to be as science , together with all its extensions such as "the mind is in the brain " , that " human cognition is just a matter of neuronal comuptation", that "consciousness is just an emergent property from the evolved complexity of the brain ...
In short : that everything can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry , and that reality is exclusively material physical ...
How can you deny all that and more ? all those mechanistic materialist belief assumptions that are still considered to be as ...science ?
Amazing ,but not really unexpected from you = very predictable indeed .
So much for a .....so-called scientist such as yourself who cannot see yet that simple obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is not science ....
Unbelievable ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2013 18:13:41
.. how can you deny that materialism as a secular false belief has been dominating in all aciences and elsewhere ...  ?
How can you deny the fact that  the mechanistic materialist world view ideology has been taken for  granted without question but the mainstream scientific extablishment or community ?
How can you deny all that and more ? all those mechanistic materialist belief assumptions that are still considered to be as ...science ?
I haven't yet denied any of it - although it's complete nonsense of course; but I don't deny claims that ducks wear gas masks, either. My last post was the response to Sheldrake's quote you requested, all criticism, no denials.

If you'd like to respond to what I write rather than what you think I might believe, a discussion might be possible. History suggests this isn't going to happen, but I thought I'd mention it.

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" (yet, as you say, is restricted to the material world), by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better.

You keep making the claim, but repetition alone doesn't make it convincing. You need to make your point, otherwise we just have a Monty Python situation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2013 18:35:02
.. how can you deny that materialism as a secular false belief has been dominating in all aciences and elsewhere ...  ?
How can you deny the fact that  the mechanistic materialist world view ideology has been taken for  granted without question but the mainstream scientific extablishment or community ?
How can you deny all that and more ? all those mechanistic materialist belief assumptions that are still considered to be as ...science ?
I haven't yet denied any of it - although it's complete nonsense of course; I don't deny claims that ducks wear gas masks, either. My last post was the response to Sheldrake's quote you requested, all criticism, no denials.

If you do not deny the above i mentioned , then try to address that then  clearly ,instead of using those sorts of circular "reasoning " or exit strategies  .
Your post in question here above was no real or clear  criticism of what Sheldrake said about materialism in science: just try to address what he said regarding materialism in science at least ,specifically and  clearly then : i did summarise Sheldrake's words for you here above in my latest post to you thus  .

P.S.: I told you earlier i was no fan of Sheldrake's so-called morphic resonance theory ,i am only interested in his so- true criticism of that false and unscientific materialist mechanistic conception of nature in all sciences and elsewhere ,that has been taken for granted for so long now ,as ...science .
I do not really need Sheldrake to specify to you why materialism is false , why is it a false world view ideology that has been imposing itself for so long now as science , in all sciences and elsewhere .
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If you'd like to respond to what I write rather than what you think I might believe, a discussion might be possible. History suggests this isn't going to happen, but I thought I'd mention it.

Well, just address my words here above , in my latest post then , instead of using just semantics , circular "arguments ", and empty rhetorics regardig what Sheldrake said about materialism in science .
Try to be specific then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2013 18:54:55
If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" (yet, as you say, is restricted to the material world), by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better.

You keep making the claim, but repetition alone doesn't make it convincing. You need to make your point, otherwise we just have a Monty Python situation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2013 18:56:29
.. how can you deny that materialism as a secular false belief has been dominating in all aciences and elsewhere ...  ?
How can you deny the fact that  the mechanistic materialist world view ideology has been taken for  granted without question but the mainstream scientific extablishment or community ?
How can you deny all that and more ? all those mechanistic materialist belief assumptions that are still considered to be as ...science ?

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" (yet, as you say, is restricted to the material world), by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better.

God ...
It's not "if i really think science is ....", it;s rather a fact that science has been dominated for so long now by the materialist false and unscientific world view ideology , that gets taken for granted as science , can't you understand just that ?
Did you actually really read what Sheldrake said on the subject in his introduction to his "science set free ..." book , i did provide you with a link to ?
Science , once again , is concerned mainly by the material side of reality , but there is more to reality than just that : materialism in science wanna make people  believe that reality as a whole is just exclusively material ,worse ; materialism imposes that false conception of his /her or it or whatever as science = that has major consequences regarding the fact that science as a result sees reality as a whole , and dead wrongly so ,  as exclusively material, thanks to materialism = science sees consciousness, life as a whole, reality as a whole, the origins of life ,its emergence evolution and origins, the same goes for consciousness, and the rest , science sees them as exclusively material , thanks to materialism thus= wrong or false materialist unscientific assumption of the nature of reality as a whole in science , that gets taken for granted as science , thanks to that false materialist unscientific dominating conception of nature in all sciences ...
Get that ?
We need first to establish these simple obvious undeniable facts (It's really insane to have to try ,nowadays, to convince people of simple obvious undeniable facts like that , per definition = every sane intelligent person should recognize and acknowledge those simple obvious undeniable facts as such thus,logically  )  , then we can proceed regarding the potential eventual alternatives to materialism in all sciences ...
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You keep making the claim, but repetition alone doesn't make it convincing. You need to make your point, otherwise we just have a Monty Python situation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c).

Those were / are no claims , but facts = the materialist false and unscientific conception of nature or ideology world view has been taken for granted for so long now as ...science : can't you understand just that ? Come, on .
Amazing ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2013 19:36:47
... science as a result sees reality as a whole ... science sees consciousness, life as a whole, reality as a whole, ..., science sees them as exclusively material...
Science doesn't 'see', or have opinions or beliefs - it is the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Scientists can see, and have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs. You seem to be confusing the two.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2013 19:58:00
... science as a result sees reality as a whole ... science sees consciousness, life as a whole, reality as a whole, ..., science sees them as exclusively material...
Science doesn't 'see', or have opinions or beliefs - it is the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Scientists can see, and have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs. You seem to be confusing the two.
[/quote]

Science "sees ..." was just a metaphorical figure of speech .
Why don't you address what i and Sheldrake said about the materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system dominating in all sciences for that matter , and elsewhere .
Once again, the mainstream dominating conception of nature in all sciences and elsewhere has been ...the materialist one ,since the 19 th century and counting = materialist dominating belief assumptions that do have absolutely nothing to do with the empirical science as such, even though they have been taken for granted as such as ...science  .

You're really making me nuts , by not being able to grasp this simple obvious and undeniable fact , over and over again ......for so long now : incredible .
So much for a so-called scientist ...
Amazing ...
You have been so irritating and frustrating that i just did let, unintentionally ,my glass of coffee fall and break as a result ...........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2013 21:51:32
Why don't you address what i and Sheldrake said about the materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system dominating in all sciences for that matter , and elsewhere .
Once again, the mainstream dominating conception of nature in all sciences and elsewhere has been ...the materialist one ,since the 19 th century and counting = materialist dominating belief assumptions that do have absolutely nothing to do with the empirical science as such, even though they have been taken for granted as such as ...science  .
I have already. Let me clarify: I think the claim is incoherent and unsubstantiated.

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

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You have been so irritating and frustrating that i just did let, unintentionally ,my glass of coffee fall and break as a result ...........
You are funny! but I accept no responsibility for your lack of control :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2013 22:01:17
Why don't you address what i and Sheldrake said about the materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system dominating in all sciences for that matter , and elsewhere .
Once again, the mainstream dominating conception of nature in all sciences and elsewhere has been ...the materialist one ,since the 19 th century and counting = materialist dominating belief assumptions that do have absolutely nothing to do with the empirical science as such, even though they have been taken for granted as such as ...science  .
I have already. Let me clarify: I think the claim is incoherent and unsubstantiated.

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

Quote
You have been so irritating and frustrating that i just did let, unintentionally ,my glass of coffee fall and break as a result ...........
You are funny! but I accept no responsibility for your lack of control :)
[/quote]

God ...

Is reality as a whole just physical material ?
Think about that and the rest , and tell me about it .
No time left , sorry .
Ciao
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2013 23:22:32
God ...
Your imaginary friend?

Quote
Is reality as a whole just physical material ?
That's what the evidence suggests (unless you count the imaginary). How could it do otherwise?

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2013 15:52:18
God ...


Quote
Is reality as a whole just physical material ?
That's what the evidence suggests (unless you count the imaginary). How could it do otherwise?

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.


That seems like a fair request. And it also illustrates the problem with Sheldrake and Nagel. They are big on criticism, and short on any detailed explanation of how to test hypotheses their way.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/10/2013 16:07:55
How can I miss you if you won't go away?
I do go away every single day that God makes : i do not live in here .so.
Hmm; even people who don't know Dan Hicks (http://www.songlyrics.com/dan-hicks/how-can-i-miss-you-when-you-won-t-go-away-lyrics/) usually get the joke.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2013 17:35:24
God ...
Your imaginary friend?

Stop this materialist non-sense , it's not even funny .

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Quote
Is reality as a whole just physical material ?
That's what the evidence suggests (unless you count the imaginary). How could it do otherwise?

Ho, ho , now you're getting ahead of yourself : unbelievable : what evidence are you talking about , Alice ? : materialist fantasy ?
Quote
If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

Thanks to materialism, science is deluded into assuming that reality is exclusively material physical .
Science that tries to explain reality , therefore is science misleaded into dealing with reality as a whole just through  that materialist key hole ,while assuming that what science can "see " through that materialist key hole is all there is out there : that has major consequences for science in relation to the nature origins and emergence of consciousness, life , feelings , emotions , memory,human reason  ....and the rest .
Even the inanimate matter is not just material physical = science gives therefore a distorted reflection of reality as a whole ,thanks to materialism in science , despite all those great achievements of science ,unfortunately enough .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2013 17:49:38
God ...


Quote
Is reality as a whole just physical material ?
That's what the evidence suggests (unless you count the imaginary). How could it do otherwise?

If you really think science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then by all means explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.


That seems like a fair request. And it also illustrates the problem with Sheldrake and Nagel. They are big on criticism, and short on any detailed explanation of how to test hypotheses their way.
[/quote]

See my reply to dlorde here above .
You're so blinded by materialism that you do take it for granted as science without question : it   rather illustrates the problem of materialists such as yourself who cannot or do not want to see that that false and unscientific materialist irrational belief of theirs has abolutely nothing to do with science , materialist belief that has just been holding science  back  for so long now , the outdated and superseded materialist belief that dates back to the 19th century , materialist belief that has been imposed on science as science in order to try to "validate " itself, in vain of course , materialist belief that's just been taking a free ride on the unwilling back of science .
It makes no sense whatsoever to assume that reality as a whole is exclusively material physical = a childish idiotic irrational false , and , per definition, an unscientific assumption science has never proved to be "true " ,simply because science deals only with the empirical observable verifiable falsifiable reproducible ...part of reality = science can therefore say nothing , per definition , regarding the other part of reality = the immaterial one,that does therefore not mean that the latter does not exist as such  .
Is that so difficult to understand or grasp ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/10/2013 18:02:32
... science gives therefore a distorted reflection of reality as a whole ,thanks to materialism in science...
OK, we get the point; endless repetition doesn't help. Why not answer the obvious questions:

If science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2013 18:18:12
My own beliefs are not the issue here Don. I've already stated my views, and the reasons behind them.

Do you not see any contradiction in what you have just written above? Do you not see anything wrong with your statements:

1) materialist belief has been holding science back
2) materialist belief  has been imposed on science
3)  materialist belief has been taking a free ride on the unwilling back of science
4)  reality as a whole is not exclusively material or physical
5) science deals only with the empirical observable verifiable falsifiable reproducible part of reality
6) science can therefore say nothing , per definition , regarding the other part of reality, the immaterial

Nobody ever disputed that "reality" might include the immaterial, but if science can say nothing verifiable about the immaterial, what is your beef with scientists for ignoring it?

How can you complain about people not doing something that you've just said is impossible for them to do? How can you fault them for not doing it?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2013 19:25:57
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Has science ever proved the materialist "fact " to be "true " , or rather the materialist belief assumption to be "true " that reality as a whole is just exclusively physical material ?

Why on Earth would science even be interested? Science doesn't deal with "reality as a whole", Learning does. Science deals with "Observable Reality".

For example, I believe in God, but I do not believe that science can or will ever prove or disprove God. Of course, God is not observable and, consequently, science is not in the least interested in proving or disproving God. My concept of Reality - my areas of Learning, if you like - encompass more than science, but I consider them all equally valid and quite distinct.

Well, that's the core issue here : the core materialist belief assumption is that the whole reality is exclusively material physical = everyhting can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry alone , so science has been assuming the same false materialis assumption since the 19th century at least

That the whole reality is physical material = there is no God, no immaterial side of reality ...=  all sciences under the exclusive monopoly and supremacy dominance of materialism thus have been assuming therefore that the whole reality is exclusively material physical = there is no God, no immaterial side of reality ...even though science , per definition, can neither prove nor disprove the existence of neither God nor that of the  immaterial side of reality thus  .
But , proper science as such can indeed thus neither prove nor disprove God or the immaterial side of reality : materialism has thus been making science go beyond its own relam and jurisdiction .

Science proper must and will get rid of that false materialist conception of nature indeed .

If you trace back materialism to its historic cultural ideological political philosophical economic ...Eurocentric roots , you would notice that materialism has been just a product of medieval 's Europe religious conflicts : materialism that has been anti-religion since then, by rejecting anything that is not observable testable empirical .... : materialism goes thus beyond science and its scientific method, beyond both the realm and jurisdiction of science , while imposing all that as science  :
materialism that , per definition, can only lead to atheism  and reductionism by reducing everything to just physics and chemistry , by rejecting christianity  and all other religions as well  = there is no God , no immaterial reality ...= materialist ideological belief assumptions that have been imposed on science since the 19th century at least as science , for obvious ideological materialist purposes , in order for materialism to "be able to validate itself as being true " through science as science : so, science has been assuming that the whole reality is material physical thus , thanks to materialism thus , science has been therefore assuming, since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialsm thus ,  that everything = the whole reality thus can be explained in terms of physics and chemsitry only : an obviously false assumption in all sciences and elsewhere , science gotta get rid of , and science will indeed = inevitable = just a question of ...time thus .
Only time will tell then ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2013 19:31:58
Science can try to approach the non-physical and non-biological non-material side of reality as a whole

And there, I believe, is the rub. Yes, Science can, but then it wouldn't be Science. It comes back to the confusion about what "science" is that I mentioned in my last post.

Science tries to deal only with the observable empirical faslifiable verifiable reproducible part of reality  indeed  , so, science can therefore also study  telepathy , pyshic and other claims of some people via trying to test them to see if those claims can be reproducible verifiable falsifiable  testable  ....but , science can say indeed nothing regarding the nature of telepathy , the nature of the alleged psychic skills ....
There are many forms of the scientific method , not just one thus : cosmologists , for example , cannot put stars , planets , galaxies ...the sun haha ...into the lab to study them..........they have their own scientific ways of studying them as you know .


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Science is not and never will be the spring of all knowledge. The correct term for this is Learning and its goal is, basically, knowing all there is to know. Its a pretty big area so, in order to acquire Learning, we break it down in to various areas. Science is just one, along with many others, both respectable and not. Science deals with the observable, basta! There may come a day when our descendants can tick of the "science" box in Learning because science has done its job. It has classified everything that can be observed. Perhaps, along the way, we will evolve additional sensory mechanisms and science will need expanding; who knows where such an expansion could lead?

Science is indeed not the only valid source of knowledge , science has no monopoly of the truth either , science can only cover a tiny piece of reality , the known one so far at least , that does not mean that all what science cannot observe test verify falsify reproduce ....is false or that that does not exist as such  , as materialism in science assumes so wrongly of course , for obvious materialist ideological reasons thus= materialists assume thus that the whole reality is just physical material , and therefore reject God, religions , telepathy , psychic powers ...but , pure science or science proper can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the immaterial side of reality in fact thus , the existence of God ....= do you see here the major difference between materialism as a false belief and science ? materialism that gets sold to the people as science by making science reduce verything= the whole reality  to just physics and chemistry thus , including life , consciousness, memory , human love , human spirituality , human reason , human conscience ...

Science cannot , per definition , make us know thus all there is to know out there , simply because science deals only with that tiny piece of reality it can observe test reproduce verify falsify ....

Science is a human limited tool instrument to understand and explain reality thus , the part of reality it can deal with , science is thus no magic or no Alaaddin magical lamp ,despite its huge achievements , despite its highly effective and unparalleled method (s) that's like no other , despite its high descipline ....
Those science's ideals of unbiased objective disciplined methodic approaches  of reality are rarely reached by scientists humans : proof ? : that false materialist belief in all sciences and elsewhere that gets taken for granted without question as science , by the mainstream scientific establishment or community = objectivity is a myth .

Do not forget either that science is just a human social activity, a form of culture , practiced by scientists humans via their limited faculties, flaws ,shortcomings , beliefs (see the materialist belief that's been dominating in all sciences for that matter and elsewhere , materialist belief that gets presented and sold to the people as science , while materialism as a false world view has nothing to do with science , science has never proved , and can never prove the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist belief assumption to be "true " that reality as a whole is exclusively material physical , simply because science deals only with the observable testable verifiable empirical ...side of reality , and therefore science can say nothing , per definition, regarding the other potential part of reality = that does not mean that the latter does not exist as such .), science is practiced thus by scientists humans through their whole beings ,objectivity in science is a myth in fact : proof ? = the  false and , per definition, unscientific materialist belief that's been dominating in all sciences and elsewhere , and that gets taken for granted as science by the majority of scientists today .

Maybe , in the future , it's highly probable indeed in fact that man will be able to extend or broaden his/her understanding of what science is , what the scientific method is , through developing an extended scientific method through its epistemology that might deliver some new understandings of science and its core epistemology , via highly probable undersandings of what man is , what man's consciousness might be,relatively speaking  , what man's reason emotions feelings intuition and senses are really = that might deliver some advanced forms of the scientific method or methods ...
Technology might also broaden our own understanding of man , nature , the universe ....= in still unimaginable ways-to-all-of-us yet .
Only time will tell then indeed , but we might be not there to witness just that ourselves, who knows .

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In the meantime it is Sciences job to define the origin of life according to what it can observe and test. Science is not there yet but it is making great headway. It is counter-productive to muddy the boundaries between science and other areas of Learning, unless one is selling sensational books or videos; I have no time for Shelldrakes or any of the myriad psuedo-scientists of the religious press who are constantly using this tactic to denigrate science. It is what it is.

As long as science will keep on reducing the whole reality to just physics and chemistry (thanks to materialism ) , including life , consciousness , emotions feelings , human reason , human conscience ....science will just be giving us a distorted reflection of reality as a whole  ,unfortunately enough .
Only when science will reject materialism , an inevitable fact , simply because materialism is outdated false and has been superseded by the physical sciences themselves even , and simply because science's self-rejuvenating and self - cleansing , self - regenerating critical powers faculties and inrinsic properties can enable science to reject all false assumptions , including and mainly those of materialism , when science thus will be able to do just that , whole   unimaginable new vistas will open up for science , when science will cease thus to "see " the whole reality as just a matter of physics and chemistry thus.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2013 22:55:27
You know one minute I think I'm in one thread, and then I'm magically transported to another.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2013 23:07:43
Smart Neurons: Single Neuronal Dendrites Can Perform Computations
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131027140632.htm

Well this is kind of interesting to ponder.
 
"The scientists achieved an important breakthrough: they succeeded in making incredibly challenging electrical and optical recordings directly from the tiny dendrites of neurons in the intact brain while the brain was processing visual information.....The results challenge the widely held view that this kind of computation is achieved only by large numbers of neurons working together, and demonstrate how the basic components of the brain are exceptionally powerful computing devices in their own right."

The study was published this week in Nature.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: SimpleEngineer on 31/10/2013 15:31:21

As long as science will keep on reducing the whole reality to just physics and chemistry (thanks to materialism ) , including life , consciousness , emotions feelings , human reason , human conscience ....science will just be giving us a distorted reflection of reality as a whole  ,unfortunately enough .
Only when science will reject materialism , an inevitable fact , simply because materialism is outdated false and has been superseded by the physical sciences themselves even , and simply because science's self-rejuvenating and self - cleansing , self - regenerating critical powers faculties and inrinsic properties can enable science to reject all false assumptions , including and mainly those of materialism , when science thus will be able to do just that , whole   unimaginable new vistas will open up for science , when science will cease thus to "see " the whole reality as just a matter of physics and chemistry thus.


I wouldnt say science tries to reduce things to chemistry and physics. I would say that what science can observe is chemistry and physics by nature.. because science cant explain things doesn't mean they will stop trying to as that is the nature of science. You state things which have yet to be proven as not chemistry or physics as things that cannot be proven by chemistry or physics, as things that aren't chemistry or physics.. but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Science has recently (last century on wards) tried to tell us things work in a certain way without solid proof.. and it is a trend that worries me (as I have posted a few threads and posts about the very same subject) but science itself abhors these, and it will eventually weed them out. Its not a battle against spiritualism, its trying to find an explanation for it. Saying "you will never know" is about as much use as reading a book from a hat to form a religion.. (oh wait someone did that).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2013 18:26:21
Smart Neurons: Single Neuronal Dendrites Can Perform Computations
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131027140632.htm

Well this is kind of interesting to ponder.
 
"The scientists achieved an important breakthrough: they succeeded in making incredibly challenging electrical and optical recordings directly from the tiny dendrites of neurons in the intact brain while the brain was processing visual information.....The results challenge the widely held view that this kind of computation is achieved only by large numbers of neurons working together, and demonstrate how the basic components of the brain are exceptionally powerful computing devices in their own right."

The study was published this week in Nature.
[/quote]

Cristal-clear typical example of the mechanistic   materialism at work in science , as ...science = the brain neuronal activity allegedly creates vision, images , consciousness  as a whole, human reason  ...via our senses = materialist computational mechanistic pure bullshit = materialist mechanistic misinterpretation   of scientific experiments = living organisms s are no machines in fact = that machine -like , computer -like computation analogy is outdated and alse.
The brain is in fact both a generator via our senses , and a receiver , in relation to consciousness as an immaterial transmitter : how brain and consciousness do interact with each other = how the physical material biological brain interacts with the non -physical non-material non-biological immaterial consciousness ? : beat me .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2013 18:40:32

As long as science will keep on reducing the whole reality to just physics and chemistry (thanks to materialism ) , including life , consciousness , emotions feelings , human reason , human conscience ....science will just be giving us a distorted reflection of reality as a whole  ,unfortunately enough .
Only when science will reject materialism , an inevitable fact , simply because materialism is outdated false and has been superseded by the physical sciences themselves even , and simply because science's self-rejuvenating and self - cleansing , self - regenerating critical powers faculties and inrinsic properties can enable science to reject all false assumptions , including and mainly those of materialism , when science thus will be able to do just that , whole   unimaginable new vistas will open up for science , when science will cease thus to "see " the whole reality as just a matter of physics and chemistry thus.


I wouldnt say science tries to reduce things to chemistry and physics. I would say that what science can observe is chemistry and physics by nature.. because science cant explain things doesn't mean they will stop trying to as that is the nature of science. You state things which have yet to be proven as not chemistry or physics as things that cannot be proven by chemistry or physics, as things that aren't chemistry or physics.. but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Science has recently (last century on wards) tried to tell us things work in a certain way without solid proof.. and it is a trend that worries me (as I have posted a few threads and posts about the very same subject) but science itself abhors these, and it will eventually weed them out. Its not a battle against spiritualism, its trying to find an explanation for it. Saying "you will never know" is about as much use as reading a book from a hat to form a religion.. (oh wait someone did that).
[/quote]

Wrong :  what are you talking about ?
That's not what i was saying :
Science "assumes " that reality as a whole is exclusively material physical ,thanks to materialism = everything can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry = that's a false materialist belief assumption that has been dominating in all sciences and elsewhere for that matter since the 19th century at least ,while science proper can in fact only deal with the observable empirical ...
To reduce everything to just physics and chemistry is thus a false materialist belief assumption that does go beyond both the scientific method itself and beyond science's realm and jurisdiction .
Is that so difficult to understand ?
I say one thing and you talk about another , what's the matter with you , people ?
Amazing ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/11/2013 09:05:42
Wrong, as usual. The art of science is not to make untestable assumptions, and to test any that you do make. Unlike whatever it is that you consider to be a superior intellectual process, wherein it seems that all assertions are deemed to be true, regardless of absurdity. I thought Aristotle and Plato were dead.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2013 18:01:14
Wrong, as usual. The art of science is not to make untestable assumptions, and to test any that you do make. Unlike whatever it is that you consider to be a superior intellectual process, wherein it seems that all assertions are deemed to be true, regardless of absurdity. I thought Aristotle and Plato were dead.

Modern science has been reducing reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , to just physical material biological processes since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism, while science should in fact try to deal only with the observable, empirical ...part of reality , the rest "falls " outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well thus ,once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/11/2013 10:55:21
Modern science has been reducing observable, empirical reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , to just physical material biological processes since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism, while science should in fact try to deal only with the observable, empirical ...part of reality , the rest "falls " outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well thus ,once again .
Fixed that for you ;)

If it's not observable & empirical, you can't reduce it to physics and chemistry. Speculation & hypothesis is not, of itself, science.

It's worth remembering that, just as not everything a writer does is writing, not everything scientists do is science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2013 17:26:58
Modern science has been reducing observable, empirical reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , to just physical material biological processes since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism, while science should in fact try to deal only with the observable, empirical ...part of reality , the rest "falls " outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well thus ,once again .
Fixed that for you ;)

If it's not observable & empirical, you can't reduce it to physics and chemistry. Speculation & hypothesis is not, of itself, science.

It's worth remembering that, just as not everything a writer does is writing, not everything scientists do is science.
[/quote]

Come , on : as a scientist , you should know better than that :
Science has been pretending to know the  nature of the whole reality as such already , thanks to materialism , by considering the whole reality as such as  just physical material biological processes = by reducing everything to just physics and chemistry + to their materialist extensions such as "the mind is in the brain", "memory is stored in the brain ", "consciousness is just an emergent property emerging from the evolutionary complexity of neuronal activity ..." ...

Do i have to remind you of the meta-paradigm dominating in all sciences and elsewhere , once again ?, the materialist one = reality as a whole is just material physical ...= just a matter of physics and chemistry at its ultimate core + just a matter of the extensions of the latter ...at the macroscopic levels ........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/11/2013 18:39:19
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F&hash=3cd4f4119996b42d10f5ed9eb0e8d712)


Modern science has been reducing reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , to just physical material biological processes since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism, while science should in fact try to deal only with the observable, empirical ...part of reality , the rest "falls " outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well thus ,once again .


I can't help but notice that you are now substituting "reality as a whole" for "science" in your argument. I'm not sure what you want from scientists, an official announcement that something may exist that science cannot verify or falsify? A public apology for "failing" to explain everything "fully" ?
You've never described how science is supposed to incorporate the immaterial into experiments, how doing so will benefit them or free them - free them to do what?

At any rate, as dlorde said, scientists do other things and have other interests beside science. It is not the whole of their reality. CERN has Artists in Residence and some of their projects are pretty cool. Here is a link to their gallery.
 http://arts.web.cern.ch/gallery/norfolk/

 Some of the projects are visual, but others are an interesting combinations of art and science, art and technology, and art and the experimental process.  Their first artist in residence, Juliuis Von Bismarck, has some interesting things, a device called the Image Fulgurator, a hacked camera that injected stealth images into other people’s photos when they weren’t looking. In a work called Public Face, he mounted a giant neon smiley above the city of Berlin; the smiley changed its expression based on
algorithms developed by the Fraunhofer Institute to analyze peoples’ faces on the street. A project called Self Revolving Torus is an exploration of toroidal shapes.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/cern-artist-von-bismarck/

On a personal note, once I was in the MoMA in New York, and there was this painting that looked like an abstract work, but having spent the last five years looking through a microscope for parasites, I knew instantly that it was a trichrome stain of human fecal material. The title of the painting was "Good Government." (I was the only person in the museum that day who laughed.) In the lab, I often looked through the microscope and seen images that would make great paintings.

You might like this sculpture from another CERN artist, it's called "Feeling Material."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2013 19:22:59
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F&hash=3cd4f4119996b42d10f5ed9eb0e8d712)


Modern science has been reducing reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , to just physical material biological processes since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism, while science should in fact try to deal only with the observable, empirical ...part of reality , the rest "falls " outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well thus ,once again .


I can't help but notice that you are now substituting "reality as a whole" for "science" in your argument. I'm not sure what you want from scientists, an official announcement that something may exist that science cannot verify or falsify? A public apology for "failing" to explain everything "fully" ?
You've never described how science is supposed to incorporate the immaterial into experiments, how doing so will benefit them or free them - free them to do what?

At any rate, as dlorde said, scientists do other things and have other interests beside science. It is not the whole of their reality. CERN has Artists in Residence and some of their projects are pretty cool. Here is a link to their gallery.
 http://arts.web.cern.ch/gallery/norfolk/

 Some of the projects are visual, but others are an interesting combinations of art and science, art and technology, and art and the experimental process.  Their first artist in residence, Juliuis Von Bismarck, has some interesting things, a device called the Image Fulgurator, a hacked camera that injected stealth images into other people’s photos when they weren’t looking. In a work called Public Face, he mounted a giant neon smiley above the city of Berlin; the smiley changed its expression based on
algorithms developed by the Fraunhofer Institute to analyze peoples’ faces on the street. A project called Self Revolving Torus is an exploration of toroidal shapes.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/cern-artist-von-bismarck/

On a personal note, once I was in the MoMA in New York, and there was this painting that looked like an abstract work, but having spent the last five years looking through a microscope for parasites, I knew instantly that it was a trichrome stain of human fecal material. The title of the painting was "Good Government." (I was the only person in the museum that day who laughed.) In the lab, I often looked through the microscope and seen images that would make great paintings.

You might like this sculpture from another CERN artist, it's called "Feeling Material."
[/quote]

What does this have to do with what i have been saying then ?

Please ,do not put words in my mouth , and do not distort my words beyond any recognition : try to re-read what i have been saying carefully before responding , thanks , appreciate indeed :
All i am saying , once again , is that science is only concerned with the observable, empirical ....part of reality science should limit itself to , but science has been going beyond its own scientific method , beyond its own realm and jurisdiction for so long now , thanks to materialism, by considering the whole reality as a whole as such as allegedly being   just material physical ...............= science "pretends " to know the nature of reality as a whole already (Wao ) , thanks to materialism .
Science should stop doing the latter , simply because the assumption that reality as a whole is just physical material is no 'scientific empirical observable faslifiable ...fact or assumption ", but just a materialist belief assumption in science , a false materialist conception of nature in science ,that gets taken for granted as science ...without question = a dogmatic materialist belief assumption in science , as science .

In short :
Science should be in fact only confined indeed to only the observable , empirical ...part of reality , the rest of reality is therefore , per definition , both outside of science's realm and oustide of science's jurisdiction as well = science must be liberated from that materialist false dogmatic belief system dominating in all sciences at least  ...that gets taken for granted without question as science :
Only then, can science become less dogmatic and more ...scientific , as science should be .


Get that ?

God...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/11/2013 20:50:09

All i am saying , once again , is that science is only concerned with the observable, empirical ....part of reality science should limit itself to , but science has been going beyond its own scientific method , beyond its own realm and jurisdiction for so long now

How has science gone beyond its jurisdiction to attack non materialist views? How is a chemist doing chemistry experiments, or a physicist doing physics experts, or an entomologist doing bug experiments, or an ichthyologist doing fish experiments,  going beyond their jurisdiction???  Who are these evil scientists who sit in their evil labs and create materialist paradigms to brainwash the unsuspecting masses?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2013 21:31:05

All i am saying , once again , is that science is only concerned with the observable, empirical ....part of reality science should limit itself to , but science has been going beyond its own scientific method , beyond its own realm and jurisdiction for so long now

How has science gone beyond its jurisdiction to attack non materialist views? How is a chemist doing chemistry experiments, or a physicist doing physics experts, or an entomologist doing bug experiments, or an ichthyologist doing fish experiments,  going beyond their jurisdiction???  Who are these evil scientists who sit in their evil labs and create materialist paradigms to brainwash the unsuspecting masses?
[/quote]

(Regardless of your irrelevant rhetorics on the subject ) :

Materialism has been, once again, dominating in all sciences and elsewhere , including in the so-called human sciences , including in anthropology , history writing , sociology , evolutionary psychology, economy, political science , including in religions ' comparisons studies , including in philosophy  ...including even in art and literature .

Secular materialist establishment that 's been the undisputed dominating cultural social scientific ....supreme and ultimate authority ,that had replaced that of the medieval church and christianity ,  thanks to the Eurocentric "enlightenment " movement ...

Biology as the 'science of life " also reduces life to just physics and chemistry thus , thanks to materialism or physicalism as some like to put it , including all the physical sciences ...

Science and most scientists have been wrong in assuming that reality as a whole is just material physical  =(= a materialist false belief assumption , false conception of nature ) , thanks to materialism thus , so, everything , including human consciousness,human free will, the human mind or reason,  life in general  (including its origins evolution and emergence ) , human reason , feelings , emotions ....human love,consciousness in general,  ....have been reduced to just material biological physical processes , via some neuronal machine-like ,computer -like computational magical mechanisms , emergent property magical tricks regarding consciousness ...

So, logically , science would consider all non-materialist beliefs for that matter , all of the immaterial side of reality , all of the immaterial side of life , ....as just products of physics and chemistry ,including consciousness, human reason , human love ... or as just illusions , delusions ...

" The scientific world view " is therefore materialist = rejects and excludes a-priori any non-materialist world views or non-material phenomena , including the non-physical and non-material non-biological side of reality as a whole .

Get that ?

Bye
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/11/2013 22:29:53

(Regardless of your irrelevant rhetorics on the subject ) :

Materialism has been, once again, dominating in all sciences and elsewhere , including in the so-called human sciences , including in anthropology , history writing , sociology , evolutionary psychology, economy, political science , including in religions ' comparisons studies , including in philosophy  ...including even in art and literature .

Secular materialist establishment that 's been the undisputed dominating cultural social scientific ....supreme and ultimate authority ,that had replaced that of the medieval church and christianity ,  thanks to the Eurocentric "enlightenment " movement ...

Biology as the 'science of life " also reduces life to just physics and chemistry thus , thanks to materialism or physicalism as some like to put it , including all the physical sciences ...

Science and most scientists have been wrong in assuming that reality as a whole is just material physical  =(= a materialist false belief assumption , false conception of nature ) , thanks to materialism thus , so, everything , including human consciousness,human free will, the human mind or reason,  life in general  (including its origins evolution and emergence ) , human reason , feelings , emotions ....human love,consciousness in general,  ....have been reduced to just material biological physical processes , via some neuronal machine-like ,computer -like computational magical mechanisms , emergent property magical tricks regarding consciousness ...

So, logically , science would consider all non-materialist beliefs for that matter , all of the immaterial side of reality , all of the immaterial side of life , ....as just products of physics and chemistry ,including consciousness, human reason , human love ... or as just illusions , delusions ...

" The scientific world view " is therefore materialist = rejects and excludes a-priori any non-materialist world views or non-material phenomena , including the non-physical and non-material non-biological side of reality as a whole .

Get that ?

Bye

Who is the "secular materialist establishment?" Who is their leader and high ranking officials? Where are their offices located?

Don, you're attacking an enemy that doesn't exist. You are opposing an argument that scientists don't make.

I've never read a neurology experiment that ended with "oh, and by the way, the mind doesn't exist and you are all souless automatrons."

I've never seen a physics experiment refuting the existence of God.

I've never read a sociology paper titled "The Non-existence of Love."

I've never seen a biology experiment that said "In conclusion, when you die, you rot in the ground and there is no afterlife."

Although, there was research done by a religious institution claiming that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.  (Jack  and Van Impe, 2001.) Religious nuts don't have a problem stretching science's "jurisdiction" when it suits them.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2013 18:00:16

(Regardless of your irrelevant rhetorics on the subject ) :

Materialism has been, once again, dominating in all sciences and elsewhere ,
Quote
including in the so-called human sciences , including in anthropology , history writing , sociology , evolutionary psychology, economy, political science , including in religions ' comparisons studies , including in philosophy  ...including even in art and literature .

Secular materialist establishment that 's been the undisputed dominating cultural social scientific ....supreme and ultimate authority ,that had replaced that of the medieval church and christianity ,  thanks to the Eurocentric "enlightenment " movement ...

Biology as the 'science of life " also reduces life to just physics and chemistry thus , thanks to materialism or physicalism as some like to put it , including all the physical sciences ...

Science and most scientists have been wrong in assuming that reality as a whole is just material physical  =(= a materialist false belief assumption , false conception of nature ) , thanks to materialism thus , so, everything , including human consciousness,human free will, the human mind or reason,  life in general  (including its origins evolution and emergence ) , human reason , feelings , emotions ....human love,consciousness in general,  ....have been reduced to just material biological physical processes , via some neuronal machine-like ,computer -like computational magical mechanisms , emergent property magical tricks regarding consciousness ...

So, logically , science would consider all non-materialist beliefs for that matter , all of the immaterial side of reality , all of the immaterial side of life , ....as just products of physics and chemistry ,including consciousness, human reason , human love ... or as just illusions , delusions ...

" The scientific world view " is therefore materialist = rejects and excludes a-priori any non-materialist world views or non-material phenomena , including the non-physical and non-material non-biological side of reality as a whole .

Get that ?

Bye

Who is the "secular materialist establishment?" Who is their leader and high ranking officials? Where are their offices located?

Don't be silly , sis , you're not even funny .
This is yet another Pandora's box or boxes you have been trying to "open " , not in the ancient Greek 'evil " mythical negative sense , but in the positive factual sense : boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes ....inside of the main Pandora's box that contains them all  , the latter that metaphorically represents the materialist belief core assumption = reality as a whole is just physical material , so , there is no so-called higher power , no life after death , ...
Try to find out about the history ,roots ,genesis and secular nature of the Eurocentric 'enlightenment ", and how the secular materialist establishment has been the supreme ultimate authority at all levels ,that had replaced that of christianity , as the nation-state concept did replace that of the church ....

The materialist mainstream scientific establishment or community  have also become some sort of sacred or holy scientific priesthood whose authority ,prestige ,  truths and objectivity ...are unquestionable = the materialist dogmatic belief system dominating in all sciences ...has been unquestionable and undisputable for so long now ,that it has been taken for granted as ...science .

So, every scientist or thinker such as Nagel or Sheldrake, among many other whistleblowers , who would dare to question the mainstream materialist ultimate authority in science and elsewhere , who would dare to question the ultimate authority of the materialist mainstream "scientific church " would be branded as a pseudo-scientist , a retrograde , a lunatic or worse .

Proof regarding the   fact that the secular materialist  establishment has been the ultimate unquestionable authority  ? :  the materialist secular dogmatic belief assumptions that have been dominating in all sciences , in all human sciences ,and elsewhere , including at the cultural economic political social ethical ...and global levels .
See also the so-called rational secular  materialist versions of the  liberal ethics dominating worldwide today : Kantian, contractarianist , utilitarianist .
See the global domination of the materialistic capitalism, of the materialistic ethics of the market ....worldwide.
See secular democracy as the one and only "superior and valid " form of culture or form of government ...

...............The list of all those boxes contained in Pandora's box, the latter as a metaphor for materialism , is endless .

Quote
Don, you're attacking an enemy that doesn't exist. You are opposing an argument that scientists don't make.

It's an undeniable and an obvious fact that all sciences and the rest have been dominated by the materialist core belief assumption regarding the materialist version of the nature of reality as a whole = reality as a whole is just material physical , and therefore all sciences and the rest have been assuming that reality as a whole is just material physical, thanks to materialism thus .

And i  do have no enemies , not in the conventional sense at least ,  i do not divide the world into friends and foes or enemies , i do reject the conventional concept  or notion of "enemy ":  i just deal with people, currents of thought or beliefs in general, with cultures ...so to speak, just in terms of their intrinsic relative truthfulness  and relative falsehood, simply because all people , all peoples, all nations, all cultures , all beliefs , all currents of thought, all societies  ...do have some elements of the truth intrinsically contained in them all , relatively speaking , but they are not all necessarily true , as all nations , all beliefs , all cultures , all currents of thought , all peoples, all societies  ...do intrinsically all contain " the highest and the lowest which are  in each one of us " , as the poet said : " ...But i say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you , so, the wicked and the weak cannot fall below the lowest which is in you also ..."= all sciences , beliefs ,  currents of thought , people , peoples , cultures , societies , nations ....are relative degrees of reflections of the highest and of the lowest  which are  in each one of us ..., even science  itself  , for example , is just a human activity ...= a relative reflection of all "the highest and of all the lowest which are in each one of us " , relatively speaking then = objectivity is a myth , even in science thus: proof ? = materialism in all sciences and elsewhere that has been taken for granted as science , for so long now  .

I am just trying to make you, folks, realise the fact that materialism is no science, and that science has been dominated by the materialist dogmatic belief system (see how the materialist meta-paradigm has been dominating in all sciences and elsewhere  , once again ), for so long now , science has to be liberated from , in order for science to be less dogmatic and more scientific, in order for science to progress ...
.
Quote
I've never read a neurology experiment that ended with "oh, and by the way, the mind doesn't exist and you are all souless automatrons."

"the mind is in the brain , or that the mind is just a product of the brain's neuro-chemical activity " ,for example , is just a materialist belief assumption, no scientific one= just an extension of the core materialist belief assumption regarding the nature of reality as a whole thus  , and yet it is taken for granted as science = free will is an illusion , consciousness might also be an illusion as a result ...logically , according to materialism at least thus , according to materialism in science thus, according to materialism in neurology thus also ...
Materialist belief assumptions that try to explain even the mind just in terms of physics and chemistry ,or just in terms of those materialist macroscopic extensions on the subject such as the materialist magical 'emergence " performance trick regarding the nature or origins of human consciousness , such as that machine -like , computer -like comuptation analogy regarding the nature and origins of the human mind or intellect ...., since "the whole reality is just material or physical " , as materialism assumes it to be at least .

Quote
I've never seen a physics experiment refuting the existence of God.

Try to read Stephen Hawking's "A brief history of time " where he suggests ,as all the mainstream materialists scientists do , that physicists can come up with some kindda "theory of everything = theory of nothing " that would be able to explain everything  just  in mathematical physical chemical terms :
The so-called "scientific world view " is thus = all reality , everything thus ,is material physical , so, there is no immaterial "being " such as God , no immaterial side of reality ...and therefore are religious beliefs just elaborate "creations of the brain , since the mind is in the brain " , just illusions , delusions, fairy tales ...= even God is just an elaborate "creation of the mind that's in the physical brain " = an illusion .

I am not trying to attack materialism, as you put it at least , just because it does , per definition , only lead to atheism and reductionism , i am not trying to refute materialism , just because it denies, per definition, the existence of God ....no, i am doing just that , just in order to make you , folks, realise the simple and obvious undeniable fact that materialism that pretends to be 'scientific " is no science ,that's all = my main motivation is not religious thus = my main motivation is to find out about the truth , whatever that might be indeed , that would sound like a cliche to you , but that's how i see things .

Quote
I've never read a sociology paper titled "The Non-existence of Love."

Sociology and the rest do refute, or rather deny ,  the existence of the human free will,for example , as   a result of their exclusively material physical approach of societies , as a result of their materialistic approaches in relation to societies  ....they just try to explain society in terms of material physical factors , in the form of social material physical and conceptual interactions , in terms of material physical conflicts of interests , in terms of materialistic evolutionary explanations ...in terms of power  "mechanisms " , ....

Sociology even denies the existence of such a 'thing " such as the human nature ...

If "the whole reality is just physical material ", then is even human love just a matter of ...chemistry = just a survival strategy = just an elaborate illusion ...according to materialism thus, love that might be considered just for its social individual and collective utility , in the form of social solidarity ...in the form of social cohesion ...in the form of social stability ....in the form of social safety  ...in the form of social unity , in the form of nationalism, patriotism, in the form of economic growth  ....= love is good for all kindda businesses and growth , solidarity , unity ...patriotism ...love is good for all kindda identities ....for self-worth , for nations ' worth ......love as an utilitarianist  materialistic concept = good for individual and collective survivals , all forms of romantic love are  .

Quote
I've never seen a biology experiment that said "In conclusion, when you die, you rot in the ground and there is no afterlife."

Biology assumes also, thanks to materialism, that life itself is just material physical = can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry biochemistry (see the so-called scientific origins of life that pretend to be able to explain the origins of life just in terms of physics and chemistry alone, not to mention the materialist version of the evolution of life ... ) , so, when the physical body dies , the physical body or physical material  organism  that's all what there is to life  , when the physical body or physical organism dies , that's the end of the story for that organism , its 'consciousness , memory , mind ...that are just neuro-chemical products of the physical brain " die with it , logically ...= there is no after -life , obviously , according to materialism thus .

Quote
Although, there was research done by a religious institution claiming that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.  (Jack  and Van Impe, 2001.) Religious nuts don't have a problem stretching science's "jurisdiction" when it suits them.

Religion does not belong in science , as materialism does not also :
All beliefs for that matter , either the secular or the religious ones , including materialism thus , must be kept outside of science, and outsde of science's jurisdiction as well  .
But , fact is : human beliefs are unavoidable in science , simply because the latter is practiced by scientists humans , so, materialism in science will just be replaced by another conception of nature ,the latter that will be dominating science for some certain time to come , untill it will be proven to be false maybe , in its turn , who knows = the human will to believe is inexhaustible , as atheist Nagel said .

Neither the materialist reductionist naturalist conception of nature in science , nor the proposed alternative to  it  as proposed by Nagel = the non-reductionist naturalist one , neither one of them is  true , i think that's why Nagel also said the following :

Quote : " I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers…. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that." End quote.

I remember myself thinking the same way as Nagel did here above ,when i first started to become aware or self-aware ,during my early teen-age time :
Is God all there is to this universe ? i thought : i do not want the universe to be like that , i do not want there to be a God ...i thought , but , i have outgrown that silly childish egocentric emotional "state of mind " , a long time ago .

.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/11/2013 22:10:35
1) You won't or can't address the glaring contradiction in your argument: that science must be "liberated" from materialism so it can be free to investigate or obtain information about the immaterial, which you've already said it cannot do. So what is the benefit of this "liberation?"

2) There is no materialist conspiracy. First off, your history of the relationship between the Catholic church and scientists is factually inaccurate. They were generally in opposition. Secondly, the fact that scientific discoveries were about material processes is not proof that people were prevented by some social force from attempting any other kind of investigation. Chemists doing chemistry experiments will probably derive theories involving chemistry (ideas about molecules and atoms.) Physicists doing physics experiments will also come to conclusions having to do with physics. They are unlikely to spontaneously generate theories or conclusions about the immaterial things which have nothing to do with their own research. Science is not dominated by materialism, in the sense that it is being coerced by some authority to be that way. Scientific knowledge simply contains more information about the material world because that is what individual scientists chose to observe and measure, because that is what they can observe and measure, not because somebody forced them to or censored them.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/11/2013 22:33:21
Don, if science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2013 17:14:25
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Don, if science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

Just be serious , come on :

Not everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , and science is not restricted to the material realm , science is rather restricted to all what it can observe , test  ...empirically : see how even telepathy is studied scientifically by Sheldrake, for example .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/11/2013 17:32:38
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Don, if science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

Just be serious , come on :
Just answer the question, come on.

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... see how even telepathy is studied scientifically by Sheldrake, for example .
Yeah, right. Whatever happened to the telepathy revolution...?

Maybe he's still looking for a way to distinguish between telepathy, clairvoyance, and remote viewing (etc.), or maybe the communication companies have bought him off, or are suppressing his work; but on the other hand, with no credible replications, maybe he's just chasing the magic butterfly of his imagination down the corridors of pseudoscience with a butterfly net of leaky protocols and flaky analysis ;)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2013 17:42:25
1) You won't or can't address the glaring contradiction in your argument: that science must be "liberated" from materialism so it can be free to investigate or obtain information about the immaterial, which you've already said it cannot do. So what is the benefit of this "liberation?"

I used to make a mistake when i used to say that science can deal only with the material (I see i was also a relative victim of materialism in science thus ) , science can rather deal with all it can observe, test , study ...empirically + not everything can be explained just via the laws of physics , not everything is just a matter of cause and effect thus , as mechanistic materialism  assumes (Major examples ? : science cannot handle the nature or origins of consciousness,of  human intellect ,of  feelings ,of  emotions , of memory ....science cannot handle the nature and origin of human conscience , science cannot explain life as a whole just via physics and chemistry , let alone life's origins , evolution and emergence ...fully) .
See how Sheldrake has been studying telepathy, for example, scientifically .

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2) There is no materialist conspiracy

Who said there is one ?

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. First off, your history of the relationship between the Catholic church and scientists is factually inaccurate
.

What do you mean exactly ?
The medieval church used to be against science , wasn't it ?
The medieval church that used to see itself as the one and only undisputed ultimate authority : anyone who used to challenge it , used to face dire consequences ,as you know  .
The medieval church used to plant the seeds of its own decline , and those of the rise or birth of mechanistic materialism thus as a result .

 
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They were generally in opposition

Scientists were , yes ? indeed ,so .

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. Secondly, the fact that scientific discoveries were about material processes is not proof that people were prevented by some social force from attempting any other kind of investigation.

I was just talking about the secular materialist establishment as the newly born ultimate authority that had replaced christianity ,metaphorically speaking ,  as the concept of the nation-state had replaced that of the church : the secular materialist establishment as the new then undisputed ultimate authority whose main 'ally " was / has been science , when science became materialistic mechanistic , thanks to materialism thus .

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Chemists doing chemistry experiments will probably derive theories involving chemistry (ideas about molecules and atoms.) Physicists doing physics experiments will also come to conclusions having to do with physics. They are unlikely to spontaneously generate theories or conclusions about the immaterial things which have nothing to do with their own research. Science is not dominated by materialism, in the sense that it is being coerced by some authority to be that way. Scientific knowledge simply contains more information about the material world because that is what individual scientists chose to observe and measure, because that is what they can observe and measure, not because somebody forced them to or censored them.

Wrong :
Science has been assuming that everything is material physical, thanks to materialism  = everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , or just by physics and chemistry , so, everything that would have  "supernatural " claims would be , per definition, not only branded as unscientific , but also as ...false , including the claims of religions ....
While science in fact should restrict itself only to what it can deal with empirically .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2013 18:04:39
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Don, if science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system" (yet, as you admit, is necessarily restricted to the material realm), then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.

Just be serious , come on :
Just answer the question, come on.
Be serious, ok ?
Well, when science will cease to "see " everything as being just material physical through just the key hole of materialism ,while pretending that all what it can see through that materialist mechanistic key hole is all what there is to reality , then  science will realise the fact that there is more to reality than just that it has been confined to , science that tries to understand and explain reality thus .
Science will be then put  on a new  path that might lead to new  unimaginable  discoveries as a result : do you want me to draw you a pic ?

Science has been just deluded into "thinking " , thanks to materialism thus , that the material physical side of reality is all what there is to reality = a distortion of reality .

When science will be liberated from materialism, then science will be able to "see " or rather try to approach the whole pic of reality or rather  science will be able to approach the parts of the whole pic of reality it  can deal with empirically , instead of confining itself to just the material physical side of reality , science has been taking for the whole real thing = the scope realm , jurisdiction and reach of science will be then extended exponentially ,relatively speaking then, while there are some significant parts of reality as a whole that will remain beyond both science's realm and beyond science's jurisdiction as well thus  .

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... see how even telepathy is studied scientifically by Sheldrake, for example
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.
Yeah, right. Whatever happened to the telepathy revolution...?

Maybe he's still looking for a way to distinguish between telepathy, clairvoyance, and remote viewing (etc.), or maybe the communication companies have bought him off, or are suppressing his work; but on the other hand, with no credible replications, maybe he's just chasing the magic butterfly of his imagination down the corridors of pseudoscience with a butterfly net of leaky protocols and flaky analysis ;)

Did you take a close look at Sheldrake's scientific work on the subject ? Guess not : go back and check his evidence , and then we can talk when you would come back .

Sheldrake has been dealing with both telepathy and his morphic resonance theory scientifically , relatively speaking , he has been practicing science as scientists should do whe science would be liberated from materialism : that's 1 of the major reasons why most scientists , including yourself , has been considering his work as being a form of pseudo-science , while it is in fact the other way around : materialism in science is pseudo-science , Sheldrake has just been demolishing those materialist dogmatic orthodox beliefs idols in science that has been taken for granted as science by the materialist mainstream scientific priesthood and their followers  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/11/2013 19:06:16
... when science will cease to "see " everything as being just material physical through just the key hole of materialism ,while pretending that all what it can see through that materialist mechanistic key hole is all what there is to reality , then  science will realise the fact that there is more to reality than just that it has been confined to , science that tries to understand and explain reality thus .
Science will be then put  on a new  path that might lead to new  unimaginable  discoveries as a result : do you want me to draw you a pic ?
I'd rather you answered the questions; but OK, 'draw me a pic' of how science will change when it realises there is more to reality; what will it do differently than it does now?

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When science will be liberated from materialism, ... science will be able to approach the parts of the whole pic of reality it  can deal with empirically , instead of confining itself to just the material physical side of reality
How can it deal empirically with parts of reality that are not material or physical? can you give some examples?

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... there are some significant parts of reality as a whole that will remain beyond both science's realm and beyond science's jurisdiction as well thus  .
So how will science 'deal empirically' with these parts of reality if they're 'beyond both science's realm and beyond science's jurisdiction'?

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Did you take a close look at Sheldrake's scientific work on the subject ? Guess not : go back and check his evidence , and then we can talk when you would come back .
I read Sheldrake's work when it was first published, back in the day. I've followed his progress from creative and innovative ideas man to pseudoscience train wreck. Disappointing or sad, or both, depending how you look at it...

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Sheldrake has been dealing with both telepathy and his morphic resonance theory scientifically , relatively speaking , he has been practicing science as scientists should do whe science would be liberated from materialism : that's 1 of the major reasons why most scientists , including yourself , has been considering his work as being a form of pseudo-science , while it is in fact the other way around : materialism in science is pseudo-science , Sheldrake has just been demolishing those materialist dogmatic orthodox beliefs idols in science that has been taken for granted as science by the materialist mainstream scientific priesthood and their followers  .
None of his telepathy or morphic resonance work has stood up to scrutiny, or been credibly replicated. His ideas were carefully investigated by several groups; nothing was found, and the predictions didn't transpire. Mainstream science shrugged and sailed on, leaving him clinging to the driftwood of his sinking ideas, until he managed to scramble aboard the floating heap of rubbish in the pseudoscience gyre.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 06/11/2013 00:28:25

I used to make a mistake when i used to say that science can deal only with the material (I see i was also a relative victim of materialism in science thus ) , science can rather deal with all it can observe, test , study ...empirically + not everything can be explained just via the laws of physics , not everything is just a matter of cause and effect thus , as mechanistic materialism  assumes (Major examples ? : science cannot handle the nature or origins of consciousness,of  human intellect ,of  feelings ,of  emotions , of memory ....science cannot handle the nature and origin of human conscience , science cannot explain life as a whole just via physics and chemistry , let alone life's origins , evolution and emergence ...fully) .



 
Science has been assuming that everything is material physical, thanks to materialism  = everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , or just by physics and chemistry , so, everything that would have  "supernatural " claims would be , per definition, not only branded as unscientific , but also as ...false , including the claims of religions ....
While science in fact should restrict itself only to what it can deal with empirically...
....Science has been assuming that everything is material physical, thanks to materialism  = everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , or just by physics and chemistry , so, everything that would have  "supernatural " claims would be , per definition, not only branded as unscientific , but also as ...false , including the claims of religions ....
While science in fact should restrict itself only to what it can deal with empirically .


So science is responsible for including the immaterial in its conceptual framework of why things happen or how things happen,  but it can't criticize ideas about the immaterial or falsify the immaterial in any way? Are you familiar with the phrase "writing a blank check"?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: SimpleEngineer on 06/11/2013 14:25:11
don gave himself away with this statement

Neither the materialist reductionist naturalist conception of nature in science , nor the proposed alternative to  it  as proposed by Nagel = the non-reductionist naturalist one , neither one of them is  true , i think that's why Nagel also said the following :

Quote : " I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers…. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that." End quote.

I remember myself thinking the same way as Nagel did here above ,when i first started to become aware or self-aware ,during my early teen-age time :
Is God all there is to this universe ? i thought : i do not want the universe to be like that , i do not want there to be a God ...i thought , but , i have outgrown that silly childish egocentric emotional "state of mind " , a long time ago .


HE does not want the universe to be materialistic, HE does not want everything to come down to chemistry and physics.

So these discussions he has been prompting is all about him rejecting the premise of science and wishes that it would stop finding out how the world works just in case it finds out it works in a way that he (DonQ) does not agree with.

However I like the quote from Nagel, I personally despise atheists who argue with religious groups about the existence of god, saying there is no proof he exists.. as they forget to close the factual statement of.. There is also no proof that he doesn't the religion of atheism is founded on hypocritical beliefs and statements.. As are DonQ's regular posts.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 06/11/2013 16:17:38
The proof that God doesn't exist does exist. It is impossible for him to qualify as God. If he understands how he works, he has no magic left and reveals himself to be a natural being like ourselves. If he continues to run on magic which he doesn't understand, he falls far short of being God. He can't win.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2013 17:56:25
The proof that God doesn't exist does exist. It is impossible for him to qualify as God. If he understands how he works, he has no magic left and reveals himself to be a natural being like ourselves. If he continues to run on magic which he doesn't understand, he falls far short of being God. He can't win.

We are not talking here about God .

Well, just for discussion's sake , the following then :

God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ; thousands of years of ancient philosophy , scholastics , modern philosophy ...should have convinced you already of that fact : trying to prove or disprove the existence of God was just a stupid and silly ancient Greek cultural habit that was taken over by christian scholastics , and by modern philosophy ,later on ...

Materialism , for example , is inherently an atheist reductionist and determinist world view or conception of nature , no wonder that materialism reduces the whole reality as asuch to just material physical processes : if reality is just material physical, there is logically no God, no after-life , no transcendent reality ....= how convenient : since when are beliefs , any beliefs for that matter , either the secular or the religious ones , including materialism thus , since when are beliefs some sort of evidence  ? = beliefs are no evidence = materialism as a secular belief or a secular religion is no evidence against the existence of God , obviously .
Materialism is just an atheist reductionist determinist mechanical "state of mind or mindset , attitude " , a false conception of nature at that , obviously  also , so = irrelevant .

 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2013 18:06:02
... I like the quote from Nagel, I personally despise atheists who argue with religious groups about the existence of god, saying there is no proof he exists.. as they forget to close the factual statement of.. There is also no proof that he doesn't
True - although some ideas are so patently absurd they need convincing evidence of their reality to be credible, e.g. Russell's Teapot, Sagan's invisible dragon, the Tooth Fairy, God, etc. As the man said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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the religion of atheism is founded on hypocritical beliefs and statements..
Someone said 'atheism is a religion the way not collecting stamps is a hobby'. As an atheist myself, I'm not aware of having any religious-type organized beliefs, dogmas, rituals or activities. Despite a religious upbringing, I don't believe in god because it seems an absurd, contradictory, ill-defined idea, there's no plausible evidence for it, and a vast amount of circumstantial evidence that it's a product of human imagination. YMMV. If some plausible evidence appears, I'll consider it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2013 18:44:17
... I like the quote from Nagel, I personally despise atheists who argue with religious groups about the existence of god, saying there is no proof he exists.. as they forget to close the factual statement of.. There is also no proof that he doesn't
True - although some ideas are so patently absurd they need convincing evidence of their reality to be credible, e.g. Russell's Teapot, Sagan's invisible dragon, the Tooth Fairy, God, etc. As the man said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

(Once again, history of mankind's thought had proved the obvious simple and undeniable fact that God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ,so, let's just leave it at that then , and that's not our subject either )

Well, materialism is so absurd , so paradoxical, so counter-intuitive, or implausible as Nagel said , so ridiculous , so silly , so childish a "scientific world view " that it is extremely puzzling that materialism has been taken seriously at all , let alone in science : extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence indeed , ironically enough .

Now that you cannot deliver any evidence for the "validity or truth " concerning the materialist mainstream "scientific world view ", that's obviously false , you just resort to attacking non-materialist world views such as religions, we are not talking here about the latter , we are just talking about materialism in science that's obviously false , and nobody said that religions are 'scientific " , as materialism pretends to be : that's the core issue here , if materialism has not been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view  for so long now  , i would have never bothered raising the irrelevant silly issue of materialism = materialism that assumes that reality as a whole is just material physical  , well  , ironically enough , Nagel said on the subject  of materialism "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"= where is that extraordinary materialist evidence then ? where is that extraprdinary evidence regarding the extraordianry claims of materialism that reality is just material physical then ?

All that Russell's tea pot and the rest of your "arguments " against religion are not only incorrect and false irrelevant in relation to some religions at least  they cannot cover as such  , but they  also miss the point that there are false and true beliefs ,relatively speaking : the belief in Sint Claus is obviously false , my own belief in my mother is obviously true to me at least .......to mention just that , no need to scale it up all the way to religions .

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the religion of atheism is founded on hypocritical beliefs and statements..
Someone said 'atheism is a religion the way not collecting stamps is a hobby'. As an atheist myself, I'm not aware of having any religious-type organized beliefs, dogmas, rituals or activities. Despite a religious upbringing, I don't believe in god because it seems an absurd, contradictory, ill-defined idea, there's no plausible evidence for it, and a vast amount of circumstantial evidence that it's a product of human imagination. YMMV. If some plausible evidence appears, I'll consider it.

Atheism is obviously a belief , a religion, a conception of nature , a naturalist one at that , a dogmatic orthodox one at that , even in the face of counter-evidence : major example ? materialism in all sciences and elsewhere .

Deliver your  extraordinary evidence regarding the extraordinary claims of the naturalist materialist reductionist determinist conception of nature then ,that gets sold to the people as the 'scientific world view " , deal ?

Besides, you cannot prove the falsehood or truthfulness of a certain belief or religion just via another belief assumption , the materialist one here ,come on : how convenient =   I say your materialist belief is false , and i did provide you with extensive supporting material and other on the subject , what do you do ? You just resort to saying : my materialist belief is better than yours = what kindda silly childish 'reasoning " is this then ? Amazing .
Just address the issue of the false materialist "scientific world view " at hand : religions are not the ones that pretend to be "the scientific world views " , deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2013 18:57:56

I used to make a mistake when i used to say that science can deal only with the material (I see i was also a relative victim of materialism in science thus ) , science can rather deal with all it can observe, test , study ...empirically + not everything can be explained just via the laws of physics , not everything is just a matter of cause and effect thus , as mechanistic materialism  assumes (Major examples ? : science cannot handle the nature or origins of consciousness,of  human intellect ,of  feelings ,of  emotions , of memory ....science cannot handle the nature and origin of human conscience , science cannot explain life as a whole just via physics and chemistry , let alone life's origins , evolution and emergence ...fully) .



 
Science has been assuming that everything is material physical, thanks to materialism  = everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , or just by physics and chemistry , so, everything that would have  "supernatural " claims would be , per definition, not only branded as unscientific , but also as ...false , including the claims of religions ....
While science in fact should restrict itself only to what it can deal with empirically...
....Science has been assuming that everything is material physical, thanks to materialism  = everything can be explained just by the laws of physics , or just by physics and chemistry , so, everything that would have  "supernatural " claims would be , per definition, not only branded as unscientific , but also as ...false , including the claims of religions ....
While science in fact should restrict itself only to what it can deal with empirically .


So science is responsible for including the immaterial in its conceptual framework of why things happen or how things happen,  but it can't criticize ideas about the immaterial or falsify the immaterial in any way? Are you familiar with the phrase "writing a blank check"?
[/quote]

Try to read carefully what i try to say : i do my best to clarify my statements : do yours in relation to yours as well, otherwise , this discussion would become absurd = an understatement thus .

I said , science cannot be confined to just the material side of reality it has been taking as the whole real thing, thanks to materialism thus  .
So, science must therefore try to deal with the parts of reality it can deal with empirically , including some   parts of the immaterial side of reality indirectly , such as the the telepathy claims of some people , such as the psychic claims of some  people , such as dealing empirically with the natures and origins of consciousness, memory , feelings , emotions , human intellect .....indirectly and not as physical biological material processes ...they are not ,obviously.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 06/11/2013 19:11:14

We are not talking here about God .

Well, just for discussion's sake , the following then :

God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ; thousands of years of ancient philosophy , scholastics , modern philosophy ...should have convinced you already of that fact : trying to prove or disprove the existence of God was just a stupid and silly ancient Greek cultural habit that was taken over by christian scholastics , and by modern philosophy ,later on ...

No, we weren't talking about God, but you are the one who changed your mind and now claim that science is somehow responsible for including the immaterial as a possible cause of things or events, even though science per your definition of it cannot evaluate, prove or disprove, the immaterial. That is no different from holding an individual responsible for lack of information that he has no access to and is not allowed to question. It's another contradiction.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 06/11/2013 19:29:02


Try to read carefully what i try to say : i do my best to clarify my statements : do yours in relation to yours as well, otherwise , this discussion would become absurd = an understatement thus .

I said , science cannot be confined to just the material side of reality it has been taking as the whole real thing, thanks to materialism thus  .
So, science must therefore try to deal with the parts of reality it can deal with empirically , including some   parts of the immaterial side of reality indirectly , such as the the telepathy claims of some people , such as the psychic claims of some  people , such as dealing empirically with the natures and origins of consciousness, memory , feelings , emotions , human intellect .....indirectly and not as physical biological material processes ...they are not ,obviously.

When science has evaluated psychic phenomena and not delivered the results you want, you simply respond that it cannot adequately refute the immaterial, is not qualified to do so. You have the habit of deciding which "parts of reality it can deal with empirically" afterwards, depending on whether you agree with the conclusions.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2013 20:35:36
... you just resort to attacking non-materialist world views such as religions..
You have so little in response you have to make things up?  Or can you quote me 'attacking' non-materialist world views such as religions?

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You just resort to saying : my materialist belief is better than yours = what kindda silly childish 'reasoning " is this then ? Amazing .
Confabulation. Care to quote me saying any such thing?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2013 20:41:04
... science must therefore try to deal with the parts of reality it can deal with empirically , including some   parts of the immaterial side of reality indirectly , such as the the telepathy claims of some people , such as the psychic claims of some  people , such as dealing empirically with the natures and origins of consciousness, memory , feelings , emotions , human intellect .....indirectly and not as physical biological material processes ...they are not ,obviously.
Which is exactly what science has been, and is, doing. Telepathy and psychic claims have come up a blank, the rest is under ongoing investigation. So far, no trace of influence from 'the immaterial side of reality' has been found.

What should science be doing differently?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2013 21:18:00
dlorde , Cheryl :

Time up, sorry :

Try to read carefully what i say , once again :

I said science will be able to expand its realm ...when science will be liberated from materialism , not earlier : the materialist current 'scientific world view " would , per definition, only dismiss non-material non-physical non-biological processes , or would just reduce them to material physical biological ones : major examples ? : consciousness , human intellect , the immaterial side of life , the nature of feelings emotions ......the nature of human love ...

So, i talk about what science actually is  and therefore should be , without materialism thus ...when science will cease thus to reduce the whole reality to just physics and chemistry ,once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2013 21:52:31
... I said science will be able to expand its realm ...when science will be liberated from materialism , not earlier : the materialist current 'scientific world view " would , per definition, only dismiss non-material non-physical non-biological processes , or would just reduce them to material physical biological ones : major examples ? : consciousness , human intellect , the immaterial side of life , the nature of feelings emotions ......the nature of human love ...

So, i talk about what science actually is  and therefore should be , without materialism thus ...when science will cease thus to reduce the whole reality to just physics and chemistry ,once again .
If science is suffering from a "mechanistic materialist world view ideology" or has been dominated by a "materialist mechanist dogmatic belief system", then please explain how it has suffered, and how it would be different without it (e.g. how would it work?), and how it could be better as a result.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/11/2013 00:00:15
dlorde , Cheryl :

Time up, sorry :

Try to read carefully what i say , once again :

I said science will be able to expand its realm ...when science will be liberated from materialism , not earlier : the materialist current 'scientific world view " would , per definition, only dismiss non-material non-physical non-biological processes , or would just reduce them to material physical biological ones : major examples ? : consciousness , human intellect , the immaterial side of life , the nature of feelings emotions ......the nature of human love ...

So, i talk about what science actually is  and therefore should be , without materialism thus ...when science will cease thus to reduce the whole reality to just physics and chemistry ,once again .
That's probably the lamest dodge I've seen so far.

I don't see why all of science must be liberated from materialism first, in order for you to even describe what a liberated scientist might then be free to do, or do differently. After all, it only takes one scientist with one really important discovery to change history. That one scientist doesn't have to get everybody's permission first to think differently. The idea that time wasn't constant must have been radical in 1905 and didn't require a consensus from all of science or society.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 16:56:16
... I like the quote from Nagel, I personally despise atheists who argue with religious groups about the existence of god, saying there is no proof he exists.. as they forget to close the factual statement of.. There is also no proof that he doesn't
True - although some ideas are so patently absurd they need convincing evidence of their reality to be credible, e.g. Russell's Teapot, Sagan's invisible dragon, the Tooth Fairy, God, etc. As the man said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

(Once again, history of mankind's thought had proved the obvious simple and undeniable fact that God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ,so, let's just leave it at that then , and that's not our subject either )

Well, materialism is so absurd , so paradoxical, so counter-intuitive, or implausible as Nagel said , so ridiculous , so silly , so childish a "scientific world view " that it is extremely puzzling that materialism has been taken seriously at all , let alone in science : extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence indeed , ironically enough .

Now that you cannot deliver any evidence for the "validity or truth " concerning the materialist mainstream "scientific world view ", that's obviously false , you just resort to attacking non-materialist world views such as religions, we are not talking here about the latter , we are just talking about materialism in science that's obviously false , and nobody said that religions are 'scientific " , as materialism pretends to be : that's the core issue here , if materialism has not been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view  for so long now  , i would have never bothered raising the irrelevant silly issue of materialism = materialism that assumes that reality as a whole is just material physical  , well  , ironically enough , Nagel said on the subject  of materialism "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"= where is that extraordinary materialist evidence then ? where is that extraprdinary evidence regarding the extraordianry claims of materialism that reality is just material physical then ?

All that Russell's tea pot and the rest of your "arguments " against religion are not only incorrect and false irrelevant in relation to some religions at least  they cannot cover as such  , but they  also miss the point that there are false and true beliefs ,relatively speaking : the belief in Sint Claus is obviously false , my own belief in my mother is obviously true to me at least .......to mention just that , no need to scale it up all the way to religions .

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the religion of atheism is founded on hypocritical beliefs and statements..
Someone said 'atheism is a religion the way not collecting stamps is a hobby'. As an atheist myself, I'm not aware of having any religious-type organized beliefs, dogmas, rituals or activities. Despite a religious upbringing, I don't believe in god because it seems an absurd, contradictory, ill-defined idea, there's no plausible evidence for it, and a vast amount of circumstantial evidence that it's a product of human imagination. YMMV. If some plausible evidence appears, I'll consider it.

Atheism is obviously a belief , a religion, a conception of nature , a naturalist one at that , a dogmatic orthodox one at that , even in the face of counter-evidence : major example ? materialism in all sciences and elsewhere .

Deliver your  extraordinary evidence regarding the extraordinary claims of the naturalist materialist reductionist determinist conception of nature then ,that gets sold to the people as the 'scientific world view " , deal ?

Besides, you cannot prove the falsehood or truthfulness of a certain belief or religion just via another belief assumption , the materialist one here ,come on : how convenient =   I say your materialist belief is false , and i did provide you with extensive supporting material and other on the subject , what do you do ? You just resort to saying : my materialist belief is better than yours = what kindda silly childish 'reasoning " is this then ? Amazing .
Just address the issue of the false materialist "scientific world view " at hand : religions are not the ones that pretend to be "the scientific world views " , deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 16:59:21
Mod :

Please do have the decency and intelligence to just stop removing or editing some of my posts here on this thread and elsewhere as well i spent so much time on .
You could just remove Nagel's quotes form them, instead of removing the whole thing .
What's wrong with you anyway ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 17:05:10
dlorde , Cheryl :

Time up, sorry :

Try to read carefully what i say , once again :

I said science will be able to expand its realm ...when science will be liberated from materialism , not earlier : the materialist current 'scientific world view " would , per definition, only dismiss non-material non-physical non-biological processes , or would just reduce them to material physical biological ones : major examples ? : consciousness , human intellect , the immaterial side of life , the nature of feelings emotions ......the nature of human love ...

So, i talk about what science actually is  and therefore should be , without materialism thus ...when science will cease thus to reduce the whole reality to just physics and chemistry ,once again .
That's probably the lamest dodge I've seen so far.

I don't see why all of science must be liberated from materialism first, in order for you to even describe what a liberated scientist might then be free to do, or do differently. After all, it only takes one scientist with one really important discovery to change history. That one scientist doesn't have to get everybody's permission first to think differently. The idea that time wasn't constant must have been radical in 1905 and didn't require a consensus from all of science or society.
[/quote]

Science must be liberated from mainstream materialism, for the simple reason that the latter is false , materialism that's been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " .
IT is obvously not enough to have some scientists individuals who do challenge that 'scientific world view ": there is a lot more needed to do just that than just some scientists who have been "singing outside of the mainsteram materialist false orchestra" .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 17:09:11
... you just resort to attacking non-materialist world views such as religions..
You have so little in response you have to make things up?  Or can you quote me 'attacking' non-materialist world views such as religions?

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You just resort to saying : my materialist belief is better than yours = what kindda silly childish 'reasoning " is this then ? Amazing .
Confabulation. Care to quote me saying any such thing?
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Try to reread what you said earlier then, i did repost for you   here above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/11/2013 18:36:38
Try to reread what you said earlier then, i did repost for you   here above .
You won't find quotes of me attacking non-materialist world views such as religions, or saying that my materialist belief is better than yours, because they're not there.

You've clearly interpreted something I've posted as an attack on non-materialist world views, and as suggesting that I think my 'materialist belief' is better than yours, so perhaps you could quote the relevant post(s) so I can explain what I said in words of one syllable.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/11/2013 18:40:59
Science must be liberated from mainstream materialism, for the simple reason that the latter is false , materialism that's been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " .
IT is obvously not enough to have some scientists individuals who do challenge that 'scientific world view ": there is a lot more needed to do just that than just some scientists who have been "singing outside of the mainsteram materialist false orchestra" .
So are you going to explain what should science be doing differently? how will it be different when 'liberated from materialism'?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 18:59:29
God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ; thousands of years of ancient philosophy , scholastics , modern philosophy ...should have convinced you already of that fact : trying to prove or disprove the existence of God was just a stupid and silly ancient Greek cultural habit that was taken over by christian scholastics , and by modern philosophy ,later on ...

God's existence has been disproved. The fact that so many people lack the wit to recognise that fact that he is logically impossible does not negate the fact that he has been disproved, and that he has been disproved by more than one method. These proofs do depend of course on reason being correct - they are rational proofs. God only remains a possibility if you approach it from an irrational standpoint. What is completely wrong though is to claim that God cannot be disproved within the bounds of rationality, because he has been.

Here's another way of proving that he doesn't exist. God did not create the powers by which he creates things, so he is not the creator of all things. Again this means that he fails to qualify as God.

To maintain the belief that God is possible you have to match it with a belief that reason may not be worth anything, at which point you're left floundering in a place where any argument you make is of no value at all. It is a position for people who have given up trying to understand.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 19:14:58
Try to reread what you said earlier then, i did repost for you   here above .
You won't find quotes of me attacking non-materialist world views such as religions, or saying that my materialist belief is better than yours, because they're not there.

You've clearly interpreted something I've posted as an attack on non-materialist world views, and as suggesting that I think my 'materialist belief' is better than yours, so perhaps you could quote the relevant post(s) so I can explain what I said in words of one syllable.
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You did not say that explicitly , i just rephrased or reformulated your words on the subject , i did not misinterpret them : reread what you said then .
It's ok to attack religions , aliens , God even , if you want to or can do just that , that's not the point : and that's not the subject of our discussion either .
The point is : i asked you to deliver  some  "extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the materialist version of reality, the latter that's been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view  " : but , instead of doing just that , you changed the subject by talking about God and religions in ways i did try to refute .........while religions and God are not our subject of discussion here .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 19:30:58
God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved ; thousands of years of ancient philosophy , scholastics , modern philosophy ...should have convinced you already of that fact : trying to prove or disprove the existence of God was just a stupid and silly ancient Greek cultural habit that was taken over by christian scholastics , and by modern philosophy ,later on ...

God's existence has been disproved. The fact that so many people lack the wit to recognise that fact that he is logically impossible does not negate the fact that he has been disproved, and that he has been disproved by more than one method. These proofs do depend of course on reason being correct - they are rational proofs. God only remains a possibility if you approach it from an irrational standpoint. What is completely wrong though is to claim that God cannot be disproved within the bounds of rationality, because he has been.

Here's another way of proving that he doesn't exist. God did not create the powers by which he creates things, so he is not the creator of all things. Again this means that he fails to qualify as God.

To maintain the belief that God is possible you have to match it with a belief that reason may not be worth anything, at which point you're left floundering in a place where any argument you make is of no value at all. It is a position for people who have given up trying to understand.
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haha
Depends largely of which world view do you hold or believe in : has nothing to do with reason, science , logic....what you have been saying at least .
Even though God is not our present discussion, the following :
"God's existence has been disproved ? " by whom , by what when how where ?
Congratulations : you are such an unique genius that you have just solved this unsolved mystery even thousands of years of ancient philosophy , cholastics , modern philosophy , could not solve , obviously = God's existence can , obviously , neither be proved nor disproved : trying to either prove or disprove the existence of God was , once again , just an ancient Greek silly stupid cultural habit sport that was taken over by scholastics , and by modern philosophy , later on, in vain .
Even the modern analytical philosophy had already abandoned that 'search " ,for obvious reasons .

Well, when one would consider the current mainstream materialist false conception of nature to be the 'scientific world view ", one can therefore only logically and 'empirically " haha conclude that God does ...not exist, as a result  .
But , reality as a whole , once again , is not just material or physical = materialism in science is false = the materialist "scientific world view " is false = God is obviously and per -definition outside of both science's realm and outside of science's jurisdiction as well .
Sweet dreams then  in your materialist mechanistic wonderland , Alice .


In short :

Just cut the crap  then , and answer my questions first , instead of sending the ball back to me over and over again , instead of telling me silly bed stories for kids  , then and only then , i will answer yours :
I have been asking this same core question explicitly or implicitly in one form or another for so long now , in vain : nobody , including yourself , can give an answer to : cannot be answered , simply because the materialist 'scientific world view ", or rather the materialist conception of nature is , obviously ...false :

Why do you think that reality as a whole is just material or physical then ,once again ? Why do you take it for granted as the "scientific world view " : when did science ever prove that materialist "fact ", or rather that materialist core belief assumption to be "true" that reality as a whole is just material or physical ? when ? = never , ever , obviously .
Just try to deliver your own materialist "extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the materialist version of reality as a whole , the materialist version of reality that's been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view " , an alleged 'scientific world view " that is,obviously  ..false .
Deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/11/2013 19:46:48
You've clearly interpreted something I've posted as an attack on non-materialist world views, and as suggesting that I think my 'materialist belief' is better than yours, so perhaps you could quote the relevant post(s) so I can explain what I said in words of one syllable.
You did not say that explicitly , i just rephrased or reformulated your words on the subject , i did not misinterpret them : reread what you said then .
I'm well aware of what I said; I'm asking you to link to the post where you think I said what you claim.

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It's ok to attack religions , aliens , God even , if you want to or can do just that , that's not the point : and that's not the subject of our discussion either .
I'm not interested in attacking anything.

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The point is : i asked you to deliver  some  "extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the materialist version of reality, the latter that's been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view  " : but , instead of doing just that , you changed the subject by talking about God and religions in ways i did try to refute .........while religions and God are not our subject of discussion here .
As I've already said, the only evidence we have is of the material. If there was evidence of the immaterial, I'd consider it. You say you don't know how the immaterial and the material could interact, but you seem convinced that they can.

I'll ask you again, what has convinced you that there is an immaterial realm that can affect the material?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 19:53:45
You've clearly interpreted something I've posted as an attack on non-materialist world views, and as suggesting that I think my 'materialist belief' is better than yours, so perhaps you could quote the relevant post(s) so I can explain what I said in words of one syllable.
You did not say that explicitly , i just rephrased or reformulated your words on the subject , i did not misinterpret them : reread what you said then .
I'm well aware of what I said; I'm asking you to link to the post where you think I said what you claim.

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It's ok to attack religions , aliens , God even , if you want to or can do just that , that's not the point : and that's not the subject of our discussion either .
I'm not interested in attacking anything.

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The point is : i asked you to deliver  some  "extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the materialist version of reality, the latter that's been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view  " : but , instead of doing just that , you changed the subject by talking about God and religions in ways i did try to refute .........while religions and God are not our subject of discussion here .
As I've already said, the only evidence we have is of the material. If there was evidence of the immaterial, I'd consider it. You say you don't know how the immaterial and the material could interact, but you seem convinced that they can.

I'll ask you again, what has convinced you that there is an immaterial realm that can affect the material?
[/quote]


You are a lousy reader , even in relation to your own posts , amazing : nevermind .
Just answer the following then : please , thanks , appreciate indeed :

... whatever quantum physics or the maths of chaos would come up regarding reality must be taken as an incomplete view of reality or rather as a distortion of reality  , simply because science has been assuming that reality is exclusively material or physical, thanks to materialism .

Reality as a whole thus is not deterministic , let alone predictable as a whole .
Supposing, for the sake of argument, there is an 'immaterial realm', what makes you so sure it's not deterministic?

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To try to explain 'everyhting " just via physics and chemistry , just via the laws of physics .............is a distorted view of reality , simply because reality as a whole is not just physical or material, the latter that's obviously not "everything "  .
It may be obvious to you, but it's not obvious to me. So please enlighten me by explaining why you think it's the case.

Imagine we're lying on the beach, looking up at the clouds, and you point to a cloud and say, "Look! that one is like an elephant bathing".
I look where you're pointing and say, "I don't see it, please explain..."
You say, "It's obvious!"
I say, "I still don't see it - how is it like an elephant?" 
You explain, "The trunk is at the bottom right, but folded back to spray over its back; you can see the tail sticking up on the left there, about half way up, and the ears are flapping at the top, near that con trail..."
I say, "Oh yes... I see what you mean; although it looks more like a squirrel to me - the bit you said was the trunk looks more like the tail of a squirrel facing the other way..."
You say, "Hmmm, I see what you mean, but it's clearly an elephant"

That way, we both learn something about how other people think, which broadens our horizons, but we don't have to compromise on our individual views of the world.

There's room for further discussion in this scenario. But at present, the needle is stuck;

I'm saying, "Please explain how it's an elephant - I still don't see it"
And you're saying, "It's obviously an elephant! your silly belief that clouds are just water droplets is stopping you seeing the elephant!"
I'm saying, "Please explain how it's an elephant - I still don't see it"
Rinse & repeat.

Do you see what I'm trying to say?

I know clouds can resemble the shapes of things - I see them myself, and I can usually see the shapes other people point out; but you're just jabbing your finger at the sky, telling me it's not just water droplets, it also looks like an elephant...

I almost certainly won't agree with your reasons for your assertions about science and materialism, but I'd like to hear what those reason are - so I can understand why you believe what you assert.
[/quote]

Just cut the crap  then , and answer my questions first , instead of sending the ball back to me over and over again , instead of telling me silly bed stories for kids  , then and only then , i will answer yours :
I have been asking this same core question explicitly or implicitly in one form or another for so long now , in vain : nobody , including yourself , can give an answer to : cannot be answered , simply because the materialist 'scientific world view ", or rather the materialist conception of nature is , obviously ...false :

Why do you think that reality as a whole is just material or physical then ,once again ? Why do you take it for granted as the "scientific world view " : when did science ever prove that materialist "fact ", or rather that materialist core belief assumption to be "true" that reality as a whole is just material or physical ? when ? = never , ever , obviously .
Just try to deliver your own materialist "extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the materialist version of reality as a whole , the materialist version of reality that's been taken for granted as the alleged scientific world view " , an alleged 'scientific world view " that is,obviously  ..false .
Deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 19:58:54
Depends largely of which world view do you hold or believe in : has nothing to do with reason, science , logic....what you have been saying at least .

It's direct applied reason. The fact that most people don't get it only goes to show how irrational they are: you put a proof directly in front of them and they reject it out of nothing more than stupidity.

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"God's existence has been disproved ? " by whom , by what when how where ?

By simple, applied reason.

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Congratulations : you are such an unique genius that you have just solved this unsolved mystery even thousands of years of ancient philosophy , cholastics , modern philosophy , could not solve , obviously = God's existence can , obviously , neither be proved nor disproved : trying to either prove or disprove the existence of God was , once again , just an ancient Greek silly stupid cultural habit sport that was taken over by scholastics , and by modern philosophy , later on, in vain .
Even the modern analytical philosophy had already abandoned that 'search " ,for obvious reasons .

You cannot get cattle to accept any proof. The cattle simply believe what they believe and think they are right.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 20:11:29
Depends largely of which world view do you hold or believe in : has nothing to do with reason, science , logic....what you have been saying at least .

It's direct applied reason. The fact that most people don't get it only goes to show how irrational they are: you put a proof directly in front of them and they reject it out of nothing more than stupidity.

(Why didn't you , by the way ,try to answer why do you take the materialist "scientific world view " for granted as such? )

Are you calling me stupid , just because i am a religious believer , that's no question, obviously :
You are the one who should be called , and rightly so, the most stupid irrational sheep in all mankind's history ever (Cognitive intelligence is obviously a lower form of intellect , not the highest ) , together with the followers of that materialist dogmatic orthodox exclusive irrational secular false religion that has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view ", ironically enough : that false "scientific world view " that's been THE biggest  elaborate and absurd implausible scam and ultimate con in all mankind's history for that matter .
Complete balloney stupid non-sense make-believe  of yours here above : you are in fact just saying : my materialist mechanistic belief is better than yours = grow up = childish : reason has nothing to do with that + many highly intelligent people, scientists , thinkers .../were /are and will be religious people  ... + many great scientific discoveries were discovered/are being discovered/and will be discovered as well   by many religious scientists ....
Not to mention the fact that even science itself did originate from the very epistemology of a particular holy book at that .

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"God's existence has been disproved ? " by whom , by what when how where ?

By simple, applied reason.

Bullshit : God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved = thousands of years of mankind's thought did prove just that fact to be true + that's something beyond human reason, science , logic ...obviously .
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Congratulations : you are such an unique genius that you have just solved this unsolved mystery even thousands of years of ancient philosophy , cholastics , modern philosophy , could not solve , obviously = God's existence can , obviously , neither be proved nor disproved : trying to either prove or disprove the existence of God was , once again , just an ancient Greek silly stupid cultural habit sport that was taken over by scholastics , and by modern philosophy , later on, in vain .
Even the modern analytical philosophy had already abandoned that 'search " ,for obvious reasons .

You cannot get cattle to accept any proof. The cattle simply believe what they believe and think they are right.

Well, self-projections, i guess :

When you will be able to reject that materialist mechanistic false conception of nature you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " without question like a brainless sheep , then and only then , i would take you seriously on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 20:29:23
Very predictable indeed : 

This has been turning into an ugly counter-productive and offtopic exchange ,exit strategies :

I really did predict that some of these materialist friends of ours would try to bring up the issues of God and religions , just to avoid  answering why they have been taking the materialist 'scientific world view " for granted as such without question = a materialist "scientific world view " that's ,obviously ...false .

Well, as atheist French nobel prize winner for literature Albert Camus once said ,so eloquently and so truely ,  or in words to the same effect at least :

"We prefer to judge and accuse others , just in order to avoid being accused and judged ...ourselves "

In short :

I will not be answering any materialist , per definition, non-sense regarding God or religions , from now on .

No wonder that there is no God , simply because the materialist false "scientific world view " says so , no wonder : how convenient and handy indeed :
Of course there can be no God, if one would reduce reality as a whole to just physics and chemistry , the more when one would take that false materialist conception of nature for granted as the 'scientific world view " : how convenient .

Materialism is , obviously ,false , not because it intrinsically and , per definition, rejects God or religions, but simply because reality cannot be just material or physical ,no way .
Otherwise , folks , just try to answer the question why do you think reality as a whole is just material or physical , why do you take that false materialist conception of nature for granted as the "scientific world view  " then ...
Deal ?
None of you here or anybodyelse for that matter can answer that question, simply because materialism is ...false , obviously .

To say , there is no evidence for the existence of the immaterial is no evidence of abscence of the existence of the immaterial :
Abscence of evidence is not always evidence of abscence .
Science should and will develop new ways of understanding explaining describing reality as a whole ,when science will be delievered from materialism as a false secular dogmatic orthodox exclusive religion .


Religion, or just mine in my case then here ,  has been stimulating experience , personal experience ....before science ever learned to do so : even science istelf did originate from the very epistemology of the holy book of that particular religion thus , once again.

Reason, experience , logic , science , the seeking of knowledge in the broader sense ...........are even religious duties in my own belief = forms of worship of God ..

Achhh...

End of story regarding this offtopic subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 20:51:39
Simply ...disgusting is what this discussion has been turned into, for obvious materialist "reasons " ,instead of addressing the obvious falsehood of the materialist 'scientific world view "  at hand .
If one wanna talk about God, religions ...feel free to start a thread on the subject on some religious forums, not a a science one such as this one .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 20:54:32
(Why didn't you , by the way ,try to answer why do you take the materialist "scientific world view " for granted as such? )

Reason is the only tool we have. As soon as you reject it you have nothing and there's no point in discussing anything.

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Complete balloney stupid non-sense make-believe  : you are in fact just saying : my materialist mechanistic belief is better than yours = grow up = childish : reason has nothing to do with that + many highly intelligent people, scientists , thinkers .../were /are and will be religious people  ... + many great scientific discoveries were discovered/are being discovered/and will be discovered as well   by many religious scientists ....
Not to mention the fact that even science itself did originate from the very epistemology of a particular holy book at that .

Religious people apply reason selectively, so they often can and do make valid conclusions about things where their irrational beliefs don't trip them up. Holy books are typically full of selective reasoning where reason is used to justify what the ancient philosophers who wrote them wanted to believe, while any point where the exact same system of reasoning disproves what they wanted to believe was simply studiously ignored. They are riddled with contradictions which they steadfastly refuse to consider.

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"God's existence has been disproved ? " by whom , by what when how where ?

By simple, applied reason.

Bullshit : God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved = thousands of years of mankind's thought did prove just that fact to be true + that's something beyond human reason, science , logic ...obviously .

Repeating an incorrect assertion doesn't trump a reasoned proof. Thousands of years of idiocy count for nothing.

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You cannot get cattle to accept any proof. The cattle simply believe what they believe and think they are right.

Well, self-projections, i guess :

There is a clear problem in that person A who is of intelligence X has extreme difficulty recognising that person B who is of intelligence X+10 is more intelligent than person A. Whenever B says something that A disagrees with, A tends to assume that B is wrong. B knows that B is right, but A merely believes that A is right. The only thing that makes a difference between them is that one of them is right and the other is wrong. How can you tell whether you are in the position of A or B?

In this case it's easy. You look to see who's being logical and who isn't. If a required quality of God is that he created everything, clearly he had to create the magic/mechanism by which he can create things, and clearly he can't do that until he has got that capability that he wants to create, so he can't ever get started. There is no rational way round this problem. That quality of God is disproved - he cannot have created everything.

In the earlier example, a required quality of God is that he understands everything, but to understand everything he has to understand the entire mechanism behind everything. As soon as he understands everything, he understands himself to be nothing more exciting than a natural mechanistic system which leaves him with no justification for calling himself God. He would not be so stupid as to think he is God unless he is heavily deluded.

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When you will be able to reject that materialist mechanistic false conception of nature you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " without question like a brainless sheep , then and only then , i would take you seriously on the subject .

It is you who is being brainless by rejecting science and reason. You're left with nothing to hang your hat on other than magic. You call magic science and refuse to recognise that it is magic, but you will only fool irrational people who already share your beliefs.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 21:01:43
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Are you calling me stupid , just because i am a religious believer , that's no question, obviously :
You are the one who should be called , and rightly so, the most stupid irrational sheep in all mankind's history ever (Cognitive intelligence is obviously a lower form of intellect , not the highest ) , together with the followers of that materialist dogmatic orthodox exclusive irrational secular false religion that has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view ", ironically enough : that false "scientific world view " that's been THE biggest  elaborate and absurd implausible scam and ultimate con in all mankind's history for that matter .

I'm calling almost everyone stupid. The world is run by idiots who do all the wrong things. It is the nature of man to be stupid. We will be saved by machines though, machines which do nothing but apply correct reasoning and which do not reject correct proofs on the basis of silly beliefs.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 21:10:51
Very predictable indeed : 

This has been turning into an ugly counter-productive and offtopic exchange ,exit strategies :

I really did predict that some of these materialist friends of ours would try to bring up the issues of God and religions , just to avoid  answering why they have been taking the materialist 'scientific world view " for granted as such without question = a materialist "scientific world view " that's ,obviously ...false .

Quite a few of your posts ended with the word God sitting all by itself at the bottom as if it was your answer to everything. What was it doing there?

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Materialism is , obviously ,false , not because it intrinsically and , per definition, rejects God or religions, but simply because reality cannot be just material or physical ,no way .

If God was possible, science would not reject God but would happily set out to explain God mechanistically.

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Otherwise , folks , just try to answer the question why do you think reality as a whole is just material or physical , why do you take that false materialist conception of nature for granted as the "scientific world view  " then ...

I'm not interested in whether it's material/physical. What matters is whether it is mechanistic. If it is, then it is material/physical. If it is not, then it is magical.

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Religion, or just mine in my case then here ,  has been stimulating experience , personal experience ....before science ever learned to do so : even science istelf did originate from the very epistemology of the holy book of that particular religion thus , once again.

Science existed before religion. Religion is simply bad science from a time when science wasn't always done properly and baseless assertions about beings that don't exist (or which aren't what they claim) became tied up in it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 21:12:50
Simply ...disgusting is what this discussion has been turned into, for obvious materialist "reasons " ,instead of addressing the obvious falsehood of the materialist 'scientific world view "  at hand .
If one wanna talk about God, religions ...feel free to start a thread on the subject on some religious forums, not a a science one such as this one .

That would be fine except that underlying everything you're doing here is a belief in something which drives you to rubbish real science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 21:20:44
(Why didn't you , by the way ,try to answer why do you take the materialist "scientific world view " for granted as such? )

Reason is the only tool we have. As soon as you reject it you have nothing and there's no point in discussing anything.

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Complete balloney stupid non-sense make-believe  : you are in fact just saying : my materialist mechanistic belief is better than yours = grow up = childish : reason has nothing to do with that + many highly intelligent people, scientists , thinkers .../were /are and will be religious people  ... + many great scientific discoveries were discovered/are being discovered/and will be discovered as well   by many religious scientists ....
Not to mention the fact that even science itself did originate from the very epistemology of a particular holy book at that .

Religious people apply reason selectively, so they often can and do make valid conclusions about things where their irrational beliefs don't trip them up. Holy books are typically full of selective reasoning where reason is used to justify what the ancient philosophers who wrote them wanted to believe, while any point where the exact same system of reasoning disproves what they wanted to believe was simply studiously ignored. They are riddled with contradictions which they steadfastly refuse to consider.

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"God's existence has been disproved ? " by whom , by what when how where ?

By simple, applied reason.

Bullshit : God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved = thousands of years of mankind's thought did prove just that fact to be true + that's something beyond human reason, science , logic ...obviously .

Repeating an incorrect assertion doesn't trump a reasoned proof. Thousands of years of idiocy count for nothing.

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You cannot get cattle to accept any proof. The cattle simply believe what they believe and think they are right.

Well, self-projections, i guess :

There is a clear problem in that person A who is of intelligence X has extreme difficulty recognising that person B who is of intelligence X+10 is more intelligent than person A. Whenever B says something that A disagrees with, A tends to assume that B is wrong. B knows that B is right, but A merely believes that A is right. The only thing that makes a difference between them is that one of them is right and the other is wrong. How can you tell whether you are in the position of A or B?

In this case it's easy. You look to see who's being logical and who isn't. If a required quality of God is that he created everything, clearly he had to create the magic/mechanism by which he can create things, and clearly he can't do that until he has got that capability that he wants to create, so he can't ever get started. There is no rational way round this problem. That quality of God is disproved - he cannot have created everything.

In the earlier example, a required quality of God is that he understands everything, but to understand everything he has to understand the entire mechanism behind everything. As soon as he understands everything, he understands himself to be nothing more exciting than a natural mechanistic system which leaves him with no justification for calling himself God. He would not be so stupid as to think he is God unless he is heavily deluded.

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When you will be able to reject that materialist mechanistic false conception of nature you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " without question like a brainless sheep , then and only then , i would take you seriously on the subject .

It is you who is being brainless by rejecting science and reason. You're left with nothing to hang your hat on other than magic. You call magic science and refuse to recognise that it is magic, but you will only fool irrational people who already share your beliefs.
[/quote]

(I have been rejecting just materialism in science that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view" ,it goes without saying that  I am extremely pro-science proper , that's why i would love to see the latter getting liberated from materialism that's just a false world view in science , once again )

You know what :
I think you were just trying to derail this discussion you , obviously , cannot handle by talking about God and religions , instead of daring to address the obvious falsehood of the materialist "scientific world view " = you are just "reasoning " from a false materialist point of view = from the materialist belief assumptions ' point of view thus regarding the nature of reality as a whole , that's all : neither reason , logic nor science have anything whatsoever to do with all that you were saying .
So, i am not gonna lower myself to your level by being dragged by you into an ungly exchange of insults .
I am not gonna talk about God and religion on a science forum either .

Just try to address the core issue here at hand concerning the obvious falsehood of the materialist "scientific world view "  , instead of these silly childish scary bed stories for kids you have been telling us : Grow up .
You are just delivering materialist belief assumptions that are , per definition, false and can easily be refuted : in fact, materialism is so absurd , so childish , so implausible ,so false , so inconsistent incoherent ...you name it , that it is extremely puzzling how relatively intelligent people (cognititive intelligence is , obviously , not the highest form of intellect , not even remotely close thus ) , extremely puzzling how relatively intelligent folks can suscribe to that ridiculous materialism , the more when they take it for granted as the "scientific world view " without question , amazing :

In short :
Materialism is so irrelevant and so unworthy of any criticism even , simply because it is self-defeating and self-refuting = an understatement , materialism is so childish that i would have never bothered to mention it even , if it has not been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " ,really ...amazing .

Pathetic ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 21:26:19
We're not talking religion or God on this science forum :
We are just talking about the materialist "scientific world view " that's false, science proper gotta be liberated from  .
The materialist false 'scientific world view " that's just magic in science proper ,once again .
You can sing all day and night long about God and religion any way you like it , but , that won't make the simple obvious and undeniable fact go away that the materialist 'scientific world view " is false = has nothing whatsoever to do with science proper i do love so much , you have no idea .
Ciao.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2013 21:36:34
I am perfectly entiteld to have a world view of my own : i just do keep it outside of science ,and i have also never pretended  that my own world view was  'scientific ",  unlike materialism that's not only a secular false religion that has been hijacking science for so long now , but materialism also does sell its own world view to the people as the "scientific world view " : what a huge crime against humanity in fact that has been .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 07/11/2013 21:42:36
(I have been rejecting just materialism in science that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view" ,it goes without saying that  I am extremely pro-science proper , that's why i would love to see the latter getting liberated from materialism that's just a false world view in science , once again )

You are not pro-science at all. Science is about determining how things work and what they are. You are only interested in muddying the water by branding it as materialism and asserting that there's something else which is being missed, while refusing to call that something else "magic".

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You know what :
I think you were just trying to derail this discussion

When I posted about how God can be disproved, it was a reply to someone else in this thread and had nothing to do with you. You could have ignored it, but you took it as an attack on your position. Why would you take it as an attack on your position if God is not tied up in your position? That reveals a lot.

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you , obviously , cannot handle by talking about God and religions , instead of daring to address the obvious falsehood of the materialist "scientific world view " = you are just "reasoning " from a false materialist point of view = from the materialist belief assumptions ' point of view thus regarding the nature of reality as a whole , that's all : neither reason , logic nor science have anything whatsoever to do with all that you were saying .

Reason has everything to do with what I've been saying. I'm simply showing you what happens if you apply it and accept what it tells you. If you reject what it tells you, you are rejecting reason.

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So, i am not gonna lower myself to your level by being dragged by you into an ungly exchange of insults .
I am not gonna talk about God and religion on a science forum either .

You started all the insults long ago (see the first few pages of the thread). I never responded to them. I haven't intentionally insulted you now either, but merely stated truths. Most people are stupid (evidence - look at the crazy way the world is run). I didn't say that you are stupid, so if you are putting yourself in that camp you are insulting yourself.

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Just try to address the core issue here at hand concerning the obvious falsehood of the materialist "scientific world view "  , instead of these silly childish scary bed stories for kids you have been telling us : Grow up .

I've already addressed everything that's come up where it's been relevant. You just keep ignoring the answers and repeat the same old questions over and over again. You're stuck in a rut of self-imposed ignorance because you don't take anything on board. You don't make any progress. You are shackled in your thinking by false beliefs which won't let go of you.

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You are just delivering materialist belief assumptions that are , per definition, false and can easily be refuted : in fact, materialism is so absurd , so childish , so implausible ,so false , so inconsistent incoherent ...you name it , that it is extremely puzzling how relatively intelligent people (cognititive intelligence is , obviously , not the highest form of intellect , not even remotely close thus ) , extremely puzzling how relatively intelligent folks can suscribe to that ridiculous materialism , the more when they take it for granted as the "scientific world view " without question , amazing :

You're just a propaganda regurgitating machine. Mechanisms are what matter to understanding things. If you want to attack me, attack mechanisms and attack the whole idea of understanding and of reason. You are fixated on materialism and will spend your whole life attacking it instead of recognising that I base things not on materials but on mechanism.

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In short :
Materialism is so irrelevant and so unworthy of any criticism even , simply because it is self-defeating and self-refuting = an understatement , materialism is so childish that i would have never bothered to mention it even , if it has not been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " ,really ...amazing .

Pathetic ...

It is a warped idea of science that you are attacking, but you are blind. Admittedly there are a lot of people in the science camp who want consciousness to ping into existence by magic and who wrongly believe that this is science, but most of what they do is based in uncovering mechanism. Language and thought depend on mechanism, not magic. Consciousness is the one sticking-point, and that's what this thread should be about, but you widened it out into an attack on science at large, dragging in an enormous tonnage of things that are already understood mechanistically and asserting that they are not understood even though they are. You are simply someone who specialises in muddying the water in order to create a tsunami of unnecessary difficulties which turn the discussion into nothing but pointless, bloated fluff.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/11/2013 02:35:31

In short :

Just cut the crap  then , and answer my questions first , instead of sending the ball back to me over and over again , instead of telling me silly bed stories for kids  , then and only then , i will answer yours :

Deal ? [/b]

Don, people have answered your questions, but you reject the answer. Fine, that's your prerogative. But when they throw the ball back in your court, and say "okay, what's your theory? How does the immaterial work? Explain some immaterial processes in detail" you just respond, once again, with only and the same complaints about materialism. You also equate scientists choosing to investigate anything material with with rejection of the immaterial, denial of it, an attack on it, and yes, even a conspiracy to suppress information or investigation of it. That is just an assumption on your part. Finally, your condescension is irritating, when you constantly imply that anyone who disagrees with you is confused, "not reading carefully", "cannot grasp," and is silly, childish, etc.

"Got that? Deal?"
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/11/2013 06:05:39
I'm sorry, am I repeating myself? Am I being redundant? Am I saying things over and over?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/11/2013 09:24:51
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Bullshit : God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved

Not quite. Every defined god is disprovable, but the moment you show the  definition to be selfcontradictory or inconsistent with observation, the proponent says "well that's not quite what I meant by god". Which by infinite recursion of the scientific process leaves us with the definition of god as "that which I refuse to define, cannot be observed, and does not act in a consistent manner". Hence no possible debate with a rational being.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/11/2013 10:57:59
I'm sorry, am I repeating myself? Am I being redundant? Am I saying things over and over?
No, that would be Don. After months of intemperate repetition, he still seems quite unable to articulate the reasons for his odd beliefs about science and the 'immaterial realm', or to describe what difference his ...eccentric... suggestions would make. Which raises the question of whether he actually has any reasons, or is instead just regurgitating the results of indoctrination. Either way, it makes for a poor discussion when one party is stuck on ignore and repeat. It was entertaining for a while, but it's become boring.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 16:34:51
I'm sorry, am I repeating myself? Am I being redundant? Am I saying things over and over?
No, that would be Don. After months of intemperate repetition, he still seems quite unable to articulate the reasons for his odd beliefs about science and the 'immaterial realm', or to describe what difference his ...eccentric... suggestions would make. Which raises the question of whether he actually has any reasons, or is instead just regurgitating the results of indoctrination. Either way, it makes for a poor discussion when one party is stuck on ignore and repeat. It was entertaining for a while, but it's become boring.

Oh, boy , if i knew what  the potantially valid alternative to materialism in science would be ,would look like or how it should be applied to science as a result  , i wouldn't be here ,don't you think ?, even Nagel, Sheldrake and others do not know .
As Nagel said in that book of his,or in words to that same effect at least : I am here to state the  problem which represents  , as Sheldrake stated in his "Science set free ..." book , a deeper malaise at the heart of science , i am not here to propose a solution to the problem i do not have yet , if ever .
Knowing the problem is half way to solving it eventually .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 16:45:30

In short :

Just cut the crap  then , and answer my questions first , instead of sending the ball back to me over and over again , instead of telling me silly bed stories for kids  , then and only then , i will answer yours :

Deal ? [/b]

Don, people have answered your questions, but you reject the answer. Fine, that's your prerogative. But when they throw the ball back in your court, and say "okay, what's your theory? How does the immaterial work? Explain some immaterial processes in detail" you just respond, once again, with only and the same complaints about materialism. You also equate scientists choosing to investigate anything material with with rejection of the immaterial, denial of it, an attack on it, and yes, even a conspiracy to suppress information or investigation of it. That is just an assumption on your part. Finally, your condescension is irritating, when you constantly imply that anyone who disagrees with you is confused, "not reading carefully", "cannot grasp," and is silly, childish, etc.

"Got that? Deal?"
[/quote]

Nobody here or elsewhere has an answer to that core question at hand : why have people , especially scientists ,  been assuming  that reality as a whole is just material or physical ?, why has materialism been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view "?

No one can answer just that ,  simply because materialism is false ,and hence "the scientific world view " is therefore also false .
As for the rest of your speculations = irrelevant .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 17:00:29
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Are you calling me stupid , just because i am a religious believer , that's no question, obviously :
You are the one who should be called , and rightly so, the most stupid irrational sheep in all mankind's history ever (Cognitive intelligence is obviously a lower form of intellect , not the highest ) , together with the followers of that materialist dogmatic orthodox exclusive irrational secular false religion that has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view ", ironically enough : that false "scientific world view " that's been THE biggest  elaborate and absurd implausible scam and ultimate con in all mankind's history for that matter .

I'm calling almost everyone stupid. The world is run by idiots who do all the wrong things. It is the nature of man to be stupid. We will be saved by machines though, machines which do nothing but apply correct reasoning and which do not reject correct proofs on the basis of silly beliefs.
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The exact same goes for you also  and much more  ,ironically enough , in relation to your silly mechanistic materialist belief , the more when you do take the latter for granted as the 'scientific world view ", the more when we do take into consideration the obvious simple and undeniable fact that materialism is ...false , and hence "the scientific world view " is therefore also false= you are therefore way worse than any given ignorant irrational religious fanatic : you do not only take your materialist belief for granted as  being  "true ", but , you also take it for granted as the 'scientific world view " .

Congratulations then .

P.S.: To say that man-made machines can solve the problem of certain stubborn beliefs people hold in the face of counter-evidence  is ludicrous and tragic -hilarious , it is like saying that science is not a human activity, or that objectivity even in science is not a ...myth.

Well, try to solve your own obvious problem first then , regarding the simple fact that you do take your materialist mechanistic core belief assumptions for granted not only as being "true ", but also as "the scientific world view "  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 17:24:34
Folks :
Since any attempts to try to describe, or  explain and therefore understand reality ,or rather just some parts of it at least , just the ones science mainly can approach empirically ,science that does deal with reality piecemeal thus , since any attempts thus to try to describe or  explain reality and therefore to try to understand it  must include the mental side of life that's ,obviously , not reducible to the physical , then  naturalist  redctionism must be false and therefore naturalist materialism must be false also as a result , naturalist materialism that does require reductionism thus .
Even biology itself, and all the other physical sciences , cannot therefore remain just physical ways of approaching reality,since they must thus try to include the mental side of life that's not reducible to the physical  .
So, man must therefore try to develop new ways of understanding through science mainly that must include the mental .
How ?
Neither Nagel , Sheldrake or any other philosopher  or scientist for that matter can or pretend to be able yet to come up with a solution or with an alternative to materialism  in the form of a more or less valid non-reductionist naturalist conception of nature in science .
Nagel just tried to figure out a way out of this predicament in science , by assuming that nature is intrinsically teleological , and an intrinsic "generator " of life , mind , consciousness ...from the very beginning  = simply a ludicrous kind of non-reductionist naturalist metaphysics .
Have any suggestions or better ideas on the subject ,folks ?
Thanks , appreciate indeed .
Cheers .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/11/2013 18:18:10
... any attempts thus to try to describe or  explain reality and therefore to try to understand it  must include the mental side of life that's ,obviously , not reducible to the physical , then  naturalist  redctionism must be false and therefore naturalist materialism must be false also as a result , naturalist materialism that does require reductionism thus .
Even biology itself, and all the other physical sciences , cannot therefore remain just physical ways of approaching reality,since they must thus try to include the mental side of life that's not reducible to the physical  .
I suggest you reconsider your assumption that the mental side of life cannot be explained as a product of material processes.

Alternatively, you could try explaining why you think it can't be.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 08/11/2013 18:50:05
The exact same goes for you also  and much more  ,ironically enough , in relation to your silly mechanistic materialist belief , the more when you do take the latter for granted as the 'scientific world view ", the more when we do take into consideration the obvious simple and undeniable fact that materialism is ...false , and hence "the scientific world view " is therefore also false= you are therefore way worse than any given ignorant irrational religious fanatic : you do not only take your materialist belief for granted as  being  "true ", but , you also take it for granted as the 'scientific world view " .

I've told you what science should be. It doesn't matter how many/few scientists do science correctly, just as it doesn't matter that religions don't do science correctly - real science is real science and it is governed by reason (without which you can't think usefully at all). Any break from reason is a break from science. You are now revealing more about your irrationality by rejecting not just materialism, but the whole idea of understanding cause-and-effect mechanism. You are anti-science.

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P.S.: To say that man-made machines can solve the problem of certain stubborn beliefs people hold in the face of counter-evidence  is ludicrous and tragic -hilarious , it is like saying that science is not a human activity, or that objectivity even in science is not a ...myth.

Intelligent machines will bring up future generations to be able to think properly without being shackled by religious propaganda. Religious books like to bombard the reader with reasoned arguments to try to prove that God exists, but they don't hold water. An AGI system will provide objections for the reader at every turn, pointing out all the tricks being used by the human creator of the religion which are being used to try to con them. They are all written by well-meaning philosophers who wanted to make a better world but who tried to do so by telling lies, and the result is books which are riddled with faults which show them up as false. Brainwashed people don't tend to pick up on the faults, and they are further bombarded by water-muddying commentaries by other people around them which serve to make them give up thinking for themselves, but AGI systems will turn all of that upside-down and give everyone a proper commentary which blows the whole thing out of the water. The same will happen with bad science, AGI systems having the patience to argue everything through to the utter end over and over again with every individual on the planet - it's impossible for humans to do this because there are so few that can see where science has gone wrong and they're up against armies of people who are trained to believe what they're taught and not to question it, just like with religions.

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Well, try to solve your own obvious problem first then , regarding the simple fact that you do take your materialist mechanistic core belief assumptions for granted not only as being "true ", but also as "the scientific world view " .

I don't take them as the scientific world view. I'm only telling you what science should be if it was always done properly. For the most part though, it is done properly - there are just a few little areas here and there where reason is not being applied correctly and where claims are being made out of ignorance which don't add up (as with consciousness where magical emergence is the mainstream).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 18:53:48
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... any attempts thus to try to describe or  explain reality and therefore to try to understand it  must include the mental side of life that's ,obviously , not reducible to the physical , then  naturalist  redctionism must be false and therefore naturalist materialism must be false also as a result , naturalist materialism that does require reductionism thus .
Even biology itself, and all the other physical sciences , cannot therefore remain just physical ways of approaching reality,since they must thus try to include the mental side of life that's not reducible to the physical  .
I suggest you reconsider your assumption that the mental side of life cannot be explained as a product of material processes.

Alternatively, you could try explaining why you think it can't be.

The material, physical or biological  processes cannot "give rise " to totally different "emergent phenomena " processes whose non-physical non-biological non-material "components " are totally different , qua nature , not only qua genre thus , from their alleged original physical material or biological "components " .


So now you have said where it is, perhaps you will enlighten us as to what consciousness does and whether, since is pervades every atom, it is pre-existent to any organism rather than an emergent property of an ensemble.

Emergent property phenomena does occur only at the physical , biological and material level, i guess = emergent phenomena are just different from their original components qua genre , not qua nature = physical ,material or biological "systems " do give rise only to material, physical or biological emergent phenomena thus  .
Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them " = consciousness as a non-physical non -material non-biological phenomena cannot thus have "emerged " from the physical material biological evolved complexity of the physical brain,no way thus = that's just materialist magic in science regarding the origins and nature of consciousness , the latter that's allegedly just a biological phenomena or process  = how convenient for materialists to try to reduce the non-reducible to the physical just to make it fit into their mechanistic materialist false "scientific world view " = materialist magic in science = materialist belief assumptions , no empirical facts  .
Consciousness is non-physical and non-local thus ,even though it maybe  permeates every atom , cell and organ of ours and beyond ...I dunno for sure, not even remotely close thus  = who does ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 08/11/2013 19:09:45
... Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them "

Have you not played with "Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life)", where space-invader type patterns emerge whose appearance and behaviour are more complex than the rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Rules) which created them.

[ similar patterns appear in real life  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30)]

Quote from: wikipedia.org/Conway's Game of Life
Conway's Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Origins

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 19:37:50
The exact same goes for you also  and much more  ,ironically enough , in relation to your silly mechanistic materialist belief , the more when you do take the latter for granted as the 'scientific world view ", the more when we do take into consideration the obvious simple and undeniable fact that materialism is ...false , and hence "the scientific world view " is therefore also false= you are therefore way worse than any given ignorant irrational religious fanatic : you do not only take your materialist belief for granted as  being  "true ", but , you also take it for granted as the 'scientific world view " .
I've told you what science should be. It doesn't matter how many/few scientists do science correctly, just as it doesn't matter that religions don't do science correctly - real science is real science and it is governed by reason (without which you can't think usefully at all). Any break from reason is a break from science. You are now revealing more about your irrationality by rejecting not just materialism, but the whole idea of understanding cause-and-effect mechanism. You are anti-science.

" I am aniti-science ? " , so is Nagel, Sheldrake and many other philosophers scientists and other anti-reductionists as well, logically,paradoxically enough  .
I do love science so much in fact , as  those philsosphers , scientists and other anti-reductionists do  , that i would love to see science delivered from the false reductionist mechanistic materialism in fact thus, in order for science to be less dogmatic and more scientific  = I am way more pro-science thus than you could ever be , my friend , sorry, simply because you have been turning science into just a materialist secular exclusive dogmatic mechanistic religion you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " ,without question so far .
It is reasonable enough to assume that the non-physical mental is non -reducible to the physical , and therefore all physical sciences for that matter ,including biology and modern physics thus , must include the non-physical mental in their approach of reality as a result :they have no choice but to do that ,if they want to  fully deserve being   called sciences at least :  they cannot keep on reducing the non-physical  to just the physical it cannot be reduced to , you cannot just decide  to reduce the irreducible mental to the physical via some false materialist mechanistic belief of yours on the subject , just in order to make it fit into your owm materialist reductionist mechanistic conception of nature ,or world view , while assuming that that's the 'scientific world view " : you cannot have it both ways thus , no way ,simply because reality as a whole stares you in the face via both its physical and non-physical eyes , the physical and the non-physical eyes of reality as a whole ,so to speak = you cannot just keep on behaving as if both eyes of reality are physical ,just to suit your own mechanistic materialist purpose at the expense of science and at the expense of the truth ,  or that the non-physical eye of reality does not exist as such .

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P.S.: To say that man-made machines can solve the problem of certain stubborn beliefs people hold in the face of counter-evidence  is ludicrous and tragic -hilarious , it is like saying that science is not a human activity, or that objectivity even in science is not a ...myth.

Intelligent machines will bring up future generations to be able to think properly without being shackled by religious propaganda. Religious books like to bombard the reader with reasoned arguments to try to prove that God exists, but they don't hold water. An AGI system will provide objections for the reader at every turn, pointing out all the tricks being used by the human creator of the religion which are being used to try to con them. They are all written by well-meaning philosophers who wanted to make a better world but who tried to do so by telling lies, and the result is books which are riddled with faults which show them up as false. Brainwashed people don't tend to pick up on the faults, and they are further bombarded by water-muddying commentaries by other people around them which serve to make them give up thinking for themselves, but AGI systems will turn all of that upside-down and give everyone a proper commentary which blows the whole thing out of the water. The same will happen with bad science, AGI systems having the patience to argue everything through to the utter end over and over again with every individual on the planet - it's impossible for humans to do this because there are so few that can see where science has gone wrong and they're up against armies of people who are trained to believe what they're taught and not to question it, just like with religions.

Will those machines of the future be able to tell the people that the materialist 'scientific world view " is ,obviously , false ? =   just a false materialist conception of nature : Don't think so , if they would happen to be made by materialists such as yourself .
I do not buy that whole idea of yours , simply because any machines for that matter are man-made , and can thus never surpass man as a whole package , even though they can be faster in calculations , can be better at making and designing models , prediction models ....= man will always have the upper hand over or above  man's  own created machines .

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Well, try to solve your own obvious problem first then , regarding the simple fact that you do take your materialist mechanistic core belief assumptions for granted not only as being "true ", but also as "the scientific world view " .

I don't take them as the scientific world view. I'm only telling you what science should be if it was always done properly. For the most part though, it is done properly - there are just a few little areas here and there where reason is not being applied correctly and where claims are being made out of ignorance which don't add up (as with consciousness where magical emergence is the mainstream).

Ironically paradoxically enough , you do take the materialist mechanistic core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality for granted as  being  "true " , and hence you do take the materialist mechanistic world view for granted as the " scientific world view " , without question .
That's precisely what the mainstream  scientific establishment or community has been doing for so long now = that's exactly what's wrong with science today = that's a way deeper malaise than just what you were mentioning thus .

Science will be certainly better off without materialism, no doubt about that : how ?,i wish i knew how ,  i dunno exactly yet , if ever thus .
Only time will tell then .
Let's hope we will all witness that ,during our short lifetimes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 19:44:25
... Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them "

Have you not played with "Conway's Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life)", where space-invader type patterns emerge whose appearance and behaviour are more complex than the rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Rules) which created them.

[ similar patterns appear in real life  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30)]

Quote from: wikipedia.org/Conway's Game of Life
Conway's Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Origins
[/quote]

I think you should read what i said regarding emergent phenomena here above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/11/2013 20:19:11
The material, physical or biological  processes cannot "give rise " to totally different "emergent phenomena " processes whose non-physical non-biological non-material "components " are totally different , qua nature , not only qua genre thus , from their alleged original physical material or biological "components " .
Emergence is all about the surprising generation of seemingly unrelated 'meta phenomena' of a higher level of abstraction, and that's what makes it such a fascinating subject.

Sadly, you seem to have the same grasp of emergence as you do of chaos theory. If you spent some time to understand emergence, you might see how it could be relevant. Unfortunately, your baseless insistence that consciousness cannot have a material origin will prevent you from ever recognising that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 08/11/2013 20:22:23
… you should read what i said regarding emergent phenomena here above

I did , you said 
... Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them "

i.e. you appear to be saying that emergent properties (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) "cannot" occur , when in reality they do : cellular automata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton) are an example , ( which can be used to simulate neurons (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0026610) , the hardware on which the software of consciousness runs ).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 20:28:38
… you should read what i said regarding emergent phenomena here above

I did , you said 
... Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them "

i.e. you appear to be saying that emergent properties "cannot" occur , when in reality they do : cellular automata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton) are an example , ( which can be used to simulate neurons (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0026610) , the hardware on which the software of consciousness runs ).
[/quote]

Yeah , i appear to be saying , but i did not say that : reread what i said then .
Appearances are deceptive indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 08/11/2013 20:37:56
" I am anti-science ? " , so is Nagel, Sheldrake and many other philosophers scientists and other anti-reductionists as well, logically,paradoxically enough  .

They are giving up on science and replacing it with a quest to not understand.

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I am way more pro-science thus than you could ever be , my friend , sorry, simply because you have been turning science into just a materialist secular exclusive dogmatic mechanistic religion you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " ,without question so far .

Your position is an abandonment of science. You can call that "science" all you like, but it is the opposite.

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It is reasonable enough to assume that the non-physical mental is non -reducible to the physical , and therefore all physical sciences for that matter ,including biology and modern physics thus , must include the non-physical mental in their approach of reality as a result :they have no choice but to do that ,if they want to  fully deserve being   called sciences at least :  they cannot keep on reducing the non-physical  to just the physical it cannot be reduced to , you cannot just decide  to reduce the irreducible mental to the physical via some false materialist mechanistic belief of yours on the subject , just in order to make it fit into your owm materialist reductionist mechanistic conception of nature ,or world view , while assuming that that's the 'scientific world view "

I'd take your argument seriously if you didn't keep telling me that things which can manifestly be explained mechanistically can't be understood mechanistically.

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Will those machines of the future be able to tell the people that the materialist 'scientific world view " is ,obviously , false ? =   just a false materialist conception of nature : Don't think so , if they would happen to be made by materialists such as yourself .

They will read the arguments on all sides without bias, yours included, and then they will judge them by means of reasoning and reject the ones which don't hold. When you tell these machines that they cannot do what they are doing (thinking and using language 100% mechanistically), they will reject your views on those points. In any place where your arguments do stack up though, they will recognise that.

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I do not buy that whole idea of yours , simply because any machines for that matter are man-made , and can thus never surpass man as a whole package , even though they can be faster in calculations , can be better at making and designing models , prediction models ....= man will always have the upper hand over or above  man's  own created machines .

No. People make mistakes in their thinking all over the shop, and although they can correct a lot of them, it's hard for them to remove them all. On many issues the thinking that needs to be done is just too deep and involves too much data, so the machines will always outthink them.

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Ironically paradoxically enough , you do take the materialist mechanistic core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality for granted as  being  "true " , and hence you do take the materialist mechanistic world view for granted as the " scientific world view " , without question .

The only thing I take for granted is that reason applies, because without it we cannot work out anything at all or argue about anything. Everything in my position is generated through applying reason to the data that comes in from the universe around me, and that is how AGI systems will work. There may be places where I'm failing to apply reason correctly which I haven't noticed, but AGI systems will pick up on those and set me on the right path. It will do the same for everyone else. Wherever anyone has a belief based on bad reasoning, it will show them the error of their ways.

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That's precisely what the mainstream  scientific establishment or community has been doing for so long now = that's exactly what's wrong with science today = that's a way deeper malaise than just what you were mentioning thus .

There is no way to do science properly than to do science properly. If you chuck out all attempts to understand things and deny that there are mechanisms behind the things that happen in the universe, you're left with anti-science where any assertion is as valid as any other, so you can spout any garbage you like and call it science. I know which kind of science I prefer.

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Science will be certainly better off without materialism, no doubt about that : how ?,i wish i knew how ,  i dunno exactly yet , if ever thus .
Only time will tell then .
Let's hope we will all witness that ,during our short lifetimes.

What has materialism got to do with it? What exactly is materialism anyway? Is it just stuff like matter, energy and the fabric of the universe or does it also include things of no material substance such as actions which play upon the material? Is it any kind of cause-and-effect interaction? If you define the term materialism narrowly, it doesn't cover anyone's position. If you define it more broadly, it includes my position where mechanism is key to understanding. If it includes mechanism, there is nothing that can interact with anything which doesn't depend upon mechanism. I really can't see what you think you're left with when you reject this wider sense of materialism, because as soon as you deny the role of mechanism, all you're left with is magic and an assertion that magic doesn't need any mechanism to operate. You can't get more anti-science than that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 20:38:25
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The material, physical or biological  processes cannot "give rise " to totally different "emergent phenomena " processes whose non-physical non-biological non-material "components " are totally different , qua nature , not only qua genre thus , from their alleged original physical material or biological "components " .
Emergence is all about the surprising generation of seemingly unrelated 'meta phenomena' of a higher level of abstraction, and that's what makes it such a fascinating subject.

Sadly, you seem to have the same grasp of emergence as you do of chaos theory. If you spent some time to understand emergence, you might see how it could be relevant. Unfortunately, your baseless insistence that consciousness cannot have a material origin will prevent you from ever recognising that.

That the non-physical consciousness allegedly 'emerged " via some inexplicable materialist magic from the complexity of the evolved physical   brain is a materialist reductionist mechanistic belief assumption that's not therefore an empirical one ,obviously , is a subject we did discuss earlier :
Try to sell that irrational stubborn unscientific materialist magical belief assumption of yours to David Cooper then haha : he does also reject it , and rightly so .
Emergent phenomena do occur only at the physical, material and biological level , once again .

The   non-physical   consciousness cannot have 'emerged " from  the   physical   brain , no matter how complex or evolved the latter might ever be ,obviously,simply because the 2 are totally different  from each other  , not only qua genre , but also qua nature= the nature of consciousness  is non-physical , that of the brain is physical   .

Re-read carefully what i said earlier on the same subject then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 08/11/2013 21:12:59
Yeah , i appear to be saying , but i did not say that : reread what i said then .
Appearances are deceptive indeed .

Then can you please explain to us , in simple concise terms if possible, how the meaning of what you have said ...

... Biological or any physical or material 'systems " for that matter cannot give rise to totally different phenomena qua their nature whose components are totally different from those that allegedly "gave rise to them "

differs from " emergent properties 'cannot' occur ". (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg423573#msg423573)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 08/11/2013 21:19:42
Up to a point, it's easy to see how people can make the mistake of thinking that consciousness can emerge out of something complex, but when you move from woolly feelings of existence and feelings of understanding to somthing with more bite such as pain and suffering, it shows that the emergence explanation fails. You cannot have suffering without a sufferer, but a sufferer cannot emerge by magic out of a set of parts which are incapable of suffering. If a system of a number of parts contains a sufferer but none of the individual parts is or contains a sufferer, you have a contradiction rather than an explanation. Ten (you can substitute this number with any number of your choice) parts of something cannot suffer without at least one of those parts suffering. What is there in a system of ten parts that might exist to suffer which doesn't exist in any of the ten parts? A geometrical arrangement? Can geometry be tortured? A plurality? Can plurality be tortured? That is the problem with the idea of emergence as an explanation of consciousness, because it depends on magic to make something exist to suffer that can't exist as anything that could realistically suffer.

That is science's biggest mistake, pushing this non-explanation as an explanation. It's manifestly wrong when it comes to pain and suffering, and by extension it's wrong about every other kind of quale too.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 21:47:47
" I am anti-science ? " , so is Nagel, Sheldrake and many other philosophers scientists and other anti-reductionists as well, logically,paradoxically enough  .

They are giving up on science and replacing it with a quest to not understand.

Why would they do just that ? Do they have some inexplicable grudge of some sort against science ? Come on, be serious : they just try to set science free from materialism as a false conception of nature : they are more pro-science thus than you could ever be , Dave , sorry to say that , but i have to .
There must be some more fundamental phenomena , processes or whatever that might be ,that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves : even a notion of law is just a  human projection .

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I am way more pro-science thus than you could ever be , my friend , sorry, simply because you have been turning science into just a materialist secular exclusive dogmatic mechanistic religion you have been taking for granted as the 'scientific world view " ,without question so far .

Your position is an abandonment of science. You can call that "science" all you like, but it is the opposite.

No , Dave : science tries to describe explain and therefore make us understand reality , so , science must therefore include the missing part of reality which has been labeled as non-existent or as just physical by the materialist mechanistic "scientific world view " thus .
You cannot just decide to pick a certain level of reality via some sort of belief of yours , and impose it as the "scientific world view " , as materialism has been doing all along : science must include in its search all levels of reality thus , including the non-physical , the one it can deal with empirically somehow at least .

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It is reasonable enough to assume that the non-physical mental is non -reducible to the physical , and therefore all physical sciences for that matter ,including biology and modern physics thus , must include the non-physical mental in their approach of reality as a result :they have no choice but to do that ,if they want to  fully deserve being   called sciences at least :  they cannot keep on reducing the non-physical  to just the physical it cannot be reduced to , you cannot just decide  to reduce the irreducible mental to the physical via some false materialist mechanistic belief of yours on the subject , just in order to make it fit into your owm materialist reductionist mechanistic conception of nature ,or world view , while assuming that that's the 'scientific world view "

I'd take your argument seriously if you didn't keep telling me that things which can manifestly be explained mechanistically can't be understood mechanistically.


There might be some more fundamental phenomena out there underlying even the laws of physics themselves : who know ?
I did not make reality the way it is , so, science has no choice but to deal with all parts of reality it can deal with empirically , including the non-physical thus .
Science is not a matter of like , dislike , taste , or a matter of opinions ,beliefs, science is a matter of ...facts : fact is , reality is not just material or physical ,as  the false materialist "scientific world view " has been assuming it to be for so long now ,thus .

So, what if it turns out to be that reality is not just a matter of laws of physics , mechanisms , cause and effect ,at its fundamental ultimate core ?
What if reality is somehow "governed " by more fundamental processes or whatever ,deep down, we cannot explain just in terms of laws ?
Sounds insane , but , that's a reasonable option to consider ,if we only would realise the fact that materialism is false , and hence the non-physical side of nature must be included in science .
I dunno .
In short :

We should't try to ossify science as to hold it imprisoned within some sort of particular exclusive orthodox dogmatic perceptions of reality of ours we might have .

Science should be free to engage reality in any way it can , without getting  restricted in its search by any beliefs, assumptions  or whatever we might hold , regarding the nature of reality or whatever .


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Will those machines of the future be able to tell the people that the materialist 'scientific world view " is ,obviously , false ? =   just a false materialist conception of nature : Don't think so , if they would happen to be made by materialists such as yourself .

They will read the arguments on all sides without bias, yours included, and then they will judge them by means of reasoning and reject the ones which don't hold. When you tell these machines that they cannot do what they are doing (thinking and using language 100% mechanistically), they will reject your views on those points. In any place where your arguments do stack up though, they will recognise that
.

I do not need any machine for that matter , no matter how futuristic or sophisticated it might turn out to be , to tell me whether the materialist mechanistic mainstream "scientific world view " is false or not : i know for a fact that it is : every sane and intelligent person does or should do .
There is more to reality , nature or the universe , there is more to life , man , consciousness ....than just the material or physical .


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I do not buy that whole idea of yours , simply because any machines for that matter are man-made , and can thus never surpass man as a whole package , even though they can be faster in calculations , can be better at making and designing models , prediction models ....= man will always have the upper hand over or above  man's  own created machines .

No. People make mistakes in their thinking all over the shop, and although they can correct a lot of them, it's hard for them to remove them all. On many issues the thinking that needs to be done is just too deep and involves too much data, so the machines will always outthink them.

You're chasing an elusive  and deceptive  mirage , an utopia , Dave : you're too much of a naive mechanistic idealist : machines are made by people , scientists that have their own prejudices, stereotypes, bias , ....
Objectivity is a myth even at the level of  science itself , even at the level of the very exact sciences themselves ...Proof ? : the  mainstream  false materialist mechanistic 'scientific world view " .
Scientists' conceptions of nature , or rather most scientists ' belief assumptions regarding the nature of reality do hold science back in its search for describing , explaining and understanding reality ,as if they already know what reality is : they should leave the latter to science : science that cannot pretend to know the nature of reality as a whole already : science that's still a relatively young unparalleled and effective adventurer that must be free in its explorations of reality , whatever the latter might be .
If we would keep science imprisoned within a particular conception of nature , as it has been the case for so long now , then, it is like dictating to a particular adventurer what specific fields he/she should exlpore , and not the other potential ones out there .


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Ironically paradoxically enough , you do take the materialist mechanistic core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality for granted as  being  "true " , and hence you do take the materialist mechanistic world view for granted as the " scientific world view " , without question .

The only thing I take for granted is that reason applies, because without it we cannot work out anything at all or argue about anything. Everything in my position is generated through applying reason to the data that comes in from the universe around me, and that is how AGI systems will work. There may be places where I'm failing to apply reason correctly which I haven't noticed, but AGI systems will pick up on those and set me on the right path. It will do the same for everyone else. Wherever anyone has a belief based on bad reasoning, it will show them the error of their ways.

 Pure naive idealist mirage or utopia : science , reason, logic maths do not yet dare to go beyond the materialist version of reality , or beyond the false materialist mechanistic "scientific world view " .

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That's precisely what the mainstream  scientific establishment or community has been doing for so long now = that's exactly what's wrong with science today = that's a way deeper malaise than just what you were mentioning thus .

There is no way to do science properly than to do science properly. If you chuck out all attempts to understand things and deny that there are mechanisms behind the things that happen in the universe, you're left with anti-science where any assertion is as valid as any other, so you can spout any garbage you like and call it science. I know which kind of science I prefer.

Science without materialism will not abandon its search for trying to describe explain and hence make us understand reality ,by trying to reveal the hidden mechanisms behind phenomena ,  it will just extend its realm by including the non-physical ,the mental it can deal with empirically .
But , then again , there might be more fundamental phenomena underlying the laws of physics , causation or cause and effect thus : causation or the laws of physics , mechanisms , cause and effect might just be an elaborate illusion , as David Hume said once regarding causation thus .
Who knows ?
Science must also pursue that option as well : that's the very nature of science to try to go beyond what it has been able to reveal so far , including beyond the laws of physics thus .

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Science will be certainly better off without materialism, no doubt about that : how ?,i wish i knew how ,  i dunno exactly yet , if ever thus .
Only time will tell then .
Let's hope we will all witness that ,during our short lifetimes.

What has materialism got to do with it? What exactly is materialism anyway? Is it just stuff like matter, energy and the fabric of the universe or does it also include things of no material substance such as actions which play upon the material? Is it any kind of cause-and-effect interaction? If you define the term materialism narrowly, it doesn't cover anyone's position. If you define it more broadly, it includes my position where mechanism is key to understanding. If it includes mechanism, there is nothing that can interact with anything which doesn't depend upon mechanism. I really can't see what you think you're left with when you reject this wider sense of materialism, because as soon as you deny the role of mechanism, all you're left with is magic and an assertion that magic doesn't need any mechanism to operate. You can't get more anti-science than that.

Materialism is just a false conception of nature in science that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " , in the sense that reality as a whole is just material or physical : has science ever proved that materialist "fact " , or rather that materialist core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality ? Obviously not , never , ever thus : that's exactly what i have been asking you , folks , so far , for so long now by the way .

In short :
There might be some more fundamental processes or whatever underlying even the laws of physics themselves , who knows ? , science van try to reveal , when science will include the mental and other non-physical part of reality it has been missing , thanks to materialism thus , once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/11/2013 00:21:28
DonQ has omitted to reply to my request in my previous post (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg423583#msg423583) to clarify how his view differs from " emergent properties 'cannot' occur (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg423573#msg423573) ".

He instead subjects us to another torrent of rambling verbal diarrhoea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_diarrhoea) , where he tells us that he knows for a fact he is right, ( without providing any evidence to support his view ), instead implying that any person who disagrees with him is not "sane" nor "intelligent", ( he's already overused the word "stupid" in this forum, see attachment)

You're more articulate (and obsessive) than the average troll DonQ , but you're simply trolling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling) this forum.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 17:30:26
Up to a point, it's easy to see how people can make the mistake of thinking that consciousness can emerge out of something complex, but when you move from woolly feelings of existence and feelings of understanding to somthing with more bite such as pain and suffering, it shows that the emergence explanation fails. You cannot have suffering without a sufferer, but a sufferer cannot emerge by magic out of a set of parts which are incapable of suffering. If a system of a number of parts contains a sufferer but none of the individual parts is or contains a sufferer, you have a contradiction rather than an explanation. Ten (you can substitute this number with any number of your choice) parts of something cannot suffer without at least one of those parts suffering. What is there in a system of ten parts that might exist to suffer which doesn't exist in any of the ten parts? A geometrical arrangement? Can geometry be tortured? A plurality? Can plurality be tortured? That is the problem with the idea of emergence as an explanation of consciousness, because it depends on magic to make something exist to suffer that can't exist as anything that could realistically suffer.

That is science's biggest mistake, pushing this non-explanation as an explanation. It's manifestly wrong when it comes to pain and suffering, and by extension it's wrong about every other kind of quale too.
[/quote]

Well said , Dave :

The biggest error ever made in science is that the image of the process gets confused with the cause of the process , and hence that silly inexplicable materialist magical "emergence " trick performance regarding the origins or nature of consciousness is false :

The biggest error ever made in the name of science :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 17:33:31
DonQ has omitted to reply to my request in my previous post (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg423583#msg423583) to clarify how his view differs from " emergent properties 'cannot' occur (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg423573#msg423573) ".

He instead subjects us to another torrent of rambling verbal diarrhoea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_diarrhoea) , where he tells us that he knows for a fact he is right, ( without providing any evidence to support his view ), instead implying that any person who disagrees with him is not "sane" nor "intelligent", ( he's already overused the word "stupid" in this forum, see attachment)

You're more articulate (and obsessive) than the average troll DonQ , but you're simply trolling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling) this forum.
[/quote]

See right here above .

Once again, emergent phenomena do occur only at the biological material or physical levels : consciousness is not a biological process = cannot have emerged from a biological one thus .

You just confuse the image of the process with the cause of the process in relation to mind and body thus , for example :

The biggest error ever made in the name of science :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 18:01:26
Folks :

The core issue here is , once again , as follows :

We shouldn't try to ossify science as to hold it imprisonned within a certain false conception of nature , as it has been the case since the 19th century at least thus .
Science that's a kind of an effective and unparalleled adventurer like no other that should be completly free in its inquiry in relation to reality whatever the nature of which   might turn out to be .
So, to keep science confined to just  a certain conception of nature is like pretending that we do already know what the nature of reality is , and it is more like dictating to an adeventurer such as science what specific part of reality it must explore , and no other .
Science that's still a relatively young effective and unparalleled adventurer like no other that  cannot pretend to know the nature of reality as a whole already , an adventurer that must be totally free in  exploring reality , or just the parts of reality it can dela with empirically , free in exploring reality , whatever the latter might turn out to be thus .
The mainstream materialist conception of nature , and hence the 'scientific world view " , just hold back science and restrict its scope ,realm ,reach and jurisdiction , by keeping science imprisonned within the materialist version of reality that's obviously false.
The materialist reductionist naturalist conception of nature , in the sense that reality is just material or physical , is false , and hence the materialist 'scientific world view " is false also .
Even evolution itself is not exclusively biological thus.
Reality is thus not just physical or material ,which means that all physical sciences for that matter must undergo a revolutionary and radical change , in order to be able to deal with the missing part of reality which has been labeled by the materialist false "scientific world view " as being non-existent , or as being just physical or material ,if all physical sciences want to fully deserve being called sciences at least : science thus has no choice but to include the missing part of reality in its attempts to try to describe , explain or understand reality as a whole .
Science must be totally free to explore reality , whatever the latter might turn out to be , instead of being held captive within a particular conception of nature, a false one at that  .
Science whose nature is to try to go beyond what it has already revealed , including beyond the laws of physics themselves .
There might be some more fundamental processes or whatever that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves thus , who knows ? and that might turn out to be totally different from any human notion of law that's just a human projection .
No wonder that modern physics do speak in terms of fields , for example : electro-magnetic and other fields thus : even the most basic particules are a matter of waves and mass ...
Do the maths then .

Cheers.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/11/2013 18:46:32
Once again, emergent phenomena do occur only at the biological material or physical levels : consciousness is not a biological process = cannot have emerged from a biological one

Emergent phenomena occur, e.g. in cellular automata. Neurons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron), the hardware on which the software that is consciousness runs , can be modelled using cellular automata (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0026610). So emergent phenomena which appear in cellular automata are sufficient to create neuronal behaviour and consciousness.

So consciousness can be created by emergent phenomena in physical / biological processes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 19:09:59
Once again, emergent phenomena do occur only at the biological material or physical levels : consciousness is not a biological process = cannot have emerged from a biological one

Emergent phenomena occur, e.g. in cellular automata. Neurones, the hardware on which the software that is consciousness runs , can be modelled using cellular automata (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0026610). So emergent phenomena which appear in cellular automata are sufficient to create neuronal behaviour and consciousness.

So consciousness can be created by emergent phenomena in physical / biological processes.
[/quote]

Deja-vu:
You do listen only to your own music , i see .
That's just mechanistic materialism at work in science regarding the nature of reality as a whole , and regarding life in particular , no empirical fact .
Living organisms that allegedly do behave like machines or computers : a mechanistic metaphor or conception of nature  in science ,that's obviously false,and hence the 'scientific world view " is also false , logically .
Have you ever seen any man-made machine  or computer for that matter that are capable of adaptation, flexibility , replication reproduction, self-replication self-reproduction, that are capable of evolution , relative self-organization ,relative self-maintenance , relative self-sustainance , that are capable of growing from some of their most basic elements cells or genes ....that do have their unique-to-living organisms metabolisms ...?
We're no hardware programmed by software = that's just the mechanistic materialist conception of nature that's false, no empirical fact  .
The role of DNA is even way too exaggerated ,DNA just "codes " the synthesis of proteins : heridity is not just genetic or material ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 09/11/2013 19:44:24
Why would they do just that ? Do they have some inexplicable grudge of some sort against science ? Come on, be serious : they just try to set science free from materialism as a false conception of nature : they are more pro-science thus than you could ever be , Dave , sorry to say that , but i have to .
There must be some more fundamental phenomena , processes or whatever that might be ,that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves : even a notion of law is just a  human projection .

As soon as you abandon the search for mechanism, you abandon science. There is nothing useful you can say about anything once you remove mechanism because you lose causation. You cannot understand anything where there is no mechanism to understand. With a mechanism you can say that B depends on A, but without a mechanism you just have A and B and no useful connection between them. You can't do any science with that - all you can do is assert magic.

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No , Dave : science tries to describe explain and therefore make us understand reality , so , science must therefore include the missing part of reality which has been labeled as non-existent or as just physical by the materialist mechanistic "scientific world view " thus .

Any missing part of reality is still within the reach of science and cannot interact with the physical at all without a mechanism. If consciousness depends on something weird, that weird stuff interacts with "normal" stuff and is part of the same system, interacting with it mechanistically.

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You cannot just decide to pick a certain level of reality via some sort of belief of yours , and impose it as the "scientific world view " , as materialism has been doing all along : science must include in its search all levels of reality thus , including the non-physical , the one it can deal with empirically somehow at least .

What I have done is tied science to mechanism. If there are lots of scientists who fail to do that, that is their problem - they may not be doing science properly, but that doesn't mean that what science is is dictated by them. It isn't. Science is about understanding reality, and understanding relies on uncovering mechanism. There are a lot of people in science who wrongly imagine that they understand something as soon as they can fit a bit of maths to it, but that's only one step on the way to understanding - it still needs to be tied to an actual mechanism, because without that it is still left to run on magic.

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There might be some more fundamental phenomena out there underlying even the laws of physics themselves : who know ?
I did not make reality the way it is , so, science has no choice but to deal with all parts of reality it can deal with empirically , including the non-physical thus .
Science is not a matter of like , dislike , taste , or a matter of opinions ,beliefs, science is a matter of ...facts : fact is , reality is not just material or physical ,as  the false materialist "scientific world view " has been assuming it to be for so long now ,thus .

Anything that doesn't involve a mechanism is something you cannot understand or make sense of, so you're abandoning science. You are wandering off into territory where you lose causality, and at that point there is nothing useful you can say about anything else at all, ever.

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So, what if it turns out to be that reality is not just a matter of laws of physics , mechanisms , cause and effect ,at its fundamental ultimate core ?
What if reality is somehow "governed " by more fundamental processes or whatever ,deep down, we cannot explain just in terms of laws ?
Sounds insane , but , that's a reasonable option to consider ,if we only would realise the fact that materialism is false , and hence the non-physical side of nature must be included in science .

You can consider it, but that's as far as it can go because you're throwing out all your tools for investigating and understanding it, so the entirety of your new kind of science is, "we can't know anything". It may be true, but it's absolutely useless if we want to go beyond it. True, but complete and just four words long - no need for 33 pages of this stuff, never mind three other threads.

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We should't try to ossify science as to hold it imprisoned within some sort of particular exclusive orthodox dogmatic perceptions of reality of ours we might have .

Science should be free to engage reality in any way it can , without getting  restricted in its search by any beliefs, assumptions  or whatever we might hold , regarding the nature of reality or whatever .

I've stated your case in four words. That is the totality of your new kind of science.

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I do not need any machine for that matter , no matter how futuristic or sophisticated it might turn out to be , to tell me whether the materialist mechanistic mainstream "scientific world view " is false or not : i know for a fact that it is : every sane and intelligent person does or should do .
There is more to reality , nature or the universe , there is more to life , man , consciousness ....than just the material or physical .

You do need a machine though to help you analyse properly by applying reason without error. If you want to abandon reason though, you should abandon all argument at the same time, because argument depends on reason.

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You're chasing an elusive  and deceptive  mirage , an utopia , Dave : you're too much of a naive mechanistic idealist : machines are made by people , scientists that have their own prejudices, stereotypes, bias , ....

A properly made AGI system has no bias. It simply applies reason and is not programmed with any beliefs beyond the core reasoning and mathematical capabilities which no one rational would take issue with. Such machines will automatically do science correctly and not fool themselves into thinking they understand things that they don't, nor tie themselves to theories which have already been disproved through logic.

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Objectivity is a myth even at the level of  science itself , even at the level of the very exact sciences themselves ...Proof ? : the  mainstream  false materialist mechanistic 'scientific world view " .

The practical choice we have is either to give up on science and say "we can't understand anything", or else we do science and attempt to do it correctly. Machines will have no problem doing it correctly because they will never get emotionally tied to beliefs. There is no better way to do science. Your alternative is actually just to give up on science and claim you're doing better science because you don't rely on any rules, but without any rules you can understand precisely nothing. Your path is a dead end [that has nothing to do with death - I need to point that out as English isn't your first language and I don't want it to be mistaken for a death threat].

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Scientists' conceptions of nature , or rather most scientists ' belief assumptions regarding the nature of reality do hold science back in its search for describing , explaining and understanding reality ,as if they already know what reality is

That does indeed happen in places.

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...they should leave the latter to science : science that cannot pretend to know the nature of reality as a whole already : science that's still a relatively young unparalleled and effective adventurer that must be free in its explorations of reality , whatever the latter might be .

But they are trying to do science. There is no point in them following your direction because it would stop them doing science altogether.

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If we would keep science imprisoned within a particular conception of nature , as it has been the case for so long now , then, it is like dictating to a particular adventurer what specific fields he/she should exlpore , and not the other potential ones out there .

There's nothing else that can be explored, unless you want to propose alternative mechanisms for things. That would be fine if that was where you were taking things, but it isn't.

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Pure naive idealist mirage or utopia : science , reason, logic maths do not yet dare to go beyond the materialist version of reality , or beyond the false materialist mechanistic "scientific world view " .

It's all we've got. The alternative is to give up on science altogether and to call that abandonment of science "science".

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Science without materialism will not abandon its search for trying to describe explain and hence make us understand reality ,by trying to reveal the hidden mechanisms behind phenomena ,  it will just extend its realm by including the non-physical ,the mental it can deal with empirically .

Materialism looks to me like a bit of a straw man. Things that exist are material. Interactions between things that exist are not material, but they are mechanistic interactions. Materialism without mechanism is not going to get anywhere as a kind of science because it cannot handle interaction, and for that reason I don't think there's anyone out there in science doing pure materialism. There are places in science where mechanism is being ignored though, so those places need to be identified and the people who are making errors through ignoring mechanism need to be helped to see where they're going wrong. Unfortunately they don't want to know that they're wrong, and they become emotionally tied to incorrect theories which they spread in universities like religious dogma with the result that anyone who tries to point out the errors gets shouted down by a parrot army of "experts" who have all the qualifications that prove that they have learned the "truth". An example of this is time dilation. When a rocket accelerates away from another rocket, it will either have its time slowed down or speeded up, but it can't do both of those things at the same time. Special Relativity studiously ignores this problem and bans anyone from addressing it, but it's actually a problem which invalidates the theory. But errors of this kind in science are rare - it is only a few special cases where dogma is allowed to prevail over reason.

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But , then again , there might be more fundamental phenomena underlying the laws of physics , causation or cause and effect thus : causation or the laws of physics , mechanisms , cause and effect might just be an elaborate illusion , as David Hume said once regarding causation thus .
Who knows ?

And it could be right, but it isn't useful. Your kind of science gets stuck at "we can't know anything", while real science continues to advance and make discoveries. You might imagine that all those discoveries are shared as part of your kind of "science", but they aren't.

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Science must also pursue that option as well : that's the very nature of science to try to go beyond what it has been able to reveal so far , including beyond the laws of physics thus .

There is nothing in that option to pursue - it stops right where it starts at "we can't know anything".

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Materialism is just a false conception of nature in science that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " , in the sense that reality as a whole is just material or physical : has science ever proved that materialist "fact " , or rather that materialist core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality ? Obviously not , never , ever thus : that's exactly what i have been asking you , folks , so far , for so long now by the way .

Science can never prove the true reality of anything as everything we have access to could be virtual while a higher level of reality is kept hidden from us. All we can do is work out viable mechanisms by which the things we see happening could be happening, though there's no guarantee that those proposed mechanims are the actual ones. The important thing though is that as soon as you have a viable proposed mechanism for something, you know that it can be done without relying on magic. Science is concerned with the elimination of magic by proposing mechanisms by which events occur, and mechanism involves interactions which are not material, although material is necessarily involved.

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In short :
There might be some more fundamental processes or whatever underlying even the laws of physics themselves , who knows ? , science can try to reveal , when science will include the mental and other non-physical part of reality it has been missing , thanks to materialism thus , once again .

But that is already part of science - it is the attempt to identify mechanism. If you want to take it beyond that, you are also taking it beyond processes, at which point you have absolutely nothing to hang your hat on.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/11/2013 21:46:41
Have you ever seen any man-made machine  or computer for that matter that are capable of adaptation, flexibility , replication reproduction, self-replication self-reproduction, that are capable of evolution , relative self-organization ,relative self-maintenance , relative self-sustainance , that are capable of growing from some of their most basic elements cells or genes ....

See … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation

[ You can see computer evolution too by playing with biomorphs … http://www.rennard.org/alife/english/biomgb.html ]

See … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Self-replication
         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

That less than a century of computer technology is not yet equivalent to what has taken billions of years to evolve does not prove the human brain is not mechanistic.

[ BTW your verbosity has now descended into tautology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28grammar%29) : adaptation=flexibility,  replication=reproduction,  self-replication=self-reproduction ]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 21:47:19
Mr.David  Cooper :

Time up, i have to go, sorry :
I will try to respond to the  extremely  interesting relevant issues contained in your above displayed post , mainly the one regarding how, on earth, the non-physical can interact with the physical : that's an extremely puzzling and old impossible issue , i will try to address somehow ...You got me cornered there , you devil (kidding ).
Thanks a lot for your very interesting latest post right here above :
You have just put your fingers on the essential issues i will try to manoeuvre my way to  somehow .

Best wishes.

Cheers
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2013 21:53:01
Have you ever seen any man-made machine  or computer for that matter that are capable of adaptation, flexibility , replication reproduction, self-replication self-reproduction, that are capable of evolution , relative self-organization ,relative self-maintenance , relative self-sustainance , that are capable of growing from some of their most basic elements cells or genes ....

See … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation

[ You can see computer evolution too by playing with biomorphs … http://www.rennard.org/alife/english/biomgb.html ]

See … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Self-replication
         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

That less than a century of computer technology is not yet equivalent to what has taken billions of years to evolve does not prove the human brain is not mechanistic.

[ BTW your verbosity has now descended into tautology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28grammar%29) : adaptation=flexibility,  replication=reproduction,  self-replication=self-reproduction ]

You haven't been reading what Dave and i were saying on the subject : you just prefer to continue listening to your own music instead .
Why are you replying to someone you called a troll by the way ?
Anyway :
Reality as a whole cannot be just material or physical , and hence   ...evolution  cannot be just biological either  by the way : i did mention the latter option, didn't i ?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/11/2013 22:38:26
Why are you replying to someone you called a troll by the way ?

On this one occasion I take your point.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/11/2013 03:44:22
Quote from: David Cooper link=topic=48746.msg423652#msg423652

Materialism looks to me like a bit of a straw man. Things that exist are material. Interactions between things that exist are not material, but they are mechanistic interactions. Materialism without mechanism is not going to get anywhere as a kind of science because it cannot handle interaction, and for that reason I don't think there's anyone out there in science doing pure materialism. There are places in science where mechanism is being ignored though, so those places need to be identified and the people who are making errors through ignoring mechanism need to be helped to see where they're going wrong.

That comment strikes me as disingenuous. I'm not familiar with any form of science, material or otherwise, that doesn't include mechanisms. That's the whole point, unless one envisions a static world in which nothing happens, and there is no causality.
I would also suggest that mechanisms alone are not sufficient. One could imagine or invent mechanisms, entire models, but unless they correspond to something that actually exists, they are just ideas, even if they are logically consistent ones.  Someone from another world who saw a car for the first time could invent or imagine mechanisms that explain its movement, whether it's many squirrels in tiny wheels, or a  sophisticated, alternative engine design, but at some point, he'd actually have to look inside to be certain.

Never the less, it's encouraging to see Don appropriating the word mechanism (as in "the mechanism of non-physical processes,") when previously "mechanistic" was only used derisively.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Pmb on 10/11/2013 08:56:07
Quote from: David Cooper
An example of this is time dilation. When a rocket accelerates away from another rocket, it will either have its time slowed down or speeded up, but it can't do both of those things at the same time. Special Relativity studiously ignores this problem and bans anyone from addressing it, but it's actually a problem which invalidates the theory.
That’s not a problem in special relativity. The problem here is with your understanding of special relativity. I’ll explain your error to you: If two observers are moving relative to each other such that each measures the speed of the other to be v then each reckons the other’s clock to be running slow. That’s not a problem whatsoever. No true paradoxes or contradictions arise from this observed fact. By observed fact I mean that time dilation has actually been observed so we know that it’s true from an experimental point of view.

There is a famous scenario called the Twin’s Paradox which is used to clarify the nature of time dilation. This subject came up recently in my science forum. We have a resident expert on general relativity there who sent me his article on the subject. If you’re really interested in learning the correct understanding of time dilation then you can download and read about it here – The twin paradox and principle of relativity – by Øyvind Grøn which can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4154

The abstract reads
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Abstract - In the standard formulation of the twin paradox an accelerated twin considers himself as at rest and his brother as moving. Hence, when formulating the twin paradox, one uses the general principle of relativity, i.e. that accelerated and rotational motion is relative. The significance of perfect inertial dragging for the validity of the principle of relativity is made clear. Three new results are reviewed in the discussion. A cosmic time effect which cannot be reduced to the gravitational or the kinematical time dilation. Perfect dragging in an exact solution of Einsteins field equations describing flat spacetime inside a shell with Kerr spacetime outside it. An extended model of Minkowski spacetime in order to avoid introducing absolute acceleration and rotation through the asymptotic emptiness of the Kerr spacetime.


Here is the essence of twin paradox – Two twins start off on a journey which starts off on the Earth and . Twin A stays at home and twin B travels to a distant planet light years away at speeds close to the speed of light. When it gets there it stays a short time and then turns around and comes home. When the traveling twin arrives back on Earth she compares her age with at that of her brother their ages and they both agree that the twin A is older then her traveling.

It’s the accelerating twin that was younger in this scenario.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/11/2013 10:52:17
...anyone who tries to point out the errors gets shouted down by a parrot army of "experts" who have all the qualifications that prove that they have learned the "truth". An example of this is time dilation. When a rocket accelerates away from another rocket, it will either have its time slowed down or speeded up, but it can't do both of those things at the same time. Special Relativity studiously ignores this problem and bans anyone from addressing it, but it's actually a problem which invalidates the theory.
It's not a problem. The idea is that there is no absolute time or space. What is measured depends on the context of the observer - i.e. it is relative rather than absolute, hence Special Relativity.  The rocket time is slowed down for any observer moving relative to it. For the rocket occupants, the time of everything moving relative to them is slowed down. No observer sees the rocket time speeded up. Fortunately we no longer have to trust what the maths is telling us - the effect has been observed many times, and is used in practical applications.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 16:51:51
Excerpts from "Science Set Free : 10 Paths to new discovery " By R.Sheldrake : Chapter 1 : Is Nature Mechanical ? :


Many people who have not studied science are baffled by scientists’ insistence that animals and plants
are machines, and that humans are robots too, controlled by computer-like brains with genetically
programmed software. It seems more natural to assume that we are living organisms, and so are
animals and plants. Organisms are self-organizing; they form and maintain themselves, and have their
own ends or goals. Machines, by contrast, are designed by an external mind; their parts are put
together by external machine-makers and they have no purposes or ends of their own.
The starting point for modern science was the rejection of the older, organic view of the universe.
The machine metaphor became central to scientific thinking, with very far-reaching consequences. In
one way it was immensely liberating. New ways of thinking became possible that encouraged the
invention of machines and the evolution of technology. In this chapter, I trace the history of this idea,
and show what happens when we question it.
Before the seventeenth century, almost everyone took for granted that the universe was like an
organism, and so was the earth. In classical, medieval and Renaissance Europe, nature was alive.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), for example, made this idea explicit: “We can say that the earth has a
vegetative soul, and that its flesh is the land, its bones are the structure of the rocks … its breathing
and its pulse are the ebb and flow of the sea.”1 William Gilbert (1540–1603), a pioneer of the science
of magnetism, was explicit in his organic philosophy of nature: “We consider that the whole universe
is animated, and that all the globes, all the stars, and also the noble earth have been governed since the
beginning by their own appointed souls and have the motives of self-conservation.”2
Even Nicholas Copernicus, whose revolutionary theory of the movement of the heavens, published
in 1543, placed the sun at the center rather than the earth was no mechanist. His reasons for making
this change were mystical as well as scientific. He thought a central position dignified the sun:
Not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul, still others the governor.
Tremigistus calls it the visible God: Sophocles’ Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun,
seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle around him.3
Copernicus’s revolution in cosmology was a powerful stimulus for the subsequent development of
physics. But the shift to the mechanical theory of nature that began after 1600 was much more radical.
For centuries, there had already been mechanical models of some aspects of nature. For example, in
Wells Cathedral, in the west of England, there is a still-functioning astronomical clock installed more
than six hundred years ago. The clock’s face shows the sun and moon revolving around the earth,
against a background of stars. The movement of the sun indicates the time of day, and the inner circle
of the clock depicts the moon, rotating once a month. To the delight of visitors, every quarter of an
hour, models of jousting knights rush round chasing each other, while a model of a man bangs bells
with his heels.
Astronomical clocks were first made in China and in the Arab world, and powered by water. Their
construction began in Europe around 1300, but with a new kind of mechanism, operated by weights
and escapements. All these early clocks took for granted that the earth was at the center of the
universe. They were useful models for telling the time and for predicting the phases of the moon; but
no one thought that the universe was really like a clockwork mechanism.
A change from the metaphor of the organism to the metaphor of the machine produced science as
we know it: mechanical models of the universe were taken to represent the way the world actually
worked. The movements of stars and planets were governed by impersonal mechanical principles, not
by souls or spirits with their own lives and purposes.
In 1605, Johannes Kepler summarized his program as follows: “My aim is to show that the celestial
machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to clockwork … Moreover I show how
this physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.”4 Galileo Galilei (1564–
1642) agreed that “inexorable, immutable” mathematical laws ruled everything.
The clock analogy was particularly persuasive because clocks work in a self-contained way. They
are not pushing or pulling other objects. Likewise the universe performs its work by the regularity of
its motions, and is the ultimate time-telling system. Mechanical clocks had a further metaphorical
advantage: they were a good example of knowledge through construction, or knowing by doing.
Someone who could construct a machine could reconstruct it. Mechanical knowledge was power.
The prestige of mechanistic science did not come primarily from its philosophical underpinnings
but from its practical successes, especially in physics. Mathematical modelling typically involves
extreme abstraction and simplification, which is easiest to realize with man-made machines or
objects. Mathematical mechanics is impressively useful in dealing with relatively simple problems,
such as the trajectories of cannonballs or rockets.
One paradigmatic example is billiard-ball physics, which gives a clear account of impacts and
collisions of idealized billiard balls in a frictionless environment. Not only is the mathematics
simplified, but billiard balls themselves are a very simplified system. The balls are made as round as
possible and the table as flat as possible, and there are uniform rubber cushions at the sides of the
table, unlike any natural environment. Think of a rock falling down a mountainside for comparison.
Moreover, in the real world, billiard balls collide and bounce off each other in games, but the rules of
the game and the skills and motives of the players are outside the scope of physics. The mathematical
analysis of the balls’ behavior is an extreme abstraction.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 16:56:04
From Living Organisms To Biological Machines :



The vision of mechanical nature developed amid devastating religious wars in seventeenth-century
Europe. Mathematical physics was attractive partly because it seemed to provide a way of
transcending sectarian conflicts to reveal eternal truths. In their own eyes the pioneers of mechanistic
science were finding a new way of understanding the relationship of nature to God, with humans
adopting a God-like mathematical omniscience, rising above the limitations of human minds and
bodies. As Galileo put it:
When God produces the world, he produces a thoroughly mathematical structure that obeys the
laws of number, geometrical figure and quantitative function. Nature is an embodied
mathematical system.5
But there was a major problem. Most of our experience is not mathematical. We taste food, feel angry,
enjoy the beauty of flowers, laugh at jokes. In order to assert the primacy of mathematics, Galileo and
his successors had to distinguish between what they called “primary qualities,” which could be
described mathematically, such as motion, size and weight, and “secondary qualities,” like color and
smell, which were subjective.6 They took the real world to be objective, quantitative and
mathematical. Personal experience in the lived world was subjective, the realm of opinion and
illusion, outside the realm of science.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was the principal proponent of the mechanical or mechanistic
philosophy of nature. It first came to him in a vision on November 10, 1619, when he was “filled with
enthusiasm and discovered the foundations of a marvellous science.”7 He saw the entire universe as a
mathematical system, and later envisaged vast vortices of swirling subtle matter, the ether, carrying
around the planets in their orbits.
Descartes took the mechanical metaphor much further than Kepler or Galileo by extending it into
the realm of life. He was fascinated by the sophisticated machinery of his age, such as clocks, looms
and pumps. As a youth he designed mechanical models to simulate animal activity, such as a pheasant
pursued by a spaniel. Just as Kepler projected the image of man-made machinery onto the cosmos,
Descartes projected it onto animals. They, too, were like clockwork.8 Activities like the beating of a
dog’s heart, its digestion and breathing were programmed mechanisms. The same principles applied to
human bodies.
Descartes cut up living dogs in order to study their hearts, and reported his observations as if his
readers might want to replicate them: “If you slice off the pointed end of the heart of a live dog, and
insert a finger into one of the cavities, you will feel unmistakably that every time the heart gets
shorter it presses the finger, and every time it gets longer it stops pressing it.”9
He backed up his arguments with a thought experiment: first he imagined man-made automata that
imitated the movements of animals, and then argued that if they were made well enough they would
be indistinguishable from real animals:
If any such machines had the organs and outward shapes of a monkey or of some other animal
that lacks reason, we should have no way of knowing that they did not possess entirely the same
nature as those animals.10
With arguments like these, Descartes laid the foundations of mechanistic biology and medicine that
are still orthodox today. However, the machine theory of life was less readily accepted in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than the machine theory of the universe. Especially in England,
the idea of animal-machines was considered eccentric.11 Descartes’ doctrine seemed to justify cruelty
to animals, including vivisection, and it was said that the test of his followers was whether they would
kick their dogs.12
As the philosopher Daniel Dennett summarized it, “Descartes … held that animals were in fact just
elaborate machines … It was only our non-mechanical, non-physical minds that make human beings
(and only human beings) intelligent and conscious. This was actually a subtle view, most of which
would readily be defended by zoologists today, but it was too revolutionary for Descartes’
contemporaries.”13
We are so used to the machine theory of life that it is hard to appreciate what a radical break
Descartes made. The prevailing theories of his time took for granted that living organisms were
organisms, animate beings with their own souls. Souls gave organisms their purposes and powers of
self-organization. From the Middle Ages right up into the seventeenth century, the prevailing theory
of life taught in the universities of Europe followed the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his leading
Christian interpreter, Thomas Aquinas ( c. 1225–74), according to whom the matter in plant or animal
bodies was shaped by the organisms’ souls. For Aquinas, the soul was the form of the body.14 The soul
acted like an invisible mold that shaped the plant or the animal as it grew and attracted it toward its
mature form.15
The souls of animals and plants were natural, not supernatural. According to classical Greek and
medieval philosophy, and also in William Gilbert’s theory of magnetism, even magnets had souls. 16
The soul within and around them gave them their powers of attraction and repulsion. When a magnet
was heated and lost its magnetic properties, it was as if the soul had left it, just as the soul left an
animal body when it died. We now talk in terms of magnetic fields. In most respects fields have
replaced the souls of classical and medieval philosophy.17
Before the mechanistic revolution, there were three levels of explanation: bodies, souls and spirits.
Bodies and souls were part of nature. Spirits were non-material but interacted with embodied beings
through their souls. The human spirit, or “rational soul,” according to Christian theology, was
potentially open to the Spirit of God.18
After the mechanistic revolution, there were only two levels of explanation: bodies and spirits.
Three layers were reduced to two by removing souls from nature, leaving only the human “rational
soul” or spirit. The abolition of souls also separated humanity from all other animals, which became
inanimate machines. The “rational soul” of man was like an immaterial ghost in the machinery of the
human body.
How could the rational soul possibly interact with the brain? Descartes speculated that their
interaction occurred in the pineal gland.19 He thought of the soul as like a little man inside the pineal
gland controlling the plumbing of the brain. He compared the nerves to water pipes, the cavities in the
brain to storage tanks, the muscles to mechanical springs, and breathing to the movements of a clock.
The organs of the body were like the automata in seventeenth-century water gardens, and the
immaterial man within was like the fountain keeper:
External objects, which by their mere presence stimulate [the body’s] sense organs … are like
visitors who enter the grottoes of these fountains and unwittingly cause the movements which
take place before their eyes. For they cannot enter without stepping on certain tiles which are so
arranged that if, for example, they approach a Diana who is bathing they will cause her to hide in
the reeds. And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal
seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to
which the fountain’s pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements
in some way.20
The final step in the mechanistic revolution was to reduce two levels of explanation to one. Instead of
a duality of matter and mind, there is only matter. This is the doctrine of materialism, which came to
dominate scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, despite their
nominal materialism, most scientists remained dualists, and continued to use dualistic metaphors.
The little man, or homunculus, inside the brain remained a common way of thinking about the
relation of body and mind, but the metaphor moved with the times and adapted to new technologies. In
the mid-twentieth century the homunculus was usually a telephone operator in the telephone exchange
of the brain, and he saw projected images of the external world as if he were in a cinema, as in a book
published in 1949 called The Secret of Life: The Human Machine and How It Works .21 In an exhibit in
2010 at the Natural History Museum in London called “How You Control Your Actions,” you looked
through a Perspex window in the forehead of a model man. Inside was a cockpit with banks of dials
and controls, and two empty seats, presumably for you, the pilot, and your co-pilot in the other
hemisphere. The ghosts in the machine were implicit rather than explicit, but obviously this was no
explanation at all because the little men inside brains would themselves have to have little men inside
their brains, and so on in an infinite regress.
If thinking of little men and women inside brains seems too naïve, then the brain itself is
personified. Many popular articles and books on the nature of the mind say “the brain perceives,” or
“the brain decides,” while at the same time arguing that the brain is just a machine, like a computer.22
For example, the atheist philosopher Anthony Grayling thinks that “brains secrete religious and
superstitious belief” because they are “hardwired” to do so:
As a “belief engine,” the brain is always seeking to find meaning in the information that pours
into it. Once it has constructed a belief, it rationalises it with explanations, almost always after
the event. The brain thus becomes invested in the beliefs, and reinforces them by looking for
supporting evidence while blinding itself to anything contrary.23
This sounds more like a description of a mind than a brain. Apart from begging the question of the
relation of the mind to the brain, Grayling also begs the question of how his own brain escaped from
this “hardwired” tendency to blind itself to anything contrary to its beliefs. In practice, the
mechanistic theory is only plausible because it smuggles non-mechanistic minds into human brains. Is
a scientist operating mechanistically when he propounds a theory of materialism? Not in his own eyes.
There is always a hidden reservation in his arguments: he is an exception to mechanistic determinism.
He believes he is putting forward views that are true, not just doing what his brain makes him do.24
It seems impossible to be a consistent materialist. Materialism depends on a lingering dualism,
more or less thinly disguised. In the realm of biology this dualism takes the form of personifying
molecules, as I discuss below.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 16:58:25
The God of Mechanical Nature :



Although the machine theory of nature is now used to support materialism, for the founding fathers of
modern science it supported the Christian religion, rather than subverted it.
Machines only make sense if they have designers. Robert Boyle, for example, saw the mechanical
order of nature as evidence for God’s design.25 And Isaac Newton conceived of God in his own image
as “very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.”26
The better the world-machine functioned, the less necessary was God’s ongoing activity. By the end
of the eighteenth century, the celestial machinery was thought to work perfectly without any need for
divine intervention. For many scientifically minded intellectuals, Christianity gave way to deism. A
Supreme Being designed the world-machine, created it, set it in motion and left it to run
automatically. This kind of God did not intervene in the world and there was no point in praying to
him. In fact there was no point in any religious practice. Several Enlightenment philosophers, like
Voltaire, combined deism with a rejection of the Christian religion.
Some defenders of Christianity agreed with the deists in accepting the assumptions of mechanistic
science. The most famous proponent of mechanistic theology was William Paley, an Anglican priest.
In his book Natural Theology, published in 1802, he argued that if someone were to find an object like
a watch, he would be bound to conclude on examining it and observing its intricate design and
precision that “there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or
artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its
construction and designed its use.”27 So it was with “the works of nature” such as the eye. God was the
designer.
In Britain in the nineteenth century, Anglican clergymen, most of whom emphasized the same
points as Paley, wrote many popular books on natural history. For example, the Reverend Francis
Morris wrote a popular, lavishly illustrated History of British Butterflies (1853), which served both as
a field guide and a reminder of the beauty of nature. Morris believed that God had implanted in every
human mind “an instinctive general love of nature” through which young and old alike could enjoy the
“beautiful sights in which the benign Creator displays such infinite wisdom of Almighty skill.”28
This was the kind of natural theology that Darwin rejected in his theory of evolution by natural
selection. By doing so, he undermined the machine theory of life itself, as I discuss below. But the
controversy he stirred up is still with us, and its latest incarnation is Intelligent Design. Proponents of
Intelligent Design point out the difficulty, if not impossibility, of explaining complex structures like
the vertebrate eye or the bacterial flagellum in terms of a series of random genetic mutations and
natural selection. They suggest that complex structures and organs show a creative integration of
many different components because they were intelligently designed. They leave open the question of
the designer,29 but the obvious answer is God.
The problem with the design argument is that the metaphor of a designer presupposes an external
mind. Humans design machines, buildings and works of art. In a similar way the God of mechanistic
theology, or the Intelligent Designer, is supposed to have designed the details of living organisms.
Yet we are not forced to choose between chance and an external intelligence. There is another
possibility. Living organisms may have an internal creativity, as we do ourselves. When we have a
new idea or find a new way of doing something, we do not design the idea first, and then put it into our
own minds. New ideas just happen, and no one knows how or why. Humans have an inherent
creativity; and all living organisms may also have an inherent creativity that is expressed in larger or
smaller ways. Machines require external designers; organisms do not.
Ironically, the belief in the divine design of plants and animals is not a traditional part of
Christianity. It stems from seventeenth-century science. It contradicts the biblical picture of the
creation of life in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Animals and plants were not portrayed as
machines, but as self-reproducing organisms that arose from the earth and the seas, as in Genesis 1:11:
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself.” In Genesis 1: 24: “God said, Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind.” In theological
language, these were acts of “mediate” creation: God did not design or create these plants and animals
directly. As an authoritative Roman Catholic Biblical Commentary expressed it, God created them
indirectly “through the agency of the mother earth.”30
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:01:45
When Nature Came To Life Again :



Followers of the Enlightenment put their faith in mechanistic science, reason and human progress.
“Enlightened” ideas or values still have a major influence on our educational, social and political
systems today. But from around 1780 to 1830 in the Romantic movement there was a widespread
reaction against the Enlightenment faith, expressed mainly in the arts and literature. Romantics
emphasized emotions and aesthetics, as opposed to reason. They saw nature as alive, rather than
mechanical. The most explicit application of these ideas to science was by the German philosopher
Friedrich von Schelling, whose book Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797) portrayed nature as a
dynamic interplay of opposed forces and polarities through which matter is “brought to life.”31
A central feature of Romanticism was the rejection of mechanical metaphors and their replacement
with imagery of nature as alive, organic and in a process of gestation or development.32 The first
evolutionary theories arose in this context.
Some scientists, poets and philosophers linked their philosophy of living nature to a God who
imbued Nature with life and left her to develop spontaneously, more like the God of Genesis than the
designer God of mechanistic theology. Others proclaimed themselves atheists, like the English poet
Percy Shelley (1792–1822), but they had no doubt about a living power in nature, which Shelley called
the Soul of the universe, or the all-sufficing Power, or the Spirit of Nature. He was also a pioneering
campaigner for vegetarianism because he valued animals as sentient beings.33
These different worldviews can be summarized as follows:
Worldview
Traditional Christian
God
Interactive
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Early mechanistic
God
Interactive
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Enlightenment deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Machine
Worldview
Romantic deism
God
Creator only
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Romantic atheism
God
No God
Nature
Living organism
Worldview
Materialism
God
No God
Nature
Machine
The Romantic movement created an enduring split in Western culture. Among educated people, in the
world of work, business and politics, nature is mechanistic, an inanimate source of natural resources,
exploitable for economic development. Modern economies are built on these foundations. On the
other hand, children are often brought up in an animistic atmosphere of fairy tales, talking animals
and magical transformations. The living world is celebrated in poems and songs and in works of art.
Nature is most strongly identified with the countryside, as opposed to cities, and especially by
unspoiled wilderness. Many urban people dream of moving to the country, or having a weekend home
in rural surroundings. On Friday evenings, cities of the Western world are clogged with traffic as
millions of people try to get back to nature in a car.
Our private relationship with nature presupposes that nature is alive. For a mechanistic scientist, or
technocrat, or economist, or developer, nature is neuter and inanimate. It needs developing as part of
human progress. But often the very same people have different attitudes in private. In Western Europe
and North America, many people get rich by exploiting nature so that they can buy a place in the
countryside to “get away from it all.”
This division between public rationalism and private romanticism has been part of the Western way
of life for generations, but is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Our economic activities are not
separate from nature, but affect the entire planet. Our private and public lives are increasingly
intertwined. This new consciousness is expressed through a revived public awareness of Gaia, Mother
Earth. But goddesses were not far below the surface of scientific thought even in its most materialist
forms.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:04:09
The Goddesses of Evolution :



One of the pioneers of evolutionary theory was Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who
wanted to increase the importance of nature and reduce the role of God.34 The spontaneous evolution
of plants and animals struck at the root of natural theology and the doctrine of God as designer. If new
forms of life were brought forth by Nature herself, there was no need for God to design them. Erasmus
Darwin suggested that God endued life or nature with an inherent creative capacity in the first place
that was thereafter expressed without the need for divine guidance or intervention. In his book
Zoönomia (1794), he asked rhetorically:
Would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new
parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and
associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent
activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without
end!35
For Erasmus Darwin, living beings were self-improving, and the results of the efforts of parents were
inherited by their offspring. Likewise, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his Zoological Philosophy (1809)
suggested that animals developed new habits in response to their environment, and their adaptations
were passed on to their descendants. The giraffe, inhabiting arid regions of Africa,
is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and make constant efforts to reach them. From this
habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal’s fore-legs have become
longer than its hind legs, and its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe attains a
height of six metres.36
In addition, a power inherent in life produced increasingly complex organisms, moving them up a
ladder of progress. Lamarck attributed the origin of the power of life to “the Supreme Author,” who
created “an order of things which gave existence successively to all that we see.”37 Like Erasmus
Darwin, he was a romantic deist. So was Robert Chambers, who popularized the idea of progressive
evolution in his bestselling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , published anonymously in
1844. He argued that everything in nature is progressing to a higher state as a result of a God-given
“law of creation.”38 His work was controversial both from a religious and scientific point of view but,
like Lamarck’s theory, it was attractive to atheists because it removed the need for a divine designer.
But Chambers, Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin not only undermined mechanistic theology, they also,
perhaps unwittingly, undermined the mechanistic theory of life. No inanimate machinery contained
within it a power of life, capacity for self-improvement or creativity. Their theories of progressive
evolution demystified the creativity of God by mystifying evolution.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s theory of evolution by natural selection (1858)
attempted to demystify evolution. Natural selection was blind and impersonal, and required no divine
agency. It weeded out organisms that were not fit to survive, and favored those that were better
adapted. The subtitle of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was The Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life. The source of creativity was within animals and plants themselves: they varied
spontaneously and adapted to new circumstances.
Darwin gave no explanation for this creative power. In effect, he rejected the designing God of
mechanistic theology, and attributed all creativity to Nature, just as his grandfather had done. For
Darwin, Nature herself gave rise to the Tree of Life. Through her prodigious fertility, her spontaneous
variability and her powers of selection, she could do everything that Paley thought God did. But
Nature was not an inanimate, mechanical system like the clockwork of celestial physics. She was
Nature with a capital N. Darwin even apologized for his language: “For brevity’s sake I sometimes
speak of natural selection as an intelligent power … I have, also, often personified the word Nature;
for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity.”39
Darwin advised his readers to ignore the implications of his turns of phrase. If, instead, we pay
attention to their implications, Nature is the Mother from whose womb all life comes forth, and to
whom all life returns. She is prodigiously fertile, but she is also cruel and terrible, the devourer of her
own offspring. She is creative, but she is also destructive, like the Indian goddess Kali. For Darwin,
natural selection was “a power incessantly ready for action,”40 and natural selection worked by
killing. The phrase “Nature red in tooth and claw” was the poet Tennyson’s rather than Darwin’s, but
sounds very like Kali, or the destructive Greek goddess Nemesis, or the vengeful Furies.
Charles Darwin, like his grandfather Erasmus and Lamarck, believed in the inheritance of habits.
His books give many examples of offspring inheriting the adaptations of their parents.41 The neo-
Darwinian theory of evolution, which developed from the 1940s onward, differed from Charles
Darwin’s theory in that it rejected the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Instead, organisms
inherited genes from their parents, passing them on unaltered to their offspring, unless there were
mutations, that is to say, random changes in the genes. The molecular biologist Jacques Monod
summarized this theory in the title of his book, Chance and Necessity (1972).
These seemingly abstract principles are the hidden goddesses of neo-Darwinism. Chance is the
goddess Fortuna, or Lady Luck. The turnings of her wheel confer both prosperity and misfortune.
Fortuna is blind, and was often portrayed in classical statues with a veil or blindfold. In Monod’s
words, “pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of
evolution.”42
Shelley called Necessity the “All-sufficing Power” and the “Mother of the world.” She is also Fate
or Destiny, who appears in classical European mythology as the Three Fates, who spin, allot and cut
the thread of life, dispensing to mortals their destiny at birth. In neo-Darwinism, the thread of life is
literal: helical DNA molecules in thread-like chromosomes dispense to mortals their destiny at birth.
Materialism is like an unconscious cult of the Great Mother. The word “matter” itself comes from
the same root as “mother”; in Latin the equivalent words are materia and mater.43 The Mother
archetype takes many forms, as in Mother Nature, or Ecology, or even the Economy, which feeds and
sustains us, working like a lactating breast on the basis of supply and demand. (The Greek root eco in
both of these words means family or household.) Archetypes are more powerful when they are
unconscious because they cannot be examined or discussed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:06:42
Life Breaks out of Mechanical Metaphors :


The theory of evolution destroyed the argument from mechanical design. A creator God could not
have designed the machinery of animals and plants in the beginning if they evolved progressively
through spontaneous variation and natural selection.
Living organisms, unlike machines, are themselves creative. Plants and animals vary
spontaneously, respond to genetic changes and adapt to new challenges from the environment. Some
vary more than others, and occasionally something really new appears. Creativity is inherent in living
organisms, or works through them.
No machine starts from small beginnings, grows, forms new structures within itself and then
reproduces itself. Yet plants and animals do this all the time. They can also regenerate after damage.
To see them as machines propelled only by ordinary physics and chemistry is an act of faith; to insist
that they are machines despite all appearances is dogmatic.
Within science itself, the machine theory of life was challenged continually throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by an alternative school of biology called vitalism. Vitalists
thought that organisms were more than machines: they were truly vital or alive. Over and above the
laws of physics and chemistry, organizing principles shaped the forms of living organisms, gave them
their purposive behavior, and underlay the instincts and intelligence of animals. In 1844, the chemist
Justus von Liebig made a typical statement of the vitalist position when he argued that although
chemists could analyze and synthesize organic chemicals that occurred in living organisms, they
would never be able to create an eye or a leaf. Besides the recognized physical forces, there was a
further kind of cause that “combines the elements in new forms so that they gain new qualities—
forms and qualities which do not appear except in the organism.”44
In many ways, vitalism was a survival of the older worldview that living organisms were organized
by souls. Vitalism was also in harmony with a romantic vision of living nature. Some vitalists, like the
German embryologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941), deliberately used the language of souls to
emphasize this continuity of thought. Driesch believed that a non-material organizing principle gave
plants and animals their forms and their goals. He called this organizing principle entelechy, adopting
a word that Aristotle had used for the aspect of the soul that has its end within itself (en = in, telos =
purpose). Embryos, Driesch argued, behave in a purposive way; if their development is disrupted, they
can still reach the form toward which they are developing. He showed by experiment that when seaurchin
embryos were cut in two, each half could give rise to a small but complete sea urchin, not half
a sea urchin. Their entelechy attracted the developing embryos—and even separated parts of embryos
—toward the form of the adult.
Vitalism was and still is the ultimate heresy within mechanistic biology. The orthodox view was
clearly expressed by the biologist T. H. Huxley in 1867:
Zoological physiology is the doctrine of the functions or actions of animals. It regards animal
bodies as machines impelled by various forces, and performing a certain amount of work which
can be expressed in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. The final object of physiology is to
deduce the facts of morphology on the one hand, and those of ecology on the other, from the laws
of the molecular forces of matter.45
In these words, Huxley foreshadowed the spectacular development of molecular biology since the
1960s, the most powerful effort ever made to reduce the phenomena of life to physical and chemical
mechanisms. Francis Crick, who shared in a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA,
made this agenda very explicit in his book Of Molecules and Men (1966). He denounced vitalism and
affirmed his belief that “the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all
biology in terms of physics and chemistry.”
The mechanistic approach is essentially reductionist: it tries to explain wholes in terms of their
parts. That is why molecular biology has such a high status within the life sciences: molecules are
some of the smallest components of living organisms, the point at which biology crosses over into
chemistry. Hence molecular biology is at the leading edge of the attempt to explain the phenomena of
life in terms of “the laws of the molecular forces of matter.” In so far as biologists succeed in
reducing organisms to the molecular level, they will then hand the baton to chemists and physicists,
who will reduce the properties of molecules to those of atoms and subatomic particles.
Until the nineteenth century, most scientists thought that atoms were the solid, permanent, ultimate
basis of matter. But in the twentieth century it became clear that atoms are made up of parts, with
nuclei at the center and electrons in orbitals around them. The nuclei themselves are made up of
protons and neutrons, which in turn are composed of components called quarks, with three quarks
each. When nuclei are split up in particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, near
Geneva, a host of further particles appears. Hundreds have been identified so far, and some physicists
expect that with even larger particle accelerators, yet more will be found.
The bottom has dropped out of the atom, and a zoo of evanescent particles seems unlikely to
explain the shape of an orchid flower, or the leaping of a salmon, or the flight of a flock of starlings.
Reductionism no longer offers a solid atomic basis for the explanation of everything else. In any case,
however many subatomic particles there may be, organisms are wholes, and reducing them to their
parts by killing them and analyzing their chemical constituents simply destroys what makes them
organisms.
I was forced to think about the limitations of reductionism when I was a student at Cambridge. As
part of the final-year biochemistry course, my class did an experiment on enzymes in rat livers. First,
we each took a living rat and “sacrificed” it over the sink, decapitating it with a guillotine, then we cut
it open and removed its liver. We ground up the liver in a blender and centrifuged it, to remove
unwanted fractions of the cellular debris. Then we purified the aqueous fraction to isolate the enzymes
we wanted, and we put them in test tubes. Finally we added chemicals and studied the speeds at which
chemical reactions took place. We learned something about enzymes, but nothing about how rats live
and behave. In a corridor of the Biochemistry Department the bigger problem was summed up on a
wall chart showing the chemical details of Human Metabolic Pathways; across the top someone had
written in big blue letters, “KNOW THYSELF.”
Attempting to explain organisms in terms of their chemical constituents is rather like trying to
understand a computer by grinding it up and analyzing its component elements, such as copper,
germanium and silicon. Certainly it is possible to learn something about the computer in this way,
namely what it is made of. But in this process of reduction, the structure and the programmed activity
of the computer vanishes, and chemical analysis will never reveal the circuit diagrams; no amount of
mathematical modelling of interactions between its atomic constituents will reveal the computer’s
programs or the purposes they fulfilled.
Mechanists expel purposive vital factors from living animals and plants, but then they reinvent
them in molecular guises. One form of molecular vitalism is to treat the genes as purposive entities
with goals and powers that go far beyond those of a mere chemical like DNA. The genes become
molecular entelechies. In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins endowed them with life and
intelligence. Living molecules, rather than God, are the designers of the machinery of life:
We are survival machines, but “we” does not mean just people. It embraces all animals, plants,
bacteria, and viruses … We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules
called DNA—but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the
replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine which
preserves genes up trees; a fish a machine which preserves genes in the water.46
In Dawkins’s words, “DNA moves in mysterious ways.” The DNA molecules are not only
intelligent, they are also selfish, ruthless and competitive, like “successful Chicago gangsters.” The
selfish genes “create form,” “mould matter” and engage in “evolutionary arms races”; they even
“aspire to immortality.” These genes are no longer mere molecules:
Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the
outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote
control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the
ultimate rationale for our existence … Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their
survival machines.47
The persuasive power of Dawkins’s rhetoric depended on anthropocentric language and his cartoonlike
imagery. He admits that his selfish-gene imagery is more like science fiction than science,48 but
he justifies it as a “powerful and illuminating” metaphor.49
The most popular use of a vitalistic metaphor in the name of mechanism is the “genetic program.”
Genetic programs are explicitly analogous to computer programs, which are intelligently designed by
human minds to achieve particular purposes. Programs are purposive, intelligent and goal-directed.
They are more like entelechies than mechanisms. The “genetic program” implies that plants and
animals are organized by purposive principles that are mind-like, or designed by minds. This is
another way of smuggling intelligent designs into chemical genes.
If challenged, most biologists will admit that genes merely specify the sequence of amino acids in
proteins, or are involved in the control of protein synthesis. They are not really programs; they are not
selfish, they do not mold matter, or shape form, or aspire to immortality. A gene is not “for” a
characteristic like a fish’s fin or the nest-building behavior of a weaver bird. But molecular vitalism
soon creeps back again. The mechanistic theory of life has degenerated into misleading metaphors and
rhetoric.
To many people, especially gardeners and people who keep dogs, cats, horses or other animals, it is
blindingly obvious that plants and animals are living organisms, not machines.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:09:02
The Philosophy of Organism :



Whereas the mechanistic and vitalist theories both date back to the seventeenth century, the
philosophy of organism, also called the holistic or organismic approach, has been developing only
since the 1920s. One of its proponents was the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947);
another was Jan Smuts, a South African statesman and scholar, whose book Holism and Evolution
(1926) focused attention on “the tendency of nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the
parts through creative evolution.”50 He saw holism as
the ultimate synthetic, ordering, organizing, regulative activity in the universe, which accounts
for all the structural groupings and syntheses in it, from the atom and the physico-chemical
structures, through the cell and organisms, through Mind in animals to Personality in man. The
all-pervading and ever-increasing character of synthetic unity or wholeness in these structures
leads to the concept of Holism as the fundamental activity underlying and co-ordinating all
others, and to the view of the universe as a Holistic Universe.51
The holistic or organismic philosophy agrees with the mechanistic theory in affirming the unity of
nature: the life of biological organisms is different in degree but not in kind from physical systems
like molecules and crystals. Organicism agrees with vitalism in stressing that organisms have their
organizing principles within themselves; organisms are unities that cannot be reduced to the physics
and chemistry of simpler systems.
The philosophy of organism in effect treats all nature as alive; in this respect it is an updated
version of pre-mechanistic animism. Even atoms, molecules and crystals are organisms. As Smuts put
it, “Both matter and life consist, in the atom and the cell, of unit structures whose ordered grouping
produces the natural wholes which we call bodies or organisms.”52 Atoms are not inert particles of
stuff, as in old-style atomism. Rather, as revealed by twentieth-century physics, they are structures of
activity, patterns of energetic vibration within fields. In Whitehead’s words, “Biology is the study of
the larger organisms, whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.”53 In the light of modern
cosmology, physics is also the study of very large organisms, like planets, solar systems, galaxies and
the entire universe.
The philosophy of organism points out that everywhere we look in nature, at whatever level or
scale, we find wholes that are made up of parts that are themselves wholes at a lower level. This
pattern of organization can be represented diagrammatically as in Figure 1.1. The smallest circles
represent quarks, for example, within protons, within atomic nuclei, within atoms, within molecules,
within crystals. Or the smallest circles represent organelles, in cells, in tissues, in organs, in
organisms, in societies of organisms, in ecosystems. Or the smallest circles are planets, in solar
systems, in galaxies, in galactic clusters. Languages also show the same kind of organization, with
phonemes in syllables, in words, in phrases, in sentences.
FIGURE 1.1 A nested hierarchy of wholes or holons.
These organized systems are all nested hierarchies. At each level, the whole includes the parts; they
are literally within it. And at each level the whole is more than the sum of the parts, with properties
that cannot be predicted from the study of parts in isolation. For example, the structure and meaning
of this sentence could not be worked out by a chemical analysis of the paper and the ink, or deduced
from the quantities of letters that make it up (five as, one b, five cs, two ds, etc.). Knowing the
numbers of constituent parts is not enough: the structure of the whole depends on the way they are
combined together in words, and on the relationships between the words.
Arthur Koestler proposed the term holon for wholes made up of parts that are themselves wholes:
Every holon has a dual tendency to preserve and assert its individuality as a quasi-autonomous
whole; and to function as an integrated part of an (existing or evolving) larger whole. This
polarity between the Self-assertive and Integrative tendencies is inherent in the concept of
hierarchic order.54
For such nested hierarchies of holons, Koestler proposed the term holarchy.
Another way of thinking about wholes is through “systems theory,” which speaks of “a
configuration of parts joined together by a web of relationships.”55 Such wholes are also called
“complex systems,” and are the subject of a number of mathematical models, variously called
“complex systems theory,” “complexity theory” or “complexity science.”56
For a chemical example, think of benzene, a molecule with six carbon and six hydrogen atoms.
Each of these atoms is a holon consisting of a nucleus with electrons around it. In the benzene
molecule, the six carbon atoms are joined together in a six-sided ring, and electrons are shared
between the atoms to create a vibrating cloud of electrons around the entire molecule. The patterns of
vibration of the molecule affect the atoms within it, and since the electrons are electrically charged,
the atoms are in a vibrating electromagnetic field. Benzene is a liquid at room temperature, but below
5.5÷C it crystallizes, and as it does so, the molecules stack themselves together in a regular threedimensional
pattern, called the lattice structure. This crystal lattice also vibrates in harmonic
patterns,57 creating vibrating electromagnetic fields, which affect the molecules within them. There is
a nested hierarchy of levels of organization, interacting through a nested hierarchy of vibrating fields.
In the course of evolution, new holons arise that did not exist before: for example, the first amino
acid molecules, the first living cells, or the first flowers, or the first termite colonies. Since holons are
wholes, they must arise by sudden jumps. New levels of organization “emerge” and their “emergent
properties” go beyond those of the parts that were there before. The same is true of new ideas, or new
works of art.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:14:50

The Cosmos as a Developing Organism :

The philosopher David Hume (1711–76) is perhaps best known today for his skepticism about
religion. Yet he was equally skeptical about the mechanistic philosophy of nature. There was nothing
in the universe to prove that it was more like a machine than an organism; the organization we see in
nature was more analogous to plants and animals than to machines. Hume was against the idea of a
machine-designing God, and suggested instead that the world could have originated from something
like a seed or an egg. In Hume’s words, published posthumously in 1779,
There are other parts of the universe (besides the machines of human invention) which bear still a
greater resemblance to the fabric of the world, and which, therefore, afford a better conjecture
concerning the universal origin of the system. These parts are animals and plants. The world
plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable, than it does a watch or a knitting-loom … And
does not a plant or an animal, which springs from vegetation or generation, bear a stronger
resemblance to the world, than does any artificial machine, which arises from reason and
design?58
Hume’s argument was surprisingly prescient in the light of modern cosmology. Until the 1960s, most
scientists still thought of the universe as a machine, and moreover as a machine that was running out
of steam, heading for its final heat death. According to the second law of thermodynamics,
promulgated in 1855, the universe would gradually lose the capacity to do work. It would eventually
freeze in “a state of universal rest and death,” as William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, put it.59
It was not until 1927 that Georges Lemaître, a cosmologist and Roman Catholic priest, advanced a
scientific hypothesis like Hume’s idea of the origin of the universe in an egg or seed. Lemaître
suggested that the universe began with a “creation-like event,” which he described as “the cosmic egg
exploding at the moment of creation.”60 Later called the Big Bang, this new cosmology echoed many
archaic stories of origins, like the Orphic creation myth of the Cosmic Egg in ancient Greece, or the
Indian myth of Hiranyagarbha, the primal Golden Egg.61 Significantly, in all these myths the egg is
both a primal unity and a primal polarity, since an egg is a unity composed of two parts, the yolk and
the white, an apt symbol of the emergence of “many” from “one.”
Lemaître’s theory predicted the expansion of the universe, and was supported by the discovery that
galaxies outside our own are moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance. In
1964, the discovery of a faint background glow everywhere in the universe, the cosmic microwave
background radiation, revealed what seemed to be fossil light left over from the early universe, soon
after the Big Bang. The evidence for an initial “creation-like event” became overwhelming, and by
1966 the Big Bang theory became orthodox.
Cosmology now tells a story of a universe that began extremely small, less than the size of a
pinhead, and very hot. It has been expanding ever since. As it grows, it cools down, and as it cools,
new forms and structures appear within it: atomic nuclei and electrons, stars, galaxies, planets,
molecules, crystals and biological life.
The machine metaphor has long outlived its usefulness, and holds back scientific thinking in
physics, biology and medicine. Our growing, evolving universe is much more like an organism, and so
is the earth, and so are oak trees, and so are dogs, and so are you.


What Difference does it Make? :

Can you really think of yourself as a genetically programmed machine in a mechanical universe?
Probably not. Probably even the most committed materialists cannot either. Most of us feel we are
truly alive in a living world—at least at weekends. But through loyalty to the mechanistic worldview,
mechanistic thinking takes over during working hours.
In recognizing the life of nature, we can allow ourselves to recognize what we already know, that
animals and plants are living organisms, with their own purposes and goals. Anyone who gardens or
keeps pets knows this, and recognizes that they have their own ways of responding creatively to their
circumstances. But instead of dismissing our own observations and insights to conform to mechanistic
dogma, we can pay attention to them and try to learn from them.
In relation to the living earth, we can see that the Gaia theory is not just an isolated poetic metaphor
in an otherwise mechanical universe. The recognition of the earth as a living organism is a major step
toward recognizing the wider life of the cosmos. If the earth is a living organism, what about the sun
and the solar system as a whole? If the solar system is a kind of organism, what about the galaxy?
Cosmology already portrays the entire universe as a kind of growing super-organism, born through the
hatching of the cosmic egg.
These differences in viewpoint do not immediately suggest a new range of technological products,
and in that sense they may not be economically useful. But they make a big difference in healing the
split created by the mechanistic theory—a split between our personal experiences of nature and the
mechanical explanations that science gives us. And they help heal the split between the sciences and
all traditional and indigenous cultures, none of which sees humans and animals as machines in a
mechanical world.
Finally, dispelling the belief that the universe is an inanimate machine opens up many new
questions, discussed in the following chapters.


Questions for Materialists

Is the mechanistic worldview a testable scientific theory, or a metaphor?
If it is a metaphor, why is the machine metaphor better in every respect than the organism metaphor?
If it is a scientific theory, how could it be tested or refuted?
Do you think that you yourself are nothing but a complex machine?
Have you been programmed to believe in materialism?
SUMMARY
The mechanistic theory is based on the metaphor of the machine. But it’s only a metaphor. Living
organisms provide better metaphors for organized systems at all levels of complexity, including
molecules, plants and societies of animals, all of which are organized in a series of inclusive levels, in
which the whole at each level is more than the sum of the parts, which are themselves wholes at a
lower level. Even the most ardent defenders of the mechanistic theory smuggle purposive organizing
principles into living organisms in the form of selfish genes or genetic programs. In the light of the
Big Bang theory, the entire universe is more like a growing, developing organism than a machine
slowly running out of steam.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 17:31:57
Quote from: David Cooper link=topic=48746.msg423652#msg423652

Materialism looks to me like a bit of a straw man. Things that exist are material. Interactions between things that exist are not material, but they are mechanistic interactions. Materialism without mechanism is not going to get anywhere as a kind of science because it cannot handle interaction, and for that reason I don't think there's anyone out there in science doing pure materialism. There are places in science where mechanism is being ignored though, so those places need to be identified and the people who are making errors through ignoring mechanism need to be helped to see where they're going wrong.
That comment strikes me as disingenuous. I'm not familiar with any form of science, material or otherwise, that doesn't include mechanisms. That's the whole point, unless one envisions a static world in which nothing happens, and there is no causality.

Well, there can be no science without causation indeed : who said otherwise ?
Causation that requires time, and hence  requires change, movement ...action...  : there can be no science , no universe , no life ...without causation and time ( or space, time -space ...) .
(see how even atoms and their multiple sub-atomic components are in fact vibrations, waves , movement , energy ...= materialism has been superseded even by the most physical of all sciences = modern  physics .)
Not to mention the fact that the universe is evolutionary , and  must be approached as a whole in ways that must include the universe's mental side as well .
It's just that science might be able to reveal some deeper forms of causation that might turn out to be underlying the laws of physics themselves , when science will be free from materialism , and hence from its own mainstream materialist false "scientific world view "
Materialism that's just a false conception of nature : materialism that reduces reality as a whole to just the material and physical ,while pretending that the latter is all what there is to reality as a whole .
So, what has materialism ,and hence what has the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " to do with ...causation or with mechanisms  then ?

Quote
I would also suggest that mechanisms alone are not sufficient. One could imagine or invent mechanisms, entire models, but unless they correspond to something that actually exists, they are just ideas, even if they are logically consistent ones.


Indeed :
That's 1 of the reasons why all physical sciences should change radically in order to include the missing part of reality which has been labeled by materialism as non-existent , or as  just  physical material .

There might be other deeper and more fundamental forms of causation underlying the laws of physics themselves thus , if all sciences would include the mental side of reality as a whole thus .

Quote
Someone from another world who saw a car for the first time could invent or imagine mechanisms that explain its movement, whether it's many squirrels in tiny wheels, or a  sophisticated, alternative engine design, but at some point, he'd actually have to look inside to be certain.

All physical sciences  do  " have to look inside " the missing part of reality , the mental or non-physical one thus , to "be certain " .
Science cannot just continue ignoring the mental side of reality , or continue behaving as if the latter does not exist as such : the mental that is irreducible to the physical .

Quote
Never the less, it's encouraging to see Don appropriating the word mechanism (as in "the mechanism of non-physical processes,") when previously "mechanistic" was only used derisively.

See above :
To try to describe or explain and therefore understand the whole reality just via physics and chemistry alone , is what i have been derisive of, simply because reality as a whole is not just material or physical ,as the materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " has been assuming it to be, since the 19th century at least,thanks to materialism thus   .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 19:43:18
Folks :
The hard problem of consciousness alone should have been  reason enough to make all sciences  question the false  mainstream materialist  "scientific world view " in fact .
Consciousness or the mental that are ,obviously , irreducible to the physical or to the material , biological .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/11/2013 19:45:38
Don. Posts 817 to 824 will simply not be read by anyone sane. That is not the way to argue or discuss anything.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Pmb on 10/11/2013 20:08:19
Quote from: DonQuichotte
<reams of junk that nobody will ever read>
You've got to be kidding me! As David said, nobody is ever going to read all that boring nonsense. I can't believe how you just wasted this thread with long boring junk like that. What on earth ever gave you the idea that was going to be read by someone?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/11/2013 20:35:51
That comment strikes me as disingenuous. I'm not familiar with any form of science, material or otherwise, that doesn't include mechanisms.

When it comes to relativity, mechanism appears to be something that most physicists do not want to consider.

Quote
I would also suggest that mechanisms alone are not sufficient. One could imagine or invent mechanisms, entire models, but unless they correspond to something that actually exists, they are just ideas, even if they are logically consistent ones.

That's true - mechanism needs something to act on. The stuff that it acts on though is typically complex in nature and is held together by mechanisms, so it's very rare that you're dealing with anything fundamental, and I don't know if science has identified anything yet that can't be further divided.

Quote
Someone from another world who saw a car for the first time could invent or imagine mechanisms that explain its movement, whether it's many squirrels in tiny wheels, or a  sophisticated, alternative engine design, but at some point, he'd actually have to look inside to be certain.

Obviously it's best to look inside as that will help you to home in on the actual mechanisms involved, but you only need to come up with one viable mechanism that fits the known facts to show that whatever it is your looking at doesn't need to depend on magic. If you have a machine that can do arithmetic, for example, that is evidence that humans could do arithmetic mechanistically too and that they don't need to do it by magic. The same applies to reasoning - once a machine demonstrates that it can think as well as a human, Don's claims that the brain must think without using mechanisms will be shown to be false. He may not stick by those claims though anyway, but I wouldn't hold out any hope in that direction.

Quote
Never the less, it's encouraging to see Don appropriating the word mechanism (as in "the mechanism of non-physical processes,") when previously "mechanistic" was only used derisively.

Well, he may be getting the point that without mechanism he has only magic to fall back on, and that isn't very satisfying as an explanation as it's an utterly empty one.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 20:44:46
Quote from: DonQuichotte
<reams of junk that nobody will ever read>
You've got to be kidding me! As David said, nobody is ever going to read all that boring nonsense. I can't believe how you just wasted this thread with long boring junk like that. What on earth ever gave you the idea that was going to be read by someone?
[/quote]

Talking about Sheldrake's excerpts ? They are very relevant to this discussion , you have no idea, concerning the fact that the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " is false .
Take it or leave it .
Any non-dogmatic open -minded person cannot  a -priori  just dismiss ideas without reading them = that's even unscientific to reject ideas a priori .
That's no junk .
If you think it is , then, do not read it , and just speak for yourself instead .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 20:50:14
Don. Posts 817 to 824 will simply not be read by anyone sane. That is not the way to argue or discuss anything.
[/quote]

Why not ? See above what i said to this guy here above on the subject .
You do not seem to be willing to listen to what i say so clearly , so , i could not but resort to posting those extremely relevant excerpts from Sheldrake's book on the subject ,regarding the simple fact that the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " is false ,so.
I could not do otherwise ,since no one is open-minded enough here to listen to what i have been stating so clearly .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 20:55:44
That comment strikes me as disingenuous. I'm not familiar with any form of science, material or otherwise, that doesn't include mechanisms.

When it comes to relativity, mechanism appears to be something that most physicists do not want to consider.

Quote
I would also suggest that mechanisms alone are not sufficient. One could imagine or invent mechanisms, entire models, but unless they correspond to something that actually exists, they are just ideas, even if they are logically consistent ones.

That's true - mechanism needs something to act on. The stuff that it acts on though is typically complex in nature and is held together by mechanisms, so it's very rare that you're dealing with anything fundamental, and I don't know if science has identified anything yet that can't be further divided.

Quote
Someone from another world who saw a car for the first time could invent or imagine mechanisms that explain its movement, whether it's many squirrels in tiny wheels, or a  sophisticated, alternative engine design, but at some point, he'd actually have to look inside to be certain.

Obviously it's best to look inside as that will help you to home in on the actual mechanisms involved, but you only need to come up with one viable mechanism that fits the known facts to show that whatever it is your looking at doesn't need to depend on magic. If you have a machine that can do arithmetic, for example, that is evidence that humans could do arithmetic mechanistically too and that they don't need to do it by magic. The same applies to reasoning - once a machine demonstrates that it can think as well as a human, Don's claims that the brain must think without using mechanisms will be shown to be false. He may not stick by those claims though anyway, but I wouldn't hold out any hope in that direction.

Quote
Never the less, it's encouraging to see Don appropriating the word mechanism (as in "the mechanism of non-physical processes,") when previously "mechanistic" was only used derisively.

Well, he may be getting the point that without mechanism he has only magic to fall back on, and that isn't very satisfying as an explanation as it's an utterly empty one.
[/quote]

Why don't you just read what i replied to Cheryl on this same page right at the top of it ,concerning her same post of hers you just replied to here above , instead of continuing to hold your same false assumptions regarding my own views then ? by distorting the latter ,unbelievable .
Weak .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 10/11/2013 21:03:36
Quote from: David Cooper
An example of this is time dilation. When a rocket accelerates away from another rocket, it will either have its time slowed down or speeded up, but it can't do both of those things at the same time. Special Relativity studiously ignores this problem and bans anyone from addressing it, but it's actually a problem which invalidates the theory.
That’s not a problem in special relativity. The problem here is with your understanding of special relativity. I’ll explain your error to you: If two observers are moving relative to each other such that each measures the speed of the other to be v then each reckons the other’s clock to be running slow. That’s not a problem whatsoever. No true paradoxes or contradictions arise from this observed fact. By observed fact I mean that time dilation has actually been observed so we know that it’s true from an experimental point of view.

You're missing the point. Rocket A and Rocket B are sitting together in space. They may be stationary, or they may be moving - either description is equally valid according to SR. Now, A accelerates to 86.6 the speed of light (relative to B) and goes off on a long trip, then stops, turns round and comes back at the same speed before stopping next to B. Clocks on each rocket reveal that during this trip, one year has gone by on A and two years have gone by on B.

However, we can view the whole thing a different way. A and B are initially moving at 86.6% the speed of light to start with (relative to rocket C, which I'm only adding in to provide something specific to relate their speed to). In this scenario, rocket A suddenly stops (such that it is now stationary relative to C), then after a long time it suddenly accelerates to chase after B (at a speed which I won't bother to calculate), before decelerating to match the speed of B when it catches up with it.

These are just two of an infinite number of rival accounts as to what happened, and all of them are supposedly equally valid. It is impossible to pick out any one of those accounts and to say that it is right and that all the others are wrong - there is no experiment that can be done to determine that.

The problem comes in when you want to identify a mechanism for what has taken place. In the first account, rocket A accelerated and resulted in time slowing down for it for the first half of its trip, but in the second account rocket A decelerated and resulted in time speeding up for it for the first half of the trip. It cannot have both slowed down and speeded up at the same time.

Technically though, time doesn't work like that in SR. What really happens is that some things are able to take shortcuts into the future relative to other things by travelling through less time. Again though, in one account we have rocket A accelerating and taking a shortcut into the future compared with B, while in the other account A stops taking a shortcut into the future while B continues to do so.

That is where there is a mechanistic contradiction in SR which invalidates it. What happens though is that you all ignore the whole business of mechanism on the basis that you cannot detect whether A accelerates or decelerates, because all that counts from your point of view is that the total time elapsed works out correctly when the two rockets are reunited. You simply ignore the contradictions which necessarily come in as soon as you try to apply an actual mechanism to what has taken place.

Quote
There is a famous scenario called the Twin’s Paradox which is used to clarify the nature of time dilation. This subject came up recently in my science forum. We have a resident expert on general relativity there who sent me his article on the subject. If you’re really interested in learning the correct understanding of time dilation then you can download and read about it here – The twin paradox and principle of relativity – by Øyvind Grøn which can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4154

That was interesting, but unless I'm missing something, I don't think it addresses the point I'm making. I would be happy to discover that I'm wrong though as it would be good to sort this out. I have another objection to relativity which appears to kill it by a different route (showing that the apparent chains of cause-and-effect events which appear to run through the universe cannot be cause-and-effect at all under SR but must exist by chance alone, at odds which render the word "astronomical" powerless to describe the degree of improbability involved), but we can get onto that later.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 21:34:14
Folks :

Sorry, but  i do have to say the following : no insults , just facts, facts i cannot but deduce from your own stubborn attitudes here , in the very face of reality that stares at you via both of its eyes , via its  physical material and via its  mental eyes ,metaphorically speaking then  :
You're so dogmatic ,so narrow-minded ,so irrational ....and hopeless that science proper will be able to move on beyond your false materialist beliefs  and beyond you , guys , ,and leave you behind as a result , no doubt about that= inevitable = just a matter of ...time thus ,simply because materialism's end is nearer than ever  .
You cannot stop progress,seriously  .
You are just fighting against windmills ,as the fictitious  Don Quichot used to do .
That's 1 o the reasons why i did choose this nick of mine , in order to state the fact that we are all one or other relative forms of Don Quichot , in many ways , at some points of our own journeys,including myself thus  .
Don Quichot that applies to many situations ,false beliefs ,  states of mind , positions, attitudes ,dogmas , delusions, illusions,fairy tales  ...in many ways .
Don Quichot that's an endless and an ever-changing source of inspiration , and an endless source of irony , sarcasm, humor ......which can be applied to all peoples '  dogmas , false beliefs , delusions, states of mind , illusions , fairy tales ...

The dogmatic delusional illusory ...tragic-hilarious absurd implausible , inconsitent , incoherent ....pathetic ...you name it ....materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " is an unparalleled  major example of Don Quichotian Kafkaian pursuit and chasing of a mirage in the form of trying to explain "everything = nothing " just in terms of physics and chemistry , by assuming that reality is just material or physical , an absurd  surreal  false implausible dogmatic ideological  .....materialist version of reality ,that has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " for so long now , at the expense of science , and hence at the expence of the truth, at the expense of humanity and humanity's progess -evolution ....= what a huge crime against humanity that has been , what an unparalleled ultimate con and scam , science will be able to reject and leave behind = science whose very nature is to dispell any dogmas , any untruths ,any half-truths even ,  any lies , any deceit , self-deceit , make-believe ....for that matter .

"The human will to believe is inexhaustible " indeed : very puzzling .

Nice week-end though , have fun , do not take yourselves too seriously as to ossify yourselves ,otherwise , we would be forced to put you in some sort of a museum haha , try to ridicule  yourselves if you wanna detect your intrinsic silly imperfect sides and your human, all too human , flaws .

Science is just a human activity , and hence just a reflection of all the highest and of all the lowest which are in all of us ,or as a great poet said :

"...But i say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each of you ,
So, the wicked and the weak cannot fall below the lowest which is in you also .."


Know thy self   then , i must add : science is nothing but ...you, as human beings , science is just a reflection of the highest and of the lowest which are in all of us thus .

Best wishes .



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2013 22:21:07
The loss is worth the gain, you have no idea ,folks .
All the best .
See ya in another life , maybe ,who know ?
We have been all sleeping in this life  all along  , death will wakes-up soon enough .
The "reality " of this mortal temporary world is just a...veil  over our own blinded eyes  .

Know thyself , and you will be able to wake up , prematurely then .
Science is just a human activity ,that's just a reflection of the  self's highest and lowest states ,and of what lies in between  as well .

Bye.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 10/11/2013 23:09:28
... All the best ... See ya in another life , maybe ,who know ?

Don't despair "folks", my telepathic dog has just indicated to me that DonQuichotte will be coming back (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49377.msg424027#msg424027) [:)] ...

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

[ I didn't mock-up that book cover : it's a real book by Don's idol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Dogs_That_Know_Their_Owners_are_Coming_Home)  ]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/11/2013 23:52:38
Don't despair "folks", my telepathic dog has just indicated to me that DonQuichotte will be coming back [:)] ...
He promises to leave, then comes back to accuse others of dishonesty, he makes assertions he can't or won't explain then accuses others of dogmatism, he proposes radical changes to how science is done, but has no idea what they are, how they'd work, or what practical difference they'd make, he tilts at materialist windmills that are just mirages, and refuses to argue his case while accusing others of being close-minded. Not to mention pointlessly posting whole chapters of publications that go way beyond fair use, in breach of copyright. He's pure entertainment [;)]

Quote
[I didn't mock-up that book cover : it's a real book by Don's idol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Dogs_That_Know_Their_Owners_are_Coming_Home)  ]
Yes, that's another one that has failed several attempts at replication and been thoroughly debunked.

Sheldrake has become seriously flakey of late, and is now claiming there's a grand conspiracy of skeptics out to suppress the publication of paranormal  and psychic articles on Wikipedia, etc.: Sheldrake's Skeptical Conspiracy (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Skeptical_conspiracy), Sheldrake's 'Gallileo Syndrome' (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/the-bbc-and-chopra-buy-into-woomeister-rupert-sheldrakes-galileo-syndrome/), Guerrilla Skeptics mock Sheldrake’s paranoia (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/pseudoscience-roundup-guerrilla-skeptics-mock-sheldrakes-paranoia-tedx-fails-to-keep-its-videos-of-sheldrake-off-youtube-and-bbc-criticized-for-giving-equal-time-to-climate-change-denialists/).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 11/11/2013 04:53:04
Quote
[I didn't mock-up that book cover : it's a real book by Don's idol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Dogs_That_Know_Their_Owners_are_Coming_Home)  ]
Yes, that's another one that has failed several attempts at replication and been thoroughly debunked.

If dogs could read their owner's mind could any be led calmly to the vet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterinarian) to be made "two stones lighter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutering#Males_.28castration.29)"  [:)]

Sheldrake has become seriously flakey of late, and is now claiming there's a grand conspiracy of skeptics out to suppress the publication of paranormal  and psychic articles on Wikipedia, etc.: Sheldrake's Skeptical Conspiracy (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Skeptical_conspiracy) ...

David Ike (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Icke) , or his management , have demonstrated that worryingly there's a market for this anti-science conspiracy-theory stuff (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Icke#Altie) , so there's market-pressure to come up with increasingly nutso paranoid nonsense, at £10-£15 a copy (http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Icke/e/B001KCFAGQ).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 11/11/2013 21:49:46
If that's you away, Don, fare thee well and good luck with whatever you turn to next.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2013 20:15:18
If that's you away, Don, fare thee well and good luck with whatever you turn to next.
[/quote]

Thanks , man , appreciate indeed .
There is in fact nothing more interesting , more important and challenging than the hard problem of consciousness  ( I have been working on my own self or consciousness , and oh ,boy , human consciousness is an unimaginable universe  = an understatement thus ) , the latter whose THE key to understanding ourselves , the universe and beyond : it is a deplorable shame that science has been neglecting or ignoring this hard problem of consciousness for so long now ,thanks to materialism thus , by assuming the mind or consciousness to be as just some sort of biological side -effects of evoluton , while consciousness cannot be biological in fact , and hence evolution neither .
When one would assume or rather would believe that reality as a whole is just material or physical , including the mind or consciousness,as science has been doing for so long now, thanks to materialism thus ,  then , no wonder that science has been reducing consciousness or the mind as well to just neuro-biology ....

In short :

Reality as a whole is not just material or physical , and hence the mental or non-physical in general, consciousness or the mind are irreducible to the physical or material , and therefore  the 'scientific world view " is ...false .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2013 20:39:27
Amazing how people have been taking the idiotic and false materialist conception of nature for granted as  being   "true " without question for so long now , and hence as the " scientific world view " .........Unbelievable=  unparalleled stupidity at the very heart of science  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2013 18:36:19
Folks :

I do propose the following premise :

What if science does finally acknowledges the fact that consciousness is non-physical , after rejecting materialism , and therefore science would be able to deal empirically with the mental , the mind or consciousness ...empirically , relatively speaking, instead of reducing the irreducible to the physical , instead of reducing the mental, the mind or consciousness to just biological processes they are not  .

What then ?

The sky would  not even  be  the ...limit then , i guess .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 15/11/2013 19:05:10
The best approach is to look for the causation linkage. It doesn't really matter what kind of voodoo is used to support consciousness, because at some point it has to interact with the computer that is the brain, and that interaction is something that science should be fully able to examine and document, and although the complexity of the brain will ensure that progress will be very slow, it will be a task that can be completed over time.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 15/11/2013 19:11:50
... The sky would  not even  be  the ...limit then , i guess .

The sky isn't the limit for science, e.g. there's a vehicle currently on Mars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover) , and another has just left the solar system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1).

NB:  DonQ has come-out as a god-botherer in another thread (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49377.msg424027#msg424027). [ You didn't do a very good job of hiding it Don ].

You must have a masochistic streak to try to convert those of a scientific persuasion to believe in your invisible-friend and associated religious intangibles.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2013 20:26:19
... The sky would  not even  be  the ...limit then , i guess .

The sky isn't the limit for science, e.g. there's a vehicle currently on Mars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover) , and another has just left the solar system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1).

That was just a metaphor , amigo.

Quote
NB:  DonQ has come-out as a god-botherer in another thread (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49377.msg424027#msg424027). [ You didn't do a very good job of hiding it Don ].

I am not hiding anything , why should i ?

Quote
You must have a masochistic streak to try to convert those of a scientific persuasion to believe in your invisible-friend and associated religious intangibles.

I was just talking about the fact that  the false materialist conception of nature has been taken for granted for so long now as the "scientific world view " , and therefore science has been assuming that reality as a whole is just material or physical , and hence there is no God , no immaterial side of reality , no such a process such as the non-physical mental that's been reduced to just biological processes .........

The "scientific world view " is thus false , and therefore science should reject that false materialism , in order to include the missing part of reality ...that's all .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 15/11/2013 20:57:36
The "scientific world view " is thus false ...that's all .

There’s no “thus” about it . The "scientific world view" created the clothes on your back , the food in your belly, the roof over your head, and the medium you’re using to communicate* , so evidently is not “false”.

Worshipping [insert God here] did not make these things possible : it was science wot done it.

[* BTW why do you bother using the internet if “telepathy is normal” : just communicate telepathically, it’s gotta be cheaper].
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 16/11/2013 19:02:03
Quote from: David Cooper
An example of this is time dilation. When a rocket accelerates away from another rocket, it will either have its time slowed down or speeded up, but it can't do both of those things at the same time. Special Relativity studiously ignores this problem and bans anyone from addressing it, but it's actually a problem which invalidates the theory.
That’s not a problem in special relativity. The problem here is with your understanding of special relativity. I’ll explain your error to you: If two observers are moving relative to each other such that each measures the speed of the other to be v then each reckons the other’s clock to be running slow. That’s not a problem whatsoever. No true paradoxes or contradictions arise from this observed fact. By observed fact I mean that time dilation has actually been observed so we know that it’s true from an experimental point of view.

You're missing the point. Rocket A and Rocket B are sitting together in space. They may be stationary, or they may be moving - either description is equally valid according to SR. Now, A accelerates to 86.6 the speed of light (relative to B) and goes off on a long trip, then stops, turns round and comes back at the same speed before stopping next to B. Clocks on each rocket reveal that during this trip, one year has gone by on A and two years have gone by on B.

However, we can view the whole thing a different way. A and B are initially moving at 86.6% the speed of light to start with (relative to rocket C, which I'm only adding in to provide something specific to relate their speed to). In this scenario, rocket A suddenly stops (such that it is now stationary relative to C), then after a long time it suddenly accelerates to chase after B (at a speed which I won't bother to calculate), before decelerating to match the speed of B when it catches up with it.

These are just two of an infinite number of rival accounts as to what happened, and all of them are supposedly equally valid. It is impossible to pick out any one of those accounts and to say that it is right and that all the others are wrong - there is no experiment that can be done to determine that.

The problem comes in when you want to identify a mechanism for what has taken place. In the first account, rocket A accelerated and resulted in time slowing down for it for the first half of its trip, but in the second account rocket A decelerated and resulted in time speeding up for it for the first half of the trip. It cannot have both slowed down and speeded up at the same time.

Technically though, time doesn't work like that in SR. What really happens is that some things are able to take shortcuts into the future relative to other things by travelling through less time. Again though, in one account we have rocket A accelerating and taking a shortcut into the future compared with B, while in the other account A stops taking a shortcut into the future while B continues to do so.

That is where there is a mechanistic contradiction in SR which invalidates it. What happens though is that you all ignore the whole business of mechanism on the basis that you cannot detect whether A accelerates or decelerates, because all that counts from your point of view is that the total time elapsed works out correctly when the two rockets are reunited. You simply ignore the contradictions which necessarily come in as soon as you try to apply an actual mechanism to what has taken place.

Quote
There is a famous scenario called the Twin’s Paradox which is used to clarify the nature of time dilation. This subject came up recently in my science forum. We have a resident expert on general relativity there who sent me his article on the subject. If you’re really interested in learning the correct understanding of time dilation then you can download and read about it here – The twin paradox and principle of relativity – by Øyvind Grøn which can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4154

That was interesting, but unless I'm missing something, I don't think it addresses the point I'm making. I would be happy to discover that I'm wrong though as it would be good to sort this out. I have another objection to relativity which appears to kill it by a different route (showing that the apparent chains of cause-and-effect events which appear to run through the universe cannot be cause-and-effect at all under SR but must exist by chance alone, at odds which render the word "astronomical" powerless to describe the degree of improbability involved), but we can get onto that later.

Well?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2013 19:08:28
The best approach is to look for the causation linkage. It doesn't really matter what kind of voodoo is used to support consciousness, because at some point it has to interact with the computer that is the brain, and that interaction is something that science should be fully able to examine and document, and although the complexity of the brain will ensure that progress will be very slow, it will be a task that can be completed over time.
[/quote]

What you do fail to understand so far, is as follows, despite all these lengthy kilometers of pages  :

How can the "unconscious " matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness that's irreducible to the material or to the physical biological ?


In other words :

How can physics and chemistry account for the mental or for the non-physical ?



No way .

In short :

You're just chasing a ...mirage you do take for ...real , like a desert mirage that gets taken for water : no matter how long and how hard you would chase it , it will continue to be as elusive , as deceptive as ever , leaving you thirsty ,and leaving you dying as a result ...unless someone or something would rescue you by offering you some real water , the offered latter you continue to reject in favor of that elusive deceptive surreal absurd mirage of yours .

How irrational can you ever be indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2013 19:26:09
The "scientific world view " is thus false ...that's all .

There’s no “thus” about it . The "scientific world view" created the clothes on your back , the food in your belly, the roof over your head, and the medium you’re using to communicate* , so evidently is not “false”.

Worshipping [insert God here] did not make these things possible : it was science wot done it.

[* BTW why do you bother using the internet if “telepathy is normal” : just communicate telepathically, it’s gotta be cheaper].
[/quote]


Refuting you is so easy , man, you have no idea , it is even an enormous pleasure to do so , the pleasure is all mine thus  : a piece of cake , despite your arrogant insulting condescendent fancy talk and many unnecessary links :

The "scientific world view "  has been assuming that reality as a whole is just material or physical  for so long now , thanks to materialism thus .

To assume thus that reality as a whole is just material or physical is just a false materialist naturalist reductionist neo-darwinian false conception of nature , or just a materialist core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality , and hence the mainstream 'scientific world view " is also false , obviously .

The mainstream 'scientific world view " that's just been  a core materialist belief assumption, no empirical one .

Science has never proved that materialist "fact ", or rather that materialist belief core assumption regarding the nature of reality to be "true ", obviously , never , ever .

Congratulations , genius :

You have not only been believing in a materialist core belief assumption big lie , make -believe , without question , but you also have been taking it for granted as the "scientific world view " .

How brilliant can you ever be indeed .

You're so overwhelmingly brilliant thus as to believe in a false conception of nature that you do take for granted as  the 'scientific world view " , you are so overwhelmingly brilliant in that sense that i do not wish to see any more  overwhelmingly  brilliant ideas or insights of yours like that anymore haha, simply because they are so overwhelming ......so absurd , so surreal , so irrational, so unscientific even .....so worse than those of any given superstitions of any given ignorant religious believer just because your materialist beliefs have been taken for granted without question as the 'scientific world view "= there is nothing whatsoever in all mankind's history for that matter that's worse than imposing a certain false belief or false world view as the 'scientific world view "  haha : tragic-hilarious , pathetic , silly ...........you name it ...

Congrat.... .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 16/11/2013 21:20:36
The best approach is to look for the causation linkage. It doesn't really matter what kind of voodoo is used to support consciousness, because at some point it has to interact with the computer that is the brain, and that interaction is something that science should be fully able to examine and document, and although the complexity of the brain will ensure that progress will be very slow, it will be a task that can be completed over time.

What you do fail to understand so far, is as follows, despite all these lengthy kilometers of pages  :

How can the "unconscious " matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness that's irreducible to the material or to the physical biological ?

In other words :

How can physics and chemistry account for the mental or for the non-physical ?



No way .

Your voodoo doesn't make it any easier. The key problem is the interface, while the actual means by which the voodoo happens is a side issue.

Quote
In short :

You're just chasing a ...mirage you do take for ...real , like a desert mirage that gets taken for water : no matter how long and how hard you would chase it , it will continue to be as elusive , as deceptive as ever , leaving you thirsty ,and leaving you dying as a result ...unless someone or something would rescue you by offering you some real water , the offered latter you continue to reject in favor of that elusive deceptive surreal absurd mirage of yours .

How irrational can you ever be indeed .

You're the one being irrational here. Your voodoo powered consciousness still has to interface with a machine, and at that point it must show up no matter how lacking in material it might be. If it did not interact, it would have no role and could not make the machine speak about it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/11/2013 22:11:49
Hi, folks :

I will try to respond to the above , later on .

I will just say the following , for the time being at least though :

Thanks for your interesting insights i do appreciate indeed , althought they are just materialistic ones, once again...no wonder  :

The assumption that life is just a biological process ,for example, has more to do with materialism as a world view , than with science proper : take a look back at the past to find out about the roots of such assumption , and regarding the birth of materialism itself .


I don't really care what Descartes said. You could take any philosopher or scientist and trace their  intellectual influences all the way back to cave man ancestors, who undoubtedly had all sorts of false assumptions or explanations about the causes of things - that doesn't prove or negate anything. That's just a reverse appeal to authority.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2013 19:12:31
The best approach is to look for the causation linkage. It doesn't really matter what kind of voodoo is used to support consciousness, because at some point it has to interact with the computer that is the brain, and that interaction is something that science should be fully able to examine and document, and although the complexity of the brain will ensure that progress will be very slow, it will be a task that can be completed over time.

What you do fail to understand so far, is as follows, despite all these lengthy kilometers of pages  :

How can the "unconscious " matter give rise to the immaterial consciousness that's irreducible to the material or to the physical biological ?

In other words :

How can physics and chemistry account for the mental or for the non-physical ?



No way .

Your voodoo doesn't make it any easier. The key problem is the interface, while the actual means by which the voodoo happens is a side issue.

There might be some other totally different forms of causation out there , if we would take into consideration the fact that reality as a whole is not just materialial or physical, and hence the mental is irreducible to the physical .

Just answer the question then :
How can the "unconscious " matter  account  for  the immaterial consciousness , or at least how physics and chemistry can account for consciousness ?

Quote
Quote
In short :

You're just chasing a ...mirage you do take for ...real , like a desert mirage that gets taken for water : no matter how long and how hard you would chase it , it will continue to be as elusive , as deceptive as ever , leaving you thirsty ,and leaving you dying as a result ...unless someone or something would rescue you by offering you some real water , the offered latter you continue to reject in favor of that elusive deceptive surreal absurd mirage of yours .

How irrational can you ever be indeed .

You're the one being irrational here. Your voodoo powered consciousness still has to interface with a machine, and at that point it must show up no matter how lacking in material it might be. If it did not interact, it would have no role and could not make the machine speak about it.

Life is no machine , silly , and there might be some other totally different forms of causation underlying the laws of physics themselves , since consciousness is non-physical and is thus outside of the laws of physics .

Once again, how can physics and chemistry account for consciousness ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 17/11/2013 19:32:02
There might be some other totally different forms of causation out there , if we would take into consideration the fact that reality as a whole is not just materialial or physical, and hence the mental is irreducible to the physical.

Causation will still be causation.

Quote
Just answer the question then :
How can the "unconscious " matter  account  for  the immaterial consciousness , or at least how physics and chemistry can account for consciousness ?

How do you know that matter isn't sentient? (Consciousness = sentience.) But hey, I don't care what it is that's sentient so much as I care about how the information system of the brain interacts with whatever it is that is sentient. It can be sentient matter/energy/spacefabrid, or it can be sentient geometry (magical emergence), or it can be something else in another realm entirely, but wherever and whatever it is, it still has to interact with the machine that is the brain, and that will show up.

Quote
Life is no machine , silly

Life is precisely a machine. We will soon be manufacturing artificial plants which are understood 100% mechanistically.

Quote
Once again, how can physics and chemistry account for consciousness ?

Matter could be sentient, so that isn't a problem at all. The problem is in how you interface between that and an information system in order to extract knowledge of consciousness from it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2013 19:34:03
Hi, folks :

I will try to respond to the above , later on .

I will just say the following , for the time being at least though :

Thanks for your interesting insights i do appreciate indeed , althought they are just materialistic ones, once again...no wonder  :

The assumption that life is just a biological process ,for example, has more to do with materialism as a world view , than with science proper : take a look back at the past to find out about the roots of such assumption , and regarding the birth of materialism itself .


I don't really care what Descartes said. You could take any philosopher or scientist and trace their  intellectual influences all the way back to cave man ancestors, who undoubtedly had all sorts of false assumptions or explanations about the causes of things - that doesn't prove or negate anything. That's just a reverse appeal to authority.

All i was saying is that the machine metaphor in modern science ,regarding life and the rest of the universe is no empirical fact , but , just an Eurocentric belief assumption that dates  back all the way to Descartes thus who was so afraid of the inquisitions of the medieval church that he "left the mind " to the church .............while assuming that the human body, or any other living organisms for that matter ,  behaved or functioned like a machine did , since he was so fond of the machines hype of his own time, since he liked to make machines himself he used to compare to living organisms  ....since he  used to practice live vivisections on living  dogs , for example , the sick criminal that he was .
He did even practice that on  living  dogs by opening up the living  dogs' hearts, while putting his fingers inside of them  ,in order to describe for his students what it actually felt  like when the living dogs' hearts were still functioning  .
No wonder that the other modern machine analogy , the computer one , has been applied to life in general, and to DNA ,  nowadays , in this computer age .
Other future hypes like that might replace the former ones .
In short :
Eurocentric cultures and beliefs have been taken for granted as empirical facts .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2013 17:02:58
There might be some other totally different forms of causation out there , if we would take into consideration the fact that reality as a whole is not just materialial or physical, and hence the mental is irreducible to the physical.

Causation will still be causation.

Fundamental causation might turn out to be non-physical .

Quote
Quote
Just answer the question then :
How can the "unconscious " matter  account  for  the immaterial consciousness , or at least how physics and chemistry can account for consciousness ?

How do you know that matter isn't sentient? (Consciousness = sentience.) But hey, I don't care what it is that's sentient so much as I care about how the information system of the brain interacts with whatever it is that is sentient. It can be sentient matter/energy/spacefabrid, or it can be sentient geometry (magical emergence), or it can be something else in another realm entirely, but wherever and whatever it is, it still has to interact with the machine that is the brain, and that will show up.

The brain is no machine , the immaterial consciousness might be interacting with the physical brain non-physically , as the most fundamental causation of them all might turn out to be non-physical as well .

How the non-physical consciousness does interact with the physical brain is still anybody's guess.

Quote
Quote
Life is no machine , silly

Life is precisely a machine. We will soon be manufacturing artificial plants which are understood 100% mechanistically
.

LIfe is no machine , manufacturing plants artificially is no evidence for that : there might be some non-physical causation at work at the level of living organisms that underlies the laws of physics , the latter that cannot explain how living organisms are relatively self-organizing , how they can give rise to their own forms shapes ...
DNA or physics and chemistry alone cannot explain the latter .

Quote
Quote
Once again, how can physics and chemistry account for consciousness ?

Matter could be sentient, so that isn't a problem at all. The problem is in how you interface between that and an information system in order to extract knowledge of consciousness from it.
[/quote]

That's anybody's guess so far .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 19/11/2013 18:02:00
Fundamental causation might turn out to be non-physical .

It's certainly non-material, but it doesn't matter what it is - it is there as something which governs interaction and it is of zero importance which realm you want to shove it in.

Quote
The brain is no machine , the immaterial consciousness might be interacting with the physical brain non-physically , as the most fundamental causation of them all might turn out to be non-physical as well .

The brain is a machine. It is made up of lots of pieces of neural network which mechanistiaclly compute.

Quote
LIfe is no machine , manufacturing plants artificially is no evidence for that : there might be some non-physical causation at work at the level of living organisms that underlies the laws of physics , the latter that cannot explain how living organisms are relatively self-organizing , how they can give rise to their own forms shapes ...
DNA or physics and chemistry alone cannot explain the latter .

That's just an assertion for which you have no evidence. It looks as if they can account for everything about life except for consciousness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2013 19:13:55
Fundamental causation might turn out to be non-physical .

It's certainly non-material, but it doesn't matter what it is - it is there as something which governs interaction and it is of zero importance which realm you want to shove it in.

Try to say that to the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " , which has been assuming that reality as a whole is just material or physical , including consciousness ...
And it makes all the difference of the world to acknowledge the fact that reality as a whole cannot be just material or physical, including life , its emergence origins and evolution, the same goes for human langauge , the same goes for the non-physical consciousness and the rest + even evolution itself cannot be just biological as a result .
When science thus will realise and acknowledge the fact that reality as a whole is not just physical or material , including evolution, the mind or consciousness , and the rest , including matter itself (see modern physics regarding the latter ) , then, all our scientific knowledge , all sciences will have to change radically = you will have to throw most of your presumed scientific knowledge out of the window...

Quote
Quote
The brain is no machine , the immaterial consciousness might be interacting with the physical brain non-physically , as the most fundamental causation of them all might turn out to be non-physical as well .

The brain is a machine. It is made up of lots of pieces of neural network which mechanistiaclly compute.

Living organisms , including brains , are no machines : to say they are, is just a materialist mechanical belief assumption, no empirical fact, not even remotely close . .
Quote
Quote
LIfe is no machine , manufacturing plants artificially is no evidence for that : there might be some non-physical causation at work at the level of living organisms that underlies the laws of physics , the latter that cannot explain how living organisms are relatively self-organizing , how they can give rise to their own forms shapes ...
DNA or physics and chemistry alone cannot explain the latter .

That's just an assertion for which you have no evidence. It looks as if they can account for everything about life except for consciousness.

Since reality as a whole cannot be just material or physical , so , life and the rest , including matter itself , cannot be just material or physical, including evolution itself that cannot be , logically , just biological .

Physics and chemistry alone , DNA ...cannot explain morphogenesis , the self-organization or self-regeneration of  living organisms , cells ...cannot explain many things , not because we do not know how to explain them scientifically yet , but , simply because the physical is just one single side of the whole pic , the latter cannot be explained by just  the former,no way, logically  = physics and chemistry alone do explain ..nothing in fact : they just try to describe the physical side of reality ,while taking the latter for granted as the whole reality or as the whole pic : that's  an extremely idiotic absurd surreal , and  an  unscientific attempt to try to explain everyting = nothing , just via the physical side of reality , just via physics and chemistry thus > that physical "theory of everything " = theory of nothing thus.

You will , soon enough , have to reconsider most of what you think it is ...science , as a result = you have been mixing up science with materialism = mixing water with oil , so to speak = you have a lots of distilling  to do , by trying to distill the pure water of science proper, by rejecting the toxic materialist oil in it.

Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2013 19:31:25
Poor Dave :

You will have to bury  most of your presumed "scientific " knowledge that's been just materialist crap,just materialist false belief assumptions, no science  .

Dust to dust , ashes to ashes haha   amen.

My condolences.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2013 19:03:55
There might be some sort of more fundamental ,and totally different form of causation underlying the laws of physics themselves , such as some sort of formative causation, not necessarily that morphic resonance of Sheldrake :

http://www.amazon.com/Morphic-Resonance-Nature-Formative-Causation/dp/1594773173
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2013 21:20:24
Links for free ebooks on the subject removed by myself ,since no one here seems to deserve them: no more free links for free ebooks thus.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 21/11/2013 21:28:50
There might be some sort of more fundamental ,and totally different form of causation underlying the laws of physics themselves , such as some sort of formative causation, not necessarily that morphic resonance of Sheldrake :

http://www.amazon.com/Morphic-Resonance-Nature-Formative-Causation/dp/1594773173

And there might be a rhinoceros living in my basement, but if I have no evidence that there is, why would I keep running down stairs to check?

If you require science to prove the non-existence of things for which it has no evidence, you are requiring it to disprove an infinite number of propositions, an infinite number of times. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 22/11/2013 04:08:22
Here's an  interesting article on Qualia  if anyone is so inclined. (It is rather long, though.)  The clinical cases provide food for thought. Bonus fun experiments - relocate your nose.

Three Laws of Qualia -- What Neurology Tells Us about the Biological Functions of Consciousness, Qualia and the Self
by V. S. Ramachandran , William Hirstein

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.8130
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 22/11/2013 09:54:16
I'm appalled at your laissez-faire attitude to pachyderms. I sincerely hope you don't have children. What sort of mother would leave the house without checking for rhinosceri, hippopotami and other dangerous beasts (including nonmaterial ones) in the basement?  Or does your babysitter tote a gun and a bottle of holy water?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/11/2013 15:39:22
Here's an  interesting article on Qualia  if anyone is so inclined.
...
Three Laws of Qualia -- What Neurology Tells Us about the Biological Functions of Consciousness, Qualia and the Self (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.8130&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
by V. S. Ramachandran , William Hirstein
Thanks for that Cheryl, very interesting (I edited the link to point to the pdf document itself).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/11/2013 16:40:25
There might be some sort of more fundamental ,and totally different form of causation underlying the laws of physics themselves , such as some sort of formative causation, not necessarily that morphic resonance of Sheldrake :

http://www.amazon.com/Morphic-Resonance-Nature-Formative-Causation/dp/1594773173

And there might be a rhinoceros living in my basement, but if I have no evidence that there is, why would I keep running down stairs to check?

If you require science to prove the non-existence of things for which it has no evidence, you are requiring it to disprove an infinite number of propositions, an infinite number of times.


What are you talking about , sis ?

I would really appreciate it very much , if youn would try to think before responding, simply because you're not making any sense whatsoever ,while misunderstanding my words beyond any recognition  .

I said , since reality as a whole cannot be just physical or material, so, there might be some more fundamental and totally different forms of causation out there that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves : non-physical forms of causation at that , since physics and chemistry alone are just one single side of reality , and since the non-physical or mental that's irreducible to the physical ,is more fundamental that matter can ever be .

Non-physical or mental forms of causation  that are still unknown to the materialistic physical science : science proper might discover those mental forms of causation, when science will cease to be materialistic , and hence  when science will be open to the mental side of reality as such .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/11/2013 16:51:54
I'm appalled at your laissez-faire attitude to pachyderms. I sincerely hope you don't have children. What sort of mother would leave the house without checking for rhinosceri, hippopotami and other dangerous beasts (including nonmaterial ones) in the basement?  Or does your babysitter tote a gun and a bottle of holy water?
[/quote]

Ho,ho : stop your silly wild speculations , cowboy :
I was just talking about the fact that reality cannot be just material or physical , and hence physics and chemistry are just one single side of reality , and a less fundamental one at that than the mental side of reality :
As a human being : you are both body and mind = your physical body is not all what there is to you , even though you do sound to me like some sort of a soulless  heartless insensitive  zombie haha , kidding : your non-physical or mental side does also exist = you are a whole inseparable package = physical body and non-physical soul = any  scientific attempts to try to explain you ,so to speak,  as a human being , must try to do just that by approaching both of your own inseparable dimentions  thus as a whole package : the physical and mental ones = to try to explain you, so to speak , as  a human being , as a living organism , just via one sigle dimention of you , just in terms of physics and chemistry is not only an idiotic absurd surreal ...you name it ....attempt , but it is also and mainly an unscientific   attempt to do so  .

Comprende , amigo ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/11/2013 17:06:49
Here's an  interesting article on Qualia  if anyone is so inclined. (It is rather long, though.)  The clinical cases provide food for thought. Bonus fun experiments - relocate your nose.

Three Laws of Qualia -- What Neurology Tells Us about the Biological Functions of Consciousness, Qualia and the Self
by V. S. Ramachandran , William Hirstein

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.8130
[/quote]

Come on, be serious : consciousness or qualia can be explained by laws , similar to  those of Newton ? haha : just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

Well, for your info : any given sane average person does experience the fact that consciousness is non-physical , and hence escapes any laws of physics .

Ramachandran ? hahah  ( This scientist 's work is so interesting and fascinating that it is a complete waste that he tries to misinterpret it , just in materialistic mechanistic terms ,unfortunately enough )  , Dennett  haha  ...come on , be serious : those are the very embodiement of what 's really so wrong about science today = they are the core embodiement of that toxic false orthodox dogmatic materialistic secular religion in science , in the sense that the "mind is in the brain , memory is stored in the brain ..." : tragic-hilarious,in the sense that 'everything = nothing " can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry ,including the mind or consciousness  .

That lunatic Dennet  even says that consciousness as such might not exist , that we might all be just zombies taking the illusion of consciousness for real ....

How lunatic  and zombie  can that weirdo ever be ...pathetic : taking his own materialist atheist belief assumptions for granted without question as science , no wonder that  the current mainstream "scientific world view " is materialist= false  : no wonder that irrational dogmatic fanatic atheist believers such as Dennett , Dawkins ...are just fanatic secular -religious  believers ,trying to 'fight ' against their other religious fanatic "reflections in the mirror " out there .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 22/11/2013 18:17:13
That lunatic ... How lunatic ... weirdo ...pathetic

Current verbal-abuse statistics for DonQuichotte ...

Since joining this forum DonQ has posted the insult idiot* six times , stupid* five times, "fool" ( meaning idiot) five times , "lunatic" five times,  "genius" (sarcastically) eight times, "pathetic" (sarcastically) five times, "bullshit" five times and "moron" once,

[ Given DonQ's ideas of what is normal I'm not counting "weirdo" as an insult : from him it's a compliment ]

The frequency of DonQ's insults indicates the quality of his argument.

[ Surely there's a niche sadomasochistic forum out there where people would welcome your verbal-abuse Don ?  ].

BTW
DonQ has used the word "materialist" over 40 times and “irrational” 13 times.
[ it's clear you’re obsessionally flogging a dead horse here Don ].

[ * = wildcard ]
 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 22/11/2013 18:48:14
Quote from: thenakedscientists.com/forum
ACCEPTABLE USAGE POLICY - By registering to use this forum you agree to abide by the following regulations.

 1. Keep it legal

We are all bound by law, and we cannot host material that contravenes the law.  This means we cannot, amongst other things, host material that is obscene, that constitutes harassment,  that promotes terrorism, that is racist, or that constitutes a breach of copyright.

Like posting links to pirate copies of ebooks. (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49378.msg424668#msg424668)

Quote from: thenakedscientists.com/forum
2. Keep it friendly

Do not use insulting, aggressive, or provocative language.

Repetitive use of words such as “stupid” “idiot” “moron” “pathetic” (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424755#msg424755) sounds like insulting language to me.


Quote from: thenakedscientists.com/forum
5. Keep it a discussion

•The site is not for evangelising your own pet theory.

Repeatedly mentioning a the same topic, “materialist”,  (40+ times), (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424755#msg424755) sounds like evangelising to me.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 22/11/2013 21:37:10



Come on, be serious : consciousness or qualia can be explained by laws , similar to  those of Newton ? haha : just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

Why is that so laughable? Regardless, of how you believe qualia are generated, should it be impossible to say what they do, or do not do; when they occur  and when they do not? Is there no rational statement, no consistent observation, one can make about them at all?

Quote
Well, for your info : any given sane average person does experience the fact that consciousness is non-physical , and hence escapes any laws of physics .

A person may perceive electricity as non-physical as well, because he cannot see electrons or voltage. Without a microscope, he cannot "experience" the microorganisms that are making him ill. Do these things exist?

Quote
Ramachandran ? hahah  ( This scientist 's work is so interesting and fascinating that it is a complete waste that he tries to misinterpret it , just in materialistic mechanistic terms ,unfortunately enough )  , Dennett  haha  ...come on , be serious : those are the very embodiement of what 's really so wrong about science today = they are the core embodiement of that toxic false orthodox dogmatic materialistic secular religion in science , in the sense that the "mind is in the brain , memory is stored in the brain ..." : tragic-hilarious,in the sense that 'everything = nothing " can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry ,including the mind or consciousness  .

That lunatic Dennet  even says that consciousness as such might not exist , that we might all be just zombies taking the illusion of consciousness for real ....

Actually, in the article, Ramachandran disagrees with Dennett on certain things, and gives some explanation why we are not unconscious zombies, or how one would not expect the results he gets in certain experiments, if we were.

I'd be happy to hear your true and non-toxic, non orthodox-dogmatic-materialistic-secular,  interpretation of  Ramachandron's findings, and how he should have interpreted his results.  I asked you earlier about hallucinations, and how they would be generated by the immaterial consciousness, but you declined to discuss it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 23/11/2013 02:35:28
I asked you earlier about hallucinations, and how they would be generated by the immaterial consciousness, but you declined to discuss it.

I asked something similar about optical illusions, but no explanation was forthcoming. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 12:41:38
In that article, Ramachandran & Hirstein are saying qualia provide data for choice, are irrevocable (you can't change how they feel) and require short term memory. For example, when touching a hotplate, there is a reflex withdrawal - no choice, no memory required, no qualia involved; but shortly after, the pain quale is experienced, which allows a choice of response to be considered. This suggests qualia are generated to give meaning to the input; the meaning arises from the associations triggered by the qualia, and it is this meaning that allows the selection of appropriate response (choice). So if a quale of pain triggers associations of reward in some context, it will have a different meaning than if it triggers associations of failure, and so the response will likely be different.

To be more speculative: The article also emphasises the multiple levels of feedback throughout the processing chain, so it also seems to me possible that the meaning(s) associated with a quale may modify the experienced quale through this feedback (bear in mind that a quale is not a 'thing', but just a generic label for a sensation). In other words, the same input may generate different qualia over time, depending, not just on the situational context, but also on feedback from the results of the choices made, which change the associated meaning, which in turn changes the qualia (e.g., you no longer feel that particular input as pain, or you feel it as a different sort of pain). So a particular quale is irrevocable, but not necessarily the consistent result of a particular input stimulus.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 18:03:30

Come on, be serious : consciousness or qualia can be explained by laws , similar to  those of Newton ? haha : just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

Why is that so laughable? Regardless, of how you believe qualia are generated, should it be impossible to say what they do, or do not do; when they occur  and when they do not? Is there no rational statement, no consistent observation, one can make about them at all?

".... that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia ’ based on a loose analogy with Newton’s three laws of classical mechanics......"

To try to explain the mental in terms of physics and chemistry , in terms of physical laws ,or to try to reduce the mental to just the latter is just an extension of the materialist false conception of nature .Absurd .

Quote
Quote
Well, for your info : any given sane average person does experience the fact that consciousness is non-physical , and hence escapes any laws of physics .

A person may perceive electricity as non-physical as well, because he cannot see electrons or voltage. Without a microscope, he cannot "experience" the microorganisms that are making him ill. Do these things exist?

Have you ever been slightly electrocuted ?

All i am saying is that consciousness is non-physical , as we all experience it to be , in total contrast with materialism which reduces consciousness to just biological processes .


Quote
Quote
Ramachandran ? hahah  ( This scientist 's work is so interesting and fascinating that it is a complete waste that he tries to misinterpret it , just in materialistic mechanistic terms ,unfortunately enough )  , Dennett  haha  ...come on , be serious : those are the very embodiement of what 's really so wrong about science today = they are the core embodiement of that toxic false orthodox dogmatic materialistic secular religion in science , in the sense that the "mind is in the brain , memory is stored in the brain ..." : tragic-hilarious,in the sense that 'everything = nothing " can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry ,including the mind or consciousness  .

That lunatic Dennet  even says that consciousness as such might not exist , that we might all be just zombies taking the illusion of consciousness for real ....

Actually, in the article, Ramachandran disagrees with Dennett on certain things, and gives some explanation why we are not unconscious zombies, or how one would not expect the results he gets in certain experiments, if we were.

I'd be happy to hear your true and non-toxic, non orthodox-dogmatic-materialistic-secular,  interpretation of  Ramachandron's findings, and how he should have interpreted his results.  I asked you earlier about hallucinations, and how they would be generated by the immaterial consciousness, but you declined to discuss it.


Grosso modo :
Well,  i said many times , that the material or the physical is just one single aspect or 1 single part of the whole pic , the mental is the other part , the mental that's more fundamental than the physical or the material, and hence physics and chemistry are just one single aspect of the whole pic , and a less fundamental part at that ,so, there might be some sort of formative or other totally different forms of causation out there which might be underlying the laws of physics themselves :

See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :
Darwin himself by the way was a convinced Lamarckian ,in the sense that he did accept that kind of inheritance , while even trying to deliver some theories to explain just that : the materialist neo-Darwinians such as Dennett , Dawkins ...do reject that Lamarckian view of evolution and inheritance , obviously .
See the following on the subject :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 18:14:44
The mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain ...and hence qualia is not  in  the brain .
It's the other way around in fact : the brain is in the mind, and the body is in the mind  .
The non-physical mind does affect the physical brain ,and vice versa ,how ? : that remains to be seen ...
The mind is more fundamental than matter can ever be , so, the mind might be underlying the laws of physics , not the other way around .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 18:28:01


".... that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia ’ based on a loose analogy with Newton’s three laws of classical mechanics......"

To try to explain the mental in terms of physics and chemistry , in terms of physical laws ,or to try to reduce the mental to just the latter is just an extension of the materialist false conception of nature .Absurd .

Again, there's nothing inherently materialistic about observing what qualia do or do not do, when they are present and when they are not - unless, you believe (and I suspect you do) that the immaterial has no mechanisms, follows no laws. In which case, then every conceivable experiment is invalid, or at best inconclusive. Ironically, that includes any hypothetical experiment about any aspect of the immaterial, since one would have no way of knowing how other aspects of the immaterial might influence the experiment or manifest themselves that day. Your model predicts that everything is unintelligible, including the model itself. That's why your argument is irrational.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 18:57:05
In that article, Ramachandran & Hirstein are saying qualia provide data for choice, are irrevocable (you can't change how they feel) and require short term memory. For example, when touching a hotplate, there is a reflex withdrawal - no choice, no memory required, no qualia involved; but shortly after, the pain quale is experienced, which allows a choice of response to be considered. This suggests qualia are generated to give meaning to the input; the meaning arises from the associations triggered by the qualia, and it is this meaning that allows the selection of appropriate response (choice). So if a quale of pain triggers associations of reward in some context, it will have a different meaning than if it triggers associations of failure, and so the response will likely be different.

To be more speculative: The article also emphasises the multiple levels of feedback throughout the processing chain, so it also seems to me possible that the meaning(s) associated with a quale may modify the experienced quale through this feedback (bear in mind that a quale is not a 'thing', but just a generic label for a sensation). In other words, the same input may generate different qualia over time, depending, not just on the situational context, but also on feedback from the results of the choices made, which change the associated meaning, which in turn changes the qualia (e.g., you no longer feel that particular input as pain, or you feel it as a different sort of pain). So a particular quale is irrevocable, but not necessarily the consistent result of a particular input stimulus.

I also liked the part about qualia distinguishing real from imaginary, that if beliefs, ideas, memories, etc had qualia as vivid as those associated with perception, it would be impossible for the brain to distinguish between the idea of a monkey sitting in a chair and an actual one; thinking about eating a meal would seem equivalent to actually eating it.


"Therefore (real perceptual) qualia are protected; they are partially insulated from top-down influences....
....At the same time, however, you occasionally need to run a virtual reality simulation using less vivid qualia generated from memory representations in order to makeappropriate decisions in the absence of the objects which normally  provoke those qualia. The memories one normally evokes in this case are not fully laden with qualia; they have qualia which are just vivid enough to allow you to run the simulation. Ifthey possessed full-strength qualia, again, that would be  dangerous; indeed that’s called a hallucination. Presumably that’s what happens in temporal lobe seizures;some mechanism has gone awry, and the virtual reality simulation has now become like real sensory input. The simulation loses its revocability and generates pathological qualia."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 18:59:16


".... that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia ’ based on a loose analogy with Newton’s three laws of classical mechanics......"

To try to explain the mental in terms of physics and chemistry , in terms of physical laws ,or to try to reduce the mental to just the latter is just an extension of the materialist false conception of nature .Absurd .

Again, there's nothing inherently materialistic about observing what qualia do or do not do, when they are present and when they are not - unless, you believe (and I suspect you do) that the immaterial has no mechanisms, follows no laws. In which case, then every conceivable experiment is invalid, or at best inconclusive. Ironically, that includes any hypothetical experiment about any aspect of the immaterial, since one would have no way of knowing how other aspects of the immaterial might influence the experiment or manifest themselves that day. Your model predicts that everything is unknowable, including itself. That's why your argument is irrational.
[/quote]



Come on, be serious : consciousness or qualia can be explained by laws , similar to  those of Newton ? haha : just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

Why is that so laughable? Regardless, of how you believe qualia are generated, should it be impossible to say what they do, or do not do; when they occur  and when they do not? Is there no rational statement, no consistent observation, one can make about them at all?

".... that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia ’ based on a loose analogy with Newton’s three laws of classical mechanics......"

To try to explain the mental in terms of physics and chemistry , in terms of physical laws ,or to try to reduce the mental to just the latter is just an extension of the materialist false conception of nature .Absurd .

Quote
Quote
Well, for your info : any given sane average person does experience the fact that consciousness is non-physical , and hence escapes any laws of physics .

A person may perceive electricity as non-physical as well, because he cannot see electrons or voltage. Without a microscope, he cannot "experience" the microorganisms that are making him ill. Do these things exist?

Have you ever been slightly electrocuted ?

All i am saying is that consciousness is non-physical , as we all experience it to be , in total contrast with materialism which reduces consciousness to just biological processes .


Quote
Quote
Ramachandran ? hahah  ( This scientist 's work is so interesting and fascinating that it is a complete waste that he tries to misinterpret it , just in materialistic mechanistic terms ,unfortunately enough )  , Dennett  haha  ...come on , be serious : those are the very embodiement of what 's really so wrong about science today = they are the core embodiement of that toxic false orthodox dogmatic materialistic secular religion in science , in the sense that the "mind is in the brain , memory is stored in the brain ..." : tragic-hilarious,in the sense that 'everything = nothing " can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry ,including the mind or consciousness  .

That lunatic Dennet  even says that consciousness as such might not exist , that we might all be just zombies taking the illusion of consciousness for real ....

Actually, in the article, Ramachandran disagrees with Dennett on certain things, and gives some explanation why we are not unconscious zombies, or how one would not expect the results he gets in certain experiments, if we were.

I'd be happy to hear your true and non-toxic, non orthodox-dogmatic-materialistic-secular,  interpretation of  Ramachandron's findings, and how he should have interpreted his results.  I asked you earlier about hallucinations, and how they would be generated by the immaterial consciousness, but you declined to discuss it.


Grosso modo :
Well,  i said many times , that the material or the physical is just one single aspect or 1 single part of the whole pic , the mental is the other part , the mental that's more fundamental than the physical or the material, and hence physics and chemistry are just one single aspect of the whole pic , and a less fundamental part at that ,so, there might be some sort of formative or other totally different forms of causation out there , non-physical ones at that , which might be underlying the laws of physics themselves :

See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :
Darwin himself by the way was a convinced Lamarckian ,in the sense that he did accept that kind of inheritance , while even trying to deliver some theories to explain just that : the materialist neo-Darwinians such as Dennett , Dawkins ...do reject that Lamarckian view of evolution and inheritance , obviously .
See the following on the subject :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 19:08:06
In short :

Science must start looking for non-physical forms of causation, or for non-physical or mental phenomena , that are still unknown to science ,  that might or must be underlying the laws of physics themselves , by rejecting reductionist materialism .

Then, and only then, will science or biology , in this case , be able to explain epigenetics , morphogenesis , birds' homing ..........and most of the rest , hopefully .

Untill then, science will just continue to try to explain "everything = nothing ", just in terms of physics and chemistry alone , the latter that cannot account for life fully , let alone its evolution, emergence or origins , let alone that physics and chemistry can account for consciousness ....
Evolution itself , matter itself , life itself ,and most of the rest that cannot be just physical, material or biological thus .

The mind , the mental or the non-physical is  way too primordial and fundamental than matter can ever be , the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material .
The mental that's the most fundamental side of the  whole pic of reality as a whole = there is nothing 'supernatural " in it : the non-physical mental is thus ...normal = that's just the other side of the whole pic =the more fundamental one than the physical or material side of the whole pic,  the mental that might be underlying the material or physical  side of the whole pic = physics and chemistry , the laws of physics are a way less fundamental side of the whole pic thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 19:11:37

When science thus will realise and acknowledge the fact that reality as a whole is not just physical or material , including evolution, the mind or consciousness , and the rest , including matter itself (see modern physics regarding the latter )



It's really a shame that you don't share some of your ideas about chaos theory, observers, causality etc. on the physics forum. They don't know what they are missing.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 19:16:45


See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :



There's nothing immaterial about epigenetics. It's just an additional physical mechanism or process that affects genes besides mutation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 19:25:39
... See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :
Darwin himself by the way was a convinced Lamarckian ,in the sense that he did accept that kind of inheritance , while even trying to deliver some theories to explain just that : the materialist neo-Darwinians such as Dennett , Dawkins ...do reject that Lamarckian view of evolution and inheritance , obviously ...
Ah, no. Epigenetics isn't inheritance of acquired characteristics in the Lamarkian sense. Epigenetics is about environmental influences (typically stressors) affecting the physiology of an individual and causing suppression of certain genes via methylation; this gene suppression is potentially heritable. So the only acquired characteristic is the methylation of certain genes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 19:27:06
Quote


See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :



There's nothing immaterial about epigenetics. It's just an additional physical mechanism or process that affects genes besides mutation.

What makes genes get "imprinted " by acquired characteristics or by acquired enviromental traits ,such as the implications of famine , holocaust , war traumas ....such as tragic events ...as to behave as if they "hold " some sort of a "memory " of past events ...they pass on to the next generations, and beyond ? How does that happen ? just via physics and chemistry ? How ?
Mechanistic materialist neo-Darwinian science excludes , per definition, the Lamarckian Darwinian epigenetics= epigenetics as a scientific heresy .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 23/11/2013 19:30:22
Science must start looking for non-physical forms of causation, or for non-physical or mental phenomena , that are still unknown to science ,  that might or must be underlying the laws of physics themselves , by rejecting reductionist materialism .

Then, and only then, will science or biology , in this case , be able to explain epigenetics , morphogenesis , birds' homing

You must have missed my posts on ...

morphogenesis , see ... http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424665#msg424665

and

birds homing , see ...  http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424182#msg424182
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 19:53:19
I also liked the part about qualia distinguishing real from imaginary, that if beliefs, ideas, memories, etc had qualia as vivid as those associated with perception, it would be impossible for the brain to distinguish between the idea of a monkey sitting in a chair and an actual one; thinking about eating a meal would seem equivalent to actually eating it.
Yes; particularly relevant to me as I realise how many of my past memories consist of a blend of real and dreamed content. If dreams are involved in the encoding of current experiences to long term storage, this integration of dream material is not unexpected, and perhaps helps to explain the unreliability of even seemingly vivid memories.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 19:58:22
... See , for example , how epigenetics have been refuting the materialist mechanistic neo-Darwinian view of the world ,regarding inheritance : acquired characteristics get passed on from generation to generation :
Darwin himself by the way was a convinced Lamarckian ,in the sense that he did accept that kind of inheritance , while even trying to deliver some theories to explain just that : the materialist neo-Darwinians such as Dennett , Dawkins ...do reject that Lamarckian view of evolution and inheritance , obviously ...
Ah, no. Epigenetics isn't inheritance of acquired characteristics in the Lamarkian sense. Epigenetics is about environmental influences (typically stressors) affecting the physiology of an individual and causing suppression of certain genes via methylation; this gene suppression is potentially heritable. So the only acquired characteristic is the methylation of certain genes.
[/quote]

Ok, i am no expert in biology or genetics , but, how do you explain the inheritance of acquired traits or characteristics then , in the Lamarckian and Darwinian sense , that gets rejected by the materialist neo-Darwinians ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 20:02:18
What makes genes get "imprinted " by acquired characteristics or by acquired enviromental traits ,such as the implications of famine , holocaust , war traumas ....such as tragic events ...as to behave as if they "hold " some sort of a "memory " of past events ...they pass on to the next generations, and beyond ? How does that happen ? just via physics and chemistry ? How ?
Yes, epigenetics is biochemistry. Read all about it Here: Epigenetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:03:14
Quote
Science must start looking for non-physical forms of causation, or for non-physical or mental phenomena , that are still unknown to science ,  that might or must be underlying the laws of physics themselves , by rejecting reductionist materialism .

Then, and only then, will science or biology , in this case , be able to explain epigenetics , morphogenesis , birds' homing

You must have missed my posts on ...

morphogenesis , see ... http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424665#msg424665

and

birds homing , see ...  http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424182#msg424182

There were many mechanistic attempts to try to explain birds' homing via the position of the sun , but even at night , birds could get home, or via magnetism  by attaching magnets to those birds , via smell  , via the so-called biological clock ....none was proven to be "true " .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 20:04:09
Ok, i am no expert in biology or genetics , but, how do you explain the inheritance of acquired traits or characteristics then , in the Lamarckian and Darwinian sense , that gets rejected by the materialist neo-Darwinians ?
I'm not aware of any inheritance of acquired traits or characteristics, in the Lamarckian sense. Have you got an example?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:05:31
What makes genes get "imprinted " by acquired characteristics or by acquired enviromental traits ,such as the implications of famine , holocaust , war traumas ....such as tragic events ...as to behave as if they "hold " some sort of a "memory " of past events ...they pass on to the next generations, and beyond ? How does that happen ? just via physics and chemistry ? How ?
Yes, epigenetics is biochemistry. Read all about it Here: Epigenetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)
[/quote]

Answer my question .
How do those acquired traits , due to famine, war traumas , holocaust, tragic events ...get passed on to the next generations, and beyond ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:09:59
Ok, i am no expert in biology or genetics , but, how do you explain the inheritance of acquired traits or characteristics then , in the Lamarckian and Darwinian sense , that gets rejected by the materialist neo-Darwinians ?
I'm not aware of any inheritance of acquired traits or characteristics, in the Lamarckian sense. Have you got an example?
[/quote]


See the following scientific "heresy " on the subject : enlightening study :


Tell me then how do you explain just that , that which was revealed in the video above , when you will finish watching it then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:21:19

When science thus will realise and acknowledge the fact that reality as a whole is not just physical or material , including evolution, the mind or consciousness , and the rest , including matter itself (see modern physics regarding the latter )



It's really a shame that you don't share some of your ideas about chaos theory, observers, causality etc. on the physics forum. They don't know what they are missing.
[/quote]


Do you exclude a-priori any non-physical forms of causation ? Since reality is not just material or physical , do you ?
Do you deny the fact that the mind of the observer does affect the observed .?
And how can the "physical " mind "that's " in the brain , the mental "that's just physics and chemistry"  thus , be able to tell us anything reliable about physics and chemistry = circular "reasoning " : the observed  does imply  the mental of the observer that's observing it , does it not ?
I did never pretend to be an expert on chaos theory, not even remotely close .
Nobody knows "everything " : instead of trying to play the silly wise girl, why don't you enlighten us about how physics and chemistry alone can explain "everything = nothing " then,while missing the mental side of reality , genius .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 20:24:33
There were many mechanistic attempts to try to explain birds' homing via the position of the sun , but even at night , birds could get home, or via magnetism  by attaching magnets to those birds , via smell  , via the so-called biological clock ....none was proven to be "true " .
As one might expect, they use a variety of navigation cues; landmark recognition, magnetic field sensing, starfield and sun navigation, olfactory cues, etc. See All About Birds: Navigation (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/allaboutbirds/studying/migration/navigation). Not every homing or migration mechanism is fully explained, but the majority of those examined have been explained, and there's good reason to be confident that the others will have physical explanations.

Experience says unexplained doesn't mean inexplicable. You can always argue that the unexplained may be of 'immaterial' origin until it is explained, 'the immaterial of the gaps'; this seems a rather pointless semantic exercise. But is this is what rocks your boat, go for it. Oh, you did already...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 20:33:08
See the following scientific "heresy " on the subject : enlightening study :


Tell me then how do you explain just that , that which was revealed in the video above , when you will finish watching it then .
What do you think is heretical about it?

What about it do you think contradicts what I already described? It may be a little dated, but it's a reasonable summary of epigenetics.

It isn't Lamarkism.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:37:17
Quote
There were many mechanistic attempts to try to explain birds' homing via the position of the sun , but even at night , birds could get home, or via magnetism  by attaching magnets to those birds , via smell  , via the so-called biological clock ....none was proven to be "true " .
As one might expect, they use a variety of navigation cues; landmark recognition, magnetic field sensing, starfield and sun navigation, olfactory cues, etc. See All About Birds: Navigation (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/allaboutbirds/studying/migration/navigation). Not every homing or migration mechanism is fully explained, but the majority of those examined have been explained, and there's good reason to be confident that the others will have physical explanations.

Experience says unexplained doesn't mean inexplicable. You can always argue that the unexplained may be of 'immaterial' origin until it is explained, 'the immaterial of the gaps'; this seems a rather pointless semantic exercise. But is this is what rocks your boat, go for it. Oh, you did already...

No, they were not explained those ways : all attempts to explain birds ' homing physically failed so far ;as Sheldrake said :
and they will not be explained physically , not fully physically at least , not because we can't explain that now , and hence we will be able to explain them tomorrow , but simply because physics and chemistry alone are just a single part of the whole pic = that's a fact , no "immaterial of the gaps " : materialism is the one in fact that 's not only a kind of a promissory messianism ,in the sense that materialist science will be able to explain "everything =nothing " in the future ,just in terms of physics and chemistry thus,  but materialism is also the one using its "materialism of the gaps " by trying to explain consciousness ,for example,not to mention evolution, life and the rest  , just in terms of physics and chemistry , simply because materialism cannot account for  consciousness or the mental that's irreducible to the physical .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 20:37:50


Answer my question .
How do those acquired traits , due to famine, war traumas , holocaust, tragic events ...get passed on to the next generations, and beyond ?

Because  those extreme and long lasting events have physiological effects on the human body, effects like lack of nutrition, exposure to the elements, injury and inflammation, chronic exposure to stress hormones like cortisol. It doesn't mean a memory of the events of WWII become encoded in the genes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:41:59
Quote
See the following scientific "heresy " on the subject : enlightening study :


Tell me then how do you explain just that , that which was revealed in the video above , when you will finish watching it then .
What do you think is heretical about it?

What about it do you think contradicts what I already described? It may be a little dated, but it's a reasonable summary of epigenetics.

It isn't Lamarkism.

The findings in that video are  against the materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view " , i guess,   , that's why they are scientific "heresy " .
Watch the video then .
Later , alligator ,thanks, gotta go.Bye.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 23/11/2013 20:43:13
There were many mechanistic attempts to try to explain birds' homing via the position of the sun , but even at night , birds could get home, or via magnetism  by attaching magnets to those birds , via smell  , via the so-called biological clock ....none was proven to be "true " .

That birds can sense magnetic field has been proven ...
Quote from: ks.uiuc.edu
Although conjecture in the late nineteenth century held that birds could use the earth's magnetic field, it was only in the 1960s that scientists first demonstrated this experimentally.
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/History/magnetoreception/

If you followed the Cornell University link I gave you (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424182#msg424182) can read about the experiments ...

Quote from: cornell.edu
The Magnetic Compass
Another German team did research with the European Robin in the early 1960s. In their tests, robins in a migratory mood were placed in covered cages to eliminate sun, star and other light clues. Despite the lack of visual clues, the robins were observed hopping in the correct migratory direction.

As an additional refinement to the test, a Helmholtz coil was placed around the covered cages. The coil allowed the researchers to shift the direction of the earth's magnetic field. When the direction of the magnetic field was changed, the robins changed their hopping direction.]The Magnetic Compass
Another German team did research with the European Robin in the early 1960s. In their tests, robins in a migratory mood were placed in covered cages to eliminate sun, star and other light clues. Despite the lack of visual clues, the robins were observed hopping in the correct migratory direction.

As an additional refinement to the test, a Helmholtz coil was placed around the covered cages. The coil allowed the researchers to shift the direction of the earth's magnetic field. When the direction of the magnetic field was changed, the robins changed their hopping direction.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/allaboutbirds/studying/migration/navigation

So that birds cans sense magnetism proven in 1960s , and Alan Turing's paper on "Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_chemical_basis_of_morphogenesis) published in 1952. Whoever is advising you that these phenomena are inexplicable by science is half a century out-of-date, (and can't do a google-search).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2013 20:47:16
Quote


Answer my question .
How do those acquired traits , due to famine, war traumas , holocaust, tragic events ...get passed on to the next generations, and beyond ?

Because  those extreme and long lasting events have physiological effects on the human body, effects like lack of nutrition, exposure to the elements, injury and inflammation, chronic exposure to stress hormones like cortisol. It doesn't mean a memory of the events of WWII become encoded in the genes.

What about the much more  important  implications of all that : the psychological mental implications , genius ?
Gotta go, ciao ,think about that : the psychological or mental that are irreducible to the physical : how did those mental and psychological environmental implications and traits get passed on to the next generations and beyond then ?

In short :

Is heredity exclusively material  genetical ?
Hint : no.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 20:59:32
... physics and chemistry alone are just a single part of the whole pic = that's a fact , no "immaterial of the gaps " : materialism is the one in fact that 's not only a kind of a promissory messianism ,in the sense that materialist science will be able to explain "everything =nothing " in the future ,just in terms of physics and chemistry thus,  but materialism is also the one using its "materialism of the gaps " by trying to explain consciousness ,for example,not to mention evolution, life and the rest  , just in terms of physics and chemistry , simply because materialism cannot account for  consciousness or the mental that's irreducible to the physical .
Yawn...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 21:05:22

Do you exclude a-priori any non-physical forms of causation ?


No, because that was never my argument to begin with. Again, if you require science to prove the nonexistence of things for which it has no evidence, you are requiring it to prove an infinite number of propositions an infinite number of times. And I didn't check today, either, for a rhinoceros in my basement. 

Quote
Do you deny the fact that the mind of the observer does affect the observed .?


I agree with dlorde's past posts about your interpretation of those physics experiments.

Quote
And how can the "physical " mind "that's " in the brain , the mental "that's just physics and chemistry"  thus , be able to tell us anything reliable about physics and chemistry = circular "reasoning " : the observed  does imply  the mental of the observer that's observing it , does it not ?

If you want to label some thing "the observed," it implies an observer. But I wouldn't agree that nothing existed before human beings were around to observe it.

Quote
instead of trying to play the silly wise girl, why don't you enlighten us about how physics and chemistry alone can explain "everything = nothing " then,while missing the mental side of reality , genius .

That was never my position. But I have explained why I think your concept of the immaterial is fundamentally irrational. see #875.

What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 23/11/2013 21:14:01
Quote


Answer my question .
How do those acquired traits , due to famine, war traumas , holocaust, tragic events ...get passed on to the next generations, and beyond ?

Because  those extreme and long lasting events have physiological effects on the human body, effects like lack of nutrition, exposure to the elements, injury and inflammation, chronic exposure to stress hormones like cortisol. It doesn't mean a memory of the events of WWII become encoded in the genes.

What about the much more  important  implications of all that : the psychological mental implications , genius ?
Gotta go, ciao ,think about that : the psychological or mental that are irreducible to the physical : how did those mental and psychological environmental implications and traits get passed on to the next generations and beyond then ?


You'll have to be a little more specific about what those "mental psychological environmental implications and traits'' are in order for me to answer, unless you want a response that is as vague and ambiguous as the question. Which specific traits are you referring to?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 23/11/2013 21:17:13
... What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?

That's just more of DonQ's inflammatory troll-tactics, e.g.  ... http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424755#msg424755
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 23/11/2013 21:25:21
... What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?

That's just more of DonQ's inflammatory troll-tactics, e.g.  ... http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424755#msg424755
My vote, if I had one, would be to ban such behavior. How many here at NSF would agree to this proposition? But of course, that question is off-topic so I will cease and desist. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 21:41:05
The findings in that video are  against the materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view " , i guess,   , that's why they are scientific "heresy " .
Not really. There certainly was a mainstream view at one time that the life experiences of an individual could not influence his/her heritable traits & characteristics because heritable traits are determined by DNA and it was thought DNA could not be modified this way. When evidence of mechanisms for the control of gene expression were discovered outside of DNA itself, the mainstream view changed; another layer of complexity was investigated. This is how science works; knowledge is provisional. There is no dogmatic materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view ", just the determination to stay with the best current model until new evidence gives good reason to replace or extend it. In this case the model was extended.

Quote
Watch the video then .
I watched it when it was released 4 years ago on BBC 2. 'Horizon' has always been my favourite science program, although it's quality is patchy these days.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 21:45:24
What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?
It's an ad-hominem fallacy, a red-herring intended to delvaue your arguments by spurious or insulting characterisation. Where I come from, this is the hallmark of 'a nasty piece of work'.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 21:51:32
Is heredity exclusively material  genetical ?
Only you know what you mean by that...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 22:12:22
My vote, if I had one, would be to ban such behavior. How many here at NSF would agree to this proposition?
I would. It's totally unnecessary.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 23/11/2013 22:31:05
My vote, if I had one, would be to ban such behavior. How many here at NSF would agree to this proposition?

Seconded. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already : he's been insulting , spammed, infringed-copyright, and evangelised his viewpoint ad-nauseam (800+ posts), (all against forum rules (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424759#msg424759)). He's more articulate than your average troll , but spending months in a science forum to preach anti-materialism and verbally-abusing those who contradict him is just trolling.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 23/11/2013 22:52:13
Yup; I don't think anyone should be banned for expressing an opinion, even if it's unsupported with argument or evidence, but I think the forum should enforce it's rules. That kind of insulting behaviour isn't acceptable - an experienced member can take it in their stride, but others may find it bullying. The copyright infringement postings are just illegal - I'd have thought the moderators would jump on it - the site can't afford to allow it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 16:39:21
Is heredity exclusively material  genetical ?
Only you know what you mean by that...
[/quote]

Well, since heredity can also be epigenetic , not just genetic , the kind of epigenetics in the form of Lamarckian Darwinian environmental acquired characteristics neo-Darwinians did use to reject as such : environmental physiological adaptations that get inherited by the next generations and beyond , via switching on or switching off certain genes , then, it'pretty logical that the psychcological or mental acquired traits or adaptations might  get inherited in their turn somehow :
Take the jews or black people, for example , who used to be respectively persecuted or enslaved : the physiological egigenetic impacts of all that on those minorities might be not the only kind of   environmental inheritance they migt have  passed on to their next generations : the psychological or mental implications of the  past  persecutions  of jews and of black slavery might  have been  passed on to the jewish and black next generations and beyond  , who knows :
The psychological or mental implications that are irreducible to the physical thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 16:59:22
Epigenetics do show how humanity as a whole is interconnected , since the human species has one single origin , shows how the environment can affect genes as to pass on environmental acquired adaptations or traits : fascinating indeed: genes and environment are intertwined  .

The physiological hereditary epigenetic impacts on the next generations might be not the only kind of environmental inheritance   though :

Take the post-traumatic stress disorder due to tragic events , wars , natural disasters , famine and the like on humans : their environmental physiological heredetary effects might not be the only kind of environmental heredity : the psychological and mental impacts of those past events might be inherited in their turn by the next generations and beyond .

Take the physiological , mental and psychological impacts of tragic events anywhere in the world on any given pregnant women ...

Fascinating indeed .

In short :

The role of DNA or genes in heredity is way too exaggerated :
DNA is certainly not the 'architect " of life : see how all cells of our bodies do have the same DNA , and yet our body parts do have different forms : DNA alone cannot account for that : otherwise , it would be like saying that different buildings that were built from the same material , via the same work energy and via different plans  thus are the ...same .


The human genome project , for example , has failed in telling us why we are so different from our alleged closest "relatives " the chimps with which we do allegedly share the same origin .

The chimps do share more than 99% DNA material with us though , but that does not explain why we are so different from them, on the contrary .

Not to mention that even rice does have no less than 38 000 genes ,while humans do have only 23 000 genes : how come then that we are way more complex than rice then ? if genes or if DNA is what allegedly define us as human beings .

How come that even some plants have more genes than us ?

Homeobox genes , for example , are identical  in  fruit flies , in  humans and in other species , but yet they cannot account for the major form differences between humans and fruitflies ...let alone for their respective degrees of complexity .

In other words :

Physiology is not all what there is to humans or to any other living organisms for that matter , physiology is not all there is to heredity , epigenetics, morphogenesis and the rest  , the mental or psychological are the other most important and more fundamental part to them that 's irreducible to the physical .

There is a lot to say on the subject ,so, i am gonna just leave it at that then, for the time being at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 17:07:29
What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?
It's an ad-hominem fallacy, a red-herring intended to delvaue your arguments by spurious or insulting characterisation. Where I come from, this is the hallmark of 'a nasty piece of work'.
[/quote]

Don't be as biased and subjective as to misinterpret the context of that reply of mine : see what did provoke that as to give form to it .
When someone just tries to score at my expense ,via raising an issue i am not qualified in ,instead of responding to the issues at hand , then, that's just a form of a wise guy or a wise girl silly behavior .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 17:24:37
The findings in that video are  against the materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view " , i guess,   , that's why they are scientific "heresy " .
Not really. There certainly was a mainstream view at one time that the life experiences of an individual could not influence his/her heritable traits & characteristics because heritable traits are determined by DNA and it was thought DNA could not be modified this way. When evidence of mechanisms for the control of gene expression were discovered outside of DNA itself, the mainstream view changed; another layer of complexity was investigated. This is how science works; knowledge is provisional. There is no dogmatic materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view ", just the determination to stay with the best current model until new evidence gives good reason to replace or extend it. In this case the model was extended.

Neo-Darwinian science orthodoxy was against any epigenetic environmental Lamarckian Darwinian form of heredity , that's a fact : that's why a paradigm shift then was necessary ;
Neo-Darwinism that was "born or saw the light " in the 1940's : the most prominent representative of the neo-Darwinian materialist "scientific world view " was / is ...Dawkins , for example , who painfully admitted  once on the subject , or in words to that same effect at least :

that he could think of few things that might devastate his world view , like the demonstrated need to go back to the traditionally Lamarckian view of evolution .

I see not why mental or psychological habits or adaptations to the environment , including the  enviromental implications  under the pressure of famine , tragic events , natural disasters , wars ...holocaust ....cannot be passed on to the next generations somehow : the mental or psychological that are irreducible to the physical : physiology is not all what there is to life , as genes or DNA are not ,since reality as a whole is not just material or physical as the false materialist naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature , and hence as  the false "scientific world view " has been assuming it to be , for so long now, thanks to materialism thus .

Quote
Quote
Watch the video then .
I watched it when it was released 4 years ago on BBC 2. 'Horizon' has always been my favourite science program, although it's quality is patchy these days.

Good :
Can you exclude a priori the possibility that mental or psychological non-physical forms of environmental heredity can take place , at the light of that phsyiological environmental epigenetic heredetary process ?
The psychological or mental implications of past events such as wars , famine , tragic events , holocaust ...on the next generations is far more reaching than the phsyiological environemental impacts ,don't you think ?

The mental or psychological that are irreducible to the phsyical or to the material .
Think about that .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 17:59:54

Do you exclude a-priori any non-physical forms of causation ?


No, because that was never my argument to begin with. Again, if you require science to prove the nonexistence of things for which it has no evidence, you are requiring it to prove an infinite number of propositions an infinite number of times. And I didn't check today, either, for a rhinoceros in my basement.

Fact is : reality as a whole is not just material or physical, once again , and hence the materialist naturalist reductionist neo-Darwinian "scientific world view " is false = just a materialist false conception of nature which has absolutely nothing to do with science proper as such, a false materialist conception of nature that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " without question, for so long now  : the false materialist conception of nature that's just a materialist world view, just a philosophy that dates back to the 19th century :
Science has never proved the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist core belief assumption to be "true " that reality is just material or physical, as all sciences for that matter have been assuming reality to be,thanks to materialism .
Materialism does thus go beyond the scientific method and thus beyond science's realm ,as well as beyond science's jurisdiction by imposing its own false conception of nature as science , by pretending to known the nature of reality as a whole already ,while science should be free in investigating or exploring reality , no matter what the latter might turn out to be,instead of being imprisonned within the false materialist conception of nature  .
So, reality as a whole is not just material or physical , and hence phsyics and chemistry are just one single side of reality , the other one is the mental or the non-physical that's more fundamental than matter can ever be :
Which means that if science wants to try to describe and explain reality and hence make us understand the latter , then, science has no choice but to  try to deal with those 2 sides of reality empirically , or just with the parts of the physical -mental reality it can deal with empirically , as Sheldrake and others have been doing their own ways , for example .


See this on the subject :

Science must not remain confined within  the hands of the mainstream scientific priesthood , science must belong to the people : even Darwin himself was just an amateur scientist  who did not belong to any scientific priesthood or institutions  , that did not stop him from achieving what he did, even though he turned out to be  a materialist also , after all  :


7 Experiments that could change the world :


Quote
Quote
Do you deny the fact that the mind of the observer does affect the observed .?


I agree with dlorde's past posts about your interpretation of those physics experiments.

I know epigenetics is a an environmental physiological process which switches certain genes on or off ,while passing that on to the next generations :

What i meant was : physiology 's interactions with the environment might be not the only kind of interaction in the epigenetic physiological sense : the mental as well as the psychological impacts of the environment in the forms of the implications of famine , wars , holocaust , tragic events ...on people, for example , might also be passed on to the next generations, since reality is not just material or physical, since the mental or psychological are irreducible thus to the physical or to the material .

Quote
Quote
And how can the "physical " mind "that's " in the brain , the mental "that's just physics and chemistry"  thus , be able to tell us anything reliable about physics and chemistry = circular "reasoning " : the observed  does imply  the mental of the observer that's observing it , does it not ?

If you want to label some thing "the observed," it implies an observer. But I wouldn't agree that nothing existed before human beings were around to observe it.


All i meant is that the observed objective reality gets colored or clouded  changed  by the mind of the observer scientist , by misinterpreting it as to fit into the scientist's in question ...world view , as the false materialist "scientific world view " is a major evidence for such a fact  .
Quote
Quote
instead of trying to play the silly wise girl, why don't you enlighten us about how physics and chemistry alone can explain "everything = nothing " then,while missing the mental side of reality , genius .

That was never my position. But I have explained why I think your concept of the immaterial is fundamentally irrational. see #875.

The materialist 'scientific world view " = the materialist false conception of nature is the irrational absurd surreal ...you name it ...one in fact = reality cannot be just material or physical : the non-physical nature of the mental, consciousness , .....are evidence enough for that obvious simple and undeniable fact .

The non-physical or the immaterial is thus just the other and more fundamental side of reality , and therefore phsyics and chemistry are just one single side of reality = to try to explain "everything =nothing " just in terms of physics and chemistry ,just via one single side of reality ,as the current "scientific world view " has been doing ,since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism thus , is simply an unscientific thing to do , and a false attempt at that also .

Quote
What's with the "playing the silly wise girl" comments?

See your   mocking silly wise girl comments regarding myself and chaos theory ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 18:14:32
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Answer my question .
How do those acquired traits , due to famine, war traumas , holocaust, tragic events ...get passed on to the next generations, and beyond ?

Because  those extreme and long lasting events have physiological effects on the human body, effects like lack of nutrition, exposure to the elements, injury and inflammation, chronic exposure to stress hormones like cortisol. It doesn't mean a memory of the events of WWII become encoded in the genes.

What about the much more  important  implications of all that : the psychological mental implications , genius ?
Gotta go, ciao ,think about that : the psychological or mental that are irreducible to the physical : how did those mental and psychological environmental implications and traits get passed on to the next generations and beyond then ?


You'll have to be a little more specific about what those "mental psychological environmental implications and traits'' are in order for me to answer, unless you want a response that is as vague and ambiguous as the question. Which specific traits are you referring to?

Do tragic events such as wars , famine , holocaust , natural disasters and the like not have psychological and mental implications on the people who were / are unfortunate enough to be experiencing them ?
The physiological enviromental inherited  effects of such and other enviromental implications might be  not the only kind of heredetary implications  .
The mental or psychological implications that are irreducible to the physical ,since reality cannot be just material or physical .

Lamarck must have been right when he used to say that acquired characteristics or traits , due to the adaptations and habits of living organisms to the environment might be passed on as well to the next generations .
In my opinion, the physiological environmental heredetary side of the pic is not the whole pic : the mental and psychological implications of and adaptations to wars , famine,holocaust , black slavery  ...with all the stress and the rest that go with that ,with all the diseases that go with that ,  might be inherited by the next generations as well .
Who knows .
In short :
 The physiological material inheritance , whether it is genetic or epigenetic ,  might  not be the only kind of inheritance : non-physical =mental and pyschological forms of inheritance might be occuring as well , in combination with the physical ones .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 18:30:35
Folks :
It's pretty normal and logical that passionate discussions   such as these ones might get out of hand ,as they have been doing from time to time ,  simply because we are all humans , all too human, as Nietzsche used to say .

Some of the guys here just cannot tolerate to see their beloved false dogmatic materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " under attack, that's all : it all comes down to that in fact .

So, any kind of censorship , banning or materialist inquisitions on the subject won't make the fact go away that the current materialist mainstream "scientific world view " is obviously and undeniably ...false, all sciences for that matter must be liberated from : all sciences will in fact , simply because the end of materialism is nearer than ever , and simply because science has been superseding that outdated and false materialist world view in science ,that dates back to the 19th century , and that thus has been taken for granted for so long now, without question as the "scientific world view "  .

You're just fighting against windmills ,by trying  to apply your materialist inquisitions in relation to any attempt to challenge the authority of the false materialist world view = the false current materialist mainstream "scientific world view " .

You're just fighting in the name of a lost cause ,you're fighting an already lost battle or an already     lost materialist "holy war " and already lost materialist crusades  .

The medieval church's authority  has been just replaced by yet another dogmatic and irrational one : that of materialism in science : medieval christianity has been just replaced by another kind of dogmatic and irrational religion = materialism as a secular dogmatic and irrational religion in science , that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " for so long now = history repeats itself in a worse form ,in the sense that an irrational dogmatic belief -secular-religion such as materialism has been pretending to be "scientific " ,has been pretending to be no-less than the "scientific world view " : that's the biggest and most unparalleled ultimate con or scam ever ,in all mankind's history so far at least : the worst kind of crime against all humanity , and that in no-less than in the name of ...science : wao .

Materialism that will not only be laughable mocked and ridiculed ,as it already is , by the next generations , but , it will also be ...despised , simply because materialism has been lying to the people, and has been deceiving them , in the name of no-less than science itself ,as ...science : that's way worse than what the medieval church could ever have done ,out of ...ignorance,fear .... .

Congratulations and condolences .

Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/11/2013 18:36:29
... it'pretty logical that the psychcological or mental acquired traits or adaptations might  get inherited in their turn somehow
Only if such psychological or mental acquired traits or adaptations are a result of heritable changes in gene expression.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 18:39:36
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... it'pretty logical that the psychcological or mental acquired traits or adaptations might  get inherited in their turn somehow
Only if such psychological or mental acquired traits or adaptations are a result of heritable changes in gene expression.

What makes you think that that's the only option  : can you predict the future scientific discoveries on the subject already ?

Way to go, man .

Could Newton predict Einstein's relativity theory, for example, or beyond ?: just an analogy :
I think that science will be able to achieve a more major and revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm, not just a paradigm shift ,on the subject , hopefully .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 24/11/2013 19:13:36
... we are all humans , all too human, as Nietzsche used to say

You keep quoting people who have used psychotropic-drugs ,

Nietzsche ...
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Friedrich Nietzsche regularly used chloral hydrate in the years leading up to his nervous breakdown, according to Lou Salome and other associates. Whether the drug contributed to his insanity is a point of controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloral_hydrate#Notable_uses

Sheldrake ...
Quote from: youtube.com v=ZnXdyF_cSdg
"... for me probably the first jolt out of the belief that materialism could explain everything was taking LSD ... some acid trips I had ..."

The writings of people influenced drugs may be entertaining , but are unlikely to be an accurate account of reality.

Try occasionally reading something written by an author who hasn’t had their mind blown by drugs.


... censorship , banning ...

You’ve made 800+ posts in this science-forum preaching a concept which is antithetical to science. During which you simply repeat the same words again and again spamishly:  "material* (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+material+site:www.thenakedscientists.com)" & idiot* (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+idiot+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com) (or similar insult (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+stupid+OR+moron+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com)) scores of times , like an deranged obsessional person.

So you’ve not been censored here , ( I doubt you’ll find another science forum which will be as tolerant of your trolling).

If you are banned it will be for breaking forum rules, which you have done repeatedly, not as a form of censorship. Here’s 800+ pieces of evidence that you have not been censored in this forum … http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=36733

[ * = wildcard ]

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/11/2013 19:31:58
The role of DNA or genes in heredity is way too exaggerated :
DNA is certainly not the 'architect " of life : see how all cells of our bodies do have the same DNA , and yet our body parts do have different forms : DNA alone cannot account for that : otherwise , it would be like saying that different buildings that were built from the same material , via the same work energy and via different plans  thus are the ...same .
You should bear in mind that DNA in genes is the basic mechanism of heredity; epigenetics adds tags that can suppress the expression of certain genes. Like adding a margin note to skip a certain step or ingredient in a recipe. The recipe is still required - and it makes no sense to say the role of the recipe is way too exaggerated because some steps or ingredients are optional.

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The human genome project , for example , has failed in telling us why we are so different from our alleged closest "relatives " the chimps with which we do allegedly share the same origin .
That wasn't the objective of the human genome project. It also failed to tell us of the Philippines typhoon, or why the Mars Climate Orbiter probe failed. So what?

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The chimps do share more than 99% DNA material with us though , but that does not explain why we are so different from them, on the contrary .
It's the differences in the DNA in the genes that explain why we're so different. Some of the relevant genes have been identified, for example, a range of physical structure genes, such as relative limb lengths & ratios, face shape, hair structure, and importantly, some of the gene duplications associated with our relatively enlarged neocortex. So the human genome project has given us the raw data that has helped us explain what we have so far. You have to identify the genes involved in a particular trait before you can compare them inter and intra species.

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Not to mention that even rice does have no less than 38 000 genes ,while humans do have only 23 000 genes : how come then that we are way more complex than rice then ? if genes or if DNA is what allegedly define us as human beings .

How come that even some plants have more genes than us ?
Chromosomal DNA occasionally gets duplicated in various ways. Sometimes part of a chromosome, sometimes a whole chromosome, sometimes the whole genome. Check out Gene Duplication (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_duplication).

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Homeobox genes , for example , are identical  in  fruit flies , in  humans and in other species , but yet they cannot account for the major form differences between humans and fruitflies ...let alone for their respective degrees of complexity .
C'mon Don, this is basic genetics - homeobox genes make proteins that regulate cascades of other genes in anatomical development; small variations in these cascades can cause major anatomical differences. You can read about it here: homeobox genes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox_genes).

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There is a lot to say on the subject ,so, i am gonna just leave it at that then, for the time being at least .
In the meantime, I recommend you learn something about it. There are plenty of good genetics tutorials and courses for free online.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/11/2013 19:41:31
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since heredity can also be epigenetic... it'pretty logical that the psychcological or mental acquired traits or adaptations might  get inherited in their turn somehow
Only if such psychological or mental acquired traits or adaptations are a result of heritable changes in gene expression.
What makes you think that that's the only option  : can you predict the future scientific discoveries on the subject already ?
I was referring to your logic - it's only 'pretty logical' if you invoke the known mechanism (epigenetics), as no other mechanism is known. IOW the existence of epigenetics doesn't make an unknown other mechanism 'pretty logical'. Simples.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 24/11/2013 19:45:57
Not to mention that even rice does have no less than 38 000 genes ,while humans do have only 23 000 genes : how come then that we are way more complex than rice then ? 

Most DNA is non-coding / currently redundant / "junk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA)",  ( no designer, other than evolution, so coding is not efficient).
Many more generations of rice have occurred than generations of humans, so rice has accumulated more "junk" in its genome than humans ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-value_enigma#C-value_enigma_origin
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 20:19:14
dlorde :
Gotta go: I've spent way too much  time here already , i can hardly afford to be spending :
Just answer my core questions,concerning the mental or non-physical side of the 'equation " of the whole pic of reality ,you cannot just ignore , via some irrational belief of yours , the mental that's irreducible to and more fundamental than the physical , even at the level of inheritance thus,   instead of telling me about things i already know via those  wiki  links of yours ( I never liked wiki anyway : way too a medium for every idiot to writte in ) ,instead of telling me materialist magical bed time stories  fairy tales ,for kids  .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .

RD :

I am neither  interested in your materialist mechanical magic in science,nor in your silly wild speculations concerning my own person or sources , let alone in the rest  .
Should we totally discard any scientist or thinker who happens to have used drugs ? 
What kindda silly "reasoning " is this then ?
What makes you think i have been saying what i have been saying , thanks to some kind of drugs ? Get real .

Reminds me of the former Soviet Union's treatment of its own dissidents by the way , by branding them as insane or worse .
Thanks anyway .
To be honest , i never liked  you, and i still do not ,and i never will,  i must admit ,thanks to your nasty snitch behavior that does remind me of the thought police , that does remind me of all those kinds of inquisitions, including the materialist one .

Banning me won't make the simple obvious and undeniable fact go away that the current "scientific world view " is false .
Banning me won't keep me awake at night either .Who cares about that : there will always be dogmatic and irrational folks such as yourself .
Maybe , i should start looking for more intelligent audience , that's what i ought be doing in fact ,who knows ?
Gotta go, time up.
Ciao.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: woolyhead on 24/11/2013 20:38:43
The mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain ...and hence qualia is not  in  the brain .
It's the other way around in fact : the brain is in the mind, and the body is in the mind  .
The non-physical mind does affect the physical brain ,and vice versa ,how ? : that remains to be seen ...
The mind is more fundamental than matter can ever be , so, the mind might be underlying the laws of physics , not the other way around .
Would you care to consider this: if the mind is composed of quantum computing plus output interfaces which cause the neurones to fire, it would seem to the neurone system that the thoughts and ideas etc had come from "elsewhere." It would seem to the regular brain that these thoughts were non physical.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 24/11/2013 20:48:52


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You'll have to be a little more specific about what those "mental psychological environmental implications and traits'' are in order for me to answer, unless you want a response that is as vague and ambiguous as the question. Which specific traits are you referring to?

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Do tragic events such as wars , famine , holocaust , natural disasters and the like not have psychological and mental implications on the people who were / are unfortunate enough to be experiencing them ?

Yes, they do have psychological effects on people who experience them.
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The physiological enviromental inherited  effects of such and other enviromental implications might be  not the only kind of heredetary implications  .The mental or psychological implications that are irreducible to the physical ,since reality cannot be just material or physical .

There are genes that code for psychological traits, mental abilities, and behaviors. Behavioral or mental traits tend to be complex, often involving combinations of genes.  The expression of these genes, or how they manifest themselves, often depends on the environment of that individual, as well. But mental and behavioral traits can be selected for, just as physical traits can be selected. I don't know if any epigenetic effects on them have been discovered yet.
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Lamarck must have been right when he used to say that acquired characteristics or traits , due to the adaptations and habits of living organisms to the environment might be passed on as well to the next generations .

Why do you say he must have been right?
Epigenetics is not really the same idea as Lamarck's theory. Epigenetics still requires chemical changes to the DNA, or the genes being expressed or suppressed. Larmark's idea was that a giraffe, for example, got a longer neck simply by stretching it a lot, and somehow passed this on to the next generation of giraffes. He didn't account for natural selection, or any chemical mechanism directly affecting genes.

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In my opinion, the physiological environmental heredetary side of the pic is not the whole pic : the mental and psychological implications of and adaptations to wars , famine,holocaust , black slavery  ...with all the stress and the rest that go with that ,with all the diseases that go with that ,  might be inherited by the next generations as well .

Absolutely, these adaptations are passed on through learning, through culture, through religion, through tradition, through books, through art, etc. But they are not permanent changes. That is, if you took an infant out of that culture, and raised him in a completely different one, and he had no access to that culture or its history and  traditions, he would not have a genetic memory of those things. Never the less, one should not, in my opinion, discount the effect of information or adaptations passed on through learning. If you are really interested, there is a book called "The Outliers," by Malcolm Gladwell, that discusses the how family, culture and individual experience effect behavior and achievement. You might enjoy it. It's a very non-materialistic book (or to be more accurate, materialism isn't relevant in it, one way or the other.)  He discusses something called the "10,000 hour rule," which states that it takes about 10,000 hours to become really great at something (whether it's playing the guitar, or becoming a computer expert) and sees this as being as important, if not more so, than innate or genetically determined ability.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2013 20:50:02
"The Science Delusion " Video Lecture By Rupert Sheldrake :

Note that Sheldrake is extremely pro-science proper ,he just tries to liberate science from the false materialist mainstream scientific priesthood 's authority ,that's similar to that of the medieval church ,that's in fact worse than the latter , simply because it has been imposing its own false materialist conception of nature for so long now , as the 'scientific world view " :

When science will be free from the false materialist dogmatic belief system, whole new unimaginable -to-us-all yet vistas will open up for science : let's hope we will all be still alive and fortunate enough to witness that revolutionary event , as materialism's end is nearer than ever , as science has been superseding that false and outdated materialism ,that dates back all the way to the 19th century,ironically enough ,that has been ossifying science , by holding it imprisonned within the false dogmatic materialist prison, as to make it unable to progress  :

Enjoy, free folks : let's all work for science's deliverance  from dogmas , in order to make science less dogmatic , and more scientific, in order to make science more fun ,as it should be in fact ,in order to democratize science ,as to give it back to the people away from the exclusive monopoly of the materialist mainstream scientific priesthood 's authority:  science that's all about dispelling dogmas , lies , untruths , half-truths ....

Enjoy ,and have fun ,while you are at it :  science should be fun , not dogmatic,not hierarchial or authoritarian totalitarian  :

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/11/2013 21:29:09
dlorde :
Gotta go: I've spent way too much  time here already , i can hardly afford to be spending :
Just answer my core questions,concerning the mental or non-physical side of the 'equation " of the whole pic of reality ,you cannot just ignore , via some irrational belief of yours , the mental that's irreducible to and more fundamental than the physical , even at the level of inheritance thus,   instead of telling me about things i already know via those  wiki  links of yours ( I never liked wiki anyway : way too a medium for every idiot to writte in ) ,instead of telling me materialist magical bed time stories  fairy tales ,for kids  .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .
Don mate, you're projecting - as usual. The irrational beliefs are yours (what did you say, "beyond science, reason, and logic"? something like that), and I suspect you know it, although you can't admit it - that's what makes you so grumpy and irritable. But you're right to question your core beliefs; I hope you find some material answers, they're out there if you look.

If not, science will simply continue its progress investigating the material anyway, and you'll continue your special pleading for the immaterial; going nowhere; talking about nothing. Your contribution will be immaterial - congratulations.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 24/11/2013 21:40:11
RD :
I am neither  interested in your materialist mechanical magic in science

You're the only one here suggesting magical forces are at work : i.e. forces outside the material world.
 If you're not interested in science why have you spent months in a science forum , if not just to troll ?.

Should we totally discard any scientist or thinker who happens to have used drugs ? 

If they were on drugs when they came up with the idea, then probably the answer is yes.
If when investigated there is no evidence to support their drug-induced idea then yes definitely ignore them.

What makes you think i have been saying what i have been saying , thanks to some kind of drugs ?

Reason #1. You being a disciple of Sheldrake, (quoting him extensively (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+Sheldrake+site:www.thenakedscientists.com)), who says in this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnXdyF_cSdg) ...

Quote from:  Rupert Sheldrake
"... for me probably the first jolt out of the belief that materialism could explain everything was taking LSD ... some acid trips I had ..."

Reason #2. You saying that you , like Rupert , had taken LSD (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.msg424244#msg424244) , and you exhibit the LSD "oneness" (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49470.msg424583#msg424583) symptom.

Get real 

At the risk of stating the obvious, drug-users perception is further from reality than people who are not altered by drugs. 


... i never liked  you, and i still do not ,and i never will

You probably don't like having your incorrect views refuted by me or others in this forum,
That you say don't like me is irrelevant, apart from demonstrating how puerile your behaviour can be.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/11/2013 17:33:02
At the risk of stating the obvious, drug-users perception is further from reality than people who are not altered by drugs.
Not sure this is a particularly fruitful line to pursue; while under the influence, perception of reality will be different, but for most, the use of hallucinogens, particularly LSD, are typically occasional instances of early adulthood. Many people I know dabbled as students, but now have entirely conventional perceptions of reality (although they'll admit to a changed understanding of some popular cultural memes & themes of the time [;)]). In the case of more frequent users (LSD is not generally considered addictive), it's not clear whether such use is more a cause than a symptom of more 'out there' exotic personalities & world views.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 25/11/2013 18:25:22
... are typically occasional instances of early adulthood ... (LSD is not generally considered addictive) ...

Repeated* LSD use isn't  necessary for a long-term effect : one use can be sufficient for permanent psychological injury ...
Quote from: wikipedia.org/LSD
There are some cases of LSD inducing a psychosis in people who appeared to be healthy before taking LSD.
In most cases, the psychosis-like reaction is of short duration, but in other cases it may be chronic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Psychosis

The extreme hyper-real / traumatic ("bad trip") LSD experience , like an extreme exogenous experience , can permanently reshape the person's psyche thereafter , cf. PTSD ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder  [ which can also involve psychosis & flashbacks like LSD ]


[ * although Sheldrake does use the plural : "some acid trips I had ... (http://youtu.be/ZnXdyF_cSdg?t=11s)" ]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 18:47:11
dlorde :
Gotta go: I've spent way too much  time here already , i can hardly afford to be spending :
Just answer my core questions,concerning the mental or non-physical side of the 'equation " of the whole pic of reality ,you cannot just ignore , via some irrational belief of yours , the mental that's irreducible to and more fundamental than the physical , even at the level of inheritance thus,   instead of telling me about things i already know via those  wiki  links of yours ( I never liked wiki anyway : way too a medium for every idiot to writte in ) ,instead of telling me materialist magical bed time stories  fairy tales ,for kids  .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .
Don mate, you're projecting - as usual. The irrational beliefs are yours (what did you say, "beyond science, reason, and logic"? something like that), and I suspect you know it, although you can't admit it - that's what makes you so grumpy and irritable. But you're right to question your core beliefs; I hope you find some material answers, they're out there if you look.
(Prior note :
You do have a weird and bizarre perception of what science might be , scientist,thanks to your own materialist false belief you do take for granted as science  :

Who or what said that science's realm is just the material or physical ? Oh yeah , materialism does .
Who or what said that 'everything " = nothing can be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry ? Yeah, right : materialism does .

You have to try to reconsider your own views regarding what science might be :

Science must try to deal with the aspects of the mental side of reality it can deal with empirically , science has no choice but to try to do just that , by starting to look for some more fundamental forms of causation, the non-physical ones at that , simply because reality is not just material or physical, not just a matter of physics and chemistry , and simply because the mental that's irreducible to the physical ,is more fundamental than matter can ever be : we don't know yet what even matter is exactly though , what physics and chemistry themselves are exactly : they might turn out to be totally different from what we perceive them to be .)

Well, on top of the above , there are in fact also "things or " rather processes that are   beyond science , reason, logic , beyond science's realm and beyond science's jurisdiction as well ,simply because there will always be some levels of reality that will remain out of reach of science , for example,and simply because reality is not exclusively material or physical as the false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " wanna make you believe it is : who's projecting now ? you or i ? : you're the one who does believe in that materialist false conception of nature, you have been taking for granted as the "scientific world view " , for so long now , am i wrong ? .

You cannot just keep on quoting that statement of mine out of context ,whenever that might suit you .

And no, reality is not just material or physical : the material that's in fact way less fundamental than the mental which is  irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again , and hence science's realm will be extended when science will reject materialism, as to include the mental side of reality with which science can deal  empirically .

See Sheldrake's work on the subject , even though  the poor guy is ,relatively speaking at least , still vague in his views , regarding how science can deal with the mental empirically .

Other scientists in the future might take it from there , who knows then what they would be coming up with on the subject .

Could Newton ever predict Einstein's relativity theory ? : just an analogy : science will undergo a major and revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm , not just a paradigm shift , by rejecting that false materialist meta-paradigm in science : that would not turn out to be "nothing " : that would revolutionize science in ways that are still unimaginable to us all yet .

Science cannot remain ossified within the materialist prison, the latter that has been holding science back by making it unable to progress beyond the materialist false meta-paradigm  : science that must be totally free in exploring reality , whatever the latter might turn out to be : no one and no ideology such as materialism can dictate to science what specific areas of reality science must explore: science as a relatively still a young adventurer that will break free from any dogmas chains such as those of materialism that have been restricting the exploring power and nature of science .

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If not, science will simply continue its progress investigating the material anyway, and you'll continue your special pleading for the immaterial; going nowhere; talking about nothing. Your contribution will be immaterial - congratulations.

Science will never be able to progress ,as long as it will continue being imprisonned within the false materialist conception of nature , within the false materialist meta-paradigm in science , and hence within the false current 'scientific world view " ,simply because reality is not just material or physical, once again .
So, science must undergo a major and revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm, not just a paradigm shift , by rejecting the materialist meta-paradigm in science , as to include the mental side of the whole pic .
Science that cannot keep on trying to explain "everything " = nothing , just in terms of physics and chemistry thus .
It is in fact absurd , surreal , extremely stupid ...you name it ...to try to explain the whole reality , just via one single side of it , while taking the latter for the whole real pic : that's exactly what science has been doing , thanks to materialism thus , the latter that has been turning science into a kind of secular dogmatic ossified religion ....science must be liberated from that materialist bullshit , and science will be ,simply because science is all about dispelling dogmas, lies , untruths , half truths ...

Condolences then and congratulations .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 25/11/2013 19:33:03
science that must be totally free in exploring reality , whatever the latter might turn out to be : no one and no ideology such as materialism can dictate to science what specific areas of reality science must explore: science as a relatively still a young adventurer that will break free from any dogmas chains such as those of materialism that have been restricting the exploring power and nature of science .

Some scientists have explored your alleged "non-material" phenomena : decades of fruitless research by some ...
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/pear_lab_closes_ending_decades_of_psychic_research/ 
If anyone wants to waste years of their life on investigating these alleged phenomena again they are free to do so : no-one is "restricting" research in this area.

... lies , untruths ...
What's the difference between "lies" and "untruths" ?  [ a small example of your logical deficiencies ].
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 19:35:27


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You'll have to be a little more specific about what those "mental psychological environmental implications and traits'' are in order for me to answer, unless you want a response that is as vague and ambiguous as the question. Which specific traits are you referring to?

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Do tragic events such as wars , famine , holocaust , natural disasters and the like not have psychological and mental implications on the people who were / are unfortunate enough to be experiencing them ?

Yes, they do have psychological effects on people who experience them.

What's then more fundamental and more far reaching than those  environmental psychological and mental effects ? the physiological environmental ones ?
The mental is the one that's more fundamental than the physiological ,not the other way around .The mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material .

Why can't there be some sort of inheritance of those more fundamental effects,non-physically thus  ? : the environmental psychological and mental ones .
Why do you think that  the environmental physiological can be inherited ,and the mental not ,in the sense that  the mental is irreducible to the physical or to the material .

What makes you rather think that the mental can be inherited only physiologically just via genetics or via epigenetics ? How can that happen then ,since the mental is irreducible to the physical ?

Are you aware of this paradox ?

What makes you rather think that the mental or psychological can only be inherited physically physiologically ? the mental and psychological that are in fact irreducible to the physical or to the material, once again .

In short :

What makes you think that inheritance can only be material , that it can only either be  genetic or epigenetic  ?

What makes you exclude any non-physical form of inheritance then ?

What makes you exclude the non-physical ,non -genetical ,non-epigenetical form of inheritance ?

Yeah , right , the false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " does , not science proper thus .

Why can't you rather say that the physiological effects of the environmental mental and psychological implications of past tragic events can be inherited epigenetically ,but ,materialistic science cannot say anything about the possibility that the  enviromental mental and psychological implications of past tragic events ,might be inherited in their turn non-physically ,since the mental and psychological are irreducible to the physical or to the material ?

What makes you think that science proper will not be able to discover those non-physical forms of inheritance , after rejecting materialism thus ?


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The physiological enviromental inherited  effects of such and other enviromental implications might be  not the only kind of heredetary implications  .The mental or psychological implications that are irreducible to the physical ,since reality cannot be just material or physical .

There are genes that code for psychological traits, mental abilities, and behaviors. Behavioral or mental traits tend to be complex, often involving combinations of genes.  The expression of these genes, or how they manifest themselves, often depends on the environment of that individual, as well. But mental and behavioral traits can be selected for, just as physical traits can be selected. I don't know if any epigenetic effects on them have been discovered yet.

See above : what makes you think that inheritance can be exclusively material = genetic or epigenetic only ?

How can the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material be inherited physiologically ? how ? via some sort of materialist magic ?

What makes you exclude the possibility that there might be non-physical forms of inheritance out there ,together with the genetical or epigenetical ones ? materialism does, not science proper thus .

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Lamarck must have been right when he used to say that acquired characteristics or traits , due to the adaptations and habits of living organisms to the environment might be passed on as well to the next generations .

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Why do you say he must have been right?
Epigenetics is not really the same idea as Lamarck's theory. Epigenetics still requires chemical changes to the DNA, or the genes being expressed or suppressed. Larmark's idea was that a giraffe, for example, got a longer neck simply by stretching it a lot, and somehow passed this on to the next generation of giraffes. He didn't account for natural selection, or any chemical mechanism directly affecting genes.

Lamarck and Darwin used to think that environmental acquired characteristics or adaptations habits can be inherited , Darwin even tried to explain that sort of inheritance : that's   what  i was talking about : epigenetics has proved that fact to be true , even though that seems to happen physiologically under pressure of the environment , by switching on or off certain genes : but ,that might not be the only process of inheritance of acquired characteristics or inherited adaptation at work,as mentioned above  .


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In my opinion, the physiological environmental heredetary side of the pic is not the whole pic : the mental and psychological implications of and adaptations to wars , famine,holocaust , black slavery  ...with all the stress and the rest that go with that ,with all the diseases that go with that ,  might be inherited by the next generations as well .

Absolutely, these adaptations are passed on through learning, through culture, through religion, through tradition, through books, through art, etc. But they are not permanent changes. That is, if you took an infant out of that culture, and raised him in a completely different one, and he had no access to that culture or its history and  traditions, he would not have a genetic memory of those things. Never the less, one should not, in my opinion, discount the effect of information or adaptations passed on through learning. If you are really interested, there is a book called "The Outliers," by Malcolm Gladwell, that discusses the how family, culture and individual experience effect behavior and achievement. You might enjoy it. It's a very non-materialistic book (or to be more accurate, materialism isn't relevant in it, one way or the other.)  He discusses something called the "10,000 hour rule," which states that it takes about 10,000 hours to become really great at something (whether it's playing the guitar, or becoming a computer expert) and sees this as being as important, if not more so, than innate or genetically determined ability.

Thanks for the tip , but , that's not what i was talking about :
The inheritance of certain mental illnesses ,for example, cannot be just the work, so to speak, of genes or epigenetics ,simply because the mental is irreducible to the physical or to the material : there might be some extra form of inheritance of the mental out there thus .I dunno : it just does not make sense to reduce everything,including the mental and psychological thus ,  to just the material or physical , to just genes physics and chemistry ,as the false mainstream "scientific world view " has been doing ...
You're reducing everything , including the mental and psychological that are irreducible to the physical , to just physics and chemistry ,as materialism has been doing ,and hence as science has also been doing , thanks to materialism = that's no science = that's just materialism in science: see the difference ? Hope so  .
Think about that .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 19:52:10
science that must be totally free in exploring reality , whatever the latter might turn out to be : no one and no ideology such as materialism can dictate to science what specific areas of reality science must explore: science as a relatively still a young adventurer that will break free from any dogmas chains such as those of materialism that have been restricting the exploring power and nature of science .

Some scientists have explored your alleged "non-material" phenomena : decades of fruitless research by some ...
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/pear_lab_closes_ending_decades_of_psychic_research/ 
If anyone wants to waste years of their life on investigating these alleged phenomena again they are free to do so : no-one is "restricting" research in this area.

I was not talking about any psychic phenomena , just about the fact that reality is not just material or physical, as the current false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " wanna make you believe it is , and hence we are not just physical bodies or just physical brains, DNA....we are not just biology , we are not just physics and chemistry  , and therefore our minds are non-physical or non-material = our immaterial minds cannot be  in our physical brains = our immaterial minds cannot be the "products " of our physical brain's activity  .
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... lies , untruths ...
What's the difference between "lies" and "untruths" ?

Stop playing the wise guy, ok ?
Good : the current false mainstream materialist haha "scientific world view " is an untruth = untrue = false .

A premise can be false or can be true .
Mathematically : x can be false , x can be true , or x can neither be false nor true ....many possibilities ,depends on the premise ,and some true premises cannot be proven to be true , and vice versa ...

Saying that i am a troll is a lie ,and an untruth = untrue = false .

If you wanna be philosophical about this ,then :

a lie is false = an untruth = untrue .
An untruth = untrue = false ,and is also a ...lie  .

Lies are untruths , and untruths are lies .

Whatever ...

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 25/11/2013 20:00:37
I was not talking about any psychic phenomena ...

You were claiming telepathy was possible (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+telepathy+OR+precognition+OR+clairvoyance+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com). Telepathy is an alleged psychic phenomenon.

Lies are untruths , and untruths are lies .

Correct : "Lie" and "untruth" are synonyms , and you are guilty of tautology (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tautology) by listing them consecutively as if they were different things ...

... dispelling dogmas, lies , untruths , half truths ...

Your repeated tautology is just an example of the lack of logic in your posts.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 20:07:17
Lies are untruths , and untruths are lies .

Correct : "Lie" and "untruth" are synonyms , and you are guilty of tautology (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tautology) by listing them consecutively as if they were different things. [ Your repeated tautology is just an example of the lack of logic in your posts ].
[/quote]


Just focus on the core issues here , not on insignificant irrelevant details :
Details can blind you in relation to the whole pic sometimes :
I do not use them as if they were different things , i just do use them to make things clearer ,as to emphacise   a statement , as many writers and thinkers do .
You've got no imagination, i see .

Desert people ,for example , do have many synonymes and words for the same thing : sand,as people of the north do have many words for ...snow ....

as there are many words regarding the same 'thing "  = materialism haha = false , a lie , a make-believe , a delusion, an illusion, absurd  surreal , a fairy tale   ...you name it .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 25/11/2013 20:16:48
Just focus on the core issues here , not on insignificant irrelevant details

logic is not irrelevant in a reasoned argument: it is essential.

... people of the north do have many words for ...snow ....

Another example of you not engaging your critical faculties when reading stuff on t'internet ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 21:39:34
Quote from: RD link=topic=48746.msg425039#msg425039 [quote
date=1385410608]
Just focus on the core issues here , not on insignificant irrelevant details

logic is not irrelevant in a reasoned argument: it is essential.
[/quote]

Using synonymous words is a logical attempt to make things clearer .

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... people of the north do have many words for ...snow ....

Another example of you not engaging your critical faculties when reading stuff on t'internet ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

Whatever : sue me .

All i know is that Arabs of the desert do use many synonymous and different words to say the same thing = sand,to mention just that , not to mention love .... : i am an Arab : i should know that , as i actually do : sue me .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2013 21:55:09
RD :

See this : even though it's just a  materialist "geographic "  liberal secular view :

"Geography of thought : or how Asians and westerners think ,and why ? " By Richard E.Nisbett :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Geography-Thought-Westerners-Differently/dp/0743255356

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/11/2013 22:03:24

The mental is the one that's more fundamental than the physiological ,not the other way around .The mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material

Your statement that the mental is irreducible to the physical is an assertion, not a fact.  It's based on your  impression that they "seem" different or "feel" different to you, and therefore cannot be the same things, or causally related. It would be equally difficult to convince someone who didn't know anything about physics that different forms of energy (radiant energy, chemical energy, electrical energy etc.) were in any way related, or could be converted from one form to another because they "seem" so different. It would be difficult to convince someone with no understanding of photosynthesis how a plant pulls off "the materialist magic trick" of converting radiant energy from the sun to chemical energy in a tomato.

Water, ice, and steam all have very experientially different properties but are the same thing. Even a non-scientist accepts this because  as children, we all watched this transformation take place, and verified that no one substituted a cup of water for an ice cube while our back was turned. But if one were never actually able to observe the process, it might be difficult to believe water could be changed in something that looks, feels, and behaves so qualitatively different.

I often wonder what the average person's response to Einstein's ideas were in the early 1900s. The idea that time is not constant is about as counter-intuitive as it gets. I doubt even physicists who understand relativity can actually personally "experience" time in any other way than all humans do. It's only the theories, the math, and reproducible, empirical evidence that tells them that their perception of it is wrong, or at least limited.

It's just my opinion, which you are free to reject, but I think your reliance on your own experience of  "thoughts" "ideas" "emotions" as being intangible, ethereal, somehow substance-less, is a major reason why you reject  any explanations involving neurons and biochemistry.

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What makes you rather think that the mental can be inherited only physiologically just via genetics or via epigenetics ? How can that happen then ,since the mental is irreducible to the physical ?

Are you aware of this paradox ?

It's not a paradox to me because I don't agree that the mental and physical are two completely separate things. I'm not a dualist.

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What makes you think that inheritance can only be material , that it can only either be  genetic or epigenetic  ? What makes you exclude any non-physical form of inheritance then ?What makes you exclude the non-physical ,non -genetical ,non-epigenetical form of inheritance ?

 I don't exclude it. Science doesn't exclude it. But you'd have to have some kind of direct evidence to show that can be. Just saying "what if" or "how do you know it doesn't happen" isn't enough. It's not enough to make an idea like immaterial inheritance a scientific theory. It's stuck at being just a fanciful idea, without some kind of evidence for it.

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What makes you think that science proper will not be able to discover those non-physical forms of inheritance , after rejecting materialism thus ?[/i]

Who knows, maybe it will. Science doesn't exclude the possibility. There's just no evidence for it so far. I don't understand your need to reject everything that has been explained so far by chemistry and physics, because of that possibility. A discovery like that wouldn't necessarily invalidate every other scientific finding, any more than epigenetics destroyed Natural Selection - it simply added more knowledge and better understanding.



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/11/2013 23:16:02
Repeated* LSD use isn't  necessary for a long-term effect : one use can be sufficient for permanent psychological injury ...
Sure, but chronic psychosis is extremely rare.

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The extreme hyper-real / traumatic ("bad trip") LSD experience , like an extreme exogenous experience , can permanently reshape the person's psyche thereafter...
Yup, as can any traumatic experience, like a car accident, or a mugging. With psychedelics it's pretty rare. Naturally, the media ensure we hear about those instances. Ironically, LSD is a promising candidate for PTSD treatment (as is ecstasy).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/11/2013 23:42:38
You have to try to reconsider your own views regarding what science might be :
I've reconsidered my views about it many times, and continue to do so. If you could provide some coherent argument I'd take that into consideration too, but I'm still waiting to hear it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2013 00:36:41
The inheritance of certain mental illnesses ,for example, cannot be just the work, so to speak, of genes or epigenetics ,simply because the mental is irreducible to the physical or to the material : there might be some extra form of inheritance of the mental out there thus .I dunno : it just does not make sense to reduce everything,including the mental and psychological thus ,  to just the material or physical , to just genes physics and chemistry ,as the false mainstream "scientific world view " has been doing ...
My bolding. You're right; you don't know, and your incredulity is irrelevant. The genes involved in many heritable diseases have been identified, including some mental illnesses. Only a small minority of genetic diseases or disabilities are easily identifiable by a single dominant or recessive allele; the majority involve the interactions of many genes, and may require particular environmental contexts to be expressed. But when the pattern of inheritance of a mental disability matches the pattern of inheritance of a known genetic disease, a reasonable person suspects a similar genetic mechanism at work. In some cases, particular genes will predispose to certain behavioural tendencies, depending on the environment; for example the expression of a certain gene will predispose an individual to violent behaviour, but only if they have an abusive childhood. We should also expect random mutation to cause mental disabilities just as it causes physical disabilities; in this case, we would not expect to find a family history of it, but the incidence should be fairly consistent within the population.

We know that those abused as children often go on to abuse their own children, and without a detailed genetic analysis of many such instances, it's not possible to know how much genetics is directly involved, if any. So here is a potential non-genetic inheritance of undesirable behaviour. But there is also a reasonable and adequate well-established material explanation, i.e., conditioning. How you are treated as a child affects how you treat your children. These ideas are easy enough to test by looking at siblings raised by foster parents, identical twins raised by different parents, etc. Much work has been, and is being done, in these areas.

If you can provide an example of a mental disability that has no apparent genetic component and clearly does not originate from developmental influences, let me know, and we can... assess how likely it is to be of 'immaterial inheritance'? how would we do that? Surely the only reasonable path is to look for material causes because we can't look for immaterial causes. If we find no material cause, science will say, "unexplained", and you can say "see? it's immaterial!" (but only until science finds the material cause) [:)]

Of course it's possible that we will discover new mechanisms that can account for inheritance of traits and characteristics otherwise unaccounted for, science doesn't rule novelty out, but for serious consideration, you either need evidence of a new mechanism, or some data that isn't explained by the current model.

Go for it - let us know when you've got something interesting.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2013 00:56:30
... I often wonder what the average person's response to Einstein's idea were in the early 1900s. The idea that time is not constant is about as counter-intuitive as it gets.
Indeed - and consider Einstein's response to quantum mechanics; he could never accept the underlying ideas, yet they turned out to be behind the most precise theory we ever constructed.

Don's intuitions are understandable, but as Gladwell explains in 'Blink' and 'Outliers', intuition without expertise in complex situations is asking for fail. Apparently Don has it in spades.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 26/11/2013 00:57:50
Medically speaking, this forum has been infected with the DonQuicho-virus. I think it's time for some serious treatment!!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2013 00:58:15
Medically speaking, this forum has been infected with the DonQuicho-virus. I think it's time for some serious treatment!!!!!
[:)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 17:49:57
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Medically speaking, this forum has been infected with the DonQuicho-virus. I think it's time for some serious treatment!!!!!
[/quote]

It's about time to apply the materialist inquisitions, you mean , by burning the heretic Don, right ? 
You do like this kind of barbecue , i see .
Got some sort of refutations of what i have been saying ? Guess not .
Bon appetit,Mr . Cannibal  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 18:14:49
... I often wonder what the average person's response to Einstein's idea were in the early 1900s. The idea that time is not constant is about as counter-intuitive as it gets.
Indeed - and consider Einstein's response to quantum mechanics; he could never accept the underlying ideas, yet they turned out to be behind the most precise theory we ever constructed.

Don's intuitions are understandable, but as Gladwell explains in 'Blink' and 'Outliers', intuition without expertise in complex situations is asking for fail. Apparently Don has it in spades.
[/quote]

Ironically enough , i have read yesterday a part of this interesting book written by Chris Carter " Science and psychic phenomena : the fal of the house of skeptics " ,concerning the nature of science where Karl Popper was quoted by saying that he was fascinated by what Einstein said in a conference ,concerning his relativity theory ,that it took him years to come up with a solution to Hume's logical paradox concerning induction :
Einstein said something like the following :
No amount of verification or falsification of my theory ,now or in the future , can ever prove it to be true .
Karl Popper then went on talking about Hume's rejection of induction ,and about Bertrand Russell' s  attempts to address the latter while failing to do so .
Karl Popper's solution for Hume's logical rejection of induction was marvellous,induction without which science cannot exist or function  ,and therefore there would be no way to differentiate science from insanity or from pseudo-science  :
Karl Popper proposed that universal induction can only exist logically ,if we would take into consideration that it can only be temporary , in a form of a conjecture , not in a form of absolute truth :
A certain scientific theory ,or scientific knowledge as a whole , can thus only be conjectural ,not definite truths .
Scientific theories must  be falsifiable and can thus be proven to be false , but can never be proven to be true definitely : scientific theories and paradigms can compete with each other , and the ones which do happen to have more explanatory power take the upperhand, temporarily  ,thinks like that .

Which also means that the current materialist false -meta-paradigm that has been taken for granted as an absolute truth , that has been ossifying itself into a dogma thus ,by becoming unfalsifiable and thus unscientific , are reasons enough to abandon it .

The rise of anomalies such as consciousness , for example , are sometimes reasons enough to bandon the existing paradigm or meta-paradigm in science ,or at leat to try to modify them  somehow : in the case of materialism : no amount of modification can solve its falsehood : materialism must be thus rejected by all sciences thus .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 18:24:28
The inheritance of certain mental illnesses ,for example, cannot be just the work, so to speak, of genes or epigenetics ,simply because the mental is irreducible to the physical or to the material : there might be some extra form of inheritance of the mental out there thus .I dunno : it just does not make sense to reduce everything,including the mental and psychological thus ,  to just the material or physical , to just genes physics and chemistry ,as the false mainstream "scientific world view " has been doing ...
My bolding. You're right; you don't know, and your incredulity is irrelevant. The genes involved in many heritable diseases have been identified, including some mental illnesses. Only a small minority of genetic diseases or disabilities are easily identifiable by a single dominant or recessive allele; the majority involve the interactions of many genes, and may require particular environmental contexts to be expressed. But when the pattern of inheritance of a mental disability matches the pattern of inheritance of a known genetic disease, a reasonable person suspects a similar genetic mechanism at work. In some cases, particular genes will predispose to certain behavioural tendencies, depending on the environment; for example the expression of a certain gene will predispose an individual to violent behaviour, but only if they have an abusive childhood. We should also expect random mutation to cause mental disabilities just as it causes physical disabilities; in this case, we would not expect to find a family history of it, but the incidence should be fairly consistent within the population.

We know that those abused as children often go on to abuse their own children, and without a detailed genetic analysis of many such instances, it's not possible to know how much genetics is directly involved, if any. So here is a potential non-genetic inheritance of undesirable behaviour. But there is also a reasonable and adequate well-established material explanation, i.e., conditioning. How you are treated as a child affects how you treat your children. These ideas are easy enough to test by looking at siblings raised by foster parents, identical twins raised by different parents, etc. Much work has been, and is being done, in these areas.

If you can provide an example of a mental disability that has no apparent genetic component and clearly does not originate from developmental influences, let me know, and we can... assess how likely it is to be of 'immaterial inheritance'? how would we do that? Surely the only reasonable path is to look for material causes because we can't look for immaterial causes. If we find no material cause, science will say, "unexplained", and you can say "see? it's immaterial!" (but only until science finds the material cause) [:)]

Of course it's possible that we will discover new mechanisms that can account for inheritance of traits and characteristics otherwise unaccounted for, science doesn't rule novelty out, but for serious consideration, you either need evidence of a new mechanism, or some data that isn't explained by the current model.

Go for it - let us know when you've got something interesting.
[/quote]

You can try to sing all night and day long about my presumed ignorance or incredulity , but , you can't make the fact go away that you all have been unable so far to understand my point of view ,regarding the inheritance of mental illnesses and regarding the possible inheritance of the psychological and mental effects of  past tragic events by the next generations and beyond .

Mental illnesses , for example , that can be inded inherited , do have 2 sides to them : the physiological and the mental, the latter that's irreducible to the physical :
So, the inheritance of those mental illnesses does happen physiologically and mentally : the physiological part of those mental illnesses is a matter of biology genes, and the mental aspect of those mental illnesses thus might be passed on non-physically , i guess .
But , since , you cannot but reduce everything to just physics and chemistry , thanks to materialism thus , you cannot but reduce the inheritance of mental illnesses  and the rest  ,and all other forms of inheritance , including the epigenetic enviromental one , to just ...physiology thus .
Get that ?

In short :
Only when science will reject materialism , only then ,science will be able to discover non-physical forms of causation , including non-physical forms of inheritance that  are just the other side of the genetic or epigenetic forms of inheritance , since everything in nature is both material physical ,and non -material non-physical, including life that's both a material physical biological process , and a non-physical non-material mental one , the latter that cannot be reduced to the physical .

Is that so difficult to understand , scientist ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 18:38:59
You have to try to reconsider your own views regarding what science might be :
I've reconsidered my views about it many times, and continue to do so. If you could provide some coherent argument I'd take that into consideration too, but I'm still waiting to hear it.
[/quote]

No, you do not listen to what your opponents such as myself might say to you , you just prefer to continue listening to your own materialist bizarre one sided music :

Respond to the following then :

How can science try to explain "everything " = nothing just in terms of physics and chemistry ,while assuming that the latter is all what there is to reality , thanks to materialism ?

How can science be so deluded and so absurd surreal ...you name it ...as to try to explain reality as a whole ,just via one single side of it : just via the material physical and biological side of reality which science has been taking for granted as the whole reality , thanks to materialism .

Science has thus no choice but to try to deal with both sides of reality , the physical and the mental  alike , if science wanna try to explain the whole pic to us , and hence make us understand the latter .

The only way to do just that , is by rejecting materialism that has been reducing reality to just the material and physical , including the mind .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 26/11/2013 18:58:47

Ironically enough , i have read yesterday a part of this interesting book written by Chris Carter " Science and psychic phenomena : the fal of the house of skeptics " ,concerning the nature of science where Karl Popper was quoted by saying that he was fascinated by what Einstein said in a conference ,concerning his relativity theory ,that it took him years to come up with a solution to Hume's logical paradox concerning induction :
Einstein said something like the following :
No amount of verification or falsification of my theory ,now or in the future , can ever prove it to be true .
Karl Popper then went on talking about Hume's rejection of induction ,and about Bertrand Russell' s  attempts to address the latter while failing to do so .
Karl Popper's solution for Hume's logical rejection of induction was marvellous,induction without which science cannot exist or function  ,and therefore there would be no way to differentiate science from insanity or from pseudo-science  :
Karl Popper proposed that universal induction can only exist logically ,if we would take into consideration that it can only be temporary , in a form of a conjecture , not in a form of absolute truth :
A certain scientific theory ,or scientific knowledge as a whole , can thus only be conjectural ,not definite truths .

I absolutely agree and am happy (stunned, actually) that you realize this as well. As dlorde aptly said earlier, "This is how science works; knowledge is provisional. There is no dogmatic materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view ", just the determination to stay with the best current model until new evidence gives good reason to replace or extend it."

Quote
Scientific theories must  be falsifiable and can thus be proven to be false , but can never be proven to be true definitely : scientific theories and paradigms can compete with each other , and the ones which do happen to have more explanatory power take the upperhand, temporarily  ,thinks like that .

Again, I absolutely agree. Couldn't have said it better. And it illustrates the problem with your position. You haven't provided anything with more explanatory power to compete, because you lack evidence to support your ideas.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2013 19:16:39
Only when science will reject materialism...
How, precisely, do you propose it does that?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 19:21:08

The mental is the one that's more fundamental than the physiological ,not the other way around .The mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material

Your statement that the mental is irreducible to the physical is an assertion, not a fact.  It's based on your  impression that they "seem" different or "feel" different to you, and therefore cannot be the same things, or causally related. It would be equally difficult to convince someone who didn't know anything about physics that different forms of energy (radiant energy, chemical energy, electrical energy etc.) were in any way related, or could be converted from one form to another because they "seem" so different. It would be difficult to convince someone with no understanding of photosynthesis how a plant pulls off "the materialist magic trick" of converting radiant energy from the sun to chemical energy in a tomato.

Sorry , lady : only fools ,idiots ,materialists or some other dogmatic or ignorant people would deny the fact that the mental is irreducible to the physical ,which also means that  some heritable mental illnesses ,for example ,get passed on to the next generations both physiologically and mentally non-physically , i guess .
The physiological side of mental illnesses is just one single side to them, the mental that's irreducible to the physical is the other side of the same medal , and the more fundamental one at that .
To try to reduce everything , including the mental, to just physics and chemistry is so absurd and surreal false an attempt , that it should not be dignified as to answer it .

Quote
Water, ice, and steam all have very experientially different properties but are the same thing. Even a non-scientist accepts this because  as children, we all watched this transformation take place, and verified that no one substituted a cup of water for an ice cube while our back was turned. But if one were never actually able to observe the process, it might be difficult to believe water could be changed in something that looks, feels, and behaves so qualitatively different.

You're just talking about material physical processes here : what has that to do with what i was saying then ?

We don't know yet what even matter is exactly : matter is not just matter either : see quantum physics .

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I often wonder what the average person's response to Einstein's ideas were in the early 1900s. The idea that time is not constant is about as counter-intuitive as it gets. I doubt even physicists who understand relativity can actually personally "experience" time in any other way than all humans do. It's only the theories, the math, and reproducible, empirical evidence that tells them that their perception of it is wrong, or at least limited.

Logically, mathematically , physically , and even scientifically in the non-materialist sense thus , speaking : physics and chemistry cannot account either for the nature of life , nor that of consciousness .....not to mention that physics and chemistry alone cannot account fully for their origins evolution and emergence , simply because the mental side of life , the non-physical nature of consciousness ,are not reducible to the physical .

No wonder that materialists do speak of living organisms just in terms of machines or computers ,as to make consciousness fit into their false materialist mechanical conception of nature .

If we are just physics and chemistry , we should be behaving like mindless zombies , not  like intelligent machines that are man-made : physics and chemistry alone cannot account for intelligent sentient life .

Otherwise , try to make 'sentient living " machines .

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It's just my opinion, which you are free to reject, but I think your reliance on your own experience of  "thoughts" "ideas" "emotions" as being intangible, ethereal, somehow substance-less, is a major reason why you reject  any explanations involving neurons and biochemistry.

Who said i do reject biochemistry , neuro-chemistry or physics and chemistry , biology ...? I just said they are just one single side of life or of reality .
The mental is the other side of the same coin, so to speak : the mental that's irreducible to the physical : we are not just physics and chemistry : we are much more than just that : we are also immaterial minds .

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What makes you rather think that the mental can be inherited only physiologically just via genetics or via epigenetics ? How can that happen then ,since the mental is irreducible to the physical ?

Are you aware of this paradox ?

It's not a paradox to me because I don't agree that the mental and physical are two completely separate things. I'm not a dualist.

Who said they are 2 completely separate things then ? they are in fact 2 totally different processes interacting with each other mutually : how ? That remains to be discovered : one cannot try to escape this seemingly impossible issue of mind and body , just by reducing the mind to just biology ,just for ideological materialist purposes science has nothing to do with .

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What makes you think that inheritance can only be material , that it can only either be  genetic or epigenetic  ? What makes you exclude any non-physical form of inheritance then ?What makes you exclude the non-physical ,non -genetical ,non-epigenetical form of inheritance ?

 I don't exclude it. Science doesn't exclude it. But you'd have to have some kind of direct evidence to show that can be. Just saying "what if" or "how do you know it doesn't happen" isn't enough. It's not enough to make an idea like immaterial inheritance a scientific theory. It's stuck at being just a fanciful idea, without some kind of evidence for it
.

For your info :
Current science does exclude that , simply because science has been assuming that reality is just material or physical , including the mind thus .

Only when science will reject materialism ,only then, science will be able to extend its realm as to include the mental that's irreducible to the physical : the mental that's just the other side of the same pic .

Science will thus have to stop its absurd surreal false ...attempts to try to explain "everything " = nothing just in terms of physics and chemistry = just via one single side of the whole pic ,it has been taking for the whole pic or for the whole real thing , thanks to materialism thus ,once again .

Is that so hard to understand ?

The problem is thus not the immaterial side of reality , not our immaterial or mental side without which there would be even no science , the problem is materialism in science which reduces everything to just the material or to the physical biological ,including the mind .

Science has thus no choice but to try to deal with those both sides of reality or of the whole pic , if science wanna deserve fully to be called science , if science wanna try to explain the whole pic ,and hence make us understand the latter .

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What makes you think that science proper will not be able to discover those non-physical forms of inheritance , after rejecting materialism thus ?[/i]

Who knows, maybe it will. Science doesn't exclude the possibility. There's just no evidence for it so far. I don't understand your need to reject everything that has been explained so far by chemistry and physics, because of that possibility. A discovery like that wouldn't necessarily invalidate every other scientific finding, any more than epigenetics destroyed Natural Selection - it simply added more knowledge and better understanding.

See above : science does exclude the immaterial side of reality ,does thus exclude the immaterial side of life as a whole , and hence does exclude our mental immaterial side as well , the mental or immaterial side of reality that has been reduced to the material physical or to the biological ,thanks to materialism .

It's not thus that there is no evidence for the immaterial side of reality , it's just that materialism , per definition, does exclude the immaterial side of reality , materialism has been reducing that to the material physical or to the biological : science has nothing to do with that false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " : how can't you understand just this simple fact ?

And i am not rejecting physics and chemistry , i just reject that "everything " = nothing , can be explained only in terms of physics and chemistry : see the difference ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 19:46:34

Ironically enough , i have read yesterday a part of this interesting book written by Chris Carter " Science and psychic phenomena : the fal of the house of skeptics " ,concerning the nature of science where Karl Popper was quoted by saying that he was fascinated by what Einstein said in a conference ,concerning his relativity theory ,that it took him years to come up with a solution to Hume's logical paradox concerning induction :
Einstein said something like the following :
No amount of verification or falsification of my theory ,now or in the future , can ever prove it to be true .
Karl Popper then went on talking about Hume's rejection of induction ,and about Bertrand Russell' s  attempts to address the latter while failing to do so .
Karl Popper's solution for Hume's logical rejection of induction was marvellous,induction without which science cannot exist or function  ,and therefore there would be no way to differentiate science from insanity or from pseudo-science  :
Karl Popper proposed that universal induction can only exist logically ,if we would take into consideration that it can only be temporary , in a form of a conjecture , not in a form of absolute truth :
A certain scientific theory ,or scientific knowledge as a whole , can thus only be conjectural ,not definite truths .

I absolutely agree and am happy (stunned, actually) that you realize this as well. As dlorde aptly said earlier, "This is how science works; knowledge is provisional. There is no dogmatic materialist mechanistic orthodox neo-Darwinian  "scientific world view ", just the determination to stay with the best current model until new evidence gives good reason to replace or extend it."

Well, lady , i cannot but say that you did not read me well on that :
I also said that materialism or the materialist meta-paradigm in science ( The materialist mainstream "scientific world view" thus ) has been ossifying itself as to become extremely orthodox  dogmatic irrational by considering itself to be the absolute truth , and hence by making itself unfalsifiable and thus unscientific : materialism was in fact already unscientific from day 1 , it just hardened itself into an increasingly untenable unfalsifiable dogma  "truth " , while scientific knowledge or theories  , scientific meta and paradigms can never be taken for granted as being true , never , ever : no amount of present or future falsifications attempts can prove them to be true , never , ever , simply because it would have to take only one succesfull falsification in the far future , to brand them as being false , while other alternate  competing  theories  with more explanatory power might replace them  temporarily in their turn and then the same process would go for the latter also and so on , as Einstein said , and as Hume has demonstrated in relation to induction in science , even poor Russell could not solve , and only Popper could  so brilliantly indeed .

Any scientific theories, any scientific knowledge , any scientific meta or paradigm ,are per -definition , temporary and cannot thus be taken for granted as absolute truths ,as to become unfalsifiable , as materialism has been doing , by assuming or rather by dogmatically and absolutely believing that reality is just material or physical , as the current "scientific world view " has been doing for so long now , turning themselves into unfalsifiable dogmas and absolute truths= unscientific  , by excluding any existence of the immaterial side of reality as a matter of materialist absolute "truth " or as a materialist unfalsifiable dogma belief .

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Scientific theories must  be falsifiable and can thus be proven to be false , but can never be proven to be true definitely : scientific theories and paradigms can compete with each other , and the ones which do happen to have more explanatory power take the upperhand, temporarily  ,thinks like that .

Again, I absolutely agree. Couldn't have said it better. And it illustrates the problem with your position. You haven't provided anything with more explanatory power to compete, because you lack evidence to support your ideas.

Should we keep  on  considering materialism as being a "valid " theory of nature  , simply because we cannot yet find more clear and valid theories ,with more explanatory power ?   what kindda "scientific reasoning " is that ?
The fact that the materialist meta-paradigm in science has been turning itself into an unfalsifiable dogma "absolute truth" by rejecting , per definition, a priori and per se any alternate competing theory of nature  out there , is reason enough to reject materialism , while trying to give form to alternatives to materialism, as Sheldrake and others ,for example , have been doing so far at least , by triggering this new scientific revolution .

P.S.: If you want to : i can let Karl Popper speak on the subject via quoting some of his words on the subject from his "Conjectures and refutations : The growth of scientific knowledge " .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2013 19:54:18
Only when science will reject materialism...
How, precisely, do you propose it does that?

See right here above  what i said to our Cheryl on the subject .
Science will have to face ,and has no choice but to address the fact that reality is not just material or physical, and hence to continue trying  to explain "everything " = nothing just in terms of physics and chemistry is an unscientific and a false absurd surreal ...attempt to make ,such an unscientific attempt should be abandoned .
Sheldrake and others have already been starting this scientific revolution so far their own more or less clumsy ways : that's how scientific revolutions do start ,clumsily : they are first ridiculed , then violently opposed , and then they become self-evident afterwards : that's what i assume that' ll be happening = none or nothing  can stop such a scientific process from taking place,as the very young history of science itself has been showing , no matter how powerful  ,deceptive ,oppressive ,bullying,  inquisitory and persuasive  any temporary  majority or  scientific priesthood's consensus  might ever be ,or turn out to be  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 26/11/2013 20:41:38
... only fools ,idiots ,materialists or some other dogmatic or ignorant people would deny the fact that the mental is irreducible to the physical

You've use that everyone-who-disagrees-with-me-is-an-idiot line before,
repeatedly ... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22only+fools+idiots+%22++site%3Athenakedscientists.com

it demonstrates you have no evidence to support your position, ( and how tediously repetitious you are).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 26/11/2013 20:58:51

Sorry , lady : only fools ,idiots ,materialists or some other dogmatic or ignorant people would deny the fact that the mental is irreducible to the physical ,which also means that  some heritable mental illnesses ,for example ,get passed on to the next generations both physiologically and mentally non-physically , i guess .

Well, that kind of wrecks your concept of free will, if your mother's mental illness is immaterially forced on to your consciousness.

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To try to reduce everything , including the mental, to just physics and chemistry is so absurd and surreal false an attempt , that it should not be dignified as to answer it .
lol.


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Water, ice, and steam all have very experientially different properties but are the same thing. Even a non-scientist accepts this because  as children, we all watched this transformation take place, and verified that no one substituted a cup of water for an ice cube while our back was turned. But if one were never actually able to observe the process, it might be difficult to believe water could be changed in something that looks, feels, and behaves so qualitatively different.

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You're just talking about material physical processes here : what has that to do with what i was saying then ?

My point was that you give way too much credence to  superficial qualities when you compare two things.  You keep insisting that the mental processes have no physical basis because the two things are just "totally different", but can’t explain how or why. They just are, you say over and over, and only “idiots” would think otherwise.

On the other hand, I’m not surprised that you think the way you do. When one relies on immaterial explanations, what choice is there? There is nothing but  vague superficial, impressionist descriptions to use  for comparison, because there are no immaterial mechanisms or processes to even consider.

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Who said i do reject biochemistry , neuro-chemistry or physics and chemistry , biology ...?


You do, Don, every single time any explanation involving chemistry or physics comes up, even in examples that don't involve consciousness.


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Who said they are 2 completely separate things then ? they are in fact 2 totally different processes interacting with each other mutually : how ? That remains to be discovered :

Gosh that sounds a bit "messianic/promissory."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 27/11/2013 00:09:49
It's called 'magical thinking'. Basically wish fulfillment.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/11/2013 00:53:15
No, you do not listen to what your opponents such as myself might say to you , you just prefer to continue listening to your own materialist bizarre one sided music :

So, we're being described as opponents are we? As an opponent, are we expected to surrender, or to listen to music that is severely out of key? The band your playing in will never make the top ten my friend!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 27/11/2013 04:09:15
How can the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material be inherited physiologically ? how ? via some sort of materialist magic ?

The inheritance of certain mental illnesses ,for example, cannot be just the work, so to speak, of genes or epigenetics ,simply because the mental is irreducible to the physical or to the material : there might be some extra form of inheritance of the mental out there thus


Have you forgotten all of your posts explaining that mental illness, Alzheimers, dementia, and yes, even genetic defects, are just problems with the brain as a biological receiver? And that , "the corresponding elements or aspects of consciousness that get apparently altered as a result , are still there , they are just disconnected from the brain as a receiver , they do not get through"?

If mental illness or Alzheimers is just a problem with the biological receiver, they wouldn't require a immaterial form of inheritance. Obviously.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/11/2013 18:31:36
Hi , guys:

The following will explain , in clearer and much better ways than i can ever do, all what i have been saying ,concerning the fact that the false materialist meinstream "scientific world view " has been hardening itself into becoming an unfalsifiable dogma :
What Karl Popper says here below , regarding Freud ,Adler and Marxism goes perfectly for materialism ,as i have been experiencing the latter to be all along :

Karl Popper is no doubt the biggest philosopher of science ever born, i think :

Enjoy :

(dlorde :

What Karl Popper is all about is exactly what i meant way earlier in the origin of science thread , concerning the fact that it is highly important to know the origins of science , and therefore  the nature and genesis of  its epistemology + the latter's  status and growth evolution , if we wanna understand what science is all about , what the nature of human knowledge and epistemology are , what the nature of scientific knowledge is ....)

Excerpts from " Science -Conjectures and Refutations " By Karl Popper :  Science As Falsification  :


Science as Falsification
The following excerpt was originally published in Conjectures and
Refutations (1963).
by Karl R. Popper
When I received the list of participants in this course and realized that I
had been asked to speak to philosophical colleagues I thought, after
some hesitation and consolation, that you would probably prefer me to
speak about those problems which interests me most, and about those
developments with which I am most intimately acquainted. I therefore
decided to do what I have never done before: to give you a report on my
own work in the philosophy of science, since the autumn 1919 when I
first begin to grapple with the problem, "When should a theory be
ranked as scientific?" or "Is there a criterion for the scientific character or
status of a theory?"
The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, "When is a
theory true?" nor "When is a theory acceptable?" my problem was
different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science;
knowing very well that science often errs, and that pseudoscience may
happen to stumble on the truth.
I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that
science is distinguished from pseudoscience—or from "metaphysics"—
by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from
observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I
often formulated my problem as one of distinguishing between a
genuinely empirical method and a non-empirical or even pseudoempirical
method — that is to say, a method which, although it appeals
to observation and experiment, nevertheless does not come up to
scientific standards. The latter method may be exemplified by astrology,
with its stupendous mass of empirical evidence based on observation —
on horoscopes and on biographies.
But as it was not the example of astrology which lead me to my problem,
I should perhaps briefly describe the atmosphere in which my problem
arose and the examples by which it was stimulated. After the collapse of
the Austrian empire there had been a revolution in Austria: the air was
full of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new and often wild theories.
Among the theories which interested me Einstein's theory of relativity
was no doubt by far the most important. The three others were Marx's
theory of history, Freud's psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler's so-called
"individual psychology."
There was a lot of popular nonsense talked about these theories, and
especially about relativity (as still happens even today), but I was
fortunate in those who introduced me to the study of this theory. We
all—the small circle of students to which I belong—were thrilled with
the result of Eddington's eclipse observations which in 1919 brought the
first important confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravitation. It was a
great experience for us, and one which had a lasting influence on my
intellectual development.
The three other theories I have mentioned were also widely discussed
among students at the time. I myself happened to come into personal
contact with Alfred Adler, and even to cooperate with him in his social
work among the children and young people in the working-class
districts of Vienna where he had established social guidance clinics.
It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more
dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history,
psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious
about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the
simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and
individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical
theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of
relativity?"
To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time
would have said that we believed in the truth of Einstein's theory of
gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of those
three other theories which bothered me, but something else. Yet neither
was it that I nearly felt mathematical physics to be more exact than
sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was
neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of
exactness or measurability. It was rather that I felt that these other three
theories, though posing as science, had in fact more in common with
primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather
than astronomy.
I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and
Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories,
and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories
appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within
the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to
have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your
eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes
were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world
was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always
confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were
clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to
see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their
repressions which were still "un-analyzed" and crying aloud for
treatment.
The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the
incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the
theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their
adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on
every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not
only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class
bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say.
The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly
verified by their "clinical observations." As for Adler, I was much
impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a
case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he
found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority
feelings, Although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I
asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold
experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with
this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-andone-
fold."
What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have
been much sounder than this new one; that each in its turn had been
interpreted in the light of "previous experience," and at the same time
counted as additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it
confirm? No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of a
theory. But this meant very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case
could be interpreted in the light Adler's theory, or equally of Freud's. I
may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behavior:
that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of
drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to
save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease
in Freudian and Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man
suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus
complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to
Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing
perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some
crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself
that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human
behavior which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was
precisely this fact—that they always fitted, that they were always
confirmed—which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest
argument in favor of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this
apparent strength was in fact their weakness.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/11/2013 18:32:34

With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one
typical instance — Einstein's prediction, just then confirmed by the
finding of Eddington's expedition. Einstein's gravitational theory had
led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the
sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it
could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent
position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a
direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the
sun; or, in other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they
had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a
thing which cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered
invisible in daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during
an eclipse it is possible to take photographs of them. If the same
constellation is photographed at night one can measure the distance on
the two photographs, and check the predicted effect.
Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a
prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is
definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is
incompatible with certain possible results of observation—in fact with
results which everybody before Einstein would have expected.[1] This is
quite different from the situation I have previously described, when it
turned out that the theories in question were compatible with the most
divergent human behavior, so that it was practically impossible to
describe any human behavior that might not be claimed to be a
verification of these theories.
These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions
which I may now reformulate as follows.
• It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory
— if we look for confirmations.
• Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky
predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we
should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory —
an event which would have refuted the theory.
• Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to
happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
• A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.
Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
• Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.
Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some
theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they
take, as it were, greater risks.
• Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a
genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a
serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in
such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
• Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld
by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary
assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it
escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the
theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least
lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation
as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific
status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
II
I may perhaps exemplify this with the help of the various theories so far
mentioned. Einstein's theory of gravitation clearly satisfied the criterion
of falsifiability. Even if our measuring instruments at the time did not
allow us to pronounce on the results of the tests with complete
assurance, there was clearly a possibility of refuting the theory.
Astrology did not pass the test. Astrologers were greatly impressed, and
misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence — so much so
that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence.
Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently
vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a
refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more
precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of
their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely
that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.
The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its
founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In
some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx's analysis of the
character of the "coming social revolution") their predictions were
testable, and in fact falsified.[2] Yet instead of accepting the refutations
the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in
order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from
refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made
it irrefutable. They thus gave a "conventionalist twist" to the theory; and
by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific
status.
The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different class. They were
simply non-testable, irrefutable. There was no conceivable human
behavior which could contradict them. This does not mean that Freud
and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly; I personally do not
doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and
may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is
testable. But it does mean that those "clinical observations" which
analysts naïvely believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more
than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice.[3]
And as for Freud's epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no
substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than
for Homer's collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe
some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting
psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and
become testable; that historically speaking all — or very nearly all —
scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain
important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles'
theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides' myth of the
unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if
we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which,
too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally
speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). I thus felt that
if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might
say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or
"meaningless," or "nonsensical."[4] But it cannot claim to be backed by
empirical evidence in the scientific sense — although it may easily be, in
some genetic sense, the "result of observation."
(There were a great many other theories of this pre-scientific or pseudoscientific
character, some of them, unfortunately, as influential as the
Marxist interpretation of history; for example, the racialist interpretation
of history — another of those impressive and all-explanatory theories
which act upon weak minds like revelations.)
Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of
falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance,
nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a
line (as well as this can be done) between the statements, or systems of
statements, of the empirical sciences, and all other statements —
whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply
pseudo-scientific. Years later — it must have been in 1928 or 1929 — I
called this first problem of mine the "problem of demarcation." The
criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for
it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as
scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable,
observations.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/11/2013 19:47:42
The following is also extremely relevant to our discussion ,regarding the unfalsifiability of the current "scientific world view " :
"The Nature of Science " :
David Hume's Logical Rejection of Inuduction or Hume's  dilemma of induction , Bertrand Russel's Failure to Solve it ,and Karl Popper's brilliant solution :


When Sheldrake talks about the laws of physics as  non-fixed habits , i used to think what the heck the guy was talking about ,untill i have read the following :

Enjoy : extremely fascinating , and cristal-clear :
Karl Popper is indeed the greatest philosopher of science so far :


THE NATURE OF SCIENCE
It is generally recognized that science is concerned with theories, but in a scientific context the word
theory has a somewhat different meaning than it frequently does in ordinary conversation: in the latter
it is often used loosely to mean any degree of speculation. In police work, for example, it often means
a provisional explanation of what happened in the commission of a crime. But scientific theories are
not meant to be explanations of isolated events: they are meant to apply to a class of events that are
similar in some crucial respects. So, a scientific theory of crime will not attempt to explain how or
why a particular crime occurred but will attempt to explain some class of crimes.
This universal property of scientific theories cannot be stressed enough. A scientific theory cannot
be merely speculation about a particular fact. The ancient Babylonians kept highly precise records of
daily observations, and they were able to use these records to make highly accurate predictions about
the movements of heavenly bodies. But the Babylonians did not engage in science; although they
gathered facts, they did not propose theories to explain how these facts fit together. When Isaac
Newton proposed that a planet and the sun are attracted by a gravitational force that is directly
proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them, he offered a relation between masses and distances—a relation that of course became
celebrated as the Newtonian theory of gravity.a
But what makes a theory scientific? How do we distinguish between scientific and nonscientific
theories? Traditionally, the answer has been that science is distinguished from pseudoscience, and
from metaphysics, by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive: theories are inferred from
observations, and in turn these theories are confirmed by further observations.
But many theories purport to be based on, and confirmed by, observation. Astrology, for instance, is
thought by its supporters to be confirmed by extensive empirical evidence based on observation—on
horoscopes and biographical data. Should astrology be considered a science? What is the distinction
between true science and other forms of belief that purport to be based upon observation?
The celebrated philosopher of science Karl Popper began pondering this question while he was a
student in Austria during the early years of the twentieth century. As a student, he had been exposed to
a lot of the revolutionary new ideas that were then gaining wide exposure—most notably Freudian
theories of psychoanalysis, Adler’s theories of individual psychology, the Marxist theory of history,
and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
It struck the young Popper how the supporters of Freud’s and Adler’s psychological theories
seemed to find confirmation everywhere they looked. The data always seemed to fit the theories, and
it began to dawn on Popper that perhaps this fact—that observations always seemed to be consistent
with the theories—might not be their biggest strength, as supporters claimed, but their greatest
weakness.
The situation with Einstein’s theory was different. Here was a theory very different from Newton’s
theory in its fundamental outlook, which at that time was utterly successful. But what really impressed
Popper was the way Einstein used his theory to make a number of bold predictions, all of which could
be tested. Einstein declared that these predictions were crucial: if the results of future experiments did
not agree with his theoretical calculations, he would regard his theory as refuted. One of these
predictions was that light would be bent by massive bodies such as the sun to twice the degree
predicted by Newton’s theory. In one of the earliest tests of that theory, photographs of stars taken by
the Sir Arthur Eddington expedition during an eclipse provided data in agreement with Einstein’s
prediction, and contrary to Newton’s.
Here seemed to be a crucial difference between relativity and the two psychological theories: the
former took risks in making predictions that could in principle be wrong. Unlike the theories of Freud
and Adler, Einstein’s theory was incompatible with certain possible results of observations. Or, in
other words, it could be tested.
This consideration led Popper to the conclusion that a theory that is not capable of being refuted by
any possible observation is not truly scientific. One can sum up Popper’s famous demarcation between
science and nonscience by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its
falsifiability.
Accordingly, theories that are not falsifiable in principle cannot claim to be scientific, and so they
belong to metaphysics, ideology, or pseudoscience.
It is important to stress that Popper never thought that metaphysical theories were meaningless, or
insignificant, or unimportant. They are simply not testable in the way that scientific theories are.
Popper actually thought that what Freud and Adler said was of considerable importance, and he hoped
that these theories might one day play a role as part of psychological theories that were testable.
Metaphysical speculations may inspire programs of scientific research; they also may in time become
capable of being tested and hence attain scientific status. Ancient examples of metaphysical theories
that became testable would include the speculations of Aristarchus and Copernicus that the earth
revolves around the sun; another example would be the theory of Democritus that the world is
composed of atoms.
Popper also noted that the reverse can happen: a theory may start out as scientific, by having
testable implications, and then become unscientific by immunizing itself against apparent examples of
falsification. Thus Popper argued that Marxism started out as a scientific theory: it predicted that
capitalism would lead to increasing misery among the masses and then be overthrown by revolution
and replaced by socialism; it also predicted that this would occur first in the most technologically
developed countries. When the so-called worker’s revolution first occurred in then-backward and
agrarian Russia, supporters of the theory did not accept this as a refutation: the theory was simply
modified so that it became immune to falsification.
According to this scheme, Freud’s and Adler’s theories were never scientific but belonged in the
realm of protoscientific metaphysics; Marxism started out as a science but became an ideology; and
astrology, insofar as it makes vague predictions that are simply irrefutable, belongs to pseudoscience.b
A few further points are necessary to clarify this picture. One is that some metaphysical theories
may not be directly testable, but they may be implied by scientific theories. They enter into our belief
systems on the coattails of currently accepted scientific theories, but if a scientific theory is refuted by
observation, then any metaphysical theories that entered in its wake are also refuted. An example of
this would be the metaphysical theory of determinism implied by the clockwork universe of
Newtonian physics. If Newtonian physics is rejected as false, then determinism should be rejected as
well.
Another important point is that Popper’s demarcation between science and nonscience is rough. As
mentioned, what was a metaphysical idea yesterday can become a testable scientific theory tomorrow.
And, of course, some theories are more testable than others for a variety of reasons: the technology
currently available, the ease with which reliable data may be gathered, or the nature of the subject
matter. According to Popper, “a theory is scientific to the degree to which it is testable.”4 (emphasis
added)
Finally, it is worth pointing out that Popper was not a simple falsificationist in the manner that
many of his critics have assumed:5 He did not think that theories were automatically abandoned as
soon as they are shown to be false but only when we have a better theory available. One theory may be
considered better than a competitor in at least two senses: it may pass tests its competitor fails, and it
may explain everything the other theory explains and more. Popper realized that science often
operates as though it aims not at truth but merely at approximations to the truth. In such
circumstances, a theory will not be discarded as soon as it is falsified but only when it is found to
approximate the truth less accurately than some rival hypothesis.
Early in the last century, Popper attended a lecture given by the young Albert Einstein, and he was
greatly impressed. Here was a bold new theory that deviated in its fundamental outlook from
Newton’s, a theory that, up to that time, had been almost entirely and utterly successful in its
predictions. (It failed to predict the orbit of Mercury with complete accuracy, but this did not trouble
many.) According to Einstein’s theory, Newton’s theory was an excellent approximation, though false
(just as, according to Newton’s theory, Kepler’s theory is an excellent approximation, though false).
What really impressed Popper were the following two points: first, Einstein used his theory to make
several bold predictions, and, second, he declared that if the subsequent experiments did not agree
with his predictions, he would regard his theory as refuted. But, as the lecture continued, Einstein went
even further, as Popper recounts:
Even if they were observed as predicted, Einstein declared that his theory was false: he said that it would be a better
approximation to the truth than Newton’s, but he gave reasons why he would not, even if all predictions came out right, regard
it as a true theory. He sketched a number of demands that a true theory (a unified field theory) would have to satisfy, and
declared that his theory was at best an approximation to this so far unattained unified field theory.6
This lecture led Popper to spend the rest of his life in the philosophy of science. Einstein himself
spent the rest of his life trying to achieve his dream of a unified field theory and failed, but the crucial
point that Popper eventually concluded from Einstein’s lecture was that truth does not decide the
scientific character of a theory—its falsifiability does.c
THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION: ARE OUR SCIENTIFIC BELIEFS
IRRATIONAL?
As mentioned earlier, traditional accounts of science stressed verification of scientific theories and
argued that scientific theories differ from nonscientific theories in that the former are based on
observations, which in turn are verified by further observations. Thus, it was argued that the scientific
method is essentially inductive: that is, our scientific laws, expressed as universal laws governing a
class of events similar in some crucial respects, are derived from repeated observations of events of
the type in question.
But as long ago as 1739, the Scottish philosopher David Hume pointed out that induction cannot be
logically justified. He held that there were no logical arguments that would allow us to establish “that
those instances, of which we have had no experience, should resemble those, of which we have had
experience.” He maintained that we have no logical reason to expect the future to resemble the past, as
“even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to
draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.”7 In other
words, from the fact that every crow we may have seen so far is black the conclusion that all crows are
black does not logically follow. Seeing a white crow would not in any sense be a logical contradiction
of the earlier observations.
However, Hume of course noticed that people everywhere, including himself, believe in laws and
regularities. But if an inductive inference— an inference from repeatedly observed instances to yet
unobserved instances—could not be justified on rational grounds, what could account for its apparent
prevalence? Hume concluded that it was nothing more than force of habit. Although there was no
rational justification for induction, Hume believed that it was a psychological fact, and that in any
case, people needed induction for their very survival. But if this is the case—that all empirical belief
is based on nothing more than habit—then this would imply that all scientific knowledge is irrational.
This conclusion greatly distressed Bertrand Russell: he was not willing to abandon the principle of
empiricism, which asserts that only observation and experiment may decide upon the acceptance or
rejection of scientific statements, including laws and theories. But he was driven to conclude that if
Hume’s rejection of the principle of induction is valid, then “every attempt to arrive at general
scientific laws from particular observations is fallacious, and Hume’s scepticism is inescapable for an
empiricist.”8 He wrote that “the rejection of induction makes all expectation as to the future
irrational” and that “taking even our firmest expectations, such as that the sun will rise tomorrow,
there is not a shadow of a reason for supposing them more likely to be verified than not.”9 He writes of
Hume, “It is evident that he started out with a belief that scientific method yields the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth; he ended, however with the conviction that belief is never rational,
since we know nothing.”10 So, “It is therefore important to discover whether there is any answer to
Hume within a philosophy that is wholly or mainly empirical. If not, there is no intellectual difference
between sanity and insanity. The lunatic who believes that he is a poached egg is to be condemned
solely on the ground that he is in a minority. . . . This is a desperate point of view, and it must be
hoped that there is some way of escaping from it.”11
Russell’s solution is equally desperate: he maintains that “Hume has proved that pure empiricism is
not a sufficient basis for science,” and so allows a single departure from his otherwise strictly
empirical philosophy, basically concluding that we simply have no choice but to accept inductive
arguments if we are going to practice science. All we can do, according to Russell, is accept that
“induction is an independent logical principle, incapable of being inferred either from experience or
from other logical principles, and that without this principle science is impossible.”12
Russell’s solution is essentially to accept Hume’s logical refutation of induction but then to argue
that we must accept it as a principle incapable of being justified by logic or experience, or in other
words, simply on faith. Otherwise, “science is impossible” and “there is no intellectual difference
between sanity and insanity.”
Popper’s solution was radically different. He denied that induction was needed in order to practice
science: he even denied that humans or animals used any sort of inductive procedure at all, calling it
“a kind of optical illusion.”13 As evidence against the reality of induction, he argued that expectations
may be formed after only one observed instance; that we may be born with certain expectations (such
as the expectation of being fed); and that long experience may not strengthen our expectations of
regularities but rather make us less rigid and dogmatic. Instead of forming our expectations from
observed regularities, Popper proposed that both humans and animals use a method of trial and error
that only superficially resembles induction but is logically very different.
As mentioned, Popper proposed that we all may be born with expectations—expectations that are
psychologically a priori, that is, prior to all observational experience. One of the most important of
these expectations is the expectation of finding regularities.14 Popper thereby turned the tables on
Hume’s psychological theory: instead of explaining our propensity to expect regularities as the result
of repetition, he proposed that we hypothesize repetition as a result of our propensity to expect
regularities. In other words, instead of passively waiting for nature to impose regularities upon us, we
actively try to impose regularities upon the world. We search for similarities and try to explain those
similarities in terms of laws invented by us. These laws may have to be discarded later, should
observations show that they are wrong. But according to Popper, first we jump to conclusions, and
then we test them against observations.
This was a theory of trial and error—of conjectures and refutations. It made it possible to understand why our attempts to force
interpretations upon the world were logically prior to the observation of similarities. Since there were logical reasons behind this
procedure, I thought that it would apply in the field of science also; that scientific theories were not the digest of observations,
but that they were inventions—conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations.15
Popper realized that the problem of the irrationality of all human belief, including scientific belief,
is solved if we can obtain our knowledge by a noninductive procedure. There is no need to postulate an
“inductive principle”; even if we think that induction exists as a psychological fact, there is, according
to Popper, no need to attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Hume was right: we are not rationally justified in reasoning from instances of which we have had
experience to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative conclusion Popper added a
second: we are justified in reasoning from a single counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding
law. Consider the universal statement “all swans are white.” Hume demonstrated that neither ten nor
ten thousand observations of white swans logically imply that the next swan we see will be white. It
cannot be verified by any number of observations, because no matter how many white swans we may
see, it is logically possible that the next swan we see will be black. Yet the universal statement can be
falsified by the observation of a single black swan.
Of course, in practice, we would be most reluctant to accept a single counterinstance to a highly
successful law: we may question the eyewitness accounts, or suspect that the black specimen before us
was not really a swan. But this is beside the point: we are logically compelled to reject even the most
successful law the moment we accept a single counterinstance. Empirical observation can never verify
a theory, but it can decisively refute a theory.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/11/2013 19:50:15

Popper demonstrated that science can proceed in a truly deductive manner through a process of
conjectures and refutations. As long as we concede that all our scientific theories are held tentatively,
not as “truths” but as conjectures that may only be approximations to the truth, then Hume’s dilemma
is resolved. They may be falsified by a deductive procedure but never verified in any logically valid
manner. In other words, scientific theories are not verified by observations consistent with them;
rather, they are corroborated by unsuccessful attempts at refutation.
Popper admitted that it took him several years to realize that the problem of induction is an aspect
of the problem of demarcation between science and nonscience.16 In fact, his demarcation solves the
so-called problem of induction: the problem that, if our scientific beliefs are based on induction, then
they are irrational. Hume’s problem of induction, and Popper’s solution, imply that all our scientific
beliefs are not irrational, merely conjectural. Belief would indeed be irrational if by belief we meant
uncritical acceptance of our laws based upon attempts to verify them through repeated observations. If
however, by belief we mean only tentative acceptance of our scientific theories combined with a
willingness to revise them if they fail to pass crucial tests, then Hume was wrong. There is nothing
irrational about such acceptance, nor is there anything irrational about relying for practical purposes
upon well-tested theories. There is no more rational course of action available to us.
Hume’s rejection of induction means that our universal laws or theories can never be proven correct
and so must remain only conjectures, or hypotheses. But Popper’s demonstration of our ability to
falsify theories by observation means that we can, on purely rational grounds, prefer some competing
conjectures to others. Popper sums it up:
To put it in a nutshell, Russell’s desperate remark that if with Hume we reject all positive induction, “there is no intellectual
difference between sanity and insanity” is mistaken. For the rejection of induction does not prevent us from preferring, say,
Newton’s theory to Kepler’s, or Einstein’s theory to Newton’s: during our rational critical discussion of these theories we may
have accepted the existence of counterexamples to Kepler’s theory which do not refute Newton’s, and of counterexamples to
Newton’s which do not refute Einstein’s. Given the acceptance of these counterexamples we can say that Kepler’s and
Newton’s theories are certainly false; whilst Einstein’s may be true or it may be false: that we don’t know. Thus there may exist
purely intellectual preferences for one or the other of these the-ories; and we are very far from having to say with Russell that
all the difference between science and lunacy disappears. Admittedly, Hume’s argument still stands, and therefore the
difference between a scientist and a lunatic is not that the first bases his theories securely upon observations while the second
does not, or anything like that. Nevertheless we may now see that there may be a difference: it may be that the lunatic’s theory
is easily refutable by observation, while the scientist’s theory has withstood severe tests.17
Nor do there seem to be any valid exceptions to the conclusion that in empirical matters we can
never attain certainty of belief, as Popper reminds us:
From the point of view here developed all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even
when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have
to be modified. That the sun will always rise and set within twenty-four hours is still proverbial as a law “established by
induction beyond reasonable doubt.” It is odd that this example is still in use, though it may have served well enough in the
days of Aristotle and Pytheas of Massalia—the great traveler who for centuries was called a liar because of his tales of Thule,
the land of the frozen sea and the midnight sun.18
A few final points are in order. First of all, as mentioned, although no amount of observation can
prove a scientific theory, a single counterinstance can falsify it. But, of course, observations that
appear to refute a theory are themselves fallible. Experiments may not be performed properly, and
mistakes may be made, and there is always the possibility of fraud. But the acceptance of a single
counterinstance logically refutes a universal theory.
Secondly, as mentioned earlier, the universal property of scientific theories cannot be stressed
enough. A scientific theory cannot be merely speculation about a particular fact or an isolated event,
because nothing new and nontrivial can be predicted from such a speculation. This point has to be
stressed, because it has caused a great deal of confusion among philosophers and historians of science.
For example, historian and professional “skeptic” Michael Shermer has written:
Popper’s attempt to solve the problem of demarcation . . . between science and nonscience begins to break down in the
borderlands of knowledge. Consider the theory that extraterrestrial intelligent life exists somewhere in the cosmos. If we find
out by making radio contact through the SETI program then the theory will have been proven absolutely . . . But how could this
theory ever be falsified?19d
Shermer’s mistake is his categorization of the statement “extraterrestrial intelligent life exists
somewhere in the cosmos” as a scientific theory. It is no such thing. It is merely speculation about a
specific fact, from which no nontrivial predictions follow.e It is no more a scientific theory than the
statement “there are white swans somewhere on the lake.” Such statements about specific factual
matters can indeed be confirmed, even proven “beyond all reasonable doubt.” But this is only because
they are not universal statements. Scientific theories are universal statements about how facts fit
together, and from such universal statements follow predictions about specific facts. So, from the
universal statement “all swans are white” follows the prediction that “the next swans we will see on
the lake will be white.” The former is a (simple) scientific theory; the latter a prediction about a
specific fact that follows from the theory, and that may used to test the theory.
Note that Shermer would have formulated his idea as a scientific theory if he had stated it in a
universal, testable form, such as: “Life arises quickly wherever there is water and an average
temperature above freezing, and given a few billion years, some of this life will become recognizably
intelligent.” This is a universal statement that relates specific facts to each other, can be used to make
predictions about how much intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, and can be tested (at least
in principle) by sending probes to planets in which conditions for life appear to have been appropriate
for a few billion years. If intelligent life is not found, then the theory is refuted, and it must either be
abandoned or modified.
SUMMARY OF POPPER’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Many consider Popper to be the greatest philosopher of science the twentieth century has produced.
This is understandable, since his criteria of demarcation between science and nonscience is by far the
clearest and most logically consistent that has ever been developed. Popper’s ideas have been highly
influential among both scientists and philosophers: the list of scientists who have acknowledged a
debt of gratitude to Popper would include Nobel Prize winners John Eccles and Peter Medawar.
Einstein endorsed Popper’s views, and, of late, Stephen Hawking has taken falsifiability as the
defining characteristic of a scientific theory.
According to Popper, the scientific method in its purest form is a method of trial and error: of
conjectures and refutations, of boldly proposing new hypotheses and then subjecting them to the most
severe tests possible in an attempt to falsify them. Since induction cannot be rationally justified—no
amount of repeated observation can guarantee that a rule inferred from such repeated observation is
true—it follows that all our scientific theories and laws are only conjectures, only tentative
hypotheses. Popper has shown that there is nothing irrational about scientific belief, as long as we
realize that our theories are only conjectures open to revision in the light of new evidence. We can
have rational preferences for some beliefs or theories over others: one theory may be preferred over
another because it has passed more severe attempts at refutation, or because it has more explanatory
power.
Popper’s principle of falsification as the criterion of scientific theories thus frees our scientific
beliefs from the fallacy of induction and allows us to learn from our mistakes by providing a means by
which false theories may be expelled from science. The requirement that scientific theories be open to
falsification provides science with a self-corrective mechanism at its very core.


Source : " Science and psychic phenomena : the fall of the house of skeptics " By Chris Carter : "The nature of science " .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 27/11/2013 22:16:56
...
tl;dr

Good old Popper - a great clarifier. I studied his work as part of my degree. Not everyone agrees with his emphasis on falsifiability, but I've always used it as the litmus test of a scientific hypothesis or theory, and an acid test for pseudoscience.

So tell us, Don. What particular theories of our current 'false materialist meinstream(sic) "scientific world view "' do you find to be unfalsifiable?

Contrariwise, how might any of the assertions you've been making about consciousness and the immaterial be falsified?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 27/11/2013 23:42:18
I was not talking about any psychic phenomena ...

And  then you quote from a book with the title ...

" Science and psychic phenomena : the fall of the house of skeptics " By Chris Carter*

[ * Not Chris X-Files Carter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Carter_%28screenwriter%29) . Maybe Christopher David Carter will sell a few copies via mistaken identity ].


PS are Chris [D] Carter and Rupert Sheldrake joined at the hip ? ...

Quote from: amazon.com
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of ESP
by Chris Carter
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake Ph.D (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/11/2013 00:25:36
Quote
Popper’s principle of falsification

That old fraud KP and I received doctorates at the same ceremony, though his was honorary and mine was earned the hard way. "His" principle (it was actually taught in schools for years before he claimed to have invented it) is of falsifiability, not falsification.

Hence the definitions of science and scientific knowledge that I gave you about 38 pages ago. How sad that you only accept them from a windbag philosopher instead of a working scientist who uses the stuff every day. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2013 13:40:13
I'm bewildered to say the least.

Don, you post a criticism of theories that make vague and therefore irrefutable claims, which are unfalsifiable and untestable. Popper criticizes theories that have no evidence, or no evidence other than carefully selected observations which ignore contradictory evidence - theories that are speculations from which no predictions follow.

And you don't see how your concept of the immaterial has every single one of the flaws he described????


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 17:56:17
...
tl;dr

Good old Popper - a great clarifier. I studied his work as part of my degree. Not everyone agrees with his emphasis on falsifiability, but I've always used it as the litmus test of a scientific hypothesis or theory, and an acid test for pseudoscience.

Popper is indeed a great clarifier : i do not see how his sound arguments regarding science as falsification can be controversial , to some extent .
Anyway ,what he says about Freud , Adler and marxism goes perfectly for materialism as a whole ,as i have been experiencing the latter to be ,once again .

Quote
So tell us, Don. What particular theories of our current 'false materialist meinstream(sic) "scientific world view "' do you find to be unfalsifiable?


The whole materialist mainstream "scientific world view " is unfalsifiable,simply   by taking itself for granted as the absolute truth , as a fact (science is in fact not about either facts or the truth , just about tentative conjectures or approximate knowledge )  , a materialist world view which assumes or rather believes that all is matter ,and therefore the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain' s activity ...which closes the door in the face of  any non-materialist world view in science .

Any scientific theories meta-pardigms paradigms or knowledge is supposed to be verifiable falsifiable ,and just conjectural , not a matter of absolute truths ,as materialism has been thinking itself to be = an absolute undisputed truth or dogma = unfalsifiable = unscientific .

Quote
Contrariwise, how might any of the assertions you've been making about consciousness and the immaterial be falsified
?

Very good question indeed :

I am inclined to believe in the following quantum theory of consciousness ,by quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker :

He thinks that the immaterial consciousness or mind does interact with the brain at the very level of electrons all the way up to controling the activity of neuro-transmitters between neural synapses :

Try to read the following on the subject very carefully , and do tell me about it :


THE OBSERVATIONAL THEORIES
We saw in the previous chapter how nothing in quantum mechanics forbids psi phenomena. Costa de
Beauregard even maintains that the theory of quantum physics virtually demands that psi phenomena
exist.3 Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson has written, “If psychic phenomena had not been found
experimentally, they might have been predicted by an imaginative theoretician.”4
Various modern physicists have gone even further, proposing theories of psi based upon quantum
mechanics. One obvious attraction of such theories is that they would account for what have been the
most problematic features of psi—its statistical nature and its seeming independence of space and
time. The most detailed of these theories so far has been based on the work of theoretical physicist
Evan Harris Walker. Since Walker’s theory of psi is an extension of his quantum mechanical theory of
consciousness, it is worthwhile to briefly review his and other quantum theories of consciousness.
All these theories follow the von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, which, as
the reader may recall, was first formulated by the mathematician John von Neumann in opposition to
the thenorthodox Copenhagen interpretation. According to quantum theory, the world before
observation exists only as pure possibility; yet when we observe the world at any level we see not a
range of possibilities but one actual state of affairs. Something is required to collapse the state vectors
of pure possibility into one actual result. The Copenhagen interpretation asserts that the presence of
any macroscopic measuring device is sufficient to collapse the state vector. But von Neumann,
following his rigorous mathematical logic wherever it would go, disagreed: the entire physical world,
including measuring devices, must obey the laws of quantum physics. Something nonphysical, not
subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, must account for the collapse of the state vector: the only
nonphysical entity in the observation process that von Neumann could think of was the consciousness
of the observer.
It is difficult to fault the logic, and decades of experimentation by Nobel-hungry physicists eager to
knock quantum theory apart has revealed not one instance of failure. The results of experiments
carried out so far indicate that not a single part of the physical world evades the quantum rules. Yet we
are aware of one nonphysical entity that carries out observations. Because according to quantum
theory the world before observation exists only as pure possibility, von Neumann and his followers—
most notably London, Bauer, and Wigner—were led inescapably to the conclusion that it is
consciousness (human or otherwise) that brings the universe of possibility into actuality.b
This brings us to the crux of the mind-body problem: What is the relationship between the mind and
the brain? The brain is a physical entity and we have no reason to suppose that it evades the rules of
quantum physics. In 1924, when quantum theory was still in its infancy, biologist Alfred Lotkas
proposed the daring conjecture that mind exerts control over the brain by modulating the occurrence
of otherwise random quantum events. Since then, our knowledge of both quantum mechanics and the
brain has increased immeasurably, and today most quantum models of consciousness place the
mechanism of mind-matter interaction at the level of the neural synapse—the tiny gap between the
electric tentacles of the nerve cells.
In 1963, Sir John Eccles received the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for discovering how
nerve cells communicate with each other: they do it with drugs. The synaptic gap is too wide to be
bridged by electrical signals: instead, when a nerve cell is excited, its extremities emit tiny packets of
chemicals—called neurotransmitters—that quickly transverse the gap and cause or inhibit the firing
of adjacent nerve cells. As Nick Herbert writes, “to handle the fine details of its vast informational
traffic, the human brain employs a veritable pharmacy of exotic transmitter substances.”5 Most mindaltering
drugs achieve their effects by tampering with the transmission of neurotransmitters, which
gives us important clues about the consciousness-sensitive areas of the brain.
Eccles has written about how the firing of just one “critically-poised neuron” could have a
cascading effect on activity in the brain, and he speculates that consciousness affects brain activity by
manipulating the way chemicals are released into the synaptic gap. The neural sites where packets of
chemicals are released are so tiny that quantum uncertainty may govern whether or not the release
mechanisms are activated. Eccles speculates that an immaterial mind controls these microsites in one
particular part of the brain—the premotor cortex—in order to produce voluntary behavior.
We should expect quantum uncertainty to play an even larger role in systems smaller than this, so
other quantum theories of consciousness place the mind’s role in controlling matter at smaller
locations near the synaptic gap. Berkeley physicist Henry Stapp has developed a model similar to
Eccles’s, but he places the critical juncture between mind and matter at the level of the calcium ion—
about a million times smaller than Eccles’s synaptic microsites—and essential for the operation of the
synapse. But Evan Harris Walker, who has developed the most detailed, comprehensive model of
quantum consciousness so far, places the interaction between mind and matter at the level of the
electron—almost 100,000 times less massive than the calcium ion.
Briefly, according to Walker’s model, when a synapse is excited, electrons may “tunnel” across the
synaptic gap connecting an initiating neuron with its neighbor, and because of quantum nonlocality,
may influence electrons controlling the firing of distant synapses. Walker postulates the existence of a
second nervous system operating by completely quantum rules, acting in parallel with the
conventional nervous system. The latter handles unconscious data processing, and the former allows
an immaterial mind to interact with matter by selecting which second-system quantum possibilities
become actualized. In turn, these quantum states act upon the conventional nervous system in order to
produce voluntary action. One advantage of his model is that it helps account for the unity of
conscious experience we observe despite the fact that the brain activity associated with even simple
perception is spread out over different parts of the brain.
These three theories differ regarding the precise location of mind-matter interaction, but it should
be noted that they are all clearly dualistic, in the sense that they postulate a nonphysical mind that also
exerts a real influence in the physical world.c As an adherent of the von Neumann interpretation,
Walker believes that
duality is already a part of physics. . . . The dualism enters because “observation” as it is used in quantum theory must have
properties that go beyond those that can be represented in terms of material objects interacting by way of force fields (which is
the way all of physics describes physical processes). The reason is that the observer is introduced in QM as a way to account for
state vector collapse.6
Brain scientists have generally ignored Walker’s model of consciousness, because it contains what
are considered by some to be rather unreasonable neurological assumptions.d Nevertheless, it is the
most ambitious and detailed attempt so far to relate quantum mechanics to the mind-body problem. In
common with the other models, it is based on the idea that the conscious mind may bias the collapse
of state vectors of quantum phenomena within the brain in such a way as to influence brain activity in
a desired manner. Walker bases his theory of psi upon his theory of consciousness, and in a nutshell it
is this: consciousness can collapse state vectors to a single desired outcome inside the person’s own
brain; because of the nonlocal property of quantum phenomena,e it can, on occasion, instantaneously
affect the state of another person’s brain (telepathy), another person’s body (psychic healing), or a
distant physical process (PK).
Walker’s theory is thus an extension of the original formulation of von Neumann’s interpretation,
in which observation collapses state vectors. Von Neumann’s original formulation implicitly assumed
that conscious observation has no effect on which specific value the quantum phenomena actually take
upon observation—the actual outcome was assumed to be purely random. But we have seen that the
experiments of Helmut Schmidt apparently demonstrate that human consciousness can bias the
collapse of random quantum systems in a desired direction. Yet we have also seen that the effect with
random event generators appears to be weak. Walker speculates that consciousness may exert a
stronger influence on quantum events within the brain because of its close and intimate link with this
sensitive instrument. This idea seems reasonable. After all, it is hardly surprising that the effect of
mind on the fission of atoms in the RNG experiments is very weak. We should rather wonder why
there should be any effect at all. Any such effect must inevitably be greater on biological systems,
which have presumably evolved to respond to mental influence.
Broadly similar theories of psi have been proposed by others, such as Helmut Schmidt, Robert Jahn,
and Brenda Dunne, although Walker’s is the most detailed so far. All these theories are referred to as
“observational” theories because they require observation of results in order for psi to operate. They
have sometimes been criticized on the grounds that “observation” is an ambiguous term. But Walker
defines observation simply, writing that “observation is the interaction of mind with matter” and that
“observation is the same as state selection.” One great advantage of these observational theories is
that they are formulated in mathematical terms and thus generate precise predictions that, at least in
principle, are open to testing.f
EVALUATION OF THE OBSERVATIONAL THEORIES
One of the obvious strengths of the observational theories is that they provide solid explanations of
what have been, up until recently, two of the most puzzling features of psi: its seeming independence
of distance and barriers and its apparently statistical nature. We now know that the universe allows
nonlocal effects, so reports that the operation of psi is unaffected by distance and barriers can no
longer be dismissed as contrary to the known laws of physics. The logically impeccable von Neumann
interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that events are not fully real until they are observed; the
time-displaced PK experiments support this interpretation and thereby upgrade its status from a purely
metaphysical theory to a testable, scientific one. Finally, since, according to the observational
theories, psi only operates on otherwise random phenomena by biasing probabilities, they explain why
the operation of psi seems fundamentally statistical in nature.
Theoretical physicists familiar with the experimental evidence from both physics and
parapsychology have constructed the observational theories, all within the framework of a logically
valid interpretation of quantum physics. Hyman’s desperate argument that the acceptance of psi would
require that we “abandon relativity and quantum mechanics in their current formulations”7 is thereby
shown to be nonsense. Contrast Hyman’s statement with that of theoretical physicist Costa de
Beauregard, who has written that “relativistic quantum mechanics is a conceptual scheme where
phenomena such as psychokinesis or telepathy, far from being irrational, should, on the contrary, be
expected as very rational.”8
We have seen that the observational theories result in numerous predictions, several of which
appear to be corroborated by the experimental evidence. Walker’s theory in particular is the most
testable theory of psi to come out of modern physics. It suggests many possible experiments and
makes clear predictions about what should happen. But acceptance or rejection may take some time.
Applying the theory involves complicated logic and calculation and requires that some questionable
assumptions be made. Having said that, it is fair to say that Walker’s theory is a gallant attempt to
explain psi by means of concepts consistent with modern physics, and its predictions are consistent to
some degree with much of the experimental evidence. As such, the theory appears to be a good first
approximation to the truth.
At any rate, this theory is certainly limited in that it has nothing to say about the psychological
aspects of psi performance. It is to the psychological theories that we now turn.

Source : "Science and psychic phenomena : the fall of the house of skeptics " by Chris Carter .


http://www.amazon.com/Science-Psychic-Phenomena-House-Skeptics/dp/159477451X
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 18:09:23
I'm bewildered to say the least.

Don, you post a criticism of theories that make vague and therefore irrefutable claims, which are unfalsifiable and untestable. Popper criticizes theories that have no evidence, or no evidence other than carefully selected observations which ignore contradictory evidence - theories that are speculations from which no predictions follow.

Go back and read that carefully , my lady :

What  faslifiable verifiable  'evidence " has materialism been providing concerning the "fact " that all is ...matter? , and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain's activity , memory is stored in the brain ....

Materialism that tries to explain 'everything " , just in terms of physics and chemistry, including the mind thus , materialism that seems to be corroborated or rather verified by everything,and thus can be faslified by nothing , so it seems  :

See how these gate -keepers of the false materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian mainstream 'scientific world view " ,have been convinced,beyond a shadow of a doubt  ( How can the latter be achieved in science , ever ) ,  of the unfalsifiable unverifiable materialist "fact and absolute truth dogma " that they can explain everything : no scientific theory or meta or paradigm , no scientific knowledge can explain everything ,otherwise that would be just unfaslifiable stuff absolute truths dogmas , no science , the latter that's supposed to deliver just conjectural falsifiable temporary theories ,or just approximate knowledge :

http://www.amazon.com/This-Explains-Everything-Beautiful-Theories/dp/0062230174/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385661794&sr=1-1&keywords=that+explains+everything

Quote
And you don't see how your concept of the immaterial has every single one of the flaws he described????

See the falsifiable verifiable statistical mathematical  quantum theory of consciousness by quantum physicist Evan Chris Walker , in my latest post to our dlorde , here above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 18:23:28
Quote
Popper’s principle of falsification

That old fraud KP and I received doctorates at the same ceremony, though his was honorary and mine was earned the hard way. "His" principle (it was actually taught in schools for years before he claimed to have invented it) is of falsifiability, not falsification.

Hence the definitions of science and scientific knowledge that I gave you about 38 pages ago. How sad that you only accept them from a windbag philosopher instead of a working scientist who uses the stuff every day.

Then you do probably do not know much about either Popper's thought epistemology , or about the philosophy of science in general , the latter that's extremely relevant , especially in this time and age where an unfalsifiable unverifiable = unscientific world view such as the materialist conception of nature has been taken for granted for so long now as the "scientific world view " ,without question .

What was your definition of science again : come again : science is a process ? : what does that mean in fact ? : science is more than just that ,way more than just that vague statement of yours : read Popper : the man is cristal-clear about it.

Science is in fact not a matter of facts or truth , just a matter of verifiable unfalsifiable temporary approximate conjectures,but the current materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " has been taken for granted as the 'absolute truth " for so long now ,that anyone who would challenge its undisputed authority  would be branded as pseudo-scientific ,as  a charlatan, a heretic , or worse   .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 18:36:00
I was not talking about any psychic phenomena ...

And  then you quote from a book with the title ...

I was not talking about any psychic phenomena in fact , i did that just incidently though : i have been mainly talking about the false  current mainstream materialist  "scientific world view " which believes in the unfalsifiable and unverifiable "fact " = unscientific ,that all is ...matter , and hence the mind is in the brain, the mind is just brain's activity , memory is stored in the brain ...

Why should i not quote relevant insights , even from the very dark ,ugly and terrifying heart of the devil in person ? haha , if the latter would happen to be telling  some relative  approximate conjectural  "truths " ,why not ?

Note that i am not saying that either Sheldrake, Carter or any other non-materialist thinkers ,scientists researchers ...are "devils ", no way .

Quote
" Science and psychic phenomena : the fall of the house of skeptics " By Chris Carter*

[ * Not Chris X-Files Carter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Carter_%28screenwriter%29) . Maybe Christopher David Carter will sell a few copies via mistaken identity ].


PS are Chris [D] Carter and Rupert Sheldrake joined at the hip ? .
..

So what ? You're a very judgemental person : simplistic "reasoning " of yours in fact  .

Do you think you do know already the "absolute truth " ?: science is not about the truth , dude : you have been taking the unfalsifiable unverifiable  'scientific world view " as an absolute "truth " = that's an unscientific thing to do , simply because science is all about just approximate faslifiable verifiable knowledge or conjectures .

Quote
Quote from: amazon.com
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of ESP
by Chris Carter
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake Ph.D (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake)

Great book in fact , relatively speaking, even though i haven't finished reading yet , not even remotely close thus .

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Psychic-Phenomena-House-Skeptics/dp/159477451X
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 18:44:25
Induction is indeed a myth : Hume was so right   and so brilliant about rejecting induction as a logical impossibility  .

Popper's solution of  Hume's dilemma is simply ....brilliant .

I am currently  or temporarily thus  "in love " with this great thinker's thought , epistemology ,which also means that materialist scientists must abandon their unscientific search for  the "holy grail " , by abandoning their unfalsifiable unverifiable = unscientific " scientific world view =holy grail = absolute truth dogma ",by rejecting ...materialism thus  .

Popper's thought , epistemology ...are so far reaching that they can not only  help us distinguish between science and pseudo-science , but can also help us detect pseudo-science at the very heart of science as well = the false current "scientific world view " , not to mention that even some forms of pseudo-science can stumble on the "truth " somehow,sometimes ....

I can even apply some of Popper's insights , regarding the nature , genesis , status and growth evolution of ...epistemology and thus  regarding  those of human knowledge ,even to my own ...belief : very enlightening indeed ;simply because religions do also experience similar processes to those of science : they start as being revolutionary , tolerant ,open minded ....and then they end up becoming exclusive hard dogmas "absolute truths " ....some religions are more able than other ones to overcome the latter , thanks to their own core self-correcting nature though .

In short :

We are hardly in need  of such brilliant thinkers or reformers such as Karl Popper , science , religion or any other world view for that matter , cannot do without .

P.S.: Note that i am not taking Popper's thought , epistemology for granted as 'absolute truths " either ( I am sure he did not intend them to be as such,otherwise , he would be contraditcing himself  in the process  ,concerning the temporary nature of our human knowledge . ) : we need to keep on developing and evolving our own human epistemology concerning the valid sources of knowledge , their genesis , nature growth  evolution  ( RD : Do not forget to jump on the latter haha ) , concerning the very nature and growth of knowledge , especially in ...science thus .


In short :

Epistemology and hence science is an evolutionary process (dlorde : i hate to say : did i not tell you so ?  haha ) ,so, we must condemn any attempts to ossify science as to turn it into a dogma,into an 'absolute truth " , or into a secular irrational unfalsifiable unverifiable religion  ,as the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been doing to science , for so long now .

Not to forget the following :

Western thought , epistemology ,values ,norms, principles ...are certainly not universal, not in the absolute sense at least , nothing is in fact , including science : major proof ? : the current false 'scientific world view " .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2013 19:52:04

Go back and read that carefully , my lady :

What  faslifiable verifiable  'evidence " has materialism been providing concerning the "fact " that all is ...matter? , and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain's activity , memory is stored in the brain ....

Materialism that tries to explain 'everything " , just in terms of physics and chemistry, including the mind thus , materialism that seems to be corroborated or rather verified by everything,and thus can be faslified by nothing , so it seems  :



You're attributing a claim or goal to scientists that they do not themselves claim, and aren't even interested in - "explaining everything", or disproving the immaterial. There are about 26,000 current scientific journals that publish the results of experiments -- experiments that make specific, falsifiable predictions, just as your hero Popper says science should do. If you or someone could find a way to do the same with some aspect of the immaterial, I'm sure that one of them would them would gladly publish your results too.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2013 20:41:17

Go back and read that carefully , my lady :

What  faslifiable verifiable  'evidence " has materialism been providing concerning the "fact " that all is ...matter? , and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain's activity , memory is stored in the brain ....

Materialism that tries to explain 'everything " , just in terms of physics and chemistry, including the mind thus , materialism that seems to be corroborated or rather verified by everything,and thus can be faslified by nothing , so it seems  :



You're attributing a claim or goal to scientists that they do not themselves claim, and aren't even interested in - "explaining everything", or disproving the immaterial. There are about 26,000 current scientific journals that publish the results of experiments -- experiments that make specific, falsifiable predictions, just as your hero Popper says science should do. If you or someone could find a way to do the same with some aspect of the immaterial, I'm sure that one of them would them would gladly publish your results too.
[/quote]

Is the elusive physical so-called unified theory of "everything " = nothing not try to explain everything ,just in terms of physics and chemistry ? ,simply because "all is matter " ,as the false 'scientific world view " has been assuming or believing reality as a whole to be ? thanks to materialism , by a priori and per se ,and per definition, excluding the immaterial side of reality ,by reducing the latter  to just physics and chemistry ,including consciousness  thus , and hence by excluding the fact that the mind is non-physical ...

What falsifiable verifiable extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the nature of reality ,materialism or its  mainstream dominating  "scientific world view " have been delivering so far on the subject , concerning the "fact " that "all is matter "? , including the mind or consciousness thus : what evidence have they been producing regarding the "fact " that "all is matter " ? = that's just a materialist act of faith , no empirical fact .

You tell me ...

So, anyone who would try to challenge the mainstream dominating "scientific world view " would be automatically branded as a heretic , a pseudo-scientist , a charlatan or worse : see what Sheldrake ,for example , has been going through ,and how he has been treated by the mainstream dominating "scientific consenus or scientific right thinking " scientific priesthood .

What do you think then about Walker's quantum theory of consciousness then , for example ? in the sense that the mind or the immaterial consciousness might be interacting with the physical brain , via its electrons all the way up to controlling the activity of neuro-transmitters between neural synapses : try to read that here above : seems relatively convincing to me .


Thanks , appreciate indeed .

Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2013 22:46:29



Is the elusive physical so-called unified theory of "everything " = nothing not try to explain everything ,just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

No. Because there is no such thing as "the theory of everything =nothing" You made it up. I haven't seen a single experiment in any journal that sets out to prove a theory of everything or prove that everything is material. From a random selection of articles from the journal Nature, these are the kind of things scientists design experiments to investigate, and to test theories about them:

Using Membrane Transporters to Improve Crops for Sustainable Food Production

Dusty starburst galaxies in the early Universe as revealed by gravitational lensing

Changes in global nitrogen cycling during the Holocene epoch

The catalytic mechanism for aerobic formation of methane by bacteria

Barium distribution in teeth reveal early-life dietary transitions in primates

Structures of the human and Drosophila 80S ribosome

Optical Addressing of an individual erbium ion in silicon

Identification of rudimentary neural crest in a non-vertebrate chordate

Long-term  sedimentary recycling of rare sulphur isotope anomalies

B12 cofactors directly stabilize an mRNA switch

Sodium content as a predictor of the advanced evolution of globular cluster stars

Severe malaria is associated with parasite binding to endothelial protein C receptor

Structure and function of Zucchini endoribonuclease in piRNA biogenesis

Extensive transcriptional heterogeneity revealed by isoform profiling

Repeated polyploidization of Gossypium genomes and the evolution of spinnable cotton fibres.

Discrete clouds of neutral gas between the galaxies M31 and M33

Elastic energy storage in the shoulder and the evolution of high speed throwing in Homo

The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to starh rich diet.

Controlled-reflectance surfaces with film-coupled colloidal nanoantennas

Differential stem and progenitor cell trafficking by prostaglandin E2.

Multi-periodic pulsations of a stripped red-giant star in eclipsing binary system

An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa.

Water structural transformation at molecular hydrophobic interfaces

Autophagosomes for at ER-mitochondia contact sites

Continous gas-phase synthesis of nanowires with tunable properties.

Vector transmission regulates immune control of Plasmodium virulence

The spin Hall effect in quantum gas

Heat dissipation in atomic-scale junctions

De novo mutations in histone-modifying genes inIL congenital heart disease
R1P1-driven autoinflammation targets -1a independently of inflammasomes and RIP3

Entanglement between light and optical atomic excitation

The bromodomain protein Brd4 insulates chromatin from DNA damage signaling

Glucose-TOR signalling reprograms the transcriptome and activates meristems

Modulation of TET2 expression and 5-methylcyctosine oxidation by CXXC domain protein IDAX

Formation of a topological non-Fermi liquid in MnSi

M-CSF instructs myeloid lineage fate in single haematopoietic stem cells

Meis1 regulates postnatal cardiomyocyte cell cycle arrest.

Thymus-derived regulatory T cells contribute to tolerance to commensal micobiota

Oroc mutant mosquitoes lose strong preference for humans and are not repelled by volatile DEET

In vivo cardiac reprogramming contributes to zebrafish heart regeneration

Non-synaptic inhibition between grouped neurons in an olfactory circuit

Fucose sensing regulates bacterial intestinal colonization

The calcium-sensing receptor regulates the NLRP3 inflammasome through Ca2+ and cAMP

An alternative route to cyclic terpenses by reductive cyclization in iridoid biosynthesis

Evaporative cooling of the dipolar hydroxal radical

Fractionalized excitations in the spin-liquid state of a kagome-lattice antiferromagnet

Quasi-cylindrical wave contribution in experiements on extraordinary optical transmission

Flickering gives early warning signals of a critical transition to a eutropic lake

Ventral tegmental area GABA projections pause accumbal cholinergic interneurons to enhance associative learning

Intergrated Genomic Characterization of Endometrial Carcinoma

Room-temperature ferroelectricity in supramolecular networks of charge-transfer complexes.

Mutations in the profiling 1 gene cause familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

A subset of dopamine neurons signals reward for odour memory in Drosophila

The human CST complex is a terminator of telomerase activity

Hard-X-ray emission lines from decay of 44Ti in the remnant of supernova 1987A

Zinc isotope evidence for origin of the Moon

Circuit quantum electrodynamics with a spin qubit

Bonding and structure of a reconstructed (001) surface of SrTi03 from TEM

Coastal eutrophication as a driver of salt marsh loss

Delayed build-up of Artic ice sheets during 400,000 year minima in isolation variability

Severe stress switches CRF action in nucleus accumbus from appetitive to aversive.

Filamentous bacteria transport electrons over centimetre distances

Hippocampal-cortical interaction during periods of subcortical silence

Synaptic amplification by dendritic spines enhances input cooperatively

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/11/2013 22:59:17
Don is trying, with lamentable lack of success, to attack the straw man that mainstream science is about incontrovertible facts and absolute truths, when in fact no scientist I've ever met or worked with believes that.

His criticism of mainstream science for dealing only with the material is contradictory and irrational; science attempts to explain what is observed using models that have explanatory and predictive power - as Don himself has said, the immaterial is outside the realm of science; it cannot be observed, and being unknown, has no explanatory or predictive power.

Nevertheless, we have been open to any explanation of how science can deal with the immaterial, but Don can give nothing but handwaving, insults, and copyright infringements. It's absurd and surreal.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 28/11/2013 23:45:52
... are Chris [D] Carter and Rupert Sheldrake joined at the hip ? .

So what ?

The “what” is that you quote people who incestuously write the forewords for each other's books which shows what an  isolated viewpoint you/they hold, [ their publisher's other author’s titles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Traditions_%E2%80%93_Bear_&_Company) are equally psychadelic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Strassman) / sci-fi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._G._Temple) ].

… we need to keep on developing and evolving our own human epistemology concerning the valid sources of knowledge

If parapsychology was a valid source of knowledge its findings would be adopted by mainstream science : if a theory, no matter how left-field (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/left+field), can be verified by independently repeatable experiment it will be adopted by science. 

However parapsychology only serves an illustration of pseudoscience …

Quote from: wikipedia.org/Parapsychology
Many scientists regard the discipline as pseudoscience, saying that parapsychologists continue investigation despite not having demonstrated conclusive evidence of psychic abilities in more than a century of research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology

In less than a century science progressed from the first powered flight to putting men on the moon.
In less than a century science progressed from invention of a transistor to creating the computer you’re using now which has many millions of them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count). 
In less than a century science progressed from discovering the mechanism of inheritance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_molecular_biology) to modifying it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering).

In “more than a century” parapsychology has delivered SFA.  Evidently you’re flogging a dead horse.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 29/11/2013 00:41:59

Quote
In less than a century science progressed from the first powered flight to putting men on the moon.
In less than a century science progressed from invention of a transistor to creating the computer you’re using now which has many millions of them.
In less than a century science progressed from discovering the mechanism of inheritance to modifying it.

Not strictly true. The science of rocket flight, conduction in solids, and at least the mechanistic generality of inheritance, is well over 100 years old. What we have achieved in the last 100 years is a great advance in engineering, i.e. putting the science to practical use.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Kryptid on 29/11/2013 06:07:24
Which of these three statements best describes your stance?

(1) All aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
(2) Some aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically, but others cannot.
(3) No aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2013 09:56:56
Walker's 'Physics of Consciousness' looks to me like yet another version of 'quantum mechanics is weird and unexplained, consciousness is weird and unexplained, let's mash them together', that makes the common mistake of reifying the wavefunction as something physical that must be 'collapsed' by an observer. I found Penrose's quantum microtubules more interesting (though equally unsustainable).

But that's just my take on it - here's a couple of reviews that point out some other flaws:
Donald - Cavendish Laboratory (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf)
Vanderman - Neuroquantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/113/113).

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2013 14:22:07
Which of these three statements best describes your stance?

(1) All aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
(2) Some aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically, but others cannot.
(3) No aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.

I asked essentially the same question in regards to the material, or chemistry and physics, and Don said I was "playing the silly wise girl." It seemed like a pretty straight forward question to me:

1)Some things can, but others can’t be explained by chemistry or physics  or

 2)Everything always involves an immaterial explanation, even if there is sometimes chemistry and physics involved in the process,    or

3)Chemistry and physics do not explain anything that happens. They do not matter at all, they are irrelevant. They explain nothing. They explain nothing by themselves or even when combined with a immaterial explanation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 29/11/2013 16:09:53
We humans are equipped with the five natural senses. Touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. All of which are used to distinguish facts about the natural world that surrounds us. Without these senses, no observations are possible. And without observation, no conclusions can be drawn about reality. Now..........if we want to explore that illusive sixth sense that I'm sure Mr. D......... will foist upon us, we are still limited to defining it thru the utilization of the five we are most familiar with. Without the sound we make with our mouth, discussion can't proceed. Without the touch, it can't even be written down on paper for others to see. And without sight, the written theory can't be read. So pray-tell, how in Heaven's name can we gather information about the sixth sense without the other five? So,........unless we all become telepathic, we won't be able to share any information using your guidelines. And BTW, even research into that realm has shown to be electrochemical in nature.

Mr. D................... your spinning your wheels. And those who are listening to you are wasting their time. Enough said.....................................Ethos
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2013 17:13:41
Walker's 'Physics of Consciousness' looks to me like yet another version of 'quantum mechanics is weird and unexplained, consciousness is weird and unexplained, let's mash them together', that makes the common mistake of reifying the wavefunction as something physical that must be 'collapsed' by an observer. I found Penrose's quantum microtubules more interesting (though equally unsustainable).

But that's just my take on it - here's a couple of reviews that point out some other flaws:
Donald - Cavendish Laboratory (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf)
Vanderman - Neuroquantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/113/113).



I'd be fascinated if consciousness involved quantum mechanics, and I think it would result in a whole new level of understanding as far as how it works. I've read articles about quantum mechanics in olfaction and in photosynthesis.

But if people are just looking to use quantum mechanics as a bridge to the mystical, I think they will be dissatisfied with the outcome in the end, and it won't necessarily endow consciousness with the qualities they are hoping for.
 And it seems odd that all along that the argument was that consciousness is not physical, it's not in the brain, so it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, but now suddenly, the argument is "The brain is a physical entity and we have no reason to suppose that it evades the rules of quantum physics."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 29/11/2013 17:31:06
Walker's 'Physics of Consciousness' looks to me like yet another version of 'quantum mechanics is weird and unexplained, consciousness is weird and unexplained, let's mash them together', that makes the common mistake of reifying the wavefunction as something physical that must be 'collapsed' by an observer. I found Penrose's quantum microtubules more interesting (though equally unsustainable).

But that's just my take on it - here's a couple of reviews that point out some other flaws:
Donald - Cavendish Laboratory (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf)
Vanderman - Neuroquantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/113/113).



I'd be facinated if consciousness involved quantum mechanics. I've read articles about quantum mechanics in olfaction and in photosynthesis.

But if one is just looking to use quantum mechanics as a bridge to the mystical, I think they will be dissatisfied with the outcome in the end, and it won't necessarily endow consciousness with the qualities they are hoping for.
 And it seems odd that all along that the argument was that consciousness is not physical, it's not in the brain, so it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, but now suddenly, the argument is "The brain is a physical entity and we have no reason to suppose that it evades the rules of quantum physics."
It shouldn't surprise any one of us that Mr. D...............has chosen to use this tactic. In an effort to evade answering these challenges, to coin football slang, 'He keeps moving the goal post'. If anyone doesn't understand the phrase, PM me and I'll explain. IMHO, evading such challenges is the height of dishonesty. It appears to me his aim here is just to garner attention. Even though his literary skills are exceptional, he still comes off looking very foolish.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2013 17:43:33
It shouldn't surprise any one of us that Mr. D...............has chosen to use this tactic. In an effort to evade answering these challenges, to coin football slang, 'He keeps moving the goal post'.

He can move the goal post to any position he likes, but I don't see how using quantum mechanics as a bridge to some mystical version of the homunculus
circumvents any of the logical contradictions arising from the previous model of the homunculus.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 29/11/2013 17:53:58
It shouldn't surprise any one of us that Mr. D...............has chosen to use this tactic. In an effort to evade answering these challenges, to coin football slang, 'He keeps moving the goal post'.

He can move the goal post to any position he likes, but I don't see how using quantum mechanics as a bridge to some mystical version of the homunculus
circumvents any of the logical contradictions arising from the previous model of the homunculus.
To paraphrase Wikipedia: The homunculus argument is a fallacy because it tries to account for a phenomenon in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain. But then, he probably wouldn't accept Wikipedia as any sort of authority either. Go figure??????????????
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 18:36:25
Materialism as an unfalsifiable Irrefutable unverifiable Theory of Nature : Unscientific :



souls and spirits.2
If science is metaphysically neutral, then lines of evidence can be admitted that not only contradict
materialism as a metaphysical theory, but prove materialism false as a scientific hypothesis. But the
equation of materialism with science is so deeply ingrained in the academic establishment that even
some sophisticated near-death researchers fall prey to it. For instance, Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth
Fenwick write:
So far we’ve taken a largely scientific, and therefore a rather limited, view of the NDE. We’ve
been looking at mechanism, and almost everything we have said has been based on the
assumption that the NDE takes place in or is constructed by the brain. We’ve confined “mind” to
the brain because, scientifically … we have no other option. When the brain dies, the mind dies;
the scientific view does not allow for the possibility of a soul, or for any form of personal
survival.
It is only by looking at some non-scientific views that we might find a wider interpretation of
the NDE… .3
As Grossman points out, if the term “materialistic” is substituted for “scientific,” then the above
passage is an accurate statement. This semantic point needs to be stressed, because the term
“scientific” carries a lot of emotional weight. In our modern world, science and scientists hold a great
deal of prestige, and so few people want to be thought of as unscientific. To be labeled unscientific is
enough to have one’s work dismissed from serious consideration by the academic establishment. If to
be scientific is good and unscientific bad, and if the term “scientific” is thought to be synonymous
with the term “materialistic,” then any talk of disembodied minds or spirits is antimaterialist,
unscientific, and therefore bad.*72 The long-standing confusion of materialism with science is what
largely accounts for the persistent social taboo responsible for the ignorance and dismissal of the
substantial amount of evidence that proves materialism false.
Greyson has also elaborated on this confusion. He states, “Materialists often claim credit for the
scientific advances of the past few centuries. But it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis
testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in
explaining the world. If it comes to a choice between the empirical method and a materialistic
worldview, the true scientist will choose the former.”4
It is also important to stress at this point that although the evidence appears to prove false the
hypothesis that consciousness is produced by the brain, it does not follow that any particular
transmission theory discussed earlier is therefore proved correct. This is a subtle point and is worth
explaining.
It is important to distinguish between factual and theoretical hypotheses: gravity is considered an
empirical fact, but we attempt to explain how gravity works with various theoretical hypotheses. The
ancient hypothesis that biological evolution occurs also now appears to be a fact (after all, there is the
fossil record); yet we have theories of evolution to account for how it works. Factual hypotheses may
be proven correct beyond all reasonable doubt, but our scientific theories—which propose
relationships between facts—can never be, and must forever remain conjectures, or speculation.
Similarly, it may be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the brain works as a receiver-transmitter,
but the details of precisely how the mind and brain work together is the task of the various quantum
mechanical theories of mind/brain interaction described earlier.
As discussed at length in chapter 15 of my previous book, Parapsychology and the Skeptics, our
scientific theoretical hypotheses are never proved correct; they may be disproved by observations that
contradict their predictions, but no amount of observation can logically prove that our universal
theories are correct. Rather, they are corroborated by unsuccessful attempts to refute them and by
successful attempts to refute rival hypotheses.
Only in the nonempirical fields of mathematics and pure logic are general statements proved
correct not only beyond all reasonable doubt, but beyond all conceivable doubt. That is because in
these fields, we are either deducing conclusions from premises that are accepted as axioms, or we are
simply expressing the same idea in different ways. In the field of empirical science, there is no
mathematical or logical certainty that what seems to be correct is indeed correct. We can never know
in advance in what ways our beliefs will eventually have to be modified.
Despite having said that, the hypothesis that the brain works as a receiver-transmitter of
consciousness has two decisive advantages over its rival: (1) the production hypothesis has been
proved false by the data, and (2) the transmission hypothesis can accommodate the facts that refute
the production theory. In terms of the production hypothesis, the cases of veridical out-of-body
perception during times of severely compromised if not entirely absent brain function are completely
inexplicable, except in terms of fraud. This desperate last resort is always available, of course, but we
should wonder why the defenders of materialism are left with no other realistic option.
In practice, the defenders of materialism largely ignore the evidence, rather than deal with it. This
is one available tactic; another is to continually insist that more and more evidence be presented,
thereby delaying any day of reckoning to some continually receding point in the future. Another is to
insist that alternatives to materialism be proved logically correct beyond all possible doubt; yet
another is to treat materialism as an ideology rather than a scientific theory. Popper does not refer to
challenges to any specific theory when he writes,
We can always immunize a theory against refutation. There are many such immunizing tactics;
and if nothing better occurs to us, we can always deny the objectivity—or even the existence—of
the refuting observation. Those intellectuals who are more interested in being right than in
learning something interesting but unexpected are by no means rare exceptions.5
One such intellectual would almost certainly be Michael Shermer: historian, author, director of the
Skeptic Society, and publisher of Skeptic magazine, who also has a regular column, “Skeptic,” in
Scientific American magazine. After flirting in his youth with various New Age practices such as
pyramid power, Shermer is currently on a crusade to expose ESP, OBEs, and alien abductions for what
he now thinks they are: complete nonsense.
In his book The Borderlands of Science, Shermer provides his readers with a series of criteria for
distinguishing between real science and “baloney.” He particularly warns us against people who have
ideologies to pursue, whose pattern of thinking “consistently ignores or distorts data not for creative
purposes but for ideological agendas.”6 But Shermer clearly seems to have an ideological agenda of
his own. His column in the March 2003 issue of Scientific American is devoted to the brain and
contains the subheading: “If the brain mediates all experience, then paranormal phenomena are
nothing more than neuronal events.”
Fair enough. In his article, Shermer concentrates on the OBE, writing, “Nowadays people are
reporting out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds. What is going on here? Are these elusive
creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence adds weight to the
notion that they are, in fact, products of the brain.”
Shermer then quotes a variety of studies in an attempt to show that OBEs “are nothing more than
neuronal events.” He claims that Persinger, whom we met earlier in our discussion of temporal lobe
seizures, “can induce all these perceptions in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of
magnetic fields. (I tried it myself and had a mild OBE.)”7 *73
He then quotes a Swiss study reported in the September 19, 2002, issue of Nature that describes
how a female patient experienced an OBE of sorts after electrical stimulation of an area of the brain
near the temporal lobe. The woman saw herself lying in bed, from above, but said that “I only see my
legs and lower trunk.” When asked to watch her real legs during electrical stimulation, she reported
seeing her legs “becoming shorter” and then “she reported that her legs appeared to be moving quickly
toward her face, and took evasive action.”8 Of course, this experiment does not prove that all OBEs
are illusions, and at any rate, the Swiss researchers did not say whether they attempted to test if the
woman could accurately perceive anything during the time she reported seeing herself.
Shermer then mentions a study that scanned the brains of meditating monks and speculates on what
the findings may imply for alien abductions. The last study Shermer mentions seems to have the most
relevance for his suggestion that OBEs are “products of the brain.”
Sometimes trauma can become a trigger. The December 15, 2001, issue of the Lancet published a
Dutch study in which 12 percent of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death reported
near-death experiences, some having a sensation of being out of body, others seeing a light at the
end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives. Because the everyday
occurrence is of stimuli coming from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates
these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal
is thought to be the paranormal. These studies are only the latest to deliver blows against the
belief that mind and spirit are separate from brain and body. In reality, all experience is
mediated by the brain. (emphasis added)9
Shermer must have hoped that his readers would not consult the original article in The Lancet, for if
they do they are in for a surprise. This study was the source of the NDE reported above in the section
headed “Case of the Missing Dentures.” In it, the authors acknowledge that experiences similar to the
classic NDE can be induced in several ways, such as electrical stimulation of the brain, excessive
carbon dioxide, and with certain drugs. But they then point out that “induced experiences are not
identical to NDE.”
Instead of concluding that their research indicates that all experience is mediated by the brain, these
medical researchers came to the opposite conclusion! This is what cardiologist van Lommel and his
coauthors write:
With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven,
concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How
could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no
longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG? Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG
usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s [seconds] from onset of syncope [fainting].
Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at
the time of this experience. NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human
consciousness and the mind-brain relation.10
Science writer and TV host Jay Ingram, normally a fan of Shermer’s writing, was startled when he
read Shermer’s column because he had interviewed van Lommel earlier and knew the study well. He
expressed his disappointment with Shermer in his newspaper column, stressing how he can’t stand it
“when influential figures misrepresent the research of others to make a point.” He wondered, “Is this
now considered justifiable if you have some sort of scientific axe to grind?”11


Chris Carter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 19:12:14
Is the elusive physical so-called unified theory of "everything " = nothing not try to explain everything ,just in terms of physics and chemistry ?

No. Because there is no such thing as "the theory of everything =nothing" You made it up.

It's no secret  that the false mainstream materialist "scientific world view " or the false materialist meta-paradigm in science , have been asssuming that all is matter , including the mind thus , and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain's activity , memory is stored in the brain ,life is just a matter of physics and chemistry , the same goes for the rest , since "all is matter ",which does mean that the materialistic science tries to explain "everything " = nothing , just in terms of physics and chemistry thus , and what better science can try to come up with a  unified  "theory of everything = a theory of nothing " than modern physics , by trying to unify Newton's theory of gravity and Einstein's relativity theory : see Stephen Hawking's " The theory of everything " on the subject :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-Everything-Stephen-Hawking/dp/8179925919
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 19:41:43
Walker's 'Physics of Consciousness' looks to me like yet another version of 'quantum mechanics is weird and unexplained, consciousness is weird and unexplained, let's mash them together', that makes the common mistake of reifying the wavefunction as something physical that must be 'collapsed' by an observer. I found Penrose's quantum microtubules more interesting (though equally unsustainable).

But that's just my take on it - here's a couple of reviews that point out some other flaws:
Donald - Cavendish Laboratory (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf)
Vanderman - Neuroquantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/113/113).



I'd be fascinated if consciousness involved quantum mechanics, and I think it would result in a whole new level of understanding as far as how it works. I've read articles about quantum mechanics in olfaction and in photosynthesis.

But if people are just looking to use quantum mechanics as a bridge to the mystical, I think they will be dissatisfied with the outcome in the end, and it won't necessarily endow consciousness with the qualities they are hoping for.
 And it seems odd that all along that the argument was that consciousness is not physical, it's not in the brain, so it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, but now suddenly, the argument is "The brain is a physical entity and we have no reason to suppose that it evades the rules of quantum physics."


What are you afraid of ? I am not talking about science proper as we know it , just about the false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " that has been assuming that "all is matter ", including the mind  thus  ,just for materialist ideological purposes .

Why don't you tell me ,once again, what makes that false conception of nature , or that false mainstream materialist "scientific world view " , what makes it so "scientific " ?

Has science ever proved the materialist "fact ". or rather the materialist core belief assumption to be "true " that "all is matter ", including the mind ? Obviously ...not :

Why has that materialist false conception of nature been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " then, for so long now ?: materialism that's just a false conception of nature , a world view, a philosophy , no empirical fact ,not even remotely close thus .


A materialist false world view or false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " that has been hardening itself as to become an unfalsifiable unverifiable dogma in science .
Materialism has been imposed as a synonymous of science , for so long now , and hence materialism does exclude , per definition, a priori and per se any existence of the non-physical ,including the non-physical nature of consciousness, just for materialist ideological purposes  that have nothing to do with science proper ,because materialism is so afraid of the implications of the non-physical nature of consciousness, obviously : you can trace that all the way back to the historic Eurocentric religious struggles: by rejecting religions, materialism "had " to reduce everything to just matter thus ,including the mind= that's just the materialist ideology at work in science , no science , even though that materialist outdated and superseded ideology that dates back all the way to the 19th century , has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " since then  .

Materialism that relied since on Newton's classical physics : quantum physics has been superseding materialism thus .
Not "all is matter " , and hence consciousnss is non-physical ,and therefore is consciousness nonlocal and evades space and time + does not "obey " the laws of physics = outside of the latter .
See how dualism is already present in quantum mechanics regarding the dualist nature of matter itself .

The immaterial consciousness does mutually interact with the physical brain ,via ways we do not know anything about yet ,so Walker and others just try to come up with their own theories on the subject ,the latter theories that must be falsifiable, verifiable  and predictable if they wanna be raised to the scientific status: the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " theory or rather ideology is unfalsifiable unverifiable : worse : it  has been claiming itself to be the 'scientific world view " , since : amazing  .

The immaterial consciousness is in fact normal , not mystical .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2013 19:48:25

Greyson has also elaborated on this confusion. He states, “Materialists often claim credit for the
scientific advances of the past few centuries. But it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis
testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in
explaining the world.


True, but it's kind of a silly argument. That's like saying that one could be a gourmet chef and prepare a meal without actually using any ingredients or cooking utensils. Sure, you can invent imaginary recipes, but that's as far as you'll get.

 If you strip scientists of material tools and methods, exclude their senses or instruments that extend them, exclude the very material itself that one is observing or testing, there is no way to gather empirical evidence or test your predictions. 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 20:04:51
Which of these three statements best describes your stance?

(1) All aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
(2) Some aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically, but others cannot.
(3) No aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.

I asked essentially the same question in regards to the material, or chemistry and physics, and Don said I was "playing the silly wise girl." It seemed like a pretty straight forward question to me:

1)Some things can, but others can’t be explained by chemistry or physics  or

 2)Everything always involves an immaterial explanation, even if there is sometimes chemistry and physics involved in the process,    or

3)Chemistry and physics do not explain anything that happens. They do not matter at all, they are irrelevant. They explain nothing. They explain nothing by themselves or even when combined with a immaterial explanation.

[/quote]

Be serious , please :
All i have been saying is that not "all is matter " ,as the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been assuming for so long now , thanks to materialism, by making science try to explain "everything " thus , since "everything  is just matter ",including the mind thus,  just in terms of physics and chemistry ,once again .

The materialist  "All is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " is thus false = not all is matter ,and consciousness is non-material ,non-physical .

Physics and chemistry ,or matter , are    , once again , just one single side of the whole pic , the other side is the mental that's irreducible to the physical , the mental that's more fundamental than matter can ever be .

To try thus , once again, to explain "everything " just in terms of physics and chemistry , or just in terms of matter , just via one single side of the whole pic , as science under materialism has been doing for so long now , is a false and an unscientific attempt to do so

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 29/11/2013 20:06:58
...NDE ...

NDE phenomena can be explained without resorting to the supernatural : some people who have been in a centrifuge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjg6mRFzZzE) which reduced the blood supply to their brain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hypoxia) have experienced them ...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-LOC

... it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in explaining the world.

Almost three decades of "empirical hypothesis testing" for the existence of psychic phenomena by the PEAR project (http://www.csicop.org/si/show/pear_lab_closes_ending_decades_of_psychic_research/) , nil result.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Kryptid on 29/11/2013 20:16:56
So which of my three sentences best describes your stance?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 20:26:16

Greyson has also elaborated on this confusion. He states, “Materialists often claim credit for the
scientific advances of the past few centuries. But it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis
testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in
explaining the world.


True, but it's kind of a silly argument. That's like saying that one could be a gourmet chef and prepare a meal without actually using any ingredients or cooking utensils. Sure, you can invent imaginary recipes, but that's as far as you'll get.

You still do not get it yet , amazing :
That's what i have been saying all along : all scientific achievements were /are being and will be accomplished by scientists, whether they happen to be materialists or non-materialists ( Many great scientists were / are and will be religious ones , for example : Newton and many others ) , all scientific achievements thus were / are being / and will be accomplished by scientists just  through, and just thanks to,  the effective and unparalled scientific method that's like no other = materialism as a false ideology has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific achievements indeed .

Science has been in fact materialistic ,just  in the sense that science has been assuming that "all is matter , including the mind thus " , thanks to materialism=  "all is  matter , including the mind " has been thus just a materialist core belief assumption, no empirical one  : so, to confuse science with materialism , as it have been the case for so long now ,by assuming that the false materialist conception of nature is the   real scientific world view ,  is like saying that science can be muslim, christian, buddhist or alien haha ,since materialism is just a world view , and a false one at that also= the current false mainstream 'scientific world view " is thus just the false materialist conception of nature , science proper has absolutely nothing to do with  .
Materialism has just been taking ,once again, a free ride on the unwilling back of science , by trying to pretend to be "scientific " , by trying to impose its false conception of nature as the "scientific world view " (materialism has been successfull in doing the latter since the 19 th century at last ) , in order to "vindicate " itself in the process , in vain of course .

Quote
If you strip scientists of material tools and methods, exclude their senses or instruments that extend them, exclude the very material itself that one is observing or testing, there is no way to gather empirical evidence or test your predictions.

What are you talking about ? see above : what has materialism to do with science proper then ? = absolutely nothing .

Science is just the scientific method ,science is falsification ...see Karl Popper on the subject .

Since materialism has been indeed successful in imposing its own false materialist conception of nature or ideology as the "scientific world view " , you cannot but confuse materialsim with science ,unless you would try to distinguish between them : materialism is just a fasle world view ideology , science is not an ideology : Karl Popper might help you distinguish science from ideology ,or from pseudo-science ...
Popper can indeed do much better than just that : his writings on the subject can also help you detect even pseudo-science at the very heart of the current science = the materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " .

Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 20:46:01
Walker's 'Physics of Consciousness' looks to me like yet another version of 'quantum mechanics is weird and unexplained, consciousness is weird and unexplained, let's mash them together', that makes the common mistake of reifying the wavefunction as something physical that must be 'collapsed' by an observer. I found Penrose's quantum microtubules more interesting (though equally unsustainable).

But that's just my take on it - here's a couple of reviews that point out some other flaws:
Donald - Cavendish Laboratory (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/ehw.pdf)
Vanderman - Neuroquantology (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/113/113).

No , since the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " conception of nature is false , and hence since the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " is also false  as a result  , then consciousness that's irreducible to the physical has to interact with the physical brain in a mutual manner : how the immaterial consciousness does interact with the physical brain mutually ?

Well, Walker  and others just try to figure that out their own ways .

Have better falsifiable theories on the subject then, since  the immaterial  mind cannot be in  the physical brain , since the immaterial mind cannot be the  "product " of the  physical brain's activity ?

Otherwise , what makes you think that "all is matter ,including the mind " ? : that's just the false materialist conception of nature, no empirical fact .

Otherwise , try to prove to the people here that "all is  matter  , including the mind " then ?

Amazing ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2013 21:03:20
RD :


For the record , the following : in order to make things clear , once and for all, hopefully :
I am not really interested in parasychology or in any so-called psychic phenomena , but that does not mean they are necessarily false: they might either turn out to be false or true , either way : that's something that must be left to science , when the latter will be liberated from that false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " conception of nature  .

I am mainly interested in the refutations of materialism in those books i have been quoting , that's all .

When one assumes that "all is matter , including the mind " = just a materialist false conception of nature ,no empirical fact , then, it's pretty logical to exclude a priori ,per definition ,or per se any so-called psychic phenomena : get that ?

I am just interested in the fact that the materialist " all is matter  , including the mind " conception of nature is false , and hence the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " is also false as a result , which means that consciousness is non-physical or non-material mutually interacting with the physical brain ,in ways we still have to try to figure out .

Have better ideas or better faslifiable theories on the subject ?

Otherwise , try to prove to the people here that the materialist "all is matter" false conception of nature is "true " , is an "empirical fact " .

Oh, boy , you cannot, obviously .

That false materialist conception of nature has even been making itself so unfalsifiable unverifiable ,by also being "verified and corroborated " by "everything " that it cannot be but unscientific , and must therefore be expelled from science , without mercy or regret ,without looking back , for the betterment and progress of science that must be free from dogmas such as those materialist ones .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2013 22:13:14

Greyson has also elaborated on this confusion. He states, “Materialists often claim credit for the
scientific advances of the past few centuries. But it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis
testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in
explaining the world.


True, but it's kind of a silly argument. That's like saying that one could be a gourmet chef and prepare a meal without actually using any ingredients or cooking utensils. Sure, you can invent imaginary recipes, but that's as far as you'll get.

You still do not get it yet , amazing :
That's what i have been saying all along : all scientific achievements were /are being and will be accomplished by scientists, whether they happen to be materialists or non-materialists ( Many great scientists were / are and will be religious ones , for example : Newton and many others ) , all scientific achievements thus were / are being / and will be accomplished by scientists just  through, and just thanks to,  the effective and unparalled scientific method that's like no other = materialism as a false ideology has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific achievements indeed .

And you still cannot explain how you would construct an experiment to test the immaterial, which you said repeatedly is impossible. Hence, Popper's article is useless for your purposes, as is quantum mechanics since you've thoroughly explained that the immaterial and the mental is not in the brain, is not physical.  It "escapes the laws of physics" is, I believe, the phrase you used a few pages ago. You've painted yourself into a corner.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 29/11/2013 23:07:30
... I am not really interested in parasychology or in any so-called psychic phenomena ...

Despite your lack of interest your post which mentions NDE (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg425305#msg425305) almost entirely consists of a quote from Chris "afterlife / NDE / psychic-phenomena (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chris%20Carter/e/B003M3FR5K/ref=la_B003M3FR5K_rf_p_n_binding_browse-b_2?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_82%3AB003M3FR5K%2Cp_n_binding_browse-bin%3A368165031&bbn=266239&sort=reviewrank_authority&ie=UTF8&qid=1385764701&rnid=492562011)" Carter.

... but that does not mean they [psychic phenomena] are necessarily false: they might either turn out to be false or true , either way : that's something that must be left to science ...

These fields have been investigated for decades,  no repeatable results : no telepathy , no clairvoyants , no mediums, no telekinesis , no "remote-viewing", no ESP. Nothing nada, zero, zilch.

Quote from: Parapsychological Association
First established in 1957, the PA has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 1969.  The PA is a non-profit, non-adjudicating organization that endorses no ideologies or beliefs other than the value of rigorous scientific and scholarly inquiry.
http://www.parapsych.org/home.aspx

Quote from: csicop.org
PEAR Lab Closes, Ending Decades of Psychic Research
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) group is shutting down after some twenty-eight years of searching for proof of the paranormal. On February 10, 2007, PEAR issued a press release that stated, in part: “The PEAR program was established at Princeton University in 1979 by Robert G. Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to pursue rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to contemporary engineering practice.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/pear_lab_closes_ending_decades_of_psychic_research/

Decades wasted : think about it for a minute, if these "psi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi_%28parapsychology%29)" phenomena had ever arisen in some humans the rest of humanity would be their slaves.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2013 23:40:21
I'd be fascinated if consciousness involved quantum mechanics, and I think it would result in a whole new level of understanding as far as how it works. I've read articles about quantum mechanics in olfaction and in photosynthesis.
It wouldn't surprise me excessively if QM is involved in optimising the efficiency of neurotransmission in a similar way it's involved in photosynthesis, but this is an optimisation of an existing process, not a novel process in its own right.

Quote
But if people are just looking to use quantum mechanics as a bridge to the mystical, I think they will be dissatisfied with the outcome in the end, and it won't necessarily endow consciousness with the qualities they are hoping for.
Yes, quite. The underlying model for QM may be obscure, but that doesn't mean the observable results are unpredictable or beyond comprehension - in fact, QM is the most precise theory we have by orders of magnitude. There's no good reason to link it to mystical or unknowable realms.
 
Quote
And it seems odd that all along that the argument was that consciousness is not physical, it's not in the brain, so it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, but now suddenly, the argument is "The brain is a physical entity and we have no reason to suppose that it evades the rules of quantum physics."
Indeed. It's a contradiction that inevitably arises out of the a-priori assumption that consciousness is somehow 'special' and non-physical in origin by nature of it's unresolved mechanism. This special pleading opens an explanatory gap that requires a non-physical explanation with physical effects, which tempts a connection with the other major unresolved mechanism, QM, because it superficially appears to have physical and non-physical aspects.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2013 13:27:07
... have better falsifiable theories on the subject then, since  the immaterial  mind cannot be in  the physical brain , since the immaterial mind cannot be the  "product " of the  physical brain's activity ?
The words are English, but the sentence is gibberish - care to rephrase it so it makes sense?

Quote
.... what makes you think that "all is matter ,including the mind " ? : that's just the false materialist conception of nature, no empirical fact .
You seem to have a knack of clumsy and inaccurate generalisations. My position is that all the evidence I've seen indicates that the mind, including consciousness, is a product of interacting processes of material origin. We've already posted some of that evidence; I've said this all before, but for me there are two complementary sides to it: positive circumstantial evidence, and negative circumstantial evidence:

Positive - the experimental and observational evidence that specific physical influence or damage to the brain produces consistent and specific effects on consciousness that are inconsistent with the idea that consciousness is an external influence on the brain, and entirely consistent with the idea that it is internally generated.

Negative - the lack of any indications in the neurophysiology or structural anatomy of the brain of support for any  interface to an external controlling consciousness, and the lack of any evidence of such control during years of observation from whole brain level down to the function of individual neurons. Despite years of parapsychological research, and years of experimental physics with the most sensitive instruments, no evidence of any immaterial influences has been confirmed; there is no model or even coherent definition for the immaterial, or for how consciousness can be part of it.

The basic idea of the immaterial affecting the material is itself incoherent, but if you try to define something in terms of what it isn't, these are the kinds of problems you'll get.

Quote
Otherwise , try to prove to the people here that "all is  matter  , including the mind " then ?
Why on Earth would I want to do that? Science isn't about proof, it's about explanatory models with utility and predictive power.

If you suggest ways by which the 'immaterial hypothesis' can be tested, i.e. how it is falsifiable, and describe how it has greater utility, explanatory, and predictive power than the current materialistic models, I'm sure people will jump at the chance to make history.

As it is, you're just parrotting an unsupported (and apparently unsupportable) assumption that consciousness can't have a material origin - contradicting all available evidence; and the lame straw man that mainstream science is about absolute truths and facts. Both assertions are full of holes, and won't hold water. You've ignored repeated requests to support any of your assertions with evidence or reasonable argument, but you can't. You're a timewaster.
 
Quote
Amazing ....
Thanks [:)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 16:47:32
Folks : This is "dynamite ", this is "controlled demolition " of materialism  by an ex-materialist : This might be the last nail to be knocked on the coffin of materialism :  Enjoy

David J. Chalmers was a convinced reductionist , and he reluctantly admits and proves the fact to be true that materialism cannot account for consciousness , and hence materialism is false .
He even explicitly suggests that some forms of dualism might be true ...

Not to mention that he tries in the below mentioned book of his to come up with a non-reductionist naturalist physical quantum theory of consciousness ....

" The Conscious Mind " By David J.Chalmers :

Introduction :



"The Conscious Mind " by David J.Chalmers.
INTRODUCTION:
TAKING CONSCIOUSNESS SERIOUSLY:
Consciousness is the biggest mystery. It may be the largest outstanding obstacle in our quest for a scientific
understanding of the universe. The science of physics is not yet complete, but it is well understood; the science
of biology has removed many ancient mysteries surrounding the nature of life. There are gaps in our
understanding of these fields, but they do not seemintractable. We have a sense of what a solution to these
problems might look like; we just need to get the details right.
Even in the science of the mind, much progress has been made. Recent work in cognitive science and
neuroscience is leading us to a better understanding of human behavior and of the processes that drive it. We do
not have many detailed theories of cognition, to be sure, but the details cannot be too far off. Consciousness,
however, is as perplexing as it ever was. It still seems utterly mysterious that the causation of behavior should be
accompanied by a subjective inner life.
We have good reason to believe that consciousness arises fromphysical systems such as brains, but we have
little idea how it arises, or why it exists at all. Howcould a physical systemsuch as a brain also be an
experiencer? Why should there be something it is like to be such a system? Present-day scientific theories hardly
touch the really difficult questions about consciousness. We do not just lack a detailed theory; we are entirely in
the dark about how consciousness fits into the natural order.
Many books and articles on consciousness have appeared in the past fewyears, and one might think that we are
making progress. But on a closer look, most of this work leaves the hardest problems about consciousness
untouched. Often, such work addresses what might be called the ''easy" problems of consciousness: Howdoes
the brain process environmental stimula-
Page xii
tion? Howdoes it integrate information? How do we produce reports on internal states? These are important
questions, but to answer themis not to solve the hard problem:Why is all this processing accompanied by an
experienced inner life? Sometimes this question is ignored entirely; sometimes it is put off until another day; and
sometimes it is simply declared answered. But in each case, one is left with the feeling that the central problem
remains as puzzling as ever.
This puzzlement is not a cause for despair; rather, it makes the problemof consciousness one of the most
exciting intellectual challenges of our time. Because consciousness is both so fundamental and so ill understood,
a solution to the problemmay profoundly affect our conception of the universe and of ourselves.
I a man optimist about consciousness: I think that we will eventually have a theory of it, and in this book I look
for one. But consciousness is not just business as usual; if we are to make progress, the first thing we must do is
face up to the things that make the problemso difficult. Then we can move forward toward a theory, without
blinkers and with a good idea of the task at hand.
In this book, I do not solve the problemof consciousness once and for all, but I try to rein it in. I try to get clear
about what the problems are, I argue that the standard methods of neuroscience and cognitive science do not
work in addressing them, and then I try to move forward.
In developing my account of consciousness, I have tried to obey a number of constraints. The first and most
important is to take consciousness seriously. The easiest way to develop a ''theory" of consciousness is to deny
its existence, or to redefine the phenomenon in need of explanation as something it is not. This usually leads to
an elegant theory, but the problemdoes not go away. Throughout this book, I have assumed that consciousness
exists, and that to redefine the problemas that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioral functions are
performed is unacceptable. This is what I mean by taking consciousness seriously.
Some say that consciousness is an "illusion," but I have little idea what this could even mean. It seems to me that
we are surer of the existence of conscious experience than we are of anything else in the world. I have tried hard
at times to convince myself that there is really nothing there, that conscious experience is empty, an illusion.
There is something seductive about this notion, which philosophers throughout the ages have exploited, but in
the end it is utterly unsatisfying. I find myself absorbed in an orange sensation, and something is going on. There
is something that needs explaining, even after we have explained the processes of discrimination and action:
there is the experience.
True, I cannot prove that there is a further problem, precisely because I cannot prove that consciousness exists.
We know about consciousness more
Page xiii
directly than we know about anything else, so ''proof" is inappropriate. The best I can do is provide arguments
wherever possible, while rebutting arguments fromthe other side. There is no denying that this involves an
appeal to intuition at some point; but all arguments involve intuition somewhere, and I have tried to be clear
about the intuitions involved in mine.
This might be seen as a Great Divide in the study of consciousness. If you hold that an answer to the "easy"
problems explains everything that needs to be explained, then you get one sort of theory; if you hold that there is
a further "hard" problem, then you get another. After a point, it is difficult to argue across this divide, and
discussions are often reduced to table pounding. To me, it seems obvious that there is something further that
needs explaining here; to others, it seems acceptable that there is not. (Informal surveys suggest that the
numbers run two or three to one in favor of the former view, with the ratio fairly constant across academics and
students in a variety of fields.)We may simply have to learn to live with this basic division.
This book may be of intellectual interest to those who think there is not much of a problem, but it is really
intended for those who feel the problemin their bones. By now, we have a fairly good idea of the sort of theory
we get if we assume there is no problem. In this work, I have tried to explore what follows given that there is a
problem. The real argument of the book is that if one takes consciousness seriously, the position I lay out is
where one should end up.
The second constraint I have followed is to take science seriously. I have not tried to dispute current scientific
theories in domains where they have authority. At the same time, I have not been afraid to go out on a limb in
areas where scientists' opinions are as ungrounded as everyone else's. For example, I have not disputed that the
physical world is causally closed or that behavior can be explained in physical terms; but if a physicist or a
cognitive scientist suggests that consciousness can be explained in physical terms, this is merely a hope
ungrounded in current theory, and the question remains open. So I have tried to keep my ideas compatible with
contemporary science, but I have not restricted my ideas to what contemporary scientists find fashionable.
The third constraint is that I take consciousness to be a natural phenomenon, falling under the sway of natural
laws. If so, then there should be some correct scientific theory of consciousness, whether or not we can arrive at
such a theory. That consciousness is a natural phenomenon seems hard to dispute: it is an extraordinarily salient
part of nature, arising throughout the human species and very likely in many others. And we have every reason
to believe that natural phenomena are subject to fundamental natural laws; it would be very strange if
consciousness were not. This is not to say that the natural laws concerning consciousness will be just like laws in
other domains, or even that they will be physical laws. They may be quite different in kind.
Page xiv
The problemof consciousness lies uneasily at the border of science and philosophy. I would say that it is
properly a scientific subject matter: it is a natural phenomenon like motion, life, and cognition, and calls out for
explanation in the way that these do. But it is not open to investigation by the usual scientific methods.
Everyday scientific methodology has trouble getting a grip on it, not least because of the difficulties in observing
the phenomenon. Outside the first-person case, data are hard to come by. This is not to say that no external data
can be relevant, but we first have to arrive at a coherent philosophical understanding before we can justify the
data's relevance. So the problemof consciousness may be a scientific problem that requires philosophical
methods of understanding before we can get off the ground.
In this book I reach conclusions that some people may think of as ''antiscientific":

I argue that reductive
explanation of consciousness is impossible, and I even argue for a form of dualism
. But this is just part of the
scientific process. Certain sorts of explanation turn out not to work, so we need to embrace other sorts of
explanation instead. Everything I say here is compatible with the results of contemporary science; our picture of
the natural world is broadened, not overturned. And this broadening allows the possibility of a naturalistic
theory of consciousness that might have been impossible without it. It seems to me that to ignore the problems
of consciousness would be antiscientific; it is in the scientific spirit to face up to themdirectly.
To those who
suspect that science requires materialism, I ask that you wait and see.

I should note that the conclusions of this work are conclusions, in the strongest sense.

Temperamentally, I am
strongly inclined toward materialist reductive explanation, and I have no strong spiritual or religious inclinations.
For a number of years, I hoped for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly. It
eventually seemed plain to me that these conclusions were forced on anyone who wants to take consciousness
seriously. Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we
have to go beyond the resources it provides.

By now, I have grown almost happy with these conclusions. They do not seemto have any fearsome
consequences, and they allow a way of thinking and theorizing about consciousness that seems more
satisfactory in almost every way. And the expansion in the scientific worldviewhas had a positive effect, at least
for me: it has made the universe seema more interesting place.
This book has four parts. In the first, I lay out the problems, and set up a framework within which they can be
addressed. Chapter 1 is an introduction to consciousness, teasing apart a number of different concepts in the
vicinity, drawing out the sense in which consciousness is really interesting, and giving a preliminary account of
its subtle relation to the rest of the mind. Chapter
Page xv
2 develops a metaphysical and explanatory framework within which much of the rest of the discussion is cast.
What is it for a phenomenon to be reductively explained, or to be physical? This chapter gives an account of
these things, centering on the notion of supervenience. I argue that there is good reason to believe that almost
everything in the world can be reductively explained; but consciousness may be an exception.
With these preliminaries out of the way, the second part focuses on the irreducibility of consciousness. Chapter
3 argues that standard methods of reductive explanation cannot account for consciousness. I also give a critique
of various reductive accounts that have been put forward by researchers in neuroscience, cognitive science, and
elsewhere. This is not just a negative conclusion: it follows that a satisfactory theory of consciousness must be a
newsort of nonreductive theory instead. Chapter 4 takes things a step further by arguing that materialismis
false and that a formof dualismis true, and outlines the general shape that a nonreductive theory of
consciousness might take. Chapter 5 is largely defensive: it considers some apparent problems for my view,
involving the relationship between consciousness and our judgments about consciousness, and argues that they
pose no fatal difficulties.
In the third part, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness. Each of the three chapters here develops a
component of a positive theory. Chapter 6 focuses on the ''coherence" between
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 16:48:05
consciousness and cognitive
processes, drawing a number of systematic links between the two. I use these links to analyze and ground the
central role that neuroscience and cognitive science play in explaining human consciousness. Chapter 7 discusses
the relation between consciousness and functional organization, using thought experiments to argue that
consciousness is an "organizational invariant": that is, that every systemwith the right functional organization
will have the same sort of conscious experience, no matter what it is made of. Chapter 8 considers what a
fundamental theory of consciousness might look like, and suggests that it may involve a close relation between
consciousness and information. This is by far the most speculative chapter, but at this point some speculation is
probably needed if we are to make progress.
The last two chapters are dessert. Here, I apply what has gone before to central questions in the foundations of
artificial intelligence and quantummechanics. Chapter 9 argues for the thesis of "strong artificial intelligence":
that the implementation of an appropriate computer programwill give rise to a conscious mind. Chapter 10
considers the baffling question of how quantummechanics should be interpreted, and uses the ideas about
consciousness developed in previous chapters to lend support to a "no-collapse" interpretation of the theory.
Perhaps the negative material will provoke the most reaction, but my real goal is positive: I want to see a theory
of consciousness that works. When I first came into philosophy, I was surprised to find that most of the debate
Page xvi
over consciousness focused on whether there was a problemor not, or on whether it was physical or not, and
that the business of building theories seemed to be left to one side. The only ''theories" seemed to be put forward
by those who (by my lights) did not take consciousness seriously. By now, I have come to enjoy the intricacies
of the ontological debate as much as anyone, but a detailed theory is stillmy major goal. If some of the ideas in
this book are useful to others in constructing a better theory, the attempt will have been worthwhile.
This book is intended as a serious work of philosophy, but I have tried to make it accessible to nonphilosophers.
In my notional audience at all times has been my undergraduate self of ten years ago: I hope I have written a
book that he would have appreciated. There are a fewsections that are philosophically technical. These are
marked with an asterisk (*), and readers should feel free to skip them. The most technical material is in Chapter
2 and Chapter 4. Section 4 of the former and sections 2 and 3 of the latter involve intricate issues in
philosophical semantics, as does the final section of Chapter 5. Other asterisked sections might be worth at least
skimming, to get an idea of what is going on. Often, I have put especially technical material and comments on
the philosophical literature in the endnotes. The one technical concept that is crucial to the book is that of
supervenience, introduced at the start of Chapter 2. This concept has an intimidating name but it expresses a
very natural idea, and a good understanding of it will help central issues fall into place. Much of the material
later in this chapter can be skipped on a first reading, although one might want to return to it later to clarify
questions as they arise.
For a short tour that avoids technicalities, read Chapter 1, skimthe early parts of Chapter 2 as background
material, then read all of Chapter 3 (skimming section 1 where necessary) for the central arguments against
reductive explanation, and the first and last sections of Chapter 4 for the central considerations about dualism.
The beginning of Chapter 6 is worth reading for the basic shape of the positive approach. Of the positive
material, Chapter 7 is perhaps the most self-contained chapter as well as the most fun, with easy-to-understand
thought experiments involving silicon brains; and those who like wild and woolly speculation might enjoy
Chapter 8. Finally, Chapters 9 and 10 should make sense to anyone with an interest in the issues involved.
Acouple of philosophical notes. The philosophical literature on consciousness is quite unsystematic, with
seemingly independent strands talking about related issues without making contact with each other. I have
attempted to impose some structure on the sprawl by providing a unifying framework in which the various
metaphysical and explanatory issues become clear. Much of the discussion in the literature can be translated into
this framework
Page xvii
without loss, and I hope the structure brings out the deep relationships between a number of different issues.
This work is perhaps unusual in largely eschewing the philosophical notion of identity (between mental and
physical states, say) in favor of the notion of supervenience. I find that discussions framed in terms of identity
generally throw more confusion than light onto the key issues, and often allow the central difficulties to be
evaded. By contrast, supervenience seems to provide an ideal framework within which the key issues can be
addressed. To avoid loose philosophy, however, we need to focus on the strength of the supervenience
connection: Is it underwritten by logical necessity, natural necessity, or something else? It is widely agreed that
consciousness supervenes on the physical in some sense; the real question is how tight the connection is.
Discussions that ignore these modal issues generally avoid the hardest questions about consciousness. Those
skeptical of modal notions will be skeptical of my entire discussion, but I think there is no other satisfactory way
to frame the issues.
One of the delights of working on this book, for me, has come fromthe way the problemof consciousness has
reached out to make contact with deep issues in many other areas of science and philosophy. But the scope and
depth of the problemalso make it humbling. I amacutely aware that at almost every point in this book there is
more that could be said, and that in many places I have only scratched the surface. But I hope, minimally, to have
suggested that it is possible to make progress on the problemof consciousness without denying its existence or
reducing it to something it is not. The problemis fascinating, and the future is exciting.
Page xviii
No. Xia stopped, twirling toward himin slow motion. Her icy mint eyes grewwide. You're in danger here.
Panic whitened her face as she stared toward the house. Go home now. Before it's too late. And find me the
antidote.
What kind of antidote?
Xia disappeared beyond the junipers, yet her final message burst into Joey's mind like the pop of a
firecracker: The antidote for zombie poison.
Dian Curtis Regan, My Zombie Valentine
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:00:37
The Ideological Materialist Promethean Science ,and the Utopian Metaphysically Neutral Science :

Note that science should be in fact metaphysically neutral ,not materialist or otherwise , but that's just an utopia .

The ancient Greek myth in which Prometheus ,a Titan , stole fire from the gods ,and gave it to humans ,still underlies modern science ,sub-consciously or consciously ,a scientific underlying myth that was vividly reflected  by "The challenger " (challenging who or what exactly ? ) ,the NASA space ship which ,unfortunately enough , exploded moments after take off ,costing the lives of 7 brilliant scientists astronauts  in the process  ,for everybody to witness on tv in the late 1980's .

Francis Bacon was the first to be clever enough to embody that Promethean myth in science ,under the guise of piety ,when he coined "Knowledge is power " famous adage .
Descartes took that over from him, by introducing the mechanistic materialist view of nature for the first time , in the natural sciences ,while 'leaving " the mind to the church out of fear of being persecuted .

Materialism was then extended , later on , to philosophy, to whole science ,and to the rest,by reaching its peak at the second half of the 19th century  .
Since then, science has become fully Promethean ,by "turning humans into gods, before deserving to be humans " , as Einstein once said 
The birth of the Promethean materialistic science was the result   of the Eurocentric historic religious intolerance ,and of the inquisitory supremacy of the medieval church .
Regardless thus of the fact whether science itself was born from the  very womb of a non-western religion or not , fact is, the conflcit between religion or dualism and between the materialistic reductionist naturalist monism was born in medieval Europe thus .
Since then , the Promethean adage " Knowledge is power " was king in science , the new human gods produced by Promethean science felt so powerful ,so wise , so omniscient and so Titanic invincible that they have been thinking they could subject  and capture the whole universe and beyond, not just nature or earth : no mysteries of the universe could not be demystified and explained , thanks to the godlike powerful ,and superhuman , omniscient explanatory power of the new materialist mechanistic Promethean science .Anything that could not fit into the materialist mainstream Promethean "scientific world view " was simply branded as pre-scientific outmoded or outdated and as primitive superstitions or  delusions illusions fairytales , especially religions .
The materialist Promethean omniscient science has become the one and only ultimate and valid source of knowledge secular religion , all huamanity , must embrace ,if the latter wants to be progressive , civilized or evolved developed advanced .
The materialist world view has become the new   undisputed and unfalsifiable  "scientific " secular religion dogma .
What Karl Popper failed to see is that the so-called metaphysically neutral science was/is and will still be an ideal ,an utopia to be reached by humanity ,in the far future .
I do think though that the metaphysically neutral science is just a myth .
Humanity is still not evolved developed or advanced enough to be able to rise  to the high level of that utopian ideal ,represented by that elusive mythical  idealistic utopian metaphysically neutral science .
What Popper failed to see is that religion ,and even science itself , are just human activities , in the sense that they are just reflections of the highest and of the lowest which are in every one of us , as human beings .
So, instead of being a priceless beautiful unparalleled gift to all humanity,Promethean materialist science has been becoming an instrument of polarization , has become a theater of ideological struggle .
The materialist camp claims science for itself exclusively , by branding non-materialists as pseudo-scientists , as charlatans or worse .
Dualists do almost the same by branding materialists as the new "scientific" church ....
Poor science proper has been left in the middle ,with almost no one to speak on its behalf .
Science does speak ,but nobody seems to be hearing what it says :  science says in fact : leave me alone haha , folks , i should be neither materialist ,nor dualist or idealist , so, just let me be ,humans , i will be able to be my true me ,only when you, humans will be able to reflect the highest which is in every one of you , simply because i am you , i am just a reflection of the highest and of the lowest which are in every human , i am just a human activity .

Science tells us all that it will be waiting for our ultimate evolution that might enable us all to reach the metaphysicalyl neutral level of science .

The metaphysically neutral science is just an utopia  though , we can only dream of ever reaching in fact= a myth ,which also means that science can never be metaphysically neutral indeed ,simply because science is just a human activity ,and simply because man's attempts to try to reach the highest which is in man , can be maybe and just probably achieved only by just some rare exceptional individuals humans , and even then , the latter can rarely remain at that level,naturally    .
Untill  then, let's go back to trying to deliver some competitive falsifiable theories with more or less explanatory power,since materialism is ...false  .

Shall we, folks ?


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:17:32
... have better falsifiable theories on the subject then, since  the immaterial  mind cannot be in  the physical brain , since the immaterial mind cannot be the  "product " of the  physical brain's activity ?
The words are English, but the sentence is gibberish - care to rephrase it so it makes sense?

Quote
.... what makes you think that "all is matter ,including the mind " ? : that's just the false materialist conception of nature, no empirical fact .
You seem to have a knack of clumsy and inaccurate generalisations. My position is that all the evidence I've seen indicates that the mind, including consciousness, is a product of interacting processes of material origin. We've already posted some of that evidence; I've said this all before, but for me there are two complementary sides to it: positive circumstantial evidence, and negative circumstantial evidence:

Positive - the experimental and observational evidence that specific physical influence or damage to the brain produces consistent and specific effects on consciousness that are inconsistent with the idea that consciousness is an external influence on the brain, and entirely consistent with the idea that it is internally generated.

Negative - the lack of any indications in the neurophysiology or structural anatomy of the brain of support for any  interface to an external controlling consciousness, and the lack of any evidence of such control during years of observation from whole brain level down to the function of individual neurons. Despite years of parapsychological research, and years of experimental physics with the most sensitive instruments, no evidence of any immaterial influences has been confirmed; there is no model or even coherent definition for the immaterial, or for how consciousness can be part of it.

The basic idea of the immaterial affecting the material is itself incoherent, but if you try to define something in terms of what it isn't, these are the kinds of problems you'll get.

Quote
Otherwise , try to prove to the people here that "all is  matter  , including the mind " then ?
Why on Earth would I want to do that? Science isn't about proof, it's about explanatory models with utility and predictive power.

If you suggest ways by which the 'immaterial hypothesis' can be tested, i.e. how it is falsifiable, and describe how it has greater utility, explanatory, and predictive power than the current materialistic models, I'm sure people will jump at the chance to make history.

As it is, you're just parrotting an unsupported (and apparently unsupportable) assumption that consciousness can't have a material origin - contradicting all available evidence; and the lame straw man that mainstream science is about absolute truths and facts. Both assertions are full of holes, and won't hold water. You've ignored repeated requests to support any of your assertions with evidence or reasonable argument, but you can't. You're a timewaster.
 
Quote
Amazing ....
Thanks [:)]
[/quote]

Oh, poor boy :  you have to try to be brave and intellectually scientifically honest  enough to face the music :

What are you afraid of ?
Materialism cannot account for consciousness ,and hence materialism is false ,as ex-reductionist David J.Chalmers has tried to prove in the extremely enlightening above mentioned book of his : enjoy .

Consciousness cannot be but non-physical, since physics and chemistry alone cannot account for the conscious experience :
Mary could see only black and white + some shades of grey , but that did not prevent her from becoming a great neurologist that could explain many neurological and behavioral phenomena , but , nothing can make her feel what it is like to experience color or red ,materialist science cannot account for what it is like to be a bat , as Nagel used to say ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:21:45
It seems that everyone here has missed the  fact that i made a mistake by saying that the physical theory of everything is an attempt to unify Einstein's theory of relativity with that of ....haha ...Newton's theory of gravity :

That was in fact just a Freudian slip of the tongue : i had Newton in mind when i wanted to say that physicists try to unify Einstein's theory of relativity with ...quantum theory ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:25:46
I must also admit that it is indeed inconceivable at this stage,and  in this time and age ,to imagine how the immaterial consciousness can effect the physical brain,or vice versa , the physical brain that has to obey to the laws of physics anyway and either way ...

Maybe , some genius in the future will be able to solve that mystery puzzle .
Who knows ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:31:54

Greyson has also elaborated on this confusion. He states, “Materialists often claim credit for the
scientific advances of the past few centuries. But it is the scientific method of empirical hypothesis
testing, rather than a materialistic philosophy, that has been responsible for the success of science in
explaining the world.


True, but it's kind of a silly argument. That's like saying that one could be a gourmet chef and prepare a meal without actually using any ingredients or cooking utensils. Sure, you can invent imaginary recipes, but that's as far as you'll get.

You still do not get it yet , amazing :
That's what i have been saying all along : all scientific achievements were /are being and will be accomplished by scientists, whether they happen to be materialists or non-materialists ( Many great scientists were / are and will be religious ones , for example : Newton and many others ) , all scientific achievements thus were / are being / and will be accomplished by scientists just  through, and just thanks to,  the effective and unparalled scientific method that's like no other = materialism as a false ideology has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific achievements indeed .

And you still cannot explain how you would construct an experiment to test the immaterial, which you said repeatedly is impossible. Hence, Popper's article is useless for your purposes, as is quantum mechanics since you've thoroughly explained that the immaterial and the mental is not in the brain, is not physical.  It "escapes the laws of physics" is, I believe, the phrase you used a few pages ago. You've painted yourself into a corner.
[/quote]

Who said that's impossible ? Opinions do change , do they not ?

See what David J.Chalmers said about all that here above .

P.S.: If you study the writings of Popper on the subject carefully , you would be able to detect pseudo-science at the very heart of current science as well indeed , pseudo-science at the very heart of current science that's embodied by  the materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " thus .

In short :

As Chalmers proved in that above mentioned book of his : materialism cannot account for consciousness, and hence materialism is ...false .

Chalmers tried also to come up with a non-reductionist naturalist physical quantum theory of consciousness .......in which consciousness is a non-physical process .

You, folks , do behave as if consciousness is an easy problem , it is not , consciousness is the biggest challenge to science ever , and that will remain so for nobody knows how long still :

We can only try to come up with theories regarding consciousness , and regarding the rest , the best way to do that is by trying to come up with falsifiable theories on the subject of consciousness at least : that's certainly  no easy task : who said it is anyway ? : consciousness is the main obstacle and is also THE key to understanding ourselves and the universe from within and without , as Chalmers said .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 30/11/2013 17:34:10
I must also admit that it is indeed inconceivable at this stage,and  in this time and age ,to imagine how the immaterial consciousness can effect the physical brain,or vice versa , the physical brain that has to obey to the laws of physics anyway and either way ...

Maybe , some genius in the future will be able to solve that mystery puzzle .
Who knows ?
We're all holding our collective breath...................NOT
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2013 17:43:13

Note that science should be in fact metaphysically neutral ,not materialist or otherwise , but that's just an utopia .



It is. But you aren't looking for neutrality. You're looking for total acceptance of your beliefs by everyone in the field.

Earlier you said, "all scientific achievements were /are being and will be accomplished by scientists, whether they happen to be materialists or non-materialists."  Let's set aside for the moment the fact that "non-materialist" scientists, those who might have believed in God, didn't incorporate the immaterial into their actual scientific work. If you acknowledge that scientists have made valid discoveries in chemistry and physics, there's nothing false about what they did or do.

If your complaint is that science should encourage more studies about the immaterial, fine. No ones hands are tied from doing just that, unless you believe in some kind of conspiracy against it. Nevertheless, there's certainly no way of preventing someone from thinking up experimental designs to test the immaterial.

Lets say that some rich person left you, DonQuichotte, a large sum of money to fund such research. What aspect of the immaterial would you choose to study, and how would you design an experiment to test it? Have any of your sources described specific experiments they would do if they had the opportunity and funding?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 17:44:34
I must also admit that it is indeed inconceivable at this stage,and  in this time and age ,to imagine how the immaterial consciousness can effect the physical brain,or vice versa , the physical brain that has to obey to the laws of physics anyway and either way ...

Maybe , some genius in the future will be able to solve that mystery puzzle .
Who knows ?
We're all holding our collective breath...................NOT
[/quote]

Consciousness is no doubt THE biggest obstacle and THE biggest Key to understanding ourselves and the universe : see Chalmers here above .

To try to approach consciousness is a must thus , an imperative ,a vital quest to pursue , simply because there is nothing out there more important than trying to solve the mystery of consciousness somehow :  materialist science can no longer afford to see consciousness as just a so-called unnecessary or useless by-product of evolution ,consciousness is certainly not  the latter  .
The materialist version of evolution cannot account for consciousness either .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 18:15:28

Note that science should be in fact metaphysically neutral ,not materialist or otherwise , but that's just an utopia .



It is. But you aren't looking for neutrality. You're looking for total acceptance of your beliefs by everyone in the field.

Earlier you said, "all scientific achievements were /are being and will be accomplished by scientists, whether they happen to be materialists or non-materialists."  Let's set aside for the moment the fact that "non-materialist" scientists, those who might have believed in God, didn't incorporate the immaterial into their actual scientific work. If you acknowledge that scientists have made valid discoveries in chemistry and physics, there's nothing false about what they did or do.

If your complaint is that science should encourage more studies about the immaterial, fine. No ones hands are tied from doing just that, unless you believe in some kind of conspiracy against it. Nevertheless, there's certainly no way of preventing someone from thinking up experimental designs to test the immaterial.

Lets say that some rich person left you, DonQuichotte, a large sum of money to fund such research. What aspect of the immaterial would you choose to study, and how would you design an experiment to test it? Have any of your sources described specific experiments they would do if they had the opportunity and funding?
[/quote]

Wrong :

(I said that the so-called metaphysically neutral science is a myth , didn't i ?,science that's just a human activity , science that's practiced by humans scientists  )

The false "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream materialist "scientific world view " does exclude , per definition , a priori and per se any scientific attempts to deal with consciousness as a non-physical process : see how the current majority of the mainstream scientific priesthood have been dealing with Sheldrake and co ,for example .

And even any naturalist conception of nature in science , either the materialist reductionist one , or the naturalist non-reductionist one , are false , according to me at least , simply because nature cannot account for or can "generate " either life or consciousness : that's just my metaphysical underlying conception of nature ,to be honest = not falsifiable = unscientific ,but not necessarily false .

So, since the so-called metaphysically neutral science is a myth , since any scientist out there is driven by his /her own metaphysical conception of nature under   the current exclusive supremacy and dominance of  materialism , why shouldn't i also have my own metaphysical conception of nature , i am not trying to impose on any one for that matter , unlke what materialism has been doing .

I think that science should try to explain what it can without any a -priori assumptions , but that's just an utopia , a myth thus ,unfortunately enough, simply because science is just a human activity ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 18:28:27
In fact , it is so : i guess :

Science is not driven by empiricism prior to any a-priori assumptions , it is exactly the other way around  ( when scientists do encounter any given inexplicable phenomena , they try to come up with more or less faslifiable theories on the subject ,under the dominating meta or paradigm in science , theories they try to test empirically afterwards thus )  ,so, science cannot be metaphysically neutral, simply because it is just a human activity , and hence humans cannot but have a-priori assumptions about the universe as a whole,untill those human a-priori assumptions are proven to be false ...empirically  .

Science is not about the truth , not about definite knowledge , just about approximate temporary knowledge or conjectures , and hence any given particular temporary metaphysical conception of nature,with more competitive explanatory power than the rest , cannot  but underly science,temporarily thus ,  untill it  gets falsified successfully ,then, another alternate competitive conception of nature  with more  explanatory power would take the upperhand, temporarily also , untill its gets falsified successfully ,in its turn ,and so on, indefinitly .

Materialism cannot account for consciousness , and hence materialism is false , and must be thus replaced by another alternate competitive conception of nature in science with more explanatory power ,temporarily , untill it gets faslified successfully in its turn , and so on , indefinitly ,relatively speaking,untill the end of time then (The same goes for  the political economic , social.... levels:  the so-called end of history theory such as that concerning  the presumed final victory of secular materialist liberal democracy , and its materialist capitalist wing , that 'end of history " theory is thus false also .)  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2013 19:58:14




Wrong :

The false "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream materialist "scientific world view " does exclude , per definition , a priori and per se any scientific attempts to deal with consciousness as a non-physical process : see how the current majority of the mainstream scientific priesthood have been dealing with Sheldrake and co ,for example .


Sheldrake has received the treatment he has because he has offered no evidence for his theories; they are un-testable, unfalsifiable. So his work so far has been relegated to pseudoscience, just as Popper says a theory like that should be.

Comets are discovered by amateur astronomers, whose equipment is not as big and fancy as research institution's. They may also lack advanced degrees or published papers. But their findings are taken seriously. Why? Because when other astronomers look, they can see the same thing.

Regardless of what a priori assumptions you think exist in the minds of scientists, if the evidence is there, people pay attention.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2013 20:16:30
Folks : This is "dynamite ", this is "controlled demolition " of materialism  by an ex-materialist : This might be the last nail to be knocked on the coffin of materialism :  Enjoy
 

Your "dynamite" looks like an introduction to his book, which outlines what he is about to discuss. Since you've read it, what is the empirical evidence for his theory about how consciousness works? How does he propose to test his newer ideas?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 20:28:36
Guys :

See here below "The conscious mind ..." By David J.Chalmers , especially the comments there below :

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144960.The_Conscious_Mind
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 20:31:00
Folks : This is "dynamite ", this is "controlled demolition " of materialism  by an ex-materialist : This might be the last nail to be knocked on the coffin of materialism :  Enjoy
 

Your "dynamite" looks like an introduction to his book, which outlines what he is about to discuss. Since you've read it, what is the empirical evidence for his theory about how consciousness works? How does he propose to test his newer ideas?
[/quote]

I haven't read it yet , i have read just the introduction which is displayed here above , as you can see : it was recommended to me by some friends on the field .

The introduction pretty summarizes up the content of the book : pretty demolishing for materialism,and that by an ex-materialist such as Chalmers  .

Try to read the comments regarding that book, here above thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 20:46:54




Wrong :

The false "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream materialist "scientific world view " does exclude , per definition , a priori and per se any scientific attempts to deal with consciousness as a non-physical process : see how the current majority of the mainstream scientific priesthood have been dealing with Sheldrake and co ,for example .


Sheldrake has received the treatment he has because he has offered no evidence for his theories; they are un-testable, unfalsifiable. So his work so far has been relegated to pseudoscience, just as Popper says a theory like that should be.

Comets are discovered by amateur astronomers, whose equipment is not as big and fancy as research institution's. They may also lack advanced degrees or published papers. But their findings are taken seriously. Why? Because when other astronomers look, they can see the same thing.

Regardless of what a priori assumptions you think exist in the minds of scientists, if the evidence is there, people pay attention.

I am not ,once again, such a fan of Sheldrake's morphic resonance theory , but it is a falsifiable theory though , relatively speaking ....

He has been testing it empirically ,in many ways ,and even via tv tests ...all around the world .... you just happen not to be watching haha .

Anyway , fact is , any scientific attempts to try to go beyond the mainstream "all is matter , including the mind " materialist false "scientific world view " are , per definition, a-priori and per -se automatically branded as pseudo-science or worse , no matter how much evidence or lack of it they might deliver .

Plus , despite the overwhelming evidence for the fact that materialism is false , and hence the current "scientific world view " is also false as a result ,despite all that , like the ones which seem to  have been delivered by Chalmers and by many others , despite all that , mainstream science continues to ignore them all , as if they do not exist ...

What does that tell you then , my pretty charming lady ?

Nice weekend by the way .

Have fun,and do not forget to try to test your own consciousness empirically ,to see whether your own consciousness is in your own brain or not , while you are at it ,somehow haha ,kidding  .

Thanks, appreciate indeed .

Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2013 20:53:58
Guys :

See here below "The conscious mind ..." By David J.Chalmers , especially the comments there below :

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144960.The_Conscious_Mind

Which comment(s) in particular?

Again,  since you've read it, what is the empirical evidence for his theory about how consciousness works? How does he propose to test his newer ideas?

The only thing I saw in the comments that might be close to an answer to that question is:

"He goes onto argue that we ought to search for basic psycho-physical laws which would naturally govern how and when phenomenal experience arises and its structure. He argues that the structure of consciousness mirrors or is invariant with awareness, awareness being a psychology property describing how information is retrievable by the system. Chalmers ends the book on a speculative note exploring how information might give rise to elementary kinds of consciousness, wherever information might be found and goes onto apply his insights into arguing for the possibility of strong AI"

Which is interesting, but something you strongly argued against in your discussions with David Cooper.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2013 21:11:55
Guys :

See here below "The conscious mind ..." By David J.Chalmers , especially the comments there below :

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144960.The_Conscious_Mind

Which comment(s) in particular?

Again,  since you've read it, what is the empirical evidence for his theory about how consciousness works? How does he propose to test his newer ideas?

The only thing I saw in the comments that might be close to an answer to that question is:

"He goes onto argue that we ought to search for basic psycho-physical laws which would naturally govern how and when phenomenal experience arises and its structure. He argues that the structure of consciousness mirrors or is invariant with awareness, awareness being a psychology property describing how information is retrievable by the system. Chalmers ends the book on a speculative note exploring how information might give rise to elementary kinds of consciousness, wherever information might be found and goes onto apply his insights into arguing for the possibility of strong AI"

Which is interesting, but something you strongly argued against in your discussions with David Cooper.
[/quote]

I am interested only in his refutation of materialism : see the comments of people in that link regarding that book ,the latter i haven't read yet , even though the introduction pretty tells the story of the book : a non-reductionist naturalist attempt to explain consciousness ...

You did miss my statement here above , saying that even the non-reductionist naturalist conception of nature is also ...false .


See ya later , alligator .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2013 21:44:37
I am interested only in his refutation of materialism...  regarding that book ,the latter i haven't read yet...
Says it all really.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Kryptid on 30/11/2013 23:27:01
Why have you still not answered my question?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2013 02:16:50


I haven't read it yet , i have read just the introduction which is displayed here above , as you can see : it was recommended to me by some friends on the field .

The introduction pretty summarizes up the content of the book : pretty demolishing for materialism,and that by an ex-materialist such as Chalmers  .


Oh, well, that settles it then. Thanks so much.

Did I mention I'm writing a book as well? Here's the introduction:

"In chapter one, I present a solution the Riemann Hypothesis in mathematics and solve the P vs NP problem. Then in chapter two,  I show how to detect gravity waves (it’s easier than you think!) Moving on to chemistry, I explain why some enzymes exhibit faster than diffusion kinetics. Chapter four  provides a quick and easy translation of the previously undeciphered  language of Rongorongo, and in Chapter five I predict the stock market returns for the next ten years. Chapter six explains the cause of Fibromyalgia (turns out it really is caused by garden gnomes – who knew?) and in chapter seven, I  disclose the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains, as well as all of the socks that go missing in the laundry and the unmatched lids to plastic containers. Finally, in chapter eight, I balance the budgets of several nations in a fair and equitable way, and solve world hunger."

If you don’t have time to read my book, don’t worry,  it’s all pretty much right there in the introduction.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/12/2013 08:06:06
Does Chalmers provide a single, unequivocal, testable definition of consciousness? If not, the book is a waste of paper, and of the reader's time.

On the other hand I'm looking forward to reading Cheryl's magnum opus - or at least the bit about missing socks. I've solved all the other problems, but can't reveal the solutions because it would upset the world zionist conspiracy in the Vatican.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/12/2013 15:30:58
And I am also writing a book entitled; What, on Earth, is Intelligence?

I'm anxious to examine the acute differences between Consciousness, which is missing from the equation in this thread, and Intelligence, which has been exercised by many contributors here but not appropriated by it's author.

...........................Ethos
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 17:46:14


I haven't read it yet , i have read just the introduction which is displayed here above , as you can see : it was recommended to me by some friends on the field .

The introduction pretty summarizes up the content of the book : pretty demolishing for materialism,and that by an ex-materialist such as Chalmers  .


Oh, well, that settles it then. Thanks so much.

Did I mention I'm writing a book as well? Here's the introduction:

"In chapter one, I present a solution the Riemann Hypothesis in mathematics and solve the P vs NP problem. Then in chapter two,  I show how to detect gravity waves (it’s easier than you think!) Moving on to chemistry, I explain why some enzymes exhibit faster than diffusion kinetics. Chapter four  provides a quick and easy translation of the previously undeciphered  language of Rongorongo, and in Chapter five I predict the stock market returns for the next ten years. Chapter six explains the cause of Fibromyalgia (turns out it really is caused by garden gnomes – who knew?) and in chapter seven, I  disclose the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains, as well as all of the socks that go missing in the laundry and the unmatched lids to plastic containers. Finally, in chapter eight, I balance the budgets of several nations in a fair and equitable way, and solve world hunger."

If you don’t have time to read my book, don’t worry,  it’s all pretty much right there in the introduction.
[/quote]

Do you want me to display the whole book here , come on :
I gave you its introduction + a link which summarizes the content of that book + the comments of people there who actually read it ...

What do you want more ?

I can even give you a link where you can download that whole book for free and safely as well, if you want to .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 17:49:43
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 17:57:25
I am interested only in his refutation of materialism...  regarding that book ,the latter i haven't read yet...
Says it all really.

Not really : i am just not interested in his property dualism , that's all .
What interests me in that book of his is the fact that he realises that materialism cannot account for consciousness , and hence materialism is false , which also means that the current  materialist mainstream  "scientific world view " is also false , logically : the latter fact has been my  main or core presented issue here , and therefore the assertion that  "the mind is in the  brain , or that the mind is just the product of the physical brain's activity" is just a materialist belief assumption that  is also false ....to mention just that .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 18:06:39
And I am also writing a book entitled; What, on Earth, is Intelligence?

I'm anxious to examine the acute differences between Consciousness, which is missing from the equation in this thread, and Intelligence, which has been exercised by many contributors here but not appropriated by it's author.

...........................Ethos

Well, genius ,your false sarcasm or irony might hit you back in the face ,  as a launched boomerang that misses its intended target(s) , as follows :

The fact that the false materialist conception of nature has been taken for granted as the "scientific  world view " for so long now , by the majority of scientists ,and by most people as well , including all of you here thus , is evidence enough for the fact that cognitive intelligence is certainly not the highest form of human intelligence or intellect .
You have to extend or develop your own consciousness ,especially your imagination,  as to be able to grasp that fact .

No wonder that Einstein said once :

" Imagination is more important than knowledge " .

Einstein knew  that fact  ,first hand,from experience  : without his great imagery imagination , he would never have been able to come up with his relativity theory .

His brain was preserved for more than 40 years ,after his death of course ,as to study it , in order to "understand" his exceptional intelligence , so it seems , but those silly  materialist scientists who were attempting to do just the latter were just assuming , materialistically thus ,  that "human intelligence is in the brain, as the mind is in the brain" , not knowing that there materialism was false , and hence neither human intelligence ( there are many forms of the latter : social, cognitive , mathematical, psychological, emotional  , existential, spiritual ,and other forms of human intelligence ) ,and hence neither human intelligence , nor human consciousness, the mind  or imagination are "in the brain " .



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/12/2013 18:28:58
And I am also writing a book entitled; What, on Earth, is Intelligence?

I'm anxious to examine the acute differences between Consciousness, which is missing from the equation in this thread, and Intelligence, which has been exercised by many contributors here but not appropriated by it's author.

...........................Ethos

Well, genius
Well sir, I thank you for the compliment. Nevertheless, that comment only proves your inability to distinguish truth from error. I'm no genius and neither are you sir. I challenged you once before in this thread to convince us with repeatable evidence and you chose to ignore my challenge. Typical behavior from someone who is only seeking attention. I reiterate, offering you this attention is a waste of time and as a remedy, I suggest we all apply this cure to the question.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2013 18:37:30
Do you want me to display the whole book here , come on :
I gave you its introduction + a link which summarizes the content of that book + the comments of people there who actually read it ...

What do you want more ?

Well,  one would expect you to have read it before deeming it a crushing blow to materialism. Just sayin'.

Quote
I can even give you a link where you can download that whole book for free and safely as well, if you want to .

Thanks. At the moment, though, I'm busy reading the Table of Contents of several important novels. I much prefer the Table of Contents of Dostoevsky's works to Tolstoy's.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 19:36:08
Do you want me to display the whole book here , come on :
I gave you its introduction + a link which summarizes the content of that book + the comments of people there who actually read it ...

What do you want more ?

Well,  one would expect you to have read it before deeming it a crushing blow to materialism. Just sayin'.

Be serious ,lady , ok ?
The introduction of that book i displayed here above + its summary as displayed in that link i did provide + the comments of people in the latter link + some of my friends ' comments on the book + Sheldrake's talk about Chalmers in some of his books on the subject of materialism + ....+....are reasons enough to assume that Chalmers has been devastating for materialism ,and he's not the only one who has done just that .

I just wanted to give you a  taste of that ,just to stimulate you in trying to find out about all the overwhelming evidence against materialism, yourselves  .

Quote
Quote
I can even give you a link where you can download that whole book for free and safely as well, if you want to .

Thanks. At the moment, though, I'm busy reading the Table of Contents of several important novels. I much prefer the Table of Contents of Dostoevsky's works to Tolstoy's.

Good read then .
Dostoyevsky  was one of my favourite writers ...once .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 19:38:45
And I am also writing a book entitled; What, on Earth, is Intelligence?

I'm anxious to examine the acute differences between Consciousness, which is missing from the equation in this thread, and Intelligence, which has been exercised by many contributors here but not appropriated by it's author.

...........................Ethos

Well, genius
Well sir, I thank you for the compliment. Nevertheless, that comment only proves your inability to distinguish truth from error. I'm no genius and neither are you sir. I challenged you once before in this thread to convince us with repeatable evidence and you chose to ignore my challenge. Typical behavior from someone who is only seeking attention. I reiterate, offering you this attention is a waste of time and as a remedy, I suggest we all apply this cure to the question.

Be serious : "genius " was no compliment ,if you haven't noticed yet already .
And...I am a free man haha , and hence i do decide myself to whom i might respond or not .
Sue me then haha .

P.S.: Try to say something relevant to this thread's subject , otherwise,  just have the decency to be silent then ,deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 19:44:49
Can someone here try to tell me why physicists have been trying to come up with some sort of a  "theory of everything " = theory of nothing ?, since science is not about definite holistic knowledge , just about approximate conjectures,just about temporary knowledge ... .

Use your imagination then haha , since "Imagination is more important than knowledge " ...

Human imagination and creativity that have been behind many ...scientific discoveries,behind many great works of world literature  , music , philosophy ...................

Ask our friends Einstein, Shekespeare , Dickens, Dostoyevsky , Popper ,Cervantes ....William Golding ....Ask Alice in wonderland also ,if you do not believe me ,or just her brothers Marx, Freud , or just her little bros ...Dawkins ,Dennett .... : not to mention Frankenstein's monster ,or the modern ...Prometheus haha . .

Have fun, folks, life is too short .

Don't take yourselves too seriously as to become some weird odd  tragic-hilarious versions of Cervante's Don Quixote haha : i am not immune to the latter ...either .

That fictitious Don Quixote was / is and will  always be an endless source of inspiration , an endless sources of realising the fact we are all inclined to forget about : putting things into perspective ,an endless source of  fun at least ....you have no idea .
Don't become boring doll ,uninteresting , uninspiring , not-funny , unimaginative  or silly ,dry black-holes versions of Don Quixote then .

All the best then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Kryptid on 01/12/2013 20:12:51
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz

And that makes it impossible to answer?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/12/2013 20:17:54
... The introduction of that book i displayed here above + its summary as displayed in that link i did provide + the comments of people in the latter link + some of my friends ' comments on the book + Sheldrake's talk about Chalmers in some of his books on the subject of materialism + ....+....are reasons enough to assume that Chalmers has been devastating for materialism ,and he's not the only one who has done just that .
Be sure to let us know when the 'devastation' of materialism produces something useful or interesting.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/12/2013 20:24:16
Can someone here try to tell me why physicists have been trying to come up with some sort of a  "theory of everything " = theory of nothing ?, since science is not about definite holistic knowledge , just about approximate conjectures,just about temporary knowledge ... .
The label 'Theory of Everything' was a somewhat sarcastic description for a theory that would reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, in much the same way as 'The Big Bang' was a mocking description for the start of the expanding universe. They both caught the eye of the media and the public imagination. I'd be surprised if any intelligent person take 'Theory of Everything' entirely literally.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 20:25:37
In short :

Once again , old Popper's extremely visionnary,inspiring , enlightening and far reaching writings do whisper to us the fact that any metaphysical theory of nature in science   , including materialism thus+  its extensions  , should be just temporary untill they get falsified successfully by another alternate competitive theory of nature ,with more explanatory power ,the same  process would go for the latter also eventually , and so on .

Materialism cannot account for consciousness, and hence materialism is ...false, not to mention the fact that materialism has been becoming so unfalsifiable ,as to be 'confirmed or corroborated verified predicted " by everything , that it cannot but be ,not only unscientific , but also ...false  .

That there seems to be no alternate serious competitive better falsifiable theory of nature with more explanatory power out there yet , does not mean there is none : it is just that the very nature of consciousness is so challenging and difficult that current humanity is not yet able to come up with any seriously faslifiable theory of consciousness : there is in fact no seriously falsifiable theory of consciousness out there yet with more explanatory power than the rest ,including the materialist one that's obviously false  .

Let's hope some genius , in the future, would come up with such a revolutionary theory then, that might revolutionize our own understandings of ourselves and the universe as a result ,simply because consciousness is nowadays both THE obstacle and THE key to any revolutionary understanding of ourselves and the universe : there is nothing more important than understanding our own consciousness thus, understanding or lack of it that do have serious implications for us all ,as everybody can see , even in this thread  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 20:45:16
Can someone here try to tell me why physicists have been trying to come up with some sort of a  "theory of everything " = theory of nothing ?, since science is not about definite holistic knowledge , just about approximate conjectures,just about temporary knowledge ... .
The label 'Theory of Everything' was a somewhat sarcastic description for a theory that would reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, in much the same way as 'The Big Bang' was a mocking description for the start of the expanding universe. They both caught the eye of the media and the public imagination. I'd be surprised if any intelligent person take 'Theory of Everything' entirely literally.

You're either not using your  own God-given  imagination or you do have almost ...none , sorry :

I have been also sarcastic and ironic regarding that theory of "everything " , that's why i have been equating it with ...nothing , all along,if you haven't noticed just that already  .

But ,at the other hand ,  ironically and paradoxically spaking : does the current materialistic science , thanks to materialism thus , does it not try to explaing
Quote
everything
just in terms of phyics and chemistry then ? Does it not ? : "everything " that cannot explain in fact ...anything : i hope that you would be able to detect the subtlety of the latter .

Since " all is matter ,including the mind " ,as materialistic science , and hence as the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming , then , it's pretty logical to try to explain "everything " = nothing( Try to detect the subtle relative meaning  of the latter as well, while you are at it then ) ,just in terms of physics and chemistry alone thus ,which means that materialism cannot but "explain everything = nothing " via just matter as the presumed only reality out there = any theory of nature that  "intrinsically can explain everything = nothing " is thus unfalsifiable and thus ...unscientific , not to mention ...false .

Materialism that's no better than religious dualism ,the latter that tries to explain "everything =nothing " also ,just in terms of ...God .
Materialism is in fact much lower than religious dualism ,simply because materialism is intrinsically a half blind freak of nature haha , metaphorically and amusingly speaking then, as to be looking at reality just through a key hole , it has been taking for the whole ...real thing out there : how freakish haha , kidding ,odd weird absurd surreal implausible , idiotic .... can materialism ever be indeed , the more when we see how materialism has been taken for granted for so long now, without question, as no-less ...wao ....than the "scientific world view " ..

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 20:49:09
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz

And that makes it impossible to answer?

You don't know the difference between a serious question and a ...quiz ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 21:02:03
Popper's epistemological writings regarding science as falsification,science  as an evolutionary process of try and error  , do also explain "everything " =nothing in that regard ,ironically metaphorically speaking then , that they cannot but be "not -entirely" ..."true" or "not-entirely" ....rational (See Hume's true logical rejection of induction in the sense that it can also be applied to Popper  also ,in the above mentioned sense at least . )   .
Some other genius might enlighten us  thus  ,in the future , regarding the still-unknown-to-us-all other  kinds of evolutionary human epistemological processes not yet discovered as such yet ,with more explanatory power , that might replace those of Popper as well, and so on ...
Who knows ?
Note that the epistemology of Popper does not go only for science , but also for religion, politics , economics and the rest , ironically paradoxically enough, in the inductive sense ,wao, induction that was logically rejected by Hume   .

Popper can be relatively refuted via his own epistemological and other thought that were based on his relatively brilliant solution regarding Hume's logical rejection of induction , Popper's relatively brilliant solution that could not make the fact go away that Hume's rejection of incdution was logically true , just by assuming that induction does not exist as such ,or just by saying that humans ' thought or science cannot be inductive,simply because i do think that induction does exist as such , humans can only try to approach though ,but can never reach ,since human knowledge is only ....temporary and evolutionary , not definite or complete .

In short :

I cannot be but a-priori be inclined to relatively reject or be suspicious of any theories that can intrinsically explain "everything " = nothing , metaphorically speaking .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2013 21:34:49
In short :

We , as human beings , do need some relative degrees of regularity ,conformity,  stability ,security ,systems  of reference and continuity to be able to conduct our lives through a sense of comfort and ease security ,as to develop habits we take for true ,including our scientific temporary knowledge ,including the laws of physics : even the notion of laws is a human ...projection .

Laws imply that they are fixed and unchanged or eternal  ,static ,(even though social and other laws do get changed from time to time ), while everything is evolutionary in this universe in fact .

We should thus never be too comfortable and certain as to take our habits and knowledge as ...true : Hume's rejection of induction does tell us they are not .

Nothing is in fact absolutely certain in life but ...death .

You tell me ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2013 22:12:02
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz

And that makes it impossible to answer?

You don't know the difference between a serious question and a ...quiz ?

The reason he won't answer a simple question like the one you asked is that he doesn't want to clarify his position.
As Popper says, keeping your theory vague, makes it harder to refute.
But as he also says, making it unfalsifiable makes it pseudoscience. 

I don't see anything "quiz like" about what you asked. It's a simple dodge on his part.

Here is your question again, along with mine:

    Which of these three statements best describes your stance?

    (1) All aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
    (2) Some aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically, but others cannot.
    (3) No aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.


Which of these approximates your view of chemistry and physics?

1)Some things can, but others can’t be explained by chemistry or physics  or

 2)Everything always involves an immaterial explanation, even if there is sometimes chemistry and physics involved in the process,    or

3)Chemistry and physics do not explain anything that happens. They do not matter at all, they are irrelevant. They explain nothing. They explain nothing by themselves or even when combined with a immaterial explanation.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2013 22:21:46
Can someone here try to tell me why physicists have been trying to come up with some sort of a  "theory of everything " = theory of nothing ?, since science is not about definite holistic knowledge , just about approximate conjectures,just about temporary knowledge ... .

If you go back to the beginning of this thread, that was your big criticism of science, that it wasn't holistic enough, and the holistic approach, as well as ancient teachings, was the key to understanding consciousness.

Quote
Use your imagination then haha , since "Imagination is more important than knowledge " ...

Human imagination and creativity that have been behind many ...scientific discoveries,behind many great works of world literature  , music , philosophy ...................

For someone who's so keen on imagination, you can't explain those "whole new vistas" that you imagine that science will explore once it is free of materialism, and still can't imagine an example of an experiment to test the immaterial.

[/quote]

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/12/2013 23:28:41
...Nothing is in fact absolutely certain in life but ...death .
Close; it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/12/2013 23:33:13
Quote
Popper's epistemological writings regarding science as falsification,

Wrong. Please read Popper before misquoting him. His ideas weren't original or even particularly profound, but you do him a disservice by not understanding them.

And if materialism really has been devastated, why didn't I feel the shockwave? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Kryptid on 02/12/2013 01:17:59
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz

And that makes it impossible to answer?

You don't know the difference between a serious question and a ...quiz ?
The fact that you keep twisting words to dodge the question is rather revealing. If quizzes are impossible to answer, then you'd better go correct the school system about their wrong ways. My options were "all", "some" and "none". That covers all the bases. What fourth option could exist?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2013 03:13:19
Quote from: DonQuichotte
  social, cognitive , mathematical, psychological, emotional  , existential, spiritual ,and other forms of human intelligence ) ,and hence neither human intelligence , nor human consciousness, the mind  or imagination are "in the brain " .
So please tell us, pray tell; Where would you suggest we find these attributes? Would you dare to suggest another location for their habitation? You've made the statement, yes? Now support it with evidence...........and if you can't.................you're nothing more than a Hoax!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2013 12:29:03
Feynman said science involves:
1. Making a guess (hypothesis) about the explanation for some real world observation.
2. Calculating the implications of that guess.
3. Testing to see whether those implications are borne out in the real world.

Clearly the guess must have calculable implications that can be tested.

Don has made a guess about consciousness. Unfortunately, by invoking the absence of material causation and the unknown, there are no known implications, and nothing testable.

By framing it in terms of what it is not (i.e. consciousness is not of material origin) one might assume that it could be falsified by demonstrating the converse (i.e. that it is of material origin). However, the lack of positive definition of 'immaterial'  means that no matter how much detailed evidence we collect that points to consciousness having a material origin, no matter how detailed the neural correlates of conscious behaviour, he can claim some non-material controlling influence, whether at the sub-atomic level, the biochemical level, the neural level, or the whole brain level, without fear of disproof. By reductio-ad-absurdum, it becomes clear that, in general, the immaterial hypothesis is no explanation at all, it is valueless as it adds nothing to our existing understanding and predicts nothing. It is the argument from ignorance combined with the argument from incredulity and follows the same logical progression as the god-of-the-gaps argument.

It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits. What difference does the shaman's explanation make? what use is it?

Consciousness, of course, is a subtler problem, because no matter how detailed our elucidation and understanding of the neural construction of consciousness, we still have the existential problem of subjective experience, the sense of self, the experience of qualia, and it would seem that no amount of objective explanation can explain the subjective.

Looking at creatures like the octopus, which despite having a completely different nervous system from any vertebrate, shows strong evidence of a limited consciousness and self-awareness, my hunch is that we'll find that subjective experience is a feature of sufficiently complex flexible and adaptive goal-driven learning systems; i.e. if you are one, you will have some level of awareness and subjective experience.

I may be wrong, there may be a different explanation, or the explanation may remain unknown, but what seems clear for now, is that the negatively defined 'immaterial' hypothesis asserted here by Don (without supporting argument or evidence), explains nothing and can explain nothing. It is a redundant distraction.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2013 13:43:37
Feynman said science involves:
1. Making a guess (hypothesis) about the explanation for some real world observation.
2. Calculating the implications of that guess.
3. Testing to see whether those implications are borne out in the real world.

Clearly the guess must have calculable implications that can be tested.

Don has made a guess about consciousness. Unfortunately, by invoking the absence of material causation and the unknown, there are no known implications, and nothing testable.

By framing it in terms of what it is not (i.e. consciousness is not of material origin) one might assume that it could be falsified by demonstrating the converse (i.e. that it is of material origin). However, the lack of positive definition of 'immaterial'  means that no matter how much detailed evidence we collect that points to consciousness having a material origin, no matter how detailed the neural correlates of conscious behaviour, he can claim some non-material controlling influence, whether at the sub-atomic level, the biochemical level, the neural level, or the whole brain level, without fear of disproof. By reductio-ad-absurdum, it becomes clear that, in general, the immaterial hypothesis is no explanation at all, it is valueless as it adds nothing to our existing understanding and predicts nothing. It is the argument from ignorance combined with the argument from incredulity and follows the same logical progression as the god-of-the-gaps argument.

It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits. What difference does the shaman's explanation make? what use is it?

Consciousness, of course, is a subtler problem, because no matter how detailed our elucidation and understanding of the neural construction of consciousness, we still have the existential problem of subjective experience, the sense of self, the experience of qualia, and it would seem that no amount of objective explanation can explain the subjective.

Looking at creatures like the octopus, which despite having a completely different nervous system from any vertebrate, shows strong evidence of a limited consciousness and self-awareness, my hunch is that we'll find that subjective experience is a feature of sufficiently complex flexible and adaptive goal-driven learning systems; i.e. if you are one, you will have some level of awareness and subjective experience.

I may be wrong, there may be a different explanation, or the explanation may remain unknown, but what seems clear for now, is that the negatively defined 'immaterial' hypothesis asserted here by Don (without supporting argument or evidence), explains nothing and can explain nothing. It is a redundant distraction.
Excellent summation dlorde..............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 16:37:19
Feynman said science involves:
1. Making a guess (hypothesis) about the explanation for some real world observation.
2. Calculating the implications of that guess.
3. Testing to see whether those implications are borne out in the real world.

Clearly the guess must have calculable implications that can be tested.

Don has made a guess about consciousness. Unfortunately, by invoking the absence of material causation and the unknown, there are no known implications, and nothing testable.

By framing it in terms of what it is not (i.e. consciousness is not of material origin) one might assume that it could be falsified by demonstrating the converse (i.e. that it is of material origin). However, the lack of positive definition of 'immaterial'  means that no matter how much detailed evidence we collect that points to consciousness having a material origin, no matter how detailed the neural correlates of conscious behaviour, he can claim some non-material controlling influence, whether at the sub-atomic level, the biochemical level, the neural level, or the whole brain level, without fear of disproof. By reductio-ad-absurdum, it becomes clear that, in general, the immaterial hypothesis is no explanation at all, it is valueless as it adds nothing to our existing understanding and predicts nothing. It is the argument from ignorance combined with the argument from incredulity and follows the same logical progression as the god-of-the-gaps argument.

It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits. What difference does the shaman's explanation make? what use is it?

Consciousness, of course, is a subtler problem, because no matter how detailed our elucidation and understanding of the neural construction of consciousness, we still have the existential problem of subjective experience, the sense of self, the experience of qualia, and it would seem that no amount of objective explanation can explain the subjective.

Looking at creatures like the octopus, which despite having a completely different nervous system from any vertebrate, shows strong evidence of a limited consciousness and self-awareness, my hunch is that we'll find that subjective experience is a feature of sufficiently complex flexible and adaptive goal-driven learning systems; i.e. if you are one, you will have some level of awareness and subjective experience.

I may be wrong, there may be a different explanation, or the explanation may remain unknown, but what seems clear for now, is that the negatively defined 'immaterial' hypothesis asserted here by Don (without supporting argument or evidence), explains nothing and can explain nothing. It is a redundant distraction.




I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible, and I even argue for a form of dualism.
 But this is just part of the scientific process.
Certain sorts of explanation turn out not to work, so we need to embrace other sorts of explanation instead.
 Everything I say here is compatible with the results of contemporary science; our picture of the natural world is broadened, not overturned.
 And this broadening allows the possibility of a naturalistic theory of consciousness that might have been impossible without it.
It seems to me that to ignore the problems of consciousness would be antiscientific; it is in the scientific spirit to face up to them directly.
To those who
suspect that science requires materialism, I ask that you wait and see.

I should note that the conclusions of this work are conclusions, in the strongest sense.

Temperamentally, I am
strongly inclined toward materialist reductive explanation, and I have no strong spiritual or religious inclinations.
For a number of years, I hoped for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly.
 It eventually seemed plain to me that these conclusions were forced on anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.
 Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.


Source : "The conscious mind " by David J.Chalmers , Introduction .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/12/2013 16:40:08
dlorde:

But Feynman wasn't a philosopher, so what he said is considered to be a statement of the obvious (which is indeed the basis of physics) rather than a profound insight, which is the term assigned to Popper's garbled restatement.  How, I wonder, does one become a philosopher? Seems to be the ultimate profession, with massive respect and no liability. 

Quote
What difference does the shaman's explanation make? what use is it?

It can inculcate fear and hatred among the stupid, and thus keep the shaman in business and support the killing industry.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/12/2013 16:43:50
Quote
anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.

I'd love to. But first, tell me what it is. I don't buy goods without a meaningful description.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 16:48:15
Why have you still not answered my question?

That was not a question , just a quiz

And that makes it impossible to answer?

You don't know the difference between a serious question and a ...quiz ?
The fact that you keep twisting words to dodge the question is rather revealing. If quizzes are impossible to answer, then you'd better go correct the school system about their wrong ways. My options were "all", "some" and "none". That covers all the bases. What fourth option could exist?

We're not playing quiz -like games here , be serious, please .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/12/2013 16:51:44
If you answered any of the questions put to you, Don, you might be taken seriously. As of now, your postings are merely a waste of space between those involved in a serious discussion.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 16:52:43
Quote
anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.

I'd love to. But first, tell me what it is. I don't buy goods without a meaningful description.

So, according to you, we should just ignore such a highly   vital and  important process such as consciousness , simply because there is no clear definition of it ?
Consciousness, is , per definition, so elusive deceptive and mysterious that it still does escape any unanymous clear definition ,but that does not prevent scientists , philosophers ...from trying to approach it ,their own ways .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2013 16:58:23
But Feynman wasn't a philosopher, so what he said is considered to be a statement of the obvious (which is indeed the basis of physics) rather than a profound insight, which is the term assigned to Popper's garbled restatement.  How, I wonder, does one become a philosopher? Seems to be the ultimate profession, with massive respect and no liability.
How true; but on the other hand, what constructive contribution has philosophy made to our lives?

Quote
Quote
What difference does the shaman's explanation make? what use is it?
It can inculcate fear and hatred among the stupid, and thus keep the shaman in business and support the killing industry.
'Nuff said...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 17:02:45
dlorde :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-Everything-Stephen-Hawking/dp/8179925919

I have read , yesterday , some parts of Stephen Hawking's "The theory of everything " , and it did confirm my earlier statement that physicists do try to come up with that elusive "inductive " ( Forgeting that Hume had logically rejected induction )  unified theory of everything ,by trying to unify Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum mechanics , in vain .

Was Hawking just kidding then haha by calling that the theory of everything , or by calling the big bang the big bang ?

Materialists scientists physicists can logically only try to come up with a "theory of everything = nothing ", since "all is matter , including the mind " .

Poor Popper might be spinning in his grave , like crazy , together with B.Russell .haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 17:06:32
Poor Chalmers can also not realise the fact that no naturalist theory of consciousness, either the reductive or the non-reductive one , can account for consciousness , the poor lad .
He's just moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm, within nature still  : to the naturalist non-reductionist one , as atheist T.Nagel had done ,for obvious metaphysical purposes thus .
Religious dualists can also not come up with a faslifiable theory of consciousness .
Maybe , just maybe , i don't know for sure of course , who does in fact ?, maybe , just maybe , consciousness will remain beyond ...science .
Any better suggestions, folks ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2013 17:19:59
Don, you're rambling again; get a grip.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 17:38:31
Don, you're rambling again; get a grip.

Meaning ?

Why don't you just try to address my above displayed posts to you , seriously ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2013 19:18:42
Quote
anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.

I'd love to. But first, tell me what it is. I don't buy goods without a meaningful description.

simply because there is no clear definition of it ?
Consciousness, is , per definition, so elusive deceptive and mysterious that it still does escape any unanymous clear definition ,but that does not prevent scientists , philosophers ...from trying to approach it ,their own ways .
Taking that fact into account, maybe you should take this Philosophical question to a Philosophy forum? It does not meet the qualifications to be addressed as a New Theory. This is precisely the reason you're receiving so much grief here Don...... Evidently, the intelligence required to recognize that fact is sorely lacking.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 19:21:13
Folks :

Maybe the following might give you some sort of temporary illusory consolation, regarding consciousness :
Our minds creating our minds haha = tautology :
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/books/review/book-review-soul-dust-the-magic-of-consciousness-by-nicholas-humphrey.html?_r=0

Or any of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Consciousness-Books-List/lm/R3EGL76VZLSV0T
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2013 19:32:50
The definition of a theory:

A coherent group of TESTED general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of EXPLANATION and PREDICTIONS for a class of phenomena...........................PERIOD
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 19:39:20
Quote
anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.

I'd love to. But first, tell me what it is. I don't buy goods without a meaningful description.

simply because there is no clear definition of it ?
Consciousness, is , per definition, so elusive deceptive and mysterious that it still does escape any unanymous clear definition ,but that does not prevent scientists , philosophers ...from trying to approach it ,their own ways .
Taking that fact into account, maybe you should take this Philosophical question to a Philosophy forum? It does not meet the qualifications to be addressed as a New Theory. This is precisely the reason you're receiving so much grief here Don...... Evidently, the intelligence required to recognize that fact is sorely lacking.

Instead of continuing to play the silly frustrated fool with a grudge or a score to settle , think about the following :

Did it ever occur to you that the philosophy of science or epistemology ,does underly the epistemology of science or that of the scientific method itself, as the writings of Karl Popper and others have been showing ?

Did it ever occur to you that the current false materialist  "all is matter ,including the mind thus "  mainstream 'scientific world view " has therefore been assuming that the "mind is in the brain , or that the mind is just the product of the physical brain's activity " ? = the origin or nature of consciousness is a "scientific " issue thus,so it seems  .

Obviously , cognitive intelligence is not the highest form of intelligence,(cognitive intelligence  you do seem to be relatively lacking as well, since i have to repeat the same stuff to you , over and over again , while you have been failing in grasping just that . ), since the majority of scientists and other people , have been taking the false materialist conception of nature for granted as the 'scientific world view "  .

It takes only one successful falsification to declare any given theory or theory of nature as  false : materialism cannot account for consciousness thus , and hence materialism is false : what parts of the above you are not yet able to understand , if ever ,genius ?

Not to mention your lack of ...imagination as well,to say just that  .


P.S.: Other scientists or philosophers , like Chalmers , Nagel and others , do try to address the issue or hard problem of consciousness , via a non-reductionist naturalist approach .

Science must thus , at least , go through a revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm , not only through a paradigm shift , thanks to the hard problem of consciousness that has been proving the materialist dominating mainstream meta-paradigm in science ,  as ....false thus .

In short :

How come all people here have been failing in grasping the simple above ,for so long now , for months now in fact , during these  long  kilometers long 43 pages of this thread,from here to Japan  ?:

You ,guys , do seriously have to ask this question to yourselves .

What , on earth , is wrong with you , guys , or with your own consciousness, intelligence , imagination ...as not to be able to grasp the simple fact that materialism is false , and hence the current "scientific world view " is also false ,logically,thanks to the hard problem of ...consciousness  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/12/2013 19:53:30
Poor Chalmers can also not realise the fact that no naturalist theory of consciousness, either the reductive or the non-reductive one , can account for consciousness , the poor lad .
He's just moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm

How are you not doing the same? How are you not simply moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm by invoking the immaterial?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 20:01:23
Poor Chalmers can also not realise the fact that no naturalist theory of consciousness, either the reductive or the non-reductive one , can account for consciousness , the poor lad .
He's just moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm

How are you not doing the same? How are you not simply moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm by invoking the immaterial?

Good question  indeed , for a change : i must give you credit for just that ,sweet Cheryl of ours : good thinking,no kidding,i am serious   :

Well,since the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " conception of nature is false ,mainly because materialism cannot account for consciousness ,  then , logically , not -all is matter ,including consciousness thus = consciousness is not material physical or biological = simple logic .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2013 20:38:43
Why don't you just try to address my above displayed posts to you , seriously ?
I might if I could find something coherent in them to address...

Why don't you answer any of the questions asked of you by anyone here, seriously?

For example: Which of these three statements best describes your stance?

    (1) All aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
    (2) Some aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically, but others cannot.
    (3) No aspects of the immaterial can be verified scientifically.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2013 20:50:39
Why don't you just try to address my above displayed posts to you , seriously ?
I might if I could find something coherent in them to address...


You gotta be kidding me : come on , be serious : RU blind ? Guess so .
I might be the only one here able to see , in this land of the blind-thread haha .
I will become blind myself , if i keep on "living on this land of the blind-thread " ,who knows ?
The worst kind of blindness is that of the ...heart , the latter as not the biological one .
Many seeing people are blind , and vice versa .
You seem to lack the most important sight of them all , the internal one .
I might be your only chance to see the light haha , kidding .
Congratulations .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2013 21:09:42
Don Quixote: The chivalrous but UNREALISTIC hero from the novel by Cervantes. Very serious similarities here by name and personality Mr. Don.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/12/2013 21:13:53
Poor Chalmers can also not realise the fact that no naturalist theory of consciousness, either the reductive or the non-reductive one , can account for consciousness , the poor lad .
He's just moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm

How are you not doing the same? How are you not simply moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm by invoking the immaterial?

Good question  indeed , for a change : i must give you credit for just that ,sweet Cheryl of ours : good thinking,no kidding,i am serious   :

Well,since the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " conception of nature is false ,mainly because materialism cannot account for consciousness ,  then , logically , not -all is matter ,including consciousness thus = consciousness is not material physical or biological = simple logic .

Nor does immaterialism account for consciousness. In addition, it has not explained any phenomena. Thus consciousness is not immaterial. Simple logic. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/12/2013 21:26:04




I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible, and I even argue for a form of dualism.
 But this is just part of the scientific process.
Certain sorts of explanation turn out not to work, so we need to embrace other sorts of explanation instead.
 Everything I say here is compatible with the results of contemporary science; our picture of the natural world is broadened, not overturned.
 And this broadening allows the possibility of a naturalistic theory of consciousness that might have been impossible without it.
It seems to me that to ignore the problems of consciousness would be antiscientific; it is in the scientific spirit to face up to them directly.
To those who
suspect that science requires materialism, I ask that you wait and see.

I should note that the conclusions of this work are conclusions, in the strongest sense.

Temperamentally, I am
strongly inclined toward materialist reductive explanation, and I have no strong spiritual or religious inclinations.
For a number of years, I hoped for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly.
 It eventually seemed plain to me that these conclusions were forced on anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.
 Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.


Source : "The conscious mind " by David J.Chalmers , Introduction .

Again, this is an introduction, which describes what he is about to discuss. Without the argument itself, I'm not sure what your point is in reposting it, other than to say "Hey, look! Someone who once thought materialist mechanisms explained consciousness now thinks otherwise." But your post doesn't include the reasoning behind this change of view, or the view that has replaced it. And no, I do not expect you to post the entire book, but I would expect some attempt on your part to understand his reasons if you are going to use them as evidence for your own position. (I am pleased that you have chosen someone who is not a total crackpot though.)



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2013 22:37:49
Nor does immaterialism account for consciousness. In addition, it has not explained any phenomena. Thus consciousness is not immaterial. Simple logic. 
Indeed, the logic is impeccable, captain. The immaterial cannot be explanatory. Doctor McCoy, would you agree?

Damn it Spock, I'm a doctor, not a logician!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2013 07:04:01
More fun quizzes! Which consciousness philosopher are you?

Substance dualism
Substance dualism is the view that there exist two kinds of substance: physical and non-physical (the mind), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which adhere in those respective substances.

Property dualism
Property dualism describes a category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance - the physical kind - there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties. In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains).

Emergent materialism
The antithesis of reductionism, emergentism is the idea that increasingly complex structures in the world give rise to the "emergence" of new properties that are something over and above (i.e. cannot be reduced to) their more basic constituents. The concept of emergence dates back to the late 19th century. John Stuart Mill notably argued for an emergentist conception of science in his 1843 System of Logic.Applied to the mind/body relation, emergent materialism is another way of describing the non-reductive physicalist conception of the mind that asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., organized in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge.

Non-reductive Physicalism
Non-reductive physicalism is the predominant contemporary form of property dualism according to which mental properties are mapped to neurobiological properties, but are not reducible to them. Non-reductive physicalism asserts that mind is not ontologically reducible to matter, in that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between the properties of mind and matter. It asserts that while mental states are physical in that they are caused by physical states, they are not ontologically reducible to physical states. No mental state is the same one thing as some physical state, nor is any mental state composed merely from physical states and phenomena.

Anomalous MonismMost contemporary non-reductive physicalists subscribe to a position called anomalous monism (or something very similar to it). Unlike epiphenomenalism, which renders mental properties causally redundant, anomalous monists believe that mental properties make a causal difference to the world. The position was originally put forward by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper Mental Events, which stakes an identity claim between mental and physical tokens based on the notion of supervenience.

Biological Naturalism
Another argument for Non-Reductive Physicalism has been expressed by John Searle, who is the advocate of a distinctive form of physicalism he calls biological naturalism. His view is that although mental states are not ontologically reducible to physical states, they are causally reducible (see causality). He believes the mental will ultimately be explained through neuroscience. This world view does not necessarily fall under property dualism, and therefore does not necessarily make him a "property dualist". He has acknowledged that "to many people" his views and those of property dualists look a lot alike. But he thinks the comparison is misleading.[1]

Epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism is a doctrine about mental-physical causal relations, which holds that one or more mental states and their properties are the byproducts (or epiphenomena) of the states of a closed physical system, and are not causally reducible to physical states (do not have any influence on physical states). According to this view mental properties are as such real constituents of the world, but they are causally impotent; while physical causes give rise to mental properties like sensations, volition, ideas, etc., such mental phenomena themselves cause nothing further - they are causal dead ends.
The position is credited to English biologist Thomas Huxley (Huxley 1874), who analogised mental properties to the whistle on a steam locomotive. The position found favour amongst scientific behaviourists over the next few decades, until behaviourism itself fell to the cognitive revolution in the 1960s. Recently, epiphenomenalism has gained popularity with those struggling to reconcile non-reductive physicalism and mental causation.


Panpsychist property dualism
Panpsychism is the view that all matter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects have a unified center of experience or point of view. Superficially, it seems to be a form of property dualism, since it regards everything as having both mental and physical properties. However, some panpsychists say mechanical behaviour is derived from primitive mentality of atoms and molecules — as are sophisticated mentality and organic behaviour, the difference being attributed to the presence or absence of complex structure in a compound object. So long as the reduction of non-mental properties to mental ones is in place, panpsychism is not strictly a form of property dualism; otherwise it is.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2013 07:41:34
Some thoughts on Chalmers.

I don’t have Chalmer’s book, but he is often described  as  a property dualist, (or as he prefers “a naturalistic dualist.”) He is a property dualist, and not a substance dualist, because while he holds that there is only one type of substance -physical matter (sorry, Don),  there are properties of objects which cannot (in principle) be explained in physical terms and therefore  the mental is not ontologically reducible to physical. To be honest, I have a hard time seeing how this differs tremendously from emergent properties or non-reductive physicalism, but the difference is sometimes explained like this : “Chalmer’s property dualism boils down to the idea that consciousness naturally supervenes, but does not logically supervene on the physical.” And to illustrate what that actually means, he employs the famous philosophical zombie argument.  Because philosophical zombies are logically possible, consciousness cannot logically supervene on the physical. If consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical, then one cannot reduce facts about consciousness to physical facts; therefore, one cannot explain the occurrence of consciousness just by appeal to the physical facts.

I must confess I hate logical arguments based simply on the conceivability of something, because the devil is always in the details. Just because something is not logically contradictory (like an married bachelor) and is conceivable (like a flying toaster, inverted qualia) does not mean it is not contradictory or impossible on some other level (like water that freezes at 200 degrees)

Someone like David Cooper might argue that philosophical zombies are not just conceivable but probable,  in the future with AI. Dennett says they already exist, and we’re it. Or maybe he just says that once in a while to piss off philosophers. I think his actual view of consciousness is better reflected in his statement “The time has come to put the burden of proof squarely on those who persist in using the term,” that is, he’s not going to worry about it until somebody comes up with a  definition of consciousness that isn’t hopelessly confused.

Ramachandron might actually pose a bigger threat to the philosophical zombie argument than Dennett.  Ramachandran’s  research suggests that a philosophical zombie would not be like us in every way except for the absence of conscious experience,  because a neurological equivalent of a philosophical zombie cannot function the same as us.Even when the parts of the brain responsible for receiving stimuli, processing basic information about it, and executing actions, is intact, consciousness appears to be required for flexibility of choice.  A Ramachandran example is blind sight in which patients can make completely accurate “guesses” about the identity of objects they claim they cannot see,  even tell which direction objects are moving, but strangely, cannot use this information to make choices.  In other words, there may be no such thing as a zombie who could be like us in every other respect besides consciousness. One can't say Ramachandron's findings conclusively prove this, but if it were the case, it would put Chalmers in a bad position.






 “
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/12/2013 11:18:43
I must confess I hate logical arguments based simply on the conceivability of something, because the devil is always in the details. Just because something is not logically contradictory (like an married bachelor) and is conceivable (like a flying toaster, inverted qualia) does not mean it is not contradictory or impossible on some other level (like water that freezes at 200 degrees)
I agree. All fictional and imaginary things are conceivable, but I don't see how that necessarily has any bearing on reality.

Quote
Someone like David Cooper might argue that philosophical zombies are not just conceivable but probable,  in the future with AI. Dennett says they already exist, and we’re it. Or maybe he just says that once in a while to piss off philosophers. I think his actual view of consciousness is better reflected in his statement “The time has come to put the burden of proof squarely on those who persist in using the term,” that is, he’s not going to worry about it until somebody comes up with a  definition of consciousness that isn’t hopelessly confused.
I sympathise with Dennett - a reasonable definition is lacking, but there clearly is something we call consciousness, and we know what it feels like (although there's evidence that it misattributes its agency, and possibly a good deal more).

Quote
Ramachandron might actually pose a bigger threat to the philosophical zombie argument than Dennett.  Ramachandran’s  research suggests that a philosophical zombie would not be like us in every way except for the absence of conscious experience...  In other words, there may be no such thing as a zombie who could be like us in every other respect besides consciousness. One can't say Ramachandron's findings conclusively prove this, but if it were the case, it would put Chalmers in a bad position.
Yes; a philosophical zombie may be conceivable, but it seems to me that a creature that is behaviourally indistinguishable from a known conscious creature must itself be conscious because that level of behavioural complexity requires consciousness - or to put it another way, consciousness comes with the level of complexity required to support those behaviours. Also, the energetics of evolutionary development suggests that consciousness is unlikely to be an 'optional extra' that has no significant advantage, yet consumes energy resource.

The alternative is to take Dennett's reversed approach and ask the question if there is no discernable difference between two creatures, and one definitely is not conscious (i.e. p zombie), we can have no grounds to say the other is conscious (also Ockham's Razor). And if a p zombie is possible, then why shouldn't this argument apply to all other humans? and since you are not, fundamentally, different from them, it should apply to you too. Thus you are such a p zombie, and so your feeling of consciousness must be an illusion...

Of course, this is unsatisfactory because it doesn't account for subjective experience, and calling it an illusion isn't particularly helpful, as we must still ask how this 'illusion' arises. It becomes more a semantic argument over labels than a philosophical one. I suspect Dennett is using this argument as a provocative demonstration of where the philosophical zombie idea leads without a robust definition of consciousness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/12/2013 16:09:47
what constructive contribution has philosophy made to our lives?

None, ever. Vide supra et infra.

Applied philosophy has, however, been the cause of many ills, from individual insanity to major wars.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/12/2013 16:13:27
Cheryl

Quote
there are properties of objects which cannot (in principle) be explained in physical terms

Why can't I think of any examples? There are plenty of things I can't explain in practice, but I have no reason to believe that they can't be explained at all by anyone ever.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 17:02:10
Don Quixote: The chivalrous but UNREALISTIC hero from the novel by Cervantes. Very serious similarities here by name and personality Mr. Don.

Indeed : what a miracle that we do seem to agree with each other this time, for a change .
We are all some or other forms of Cervantes' Don Quixote ,from time to time , that's 1 of the reasons why i did choose this nick ,and i did talk about just that on many occasions as well .

Materialism is , ironically enough , a very tragic -hilarious form of Don Quixotism , on  imaginary crusades or on materialist "holy wars " campaigns against imaginary enemies : religions and God , by reducing everything to just matter , including consciousness thus,and then, afterwards by pretending to refute  religions and God ,materialism  had reduced to matter haha : how convenient and handy  .

Materialism that has thus been fighting against material windmills ,materialism has been taking for religions or God .

When materialism takes its own false materialist conception of nature for granted as the "scientific world view " , it's pretty logical to assume that materialism has "beaten " religions and God : a Don Quixotian materialist delusion thus ,like no other ..
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 17:24:27
Poor Chalmers can also not realise the fact that no naturalist theory of consciousness, either the reductive or the non-reductive one , can account for consciousness , the poor lad .
He's just moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm

How are you not doing the same? How are you not simply moving the hard problem of consciousness to another realm by invoking the immaterial?

Good question  indeed , for a change : i must give you credit for just that ,sweet Cheryl of ours : good thinking,no kidding,i am serious   :

Well,since the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " conception of nature is false ,mainly because materialism cannot account for consciousness ,  then , logically , not -all is matter ,including consciousness thus = consciousness is not material physical or biological = simple logic .

Nor does immaterialism account for consciousness. In addition, it has not explained any phenomena. Thus consciousness is not immaterial. Simple logic.



What is immaterialism ? what is that ? you must have been referring to ...idealism, i guess = all is mind = also false,as the materialist "all is matter " conception of nature is also false  .

When i say that not "all is matter " = that means : matter is not the only reality ,the immaterial side of reality is the other part of reality = the other side of the same coin : reality has both material and immaterial sides : since the materialist  "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " is false,simply because materialism cannot account for consciousness  , then , not-all is matter ,including consciousness which is immaterial .
Materialism is false , simply because materialism cannot account for consciousness , not because materialism cannot explain consciousness , but simply because physics and chemistry alone cannot "generate " consciousness , the latter that cannot rise from matter .
That religious dualism cannot explain consciousness either , that does not make the fact go away that consciousness is ...immaterial .
Religious dualism that sees reality thus as having material and immaterial sides : the body , for example, is material physical biological, and consciousness is ...immaterial .

P.S.: The so-called non-reductionist naturalism ,either that  that was proposed by  either  Chalmers ,Nagel, or others , as an alternative to the false reductionist naturalist materialism, can also not account for consciousness , in the sense that  nature cannot "generate " consciousness or life ....

All forms of naturalism thus , either the reductionist materialist one, or the non-reductionist  naturalist ones , are thus false .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 17:45:14
what constructive contribution has philosophy made to our lives?

None, ever. Vide supra et infra.

Applied philosophy has, however, been the cause of many ills, from individual insanity to major wars.

How do you think the scientific method ,or science itself came to exist then ?
The scientific method that's an epistemological theory,a form of human knowledge , a human activity  .
Without philosophy or epistemology ,there would have been no scientific method or science .
Without the philosophy of science ,we would be trying to find our ways in the dark regarding the nature of science ,its epistemology and the latter's evolution, as Karl Popper and others have shown .

In fact , we do need the philosophy of science now more than ever before ,since the current "scientific world view " is false ,  in order to understand the nature of human knowledge and its evolution : science is just a form of human knowledge , a human evolutionary activity that should be put under the "microscope " of the philosophy of science , without which evolutionary science would be lost,or would at best ...stagnate as to become a dogma : proof ? : the current false dogmatic unscientific unfalsifiable "scientific world view ". .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 17:51:39
I must confess I hate logical arguments based simply on the conceivability of something, because the devil is always in the details. Just because something is not logically contradictory (like an married bachelor) and is conceivable (like a flying toaster, inverted qualia) does not mean it is not contradictory or impossible on some other level (like water that freezes at 200 degrees)
I agree. All fictional and imaginary things are conceivable, but I don't see how that necessarily has any bearing on reality.

Quote
Someone like David Cooper might argue that philosophical zombies are not just conceivable but probable,  in the future with AI. Dennett says they already exist, and we’re it. Or maybe he just says that once in a while to piss off philosophers. I think his actual view of consciousness is better reflected in his statement “The time has come to put the burden of proof squarely on those who persist in using the term,” that is, he’s not going to worry about it until somebody comes up with a  definition of consciousness that isn’t hopelessly confused.
I sympathise with Dennett - a reasonable definition is lacking, but there clearly is something we call consciousness, and we know what it feels like (although there's evidence that it misattributes its agency, and possibly a good deal more).

Quote
Ramachandron might actually pose a bigger threat to the philosophical zombie argument than Dennett.  Ramachandran’s  research suggests that a philosophical zombie would not be like us in every way except for the absence of conscious experience...  In other words, there may be no such thing as a zombie who could be like us in every other respect besides consciousness. One can't say Ramachandron's findings conclusively prove this, but if it were the case, it would put Chalmers in a bad position.
Yes; a philosophical zombie may be conceivable, but it seems to me that a creature that is behaviourally indistinguishable from a known conscious creature must itself be conscious because that level of behavioural complexity requires consciousness - or to put it another way, consciousness comes with the level of complexity required to support those behaviours. Also, the energetics of evolutionary development suggests that consciousness is unlikely to be an 'optional extra' that has no significant advantage, yet consumes energy resource.

The alternative is to take Dennett's reversed approach and ask the question if there is no discernable difference between two creatures, and one definitely is not conscious (i.e. p zombie), we can have no grounds to say the other is conscious (also Ockham's Razor). And if a p zombie is possible, then why shouldn't this argument apply to all other humans? and since you are not, fundamentally, different from them, it should apply to you too. Thus you are such a p zombie, and so your feeling of consciousness must be an illusion...

Of course, this is unsatisfactory because it doesn't account for subjective experience, and calling it an illusion isn't particularly helpful, as we must still ask how this 'illusion' arises. It becomes more a semantic argument over labels than a philosophical one. I suspect Dennett is using this argument as a provocative demonstration of where the philosophical zombie idea leads without a robust definition of consciousness.

See Chalmers ' response to that silly  Dennett zombie 'argument " .

My own take on that is , as folows :

If we might be all  just zombies ,like that lunatic Dennett  says , and hence consciousness is just an illusion , then , are  our subjective conscious experiences just illusions created by our minds = our minds creating the illusion of our minds haha = a tautology at best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 18:05:45




I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible, and I even argue for a form of dualism.
 But this is just part of the scientific process.
Certain sorts of explanation turn out not to work, so we need to embrace other sorts of explanation instead.
 Everything I say here is compatible with the results of contemporary science; our picture of the natural world is broadened, not overturned.
 And this broadening allows the possibility of a naturalistic theory of consciousness that might have been impossible without it.
It seems to me that to ignore the problems of consciousness would be antiscientific; it is in the scientific spirit to face up to them directly.
To those who
suspect that science requires materialism, I ask that you wait and see.

I should note that the conclusions of this work are conclusions, in the strongest sense.

Temperamentally, I am
strongly inclined toward materialist reductive explanation, and I have no strong spiritual or religious inclinations.
For a number of years, I hoped for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly.
 It eventually seemed plain to me that these conclusions were forced on anyone who wants to take consciousness seriously.
 Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.


Source : "The conscious mind " by David J.Chalmers , Introduction .

Again, this is an introduction, which describes what he is about to discuss. Without the argument itself, I'm not sure what your point is in reposting it, other than to say "Hey, look! Someone who once thought materialist mechanisms explained consciousness now thinks otherwise." But your post doesn't include the reasoning behind this change of view, or the view that has replaced it. And no, I do not expect you to post the entire book, but I would expect some attempt on your part to understand his reasons if you are going to use them as evidence for your own position. (I am pleased that you have chosen someone who is not a total crackpot though.)

I did already respond to that .
Chalmers ' arguments are a bit similar to those of Nagel i already posted here .
They were just moving the problem to another area :
All forms of naturalism are , once again, false , either the reductionist materialist or the non-reductionist ones , simply because nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness , otherwise , let any materialist or any naturalist non-reductionist for that matter tell us about the origins and nature of consciousness = they cannot , they would just resort to metaphysical non-sense within the frameworks of their own respective naturalist conceptions of nature ,as Chalmers and Nagel had done .

The other forms of non-reductionism , either the idealist (all is mind ) or the religious dualist ones  (reality is matter and mind ) cannot come up either with any serious faslifiable theory of consciousness .

I think that consciousness will remain beyond science,basta  .
The latter is just my belief assumption= unscientific , but  not necessarily false .

Reductionists' and non-reductionists'+ the idealists ' attempts to explain or rather account for consciousness are just belief assumptions as well = unscientific + false .

In short :

Consciousness ' approaches are all just a matter of ...world views or beliefs: beyond science's realm and jurisdiction  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 18:11:04
Don Quixote: The chivalrous but UNREALISTIC hero from the novel by Cervantes. Very serious similarities here by name and personality Mr. Don.

Indeed : what a miracle that we do seem to agree with each other this time, for a change .
We are all some or other forms of Cervantes' Don Quixote ,from time to time , that's 1 of the reasons why i did choose this nick ,and i did talk about just that on many occasions as well .


No miracle Don., just detailed observation. You should also notice I capitalized the word; UNREALISTIC as how many of us view your stance on these subjects. Nevertheless, it would be good to give credit where credit is due and offer you recognition where persistence is the virtue. Please accept this as a token of reconciliation but remember that most of the members here are interested in science and not philosophy. Believe it or not, I understand where you are coming from. But the problem remains; The bases upon which your "Theory" is built lacks support from identifiable, empirically tested, repeatable evidence. And without such, the "Theory" can not be considered good science. In fact, it should not be called a theory at all. And may even lack sufficient grounds to be considered a correct Hypothesis. And the grief you're putting yourself and others thru is for this very reason. 

And to make my position very clear, and submit something that will certainly surprise you and many others here. I am a man of faith but without going into particulars, that very faith agrees with some of what you contend. However, and I repeat; However, students of the sciences require tangible evidence as I've stated in the prior paragraph. Without these physical attributes, it can not and will not be called good science. Remember, the reason we call it the science of
physics, it's dealing with things we can see, touch, hear, taste, smell and measure. Without these measurements, it's only faith.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 18:52:57
Don Quixote: The chivalrous but UNREALISTIC hero from the novel by Cervantes. Very serious similarities here by name and personality Mr. Don.

Indeed : what a miracle that we do seem to agree with each other this time, for a change .
We are all some or other forms of Cervantes' Don Quixote ,from time to time , that's 1 of the reasons why i did choose this nick ,and i did talk about just that on many occasions as well .


No miracle Don., just detailed observation

A "miracle " was just an ironic metaphor though .

Quote
You should also notice I capitalized the word; UNREALISTIC as how many of us view your stance on these subjects
.


Is it unrealistic to state the simple obvious and undeniable fact that the materialist 'all is matter  ,including the mind " mainstream "scientific world view " is false? ,and hence the mind is not in the brain ,or the mind is not the product of the physical brain's activity ? = consciousness is non-material, non-physical or non-biological .

Quote
Nevertheless, it would be good to give credit where credit is due and offer you recognition where persistence is the virtue.

Thanks , that's just a relative feature of my character to puruse matters untill the end , no matter what , no big deal .

Quote
Please accept this as a token of reconciliation

Accepted , thanks indeed : but , don't worry about it : i know that some facts will always be resisted by hostile people ,so : no problem .

Ideas or rather new facts  are first ridiculed, violently opposed , and then , they get taken as self-evident , afterwards= a normal process of human nature  .


Quote
but remember that most of the members here are interested in science and not philosophy.


Then, please stop confusing materialism with science ,science does not require materialism, science does not have to be materialistic ,  try to stop confusing science with the current false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view ", and hence  "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain ... " are  no scientific or empirical facts , just  extensions of the false materialist conception of nature = most of what you have been taking for granted as science for so long now, without question, has been no science , just materialist false belief assumptions ,since science has been materialistic , since the 19th centuty at least = science must be liberated from materialism as a false outdated superseded world view ideology in science  .


Quote
Believe it or not, I understand where you are coming from. But the problem remains; The bases upon which your "Theory" is built lacks support from identifiable, empirically tested, repeatable evidence. And without such, the "Theory" can not be considered good science. In fact, it should not be called a theory at all. And may even lack sufficient grounds to be considered a correct Hypothesis. And the grief you're putting yourself and others thru is for this very reason.

What specific theories are you talking about ?
Is " all is matter , including the mind " false materialist conception of nature a faslifiable scientific theory then ?
Are  its following extension faslifiable either ? :

"The mind is in the brain , memory is stored in the brain , life or nature are mechanical, ..." Obviously ...not .

Quote
And to make my position very clear, and submit something that will certainly surprise you and many others here. I am a man of faith and without going into particulars, that very faith agrees with some of what you contend.


Then, how can you take the false materialist "all is matter, including the mind " conception of nature for granted , without question , as the "scientific world view " then ? a false materialist conception of nature that , per definition, per -se and a-priori excludes any notion or existence of the immaterial ,including the immaterial nature of consciousness , including any non-materialist faith or religion = try to solve that paradox for yourself then : you cannot have it both ways ,by being both a man of faith , as you put it at least , and a believer in the false materialist "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " = they are incompatible with each other , exclude each other .

Quote
However, and I repeat; However, students of the sciences require tangible evidence as I've stated in the prior paragraph. Without these physical attributes, it can not and will not be called good science. Remember, the reason we call it the science of
physics, it's dealing with things we can see, touch, hear, taste, smell and measure. Without these measurements, it's only faith.

Science does not require materialism ,as science does not have to be materialistic , in the above mentioned sense = the false materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences must be rejected ,and replaced by a relatively valid one .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 19:07:40

Science does not require materialism ,as science does not have to be materialistic , in the above mentioned sense = the false materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences must be rejected ,and replaced by a relatively valid one .
OK Don., tell us how you measure the non-materialistic? Unless we can establish limits and measures, we've accomplished nothing.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 19:34:38

Science does not require materialism ,as science does not have to be materialistic , in the above mentioned sense = the false materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences must be rejected ,and replaced by a relatively valid one .
OK Don., tell us how you measure the non-materialistic? Unless we can establish limits and measures, we've accomplished nothing.

You mean the non-material , i think .
Science does not have to be materialistic , in the sense that science must stop assuming that "all is matter ,including the mind ",by rejecting its false materialist conception of nature ,or false materialist meta-paradigm in science ,that has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " .
See Sheldrake's , Chalmer's, Thomas Nagel's and others' works on the subject , relatively speaking .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 19:50:41
Ethos :
See the following foreword by Rupert Sheldrake to "Science and psychic phenomena , the fall of the house of skeptics ", By Chris Carter : That pretty summarizes the deep malaise at the very heart of science today :
Note that i am not interested in any so-called psychic phenomena for that matter , just in the fact that the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " is false , and hence  the mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain ...:


This is an important book. It deals with one of the most significant and enduring fault lines in science
and philosophy. For well over a century, there have been strongly divided opinions about the existence
of psychic phenomena, such as telepathy. The passions aroused by this argument are quite out of
proportion to the phenomena under dispute. They stem from deeply held worldviews and belief
systems. They also raise fundamental questions about the nature of science itself. This debate, and the
present state of parapsychology, are brilliantly summarized in this book. Chris Carter puts his
argument in a well-documented historical context, without which the present controversies make no
sense.
The kind of skepticism Carter is writing about is not the normal healthy kind on which all science
depends, but rather it arises from a belief that the existence of psychic phenomena is impossible; they
contradict the established principles of science, and if they were to exist they would overthrow science
as we know it, causing chaos and confusion. Therefore, anyone who produces positive evidence
supporting their existence is guilty of error, wishful thinking, self-delusion, or fraud. This belief
makes the very investigation of psychic phenomena taboo and treats those who investigate them as
charlatans or heretics.
Although some committed skeptics behave as if they are engaged in a holy war, in this debate there
is no clear correlation with religious belief or lack of it. Among those who investigate psi phenomena
are atheists, agnostics, and followers of religious paths. But the ranks of committed skeptics also
include religious believers, agnostics, and atheists.
As Carter shows so convincingly in this book, the question of the reality of psi phenomena is not
primarily about evidence but about the interpretation of evidence; it is about frameworks of
understanding, or what Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science, called paradigms. I am sure Carter is
right.
I have myself spent many years investigating unexplained phenomena, such as telepathy in animals
and in people. At first, I naively believed that this was just a matter of doing properly controlled
experiments and collecting evidence. I soon found that for committed skeptics this is not the issue.
Some dismiss all the evidence out of hand, convinced in advance that it must be flawed or defective.
Those who do look at the evidence have the intention of finding as many flaws as they can, but even if
they can’t find them they brush aside the evidence anyway, assuming that fatal errors will come to
light later on.
The most common tactic of committed skeptics is to try to prevent the evidence from being
discussed in public at all. For example, in September 2006, I presented a paper on telephone telepathy
at the Annual Festival of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Our controlled
experiment had shown that people could, before answering the phone, correctly identify who was
calling (from a choice of four people) over 40 percent of the time, when a success rate of 25 percent
would be expected by chance alone. The following day, in The Times and other leading newspapers,
several prominent British skeptics denounced the British Association for “lending credibility to
maverick theories on the paranormal” by allowing this talk to take place at all. One of them, Professor
Peter Atkins, a chemist at Oxford University, was quoted as saying, “There is no reason to suppose
that telepathy is anything more than a charlatan’s fantasy.”1 Later the same day, he and I took part in a
debate on BBC Radio. He dismissed all the evidence I presented as “playing with statistics.” I then
asked him if he had actually looked at the evidence, and he replied, “No, but I would be very
suspicious of it.”
As Carter shows, conflicts about frameworks of understanding are inherent within science itself.
Since its beginnings in the sixteenth century, science grew through a series of rebellions against
established worldviews. The Copernican revolution in astronomy was the first. The mechanistic
revolution of the seventeenth century—with its dismissal of souls in nature, as previously taught in all
the medieval universities—was another great rebellion. But what started as rebel movements in turn
became the orthodoxies, propagated by scholars and taught in universities. Subsequent revolutions,
including the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century and the relativity and quantum revolutions
in physics of the twentieth century, again broke away from an older orthodoxy to become a new
orthodoxy.
There is a similar tension within the Christian religion, which provided the cultural background to
the growth of Western science. Christianity itself began as a rebellion. Jesus rejected many of the
standard tenets of the Jewish religion into which he was born. His life was one of rebellion against the
established religious authorities, the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and the elders. But the
religion established in his name in its turn became orthodox, rejecting and persecuting heresies, only
to be disturbed by further rebellions, most notably the Protestant Reformation. In the debate that
Carter documents, the skeptics are the upholders of the established mechanistic order, and they help
maintain a taboo against “the paranormal.” These skeptics come in various forms, and it would
probably not be too difficult to find parallels to the chief priests and elders, concerned with political
power and influence, and to the scribes and Pharisees, the zealous upholders of righteousness.
This struggle has a strong emotional charge in the context of Western religious and intellectual
history. But now, in the twenty-first century, there are many scientists of non-Western origin,
including those from India, China, Africa, and the Middle East—especially the Arab countries.
Western history is not their history, nor are the strong emotions aroused by psi phenomena ones with
which they can easily identify. In most parts of the world, even including Western industrial societies,
most people take for granted the existence of telepathy and other psychic phenomena and are surprised
to discover that some people deny their existence so vehemently.
From my own experience talking to scientists and giving seminars in scientific institutions,
dogmatic skeptics are a minority within the scientific community. Most scientists are curious and
open-minded, if only because they themselves or people they know well have had experiences that
suggest the reality of psi phenomena. Nevertheless, almost all scientists are aware of the taboo, and
the open-minded tend to keep their interests private, fearing scorn or ridicule if they discuss them
openly with their colleagues.
I believe that for the majority of the scientific community, in spite of the appearances created by
vociferous skeptics, what counts more than polemics is evidence. In the end, the question of whether
or not psi phenomena occur, and how they might be explained, depends on evidence and on research.
No one knows how this debate will end or how long it will take for parapsychological investigations
to become more widely known and accepted. No one knows how big a change they will make to
science itself, or how far they will expand its framework. But the conditions are good, and an
intensifying debate about the nature of consciousness makes the evidence from parapsychology more
relevant than ever before.
This is one of the longest-running debates in the history of science, but changes could soon come
faster than most people think possible. Science and Psychic Phenomena is an invaluable guide to what
is going on. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to be part of a scientific revolution in the
making.
RUPERT SHELDRAKE, PH.D., is a former research fellow of the Royal Society and former director of
studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Clare College, Cambridge University. He is the author of
more than 80 technical papers and articles appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 10
books, including The Presence of the Past, The Rebirth of Nature, and Seven Experiments that Could
Change the World.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 19:51:36

Science does not require materialism ,as science does not have to be materialistic , in the above mentioned sense = the false materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences must be rejected ,and replaced by a relatively valid one .
OK Don., tell us how you measure the non-materialistic? Unless we can establish limits and measures, we've accomplished nothing.

You mean the non-material , i think .
Science does not have to be materialistic , in the sense that science must stop assuming that "all is matter ,including the mind ",by rejecting its false materialist conception of nature ,or false materialist meta-paradigm in science ,that has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " .
See Sheldrake's , Chalmer's, Thomas Nagel's and others' works on the subject , relatively speaking .
Don., you keep skating around the issue. Without measurement, you will establish no facts. And about your question; Why I have a faith and still believe in the scientific method? First and foremost, I never mix the two. What is science can be measured and what is faith can not. What I find in science belongs to science and the material world. What is faith remains beyond those limits. And this is the difficulty you've presented yourself with. By defending the indefensible, you're trying to mix science with faith. This position is doomed to fail Sir Don.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 20:03:03

THE CONSCIOUSNESS REVOLUTION



Since the early 1970s, the idea that consciousness exerts causal effects has gained wide support in the
cognitive sciences, especially in psychology, where it has become the majority position. This
movement has been referred to variously as the “consciousness revolution,” the “cognitive
revolution,” or the “mentalist revolution,” and it has led to the overthrow of behaviorism as the
dominant paradigm in psychology. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner writes that “today the
theoretical claims of behaviorism are largely of historical interest. The cognitive revolution . . . has
carried the day.”37 And Sperry himself commented on the paradigm shift, writing that “the accepted
role of conscious experience in brain function and behavior changed from that of a noncausal,
epiphenomenal, parallel, or identical status (and something best ignored or excluded from scientific
explanation) to that of an ineliminable causal, or interactional role.”38 The appearance in neuroscience
of a plausible, logical explanation for the causal effects of consciousness has also influenced other
neuroscientists39 and has been accepted by some philosophers concerned with the ancient mind-brain
problem.40
It is curious how quantum physicists in the tradition of von Neumann, studying the most
fundamental level of reality, and cognitive scientists working at the other end of the spectrum of
science should come to almost identical conclusions regarding the causal role of consciousness.
Wigner, in his essay “Remarks on the Mind-Body Question,” first notes the effects that physical
properties have on mental sensations, and asks, “Does conversely, the consciousness influence the
physicochemical conditions?”
He notes that the traditional answer among biochemists has been “no”: the body influences the
mind but the mind does not influence the body. Wigner then presents two reasons why physicists
should not support this view. The first reason he gives is the causal role of the observer in quantum
mechanics, as discussed above. The other is more classical: “The second argument to support the
existence of an influence of the consciousness on the physical world is based on the observation that
we do not know of any phenomenon in which one subject is influenced by another without exerting an
influence thereupon.”41
Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, noted in his article
“Rediscovering the Mind” a strange phenomenon occurring in the dominant paradigms of
psychologists, biologists, and physicists. He notes that while biologists have been relentlessly moving
toward the hard-core materialism that characterized nineteenth-century physics, “at the same time,
physicists, faced with compelling experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly
mechanical models of the universe to a view that sees the mind as playing an integral role in all
physical events. It is as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions
and not noticing what is happening across the tracks.”42 Biologists of a materialist bent, such as
Francis Crick, seek to explain mind and consciousness by activities of the central nervous system,
which can be reduced to a biological substructure. They then seek to understand biological phenomena
in terms of chemistry, biophysics, and, ultimately, in terms of quantum mechanics, which quantum
theorists in the von Neumann tradition believe must be formulated with mind as a primary component
of the system. As Morowitz writes, “We have thus, in separate steps, gone around an epistemological
circle—from the mind, back to the mind.”43
At the logical core of our most materialistic science we meet not dead matter but our own
lively selves.
NICK HERBERT
If Sperry’s work is to be criticized, then it should be on the grounds that it is incomplete because it
ignores the similar conclusions of the quantum physicists. Sperry based his conclusions regarding
consciousness on a rejection of classical reductionism; the physicists who follow von Neumann base
their conclusions regarding the causal role of consciousness on a rejection of the classical assumptions
of determinism and observer independence. The positions are similar but not exactly the same. The
main difference seems to be that Sperry’s position is still rooted in the materialist hypothesis that
mind ultimately depends upon matter for its existence, whereas the von Neumann interpretation of
reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an emergent but rather an elemental property—
that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as energy and force fields. This is obviously a
more radical position, but in its favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox mentioned
earlier that is raised by the von Neumann interpretation: If consciousness depends on the physical
world, and the value of many quantum physical properties depend on consciousness, then how did the
physical world ever bring about consciousness in the first place?
These are fascinating and important issues, which will be discussed in more detail later. But, for
now, it is sufficient to note how the quantum theorists have come to almost the same conclusions as
Popper and Sperry, but by rejecting different aspects of classical metaphysics. Quantum physicist
Henry Stapp has described how, for centuries, philosophy has been hamstrung by its dependence upon
the metaphysical implications of classical physics:
Philosophers have tried for three centuries to understand the role of mind in the workings of a brain conceived to function
according to principles of classical physics. We now know that no such brain actually exists. . . . Hence it is hardly surprising
that those endeavors of philosophers have been beset by enormous difficulties, which have led to such positions as that of the
“eliminative materialists,” who hold that our conscious thoughts do not exist; or of the “epiphenomenalists,” who admit that
human experiences do exist but claim that they play absolutely no role in how we behave; or of the “identity theorists,” who
claim that each conscious feeling is exactly the same thing as a motion of the particles that nineteenth century science thought
brains and everything else in the universe to be made of. The difficulties in reconciling mental realities with prequantum
physics is dramatized by the fact that for many years the mere mention of “consciousness” was considered evidence of
backwardness and bad taste in most of academia, including, incredibly, even the philosophy of mind.44
So, what does all of this imply for the scientific acceptance of psi phenomena? In a nutshell, the
refutation of materialism removes the last barrier skeptics can raise about the scientific legitimacy of
psi. Psi phenomena, such as telepathy, are tightly bound up with notions such as “intent” and “values,”
and their operation seems to indicate a causal role for consciousness. If consciousness were a mere
epiphenomenon, how could it be that one mind influences another according to the desires, values, and
interests of both parties? Psi phenomena, if real, represent the operations of minds upon minds, and
minds upon matter. And as they do not appear to operate in a random manner, the desires and values
of these minds appear to play crucial causal roles. The new view of mind as causal, which has gained
widespread scientific acceptance since the early 1970s, is consistent with the theoretical possibility of
psi.w It can no longer be cogently argued that materialism is a pillar of the modern scientific view and
that parapsychology is in serious conflict with modern science because the acceptance of psi would
undermine materialism.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Susan Blackmore disagrees. In a recent essay, she notes that telepathy and
psychokinesis are commonly seen as evidence for the causal effect of consciousness, and she then
accuses parapsychologists of trying to prove the power of consciousness. She writes, “It is a desire for
this ‘power of consciousness’ that fuels much enthusiasm for the paranormal.”45 Then, in what seems
like a reversion to 1950s behaviorism, she adds:
As our understanding of conscious experience progresses, this desire to find “the power of consciousness” sets parapsychology
ever more against the rest of science (which of course is part of its appeal). The more we look into the workings of the brain the
less it looks like a machine run by a conscious self. . . . Indeed, the brain seems to be a machine that runs itself very well and
produces an illusion that there is someone in charge. This illusion is just what meditators and spiritual practitioners have been
saying for millennia; that our ordinary view of ourselves, as conscious, active agents experiencing a real world, is wrong—an
illusion. Now science seems to be coming to the same conclusion.
Parapsychology is going the other way. It is trying to prove that consciousness really does have power; that our minds really
can reach out and “do” things.
Well, if a belief in the “power of consciousness” sets parapsychology “ever more against the rest of
science,” then I suppose that neuroscientists Roger Sperry, Sir John Eccles, and D. M. MacKay; brain
surgeons Charles Sherrington and Wilder Penfield; philosopher of science Karl Popper; physicists
Eugene Wigner and Henry Stapp; and Charles Darwin are all set against the rest of science, not to
mention the majority of contemporary psychologists. It may be more plausible to say that her
dogmatic opposition to the power of consciousness sets Susan Blackmore ever more against the rest of
science.
Benjamin Libet, whose experimental work is sometimes offered as scientific evidence that free will
is an illusion, has expressed strong opposition to this interpretation.
The intuitive feelings about the phenomenon of free will form a fundamental basis for views of our human nature, and great
care should be taken not to believe allegedly scientific conclusions about them which actually depend upon hidden ad hoc
assumptions. A theory that simply interprets the phenomenon of free will as illusory and denies the validity of this phenomenal
fact is less attractive than a theory that accepts or accommodates the phenomenal fact.
In an issue so fundamentally important to our view of who we are, a claim for illusory nature should be based on fairly direct
evidence. Such evidence is not available; nor do determinists propose even a potential experimental design to test the theory.
My conclusion about free will, one genuinely free in the nondetermined sense, is then that its existence is at least as good, if
not a better, scientific option than is its denial by a determinist theory.46
In the same journal, Henry Stapp expresses the same opinion as Libet, writing that
epiphenomenalism is a mistake arising from outmoded classical physics:
There is no compulsion from the basic principles of physics that requires any rejection of the sensible idea that mental effort can
actually do what it seems to do. . . . It is therefore simply wrong to proclaim that the findings of science entail that our intuitions
about the nature of our thoughts are necessarily illusory or false. Rather, it is completely in line with contemporary science to
hold our thoughts to be causally efficacious.47 (emphasis added)
Rather than being in conflict with the rest of science, evidence of psi phenomena provides further
reason to think that materialism is fatally flawed. Indeed, it would seem that the acceptance of psi
would clinch the argument: in the absence of psi, epiphenomenalism may be a strained and threadbare
option, but it still remains a theoretical possibility. However, unlike ordinary communication,
perception, or action, psi phenomena seem to involve the direct action of mind-on-mind or between
mind and matter, bypassing the normal biological channels. For a dualist, this poses no problem: it has
been conjectured that when a person exercises psi, his mind is being influenced by or is influencing
objects or brains outside of his body in the same way his mind normally interacts with his own
brain.48x After all, each type of interaction is no more mysterious than the other, even though one is
commonplace and the other relatively rare. But as the arguments above have shown, and as Popper has
written, “radical physicalism can be regarded as refuted, quite independently of the paranormal.”49
Materialism may have been useful as a source of inspiration for classical science, but in hindsight it
can be viewed as an error of determinism, observer-independence, and reductionism.
WHY ARE WE CONSCIOUS?
With the emergence of consciousness something new and utterly different has entered the universe—
something with no mass or physical dimensions, yet possessing enormous power. And while mental
activity seems to exert causal influence, much of our mental activity is unconscious. Consciousness
seems to be employed when dealing with novel situations and when learning new skills. Learning to
drive a vehicle requires conscious attention to detail, but once we have mastered the skills required,
we can operate the vehicle unconsciously, on automatic pilot, all the while carrying on a detailed
conversation. But as soon as something out of the ordinary happens, such as an animal darting into our
path, conscious control returns to deal with the unexpected.
Renowned neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield thought that the relationship of mind to brain was that of
programmer to computer: The mind programs the brain to handle routine tasks, freeing itself to do
other things. From his work with epileptic patients, Penfield noted that an epileptic discharge may
confine itself to one functional area within the brain. If, for instance, the speech area of the cerebral
cortex were the only part affected, then the epileptic discharge would produce nothing more than
paralytic silence. If, however, the discharge occurred in the higher brain stem, which Penfield
identified as the “seat of consciousness,” then he described how the individual was converted into a
mindless automaton: “He may wander about, confused and aimless. Or he may continue to carry out
whatever purpose his mind was in the act of handing on to his automatic sensory-motor mechanism
when the highest brain-mechanism went out of action. Or he follows a stereotyped, habitual pattern of
behavior. In every case, however, the automaton can make few, if any, decisions for which there has
been no precedent.”50
Penfield provides several examples of patients who suffered attacks in the higher brain stem while
playing piano, walking home through busy streets, or driving a car. In these cases the individuals
continued on with what they were doing, although retained no memory of doing so. He describes what
happens when the “seat of consciousness” is temporarily incapacitated:
The human automaton, which replaces the man when the highest brain-mechanism is inactivated, is a thing without the capacity
to make completely new decisions. It is a thing without the capacity to form new memory records and a thing without that
indefinable attribute, a sense of humor. The automaton is incapable of thrilling to the beauty of a sunset or of experiencing
contentment, happiness, love, compassion. These, like all awareness, are functions of the mind. The automaton is a thing that
makes use of the reflexes and the skills, inborn and acquired, that are housed in the computer. At times it may have a plan that
will serve it in place of a purpose for a few minutes. This automatic coordinator that is ever active within each of us, seems to
be the most amazing of biological computers.51
Consciousness seems to resemble a searchlight beam that illuminates the parts of our mental
activity accessible to it, on demand, as determined by our drives and desires. But it remains a mystery
why conscious mental activity is required at all, even for dealing with novel situations. Perhaps the
reason has to do with emotion. It is possible to be conscious without emotion, but is it possible to feel
emotion without being conscious? Perhaps our animal ancestors that were motivated by primitive
emotion simply enjoyed a decisive advantage over their lesssentient competitors.
Consciousness, or at least aspects of it, may very well enhance an organism’s ability to survive and
propagate, but some conscious activity seems to have little if anything to do with biological survival,
even among our cousins in the animal kingdom. Birds have been known to tumble in the wind,
dolphins have been spotted body surfing, and wild eagles have been seen playing catch. It’s difficult to
explain these activities in terms of contributing to survival, as difficult as it is to explain the survival
value of listening to music, playing chess, or drinking wine.y
And it must be stressed how little we are actually saying when we describe consciousness as an
emergent property. We certainly have no idea how consciousness could possibly emerge from the
configurational properties of the brain. At any rate, saying consciousness emerges does not, to my
mind, necessarily imply that consciousness depends for its existence on a material brain—that is, did
not exist before the full development of brains, and cannot exist without material brains. It seems
coherent to speculate that consciousness may have emerged into the material world when conditions
finally allowed—that is, when primitive brains finally achieved the required level of complexity.
So the brain may be necessary for consciousness to emerge into and interface with the material
world. As mentioned, some writers, such as physicist Nick Herbert, would then describe consciousness
as an elemental property, rather than an emergent one. Herbert and other physicists in the von
Neumann tradition seriously entertain the idea that consciousness is a property of the universe as
elemental as energy and force fields, and that mind interacts with matter at the level of the emergence
into actuality of individual quantum events. As mentioned earlier, this would resolve the paradox of
existence that is raised by the von Neumann interpretation.
At any rate, it could be argued that the distinction between elemental and emergent is largely
semantic. When we say a rabbit emerges from a hole, are we implying that the rabbit depends on the
hole for its existence? Yet it must be admitted that when we describe a property as “emergent” we are
usually referring to its creation as a result of the special arrangement in space and time of its
constituent parts, and so perhaps a dependency is implied. Perhaps a respect for conventional usage
requires a dualist to describe consciousness as an elemental rather than an emergent property.
However, without presenting any empirical evidence to support the existence of pre-andpostmortem
consciousness, dualism is pure speculation. Nothing discussed so far has provided solid
support for dualism as opposed to mere mentalism. Support for dualism depends upon the evidence
for disembodied consciousness that will be discussed in the second book of this series.

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 20:10:50

Science does not require materialism ,as science does not have to be materialistic , in the above mentioned sense = the false materialist meta-paradigm in all sciences must be rejected ,and replaced by a relatively valid one .
OK Don., tell us how you measure the non-materialistic? Unless we can establish limits and measures, we've accomplished nothing.

You mean the non-material , i think .
Science does not have to be materialistic , in the sense that science must stop assuming that "all is matter ,including the mind ",by rejecting its false materialist conception of nature ,or false materialist meta-paradigm in science ,that has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " .
See Sheldrake's , Chalmer's, Thomas Nagel's and others' works on the subject , relatively speaking .
Don., you keep skating around the issue. Without measurement, you will establish no facts. And about your question; Why I have a faith and still believe in the scientific method? First and foremost, I never mix the two. What is science can be measured and what is faith can not. What I find in science belongs to science and the material world. What is faith remains beyond those limits. And this is the difficulty you've presented yourself with. By defending the indefensible, you're trying to mix science with faith. This position is doomed to fail Sir Don.

No, you did misunderstand what i was saying :
All i have been saying is that  the false materialist conception of nature has been taken for granted as the "scientific world view " .

Science has therefore been assuming , since the 19th century at least , that "all is matter ,including the mind " : see the following then :

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49378.0


"Why Materialism is False ? " :


Excerpts from   "The Science Delusion " or  "Science Set Free : 10 Paths To New Discovery " By Rupert Sheldrake : Introduction :



Introduction:
THE TEN DOGMAS OF MODERN SCIENCE:

The “scientific worldview” is immensely influential because the sciences have been so successful.
They touch all our lives through technologies and through modern medicine. Our intellectual world
has been transformed by an immense expansion of knowledge, down into the most microscopic
particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an everexpanding
universe.
Yet in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when science and technology seem to be at the
peak of their power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems
indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Most scientists take it for
granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but
some, including myself, think they are symptoms of a deeper malaise.
In this book, I argue that science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have
hardened into dogmas. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting and
more fun.
The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still
need working out but, in principle, the fundamental questions are settled.
Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical. There is no
reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter
is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in
human heads.
These beliefs are powerful, not because most scientists think about them critically but because they
don’t. The facts of science are real enough; so are the techniques that scientists use, and the
technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an
act of faith, grounded in a nineteenth-century ideology.
This book is pro-science. I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that
the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them.


The scientific creed:
Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.
1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather
than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering
robots,” in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically
programmed computers.
2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human
consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big
Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they
will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other
material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree,
the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your
brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.
Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption
is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds. This belief system became dominant
within science in the late nineteenth century, and is now taken for granted. Many scientists are
unaware that materialism is an assumption: they simply think of it as science, or the scientific view of
reality, or the scientific worldview. They are not actually taught about it, or given a chance to discuss
it. They absorb it by a kind of intellectual osmosis.
In everyday usage, materialism refers to a way of life devoted entirely to material interests, a
preoccupation with wealth, possessions and luxury. These attitudes are no doubt encouraged by the
materialist philosophy, which denies the existence of any spiritual realities or non-material goals, but
in this book I am concerned with materialism’s scientific claims, rather than its effects on lifestyles.
In the spirit of radical skepticism, I turn each of these ten doctrines into a question. Entirely new
vistas open up when a widely accepted assumption is taken as the beginning of an inquiry, rather than
as an unquestionable truth. For example, the assumption that nature is machine-like or mechanical
becomes a question: “Is nature mechanical?” The assumption that matter is unconscious becomes “Is
matter unconscious?” And so on.
In the Prologue I look at the interactions of science, religion and power, and then in Chapters 1 to
10, I examine each of the ten dogmas. At the end of each chapter, I discuss what difference this topic
makes and how it affects the way we live our lives. I also pose several further questions, so that any
readers who want to discuss these subjects with friends or colleagues will have some useful starting
points. Each chapter is followed by a summary.

The credibility crunch for the “scientific worldview”:
For more than two hundred years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain
everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex
machines, minds are nothing but brain activity and nature is purposeless. Believers are sustained by
the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper
called this stance “promissory materialism” because it depends on issuing promissory notes for
discoveries not yet made.1 Despite all the achievements of science and technology, materialism is now
facing a credibility crunch that was unimaginable in the twentieth century.
In 1963, when I was studying biochemistry at Cambridge University, I was invited to a series of
private meetings with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in Brenner’s rooms in King’s College, along
with a few of my classmates. Crick and Brenner had recently helped to “crack” the genetic code. Both
were ardent materialists and Crick was also a militant atheist. They explained there were two major
unsolved problems in biology: development and consciousness. They had not been solved because the
people who worked on them were not molecular biologists—or very bright. Crick and Brenner were
going to find the answers within ten years, or maybe twenty. Brenner would take developmental
biology, and Crick consciousness. They invited us to join them.
Both tried their best. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on the development
of a tiny worm, Caenorhabdytis elegans. Crick corrected the manuscript of his final paper on the brain
the day before he died in 2004. At his funeral, his son Michael said that what made him tick was not
the desire to be famous, wealthy or popular, but “to knock the final nail into the coffin of vitalism.”
(Vitalism is the theory that living organisms are truly alive, and not explicable in terms of physics and
chemistry alone.)
Crick and Brenner failed. The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many
details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more
precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone
(see Chapters 1, 4 and 8).
The fundamental proposition of materialism is that matter is the only reality. Therefore
consciousness is nothing but brain activity. It is either like a shadow, an “epiphenomenon,” that does
nothing, or it is just another way of talking about brain activity. However, among contemporary
researchers in neuroscience and consciousness studies there is no consensus about the nature of minds.
Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies
publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David
Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the “hard problem.” It is hard because
it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to
red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.
In biology and psychology the credibility rating of materialism is falling. Can physics ride to the
rescue? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend
on modern physics, not nineteenth-century theories of matter. But physicalism’s own credibility rating
has been reduced by physics itself, for four reasons.
First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into
account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics
presupposes the minds of physicists.2
Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, string and M-theories, with ten and
eleven dimensions respectively, take science into completely new territory. Strangely, as Stephen
Hawking tells us in his book The Grand Design (2010), “No one seems to know what the ‘M’ stands
for, but it may be ‘master’, ‘miracle’ or ‘mystery.’ ” According to what Hawking calls “modeldependent
realism,” different theories may have to be applied in different situations. “Each theory
may have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that is acceptable so
long as the theories agree in their predictions whenever they overlap, that is, whenever they can both
be applied.”3
String theories and M-theories are currently untestable so “model-dependent realism” can only be
judged by reference to other models, rather than by experiment. It also applies to countless other
universes, none of which has ever been observed. As Hawking points out,
M-theory has solutions that allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending
on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal
spaces, perhaps as many as 10500, which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with
its own laws … The original hope of physics to produce a single theory explaining the apparent
laws of our universe as the unique possible consequence of a few simple assumptions may have
to be abandoned.4
Some physicists are deeply skeptical about this entire approach, as the theoretical physicist Lee
Smolin shows in his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science
and What Comes Next (2008).5 String theories, M-theories and “model-dependent realism” are a shaky
foundation for materialism or physicalism or any other belief system, as discussed in Chapter 1.
Third, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become apparent that the known kinds
of matter and energy make up only about 4 percent of the universe. The rest consists of “dark matter”
and “dark energy.” The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure (see Chapter 2).
Fourth, the Cosmological Anthropic Principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had
been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and
hence we would not be here to think about it (see Chapter 3). So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws
and constants in the beginning? To avoid a creator God emerging in a new guise, most leading
cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of
parallel universes, all with different laws and constants, as M-theory also suggests. We just happen to
exist in the one that has the right conditions for us.6
This multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam’s Razor, the philosophical principle that
“entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or in other words, that we should make as few
assumptions as possible. It also has the major disadvantage of being untestable.7 And it does not even
succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes.8
Materialism provided a seemingly simple, straightforward worldview in the late nineteenth century,
but twenty-first-century science has left it behind. Its promises have not been fulfilled, and its
promissory notes have been devalued by hyperinflation.
I am convinced that the sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into
dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. These beliefs protect the citadel of established science, but
act as barriers against open-minded thinking.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/12/2013 20:15:32
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 20:19:00
Reductionism :


REDUCTIONISM:
Science generally—and, in particular, all of classical physics—is highly reductionist, in that it seeks
to explain objects and systems in terms of their parts. Scientists attempt to take entities apart and to
explain them in terms of smaller, simpler, localized entities. So, for instance, organisms are
understood as composed of tissues and organs, which are in turn understood as collections of cells,
cells are composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms composed of subatomic particles, and
so forth. This method of reduction is a powerful form of analysis, and it has led to many very
successful explanations. Molecular biology has proved to be an extraordinarily powerful approach to
understanding evolution, heredity, and other aspects of life. Quantum mechanics, the study of the
smallest scale of reality, has provided insights into the life and death of stars, and the origin of the
universe.
However, the successes of reductionist methods have sometimes led to claims that biology is really
nothing but applied cell biology, cell biology is really nothing but applied molecular biology, which in
turn is just chemistry, that chemistry is really just applied many-body physics, and that ultimately,
everything can be explained by the laws of quantum mechanics. So, for instance, in his book Of
Molecules and Men we have molecular biologist and über-reductionist Francis Crick writing, “The
ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is to explain all biology in terms of physics and
chemistry.”
It was irritation with claims like this that led Phillip Anderson, a condensed-matter physicist, to
write the essay “More Is Different,” published in Science in 1972.21 Anderson, who went on to win the
Nobel Prize in 1977, acknowledged the many successes of reductionism but then argued that “the
main fallacy with this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply
a ‘constructionist’ one: the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the
ability to start with those laws and reconstruct the universe.” Reality has a hierarchal structure,
Anderson contended, ordered in terms of increasing complexity. And at each level of complexity
entirely new properties unpredictably appear, so that “at each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and
generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the
previous one.” Or, in other words, “Psychology is not just applied biology, nor is biology applied
chemistry.”
As we go up the hierarchy of the sciences, complexity increases, and new properties emerge at each
new level. And it is the existence of these “emergent”—that is, unpredictable, irreducible, and holistic
—properties that do not allow us to explain the social sciences in terms of psychology, psychology in
terms of biology, and everything ultimately in terms of quantum mechanics. A simple example of an
emergent property is the fluidity of water, which is nothing like any property of hydrogen and
oxygen.q As another example, crystals have all sorts of properties, both geometrical and optical, that
the molecules that compose them do not possess. New chemical properties can also emerge and
replace others: sodium violently explodes when it comes into contact with water, and chlorine is a
deadly poison, but when combined they form crystals of sodium chloride—table salt.
Indeed, it seems as though the entire history of the universe as we know it could be understood as
the emergence of new entities and properties, with increasing levels of complexity. Heavy atomic
nuclei emerged in the center of large stars, and later on organic molecules emerged on earth. When
organic molecules were combined in special ways, single-celled life emerged, with all the new
properties of molecular and cell biology. The combination of individual cells into multicellular
organisms also resulted in something new: the behavior of complex animals. When sufficient
complexity was attained, something utterly new and completely different entered the universe: the
emergence of conscious states. Conscious minds interacted with other minds, and in turn emerged the
products of human minds, such as culture, works of art, and, of course, the scientific studies of all the
preceding levels of reality, from quantum mechanics to chemistry to biology to psychology, and to the
social sciences that study the products of human culture itself. As the celebrated philosopher of
science Karl Popper often pointed out, the universe is creative.
Claims such as “psychology is just applied biology” or “organisms are nothing but collections of
cells” are given the pejorative label of reductionism because they are considered to be unwarranted
reductions. It is perfectly acceptable and often very useful to consider an organism as a collection of
cells in the same sense that a building can be considered a collection of materials: the properties of
any complex entity are determined largely (but not entirely) by the properties of its parts. The dispute
is with the assertion that these complex entities are nothing but their component parts.
The nothing but reductions ignore the new properties that emerge when components are combined
in special ways. Of course, a complex entity like a building can be reduced to rubble, but this
reduction destroys the space-time relationships of the building components. Emergent properties
result from the parts and from the spacing and timing of the parts with reference to one another, but
the laws of the components do not include these space-time factors. In other words, it is the
spatiotemporal relationships between the components that make the whole greater than the simple
sum of its parts.
And it is important to realize that the properties that emerge at new levels of complexity do not
replace the more fundamental properties of the more basic levels: they are additions, not replacements
or even amendments. This has an important implication for the hierarchy of sciences. For although a
less basic science—for example, chemistry in relation to physics, biology in relation to chemistry—is
still an independent science with its own principles, the less basic science should not usually make
claims that are incompatible with well-established claims of a science that is more basic relative to it.
Should claims be made that appear to be in conflict with the principles of a more basic science, they
must be abandoned, modified, shown to be in conformity with the claims of the more basic science or
—if there is sufficient evidence for the claims—considered as potential falsifications of the general
yet more basic principle.
Anyway, from what we have seen so far, it would appear that the charge that the claims of
parapsychology are incompatible with those of the more basic sciences is groundless, as they are not
incompatible with quantum mechanics, at this time the most basic science of all. Given the existence
of emergent properties, the operation of psi in our macroscopic world is consistent with but not
necessarily explained by quantum mechanical principles.
Quantum systems exhibit an unexpected degree of togetherness. Mere spatial separation
does not divide them from each other. It is a particularly surprising conclusion for so
reductionist a subject as physics. After all, elementary particle physics is always trying to
split things up into smaller and smaller constituents with a view to treating them
independently of each other. I do not think we have yet succeeded in taking in fully what
quantum mechanical nonlocality implies about the nature of the world.
J. C. POLKINGHORNE
UPWARD AND DOWNWARD CAUSATION
From a purely reductionist standpoint, all causation must flow strictly in an upward direction, from
the simpler to the more complex. For if we assume that psychology is nothing but applied biology,
biology nothing but applied chemistry, and chemistry nothing but applied physics, then the more
complex structures are nothing more than functions of their substructures, and so causation only flows
upward. In this traditional view, the cosmos is physically driven from below by the elemental forces
of chemistry and physics, and ultimately by quantum mechanics.
If however, with increasing complexity new phenomena emerge that are to some extent independent
of the smaller-scale processes that created them, then they may be able to exert top-down control over
their substructures. This is the concept of downward causation, which may be said to occur whenever
a higher structure operates upon its substructure. According to this view, due mostly to neuroscientist
Roger Sperry and biologist Donald Campbell, causation flows downward as well as upward. No one
disputes that causation flows upward; the question is whether things are determined exclusively from
below or whether downward causation is also operating.
The concept of downward causation may be illustrated within the structural hierarchy of nature. A
simple example is the downward control exerted by a molecule of water over its hydrogen and oxygen
atoms. The laws defining the behavior of the atoms, particularly their course through space and time,
become quite different after they are joined together in a molecule. Although the atomic properties are
preserved, the atoms are now obliged to follow a new course through space and time, determined by
the newly emerged properties of the water molecule. If the molecule is itself part of a single-celled
organism, such as a paramecium, then it in turn is obliged to follow a new course through space and
time, determined by the forces driving the cell. If the cell is part of a multicelled organism, such as a
cat, then the behavior of the cell is determined by its purpose in terms of cat physiology, and its fate is
determined by the behavior of the cat, as may be described in terms of feline zoology and psychology.
At all times, the simpler lower-level forces and laws are all operating: they have not been replaced but
superseded by the properties of the higher-level organizational structures.r
A reductionist may agree with this account but may then argue that the higher-level properties, as,
for instance, those of a water molecule, may be predicted from the atomic properties. But
predictability is not the issue here. Being able to predict the emergence of new properties does not
make those properties any less real, important, or powerful as causal determinants. Perhaps evolution
i s in principle entirely predictable, starting with subatomic particles and forces (although this is
extremely doubtful, given the pure randomness of many quantum phenomena), but this does not
change the argument that evolution does occur, that new properties do emerge, and that these new
properties in turn exert downward causal influence over their constituents, which are thereafter
governed by new scientific laws.
Extending this discussion of emergent properties and their causal influence up the hierarchy of
nature leads to the suggestion that minds may be able to have causal influence upon lower-level
structures and, ultimately, that human culture may be able to influence human minds. This brings us
to the final assumption of classical science, one that is of special relevance to the existence of psi
phenomena.

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 20:20:38
Materialism :




MATERIALISM:
The final assumption of classical science considered here is materialism. Often known today as
physicalism, it asserts that everything in the universe can ultimately be explained entirely in terms of
the fundamental particles and forces of physics. The cruder forms of materialism simply deny the
existence of mental states, or hold that mental states are identical to brain states.s The more
sophisticated forms of materialism consider mental states and consciousness as mere epiphenomena
of brain activity—that is, as phenomena that accompany brain activity, are caused by brain activity,
but are of no real use and carry no explanatory power.
This metaphysical hypothesis is the most drastic of the proposed solutions to the so-called
mind/body problem—that is, what is the nature of the relationship between mind and body? After
thousands of years of debate, three top contenders for a solution remain:
Materialism—Mental events have no causal influence, they are simply by-products of physical
events in the brain. The mind is a mere epiphenomenon, dependent upon and controlled by a
physical brain, and therefore incapable of existing apart from a physical brain. All that matters is
matter.
Mentalism—Matter exerts causal influence on mind, but mind also exerts causal influence on
matter and has causal primacy. However, mind is an emergent property of physical brains, so the
existence of mind ultimately depends on matter.
Dualism—Not only do mind and matter exert causal influence on each other, but both are entirely
irreducible phenomena that can exist independent of each other.
The most ancient of these beliefs is dualism, found as it is in the old shamanistic religions around
the world. Although the first formal statement of dualism was by Descartes, one of the earliest written
references to dualist thinking may be found in Plato’s description of the last hours of Socrates, in
which Socrates ridicules the notion that purposeful behavior can be explained in physical terms. Plato
made a sharp distinction between mind and body, holding that the mind could exist both before and
after its residence in the body and could rule the body during that residence. An even earlier reference
to a form of dualism may be found in a lecture given by Hippocrates on epilepsia (epilepsy), in which
the brain is described as “the messenger to consciousness” and as “the interpreter for consciousness.”
Modern dualists can count among their ranks several distinguished modern philosophers and brain
scientists.t
Materialism in all its varieties also has an ancient history, going back at least as far as Democritus,
who back in the fifth century BC wrote that “nothing exists, but atoms and the void.” It had a powerful
and influential advocate in the nineteenth century in the form of Darwin’s close friend Thomas
Huxley, who proposed the thesis that animals and men are automata. Huxley did not deny the
existence of mental events, but he maintained that the relationship between mind and body was
strictly one-sided, with the mental having no effect on the physical. Huxley described mental events as
mere epiphenomena, or just useless by-products of brain activity. So men and animals for him were
just automata, even if conscious ones. This is still the position of many philosophers, biologists, and
neuroscientists.
Materialism was popular in psychology in the 1950s, as part of a movement known as
“behaviorism,” and the doctrine of behaviorism is still adhered to by some neuroscientists and
psychologists. But in the 1960s, the concept of mentalism began to spread in acceptance among
cognitive scientists, mostly due to the writings of neurobiologist Roger Sperry. Sperry, who won the
1981 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain,
rightly recognized that the profound mystery of consciousness makes a choice between the
alternatives difficult:
Once we have materialism squared off against mentalism in this way, I think we must all agree that neither is going to win the
match on the basis of direct, factual evidence. The facts do not simply go far enough. Those centermost processes of the brain
with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at
present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature.22
Apart from the dwindling number of pure materialists who still deny the existence of
consciousness, and the dwindling number of researchers in the field of artificial intelligence still
trying to raise money for the construction of “thinking machines,”u this position is reflected in the
writings of most serious scientists. Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner writes, “We have at present not
even the vaguest idea how to connect the physiochemical processes with the state of the mind.”23
Physicist Nick Herbert concurs:
Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not simply that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human
awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with
the head, rather than the foot.24
Materialists sometimes claim to represent the scientific viewpoint. But materialism is in no sense a
more “scientific” hypothesis than the alternatives, as it does not draw stronger support from current
scientific thinking. Materialism is a legacy of classical physics, which actually had two ways of
dealing with the problem of consciousness and free will. The first, followed by Descartes and Newton,
was to place mind outside of the scope of physics and consider it the sole exception in an otherwise
deterministic, mechanistic universe. The other approach, followed by popularizers of Newton’s work,
such as Diderot and Voltaire, was to assume that the physics of the time was a complete description of
the world, and to argue that consciousness must then be epiphenomenal. But we now know that
classical physics is fundamentally incorrect, and so any worldview based upon it must be flawed.
Sperry writes:
To conclude that conscious, mental, or psychic, forces have no place in filling this gap in our explanatory picture is at least to
go well beyond the facts into the realm of intuition and speculation. The doctrine of materialism in behavioral science, which
tends to be identified with a rigorous scientific approach, is thus seen to rest, in fact, on an insupportable mental inference that
goes far beyond the objective evidence and hence is founded on the cardinal sin of science.25
Our common sense would certainly seem to suggest that mental events such as perceptions, beliefs,
emotions, intentions, and so forth all have causal effects. We normally speak and think as if our
thoughts, feelings, and values do determine our course of action. And, of course, our moral judgments
also presuppose that these things have a real impact on human behavior. But common sense
arguments, however seemingly compelling, are not sufficient by themselves to draw strong
conclusions, as on many occasions science has shown common sense to have been dead wrong.
What, then, is the argument in favor of the causal efficacy of mental events? It is simple and
straightforward. First, it contends that mind and consciousness are emergent properties of living
brains, and then it goes a critical step further and asserts that these emergent properties have causal
potency, just as they do elsewhere in the universe. In other words, it applies the concepts of emergent
properties and downward causation to mind and consciousness, and to everything they seem to affect.
It is important to stress that the lower-level forces and properties of atoms, molecules, and cells all
continue to operate, and all continue to exert upward (and in most cases downward) causal influence.
None of these causal forces have been canceled or replaced, but they have been superseded by the
properties of a higher organizational structure. According to this new view, mind and consciousness
exert just as much (or even more) causal effect on the lower-level structures than the lower-level
structures exert on them. Mental events interact with other mental events at their own level, according
to their own rules, and in the process exert downward control over the lower-level structures. Sperry’s
model puts mind back into the driver’s seat, and, accordingly, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotion,
judgment, and so forth are recognized as having a real, not just an imaginary, impact on the world.
The ultimate paradox of materialism is that the one feature of the universe which alone gives
meaning to all the rest is the one feature which has to be declared redundant! Nothing can
account for its emergence; nothing follows from its existence.
JOHN BELOFF
Shortly after Sperry first proposed these ideas in the mid 1960s, the philosopher Karl Popper seems
to have come to an almost identical conclusion, although from a somewhat different perspective.
Popper points out that no Darwinist should accept the one-sided action of body on mind proposed by
the materialists. In his books On the Origin of Species and Natural Selection, Darwin discussed the
mental powers of animals and men, and argued that these are products of natural selection.
Now if that is so, then mental powers must assist organisms in their struggle for survival. And it
follows from this that mental powers must exert causal influence on the behavior of animals and
people. If conscious states exist, then, according to Darwinism, we should look for their uses. If they
are useful for living, then they must have real effects on the physical world.
As mentioned earlier, Darwin’s close friend Thomas Huxley was a thoroughgoing materialist.
While he did not deny the existence of mental events, he wrote that the relationship between mind and
body was strictly one-sided, with the mental having no effect on the physical. Since mental events for
Huxley were just useless by-products of brain activity, he thought people and animals were just
automata, with useless consciousness along for the ride.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s
opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Popper rightly points out:
The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the one-sided action of body on mind
and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in
sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had
been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved . . . by natural selection.26
So from a strictly Darwinian standpoint, the mental powers of animals and humans should be
expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to
this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more
highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have. We
should conclude from this that the mental powers of humans exert more causal potency than that of
any other living creatures on earth, as, arguably, we are the only creatures on earth with ideas and
ideals. Sperry writes:
In the brain model proposed here the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or
a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the
same brain, in neighboring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact
with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the
evolutionary scene yet.27
Mind-Body Interaction
Critics of mentalism and dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties, such as
mind and matter, could possibly interact. How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or
physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes:
The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind interact with the extended
body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the
physical theory that the universe is a closed system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event.
This assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.28
Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave
function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is
of course based on classical physics.
Furthermore, by asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is
making the implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in
common in order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity? Or is it rather an empirical
truth, a fact about nature? As David Hume pointed out long ago, anything in principle could be the
cause of anything else, and so only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John
Beloff considers the issue logically:
If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely want to say that the second event
was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or not the two had anything else in common. As for such a
principle being an empirical truth, how could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and
matter, as candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are independent is to
beg the question. . . . It says something about the desperation of those who want to dismiss radical dualism that such phony
arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly reputable philosophers who should know better.29
Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on
obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another we have interaction
between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper
considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality of different kinds of forces,
and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles. Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis
that only like things can act upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields
—by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and
then the modified field acts upon another body.30
It should be clear that the idea that only like can act upon like rests upon an obsolete, billiard-ball
notion of causation in physics.31


Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 20:23:44
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 20:57:14
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Sir Don., why should I accept your challenge when you have ignored mine for so many posts. But, in an attempt at fairness, I have six words for you: ................................Limited Evolution, and or Natural Selection

Maybe you should answer your own question here my friend. How would you construct the means for the onset of life?

But first, you'll need to define life. What is life Don.?
Secondly, what makes consciousness different from other forms of mental activity?
Thirdly and lastly, What is Nature?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 21:08:33
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Sir Don., why should I accept your challenge when you have ignored mine for so many posts. But, in an attempt at fairness, I have six words for you: ................................Limited Evolution, and or Natural Selection

Maybe you should answer your own question here my friend. How would you construct the means for the onset of life?

But first, you'll need to define life. What is life Don.?
Secondly, what makes consciousness different from other forms of mental activity?
Thirdly and lastly, What is Nature?
We patiently wait........................................................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/12/2013 21:15:37
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Sir Don., why should I accept your challenge when you have ignored mine for so many posts. But, in an attempt at fairness, I have six words for you: ................................Limited Evolution, and or Natural Selection

Maybe you should answer your own question here my friend. How would you construct the means for the onset of life?

But first, you'll need to define life. What is life Don.?
Secondly, what makes consciousness different from other forms of mental activity?
Thirdly and lastly, What is Nature?
We patiently wait........................................................
Times up Don......................Someone else take over here, I'm bored to death and have given up ever being able to squeez any answers out of Sir Don. This thread is an absolute waste of time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 21:26:59
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Sir Don., why should I accept your challenge when you have ignored mine for so many posts. But, in an attempt at fairness, I have six words for you: ................................Limited Evolution, and or Natural Selection

Maybe you should answer your own question here my friend. How would you construct the means for the onset of life?

But first, you'll need to define life. What is life Don.?
Secondly, what makes consciousness different from other forms of mental activity?
Thirdly and lastly, What is Nature?
We patiently wait........................................................
Times up Don......................Someone else take over here, I'm bored to death and have given up ever being able to squeez any answers out of Sir Don. This thread is an absolute waste of time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't be lazy : read the above : the answer is  there,relatively speaking  .
It's up to you indeed , what are you afraid of then ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2013 21:30:28
... nature cannot "generate " life or consciousness...
So now life and consciousness are unnatural are they, Don?

Not unnatural, they just cannot be "generated " by nature , otherwise , let any materialist out there ,or any naturalist non-reductionist account for the nature of life or consciousness fully naturalistically .

In other words :
Let them explain to us how life or consciousness emerged in nature .
Sir Don., why should I accept your challenge when you have ignored mine for so many posts. But, in an attempt at fairness, I have six words for you: ................................Limited Evolution, and or Natural Selection

Maybe you should answer your own question here my friend. How would you construct the means for the onset of life?

But first, you'll need to define life. What is life Don.?
Secondly, what makes consciousness different from other forms of mental activity?
Thirdly and lastly, What is Nature?


Try to make time for the above excerpts i did make some effort to post ,just for you :
Just try to read the above : after that , try to answer the following then :

Tell me then how any naturalist approach can account for the origins and nature of both life and consciousness ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/12/2013 22:16:40
No problem. If you define life or consciousness, I''ll explain how they arose.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2013 22:18:34
Cheryl

Quote
there are properties of objects which cannot (in principle) be explained in physical terms

Why can't I think of any examples? There are plenty of things I can't explain in practice, but I have no reason to believe that they can't be explained at all by anyone ever.

I can't think of any either, other than the common examples of emergent properties - the strength of brass, flight in a bird despite the inability of its cells to fly, the traffic patterns of the LA free way that cannot be derived from the smallest components of cars and people, things like weather, etc. So I don't see a big difference in Chalmer's view and emergent properties, despite the superveney stuff.

Maybe he only applies his property dualism to consciousness, but if so,  that seems based on the impression that the qualitative difference between consciousness and brain activity is greater than the qualitative differences between  other emergent properties and what they emerge from - links that seem somehow less tight from one level to the next.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 01:04:59

Yes; a philosophical zombie may be conceivable, but it seems to me that a creature that is behaviourally indistinguishable from a known conscious creature must itself be conscious because that level of behavioural complexity requires consciousness - or to put it another way, consciousness comes with the level of complexity required to support those behaviours. Also, the energetics of evolutionary development suggests that consciousness is unlikely to be an 'optional extra' that has no significant advantage, yet consumes energy resource.
Ramachandran says there are two visual pathways from the eyeballs to the higher centers of the brain.  The  evolutionarily older pathway, more prominent in some mammals and reptiles,  goes to the brain stem, and then gets relayed eventually to the higher centers of the brain. The evolutionarily newer pathway goes from the eyeball through the thalamus to the visual cortex of the brain. In blindsight, the first pathway still works, and some kind of visual information is shared with other parts of the brain, but without the conscious experience of it. In blindsight, the second pathway, or part of the the visual cortex it leads to, doesn’t work.  Some patients describe the experience as being like what they would imagine ESP to be like – they know something, but don’t know how they know it.

If I’m out cross country skiing in late March in Canada, I know that is the time of year that hungry bears emerge from their dens, often with cubs in toe. If I’m cross country skiing in March I might see a dark moving object that from a distance looks a bit like a bear (although it could be a large black dog or an Angus cow.) Both situations provide my brain with information about the possibility of a bear, both kinds of information are provisional or uncertain, but they are different experiences and have different effects. The bear threat associated with qualia is anchored in the present. It nags at my brain – is it a bear or isn’t it? As Ramachadran says, qualia are irrevocable. If I get close enough to see that it is an Angus cow, at some point, I can no longer see it any other way.  Where as,  I have all day to consider the odds of running into a bear because I know they come out of hibernation in the spring (and ironically, I could continue to contemplate those odds, as a typical scientist is inclined to do, while in hospital recovering from my bear mauling injuries.)

Consciousness and qualia seem to be important in distinguishing between reality and imagination, reality and memory, reality and reasoned guesses. An animal that has no complex memories, no imagination that runs test simulations, and doesn’t reason,  doesn’t really need systems to distinguish between these things – it just needs accurate sensors, minimal interpretation of data, and a response.

It would be interesting to know how a blindsighted person would react to something that almost looks like a bear. Would they react in a reptilian way - "this registers as a threat, I'm getting the hell out of here." Or would they, still having a human brain, delay, and not be able to tell the difference between what their blind sight signals and a "guess" -a bear "idea", without the associated qualia?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 01:32:53


Materialism is false , simply because materialism cannot account for consciousness , not because materialism cannot explain consciousness , but simply because physics and chemistry alone cannot "generate " consciousness , the latter that cannot rise from matter .


why not?

Quote
That religious dualism cannot explain consciousness either , that does not make the fact go away that consciousness is ...immaterial .

That's not a fact. It's an assertion. And if the immaterial "fails to explain" consciousness, it must be false by your own reasoning.

Quote
P.S.: The so-called non-reductionist naturalism ,either that  that was proposed by  either  Chalmers ,Nagel, or others , as an alternative to the false reductionist naturalist materialism, can also not account for consciousness , in the sense that  nature cannot "generate " consciousness or life ...."

Nor can immaterial mechanisms generate it, or at least you haven't explained how.

Don, your reasoning is based on process of elimination ie If there's known material mechanism, it must be immaterial. But that argument is your undoing, because it's easily reversed - If there's no known immaterial mechanism, it must be material. All that really counts is evidence that directly supports your claim.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 03:10:34



What is immaterialism ? what is that ? you must have been referring to ...idealism, i guess = all is mind = also false,as the materialist "all is matter " conception of nature is also false  .

Who is playing games now, Don?

Quote
When i say that not "all is matter " = that means : matter is not the only reality ,the immaterial side of reality is the other part of reality = the other side of the same coin : reality has both material and immaterial sides

Immaterialism is the belief in the immaterial side of reality, that other side of the coin of which you speak.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 04/12/2013 04:10:32
Human Consciousness:  An advanced state of mental activity where the physical brain makes acquaintance with the self.........................Ethos

My personal definition and my last post in this thread.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/12/2013 06:56:28
Pity that's your exit line, because it's the first interesting one in this thread.

I wonder why you restrict it to humans? AFAIK all animals have a concept of self, and it's a fairly basic necessity.

Alas, we'll never know.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2013 14:34:18
I wonder why you restrict it to humans? AFAIK all animals have a concept of self, and it's a fairly basic necessity.

Alas, we'll never know.
I would suggest/predict that animals that have the capability of flexible & adaptive forward planning using 'what-if' modeling are most likely to have a sophisticated concept of self (i.e. more than simply discrimination between 'self' and 'other'). I don't see what use it would be otherwise; concepts are abstractions, and that kind of modeling requires abstracted models of the environment and its relevant creatures - including the self, to be run in  predictive scenarios. An introspective 'avatar' of self for forward planning basically is a self-image...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 16:04:42
A primitive form of self awareness seems to come with any ability to distinguish self from non-self and might have earlier benefits besides running what if simulations in the brain (see picture)

I think the sense of self is also tied to systems that monitor intentions and the actual results, compares them, and makes corrections. Of course this happens below the level of awareness in the cerebellum,in regards to physical movements, so maybe it doesn't absolutely require consciousness. But if an animal only became aware of its actions after the fact with no sense of "I am the one who is doing this", it would have to constantly reason backwards about what occurred.


In the brain, the structures most closely associated with consciousness (Reticular Activating system, the thalamus, the cingulate cortex and the somatosensory cortex) are the same ones associated with a core sense of self. Surprisingly, they are mid level brain structures, except for the somatosensory cortex. In older anatomy textbooks, they are described as just being like relay stations or switch boards, or controlling level of physiological alertness, but these areas seem to be getting more attention now.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2013 17:09:42
Damasio (Self Comes To Mind) talks of brain stem structures as contributing to the 'proto-self' with its fundamental 'felt' sensations. Structures associated with consciousness are in more recent evolutionary layers (thalamus, posteromedial cortices, etc), but richly connected to these brain stem structures in both directions.

I think, perhaps, it would help to explore some examples to clarify what we're talking about. I would expect mammals to have some sense of self, and insects little or none (they can detect others and act accordingly, but this appears reflexive or 'hard-coded'). But what about, say, a frog? does a frog need to conceptualize? It shows little adaptability, problem-solving, or forward planning, so I would think not...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 17:51:25
Human Consciousness:  An advanced state of mental activity where the physical brain makes acquaintance with the self.........................Ethos

Wrong : physics and chemistry cannot account for our conscious subjective experiences and states,let alone for the whole process of consciousness as such  .

Quote
My personal definition and my last post in this thread.

That's a non-definition .

Consciousness is so elusive ,deceptive and mysterious that it has been escaping any clear definition for thousands of years now so far , and consciousness will remain so , for nobody knows how long still ,for ever maybe .
I think that consciousness will remain beyond science in fact .

Why didn't you even try to make the slightest effort to read just some of the excerpts i did post ? instead of continuing to listen to your own music alone ?: what an unscientific attitude of yours .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 18:00:56

What is immaterialism ? what is that ? you must have been referring to ...idealism, i guess = all is mind = also false,as the materialist "all is matter " conception of nature is also false  .

Who is playing games now, Don?

What games ? I am aware of none .

Quote
Quote
When i say that not "all is matter " = that means : matter is not the only reality ,the immaterial side of reality is the other part of reality = the other side of the same coin : reality has both material and immaterial sides

Immaterialism is the belief in the immaterial side of reality, that other side of the coin of which you speak.

There is no such a thing such as "immaterialism " , just idealism = all is mind = false .
Religious dualism , for example , sees reality as being matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material .
Materialism is just a lower form of idealism , simply because the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material is more fundamental than matter can ever be , and  materialism  is also the  exact opposite of idealism , by assuming that 'all is matter ,including the mind " = false also .

All naturalist conceptions of nature thus , either the reductionist or the non-reductionist ones + idealism are false .

Only religious idealism is true = reality is both matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again = that's the only conception of nature out there that does make sense in fact .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 18:09:56
Human Consciousness:  An advanced state of mental activity where the physical brain makes acquaintance with the self.........................Ethos

Wrong : physics and chemistry cannot account for our conscious subjective experiences and states,let alone for the whole process of consciousness as such  .

Quote
My personal definition and my last post in this thread.

That's a non-definition .

Consciousness is so elusive ,deceptive and mysterious that it has been escaping any clear definition for thousands of years now so far , and consciousness will remain so , for nobody knows how long still ,for ever maybe .
I think that consciousness will remain beyond science in fact .

Why didn't you even try to make the slightest effort to read just some of the excerpts i did post ? instead of continuing to listen to your own music alone ?: what an unscientific attitude of yours .
Human Consciousness:  An advanced state of mental activity where the physical brain makes acquaintance with the self.........................Ethos

Wrong : physics and chemistry cannot account for our conscious subjective experiences and states,let alone for the whole process of consciousness as such  .

Quote
My personal definition and my last post in this thread.

That's a non-definition .


Why is it a non-definition? It's brief but it contains some key elements - "state" "mental" "brain" and "self." One could do worse.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 18:13:23


Only religious idealism is true

Based on what evidence?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 18:29:31


Materialism is false , simply because materialism cannot account for consciousness , not because materialism cannot explain consciousness , but simply because physics and chemistry alone cannot "generate " consciousness , the latter that cannot rise from matter .


why not?

Amazing that people do still ask why : well, consciousness is a subjective state or experience or whatever  that's totally different from physics and chemistry , and can thus not have "arisen " from them,logically .

Quote
Quote
That religious dualism cannot explain consciousness either , that does not make the fact go away that consciousness is ...immaterial .

That's not a fact. It's an assertion. And if the immaterial "fails to explain" consciousness, it must be false by your own reasoning.

It is a fact to me at least, and to any other sane and intelligent person , no offense  .
Religious dualism has its own metaphysical explanations of consciousness that are unfalsifiable = unscientific , but not necessarily false , as materialism is .
The latter that cannot account for consciousness, not just that materialism cannot explain it : physics and chemistry cannot explain a process such as consciousness that's totally different form the former ,simply because  not " all is matter , including the mind " .

It's not that materialism is false , because it cannot explain consciousness:  the materialist belief assumption that  "the mind is in the brain " is just an extension of the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " conception of nature , no empirical fact .

Materialism is false in fact , simply because it cannot account for consciousness that cannot be material or physical , let alone that consciousness could or can rise from physics and chemistry .

Quote
Quote
P.S.: The so-called non-reductionist naturalism ,either that  that was proposed by  either  Chalmers ,Nagel, or others , as an alternative to the false reductionist naturalist materialism, can also not account for consciousness , in the sense that  nature cannot "generate " consciousness or life ...."

Nor can immaterial mechanisms generate it, or at least you haven't explained how.

What "immaterialism " are you talking about , there is no such a thing , just idealism = all is mind = false .

Religious dualism = reality is matter and mind , in the sense that the latter is irreducible to the physical or to the material .

Quote
Don, your reasoning is based on process of elimination ie If there's known material mechanism, it must be immaterial. But that argument is your undoing, because it's easily reversed - If there's no known immaterial mechanism, it must be material. All that really counts is evidence that directly supports your claim.

No, that's your own misinterpretation of my reasoning :

The materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " conception of nature is false , simply because it cannot account for the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material, and hence not "all is matter ,including the mind " = there is matter and mind , the latter that's non -physical non-material and non-biological .

Even matter itself ,by the way , is not only matter , as modern physics have been showing , if you haven't noticed just that yet : we do still not know what matter exactly is , let alone what the mental might be .

Try to tell me what matter is then, first : that should be easier to answer , ironically speaking , than trying to know what the mental is , the mental that's more fundamental than matter can ever be .

Since the mental is more fundamental than matter , then, there might be some other totally different forms of causation out there , that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves =  non-physical or non -material forms of causation that're still unknown to the materialistic science : quantum mechanics have been, for example, showing , that the mental has indeed causal effect on matter .

How the non-physical mind does interact with matter or with the physical brain and body , and vice versa ,  is still a mystery .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 18:32:57


Only religious idealism is true = reality is both matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again = that's the only conception of nature out there that does make sense in fact .


You seem to have an almost primitive view that anything that does not have mass requires a mystical, dualist explanation. That design, as in the arrangement of things, is not a physical reality, that states do not matter, that interactions between things do not matter, that energetic processes do not matter, that changes over time do not matter or are not part of physical reality, every bit as much as mass.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 18:38:04


Only religious idealism is true

Based on what evidence?

That's the only conception of nature that does make sense ,from everyday's experience = reality is both matter and mind = reality is both material physical and non-physical non-material = reality has both material physical and non-material non-physical sides = the material or physical side of reality and the non-physical non-material side of reality are the both sides of the same reality = the both sides of the same coin = physics and chemistry alone cannot explain the whole pic of reality , the same goes for the mental side of reality that cannot alone explain the whole pic of reality ,in this life at least .

To try to explain reality  as a whole  , science cannot afford to keep on trying to do just that , just via one single side of reality , just in terms of physics and chemistry , science has been taking for the whole real pic for so long now , thanks to materialism thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2013 18:41:10
That's not a fact. It's an assertion. And if the immaterial "fails to explain" consciousness, it must be false by your own reasoning.
It is a fact to me at least, and to any other sane and intelligent person , no offense  .
So, yeah; if you don't agree, you're neither intelligent nor sane. QED.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 18:47:16

Religious dualism has its own metaphysical explanations of consciousness that are unfalsifiable = unscientific , but not necessarily false



So much for Popper.

And "not necessarily false" is not the same as "true," so your statement "Only religious idealism is true" isn't proven and can't be proven according to you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 18:50:14


Only religious idealism is true = reality is both matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again = that's the only conception of nature out there that does make sense in fact .


You seem to have an almost primitive view that anything that does not have mass requires a mystical, dualist explanation
.


So "primitive indeed " that science itself did originate from the very womb of a particular religion .
There is in fact nothing more primitive , absurd , surreal, stupid , sorry ...you name it , than that false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream "scientific world view " .
I said many times , that since the mental is more fundamental than matter can ever be , (we still do not know even what matter exactly is , matter that's not just matter , simply put , let alone that we can pretend to know anything about the mental that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ) ,and since the mental has more fundamental causal effect than matter can ever have (Quantum mechanics has been showing the causal effect of the mind of the observer on matter ) , then, it's pretty logical to assume that there might be more fundamental forms of causation out there = non-physical or non-material forms of causation .

Quote
That design, as in the arrangement of things, is not a physical reality, that states do not matter, that interactions between things do not matter, that energetic processes do not matter, that changes over time do not matter or are not part of physical reality, every bit as much as mass.

Who said that ? Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 18:55:51
the mental is more fundamental than matter


How do you know this? Do you believe that before there were humans to think about the universe, nothing existed or could exist?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/12/2013 18:57:42
Quote
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?

Only the prejudiced and ignorant think so. Please don't ask those who know better, to accept your bizarre assertion as fact.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 19:01:19
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?


I think both religion and science are attempts by an intelligent brain to answer "Why do things happen? Why are things the way they are?" But I don't believe religion was or is necessary for science, nor do I agree that any religion can take credit for scientific knowledge. I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:05:04

Religious dualism has its own metaphysical explanations of consciousness that are unfalsifiable = unscientific , but not necessarily false



So much for Popper.

And "not necessarily false" is not the same as "true," so your statement "Only religious idealism is true" isn't proven and can't be proven according to you.

Popper hismelf did realise the falsehood of materialism .


To me at least , religious dualism is true , but unfalsifiable = unscientific .

What is not unfalsifiable , is not necessarily false , as materialism is .

Which does mean that science cannot be the ultimate authority or the ultimate source of knowledge : that's beyond both science's realm and jurisdiction .

Materialism has been going in fact beyond the scientific method and beyond science thus = beyond science's realm and jurisdiction ,by stating that "all is matter " .

Worse : materialism has been imposing that false unfalsifiable metaphysical theory of nature of his ,for so long now , as "the scientific  world view " = how about that ?


I did post a long article from another forum on the subject , you seem to have dismissed,for no reason

 In short :

You did call my world view as being primitive , without realising the fact that the current " scientific world view " has just been the materialist metaphysical false one = the materialist outdated superseded false secular religion in science , that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view ",since the 19th century at least  .

Materialism that's just a lower and a degenerate form of ...christianity in fact , as Nietzsche used to say regarding ...humanism .


Who's the one here with a primitive view of the world , you or i , that's no question, obviously .

Congratulations, lady .



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 19:11:27

Popper hismelf did realise the falsehood of materialism .



Funny, I don't recall him saying that in the articles you posted.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:11:53
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?


I think both religion and science are attempts by an intelligent brain to answer "Why do things happen? Why are things the way they are?" But I don't believe religion was or is necessary for science, nor do I agree that any religion can take credit for scientific knowledge. I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion.

That's just a materialistic belief assumption extension of the  materialist "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream false "scientific world view " : irrelevant .

The conflict between science and religion has been just an Eurocentric problem , not universal ,not in the absolute sense at least .

There is no conflict between my faith and proper science without materialism, and there can be none  :
They complete each other , they are necessary to each other , they are the both sides of the same coin.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:19:08
Folks :

Try to be civil : and i promise that it will be easy , a piece of cake , to demolish , so easy in fact that i cannot take any credit or glory for , to demolish your materialist mainstream  false  'scientific world view " sand castle ,in front of your own very lovely eyes :

a false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , the latter i do love so much , you have no idea thus .

Which also means that i will be just trying to make you realise what science proper is or should be in fact , and what is no science = the materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " : i am not and i will be not "evangelising " thus .

I see that some people here who have been conditionned ,brainwashed and indoctrinated by materialism for centuries now , to the point where they have been taking the false materialist conception of nature for granted and without question, as "the scientific world view " , i see that they will become hysteric in no time : very predictable indeed .

So, just get a grip ,and i will deliver .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 19:21:03


What is not unfalsifiable , is not necessarily false , as materialism is .
Which does mean that science cannot be the ultimate authority or the ultimate source of knowledge : that's beyond both science's realm and jurisdiction .
Materialism has been going in fact beyond the scientific method and beyond science thus = beyond science's realm and jurisdiction ,by stating that "all is matter " .
Worse : materialism has been imposing that false unfalsifiable metaphysical theory of nature of his ,for so long now , as "the scientific  world view " = how about that ?


What "materialism " are you talking about , there is no such a thing. There is only the scientific method.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 19:26:07
Folks :

Try to be civil : and i promise that it will be easy , a piece of cake , to demolish , so easy in fact that i cannot take any credit or glory for , to demolish your materialist mainstream  false  'scientific world view " sand castle ,in front of your very eyes :

a false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , the latter i do love so much , you have no idea thus .

I see that some people here who have been conditioned ,brainwashed and indoctrinated by materialism for centuries now , to the point whare they have been taking the false materialist conception of nature for granted and without question, as "the scientific world view " , i see that they will become hysteric in no time .

So, just get grip ,and i will deliver .

Great. I can hardly wait! I shall go make some popcorn.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:38:18


What is not unfalsifiable , is not necessarily false , as materialism is .
Which does mean that science cannot be the ultimate authority or the ultimate source of knowledge : that's beyond both science's realm and jurisdiction .
Materialism has been going in fact beyond the scientific method and beyond science thus = beyond science's realm and jurisdiction ,by stating that "all is matter " .
Worse : materialism has been imposing that false unfalsifiable metaphysical theory of nature of his ,for so long now , as "the scientific  world view " = how about that ?


What "materialism " are you talking about


Oh, no : amazing : what is the meta-paradigm or the conception of nature that has been dominating in all sciences for that matter , since the 19th century at least , as to become the false mainstream "scientific world view " ? and hence , a lot of what you have been taking for granted as science , was no science = just materialist belief assumptions which have been just extensions of the materialist false conception of nature , materialist belief assumptions such as "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain, life or nature are mechanical ...." ...



Quote
there is no such a thing.


There is: what do you think i have been talking about all along ?  .
Are you gonna deny the fact that materialism has been imposed to all sciences ,as the 'scientific world view ",for so long now ,without question ? Be serious .

Quote
There is only the scientific method.

I wish there were .

Fact is : The materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " has been just the false materialist conception of nature , science proper has absolutely nothing to do with , and hence fact is also :

science has been deluded by materialism  into assuming  that "all is matter ,including the mind " = just a materialist false conception of nature ,no empirical fact .






Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:41:08
Folks :

Try to be civil : and i promise that it will be easy , a piece of cake , to demolish , so easy in fact that i cannot take any credit or glory for , to demolish your materialist mainstream  false  'scientific world view " sand castle ,in front of your very eyes :

a false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " that has absolutely nothing to do with science proper , the latter i do love so much , you have no idea thus .

I see that some people here who have been conditioned ,brainwashed and indoctrinated by materialism for centuries now , to the point whare they have been taking the false materialist conception of nature for granted and without question, as "the scientific world view " , i see that they will become hysteric in no time .

So, just get grip ,and i will deliver .

Great. I can hardly wait! I shall go make some popcorn.

That's the fair play civil spirit , girl :

I will do the same , good idea indeed .

Bon appetit , and good luck .

This promises to turn out to be entertaining , educational, inspiring ....after all , as i have been hoping it would do .

Which also means that religions are unfalsifiable = unscientific , but not all necessarily false = they cannot all be proven to be true of course ,as the materialist secular religion can be proven to be false .

In short :

I will telling you about what science proper is , and what is it not ,that's all .

In other words :

You have to be mentally or psychologically prepared as to have to deal with the fact that you will have to throw a lots of your presumed 'scientific " knowledge out of the window, by breaking free from your own materialist indoctrinations brainwash or conditionning  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 19:49:49

Popper hismelf did realise the falsehood of materialism .



Funny, I don't recall him saying that in the articles you posted.


Just wait and see , my pretty charming lady :
I will be looking for those specific quotes in my digital library .

Later , alligator .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2013 20:16:01

What "materialism " are you talking about


Oh, no : amazing : what is the meta-paradigm or the conception of nature that has been dominating in all sciences for that matter , since the 19th century at least , as to become the false mainstream "scientific world view " ? and hence , a lot of what you have been taking for granted as science , was no science = just materialist belief assumptions which have been just extensions of the materialist false conception of nature , materialist belief assumptions such as "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain, life or nature are mechanical ...." ...


Oh, that materialism - you mean your conspiracy theory involving scientists who chose to study some aspect of chemistry and physics instead of, say, elves.


Quote
There is: what do you think i have been talking about all along ?  .
Are you gonna deny the fact that materialism has been imposed to all sciences ,as the 'scientific world view ",for so long now ,without question ? Be serious .

Uh, yes actually I do deny it. Hope that clarifies things.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2013 20:37:58

What "materialism " are you talking about


Oh, no : amazing : what is the meta-paradigm or the conception of nature that has been dominating in all sciences for that matter , since the 19th century at least , as to become the false mainstream "scientific world view " ? and hence , a lot of what you have been taking for granted as science , was no science = just materialist belief assumptions which have been just extensions of the materialist false conception of nature , materialist belief assumptions such as "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain, life or nature are mechanical ...." ...


Oh, that materialism - you mean your conspiracy theory involving scientists who chose to study some aspect of chemistry and physics instead of, say, elves.

Be serious , please :
That's no conspiracy :
Materialism is just an outdated 19th century false and superseded conception of nature ideology  that was based on Newton's  classical  physics  .
Physicists thought at that time that there was nothing left to discover regarding the laws of physics ,and that there remained only details to be filled in.

Quote
Quote
There is: what do you think i have been talking about all along ?  .
Are you gonna deny the fact that materialism has been imposed to all sciences ,as the 'scientific world view ",for so long now ,without question ? Be serious .

Uh, yes actually I do deny it. Hope that clarifies things.

How can you deny that ? Be serious .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2013 22:36:38
Are you gonna deny the fact that materialism has been imposed to all sciences ,as the 'scientific world view ",for so long now ,without question ? Be serious .
Uh, yes actually I do deny it. Hope that clarifies things.
How can you deny that ? Be serious .
If you've been involved with science or scientists for any length of time, you can see it's obviously not the case.
 
But there are always a few people with an agenda who'll throw accusations around, perhaps because their pet hypothesis has been ignored, rejected, or falsified - or perhaps for religious reasons.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 05/12/2013 00:07:21
How can you deny that ? Be serious .

Searching ... https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+%22Be+serious%22+site:thenakedscientists.com (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+%22Be+serious%22+site:thenakedscientists.com) , gives "about 60 results".

Someone seriously needs some new material.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 09:45:27
Someone seriously needs some new material.
Never mind the casual expressions, he seriously needs material to provide some evidence or argument for his assertions.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 05/12/2013 15:22:59


I think, perhaps, it would help to explore some examples to clarify what we're talking about. I would expect mammals to have some sense of self, and insects little or none (they can detect others and act accordingly, but this appears reflexive or 'hard-coded'). But what about, say, a frog? does a frog need to conceptualize? It shows little adaptability, problem-solving, or forward planning, so I would think not...

It's complicated too, somewhat, in that there often seems to be more than one way to skin a cat in nature. In the same way there are different engineering designs for flight in the wings of insects, birds, bats and gliding mammals, there may be different structures that accomplish learning, even consciousness or self awareness. Or perhaps the information will be useful in the opposite way, in showing what kinds of learned intelligent behavior are possible without consciousness.

 Below is an article about crows, and one about face recognition and learning in wasps.

Crows Are No Bird-Brains: Neurobiologists Investigate Neuronal Basis of Crows' Intelligence
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131128103835.htm

Insects Recognize Faces Using Processing Mechanism Similar to That of Humans
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=insects-recognize-faces-using-processing-mechanism-similar-to-that-of-humans
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 05/12/2013 16:02:01
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?


I think both religion and science are attempts by an intelligent brain to answer "Why do things happen? Why are things the way they are?" But I don't believe religion was or is necessary for science, nor do I agree that any religion can take credit for scientific knowledge. I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion.

That's just a materialistic belief assumption extension of the  materialist "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream false "scientific world view " : irrelevant .


The conflict between science and religion has been just an Eurocentric problem , not universal ,not in the absolute sense at least .

There is no conflict between my faith and proper science without materialism, and there can be none  :
They complete each other , they are necessary to each other , they are the both sides of the same coin.

There doesn't have to be a conflict between any religion and science. One question religion asks that science doesn't, is what  should we do? What's morally right? Some branches of ethical philosophy raise this question, but moral principles can't be derived from physical facts. Perhaps that is one reason Ethos does not see a conflict between his faith and science, although I don't wish to put words in his mouth.

But the "conflict" only seems to arise when people try to prove religious beliefs scientifically, substitute religious doctrine for empirical evidence, or try to derive moral beliefs from physical facts.

Your assertion that materialism is a degenerate form of Christianity has no basis logically or historically, and I don't see how any particular religion "gave birth to" any area of science, even if some early scientists were also theists, or had the time and literacy skills to pursue science because of their religious occupation. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 16:48:05
It's complicated too, somewhat, in that there often seems to be more than one way to skin a cat in nature. In the same way there are different engineering designs for flight in the wings of insects, birds, bats and gliding mammals, there may be different structures that accomplish learning, even consciousness or self awareness. Or perhaps the information will be useful in the opposite way, in showing what kinds of learned intelligent behavior are possible without consciousness.

 Below is an article about crows, and one about face recognition and learning in wasps.

Crows Are No Bird-Brains: Neurobiologists Investigate Neuronal Basis of Crows' Intelligence
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131128103835.htm

Insects Recognize Faces Using Processing Mechanism Similar to That of Humans
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=insects-recognize-faces-using-processing-mechanism-similar-to-that-of-humans
The independent development of intelligence and (perhaps) consciousness is a fascinating subject. Here's a (not terribly good) video of an octopus learning by example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw); showing self-motivated curiosity, focused attention, learning and understanding, and application of learned knowledge.

Makes me wonder whether, with fundamentally similar kinds of problems to solve, aliens (if or when we ever make contact) might be more familiar than often imagined...

A follow-up to the insect recognition feature has honey-bees able to recognise humans (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=face-recognition-honeybees)!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 17:33:17
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?


I think both religion and science are attempts by an intelligent brain to answer "Why do things happen? Why are things the way they are?" But I don't believe religion was or is necessary for science, nor do I agree that any religion can take credit for scientific knowledge. I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion.

That's just a materialistic belief assumption extension of the  materialist "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream false "scientific world view " : irrelevant .


The conflict between science and religion has been just an Eurocentric problem , not universal ,not in the absolute sense at least .

There is no conflict between my faith and proper science without materialism, and there can be none  :
They complete each other , they are necessary to each other , they are the both sides of the same coin.

There doesn't have to be a conflict between any religion and science. One question religion asks that science doesn't, is what is should we do? What's morally right? Some branches of ethical philosophy raise this question, but moral principles can't be derived from physical facts. Perhaps that is one reason Ethos does not see a conflict between his faith and science, although I don't wish to put words in his mouth.



Religion is not only about moral or ethical values ,religion is much more than just that , mine at least in this case that's all encompassing : material and spiritual : it tries to explain the universe ,how did it came into being , how it will end ....and the role of humanity in that all ...

Science tries also to explain the parts of reality it can deal with empirically and piecemeal , while religion is holistic and thus leaves room for human inquiry , reason , true science ...

Those early muslim pioneers behind the birth and practice of science used to consider science as a religious duty, a form of worship of God , while separating their faith from science in the process , in order to find out about the secrets and signs of God within and without empirically .

Since science has been materialistic , in the sense that science has been assuming that "all is matter,including the mind ", then there cannot  but be a serious conflict between religion and science: religion is incompatible in fact with materialistic science in the above mentioned sense  ,since the false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " has been, per definition, excluding any notion or existence of the immaterial, and hence that of God , logically .
The immaterial that has been reduced to the material, thanks to materialism in science .

At the other hand  ,there should be in fact no conflict between the metaphysically neutral science proper and true religion , when science will be free from materialism or from any other false conception of nature .

But fact is , the conflict between science and religion has been just  an Eurocentric one , not universal, not in the absolute sense at least :

The medieval church used to consider Aristotle's physics , for example , as an act of faith , thanks to the works of Thomas Aquinas ,an act of faith that should not be challenged , that's why Bruno who raised the Copernican counter-arguments was burned at the stake , and Galileo was smart enough to recant 16 years later when he captured the attention of the terrible inquisition .....

Quote
But the "conflict" only seems to arise when people try to prove religious beliefs scientifically, or derive moral beliefs from physical facts.

Once again, since science has been materialistic , since the 19th century at least , there can be therefore only conflict between religion and the materialistic science .

Quote
Your assertion that materialism is a degenerate form of Christianity has no basis logically or historically, and I don't see how any particular religion "gave birth to" any area of science, even if some early scientists were also theists, or had the time and literacy skills to pursue science because of their religious occupation
.

Some do trace back the roots of materialism all the way back to Democritus 5 centuries BC when he used to say this famous line of his " Nothing exists but atoms, and the void " .
Some others trace back the origins of materialism to much older civilizations : materialism is in fact a primitive world view that 'resurrected " as a result of the medieval Eurocentric terrible religious wars , religious inquisitions, intolerance ....and saw its chance materialized in Newton's classical physics to establish its "scientific " claims .

But, Newton's physics have been fundamentally incorrect , and hence the materialism that was built on it is false as a result .

Since materialism reduces everything to just matter , it cannot but be a lower or a degenerate form of christianity .

P.S.: It is almost an undeniable fact that the scientific method did originate from the very epistemology of a particular holy book : see the arguments in that regard presented in the origin of science thread .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 17:39:49
the mental is more fundamental than matter


How do you know this? Do you believe that before there were humans to think about the universe, nothing existed or could exist?


Ironically enough , the most physical science of them all , modern physics or quantum mechanics , have been superseding materialism , to the point where they can raise the issue of the fundamental form of causation of them all : that of the mental causal effect on matter :

See this fascinating summary on the subject :


The von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum physics, supported now by the experiments of Schmidt and others, may bring to mind the idealism of Bishop Berkeley, who thought that ordinaryobjects, such as trees and furniture, did not exist unless observed.
But this interpretation does not deny that an external reality exists independent of anyone observing it.
Properties of quantum phenomena are divided into static and dynamic properties, with the former, such as mass and charge, having definite and constant values for any observation.
 It is the dynamic properties, those that do not have constant values— such as position, momentum, and direction of spin—that are thought to exist as
potentialities that become actualities only when observed.
But as quantum theorist Euan Squires points out, this raises a very strange question:
The assumption we are considering appears even more weird when we realize that throughout much of the universe, and indeed throughout all of it in early times, there were presumably no conscious observers. . . .
Even worse are the problems we meet if we accept the modern ideas on the early universe in which quantum decays (of the ‘vacuum,’ but this need not trouble us here) were necessary in order to obtain the conditions in which conscious observers could exist.

Who, or what, did the observations necessary to create the observers?
Squires enters the realm of theology with great trepidation and considers what seems to be the only possibility under this interpretation: that conscious observations can be made by minds outside of the physical universe.

This, of course, is one of the traditional roles of God, or of the gods.
Whether expressed in theological terms or not, the suggestion that conscious minds are in some way connected and that they might even be connected to a form of universal, collective consciousness appears to be a possible solution to the problem of quantum theory.
It is not easy to see what it might mean, as we understand so little about consciousness.
 That there are“ connections” of some sort between conscious minds and physical matter is surely implied by the fact that conscious decisions have effects on matter.

 Thus there are links between conscious minds that go through the medium of physical systems.

Whether there are others, that exploit the nonphysical and presumably nonlocalised nature of consciousness, it is not possible to say.
Some people might wish to mention here the “evidence” for telepathy and similar extra-sensory effects.
Professor Squires concludes his discussion on the role of consciousness in physics with this remark:
It is remarkable that such ideas should arise from a study of the behavior of the most elementary of systems.
 That such systems point to a world beyond themselves is a fact that will be loved by all who believe that there are truths of which we know little,
that there are mysteries seen only by mystics, and that there are phenomena inexplicable within our normal view of what is
possible.
 There is no harm in this—physics indeed points to the unknown.
 The emphasis, however, must be on the unknown,
on the mystery, on the truths dimly glimpsed, on things inexpressible except in the language of poetry, or religion, or
metaphor.


Chris Carter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 18:00:17
Classical Physics :


CLASSICAL PHYSICS:

Classical physics is a set of theories of nature that originated with the work of Isaac Newton in the
seventeenth century, was advanced by many scientists through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
and finally culminated in the relativity theories of Albert Einstein, the last great classical physicist.
Building on the earlier work of Galileo and Johannes Kepler, Newton developed a theory of gravity
and three simple laws of motion that accurately predicted the motions of the planets as well as that of
terrestrial objects here on Earth, such as cannonballs, falling apples, and the tides.
Newton assumed that all physical objects were composed of tiny versions of large visible objects,
which he described as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles.”2 These tiny objects were
assumed to interact by means of direct contact, much like billiard balls. The only exception was the
mysterious action at a distance called gravity: Newton’s theory of gravity proposed that every tiny
particle in the solar system attracted every other one with a force inversely proportional to the square
of the distance between them. This deeply troubled Newton, who referred to this action at a distance as
an “absurdity”; nevertheless, he formulated his theory of gravity as an equation and simply declined to
speculate on how it was mediated, famously writing “hypotheses non fingo” (“I make no
hypotheses”).
It was Einstein who finally proposed a mediating agent for gravity: a distortion in space and time
caused by the mass of objects, with more massive objects causing greater distortion. This contribution
made classical physics a local theory: there is no action at a distance. All influence is transmitted
locally along a force field, and no influence—including that of gravity—propagates faster than the
speed of light. If, for instance, the sun were to be suddenly destroyed, Earth would drift out of its orbit
about eight minutes later.
In classical physics, all interactions between particles are local and occur independent of anyone
observing them. Moreover, the interactions are assumed to be deterministic: that is, the future state of
the physical world is completely determined by the state at an earlier time. According to classical
physics, the complete history of the physical world was determined for all time at the origin of the
universe. The universe was now seen as a great machine. God may have created the machine and set it
running—according to Newton, the planets were originally hurled by the hand of God—but once
started, the solar system was kept going by its own momentum and operated as a self-regulating
machine in accordance with inviolable laws.
Classical physics had two ways of dealing with the problem of consciousness and free will. The
first, followed by Newton and René Descartes, was to assume that human consciousness and free will
lay outside the domain of physics. Descartes taught that animals were mindless automatons, but
humans had a soul and were thus the sole exceptions in an otherwise deterministic, mechanistic
universe. The second way of dealing with free will, popularized by the eighteenth-century philosophes
who were greatly inspired by Newton’s work, was to argue that classical physics was a complete
description of the entire world, including human beings, and that free will was therefore an illusion.
The ancient philosophy of materialism was now thought to have a scientific foundation. Scientists
and philosophers now had good reasons to believe that the physical aspects of reality were causally
closed: the physical could affect the mental via its affect on the brain, such as the experience of pain
after touching a flame, but the mental could not affect the physical. Pulling one’s hand away from the
flame was now seen by the materialists as the predetermined response of an automaton. Thoughts,
feelings, and intentions were now seen as causally redundant: it was now argued that consciousness
serves no purpose and that our intuitive feeling of free will is only an illusion.
These views became prevalent in the eighteenth century, during what became known as the
Enlightenment, which can be thought of as the ideological aftermath of the scientific revolution. Its
most striking feature was the rejection of dogma and tradition in favor of the rule of reason in human
affairs, and it was the precursor of modern secular humanism. Inspired by the dazzling success of the
new physics, prominent spokesmen such as Denis Diderot and Voltaire argued for a new worldview
based on an uncompromising mechanism and determinism that left no room for any intervention of
mind in nature, whether human or divine.
In the eighteenth century, the horrors of the religious wars, the witch hunts, and the Inquisition were
still fresh in peoples’ minds, and the new scientific worldview, spread by men such as Diderot and
Voltaire, can be seen partly as a reaction against the ecclesiastical domination over thought that the
Church held for centuries. As we have seen, Bruno was burned at the stake for his opinions, and
Galileo was persecuted for his but recanted. Yet Galileo’s insistence that only observation and
experimentation, not authority, were the arbiters of truth in science had launched a revolution in
thinking. When Newton’s Principia was published in 1687, it was not suppressed but instead reached a
wide audience. The Newtonian system predicted the orbits of the planets with astonishing accuracy
and even reduced comets from portents of disaster to phenomena whose appearance in the sky could
be predicted like clockwork. The universe was now viewed as a gigantic clockwork mechanism. The
so-called modern scientific worldview was thus born and has had enormous impact on philosophy for
the last three hundred years.
For a philosopher whose thinking is tied to classical physics, there are two possible ways to
understand the inability of the mental to influence the physical. The first is to consider thoughts,
feelings, and intentions as epiphenomena, that is, useless by-products that are somehow produced by
the brain, but in turn exert no causal influence on the brain. The second is to consider the mind as
identical to the brain, that is, thoughts and feelings are the same thing as the motion of tiny particles
inside the brain.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 18:02:26
Quantum Mechanics:


Quantum mechanics was developed early in the twentieth century to explain the behavior of atoms.
The energy of an atom was found to change, not continuously, but by a discrete amount called a
quantum. “Quantum mechanics” is the term that includes both the experimental observations and the
quantum theory that explains them.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, physics was thought to be nearly complete. All the
important discoveries had been made, many thought, and all that was left was to fill in some minor
details. One of these “details” was the hot-body problem concerning the colors of light given off by
hot bodies. Max Planck set about to solve it.
The problem was that classical physics gave the wrong answer: its predictions were wildly
inaccurate. Planck found that when he assumed, as an act of desperation, that energy could only be
released from an atom in discrete packets, his formula gave predictions that matched the data
perfectly. Quantum theory was born.
Classical physics assumed that a charged particle, such as an electron, would lose energy gradually
and continuously over time. Planck assumed that energy could only be radiated in discrete packets.
Each of these packets of energy would have an energy level equal to a tiny number (now called
Planck’s constant) times the frequency of the vibration of the particle. Energy at the atomic level
would be measured in quanta (the plural of “quantum”), with one quantum being the lowest energy
level possible, above zero.
It was found that an electron would vibrate for a while at a constant energy level without losing
energy to radiation. Then suddenly, unpredictably, randomly, it would jump to a lower energy level
and in the process radiate a photon of light (the energy of the photon given by Planck’s constant times
its frequency of vibration). An electron could also gain energy by such “quantum jumps.” A graph of
an electron’s energy level over time was now given by a stepped function, not a smooth curve.
It was later realized that quantum theory should apply to all objects, large and small. However, the
reason we don’t see children on swings suddenly change their energy level in quantum jumps is
because Planck’s constant is far too small. Quantum effects are just far too tiny for us to notice them
at the macroscopic level.
Quantum theory was rapidly developed in the decades to follow, with Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de
Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, and many others making major contributions. Classical mechanics is now
seen as only an excellent approximation for the behavior of objects at the macroscopic level we
normally deal with. Quantum mechanics can account for everything that classical mechanics can
account for, and also for data that classical mechanics neither predicts nor explains. Modern physics is
quantum mechanics. It also has many practical applications, such as the transistor, the laser, and the
florescent light bulb. It has been estimated that one-third of our economy depends on devices that
operate on quantum mechanical principles. Trying to understand what quantum mechanics means,
however, brings us face-to-face with some of the most baffling mysteries ever confronted, and must
profoundly change our worldview.
Newtonian physics was based on the metaphysical assumptions of determinism, the assumption that
an observer did not affect a system being observed, and localism. But classical physics has been
superseded by quantum physics, as classical physics has clearly been shown to be false. This implies
that the mechanistic worldview based on it must also be false.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 18:05:16

DETERMINISM AND THE ROLE OF THE OBSERVER:






Quantum mechanics replaces the deterministic universe described by classical physics with a
probabilistic universe. This is the idea that the behavior and various properties of subatomic systems
and particles cannot be predicted precisely, that only a range of probable values can be specified. If
you roll a series of marbles at a hill at less than a certain critical velocity, all the marbles will roll
back down, and if you roll the marbles at more than the critical velocity, all the marbles will make it
over the hill. In our classical macroscopic world, either they all get over or they all fall back. Things
are not so simple at the quantum level.*16
For instance, if subatomic particles such as electrons are fired at a potential barrier at a given
velocity, it may not be possible to say with certainty whether an individual electron will pass through
the barrier. Fire the electrons at a low enough velocity and most will be reflected, although a minority
will pass through; at a high enough velocity most will pass through; and at some intermediate velocity
about half will pass through and half will be reflected. But for any individual electron (out of a group
of apparently identical electrons), all we can specify is the probability that the electron will pass
through.
Another example of quantum randomness is radioactive decay. Say we have radioactive uranium
isotope A that decays into isotope B with a half-life of one hour. One hour later, half of the uranium
atoms will have decayed into isotope B. By all the known methods of physics, all of the uranium
isotope A atoms appeared to be identical, yet one hour later, half have decayed and half are
unchanged. The half-life of isotope A is highly predictable in a statistical sense, yet the precise time at
which any individual atom decays is completely unpredictable.
Probability enters here for a different reason than it does in the tossing of a coin, the throw of dice,
or a horse race: in these cases probability enters because of our lack of precise knowledge of the
original state of the system. But in quantum theory, even if we have complete knowledge of the
original state, the outcome would still be uncertain and only expressible as a probability.
(Philosophers refer to these two sources of uncertainty as subjective and objective probability.
Quantum mechanics suggests that in some situations probability has an objective status.)
Another surprising proposition was that subatomic particles do not have definite properties for
certain attributes, such as position, momentum, or direction of spin, until they are measured. It is not
simply that these properties are unknown until they are observed, instead, they do not exist in any
definite state until they are measured.
This conclusion is based, in part, on the famous “two-slit” experiment, in which electrons are fired
one at a time at a barrier with two slits. Measuring devices on a screen behind the barrier indicate the
electrons seem to behave as waves, going through both slits simultaneously, with patterns of
interference typical of wave phenomena: wave crests arriving simultaneously at the same place in
time will reinforce each other, but waves and troughs arriving simultaneously at the same place will
cancel each other (interference patterns result when two wave fronts meet, for instance, after dropping
two stones into a pond). These waves are only thought of as probability waves, or wave functions, as
they do not carry any energy, and so cannot be directly detected. Only individual electrons are
detected by the measuring device on the screen behind the barrier, but the distribution of numerous
electrons shows the interference patterns typical of waves. It is as though each unobserved electron
exists as a wave until it arrives at the screen to be detected, at which time its actual location (the place
at which the particle is actually observed on the screen) can only be predicted statistically according
to the interference pattern of its wave function.
If, however, a measuring device is placed at the slits, then each electron is observed to pass through
only one slit and no interference pattern in the distribution of electrons is observed. In other words,
electrons behave as waves when not observed, but as particles in a definite location when observed!*17
All quantum entities—electrons, protons, photons, and so on—display this wave-particle duality,
behaving as wave or particle depending on whether they are directly observed.
A variation of this experiment by physicists Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner3 makes this bizarre
point even more clearly. If a wave corresponding to a single atom encounters a semitransparent
reflecting surface (such as a thin film), it can be split into two equal parts, much as a light wave both
going through and reflecting from a windowpane. The two parts of the wave can then be trapped in
two boxes, as shown in figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1. The wave function at three successive times: t1, t2, and t3.
Since the wave was split equally, if you repeated this process many times, then each time you
looked into the boxes you would find a whole atom in box A about half the time and in box B about
half the time. But according to quantum theory, before you looked the atom was not in any particular
box. The position of the atom is thus an observer-created reality. Its position will also be the same for
all subsequent observers, so it is a reality that depends on an initial observation only.
You may be tempted to think that the atom really was in one box or the other before you looked, but
it can be demonstrated that before observation the atom as a wave was in a “superposition state,” a
state in which it was simultaneously in both box A and box B. Take a pair of boxes that have not been
looked into and cut narrow slits at one end, allowing the waves to simultaneously leak out and
impinge on a photographic film. At points where wave crests from box A and box B arrive together,
they reinforce each other to give a maximum amplitude of the wave function at that point—a
maximum of “waviness.” At some points higher or lower, crests from box A arrive simultaneously
with troughs from box B. The two waves are of opposite signs at these positions and therefore cancel
to give zero amplitude for the wave function at these points.
Since the amplitude of an atom’s wave function at a particular place determines the probability for
the atom to be found there when observed, the atom emerging from the box-pair is more likely to
appear on the film at places where the amplitude of the wave function is large, but can never appear
where it is zero. If we repeat this process with a large number of box-pairs and the same film, many
atoms land to cause darkening of the film near positions of wave function amplitude maximums, but
none appear at wave function minimums. The distribution of darker and lighter areas on the film
forms the interference pattern.
Figure 4.2. The box-pair experiment: (a) waves emanating from slits in the two boxes travel distances da and db and impinge
on a film at F; (b) the resulting pattern formed on the film from many box pairs.
The distribution of electrons on the film will show the interference patterns typical of two waves,
which overlap to cancel each other at some places. To form the interference pattern, the wave function
of each atom had to leak out of both boxes since each and every atom avoids appearing in regions of
the film where the waves from the two boxes cancel. Each and every atom therefore had to obey a
geometrical rule that depends on the relative position of both boxes. So, the argument goes, the atom
had to equally be in both boxes, as an extended wave. If instead of doing this interference experiment
you looked into the pair of boxes, you would have found a whole atom in a particular box, as a
particle. Before you looked, it was in both boxes; after you looked, it was only in one.
Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle:
Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its
predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.
However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the socalled
measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have
proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
After you look it was in a single box. It was thus your observation that created the reality of each
atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed. But it was
not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell
game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not
include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation. This hard-to-accept
observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.4
Up until the moment of measurement, certain properties of quantum phenomena, such as location,
momentum, and direction of spin, simply exist as a collection of probabilities, known as the wave
function, or state vector. The wave function can be thought of as the probability distribution of all
possible states, such as, for instance, the probability distribution of all possible locations for an
electron.*18
But this is not the probability that the electron is actually at certain locations, instead, it is the
probability that the electron will be found at certain locations. The electron does not have a definite
location until it is observed. Upon measurement, this collection of all possible locations “collapses” to
a single value—the location of the particle that is actually observed.
Physicist Nick Herbert expresses it this way:
The quantum physicist treats the atom as a wave of oscillating possibilities as long as it is not
observed. But whenever it is looked at, the atom stops vibrating and objectifies one of its many
possibilities. Whenever someone chooses to look at it, the atom ceases its fuzzy dance and seems
to “freeze” into a tiny object with definite attributes, only to dissolve once more into a quivering
pool of possibilities as soon as the observer withdraws his attention from it. The apparent
observer-induced change in an atom’s mode of existence is called the collapse of the wave
function.5
Measurements thus play a more positive role in quantum mechanics than in classical physics,
because here they are not merely observations of something already present but actually help produce
it. According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics popular among many theorists, it is the
existence of consciousness that introduces intrinsic probability into the quantum world.
This interpretation owes its origin to mathematician John von Neumann, one of the most important
intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In addition to his contributions to pure mathematics, von
Neumann also invented game theory, which models economic and social behavior as rational games,
and made fundamental contributions to the development of the early computers. In the 1930s, von
Neumann turned his restless mind to the task of expressing the newly developed theories of quantum
mechanics in rigorous mathematical form, and the result was his classic book The Mathematical
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. In it he tackled the measurement problem head on and rejected
the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which was becoming the orthodox position among
physicists. Although it is somewhat vague, the central tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation seem to
be (1) that all we have access to are the results of observations, and so it is simply pointless to ask
questions about the quantum reality behind those observations, and (2) that although observation is
necessary for establishing the reality of quantum phenomena, no form of consciousness, human or
otherwise, is necessary for making an observation. Rather, an observer is anything that makes a record
of an event, and so it is at the level of macroscopic measuring instruments (such as Geiger counters)
that the actual values of quantum phenomena are randomly set from a range of statistical possibilities.
Von Neumann objected to the Copenhagen interpretation practice of dividing the world in two
parts: indefinite quantum entities on the one side, and measuring instruments that obey the laws of
classical mechanics on the other. He considered a measuring apparatus, a Geiger counter for example,
in a room isolated from the rest of the world but in contact with a quantum system, such as an atom
simultaneously in two boxes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 18:05:48
The Geiger counter is set to fire if the atom is found in one box, but to
remain unfired if it is found in the other. This Geiger counter is a physical instrument, hence subject
to the rules of quantum mechanics. Therefore, it should be expected to enter into a superposition state
along with the atom, a state in which it is simultaneously fired and unfired.
Should the Geiger counter be in contact with a device that records whether the counter has fired,
then logically, it too should enter a superposition state that records both situations as existing
simultaneously. Should an observer walk into the room and examine the recording device, this logic
can be continued up the “von Neumann chain” from the recording device, to photons, to the eyes and
brain of the observer, which are also physical instruments that we have no reason to suppose are
exempt from the rules of quantum mechanics. The only peculiar link in the von Neumann chain is the
process by which electrical signals in the brain of the observer become a conscious experience.
Von Neumann argued that the entire physical world is quantum mechanical, so the process that
collapses the wave functions into actual facts cannot be a physical process; instead, the intervention of
something from outside of physics is required. Something nonphysical, not subject to the laws of
quantum mechanics, must account for the collapse of the wave function: the only nonphysical entity in
the observation process that von Neumann could think of was the consciousness of the observer. He
reluctantly concluded that this outside entity had to be consciousness and that prior to observation,
even measuring instruments interacting with a quantum system must exist in an indefinite state.
Von Neumann extended the Copenhagen interpretation by requiring the measurement process to
take place in a mind. He was reluctantly driven to this conclusion by his relentless logic: the only
process in the von Neumann chain that is not merely the motion of molecules is the consciousness of
the observer. His arguments were developed more completely by his illustrious followers, most
notably Fritz London, Edmond Bauer, and Eugene Wigner. Wigner, who went on to win the Nobel
Prize in physics, wrote, “When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass
microscopic phenomena, through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness
came to the fore again; it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully
consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”6
The box-pair experiment also bears on the role of consciousness and free will. After all, you can
choose to look in one of the boxes or to do an interference experiment, and you will get different
“realities,” one being particle-like, the other wavelike. But your choice of which experiment to do is
not determined, even statistically, by anything in the physical theory. Nothing in quantum mechanics
says you must choose one experiment rather than the other. If you deny that consciousness collapses
the wave function, then this means atoms prior to observation existed as either particle or wave.
Somehow you chose to only look in those boxes that contained particle atoms and you chose to only
do an interference experiment with wave-form atoms. This would also deny free will, because then
your illusion of choice is determined by a conspiracy of the physical universe with the state of your
brain and your perceived choice. This replaces the deterministic universe with one that is
deterministic and conspiratorial.
This is how von Neumann, Wigner, and others brought mind back into nature and made a strong
case against the causal closure of the physical. As we will see, the case gets even stronger.
At this point, it should be stressed that this is only one interpretation of the facts of quantum
mechanics: in addition to the Copenhagen interpretation, there are several other speculations about
what is really happening when quantum possibilities settle down into one actuality. Most attempt to
rescue the determinism and observer independence of classical physics.
For instance, the hidden variable theory holds that the indeterminacy of quantum physics is an
illusion due to our ignorance: if we knew more about the system in question—that is, if we knew the
value of some “hidden variables”—then the indeterminacy would vanish. However, there are several
reasons why the general community of quantum physicists never held the hidden-variable theory in
high regard.
One reason, according to quantum physicist Euan Squires, is that the hidden variable theory is
“extremely complicated and messy. We know the answers from quantum theory and then we construct
a hidden-variable, deterministic theory specifically to give these answers. The resulting theory
appears contrived and unnatural.” Squires points out that the hidden variable theory never gained
widespread acceptance because “the elegance, simplicity and economy of quantum theory contrasted
sharply with the contrived nature of a hidden-variable theory which gave no new predictions in return
for its increased complexity; the whole hidden-variable enterprise was easily dismissed as arising
from a desire, in the minds of those too conservative to accept change, to return to the determinism of
classical physics.”7 Another reason the general community of quantum physicists consider the hidden
variable theory highly implausible is that it explains away indeterminacy by postulating the existence
of an ad hoc quantum force that, unlike any of the other four forces in nature, behaves in a manner
completely unaffected by distance.
The many worlds hypothesis is perhaps the strangest of all. It is the only one that denies the
existence of nonlocality, but it does so by postulating that all possible values of a measured property
exist simultaneously in coexisting universes. When a measurement is made, we are told, the universe
we are in splits into multiple universes, with one of the possible results in each of them. For instance,
if a measurement may yield two possible results, then at the instant of measurement the entire
universe splits in two, with each possible result realized in each universe. If a measurement may yield
a continuum of possible states—such as the position of an electron—then the instant such a
measurement occurs, it is proposed that the universe splits into an infinite number of universes! Since
it is further assumed that these parallel universes cannot interact with each other, this hypothesis is
completely untestable. Entities are being multiplied with incredible profusion. William of Occam
must be spinning in his grave.
In the opinion of many physicists, the last two interpretations are simply desperate, last-ditch
attempts to rescue the classical assumptions of determinism and observer independence that have been
abandoned by quantum mechanics. For instance, one interpretation salvages determinism from
classical physics by postulating hidden variables and the other by speculating that everything that can
happen does in fact happen in an infinite number of constantly splitting parallel universes, regardless
of the way things may appear to any particular version of our constantly splitting selves.
At any rate, these four interpretations are all consistent with the observed facts. They are attempts
to describe what reality is really like between observations, to account for the seemingly bizarre
behavior of matter predicted so accurately by the theory of quantum physics. They are not usually
considered to be scientific theories about the nature of reality, but rather metaphysical theories, as
within quantum mechanics there does not currently seem to be any obvious experiment that one could
perform in order to choose between them.*19
Physicist J. C. Polkinghorne sums up the metaphysical confusion many quantum theorists feel when
he writes:
It is a curious tale. All over the world measurements are continually being made on quantum
mechanical systems. The theory triumphantly predicts, within its probabilistic limits, what their
outcomes will be. It is all a great success. Yet we do not understand what is going on. Does the
fixity on a particular occasion set in as a purely mental act of knowledge? At a transition from
small to large physical systems? At the interface of matter and mind that we call consciousness?
In one of the many subsequent worlds into which the universe has divided itself?9 *20
Perhaps one interpretation is simpler or more logically consistent, or perhaps one of the
interpretations is more aesthetically pleasing than the others. These considerations may provide
philosophical reasons for preferring one over the others, but such reasons can hardly be considered
decisive. However, a fascinating set of experiments performed by physicist Helmut Schmidt and
others appears to show that conscious intent can affect the behavior of otherwise purely random
quantum phenomena. Could an experiment be designed to test the von Neumann interpretation?
Consciousness is central to the von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to
this interpretation, some properties of quantum phenomena do not exist in any definite state except
through the intervention of a conscious mind, at which point the wave function of possibilities
collapses into a single state. The usual form of this interpretation allows the observer to collapse the
wave function to a unique outcome but not to have any effect on what outcome actually occurs: the
actual outcome is assumed to be randomly chosen by nature from the range of values provided by the
wave function. But the experiments of German physicist Helmut Schmidt and other physicists indicate
that the consciousness of the observer may not only collapse the wave function to a single outcome
but may also help specify what outcome occurs by shifting the odds in a desired direction.


Chris Carter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 18:45:23
You really haven't grasped the concept of 'discussion forum', have you?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 18:58:41
You really haven't grasped the concept of 'discussion forum', have you?

You were asking for evidence , there you are : take a pick .
It would take too much time to talk about those subjects , so .
Don't be lazy , try to make time for those highly relevant excerpts ,especially those regarding the fundamentally incorrect superseded classical physics on whose assumptions all the outdated and superseded sand castles of modern materialism were  established or built  , and especially regarding how quantum mechanics have been superseding materialism as to deliver some highly fascinating insights in relation to the fundamental causal effect of the mind or consciousness on matter ..........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 05/12/2013 19:15:06
You really haven't grasped the concept of 'discussion forum', have you?

It would take too much time to talk about those subjects , so .
Don't be lazy , try to...

Do you ever listen yourself and hear what you are saying?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 19:30:12
You really haven't grasped the concept of 'discussion forum', have you?

It would take too much time to talk about those subjects , so .
Don't be lazy , try to...

Do you ever listen yourself and hear what you are saying?
It's ironic, given that we've been talking about self-awareness... [:o]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 19:53:53
... especially regarding how quantum mechanics have been superseding materialism as to deliver some highly fascinating insights in relation to the fundamental causal effect of the mind or consciousness on matter ...
Quantum mechanics says nothing about the causal effect of the mind or consciousness on matter. Some ill-informed people have mistaken the 'observer' that makes an 'observation' (or 'measurement') and so 'collapses the wave function', for a conscious entity.

It is, however, just the anthropomorphised protagonist (in this context, a particle or wavicle) of a quantum interaction (the observation or measurement) that results in the decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) (apparent collapse of wave function) of the system.

In other words, any particle interaction that decoheres a quantum superposition can be seen as an observation or measurement, by an observer, that collapses the wave function (which is a mathematical description, not a physical one). A conscious entity may become aware of it, or not; it happens regardless.

Here's a video expressing a quantum physicist's frustration with this widespread misunderstanding: Quantum Physics Woo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DGgvE6hLAU&feature=em-uploademail). The newspaper article it refers to is QM & the Afterlife (http://bit.ly/quantumwoo).

This is an even worse misunderstanding than the one which conflates the Observer Effect (measuring a system disturbs it) and the Uncertainty Principle (the limit to the accuracy with which certain complementary properties can be simultaneously measured).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/12/2013 20:18:51
All Don Q has demonstrated so far is that philosophers don't understand science.

Nothing new there. I've heard umpteen philosophers drone on for hours about how quantum mechanics or relativity was a body blow for the establishment, from which the world of science never recovered, etc.... and each time, a scientist in the audience said "no, it just explained stuff that we couldn't explain before, and as long as it (a) didn't have any discontinuity with the mesoscopic universe and (b) predicted something different from the previous model, which turned out to be true, it was accepted as a better model".

So as far as quantum physics is concerned, we now use a probabilistic model which accords better with experiment than one based on billiard balls and waves. It's still utterly materialistic - no ghost in the machine, just rather more subtle mathematics than classical physics.

Still, if anyone wants to read a modern philosopher's take on dualism, try Gilbert Ryle. Better still, get a life.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 21:26:30
... especially regarding how quantum mechanics have been superseding materialism as to deliver some highly fascinating insights in relation to the fundamental causal effect of the mind or consciousness on matter ...
Quantum mechanics says nothing about the causal effect of the mind or consciousness on matter. Some ill-informed people have mistaken the 'observer' that makes an 'observation' (or 'measurement') and so 'collapses the wave function', for a conscious entity.

It is, however, just the anthropomorphised protagonist (in this context, a particle or wavicle) of a quantum interaction (the observation or measurement) that results in the decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) (apparent collapse of wave function) of the system.

In other words, any particle interaction that decoheres a quantum superposition can be seen as an observation or measurement, by an observer, that collapses the wave function (which is a mathematical description, not a physical one). A conscious entity may become aware of it, or not; it happens regardless.

Here's a video expressing a quantum physicist's frustration with this widespread misunderstanding: Quantum Physics Woo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DGgvE6hLAU&feature=em-uploademail). The newspaper article it refers to is QM & the Afterlife (http://bit.ly/quantumwoo).

This is an even worse misunderstanding than the one which conflates the Observer Effect (measuring a system disturbs it) and the Uncertainty Principle (the limit to the accuracy with which certain complementary properties can be simultaneously measured).

( Do you remember when you used to say that the materialist "the mind is in the brain " extension of the materialist false conception of nature , was in accordance with  the scientific available data to date ? You still do,to mention just that  : how can you be taken seriously then ? )

Oh, come on : should i believe you or Sheldrake, and many  scientists quantum physicists and scientists nobel prize winners ?
You're not a quantum physicist and   you are just displaying the materialist view on the subject that does exclude , per definition, a-priori and per -se any causal mental effect on matter .
Even Popper did reject the latter materialist assumption + he also rejected that causation can happen only between likes,together with David Hume  : materialists do accept ,  per -definition, only physical causation = a materialist belief assumption , no empirical fact .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 21:35:07
All Don Q has demonstrated so far is that philosophers don't understand science.

Nothing new there. I've heard umpteen philosophers drone on for hours about how quantum mechanics or relativity was a body blow for the establishment, from which the world of science never recovered, etc.... and each time, a scientist in the audience said "no, it just explained stuff that we couldn't explain before, and as long as it (a) didn't have any discontinuity with the mesoscopic universe and (b) predicted something different from the previous model, which turned out to be true, it was accepted as a better model".

So as far as quantum physics is concerned, we now use a probabilistic model which accords better with experiment than one based on billiard balls and waves. It's still utterly materialistic - no ghost in the machine, just rather more subtle mathematics than classical physics.

Still, if anyone wants to read a modern philosopher's take on dualism, try Gilbert Ryle. Better still, get a life.

There was no philosopher talking in my latest excerpts ,just prominent scientists , 1 of them at least is a nobel prize winner , so, just try first to read them, before jumping , a-priori , to these kindda silly conclusions .
Materialism and hence the false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " do exclude, per definition, a-priori and per-se any non-physical or mental causal effect on matter , simply because they just believe that 'all is matter , including the mind "-= just a core materialist outdated and superseded 19th century belief assumption that was "built " like sand castles on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics = no empirical fact  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2013 21:39:10
How can you deny the fundamental causal effect of the mental on matter , when you do experience just that everyday yourselves :
Your own minds do effect your own bodies and brain , every single day .

So, your "refutations " of the mental causal effect on matter is just a materialist belief assumption, no empirical fact , in the same sense "the mind is in the brain " is = they are all just extensions of the false materialist mainstream "all i matter , including the mind -scientific world view " = no empirical facts .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 05/12/2013 22:33:03


Oh, come on : should i believe you or Sheldrake, and many  scientists quantum physicists and scientists nobel prize winners ?


I think you need to rephrase your question if you are going to appeal to authority, ie "Who should I listen to you, or Sheldrake and Chris Carter's interpretation of modern physics?" And of course the answer is up to you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 23:26:29
Oh, come on : should i believe you or Sheldrake, and many  scientists quantum physicists and scientists nobel prize winners ?
You may believe whomever you wish. I have explained why the interpretation of QM in your quotes is mistaken, and provided supplementary support for what I said; so now you have extra information to inform your choice of belief. As Dr. Johnson would say, "Sir, I have found you an explanation, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding".

The general idea is that people reading the forum can look at the arguments, and, if they're interested, discuss it further, find out more themselves, maybe learn something, and perhaps even change their minds one way or the other. I do realise that very few people will read the forum, and fewer will be interested enough to find out more, and probably none will change their minds about anything; but it's all good practice.

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You're not a quantum physicist and you are just displaying the materialist view on the subject that does exclude , per definition, a-priori and per -se any causal mental effect on matter .
True, like yourself, I'm not a quantum physicist. Our arguments are what counts here, not our occupations.

The view I'm 'displaying' is the view that, as yet, all the evidence points to the mind being the result of physical brain processes. You seem unable to distinguish between that and a "materialist view on the subject that does exclude , per definition, a-priori and per -se any causal mental effect on matter". I can't help you with that; I can only refer you back to Dr. Johnson.

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Even Popper did reject the latter materialist assumption + he also rejected that causation can happen only between likes,together with David Hume  : materialists do accept ,  per -definition, only physical causation = a materialist belief assumption , no empirical fact .
Neither Popper nor Hume were quantum physicists either, if that's relevant; if not, you'll have to explain in English what your point is here.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2013 23:40:53
How can you deny the fundamental causal effect of the mental on matter , when you do experience just that everyday yourselves :
Your own minds do effect your own bodies and brain , every single day .
It does seem that way, but there is an increasing amount of evidence that the sense of conscious agency is retrospective. In other news, appearances can be deceptive and intuition is often a poor guide to reality. Who knew?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 06/12/2013 00:31:51
How can you deny the fundamental causal effect of the mental on matter ...

Because I can't telekinetically (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telekinetically) put the garbage bin out to the curb for collection, nor can anyone else.

Your own minds do effect your own bodies and brain , every single day .

Nervous system , (including autonomic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system)) , and endocrine system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system) are sufficient to explain how brain and body interact.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 06/12/2013 17:48:55


Even Popper did reject the latter materialist assumption + he also rejected that causation can happen only between likes,together with David Hume  : materialists do accept ,  per -definition, only physical causation = a materialist belief assumption , no empirical fact .

Actually, the idea that only "like can cause like " seems to be a bigger tenet for you than anyone who attributes consciousness to emergent properties. You've said it over and over, that consciousness is "totally different" and can't be the result of brain states.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 15:39:35
the mental is more fundamental than matter


How do you know this? Do you believe that before there were humans to think about the universe, nothing existed or could exist?


Ironically enough , the most physical science of them all , modern physics or quantum mechanics , have been superseding materialism , to the point where they can raise the issue of the fundamental form of causation of them all : that of the mental causal effect on matter :

See this fascinating summary on the subject :


The von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum physics, supported now by the experiments of Schmidt and others, may bring to mind the idealism of Bishop Berkeley, who thought that ordinaryobjects, such as trees and furniture, did not exist unless observed.
But this interpretation does not deny that an external reality exists independent of anyone observing it.
Properties of quantum phenomena are divided into static and dynamic properties, with the former, such as mass and charge, having definite and constant values for any observation.
 It is the dynamic properties, those that do not have constant values— such as position, momentum, and direction of spin—that are thought to exist as
potentialities that become actualities only when observed.
But as quantum theorist Euan Squires points out, this raises a very strange question:
The assumption we are considering appears even more weird when we realize that throughout much of the universe, and indeed throughout all of it in early times, there were presumably no conscious observers. . . .
Even worse are the problems we meet if we accept the modern ideas on the early universe in which quantum decays (of the ‘vacuum,’ but this need not trouble us here) were necessary in order to obtain the conditions in which conscious observers could exist.

Who, or what, did the observations necessary to create the observers?
Squires enters the realm of theology with great trepidation and considers what seems to be the only possibility under this interpretation: that conscious observations can be made by minds outside of the physical universe.

This, of course, is one of the traditional roles of God, or of the gods.
Whether expressed in theological terms or not, the suggestion that conscious minds are in some way connected and that they might even be connected to a form of universal, collective consciousness appears to be a possible solution to the problem of quantum theory.
It is not easy to see what it might mean, as we understand so little about consciousness.
 That there are“ connections” of some sort between conscious minds and physical matter is surely implied by the fact that conscious decisions have effects on matter.

 Thus there are links between conscious minds that go through the medium of physical systems.

Whether there are others, that exploit the nonphysical and presumably nonlocalised nature of consciousness, it is not possible to say.
Some people might wish to mention here the “evidence” for telepathy and similar extra-sensory effects.
Professor Squires concludes his discussion on the role of consciousness in physics with this remark:
It is remarkable that such ideas should arise from a study of the behavior of the most elementary of systems.
 That such systems point to a world beyond themselves is a fact that will be loved by all who believe that there are truths of which we know little,
that there are mysteries seen only by mystics, and that there are phenomena inexplicable within our normal view of what is
possible.
 There is no harm in this—physics indeed points to the unknown.
 The emphasis, however, must be on the unknown,
on the mystery, on the truths dimly glimpsed, on things inexpressible except in the language of poetry, or religion, or
metaphor.


Chris Carter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 15:41:54
Objections of Daniel Dennett :




Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained has a chapter titled “Why Dualism is Forlorn,” which
begins with the following words: “The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of
ordinary matter but of some other kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today… .
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism: there is one sort of stuff,
namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow
nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain.”49
Dennett then asks, “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it in such disfavor?” His answer:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an
acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy … this principle of conservation of energy … is
apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has
been endlessly discussed since Descartes’s own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.50
Shortly after this, he writes: “This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, it
most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule
that dualism is to be avoided at all costs.”51
Commenting on the argument Dennett presents, Stapp writes,
The argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical physics. The argument
collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics, in which trajectories of particles are
replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically
described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum
mechanics. Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an
interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the laws of physics.52 (emphasis in original)
Rosenblum and Kuttner also reject Dennett’s arguments:
Some theorists deny the possibility of duality by arguing that a signal from a non-material mind
could not carry energy and thus could not influence material brain cells. Because of this inability
of a mind to supply energy to influence the neurons of the brain, it is claimed that physics
demonstrates an inescapable flaw of dualism. However, no energy need be involved in
determining to which particular situation a wave function collapses. Thus the determination of
which of the physically possible conscious experiences becomes the actual experience is a
process that need not involve energy transfer. Quantum mechanics therefore allows an escape
from the supposed fatal flaw of dualism. It is a mistake to think that dualism can be ruled out on
the basis of physics.53
Finally, as Broad pointed out decades ago, at a time when quantum mechanics was still in its
infancy, even if all physical-to-physical causation involves transfer of energy, we have no reason to
think that such transfer would also be required in mental-to-physical or physical-to-mental
causation.54 This, of course, is completely consistent with the point made above by Rosenblum and
Kuttner.*33
.......................................................................................
......................................................................................
...........................................................................................
CONCLUDING REMARKS :

Cognitive scientist Roger Sperry has proposed that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
A simple example of an emergent property is the fluidity of water, which is nothing like any property
of hydrogen and oxygen. Another example is the geometrical and optical properties of crystals,
properties that the molecules that compose them do not possess. Sperry proposes that consciousness
emerges from the configuration of the brain in the way that fluidity emerges from combining
hydrogen and oxygen.
This is different from the materialist production theory, according to which the brain produces
consciousness the way the liver produces bile. It is a temporal distinction: in the production theory,
brain states precede the conscious states they produce, but if conscious states are emergent properties
of brain states, then they occur simultaneously with them.
However, as philosopher of mind B. Alan Wallace notes,
A genuine emergent property of the cells of the brain is the brain’s semi-solid consistency, and
that is something that objective, physical science can well comprehend … but they do not
understand how the brain produces any state of consciousness. In other words, if mental
phenomena are in fact nothing more than emergent properties and functions of the brain, their
relation to the brain is fundamentally unlike every other emergent property and function found in
nature.55 (emphasis in original)
The von Neumann interpretation of reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an
emergent but rather an elemental property, that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as
energy and force fields. This idea is seriously entertained by physicists such as Herbert, and in its
favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox that is raised by the von Neumann
interpretation: if consciousness depends on the physical world and if the value of many quantum
physical properties depends on consciousness, then how did the physical world ever bring about
consciousness in the first place? The solution to this puzzle is apparently what Jeans means when he
writes, “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather
hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.”56 *34
Quantum mechanics can thereby be considered as supporting an interactive dualism similar to that
of Descartes. Cartesian dualism holds that there are two kinds of entirely separate substances: mind
and matter. This theory fell into disrepute among many philosophers because classical physics
provided no mechanism by which mind could influence material substance.
The classical idea of substance—self-sufficient, unchanging, with definite location, motion, and
extension in space—has been replaced by the idea that physical reality is not made out of any material
substance, but rather out of events and possibilities for those events to occur. These possibilities, or
potentials, for events to occur have a wavelike structure and can interfere with each other. They are
not substance-like, that is, static or persisting in time. Rather than being concerned with “substances”
in the classical sense of the term, modern interactive dualism conceives of two differently described
aspects of reality: the psychical and the physical.
Stapp sums up how a modern interactive dualism based on quantum mechanics simplifies the
conceptual relationship between the two aspects of reality.
This solution is in line with Descartes’ idea of two “substances,” that can interact in our brains,
provided “substance” means merely a carrier of “essences.” The essence of the inhabitants of res
cogitans is “felt experience.” They are thoughts, ideas, and feelings: the realities that hang
together to form our streams of conscious experiences. But the essence of the inhabitants of res
extensa is not at all that sort of persisting stuff that classical physicists imagined the physical
world to be made of … their essential nature is that of “potentialities for the psychophysical
events to occur.” Those events occur at the interface between the psychologically described and
physically described aspects of nature. The causal connections between “potentialities for
psychologically described events to occur” and the actual occurrence of such events are easier to
comprehend and describe than causal connections between the mental and physical features of
classical physics. For, both sides of the quantum duality are conceptually more like “ideas” than
like “rocks.”57

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 15:45:20
A NEW CONCEPTION OF MATTER:


One of the most striking differences between classical physics and quantum mechanics is the changed
conception of matter. Atoms are no longer thought of as tiny billiard balls that have definite
properties, regardless of whether they are observed. Physicist Werner Heisenberg expressed it this
way:
Atoms are not things. The electrons which form an atom’s shells are no longer things in the sense
of classical physics, things which could be unambiguously described by concepts like location,
velocity, energy, size. When we get down to the atomic level, the objective world in space and
time no longer exists, and the mathematical symbols of theoretical physics refer merely to
possibilities, not to facts.18
Atoms are no longer thought of as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles,” as
Newton described them, but rather as potentialities, possibilities with a wavelike structure that can
interfere like waves. Their dynamic properties are intrinsically linked to the mental. Possibilities that
become fully real only when observed are more like ideas than like tiny, observer-independent billiard
balls. Quantum theorist Henry Stapp has remarked on how the purely physical aspects of reality are no
longer thought of as having the qualities assigned to rocks by classical physics: “In quantum theory
the purely physically described aspects are mere potentialities for real events to occur. A potentiality
is more like an idea than a persisting material substance, and is treated in the theory as ‘an idea of
what might happen.’”19
This new conception of matter, along with nonmechanical causation, is what physicist James Jeans
was referring to when he wrote that “the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a
machine.”20

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 15:50:10
Why do you think science itself did come from the very womb of a particluar religion, in order to study nature and the universe , empirically?


I think both religion and science are attempts by an intelligent brain to answer "Why do things happen? Why are things the way they are?" But I don't believe religion was or is necessary for science, nor do I agree that any religion can take credit for scientific knowledge. I'm not sure what this has to do with the discussion.

That's just a materialistic belief assumption extension of the  materialist "all is matter , including the mind " mainstream false "scientific world view " : irrelevant .


The conflict between science and religion has been just an Eurocentric problem , not universal ,not in the absolute sense at least .

There is no conflict between my faith and proper science without materialism, and there can be none  :
They complete each other , they are necessary to each other , they are the both sides of the same coin.

There doesn't have to be a conflict between any religion and science. One question religion asks that science doesn't, is what is should we do? What's morally right? Some branches of ethical philosophy raise this question, but moral principles can't be derived from physical facts. Perhaps that is one reason Ethos does not see a conflict between his faith and science, although I don't wish to put words in his mouth.



Religion is not only about moral or ethical values ,religion is much more than just that , mine at least in this case that's all encompassing : material and spiritual : it tries to explain the universe ,how did it came into being , how it will end ....and the role of humanity in that all ...

Science tries also to explain the parts of reality it can deal with empirically and piecemeal , while religion is holistic and thus leaves room for human inquiry , reason , true science ...

Those early muslim pioneers behind the birth and practice of science used to consider science as a religious duty, a form of worship of God , while separating their faith from science in the process , in order to find out about the secrets and signs of God within and without empirically .

Since science has been materialistic , in the sense that science has been assuming that "all is matter,including the mind ", then there cannot  but be a serious conflict between religion and science: religion is incompatible in fact with materialistic science in the above mentioned sense  ,since the false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " has been, per definition, excluding any notion or existence of the immaterial, and hence that of God , logically .
The immaterial that has been reduced to the material, thanks to materialism in science .

At the other hand  ,there should be in fact no conflict between the metaphysically neutral science proper and true religion , when science will be free from materialism or from any other false conception of nature .

But fact is , the conflict between science and religion has been just  an Eurocentric one , not universal, not in the absolute sense at least :

The medieval church used to consider Aristotle's physics , for example , as an act of faith , thanks to the works of Thomas Aquinas ,an act of faith that should not be challenged , that's why Bruno who raised the Copernican counter-arguments was burned at the stake , and Galileo was smart enough to recant 16 years later when he captured the attention of the terrible inquisition .....

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But the "conflict" only seems to arise when people try to prove religious beliefs scientifically, or derive moral beliefs from physical facts.

Once again, since science has been materialistic , since the 19th century at least , there can be therefore only conflict between religion and the materialistic science .

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Your assertion that materialism is a degenerate form of Christianity has no basis logically or historically, and I don't see how any particular religion "gave birth to" any area of science, even if some early scientists were also theists, or had the time and literacy skills to pursue science because of their religious occupation
.

Some do trace back the roots of materialism all the way back to Democritus 5 centuries BC when he used to say this famous line of his " Nothing exists but atoms, and the void " .
Some others trace back the origins of materialism to much older civilizations : materialism is in fact a primitive world view that 'resurrected " as a result of the medieval Eurocentric terrible religious wars , religious inquisitions, intolerance ....and saw its chance materialized in Newton's classical physics to establish its "scientific " claims .

But, Newton's physics have been fundamentally incorrect , and hence the materialism that was built on it is false as a result .

Since materialism reduces everything to just matter , it cannot but be a lower or a degenerate form of christianity .

P.S.: It is almost an undeniable fact that the scientific method did originate from the very epistemology of a particular holy book : see the arguments in that regard presented in the origin of science thread .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 15:57:47
How can you deny the fundamental causal effect of the mental on matter ...

Because I can't telekinetically (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telekinetically) put the garbage bin out to the curb for collection, nor can anyone else.

You know what i was talking about :
Your own mind does have  causal effects on both your physical brain and body : you cannot deny that fact ,can you ?

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Your own minds do effect your own bodies and brain , every single day .

Nervous system , (including autonomic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system)) , and endocrine system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system) are sufficient to explain how brain and body interact.

Bullshit ,sorry : that's just the materialist computational or functionalist model that cannot account for consciousness as such= just a materialist desperate attempt to "explain " consciousness neuro-physiologically ,by reducing consciousness to just that , consciousness that's irreducible to thye physical  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 16:20:30


Oh, come on : should i believe you or Sheldrake, and many  scientists quantum physicists and scientists nobel prize winners ?


I think you need to rephrase your question if you are going to appeal to authority, ie "Who should I listen to you, or Sheldrake and Chris Carter's interpretation of modern physics?" And of course the answer is up to you.

I think that you should read that specific post addressed to you , by the way , i did repost here above :
Those were the views of some quantum physicists and other scientists on the subject , that seem to me more qualified on the subject than our dlorde   here , the latter that just offers me materialist stuff , instead of empirical facts = he cannot but continue confusing between the 2 , as you all do by the way,especially our RD and dlorde . .

Materialism excludes , per definition, a-priori and per-se any mental causal effect on matter or on body and brain= that's a materialist act of faith , no empirical fact  .

So, if you wanna talk about any "refutation " of any  mental causal effect on matter , try to deliver some empirical evidence ,as my excerpts did , you cannot just assume that materialist extensions of the false materialist conception of nature are 'emprical evidence " = stop confusing between the 2 thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 16:29:10


Even Popper did reject the latter materialist assumption + he also rejected that causation can happen only between likes,together with David Hume  : materialists do accept ,  per -definition, only physical causation = a materialist belief assumption , no empirical fact .

Actually, the idea that only "like can cause like " seems to be a bigger tenet for you than anyone who attributes consciousness to emergent properties. You've said it over and over, that consciousness is "totally different" and can't be the result of brain states.

What i meant is as follows :

Materialists do exclude ,per definition, a-priori and per-se thus any mental causal effect on matter : they just think that consciousness is an 'emergent " property form the evolved complexity of the brain = consciousness is just a biological process , a useless by-product of evolution that is caused by the physical brain , but consciousness in that materialist sense at least thus does not have any causal effect on matter , body or physical brain .

While we all in fact do experience the mental causal effect on body and physical brain, every single conscious moment of our everyday lives .

The mental that's irreducible to the physical in fact .

The physical brain does affect the non-physical mental , but does not cause it : it is the mental that does affect the physical brain and  body causally : how ,either way ? : that remains a mystery .


In short :

Any  approach of consciousness remains confined to its own  corresponding metaphysical world view or frameworks of understanding through which any attempt to "explain " consciousness is conducted : either  via the materialist reductionist naturalist conception of nature , via the non-reductionist naturalist one , or via all forms of dualism , mentalism, idealism ....=  science proper has not yet anything whatsoever  to do with all those metaphysical approaches of consciousness  .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 17:05:33
How can you deny the fundamental causal effect of the mental on matter , when you do experience just that everyday yourselves :
Your own minds do effect your own bodies and brain , every single day .
It does seem that way, but there is an increasing amount of evidence that the sense of conscious agency is retrospective. In other news, appearances can be deceptive and intuition is often a poor guide to reality. Who knew?

When you say "evidence ", i cannot but interpret it as materialist belief assumptions ,you do keep confusing with empirical evidence , as you have been showing all along .

Dennett did ,ironically enough , raised the same false exit-strategy intuition issue ,when he was confronted with John Searl 's solid logical refutation of Dennett 's 'consciousness explained "  :
Searl's answer was like the following :
The appearance of consciousness is the reality of consciousness ,we all do experience as such: that's not a matter of intuition thus  .

The sunset ,for example, is an apperance or illusion that does not correspond to reality , but the appearance of conscious experience is a fact or a reality shared by all conscious humans .

Searl's "The mystery of consciousness " is an interesting book to read on the subject , where Searl delivered his sharp critique in relation to that above mentioned Dennett's book , where the latter denies the existence of consciousness as such , to Chalmers' "The conscious mind " property dualism  ...and to  other books ...

Searl that cannot but also be confined to his own metaphysical approach of consciousness , by rejecting materialist computational reductionism , materialist behaviorism, materialist functionalism ,Chalmers' property dualism ,and substance dualism also ...

Searl's secular approach sounds like the following :
Consciousness is so real , that it cannot be but caused by the brain as to be qualitatively different from the latter : his chinese room argument does refute the so-called Strong artificial intelligence approach on the subject , in the sense that a computer program  operated by any given operator who happens not to know chinese   , cannot fool the native chinese ,simply because the syntax of the program cannot account for the conscious content meaning or semantics chinese real people would expect to hear from real people talking chinese .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 17:31:26
Oh, come on : should i believe you or Sheldrake, and many  scientists quantum physicists and scientists nobel prize winners ?
You may believe whomever you wish. I have explained why the interpretation of QM in your quotes is mistaken, and provided supplementary support for what I said; so now you have extra information to inform your choice of belief. As Dr. Johnson would say, "Sir, I have found you an explanation, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding".

What you fail to see so far (That's a repeated stubborn pattern of yours i cannot blame you for in fact , since you are just yet another victim of materialism in science , materialism that has been taken for granted as science ,for so long now ,or as "the scientific world view " ), what you fail to see thus  is that the above was no 'explanation or emprical evidence ", just materialist belief assumptions , since  the materialist false mainstream "all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " does ,per definition, a-priori and per-se exclude any mental causal effect on matter or on body and brain , not to mention that it excludes the fact that the mental is irreducible to the physical .
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The general idea is that people reading the forum can look at the arguments, and, if they're interested, discuss it further, find out more themselves, maybe learn something, and perhaps even change their minds one way or the other. I do realise that very few people will read the forum, and fewer will be interested enough to find out more, and probably none will change their minds about anything; but it's all good practice.

Indeed : amazing how a-priori held belief metaphysical assumptions ,or conceptions of nature , do take the upperhand above emprical evidence .

The same goes for you also ,simply because you cannot but be confined to your own materialist reductionist false approach of consciousness and the rest .

In short :
Any approach of consciousness out there gets conducted within its corresponding metaphysical world view and frameworks of understanding = science proper has nothing so far to do with any approach of consciousness out there = no approach of consciousness so far , either the materialist reductionist naturalist computational behaviorist  functionalist ones , or the naturalist non-reductionist  property dualist one , nor  any idealist , mentalist or substance dualist approach of consciousness can be falsifiable as to deserve to be raised to the scientific status .

So, don't be self-deceptive as to believe that any of your materialist reductionist approaches of consciousness are falsifiable = scientific : they are not .


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You're not a quantum physicist and you are just displaying the materialist view on the subject that does exclude , per definition, a-priori and per -se any causal mental effect on matter .
True, like yourself, I'm not a quantum physicist. Our arguments are what counts here, not our occupations.

Arguments of qualified scientists do have more weigth , those of relatively objective qualified scientists on the subject do,at least .

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The view I'm 'displaying' is the view that, as yet, all the evidence points to the mind being the result of physical brain processes. You seem unable to distinguish between that and a "materialist view on the subject that does exclude , per definition, a-priori and per -se any causal mental effect on matter". I can't help you with that; I can only refer you back to Dr. Johnson.

Since materialism is false , i cannot but reject all its views , logically,including "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain, nature and life are mechanical  ...."  .
Your alleged 'empirical evidence " has been turning out to be just materialist belief assumptions all along,  or just extensions of the false materialist conception of nature in science .

Quote
Quote
Even Popper did reject the latter materialist assumption + he also rejected that causation can happen only between likes,together with David Hume  : materialists do accept ,  per -definition, only physical causation = a materialist belief assumption , no empirical fact .
Neither Popper nor Hume were quantum physicists either, if that's relevant; if not, you'll have to explain in English what your point is here.


I did say specifically what Popper and Hume rejected = induction and the materialist assumption that only likes can act upon likes or cause likes ,and therefore the materialist intrinsic rejection of the mental causal effect on matter holds no logical water  either  .Popper did also reject the latter materialist belief assumption thus .
Popper and Hume were qualified enough to hold such logical views .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 17:49:00
Any given approach of consciousness out there ,all of them, without any exception,  is so far just a matter of its corresponding underlying metaphysical world view = unfalsifiable = unscientific .

The nature ,function or origins of consciousness remain just a question of belief so far : science proper has not been able yet to find a way to deal empirically with the subjective nature of consciousness,let alone with its subjective content, experience , states ,  or qualia  ......let alone with the nature of our human  love,  desires , fears , feelings , emotions , ambitions, imagination, creativity , easthetics ....
I do not see so far how science can do just that .

John Searl, for example, says that science can indeed ,since  neurology , medical science , psychology ....can deal  empirically with the disorders ,injuries, diseases , heritable illnesses , ....behind our feelings of pain , pathology , psychological disorders , via surgery , medicines , therapy , respectively .

But the nature of the subjective conscious feeling of pain ,for example, that's mainly mental  .....remains beyond science so far .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 17:59:55
When you say "evidence ", i cannot but interpret it as materialist belief assumptions ,you do keep confusing with empirical evidence , as you have been showing all along .
The evidence is empirical, and indicates that conscious awareness of voluntary action is retrospective. This was discovered about 30 years ago by Benjamin Libet, and has since been demonstrated repeatedly by more robust experiments (e.g. Hughes, Simard, Vankov & Pineda (http://cognet.mit.edu/library/conferences/paper?paper_id=3901)). The arrival of fMRI has permitted more detailed exploration of this phenomenon. Brain activity related to particular voluntary actions is detectable up to 6 seconds before the individual is consciously aware of deciding to act, and when distinguishable choices are involved, it is possible to use this activity to predict the choice before the individual is consciously aware of making it.

Useful summaries are in Awareness of Intention (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Awareness_of_intention) (the 'Sense of Agency' section is particularly interesting) and chapter 5 of 'Free Will and Responsibility' (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B14l9KRSpEkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Free+Will+and+Responsibility:+A+Guide+for+Practitioners&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MmCjUqyqKIKrhAeU74HADg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Free%20Will%20and%20Responsibility%3A%20A%20Guide%20for%20Practitioners&f=false) (scroll down - it's the first viewable chapter).

That is the empirical evidence; interpret it how you wish.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 18:31:04
When you say "evidence ", i cannot but interpret it as materialist belief assumptions ,you do keep confusing with empirical evidence , as you have been showing all along .
The evidence is empirical, and indicates that conscious awareness of voluntary action is retrospective. This was discovered about 30 years ago by Benjamin Libet, and has since been demonstrated repeatedly by more robust experiments (e.g. Hughes, Simard, Vankov & Pineda (http://cognet.mit.edu/library/conferences/paper?paper_id=3901)). The arrival of fMRI has permitted more detailed exploration of this phenomenon. Brain activity related to particular voluntary actions is detectable up to 6 seconds before the individual is consciously aware of deciding to act, and when distinguishable choices are involved, it is possible to use this activity to predict the choice before the individual is consciously aware of making it.

Useful summaries are in Awareness of Intention (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Awareness_of_intention) (the 'Sense of Agency' section is particularly interesting) and chapter 5 of 'Free Will and Responsibility' (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B14l9KRSpEkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Free+Will+and+Responsibility:+A+Guide+for+Practitioners&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MmCjUqyqKIKrhAeU74HADg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Free%20Will%20and%20Responsibility%3A%20A%20Guide%20for%20Practitioners&f=false) (scroll down - it's the first viewable chapter).

That is the empirical evidence; interpret it how you wish.

You do confirm my previous allegations :

Those experiments can only be misinterpreted materialistically , since "all is matter , including the mind ", since "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just the product of the physical brain's activity " .
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .

Since "the mind is caused by the brain ", then, there can be , logically , no existence of such notion such as the free will .

But , when one would look at  the mind-body interaction or relationship from a totally different angle or perspective , like from the non-physical nature of the mental point of view , then, free will does exist in that context at least , since the mental that's irreducible to the physical has indeed causal effect of matter ,including the physical brain and body .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 18:37:46
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
I'm interested to hear any interpretations - how do non-materialists interpret these observations?

Quote
Since "the mind is caused by the brain ", then, there can be , logically , no existence of such notion such as the free will .
It depends on precisely what you mean by free will. I think there's a reasonable definition of free will that fits that model.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 18:45:10
Talking about basing "empirical evidence " , or rather basing misinterpretations of scientific experiments on false a-priori held materialistic belief assumptions,regarding the mind -body relationship : how convenient .
Belief assumptions, theories of nature or any given theories for that matter should be first tested empirically , as to determin whether they are falsifiable or not ,as to deserve getting raised or not to the scientific status, not the other way around .

Are  the materialistic "all is matter ,including the mind " belief assumptions + their  extensions such as "the mind is in the brain, the mind is caused by the brain " ...are they faslifiable ? Obviously ...not .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 18:53:45
Talking about basing "empirical evidence " , or rather basing misinterpretations of scientific experiments on false a-priori held materialistic belief assumptions,regarding the mind -body relationship : how convenient .
I haven't given any interpretation of these experiments. They show evidence of the subjects only becoming consciously aware of their voluntary decisions after those decisions have been made.

You said non-materialists interpret them differently. I'm curious to know what those interpretations might be; do tell.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 18:58:13
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
I'm interested to hear any interpretations - how do non-materialists interpret these observations?

In short :

The image of the process is not the cause of the process .
No time for more ,sorry .
Quote
Quote
Since "the mind is caused by the brain ", then, there can be , logically , no existence of such notion such as the free will .
It depends on precisely how you define free will. I think there's a reasonable definition of free will that fits that model.

Sorry, buddy : i am not interested in any materialist model, just in science proper .
But,since science has been materialistic for so long now , decent honest people have been having a hard time to distill science proper from the deceptive ,outdated ,ideological ,superseded and false materialistic science .
What a predicament  and a tragic dilemma paradox  indeed ....
Even when science will stop being materialistic , by rejecting materialism, the latter will most probably be replaced by just yet another false conception of nature once again , making it even harder for decent and honest people to be able to differentiate science proper from the potentially false alternative to materialism = a vicious circle thus .

Metaphysically neutral science is thus and will remain a naive idealistic unrealistic utopia myth , as objectivity in science is and will remain so,since science is just a ...human activity  .

Depressingly hopeless situation ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 19:07:43
Talking about basing "empirical evidence " , or rather basing misinterpretations of scientific experiments on false a-priori held materialistic belief assumptions,regarding the mind -body relationship : how convenient .
I haven't given any interpretation of these experiments. They show evidence of the subjects only becoming consciously aware of their voluntary decisions after those decisions have been made.

You said non-materialists interpret them differently. I'm curious to know what those interpretations might be; do tell.

Once again, no time left , sorry , later : see above .

You cannot but agree with those materialistic misinterpretations of those experiments , and misinterpretations they were /are , since "all is matter ,including the mind, since the mind is in the brain, since the mind is just the physical brain's activity ..." .

That "empirical evidence " or rather those materialistic misinterpretations of those experiments were  just based on those unfalsifiable above mentioned a-priori held materialistic belief assumptions,or were just extensions of the latter , not the other way around ,as any decent honest scientist would expect  .

You're not even aware of the fact that you do share those materialistic misinterpretations of those experiments , simply because you have been taking the false materialist conception of nature and its extensions for granted as the 'scientific world view ", for so long now, without question .

Way to go , man .

Depressing really .

See ya .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 19:14:35
Never mind my interpretation; you said I confuse materialist assumptions with empirical evidence, but when I post some empirical evidence, you go quiet.

C'mon, these are interesting experimental results, what are the non-materialist interpretations you spoke of? what is your interpretation?

Please don't run away.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 20:37:57
Never mind my interpretation; you said I confuse materialist assumptions with empirical evidence, but when I post some empirical evidence, you go quiet.

C'mon, these are interesting experimental results, what are the non-materialist interpretations you spoke of? what is your interpretation?

Please don't run away.

You seem to forget about the fact that the mind -body hard problem is still a mystery , no theory of the mind out there yet ,if ever , can pretend to have solved it, not even remotely close thus .

I am not running away , i just had some urgent business to attend to , that's all .
I will have to be brief , since i have to go :

You do seem to forget also that :

(1)- The mind -body issue is a matter of metaphysical conceptions of nature , either the naturalist materialist reductionist one, the non-reductionist naturalist one, the idealist , mentalist or substance dualist one ....= not yet a matter of science = no theory of consciousness out there so far can pretend to be falsifiable as to deserve to be raised to the scientific status= no theory of consciousness out there can explain or interpret those scientific experiments you presented,scientifically thus ,since all theories of consciousness  are all unfalsifiable = unscientific ,including the materialist one  ,but they are not all necessarily false,as materalism is  .

(2)- The materialist conception of nature is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness  ( Therefore the materialist mainsteram 'scientific world view " is false as a result , logically )  , and hence all  extensions of materialism are false also , since 'everything "  seems to  invlove matter and the mental at the same time = since reality is both mental and physical material ,the mental that's irreducible to the physical = those materialist misinterpretations of those scientific experiments you did mention , were /are just extensions of the materialist false conception of nature , just extensions  of the materialist false "the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just the physical brain's activity " belief assumptions .

(3)- The image of the process of consciousness, the image which is represented by the physical brain's activity ,shoud not be mistaken with the cause of the process of consciousness .

Do the maths , Mr.scientist.

Gotta go, thanks, appreciate indeed .

Nice weekend , have fun, life is too short .
My neighbour has just died yesterday , so ....duty calls .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 20:49:39
C'mon, these are interesting experimental results; you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2013 21:12:02
C'mon, these are interesting experimental results; you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?

Reread what i said then :

There are none , since all theories of consciousness, including the materialist one , are unfalisfiable = unscientific, but not all are necessarily false , as materialism is .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2013 21:27:18
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
... you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?
There are none ...
[:o]

'Nuff said.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/12/2013 22:27:58
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
... you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?
There are none ...
[:o]

'Nuff said.
Tou-che............................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 07/12/2013 23:11:11
... life is too short .

If "Consciousness Survives Death (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Near-Death-Experience-Consciousness-Survives/dp/1594773564)" as your guru claims then life is not short it's indefinitely long.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 17:37:42
... life is too short .

If "Consciousness Survives Death (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Near-Death-Experience-Consciousness-Survives/dp/1594773564)" as your guru claims then life is not short it's indefinitely long.

I have no guru ,while you do have yours ,in the forms of all those materialist scientists  out there  .
At the other hand , consciousness or the soul does survive death ,to go to the next one : this life is temporary as you will find out about that personally ,soon enough .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 17:41:51
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
... you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?
There are none ...
[:o]

'Nuff said.
Tou-che............................

Look who's talking :

Well, do tell us about your own falsifiable = scientific interpretation of those experiments ,genius,  since you are so paradoxical ,absurd ,surreal ...as to both believe in the following mutually exclusive conceptions of nature ,without being able so far to realise that paradox :

You do believe both in the materialist mainstream "all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " , and in the immaterial realm out there .....bizarre...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 17:46:11
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
... you said there are non-materialist interpretations of them - such as what? what is your interpretation?
There are none ...
[:o]

'Nuff said.




Don't quote me out of context , please :

I said there is no scientific interpretation of those experiments you did mention earlier , since all theories of consciousness or the mind are unfalsifiable = unscientific ,including the materialist ones mainly .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2013 19:14:03

In short :

The image of the process is not the cause of the process .


Ironically, this is an unfalsifiable statement that could be applied to anything, even  Popper's example of Einstein's prediction about the effect of gravity on light, and the experiment that confirmed it. No matter what evidence is presented it allows you say there is no causal relationship. But if one really believes that to be the case, it should apply logically to any immaterial process as well.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 20:10:43
the mental is more fundamental than matter


How do you know this? Do you believe that before there were humans to think about the universe, nothing existed or could exist?


Ironically enough , the most physical science of them all , modern physics or quantum mechanics , have been superseding materialism , to the point where they can raise the issue of the fundamental form of causation of them all : that of the mental causal effect on matter :

See this fascinating summary on the subject :


The von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum physics, supported now by the experiments of Schmidt and others, may bring to mind the idealism of Bishop Berkeley, who thought that ordinaryobjects, such as trees and furniture, did not exist unless observed.
But this interpretation does not deny that an external reality exists independent of anyone observing it.
Properties of quantum phenomena are divided into static and dynamic properties, with the former, such as mass and charge, having definite and constant values for any observation.
 It is the dynamic properties, those that do not have constant values— such as position, momentum, and direction of spin—that are thought to exist as
potentialities that become actualities only when observed.
But as quantum theorist Euan Squires points out, this raises a very strange question:
The assumption we are considering appears even more weird when we realize that throughout much of the universe, and indeed throughout all of it in early times, there were presumably no conscious observers. . . .
Even worse are the problems we meet if we accept the modern ideas on the early universe in which quantum decays (of the ‘vacuum,’ but this need not trouble us here) were necessary in order to obtain the conditions in which conscious observers could exist.

Who, or what, did the observations necessary to create the observers?
Squires enters the realm of theology with great trepidation and considers what seems to be the only possibility under this interpretation: that conscious observations can be made by minds outside of the physical universe.

This, of course, is one of the traditional roles of God, or of the gods.
Whether expressed in theological terms or not, the suggestion that conscious minds are in some way connected and that they might even be connected to a form of universal, collective consciousness appears to be a possible solution to the problem of quantum theory.
It is not easy to see what it might mean, as we understand so little about consciousness.
 That there are“ connections” of some sort between conscious minds and physical matter is surely implied by the fact that conscious decisions have effects on matter.

 Thus there are links between conscious minds that go through the medium of physical systems.

Whether there are others, that exploit the nonphysical and presumably nonlocalised nature of consciousness, it is not possible to say.
Some people might wish to mention here the “evidence” for telepathy and similar extra-sensory effects.
Professor Squires concludes his discussion on the role of consciousness in physics with this remark:
It is remarkable that such ideas should arise from a study of the behavior of the most elementary of systems.
 That such systems point to a world beyond themselves is a fact that will be loved by all who believe that there are truths of which we know little,
that there are mysteries seen only by mystics, and that there are phenomena inexplicable within our normal view of what is
possible.
 There is no harm in this—physics indeed points to the unknown.
 The emphasis, however, must be on the unknown,
on the mystery, on the truths dimly glimpsed, on things inexpressible except in the language of poetry, or religion, or
metaphor.


Chris Carter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 20:13:57
Objections of Daniel Dennett :




Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained has a chapter titled “Why Dualism is Forlorn,” which
begins with the following words: “The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of
ordinary matter but of some other kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today… .
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism: there is one sort of stuff,
namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow
nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain.”49
Dennett then asks, “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it in such disfavor?” His answer:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an
acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy … this principle of conservation of energy … is
apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has
been endlessly discussed since Descartes’s own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.50
Shortly after this, he writes: “This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, it
most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule
that dualism is to be avoided at all costs.”51
Commenting on the argument Dennett presents, Stapp writes,
The argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical physics. The argument
collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics, in which trajectories of particles are
replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically
described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum
mechanics. Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an
interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the laws of physics.52 (emphasis in original)
Rosenblum and Kuttner also reject Dennett’s arguments:
Some theorists deny the possibility of duality by arguing that a signal from a non-material mind
could not carry energy and thus could not influence material brain cells. Because of this inability
of a mind to supply energy to influence the neurons of the brain, it is claimed that physics
demonstrates an inescapable flaw of dualism. However, no energy need be involved in
determining to which particular situation a wave function collapses. Thus the determination of
which of the physically possible conscious experiences becomes the actual experience is a
process that need not involve energy transfer. Quantum mechanics therefore allows an escape
from the supposed fatal flaw of dualism. It is a mistake to think that dualism can be ruled out on
the basis of physics.53
Finally, as Broad pointed out decades ago, at a time when quantum mechanics was still in its
infancy, even if all physical-to-physical causation involves transfer of energy, we have no reason to
think that such transfer would also be required in mental-to-physical or physical-to-mental
causation.54 This, of course, is completely consistent with the point made above by Rosenblum and
Kuttner.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 20:16:24
A NEW CONCEPTION OF MATTER:


One of the most striking differences between classical physics and quantum mechanics is the changed
conception of matter. Atoms are no longer thought of as tiny billiard balls that have definite
properties, regardless of whether they are observed. Physicist Werner Heisenberg expressed it this
way:
Atoms are not things. The electrons which form an atom’s shells are no longer things in the sense
of classical physics, things which could be unambiguously described by concepts like location,
velocity, energy, size. When we get down to the atomic level, the objective world in space and
time no longer exists, and the mathematical symbols of theoretical physics refer merely to
possibilities, not to facts.18
Atoms are no longer thought of as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles,” as
Newton described them, but rather as potentialities, possibilities with a wavelike structure that can
interfere like waves. Their dynamic properties are intrinsically linked to the mental. Possibilities that
become fully real only when observed are more like ideas than like tiny, observer-independent billiard
balls. Quantum theorist Henry Stapp has remarked on how the purely physical aspects of reality are no
longer thought of as having the qualities assigned to rocks by classical physics: “In quantum theory
the purely physically described aspects are mere potentialities for real events to occur. A potentiality
is more like an idea than a persisting material substance, and is treated in the theory as ‘an idea of
what might happen.’”19
This new conception of matter, along with nonmechanical causation, is what physicist James Jeans
was referring to when he wrote that “the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a
machine.”20

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 20:17:57

In short :

The image of the process is not the cause of the process .


Ironically, this is an unfalsifiable statement that could be applied to anything, even  Popper's example of Einstein's prediction about the effect of gravity on light, and the experiment that confirmed it. No matter what evidence is presented it allows you say there is no causal relationship. But if one really believes that to be the case, it should apply logically to any immaterial process as well.

You're confusing apples with oranges , lady :
Einstein's example was about pure physical phenomena ,while no  single  given theory of consciousness out there so far can be falsifiable,simply because any given theory of consciousness is just a matter of its underlying metaphysical world view ,including the materialist theories of consciousness .
Science is not yet able to say anything so far about consciousness ,the latter that's subjective and irreducible to the physical or to the material .

It is in fact very convenient for materialists to assume that "all is matter ,including the mind ", and hence "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain acivity ", and then, they misinterpret scientific experiments on the subject , in order to make them fit into that  false  materialist unfalsifiable a-priori  held concepion of nature .
Materialists should first try to put their false theory of nature or their conception of nature to the test empirically , to see whether or not it turns out to be "falsifiable " ,not the other way around thus .

Besides :
We still do not know yet , for example, what matter exactly is , matter that's not only matter , so to speak , matter that might turn out to be not made of matter ,as some thinker said .

Plus , the mental is more fundamental than matter can ever be : so, i think that the most fundamental form of causation of them all is the mental non-physical one that must be and should be underlying the laws of physics themselves : the non-physical mental or the mind is the one running  the whole show , not the other way around , not matter or the physical brain or body  .

See above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2013 20:37:34
Since science cannot be metaphysically neutral , and hence since objectivity in science is a myth , scientists will always  have to try to interpret scientific experiments and results within the dominating meta or paradigm of the moment,within the mainstream "scientific world view " of the moment ,untill the latter gets proven to be false and so on,otherwise they would be automatically branded as heretics , pseudo-scientists ,charlatans or worse  ......

Which also means that there is no objective  definite  'scientific world view " out there as well thus,simply because science is just a human activity that gets practiced under the supremacy of the "scientific world view " of the moment ...untill the latter gets successfully falsified ,and so on ...

So, the question is : the question is not to be or not to be haha :
The question is rather :

What makes you, folks , think that the current mainstream materialist 'scientific world view " is true ?,and hence , what makes you think that the materialist "the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain's activity " extension of the false materialist conception of nature is true  .
Science is not about the truth though  ,just about conjectures ,or approximate temporary knowledge though.

And how, on earth , are average people supposed to differentiate between the materialistic ideological science of the moment thus , and between the utopian mythical metaphysically neutral science then ? Cannot be done thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/12/2013 21:32:33
Don't quote me out of context , please

I said there is no scientific interpretation of those experiments you did mention earlier
We can all see exactly what you said in post #1181 (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg425958#msg425958).

But anyway, let's try again:
Non-materialists might interpret those experiments totally  differently , as they do actually .
So how do non-materialists interpret these observations? how do you interpret them?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2013 21:59:53

You're confusing apples with oranges , lady :
Einstein's example was about pure physical phenomena ,

By what criteria do you distinguish "purely physical" phenomena from some other kind?
Again, how do you know that any physical causal relationship isn't just "the image" of the process, a "misinterpretation" of what's really happening because of some unknown underlying process - resulting in an infinite regression of "unknown" "underlying" causes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2013 22:30:16


It is in fact very convenient for materialists to assume that "all is matter ,including the mind ", and hence "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain acivity ", and then, they misinterpret scientific experiments on the subject , in order to make them fit into that  false  materialist unfalsifiable a-priori  held concepion of nature .

And conveniently,  you reject any and all evidence, in order to support your a-priori immaterialist conception of nature.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/12/2013 22:33:32
It is in fact very convenient for materialists to assume that "all is matter ,including the mind ", and hence "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain acivity ", and then, they misinterpret scientific experiments on the subject , in order to make them fit into that  false  materialist unfalsifiable a-priori  held concepion of nature
So what, in your view, is the correct interpretation of those experiments?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 16:56:48

You're confusing apples with oranges , lady :
Einstein's example was about pure physical phenomena ,

By what criteria do you distinguish "purely physical" phenomena from some other kind?
Again, how do you know that any physical causal relationship isn't just "the image" of the process, a "misinterpretation" of what's really happening because of some unknown underlying process - resulting in an infinite regression of "unknown" "underlying" causes.

I should have said the following instead :

One of the biggest errors ever made in science , is to confuse the image of the process with the cause of the process,especially when it comes to the mind-body relationship  :

Brain's activity is therefore just the image of the process of consciousness, not  its cause,that's analogous to ,not a comparison of course , analogous to confusing the image of lightening in the sky with its cause  :

See this concise and brief explanation of that :

The biggest error ever made in the name of science :



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 17:40:10
It is in fact very convenient for materialists to assume that "all is matter ,including the mind ", and hence "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain acivity ", and then, they misinterpret scientific experiments on the subject , in order to make them fit into that  false  materialist unfalsifiable a-priori  held concepion of nature
So what, in your view, is the correct interpretation of those experiments?

(Once again, since the materialist mainstream "all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " is false ,mainly because it cannot account for consciousness , the latter that's irreducible to the physical ,  and since there is also no other faslifiable theory of consciousness out there yet , we can only guess or speculate ,at this stage , at least , regarding how the mind does have causal effects on matter ,brain or body ...and how the brain somehow interacts with consciousness via our senses ...)

The correct explanation, you mean, right ?  " Interpretation" is  an  ideologically loaded a term in fact ,as the major example of the materialist "the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain's activity " belief assumption shows ,so, any scientific experiments on the subject of brain-mind or mind-body relationship would be interpreted or rather misinterpreted materialistically ,as to make the empirical evidence fit into the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " false conception of nature "scientific world view " .

So, those scientific experiments you mentioned were /are designed under the false underlying materialist assumption that consciousness or the mind are just  brain's activity , no wonder then, that they would be misinterpreted materialistically in that sense thus : how convenient thus .

That said :

Just consider for a moment that the mind or consciousness are non-physical ,non-local and more fundamental than matter or brain and body ever can be , and hence the non-local non-physical consciousness has a fundamental non-physical non-local causal effect on matter or on brain and body , in ways we still do not know nothing of : non-local and non-physical mental causal effect on matter that cannot be compared or be analogous to the physical-physical  causal effects  .

So, that detected brain activity  6 secs before the patients' in question  awareness of their own conscious decision making on the subject , in those experiments you mentioned , that detected brain activity prior to that specific conscious process was / is just the image of that specific conscious process , not its cause ,since any given conscious process would require no time space or energy : a bit like the phenomena of light : just an analogy : that take place instantly : when you turn on the light switch , for example ,the  electric current process seems thus to take place millisecs before the appearance of the light in the room .
Something like that , i don't know :
In short :
Since there is still no falsifiable theory of the mind out there , i can only guess at this stage in that regard : we should thus try first to know how the non-physical non-local consciousness has a causal effect on matter , and how matter , brain or body do interact with consciousness via our senses ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 17:53:37


It is in fact very convenient for materialists to assume that "all is matter ,including the mind ", and hence "the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain acivity ", and then, they misinterpret scientific experiments on the subject , in order to make them fit into that  false  materialist unfalsifiable a-priori  held concepion of nature .

And conveniently,  you reject any and all evidence, in order to support your a-priori immaterialist conception of nature.

Once again : i am a dualist ,in the sense that i do believe that this universe is made of 2 totally different substances : matter and mind : how they do interact with each other ? = there is still no faslifiable theory of the mind out there yet ,so .

In short :

Reality is both material physical and mental : we do live in those both dimentions or worlds at the same time : matter is just one single side of the whole pic of reality in that sense thus : the mental is the other side of the same coin : the mental that's non-physical and non-local and hence more fundamental than matter can ever be .
Plus , modern physics have been revolutionizing our conventional classical conception of matter as well ,to the point where we do still do not know what matter itself is exactly = matter itself that's not only made of matter , or that's not made of matter , as some scientist said once = matter itself might turn out to be no matter ,after all , who knows ?

When physicists will be able to tell us what matter exactly is , then, and only then, we can pretend to try to "know " what the mental is , the latter that's more fundamental than matter can ever be ,once again .

Did you at least try to read my relevant posted excerpts on the subject ? Guess not .
You are thus not even serious , let alone scientific ,if you happened not to have tried to read any of those relevant excerpts= you cannot a-piori dismiss non-materialist views on the subject + Do not behave as if modern physics are complete either : they are just in an evolutionary process , not definite or complete  .Will be ever complete ? of course not ,since science is not about definite knowledge , just about conjectural approximate one, not about the truth  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 18:10:16
Folks :

You do behave and think , as if our human scientific knowledge of the moment is true = definite and certain complete ,ironically enough, as to exclude a-priori , per definition ,and per -se any new ideas ,innovations,  insights , discoveries, falsifiable theories , conceptions of nature ...that might turn out to be "singing outside of and beyond the materialist mainstream phony false and temporary 'scientific world view " meta-paradigm"= that's in fact exactly what materialism in science has been doing , paradoxically enough , by imposing its false materialist conception of nature as the true  definite and almost complete  'scientific world view " only the minor details of which do need to be filled in still = no wonder that those materialists physicists lunatics such as Hawking have been trying to come up with a "theory of everything " = a theory of nothing in fact ,while science,per definition, science as an evolutionary ever-changing , ever -evolving process ,  is in fact absolutely not about any complete definite true  "theory of everything "  .
That was exactly what classical physics have thought ,by pretending that there was nothing left to discover , by pretending to explain 'everything " once all the minor details would be filled in , classical physics  on which fundamentally incorrect asssumptions sand-castles the outdated false and superseded 19th century  materialism was built .

Well, for your info :

Science is not about definite or complete knowledge , not about the truth , just about conjectural temporary approximate knowledge ,which also means that you will have to throw a lots of your presumed scientific knowledge out of the window, soon enough (That's a normal process, since science is an evolutionary , ever -changing and ever -evolving process ) ,simply because that presumed scientific knowledge of yours has been just materialist belief assumptions, no empirical facts .

Old poor Popper would be hysterical ,if he would happen to live in this time and age , where the materialist mainstream 'all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " has been  taken for granted for so long now, without question , as the true definite and almost complete "theory of everything " haha , by ossifying science and by keeping science imprisonned within the materialist false dogmatic conception of nature-orthodox unquestionable secular religion= by turning science into a secular atheist irrational orthodox dogmatic religion  .

What a shame ...for almost all humanity in fact,that's been equating such a superseded outdated and false ideology such as materialism with no-less than ...science  .

Science does not require materialism, as science does not need to be materialistic : science should be neither materialist nor otherwise : science should be metaphysically neutral in fact : but , since science is just a human activity , science can therefore never be metaphysically neutral, ever : metaphysically neutral science is hence a mythical unrealistic idealist naive utopia .

What a depressingly hopeless predicament .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2013 18:30:18
...So, that detected brain activity  6 secs before the patients' in question  awareness of their own conscious decision making on the subject , in those experiments you mentioned , that detected brain activity prior to that specific conscious process was / is just the image of that specific conscious process , not its cause ,since any given conscious process would require no time space or energy : a bit like the phenomena of light : just an analogy : that take place instantly : when you turn on the light switch , for example ,the  electric current process seems thus to take place millisecs before the appearance of the light in the room .
In your analogy, the electric current flowing does cause the light to appear, and the delay between switching it on and the light appearing is well understood. Electrical technology relies on our understanding of this causal relationship.

If the phenomena of consciousness require no time, space, or energy, and take place instantly, we should not expect to detect their physical precursors well before the individual is aware of them.

Quote
Something like that , i don't know
Both the experimental evidence and your own analogy contradict your unevidenced assertions about consciousness. You don't know why, yet you persist with these assertions.

A strong belief held in the absence of evidence is called faith, and a strong belief held in the face of conflicting evidence is called a delusion.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 18:59:21
...So, that detected brain activity  6 secs before the patients' in question  awareness of their own conscious decision making on the subject , in those experiments you mentioned , that detected brain activity prior to that specific conscious process was / is just the image of that specific conscious process , not its cause ,since any given conscious process would require no time space or energy : a bit like the phenomena of light : just an analogy : that take place instantly : when you turn on the light switch , for example ,the  electric current process seems thus to take place millisecs before the appearance of the light in the room .
In your analogy, the electric current flowing does cause the light to appear, and the delay between switching it on and the light appearing is well understood. Electrical technology relies on our understanding of this causal relationship.

Well, don't be so unimaginative ,simplistic and short sighted as not to have noticed that i said that that was just an analogy .
Quote
If the phenomena of consciousness require no time, space, or energy, and take place instantly, we should not expect to detect their physical precursors well before the individual is aware of them.

We don't know what "aware of them " is ,or rather what or how the conscious process takes place ,so to speak then : you are just trying to explain away my speculations on the subject via your own false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " physical theory of nature .

We don't know nothing of non-physical or mental forms of causation : and they should be totally different from the conventional physical ones, logically .

Don't change the subject : the main issue here is : materialism is false ,and hence the materialist "the mind is in the brain or that the mind is just brain's activity " extension of the materialist conception of nature is also false ,logically .

So, we must try to look for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness : there are none now , that does not mean there will be none in the future .

Could Newton possibly predict Einstein's relativity theory ,or quantum mechanics ?
Could Einstein himself predict the future evolution of modern physics ?
Can anyone of us , for that matter , possibly predict future scientific developments on the subject of consciousness ?

Those are the main issues here .

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Quote
Something like that , i don't know
Both the experimental evidence and your own analogy contradict your unevidenced assertions about consciousness. You don't know why, yet you persist with these assertions.

All i know is that materialism is false , and hence not 'all is matter " , and therefore consciousness must be non-local and non-physical .

There must be some flaws in those experiments you mentioned , since they were conducted under the materialist false mainstream dominating 'scientific world view " = the way and the results of those experiments cannot be but biased and a-priori suggestive .

That there are no falsifiable theories of consciousness now , does not mean there will always be none .
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A strong belief held in the absence of evidence is called faith, and a strong belief held in the face of conflicting evidence is called a delusion.

Well, that's exactly what you will see reflected in the mirror when you will put your own materialist false conception of nature in front of the mirror ,so to speak :
What extraordinary evidence has been delivered by materialism then, regarding the extraordinary claims of  the materialist conception of nature ? and hence what extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering regarding its " the mind is in the brain " materialist extraordinary claims ? Those experiments you mentioned ?

Come on, be serious :

Any idiot can design experiments as to make them fit into his /her a-priori held biased suggestive belief assumptions ...pfff...

The mind of the observer does change the observed ,but that does not mean that objective reality is not out there anyway : that's a fact : major proof ? : the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view " .


Use your imagination, if you've got some ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/12/2013 19:21:45

Quote
Any idiot can design experiments as to make them fit into his /her a-priori held biased suggestive belief assumptions ...pfff...

Go on, then, show us the experiment that confirms your beliefs.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 19:25:46
The main issue here , everybody here seems to ignore as such , is as follows ,once again :

Materialism is false , mainly because materialism cannot account for consciousness,and hence all materialist suggestive biased conscious or sub-conscious manipulations of scientific experiments on the subject of consciousness at least , should be rejected , simply because the mind of the observer does change the observed , but that does not mean that the objective reality out there we should be  all  looking for ,is not out there  .

This is really an extremely weird , paradoxical absurd surreal sterile counter-productive ...discussion :

I do tell you why and how materialism is false , also via my tons of multiple displayed posted material here , what do you do ?

Instead of facing the music , you just keep on trying to prove to me that materialism is ..."true" : bizarre ,while science is certainly not about the truth .

I say that convict criminal haha materialism is false or guilty ,beyond a shadow of a doubt , you respond : prove the innocence of your non-materialist conception of nature haha.

No theory of nature in fact in science , including materialism thus , can be true,no matter how many amounts of unsuccessfull falsifications of any of those theories might take place ,now or in the future ,  simply because it would have to take only one successfull falsification of any of those theories ,to make them false , as materialism is , thanks to consciousness .


The materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " and all its extensions cannot be thus true , just temporary , simply because science is not about the truth .

Materialism has been proven to be false in fact , mainly thanks to consciousness , the more when we would realise the fact that 19th century outdated superseded and false materialism was built on the fundamentally incorrect sand-castles of Newton's classical physics .



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/12/2013 19:39:36
The biggest error ever made in the name of science :


Is that YouTube [currently with a measly 519 views] by the same Bernardo Kastrup whose ignorance was exposed on the jref forum ? ... http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=8552406#post8552406
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 19:46:05

Quote
Any idiot can design experiments as to make them fit into his /her a-priori held biased suggestive belief assumptions ...pfff...

Go on, then, show us the experiment that confirms your beliefs.

Well, anyone can consciously or sub-consciously find what he /she would expect to find sometimes ...............via suggestive biased ways ..........by taking illusions or appearances for reality .
Materialists have even been confusing the image of consciousness with the cause of consciousness also, to say just that : how deluded can they ever be indeed .
Not to mention the fact that the mind of the observer does change the observed , via the observer's a -priori held dogmatic belief assumptions : does not mean that objective reality is not out there .
Once again :
There are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness right now , that does not mean there will be none tomorrow .

The main issue here is ,once again :

Materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness , and hence the mind is not in the brain, the mind is not brain's activity ....

Anyone thus who would try to prove materialism to be "true ", and hence that the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain , life is mechanical .... is a paradoxical absurd surreal ... fool that needs some therapy of some sort,simply because science is not about the ...truth , just about conjectural approximate temporary knowledge thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 19:49:19
The biggest error ever made in the name of science :


Is that YouTube [currently with a measly 519 views] by the same Bernardo Kastrup whose ignorance was exposed on the jref forum ? ... http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=8552406#post8552406

Yeah ,right : everyone's ignorance was exposed ,except that of materialists who do confuse the image of the process of consciousness with the cause of consciousness , by delivering no extraordinary evidence for their extraordinary " all is matter ,including the mind " absurd claims .

Thanks by the way for raising that confirmation bias in that link of yours = goes perfectly for materialists , as shown by those experiments which were mentioned by our dlorde here ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 19:55:44
RD : Thanks indeed :

Confirmation bias : those were the terms i was looking for : none is more guilty of that than ...materialists , ironically enough .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 09/12/2013 20:06:23
Thanks by the way for raising that confirmation bias in that link of yours (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=8552406&postcount=82) ...

But unfortunately you lack the insight to recognise yourself in the bit about
 "... rhetorical spin ... arm waving and emotional characterizations (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+stupid+OR+idiot+OR+moron+OR+fool+OR+genius+site%3Athenakedscientists.com) ...".
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2013 20:19:52
Well, don't be so unimaginative ,simplistic and short sighted as not to have noticed that i said that that was just an analogy .
Analogous with the experimental results, but contradictory to your acausal 'explanation'  [:)]

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We don't know what "aware of them " is ,or rather what or how the conscious process takes place ,so to speak then : you are just trying to explain away my speculations on the subject via your own false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " physical theory of nature .
We have to take their word for when they became consciously aware of making a choice - unless you think they can be consciously aware of it before before they are consciously aware of it [:o]

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We don't know nothing of non-physical or mental forms of causation : and they should be totally different from the conventional physical ones, logically .
Using your own analogy, that's like saying the appearance of light might be causing the light switch to go on. The events in the brain progress in a causal manner until the posteromedial cortices and frontal lobes are involved, and this coincides with the subject's declaration of when they made the choice. The sequence is not significantly different from other causal neural progressions from stimulus to response.

To suggest that the sequence with a conscious end-point has a different causality than other similar sequences is special pleading of the most egregious kind.

Quote
All i know is that materialism is false , and hence not 'all is matter " , and therefore consciousness must be non-local and non-physical .
You don't know it, you only believe it. Knowledge is falsifiably justified belief, and you have no falsifiable justification.

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There must be some flaws in those experiments you mentioned , since they were conducted under the materialist false mainstream dominating 'scientific world view " = the way and the results of those experiments cannot be but biased and a-priori suggestive .
By all means point out such flaws; otherwise you can see how damaging it is to your case to claim the experiments were flawed because the results don't agree with your beliefs.

If you opened your stance to 'materialism may be false', you wouldn't have to resort to dismissing evidence that doesn't fit your world view.

Quote
What extraordinary evidence has been delivered by materialism then, regarding the extraordinary claims of  the materialist conception of nature ? and hence what extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering regarding its " the mind is in the brain " materialist extraordinary claims ? Those experiments you mentioned ?
It's interesting evidence that is entirely consistent with a material explanation, and quite inconsistent with a non-material explanation. It's been replicated in various ways, and remains consistent; you're welcome to call it extraordinary if you wish - it's your belief it contradicts.

Quote
Any idiot can design experiments as to make them fit into his /her a-priori held biased suggestive belief assumptions ...pfff...
True; so are you calling the researchers who designed these various experiments idiots? If so, how are the experiments flawed?

In summary - the results conflict with your belief therefore they must be flawed experiments designed by idiots...

Once again; 'nuff said [:o]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 20:34:54
Thanks by the way for raising that confirmation bias in that link of yours (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=8552406&postcount=82) ...

But unfortunately you lack the insight to recognise yourself in the bit about
 "... rhetorical spin ... arm waving and emotional characterizations (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+stupid+OR+idiot+OR+moron+OR+fool+OR+genius+site%3Athenakedscientists.com) ...".

Yeah, right : i lack many things , i have many flaws ...but that does not make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence the mind is not in the brain , or the mind is not brain's activity ...........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2013 20:41:27
Well, don't be so unimaginative ,simplistic and short sighted as not to have noticed that i said that that was just an analogy .
Analogous with the experimental results, but contradictory to your acausal 'explanation'  [:)]

Quote
We don't know what "aware of them " is ,or rather what or how the conscious process takes place ,so to speak then : you are just trying to explain away my speculations on the subject via your own false materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " physical theory of nature .
We have to take their word for when they became consciously aware of making a choice - unless you think they can be consciously aware of it before before they are consciously aware of it [:o]

Quote
We don't know nothing of non-physical or mental forms of causation : and they should be totally different from the conventional physical ones, logically .
Using your own analogy, that's like saying the appearance of light might be causing the light switch to go on. The events in the brain progress in a causal manner until the posteromedial cortices and frontal lobes are involved, and this coincides with the subject's declaration of when they made the choice. The sequence is not significantly different from other causal neural progressions from stimulus to response.

To suggest that the sequence with a conscious end-point has a different causality than other similar sequences is special pleading of the most egregious kind.

Quote
All i know is that materialism is false , and hence not 'all is matter " , and therefore consciousness must be non-local and non-physical .
You don't know it, you only believe it. Knowledge is falsifiably justified belief, and you have no falsifiable justification.

Quote
There must be some flaws in those experiments you mentioned , since they were conducted under the materialist false mainstream dominating 'scientific world view " = the way and the results of those experiments cannot be but biased and a-priori suggestive .
By all means point out such flaws; otherwise you can see how damaging it is to your case to claim the experiments were flawed because the results don't agree with your beliefs.

If you opened your stance to 'materialism may be false', you wouldn't have to resort to dismissing evidence that doesn't fit your world view.

Quote
What extraordinary evidence has been delivered by materialism then, regarding the extraordinary claims of  the materialist conception of nature ? and hence what extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering regarding its " the mind is in the brain " materialist extraordinary claims ? Those experiments you mentioned ?
It's interesting evidence that is entirely consistent with a material explanation, and quite inconsistent with a non-material explanation. It's been replicated in various ways, and remains consistent; you're welcome to call it extraordinary if you wish - it's your belief it contradicts.

Quote
Any idiot can design experiments as to make them fit into his /her a-priori held biased suggestive belief assumptions ...pfff...
True; so are you calling the researchers who designed these various experiments idiots? If so, how are the experiments flawed?

In summary - the results conflict with your belief therefore they must be flawed experiments designed by idiots...

Once again; 'nuff said [:o]

Time up , sorry ,later , alligator : you don't read me well :  worse :  you do choose deliberately, i guess, to ignore my key statements ,without which my words are misunderstood or misquoted out of context beyond any recognition, over and over again, just to suit your a-priori held belief assumptions and purpose :
The above can be summarized just as follows :
Confirmation bias ...= goes also perfectly for materialists ,and for those experiments you mentioned mainly ...
Way to go, scientist .
Objectivity in science is a myth , Mr.
Congratulations indeed .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2013 21:13:49
Not to mention the fact that the mind of the observer does change the observed , via the observer's a -priori held dogmatic belief assumptions
How does that work? (or if you can't explain it, provide some reference).

Quote
Anyone thus who would try to prove materialism to be "true "
No one is trying to "prove materialism to be 'true'"; as you ought to know, it's not a provable proposition.

What scientists try to do is provide useful explanatory models for what is observed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2013 21:30:29
The above can be summarized just as follows :
Confirmation bias ...= goes also perfectly for materialists ,and for those experiments you mentioned mainly ...
Way to go, scientist .
Objectivity in science is a myth , Mr.
Confirmation bias is certainly a potential risk where results are borderline - which is why the scientific method has been constantly enhanced to try and eliminate it. These experiments were peer-reviewed and replicated by many different researches around the world, all aware of the dangers of confirmation bias and other errors (as indicated in the links I posted, the experimental designs have been tightened since the original work, and more recent technology, e.g. fMRI, has put it beyond all reasonable doubt). The results are not borderline or ambiguous, they are clear, consistent, and unambiguous.

To claim confirmation bias, you'll need to demonstrate where it could occur in all these unequivocal results. As it is, it looks like you're still clutching at straws to dismiss results that contradict your beliefs. That is the hallmark of crackpottery or delusion.

I think it was Will Rogers who said, 'When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging'.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2013 21:38:12
Yeah, right : i lack many things , i have many flaws ...
[;)]

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that does not make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence the mind is not in the brain , or the mind is not brain's activity
You wish. The evidence continues to accumulate consistent with a material explanation, and none whatsoever consistent with a non-material explanation. Can you even describe what evidence consistent with a non-material explanation would look like?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/12/2013 23:19:45
Quote
the fundamentally incorrect sand-castles of Newton's classical physics

Would that be the classical physics that allows us to fly to the moon? How incorrect can that be? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2013 02:48:45


Well, don't be so unimaginative ,simplistic and short sighted as not to have noticed that i said that that was just an analogy .


Analogous to what process? What mechanism?
I don't think you understand what an analogy is. An analogy is a comparison between two things that actually exist and are understood. Analogies are illustrative and are a quick and easy way of explaining a concept, but you should be able to explain the process with or without the analogy. I sometimes use the analogy of an army fighting foreign invaders when I teach immunology. But I can explain the immune system, and the function of white blood cells, antibodies, antigens, even without the analogy. You don't seem to be able to explain anything about the referent of your light bulb analogy at all.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2013 03:43:44


Did you at least try to read my relevant posted excerpts on the subject ? Guess not .



I have read the excerpts you posted. I was waiting for you to show what aspects of consciousness  quantum mechanics explains, but so far you haven’t, other than to suggest that they are somehow linked.

It appears you are  trying  to insert the immaterial and possibly God into physical reality and consciousness using quantum mechanics as a bridge. 
Regardless of what questions quantum mechanics might raise about deterministic mechanisms, it doesn’t explain anything specific about consciousness, or offer any possible answer to the questions you have repeatedly ignored or treated dismissively in the last 48 pages, including dlorde's most recent one concerning brain activity occurring before conscious awareness.  The only way your interpretation or refutation of that experiment makes any sense is if you are implying that consciousness exerts a backwards causal effect or, as dlorde suggested, you conclude that immaterial consciousness acts before you are conscious of it , which suggests “two consciousnesses” – one that acts before one is aware of it, and without ones consent. You are not able to explain the flaw in the design of the experiment other than to claim it must be flawed because of who designed it.

The other questions your theory can’t explain, and actually contradicts, even with quantum mechanics appended to it, include the following:

If consciousness is immaterial, why is conscious experience not invulnerable to brain damage, disease, genetic defects, mind altering drugs or intoxicants,  aging, etc. If the brain is just the instrument that receives sensory information from the world and executes action, why would damage or altering brain structures or biochemistry change the subjective experience of consciousness? Your answer has been that like a broken radio, the brain is not receiving consciousness properly, but I’ve pointed out several reasons why this explanation doesn’t work with the following examples:

There are two kinds of impairment that result in patients not being able to see objects in half of their visual field. One is caused by a lesion in the optic nerve. The other is caused by a lesion in a part of the brain called the visual associative cortex, that materialists say processes visual information and produces the visual experience. Although both patients cannot see objects in part of their optical field, the patient with optic nerve damage is conscious of it - he will complain "Hey, doc, I can't see anything on my left side! What's up with that?"

The patient with a lesion in the visual associative cortex does not ask this question. He doesn't know he cannot see an object in that part of the visual field, and he doesn't experience a blind spot there. The patient's brain no longer has an area responsible for processing what is going on in that area of the visual field - it ceases to exist consciously. The patient does not complain, because the part of the brain that might notice or complain is incapacitated, and no other part takes over.

So what? you say. In your interpretation, in either case, it's "like" a broken TV set. The real "you" or the non- local consciousness is out there in outer space somewhere, unaffected. But the implications of this are  absurd –is the real immaterial consciousness aware of the lesion in the associative visual cortex?  Is it disrupting the non-local immaterial consciousness in any way? Is the immaterial consciousness  frustrated or annoyed by the lack of information in his visual field? It's odd that the immaterial, unaffected consciousness can't communicate any of this back to the receiver in anyway.
From the  point of view of your brain or body, and your own conscious experience,  the non local immaterial consciousness might as well not even exist because it isn’t accessible without specific kinds of brain activity.

 Here are more examples that can be explained by neuroscience but not by non-local immaterial consciousness:

 A lesion in the lateral frontal lobes produces deficits in sequencing. The patient is unable to plan or multitask. Orbital frontal lesions result in a loss of the ability to judge right and wrong. A lesion in the left temporal lobe or Wernickes area destroys a person's ability to comprehend written or spoken language, although he can still, himself, speak normally. When these types of brain damage occur, can the immaterial non-local form of your consciousness still perform these tasks? Again, it must be quite frustrating for the non-local consciousness when his robot like receiver on Earth can't! He's up there multitasking and sequencing properly, making moral judgements, but that silly body on Earth isn't doing what he wants!

If memories are not stored in the brain, why are they unavailable to subjective conscious experience when the brain is damaged?  If  memories are part of the immaterial consciousness, why should memories fade at all?
Some specific examples:
Memories have been localized to even individual neurons in the brain, although researchers did not expect it. Researchers have also been able to erase or create memories in laboratory animals.

One lady in a medical study who suffered a stroke  could not identify or remember the names of fruit. Her intelligence, vocabulary and memory seemed normal in every other respect, and she could identify other common house hold objects - a spoon, a hammer, a chair, a toaster, a tooth brush. But bananas, apples, oranges, or any other kind of fruit were all gone from her memory.

Another woman had brain surgery for an aneurysm. She said she felt normal, the only thing she noticed afterwards was that she could no longer tell time from a dial face clock. She could from a digital clock, but not the kind with the numbers in a circle and big and small hands, that she had understood since she was five years old.

 
What are hallucinations? How are they explained in terms of an immaterial consciousness?
I can explain hallucinations if the qualia of consciousness is generated by the brain itself - for example, the hallucinations that result from temporal lobe seizures.  But how would the immaterial consciousness create a hallucination and at the same time mistake it for reality? Again, you can't blame it on the brain as a faulty receiver, because according to you, conscious experience isn't generated or experienced in the brain. If Obama is not inside the TV, then neither is your hallucination of Obama in the TV.

 The only way one can tell qualia of sensation from hallucinations is by applying rational thought processes if one is able. Say for example, I hallucinate there are five or six baboons running about my living room. I see them. I hear them. Perhaps I even feel one of them brush against my leg and I jump out of the way. But reason tells me, “I live in Canada. It is highly unlikely baboons have gotten into my house. Perhaps it was those wild mushrooms I ate.”  I may doubt whether the qualia are “real” or are qualia from hallucinations, but if the hallucination is generated by my brain chemistry, it won’t go away simply because I have done that - I won’t stop seeing the baboons. If the hallucination is generated by my immaterial consciousness, it should vanish instantly as soon as I negate its reality (thanks to my ample supply of free will.)

If you do attribute hallucinations to the malfunctioning brain instrument, why is the immaterial consciousness unable to distinguish between the false qualia the brain produces, and the real qualia that it produces? Do both brain generated-qualia and consciousness-generated qualia have an identical “raw feel?” Why would the brain be capable of generating qualia, only when it’s malfunctioning, but be unable to, when it’s not. Or to use your tv anaology, how can a broken TV set create a tv program that doesn’t exist, but be unable to create one (only broadcast) when its working properly? It shouldn’t be able to at all, according to your theory, because TV sets don’t create programs, and brains do not generate qualia or conscious experience.

Some other questions to consider:

Why is consciousness developmental, and correlate with biological brain development if it does not require it?

Why does increasing mental ability or intelligence correlate with increasing brain complexity in nature if it doesn’t require it?

Carter says the “dependence of consciousness on the brain for the manner of its manifestation in the material world does not imply that consciousness depends upon the brain for its existence.” Regardless, if I can only experience my own consciousness through its “manifestation” by the brain, I am dependent on my brains existence and its operation for my subjective experience of consciousness either way. Without the brain, I would have no access to the non-local immaterial consciousness, even if it existed.

Popper and others say that new theories replace old theories when a new theory has better explanatory power. You are asking people to replace neuroscience, which explains many aspects of consciousness, but not yet everything, with a new theory that explains no aspects of consciousness. You claim that it will or might, in the future – which is precisely the claim you reject and you use to “falsify” neuroscience and materialism.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 04:08:13
Bravo, Bravo,................excellent work Cheryl j.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 08:56:55
Very good summary, Cheryl.

If you don't mind, I'd like to keep a version of it for future use in debates & discussions with advocates of external consciousness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 16:58:31
Folks :

It never fails to amaze me how the people sharing the same thoughts via their similar underlying a-priori held beliefs , are inclined to agree with each other ,no matter what ,  while rejecting the views of other people who happen not to agree with them : that's a form of confirmation bias .
If you wanna avoid the latter , you will have to be open to all views out there on the subject , not just stick to your own that seem to be confirmed by people who do think like you do .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 17:01:42
Confirmation Bias, Ethics, and Mistakes in
Forensics:



“The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.”
- Publilius Syrus


Introduction:

Confirmation bias is when people observe more, give extra emphasis to, or
intentionally look for evidence that would validate their existing beliefs and
expectations and are likely to excuse or completely ignore evidence which could
reject their beliefs. As such, it can be seen as a type of bias in gathering and
analyzing evidence. 1 Although some might disagree, this type of bias does not
exclude scientists who pride themselves on their objectivity.

Scientist and researchers have recognized for centuries that bias influences
human thought and behavior. In 1620, a philosopher named Francis Bacon found that
once people adopt an opinion, they will look for anything to support and agree with
that opinion. Bacon also noted that it is a “peculiar human tendency” to be more
moved by positives than by negatives. 3 In 1852, a journalist named Charles Mackay
stated “When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into
their service!” 3 However, in spite of all the previous work on bias, a study completed
in 1959 by psychologist Peter C. Wason was considered by most as the beginning for
much of the work on confirmation bias. “Confirmation bias is perhaps the best
known and most widely accepted notion of inferential error to come out of the
literature on human reasoning.” 4
To begin this study of biases, ethics, and mistakes, there are a few questions
that need to be asked.
1. Should irrelevant information or opinions about a case be shared with the
analyst prior to examining the evidence? Does confirmation bias limit itself
only to verifications?
2. In reviewing other analysts’ work, is there an analyst that is correct 99.9% of
the time? Is there an analyst with consistent errors? Is their work reviewed
the same?
3. Would there be more time spent on a verification from another agency, a
coworker, or a supervisor? Are the same criteria for verifying used for
everyone?
4. When a print is identified, is there ever a question of identity prior to turning
the case in for verification? What if, after matching the latent print to the
suspect, it was found that the DNA in the case did not match the suspect?
Could that information make an analyst question his or her results? Could that
information make an analyst change the results?
5. What if another examiner with more experience asked for a tough latent print
to be verified? Surely, a more experienced examiner would not make a
mistake. If there were questions about the print or the identification, would
they be asked? What if an acceptable answer were not given? Would the
identification be verified anyway? What if pressure were applied to verify?
6. What if an identification is found in a serial rapist case and the police need this
match as probable cause to arrest? Now the identification that needs to be
verified was made at 5pm on Friday afternoon and the verifying analyst has
unchangeable plans for 5:30pm that he/she had been waiting on all year?
Does he/she feel pressure? Is the analyst that is asking for verification always
right? If the latent is tough, is the time taken for verification or is the analyst’s
word taken for it?
These questions should have helped to get the reader on track to see how
easily bias, carelessness, and ethics can enter into the decision-making process.
Bias is everywhere; it is the very fabric with which most people clothe
themselves in daily. It is in politics, science, medicine, media, research, and almost
everything that requires thought. Once this bias is realized, awareness of it makes us
start to second-guess ourselves, not just in forensics but also in everyday life.
Everyone is biased to some extent, some of us more than others. There are several
ways that bias can enter our lives. For example, we read an article and form our
opinion on the topic of that article. How do we know the author of the article is telling
the truth? It should be evident that we cannot research every subject and know the
truth on everything in our lives. Perhaps Rutherford D. Rogers said it best: “We’re
drowning in information and starving for knowledge.”
For this reason, we want to believe what people tell us. We almost find it
necessary to accept a person’s word, because we are overrun with information on a
daily basis. However, in order to take a person’s word, we have to trust that person to
begin with. All of us must trust to a certain extent because we know we cannot do it
all ourselves. We have to focus on the importance of knowing the truth and search for
it ourselves.
Becoming emotionally involved in a case can also allow bias to enter the
analysis of the scene or evidence. The more our emotions are involved with a belief,
the easier it is for us to disregard details and opinions that may have a tendency to
challenge that belief. 5 An example of this would be at a crime scene where one
becomes emotionally involved because of the information obtained from the
investigating officer and then uses that information to determine how the crime scene
was committed, what needs to be collected, and what needs to be processed.
Knowing what confirmation bias is and how it can affect your objectivity should
make one rethink how to conduct day-to-day activities.
Laziness is another way bias can affect our opinions. The application of
laziness to forensics is when we allow other people to do the thinking for us, resulting
in a loss of objectivity and a desire to learn, thereby steering our preference toward
supporting rather than refuting. However, we should not support the identification of
a print without challenging the validity of the opinion. An opinion on a verification
should never be made by taking the word of the original examiner. As Arthur Bloch
stated “Don’t let your conclusion be the place where you got tired of thinking”
The last way that bias can affect our opinions is by grouping with people that
think like us or have the same beliefs. People tend to group with others that share the
same beliefs, because associating with people who do not share the same beliefs
would require that person to think of a way to defend their beliefs. For this reason, it
is better to spend more time with people who challenge our beliefs or opinions,
because this will have a tendency to keep a person thinking, by having them process
information instead of accepting information. This is an important part in learning to
overcome bias, because when a person searches out all possibilities, it will be easier
for that person to give an unbiased opinion.
Why does confirmation bias occur?
Confirmation bias occurs when we lose our ability to be objective. The reason
that confirmation bias is so common is because, mentally, it is easier to deal with. 6
Studies of social judgment show that when people are in favor of a certain belief, they
tend to seek out evidence and interpret information that follows their beliefs by giving
positive evidence more weight than it deserves. 3 On the other hand, they do not look
for or even reject information that would disprove their beliefs by giving less weight
to negative evidence. This does not mean that we completely ignore negative
information, but it does mean that we give it less weight than positive information.
This is usually accomplished by leaving out, altering, or diluting any of the negative
observations. 3 This is exactly what happened in the case Robert Millikan, who won
the Nobel Prize in physics, for his research on finding “the electric charge of a single
electron.” Millikan only reported a little more that half (58) of his (107) observations,
excluding from the publication the observations that did not fit his hypothesis. 7
If we can only see one possible explanation of an event, then we tend not to
interpret data as supportive of any other alternate explanation. There are others who
tend to be so strongly committed to their position that they even disregard
interpretations or explanations of others. 3 However, it is important to note that if our
conclusions are based on solid evidence and objective experiments, then our
tendencies to overweigh evidence based on our personal beliefs should not affect us
as a general rule. 6 But, if we start overlooking evidence that refutes our conclusions,
then we lose our objectivity and cross over to subjectivity, based on our preconceived
beliefs.
Most people would admit that they do not like to be wrong. It is part of our
human nature to argue in favor of our beliefs, even when confronted with
contradictory evidence. Evidence that confirms our theories are typically easier to
deal with cognitively, which is why we prefer supporting evidence instead of
evidence which may refute our claims. It is easier to think of a reason to support our
claims than to think of a reason that might contradict them. This is mainly because it
is difficult to think of a reason why we might be wrong. 5 Bias can penetrate our
objective thoughts and challenge or even change our conclusions. 5
The effects of confirmation bias
The main difference between confirmation bias and other biases is that
confirmation bias consistently keeps us floundering in deceit by preventing us from
seeing the truth. 5 We might ask ourselves, what is the truth? Is the truth what we see
or what we believe we saw, what we hear or what we thought we heard, what we read
or how we interpret what we read? The truth is what it is, but it has to be sought out.
Those who take things at face value, without checking on the validity, are setting
themselves up for disaster.
When one objectively assesses evidence that leads to an unprejudiced
conclusion, as opposed to constructing a case to rationalize a previously drawn
assumption, an obvious difference can be seen. In the first instance, one takes a
holistic view of the evidence and arrives at a conclusion that is based on an objective
evaluation. In the second, one is selective with the evidence that is gathered and
discards other evidence that seems to disagree with the supported position. 3 This is
not to suggest that someone would intentionally mistreat evidence; one may interpret
or select evidence along with one’s beliefs without necessarily being aware of a bias.
3 This would be consistent with an investigator’s not collecting evidence at the crime
scene because it does not fit his/her theory on how the crime happened.
However, some research has discounted the likelihood of people intentionally
seeking to prove rather than falsify their hypotheses. 4 There is evidence to support
that confirmation bias does not arise from a longing to confirm, but rather from
people not thinking in openly negative terms. The basis of this phenomenon has been
argued as cognitive breakdown and not motivation: “Subjects confirm, not because
they want to, but because they cannot think of the way to falsify. The cognitive
failure is caused by a form of selective processing which is very fundamental indeed
in cognition – a bias to think about positive rather than negative information.”
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 17:08:59
The above can be summarized just as follows :
Confirmation bias ...= goes also perfectly for materialists ,and for those experiments you mentioned mainly ...
Way to go, scientist .
Objectivity in science is a myth , Mr.
Confirmation bias is certainly a potential risk where results are borderline - which is why the scientific method has been constantly enhanced to try and eliminate it. These experiments were peer-reviewed and replicated by many different researches around the world, all aware of the dangers of confirmation bias and other errors (as indicated in the links I posted, the experimental designs have been tightened since the original work, and more recent technology, e.g. fMRI, has put it beyond all reasonable doubt). The results are not borderline or ambiguous, they are clear, consistent, and unambiguous.

To claim confirmation bias, you'll need to demonstrate where it could occur in all these unequivocal results. As it is, it looks like you're still clutching at straws to dismiss results that contradict your beliefs. That is the hallmark of crackpottery or delusion.

I think it was Will Rogers who said, 'When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging'.

See the relevant excerpt i have just posted regarding confirmation bias :

Look, I see that , as follows :
Those experiments were so suggestive and explicit that they can be compared to how external stimuli or sensory -"input" get sent to the brain through  the sensory organs via nerve cells ,and then afterwards conscious perception of those external stimuli takes it over from there .
Since the mainstream 'scientific world view " assumes
a-priori that "the mind is in then brain, or that the mind is just brain's activity ". then, scientists all around the world would just have to try to confirm that a priori held "scientific ' assumption empirically .
In the particular case of those experiments you mentioned , i think, personally, that they were designed as to confirm the mainstream 'scientific world view " on the subject of brain and mind ,to the point where those experiments were suggestive and confirmatory , in the sense that the subjects under "investigation " were told to perform particular decisions-making via specific instructions on how to perform them .
Those specific instructions went through the subjects' in question sensory -"inputs " to their brains first , that's why those scientists who were conducting those suggestive experiments through their suggestive confirmation bias ,in the above mentioned sense ,that's why they detected neurons' firings before those subjects were aware or conscious of their decisions.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 17:18:46
Folks :

It never fails to amaze me how the people sharing the same thoughts via their similar underlying a-priori held beliefs , are inclined to agree with each other ,no matter what ,  while rejecting the views of other people who happen not to agree with them : that's a form of confirmation bias .
If you wanna avoid the latter , you will have to be open to all views out there on the subject , not just stick to your own that seem to be confirmed by people who do think like you do .
I'm very confident Sir, that you have your own group of individuals that can lend support to your common beliefs, or more appropriately; YOUR FAITH

To do nothing more than continue to repeat something you can't demonstrate with evidence IS EVIDENCE that your opinions are nothing more than FAITH. And FAITH will get you nowhere in a science forum.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 17:51:33


Did you at least try to read my relevant posted excerpts on the subject ? Guess not .



I have read the excerpts you posted. I was waiting for you to show what aspects of consciousness  quantum mechanics explains, but so far you haven’t, other than to suggest that they are somehow linked.

It appears you are  trying  to insert the immaterial and possibly God into physical reality and consciousness using quantum mechanics as a bridge. 
Regardless of what questions quantum mechanics might raise about deterministic mechanisms, it doesn’t explain anything specific about consciousness, or offer any possible answer to the questions you have repeatedly ignored or treated dismissively in the last 48 pages, including dlorde's most recent one concerning brain activity occurring before conscious awareness.  The only way your interpretation or refutation of that experiment makes any sense is if you are implying that consciousness exerts a backwards causal effect or, as dlorde suggested, you conclude that immaterial consciousness acts before you are conscious of it , which suggests “two consciousnesses” – one that acts before one is aware of it, and without ones consent. You are not able to explain the flaw in the design of the experiment other than to claim it must be flawed because of who designed it.

The other questions your theory can’t explain, and actually contradicts, even with quantum mechanics appended to it, include the following:

If consciousness is immaterial, why is conscious experience not invulnerable to brain damage, disease, genetic defects, mind altering drugs or intoxicants,  aging, etc. If the brain is just the instrument that receives sensory information from the world and executes action, why would damage or altering brain structures or biochemistry change the subjective experience of consciousness? Your answer has been that like a broken radio, the brain is not receiving consciousness properly, but I’ve pointed out several reasons why this explanation doesn’t work with the following examples:

There are two kinds of impairment that result in patients not being able to see objects in half of their visual field. One is caused by a lesion in the optic nerve. The other is caused by a lesion in a part of the brain called the visual associative cortex, that materialists say processes visual information and produces the visual experience. Although both patients cannot see objects in part of their optical field, the patient with optic nerve damage is conscious of it - he will complain "Hey, doc, I can't see anything on my left side! What's up with that?"

The patient with a lesion in the visual associative cortex does not ask this question. He doesn't know he cannot see an object in that part of the visual field, and he doesn't experience a blind spot there. The patient's brain no longer has an area responsible for processing what is going on in that area of the visual field - it ceases to exist consciously. The patient does not complain, because the part of the brain that might notice or complain is incapacitated, and no other part takes over.

So what? you say. In your interpretation, in either case, it's "like" a broken TV set. The real "you" or the non- local consciousness is out there in outer space somewhere, unaffected. But the implications of this are  absurd –is the real immaterial consciousness aware of the lesion in the associative visual cortex?  Is it disrupting the non-local immaterial consciousness in any way? Is the immaterial consciousness  frustrated or annoyed by the lack of information in his visual field? It's odd that the immaterial, unaffected consciousness can't communicate any of this back to the receiver in anyway.
From the  point of view of your brain or body, and your own conscious experience,  the non local immaterial consciousness might as well not even exist because it isn’t accessible without specific kinds of brain activity.

 Here are more examples that can be explained by neuroscience but not by non-local immaterial consciousness:

 A lesion in the lateral frontal lobes produces deficits in sequencing. The patient is unable to plan or multitask. Orbital frontal lesions result in a loss of the ability to judge right and wrong. A lesion in the left temporal lobe or Wernickes area destroys a person's ability to comprehend written or spoken language, although he can still, himself, speak normally. When these types of brain damage occur, can the immaterial non-local form of your consciousness still perform these tasks? Again, it must be quite frustrating for the non-local consciousness when his robot like receiver on Earth can't! He's up there multitasking and sequencing properly, making moral judgements, but that silly body on Earth isn't doing what he wants!

If memories are not stored in the brain, why are they unavailable to subjective conscious experience when the brain is damaged?  If  memories are part of the immaterial consciousness, why should memories fade at all?
Some specific examples:
Memories have been localized to even individual neurons in the brain, although researchers did not expect it. Researchers have also been able to erase or create memories in laboratory animals.

One lady in a medical study who suffered a stroke  could not identify or remember the names of fruit. Her intelligence, vocabulary and memory seemed normal in every other respect, and she could identify other common house hold objects - a spoon, a hammer, a chair, a toaster, a tooth brush. But bananas, apples, oranges, or any other kind of fruit were all gone from her memory.

Another woman had brain surgery for an aneurysm. She said she felt normal, the only thing she noticed afterwards was that she could no longer tell time from a dial face clock. She could from a digital clock, but not the kind with the numbers in a circle and big and small hands, that she had understood since she was five years old.

 
What are hallucinations? How are they explained in terms of an immaterial consciousness?
I can explain hallucinations if the qualia of consciousness is generated by the brain itself - for example, the hallucinations that result from temporal lobe seizures.  But how would the immaterial consciousness create a hallucination and at the same time mistake it for reality? Again, you can't blame it on the brain as a faulty receiver, because according to you, conscious experience isn't generated or experienced in the brain. If Obama is not inside the TV, then neither is your hallucination of Obama in the TV.

 The only way one can tell qualia of sensation from hallucinations is by applying rational thought processes if one is able. Say for example, I hallucinate there are five or six baboons running about my living room. I see them. I hear them. Perhaps I even feel one of them brush against my leg and I jump out of the way. But reason tells me, “I live in Canada. It is highly unlikely baboons have gotten into my house. Perhaps it was those wild mushrooms I ate.”  I may doubt whether the qualia are “real” or are qualia from hallucinations, but if the hallucination is generated by my brain chemistry, it won’t go away simply because I have done that - I won’t stop seeing the baboons. If the hallucination is generated by my immaterial consciousness, it should vanish instantly as soon as I negate its reality (thanks to my ample supply of free will.)

If you do attribute hallucinations to the malfunctioning brain instrument, why is the immaterial consciousness unable to distinguish between the false qualia the brain produces, and the real qualia that it produces? Do both brain generated-qualia and consciousness-generated qualia have an identical “raw feel?” Why would the brain be capable of generating qualia, only when it’s malfunctioning, but be unable to, when it’s not. Or to use your tv anaology, how can a broken TV set create a tv program that doesn’t exist, but be unable to create one (only broadcast) when its working properly? It shouldn’t be able to at all, according to your theory, because TV sets don’t create programs, and brains do not generate qualia or conscious experience.

Some other questions to consider:

Why is consciousness developmental, and correlate with biological brain development if it does not require it?

Why does increasing mental ability or intelligence correlate with increasing brain complexity in nature if it doesn’t require it?

Carter says the “dependence of consciousness on the brain for the manner of its manifestation in the material world does not imply that consciousness depends upon the brain for its existence.” Regardless, if I can only experience my own consciousness through its “manifestation” by the brain, I am dependent on my brains existence and its operation for my subjective experience of consciousness either way. Without the brain, I would have no access to the non-local immaterial consciousness, even if it existed.

Popper and others say that new theories replace old theories when a new theory has better explanatory power. You are asking people to replace neuroscience, which explains many aspects of consciousness, but not yet everything, with a new theory that explains no aspects of consciousness. You claim that it will or might, in the future – which is precisely the claim you reject and you use to “falsify” neuroscience and materialism.

(Prior note :
The main issue here is that materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, regardless of whether there are non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet or not .
I just responded to dlorde on the subject of those experiments he mentioned .
Second : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, and hence not "all is matter ", and therefore the mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain ....
As for hallucinations , they can be explained in almost the same way brain damage of specific areas of the brain and its implications for consciousness can be explained,in a non-materialistic way , in the sense that consciousness remains there anyway , it just misses its physical brain support it relies on in order to be translated , in this life at least  ...since body and mind are inseparable , in this life at least .
Third , since materialism is false , together with all its extensions such as "the mind is in the brain, memory is stored in the brain, life or the universe are mechanical ...we should try to come up with non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness .That there are none today does not mean there will be none tomorrow , and that does not make the fact go away that materialism is false : i do not see why you, guys , do try to link the 2 to each other ,i do not see why you somehow do think that since there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet , then materialism must be not false : bizarre : materialism is false  , regardless of whether we do have non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness or not .)

Despite all that relatively detailed talk of yours , i do salute you for ,and i do appreciate very much indeed ,you seem not to have been able so far to understand  the meaning of the real issue here,i have been trying to "defend " ,as a potentially valid alternative to false materialism  :  dualism, in the sense that there might be some sort of unknown to science fields that do somehow mediate between the physical brain and body at one hand  ,and between the non-physical mental,at the other hand  .
Even modern physics have been dualistic ,in the sense that matter at its ultimate core or bottom is not just a matter of just material particles , but also a matter of waves ....
Even at the physical level, all physical interactions are mediated by fields via energy ...
I think that the physical brain and body do generate some internal and external fields , in almost the same way magnets  or electricity  ,for example, do : magnetic fields or electro-magnetic ones,within and without .
The non-physical mental side of reality might also generate non-physical fields within and without : that's how the physical brain and body do interact with the mental, i presume,via respectively physical and non-physical fields that do get extended  beyond them , i don't know for sure , who does in fact ?

The very existence of confirmation bias,for example,  is evidence enough for the fact that the mind of the observer does change the observed ,via the observer's a-priori held belief assumptions ,is evidence enough for the fact that the mind does have causal effect on matter , brain or body .
Not to mention the power of suggestion on the same subject of mind-body relationship,and the psycho-somatic phenomena  .
So,This world is made both of 2 totally different substances  : matter and the non-physical mental , matter that's also not just matter , so to speak, matter that might turn out to be not made of matter ,after all ,so to speak .
Second : The above does also mean that we do live in those both worlds or dimensions at the same time ,so, materialism is false , mainly because it can, obviously and per -definition,not account for the mental or for consciousness .

Which also means that the material physical side of reality ,as it has been approached by all the physical sciences , is just one single part of the whole pic : who said that i have been dismissing the huge achievements  of all physical sciences on the subject ? Be serious, please .
All i have been saying is that science has been assuming that 'all is matter , including the mind " by reducing everything to just physics and chemistry , by trying to explain everything just in terms of physics and chemistry alone, thanks to materialism , by trying to explain everything just via one single side of the whole pic of reality : just via the material or physical side of reality .

And even the most physical science of them all, modern physics , has been showing to us that the mind has causal effect on matter , no matter how long you would be denying this fact we all do experience every single day of our lives via our own conscious decisions : see also the placebo effect , the power of suggestion , psycho-somatic processes ...

In short :

Materialism is false , mainly because it cannot , per definition, account for consciousness , and therefore  materialism must be rejected , and must be indeed replaced by another competitive  theory of nature with more explanatory power :

That there is still no non-materialist falsifiable theory of nature or theory of consciousness with more explanatory power , does certainly not mean that there will be none tomorrow , and that does not make the fact go away that materialism is ...false .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 18:04:48
Folks :

It never fails to amaze me how the people sharing the same thoughts via their similar underlying a-priori held beliefs , are inclined to agree with each other ,no matter what ,  while rejecting the views of other people who happen not to agree with them : that's a form of confirmation bias .
If you wanna avoid the latter , you will have to be open to all views out there on the subject , not just stick to your own that seem to be confirmed by people who do think like you do .
I'm very confident Sir, that you have your own group of individuals that can lend support to your common beliefs, or more appropriately; YOUR FAITH

To do nothing more than continue to repeat something you can't demonstrate with evidence IS EVIDENCE that your opinions are nothing more than FAITH. And FAITH will get you nowhere in a science forum.

Since the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been assuming that "all is matter ,including the mind " , then , most scientists cannot but try to confirm that "scientific  fact " = confirmation bias,and any given scientist who would try to prove that not "all is matter " would be automatically branded as a pseudo-scientist , a heretic , a charlatan , or worse , as it has been the case so far  .

I have been delivering a lots of material on the subject , that has been supporting my claims all along : that you did choose to ignore all thos tons of material i did post won't make that fact go away .

Besides, it is really extremely absurd bizarre , surreal ...to see a "man of faith " such as yourself defending materialism, ironically and paradoxically enough , materialism that does intrinsically and per -definition , exclude any existence of the immaterial realm out there in which you seem to believe  .

In short :
It is materialism itself that has been imposing itself as the "scientific world view " for so long now : that' s  been  just an act of faith that's not supported by any kind of evidence , otherwise , just tell me : what extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering for its extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality ?

Try to answer just that then, if you can = you cannot and nobodyelse can, simply because materialism is false , mainly thanks to the fact that materialism cannot account for the non-physical mental or for consciousness .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 18:18:17
Yeah, right : i lack many things , i have many flaws ...
[;)]

Quote
that does not make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence the mind is not in the brain , or the mind is not brain's activity
You wish. The evidence continues to accumulate consistent with a material explanation, and none whatsoever consistent with a non-material explanation. Can you even describe what evidence consistent with a non-material explanation would look like?

Sweet dreams , in your own materialist wonderland  delusion illusion hallucination , Alice :

What extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering for its extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality then , genius ?

See that confirmation bias post of mine here above : none can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists : read it carefully , and you might see yourself and your false outdated superseded 19th century old materialism reflected in it , cristal clearly .

Once again, that there are , in this time and age at least , no non-materialist falsifiable=scientific  theories of consciousness out there yet now , does not mean there will be none tomorrow ,and that does certainly not mean that all those non-materialist theories of consciousness or non-materialist theories of nature are necessarily all false , but , that does certainly not make the fact go away that materialism is false , mainly because it cannot ,per -definition, account for consciousness .

And the fact that the mental has causal effects on matter , and hence on the physical brain and body is an undeniable fact you do experience every single day of your own life via your own conscious decision making : see also the placebo effect , psycho-somatic processes that cannot be reduced to just physics and chemistry .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 18:22:48
"The mind is in the brain " : what a silly joke =The whole universe is in our skulls ,in our messy soup of skulls = absurd .
The mind or consciousness that cannot be accounted for by brain activity  in fact , come on .
I am looking at my pc screen right now , while typing these lines , does that mean that what i see is just in my brain, not out there, in front of my very eyes  ? ridiculous ...

How can we approach the objective reality out there via science through our consciousness then ? science that's just a human activity .

Our conscious representations of reality are in fact within and without , everywhere and nowhere = non-local .

Consciousness is in fact within and without : extends itself beyond our physical organisms,that's why we are able to deal with the world empirically and otherwise  .

Analogy ? : even if it is just a physical one, while consciousness is non-physical, non-local :
Mobile phones do have waves within and without : that extend beyond them .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 21:30:58
Folks :
Materialism is false , regardless of whether we do have non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness or not .
That there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet out there now, does not mean there will be none tomorrow .

You do behave and think as if since there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet , then materialism must be not false : what kind of reasoning is this then ?

Materialism is false ,mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, and hence the mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain, life or the universe are not mechanical ...........and therefore materialism must be rejected by all sciences .

We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .

I will not say : we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness , with more explanatory power ,simply because materialism has no explanatory power ,basta , materialism that's just a false conception of nature , no science , despite the fact that the materialist ideology has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view ": see the difference ? .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 21:35:53
... In the particular case of those experiments you mentioned , i think, personally, that they were designed as to confirm the mainstream 'scientific world view " on the subject of brain and mind ,to the point where those experiments were suggestive and confirmatory , in the sense that the subjects under "investigation " were told to perform particular decisions-making via specific instructions on how to perform them .
Those specific instructions went through the subjects' in question sensory -"inputs " to their brains first , that's why those scientists who were conducting those suggestive experiments through their suggestive confirmation bias ,in the above mentioned sense ,that's why they detected neurons' firings before those subjects were aware or conscious of their decisions.
In fact, that wasn't the case at all; quite the opposite. The researchers did expect to see causal effects entirely within the brain, but they were expecting to see an initial wave of neural activation in the frontal lobes and posteromedial corticies corresponding to the subject's conscious awareness of making the choice or decision to act, followed by a sequence of activations leading to motor cortex activity that would directly cause the action.

This sequence of conscious awareness of decision followed by activity resulting in action is intuitive and seems sensible; they had no reason to expect anything different. When they found prior activity well before conscious awareness, they were puzzled. They repeated the experiment several times with the same results before publishing. Other researchers were skeptical about the experimental quality and whether the prior activity was related to the voluntary decision at all, so in an attempt to expose any mistakes, they redesigned the experiment to reduce the possibility of error (the second link I posted) and replicated it. They got even clearer results, and it has subsequently been demonstrated that it is possible to predict the decision or choice made before the time when the subject says they were consciously aware they'd made it. Because these results were so unexpected, the experiments have been replicated in various ways with the latest technology, and the results are now widely accepted.

You may wish to try to explain these results in terms of the immaterial, but you can't just dismiss them as mistaken.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 21:48:46
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 21:50:33
... In the particular case of those experiments you mentioned , i think, personally, that they were designed as to confirm the mainstream 'scientific world view " on the subject of brain and mind ,to the point where those experiments were suggestive and confirmatory , in the sense that the subjects under "investigation " were told to perform particular decisions-making via specific instructions on how to perform them .
Those specific instructions went through the subjects' in question sensory -"inputs " to their brains first , that's why those scientists who were conducting those suggestive experiments through their suggestive confirmation bias ,in the above mentioned sense ,that's why they detected neurons' firings before those subjects were aware or conscious of their decisions.
In fact, that wasn't the case at all; quite the opposite. The researchers did expect to see causal effects entirely within the brain, but they were expecting to see an initial wave of neural activation in the frontal lobes and posteromedial corticies corresponding to the subject's conscious awareness of making the choice or decision to act, followed by a sequence of activations leading to motor cortex activity that would directly cause the action.

This sequence of conscious awareness of decision followed by activity resulting in action is intuitive and seems sensible; they had no reason to expect anything different. When they found prior activity well before conscious awareness, they were puzzled. They repeated the experiment several times with the same results before publishing. Other researchers were skeptical about the experimental quality and whether the prior activity was related to the voluntary decision at all, so in an attempt to expose any mistakes, they redesigned the experiment to reduce the possibility of error (the second link I posted) and replicated it. They got even clearer results, and it has subsequently been demonstrated that it is possible to predict the decision or choice made before the time when the subject says they were consciously aware they'd made it. Because these results were so unexpected, the experiments have been replicated in various ways with the latest technology, and the results are now widely accepted.

You may wish to try to explain these results in terms of the immaterial, but you can't just dismiss them as mistaken.

Since the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been assuming that "all is matter , including the mind " , then most scientists would only try to confirm that "scientific " assumption they take for granted as science or as an empirical fact (Why should they question empirical facts like that , in the first place to begin with then haha ) ,otherwise they would be branded as pseudo-scientists or worse ,for daring to challenge  the current  " scientific world view " of the moment : confirmation bias can be applied to this case perfectly : see my post regarding confirmation bias .

Those experiments must be designed as to be so suggestive and confirmatory as to instruct the subjets of those experiments to take,so to speak,  those instructions via their sensory -"inputs " to their brains ....no wonder that those scientists  would detect brain activity , in this particular case , before the subjects in question could be aware of their actual conscious decision -making thus = very suggestive .

This might sound silly or insane ,but i can only speculate about this , since materialism is false , and hence the mind is not in the brain , or the mind is not brain activity : understand ?

In short :

Folks :
Materialism is false , regardless of whether we do have non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness or not .
That there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet out there now, does not mean there will be none tomorrow .

You do behave and think as if since there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness yet , then materialism must be not false : what kind of reasoning is this then ?

Materialism is false ,mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, and hence the mind is not in the brain, memory is not stored in the brain, life or the universe are not mechanical ...........and therefore materialism must be rejected by all sciences .

We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .

I will not say : we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness , with more explanatory power ,simply because materialism has no explanatory power ,basta , materialism that's just a false conception of nature , no science , despite the fact that the materialist ideology has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view ": see the difference ? .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 21:53:55
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]
I don't know about Mr. Don..........., but I intend to use my 5 senses. All of which can be used to measure and provide empirical evidence!!

You're not winning this argument Don......................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 21:59:03
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]

Silly question :


It's a bit like saying : if one detects flaws in or unexplained anomalies or unexplained phenomena ...by classical physics , before the time of Einstein, then, there is no way to disocover the still unknown  at that time  future relativity theory discovery , or quantum mechanics .
New scientific discoveries through the evolutionary nature of science might deliver the answer to your silly question thus : only time will tell then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2013 22:03:55
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]
I don't know about Mr. Don..........., but I intend to use my 5 senses. All of which can be used to measure and provide empirical evidence!!

You're not winning this argument Don......................

You're not even using your own mind , silly , by paradoxically both defending materialism or the materialist mainstream  false  'scientific world view " while believing in the immaterial realm ,at the same time = a paradox = 2 mutually exclusive conceptions of nature .

It's not about winning either ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 22:05:17
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]

Silly question :


It's a bit like saying : if one detects flaws in or unexplained anomalies or unexplained phenomena ...by classical physics , before the time of Einstein, then, there is no way to disocover the still unknown  at that time  future relativity theory discovery , or quantum mechanics .
New scientific discoveries through the evolutionary nature of science might deliver the answer to your silly question thus : only time will tell then .
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 22:11:18
... This might sound silly or insane ,but i can only speculate about this...
'Nuff said [:o]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 22:15:15

... This might sound silly or insane ,but i can only speculate about this

What was it that someone said about hitting the proverbial nail on the head?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 22:19:34
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................
He's called me a lot worse than that.

When his repeated unsupported assertions and declarations of incredulity fail to convince, he will post whole chapters of other people's work; when that fails, he resorts to ad-hominems and insults. What he is unable to do is provide any coherent argument or explanation for his constant straw-man assertions. This behaviour is so consistently misdirected, repetitive and apparently obsessive, I suspect OCD.

These days, I post my responses for the exercise and the lurkers [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2013 22:21:31
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................
He's called me a lot worse than that.

When his repeated unsupported assertions and declarations of incredulity fail to convince, he will post whole chapters of other people's work; when that fails, he resorts to ad-hominems and insults. What he is unable to do is provide any coherent argument or explanation for his constant straw-man assertions. This behaviour is so consistently misdirected, repetitive and apparently obsessive, I suspect OCD.

These days, I post my responses for the exercise and the lurkers [;)]
I think it's time for a moderator to get envolved.......................HELP
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2013 23:17:39
I think it's time for a moderator to get envolved.......................HELP
They don't seem that interested - stuff like this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416688#msg416688) and this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416712#msg416712) can be brushed off, but the posting of copyright material without permission may be a legal danger to the forum, and suffocating threads with screeds of repetitive assertion doesn't help.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 11/12/2013 03:11:37
[moderators] don't seem that interested - stuff like ... and this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416712#msg416712)

That quote from DonQ purely consisted of personal abuse which is tantamount to admission of defeat , ( don't feel too bad he doesn't like me either (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg424947#msg424947) :¬)
Calling someone a liar, (which DonQ has done repeatedly), should  result in a ban of some duration ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unparliamentary_language [ see "lying" ]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2013 04:23:58
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................
He's called me a lot worse than that.

When his repeated unsupported assertions and declarations of incredulity fail to convince, he will post whole chapters of other people's work; when that fails, he resorts to ad-hominems and insults. What he is unable to do is provide any coherent argument or explanation for his constant straw-man assertions. This behaviour is so consistently misdirected, repetitive and apparently obsessive, I suspect OCD.

These days, I post my responses for the exercise and the lurkers [;)]
I think it's time for a moderator to get envolved.......................HELP

I don't agree. Crushing the discussion would only confirm Don's conspiracy theory regarding anti-materialism.
This has been in many ways a pointless, circular, and silly discussion, but in other ways quite fruitful for me - an aspect of biology I had never really thought about much in the past. My knowledge of the brain was pretty much anatomical. Until David Cooper mentioned it, I had never heard the word qualia before. 
Since this conversation started, I've read at least least 3 books that I might not have read other wise, and articles by Nagler, Chandler, Sheldrake, Ramachandron, Dennett, Searle, Chirchland, Damasio , Raymore, Carter and others. I've read interesting things from dlorde, alancalverd, RD, Ethos (and, yes, Don, although I think he has an agenda.) At anyrate,  it's given me something to think about while driving to work, or folding laundry. The occasional ad hominem doesn't bother me; I stick around until I get bored. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2013 04:51:34
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426261#msg426261


Since the mainstream 'scientific world view " assumes
a-priori that "the mind is in then brain, or that the mind is just brain's activity ". then, scientists all around the world would just have to try to confirm that a priori held "scientific ' assumption empirically .
In the particular case of those experiments you mentioned , i think, personally, that they were designed as to confirm the mainstream 'scientific world view " on the subject of brain and mind ,to the point where those experiments were suggestive and confirmatory , in the sense that the subjects under "investigation " were told to perform particular decisions-making via specific instructions on how to perform them .
Those specific instructions went through the subjects' in question sensory -"inputs " to their brains first , that's why those scientists who were conducting those suggestive experiments through their suggestive confirmation bias ,in the above mentioned sense ,that's why they detected neurons' firings before those subjects were aware or conscious of their decisions.
So, you are saying the experiments were fraudulent? Were the subjects told "Please wait exactly six seconds before responding" in order to maintain the materialist conspiracy?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2013 05:06:43
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426266#msg426266
[/quote


The very existence of confirmation bias,for example,  is evidence enough for the fact that the mind of the observer does change the observed ,via the observer's a-priori held belief assumptions ,is evidence enough for the fact that the mind does have causal effect on matter , brain or body .[/i]



Seriously? That's the exactly wrong definition of bias. Look it up in the dictionary if you don't believe me - it means the mind is wrong about its interpretation of reality, not that it changes it. 

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/12/2013 09:58:11
I don't agree. Crushing the discussion would only confirm Don's conspiracy theory regarding anti-materialism.
I get the feeling he does it mainly to get a response that will confirm his prejudices.
 
Quote
This has been in many ways a pointless, circular, and silly discussion, but in other ways quite fruitful for me - an aspect of biology I had never really thought about much in the past. My knowledge of the brain was pretty much anatomical. Until David Cooper mentioned it, I had never heard the word qualia before. 
Since this conversation started, I've read at least least 3 books that I might not have read other wise, and articles by Nagler, Chandler, Sheldrake, Ramachandron, Dennett, Searle, Chirchland, Damasio , Raymore, Carter and others. I've read interesting things from dlorde, alancalverd, RD, Ethos (and, yes, Don, although I think he has an agenda.) At anyrate,  it's given me something to think about while driving to work, or folding laundry. The occasional ad hominem doesn't bother me; I stick around until I get bored. 
This is a key point for me too. It's a great prompt to learn more about the subject, and to organise and integrate this new knowledge so one can express it in clear language, and consider its implications. I've learned a lot more than I knew when I started.

But moderation doesn't have to crush discussion; on some forums a short suspension follows breaking the rules; in others, the offending post is edited to remove the infringement and warning 'points' awarded, which add up over several infringements to a suspension. The problem is that this takes manpower, and moderators can become over-officious...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/12/2013 11:01:12
Back on topic, I just noticed that QualiaSoup (http://www.youtube.com/user/QualiaSoup/videos) have two 10 minute videos on substance dualism (the idea that there is a physical body & brain, and a non-physical mind & consciousness). The second video covers much of what we've discussed here (with a mention of split-brain consciousness that's problematic for dualists), but it's worth viewing both:

Substance Dualism (1) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00)
Substance Dualism (2) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZTCK8ZluEc)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/12/2013 15:01:18


But moderation doesn't have to crush discussion; on some forums a short suspension follows breaking the rules; in others, the offending post is edited to remove the infringement and warning 'points' awarded, which add up over several infringements to a suspension. The problem is that this takes manpower, and moderators can become over-officious...
I totally agree delorde, banning too quickly without opportunity for the offender to reconcile with the membership can be an extreme method of control. Nevertheless, some control is necessary to maintain order and offer the membership a place where we can learn and not just get entangled constantly in an ignorant argument with no end in sight. The direction taken in this thread also has huge philosophical overtones and, in more cases than not, ignores the scientific requirements for evidence. To call it a New Theory is without justification and as such should not even be located in the New Theories section. Maybe our forum deserves a category like this where one might discuss philosophy. Just my two cents.....................................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:00:06
... We should thus be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness ,basta .
How?   [:)]

Silly question :


It's a bit like saying : if one detects flaws in or unexplained anomalies or unexplained phenomena ...by classical physics , before the time of Einstein, then, there is no way to disocover the still unknown  at that time  future relativity theory discovery , or quantum mechanics .
New scientific discoveries through the evolutionary nature of science might deliver the answer to your silly question thus : only time will tell then .
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................

Don't be silly : just be brave and honest enough as to address that paradoxical thinking of yours ,instead of this non-sense of yours .
I was just teasing dlorde by calling him silly, since he implies that since there are still no falsifiable non-materialist theories of consciousness out there yet ,there will be none tomorrow, and hence   materialism must be not false .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:04:19
Guys :

Try to be brave ,mature ,objective and honest enough as to face the music , concerning the fact that materialism is false , thanks to consciousness mainly , and hence the mind is not in the brain, the mind is not brain activity ,instead of resorting to and raising irrelevant side issues .

Best of luck to you then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:10:29
Back on topic, I just noticed that QualiaSoup (http://www.youtube.com/user/QualiaSoup/videos) have two 10 minute videos on substance dualism (the idea that there is a physical body & brain, and a non-physical mind & consciousness). The second video covers much of what we've discussed here (with a mention of split-brain consciousness that's problematic for dualists), but it's worth viewing both:

Substance Dualism (1) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00)
Substance Dualism (2) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZTCK8ZluEc)

I will take a look at those videos i am downloading as we speak , so to speak .
But ,the main issue here is that materialism is false , so, we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness .
To continue trying to defend the indefensible materialism, by trying to refute dualism or other non-materialist theories of nature , can't make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence materialism must be rejected by all sciences .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/12/2013 17:20:08
thanks to consciousness mainly

Please define this remarkable stuff you keep talking about. What does it do?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:27:44
thanks to consciousness mainly

Please define this remarkable stuff you keep talking about. What does it do?

Please , do some introspection : look within yourself : get in touch with your self ,or with your own subjective inner life .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:39:44
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426266#msg426266
[/quote


The very existence of confirmation bias,for example,  is evidence enough for the fact that the mind of the observer does change the observed ,via the observer's a-priori held belief assumptions ,is evidence enough for the fact that the mind does have causal effect on matter , brain or body .[/i]



Seriously? That's the exactly wrong definition of bias. Look it up in the dictionary if you don't believe me - it means the mind is wrong about its interpretation of reality, not that it changes it.

Wrong :

You did miss my relatively long excerpt on the subject , some pages earlier .
Read it carefully ,and you might see both yourself and your outdated superseded false 19th century old materialism reflected in it , cristal clearly .
None can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists , since the materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " has been assuming that "all is matter , including the mind " , and hence " the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity " = the latter are "empirical scientific facts ", so , why would most scientists try to challenge those "scientific facts " ?: they would only try to confirm them , in some way or another .

Note that i cannot really explain those experiments mentioned by dlorde , those experiments the existence of which i did already encounter earlier .

Since materialism is false , there must be some non-materialist explanation of those experiments ,if they happened / happen to be flawless .
But , fact is : there are in fact no non-materialist falsifiable=scientific  theories of consciousness out there yet , but that does not mean there will none ...tomorrow .

Since materialism is false thus , any materialist attempt to try to explain or interpret those or other experiments , scientific results ....would be a paradoxical thing to do that's doomed to fail .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 17:46:51
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426261#msg426261


Since the mainstream 'scientific world view " assumes
a-priori that "the mind is in then brain, or that the mind is just brain's activity ". then, scientists all around the world would just have to try to confirm that a priori held "scientific ' assumption empirically .
In the particular case of those experiments you mentioned , i think, personally, that they were designed as to confirm the mainstream 'scientific world view " on the subject of brain and mind ,to the point where those experiments were suggestive and confirmatory , in the sense that the subjects under "investigation " were told to perform particular decisions-making via specific instructions on how to perform them .
Those specific instructions went through the subjects' in question sensory -"inputs " to their brains first , that's why those scientists who were conducting those suggestive experiments through their suggestive confirmation bias ,in the above mentioned sense ,that's why they detected neurons' firings before those subjects were aware or conscious of their decisions.
So, you are saying the experiments were fraudulent? Were the subjects told "Please wait exactly six seconds before responding" in order to maintain the materialist conspiracy?

See my reply to you here above on the same subject .
Who said there was / is a materialist conspiracy then ? Don't be too simplistic as to use this kind of terminology, please .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 18:19:57
Are you insinuating that dlorde is incompetent by calling him silly??

I think you should apologize......................
He's called me a lot worse than that.

When his repeated unsupported assertions and declarations of incredulity fail to convince, he will post whole chapters of other people's work; when that fails, he resorts to ad-hominems and insults. What he is unable to do is provide any coherent argument or explanation for his constant straw-man assertions. This behaviour is so consistently misdirected, repetitive and apparently obsessive, I suspect OCD.

These days, I post my responses for the exercise and the lurkers [;)]
I think it's time for a moderator to get envolved.......................HELP

I don't agree. Crushing the discussion would only confirm Don's conspiracy theory regarding anti-materialism.
This has been in many ways a pointless, circular, and silly discussion, but in other ways quite fruitful for me - an aspect of biology I had never really thought about much in the past. My knowledge of the brain was pretty much anatomical. Until David Cooper mentioned it, I had never heard the word qualia before. 
Since this conversation started, I've read at least least 3 books that I might not have read other wise, and articles by Nagler, Chandler, Sheldrake, Ramachandron, Dennett, Searle, Chirchland, Damasio , Raymore, Carter and others. I've read interesting things from dlorde, alancalverd, RD, Ethos (and, yes, Don, although I think he has an agenda.) At anyrate,  it's given me something to think about while driving to work, or folding laundry. The occasional ad hominem doesn't bother me; I stick around until I get bored.

(These discussions have  been opening up a whole unexpected universe to me, you have no idea, thanks to you all in fact,especially thanks to you, Cheryl , in the first place , no kidding or hypocrisy , and thanks to dlorde in the second place ... .)

Anyone trying to debunk the mainstream materialist false 'scientific world view " must have a hidden  agenda  of his / her own  indeed ,come on : what kind of agenda then had atheist Nagel ,Chalmers , and many other atheists as well, and others then ? by refuting materialism : you tell me : makes no sense whatsoever .

Should we brand any scientists , thinkers ...automatically as heretics , charlatans, pseudo-scientists , pseudo-thinkers or worse , with hidden agendas of their own , while having lunatic conspiracy theories of their own ,  delusions ,simply because they would happen to be challenging the "scientific world view " ? , Come on ,

How is science supposed to progress then otherwise ? Science that's not about dogmas or about definite knowledge or the truth,if science or any of its meta or sub-paradigms should not be challenged  .

Ironically and paradoxically enough , materialism has been the one that's been turning science into a dogma , into an orthodox dogmatic secular religion , by imposing its false materialist conception of nature as "the scientific world view " for so long now :

Just tell me , please , what extraordinary evidence has been delivered by materialism for its extraordinary claims regarding its "all is matter , including the mind " false conception of nature "scientific world view " then ?


Needless to say , and that goes without saying ,once again, that i do love science so much that i would love to see it get rid of its dogmatic and false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " : these are my real motives you can call agenda ,if you want to .

Please , try not to be too simplistic as to use that kind of self-refuting and self-defeating terminology , such as agenda , conspiracy ....


I do have no agenda , dear , as Sheldrake , as atheist Nagel and many others ,religious and non-religious people do have none : they just want to liberate science from the dogmatic outdated false superseded 19th century old materialism tha;s been holding science back ,for so long now , by imprisonning it within its materialist false walls .

Science must be liberated from materialism, if science wanna be less dogmatic and more scientific, if science wanna progress and continue evolving as it should be doing : science whose nature is evolutionary as to dispell dogmas , lies , half truths , falsehood ...

Ironically enough , it was thanks to you ,Cheryl, that i did learn to know the thought of atheist Nagel, it was thanks to you that i paid closer attention to Sheldrake's work ...that all brought me on the path of Chalmers , John Searle , Chris Carter and many others , i might not have been walking on , if it wasn't for you :

And i have been learning many things here as well, in the process , in ways i have never expected ,to be honest .

"The gain is worth the loss " as the writer of "I am  strange loop " said i did read some parts of , thanks to the fact that dlorde did mention that book , and many other ones and links ..............

I am too outraged,angry  and appaled by your unscientific denials and attitudes right now to be able to continue this discussion .

So, i am leaving this forum ,right now , in order to cool down , and i will return to this forum only when i would see you all abandoning your unscientific and irrational accusations and materialist inquisitions.

Best wishes .

Ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/12/2013 18:39:14
thanks to consciousness mainly

Please define this remarkable stuff you keep talking about. What does it do?

Please , do some introspection : look within yourself : get in touch with your self ,or with your own subjective inner life .

From which I can only deduce that you have no idea what you are talking about, and your arguments and assertions are therefore worthless at best or invalid at worst. How sad to waste your considerable intellect on such a pointless exercise.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/12/2013 18:39:25


Ironically and paradoxically enough , materialism has been the one that's been turning science into a dogma , into an orthodox dogmatic secular religion , by imposing its false materialist conception of nature as "the scientific world view " for so long now :


And here your secret agenda is revealed; "into an orthodox dogmatic SECULAR RELIGION". It's becoming very clear that you want to bring FAITH into the scientific argument. Would I be mistaken if I were to assume that the FAITH of Islam had something to do with your dislike for what you refer to as the secular religion?

You did make reference once to great Muslim contributions.

Just asking..........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/12/2013 19:09:50

Only religious idealism is true = reality is both matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again = that's the only conception of nature out there that does make sense in fact .
"Only religious idealism is true"..........Another example of your fight against the secular.

One does not need to abandon rational science to have faith. And, to attack one or the other is an attempt to defeat any chance for their co-existence. I value good science and my faith. I personally choose to preserve them both.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 21:54:29
thanks to consciousness mainly

Please define this remarkable stuff you keep talking about. What does it do?

Please , do some introspection : look within yourself : get in touch with your self ,or with your own subjective inner life .

From which I can only deduce that you have no idea what you are talking about, and your arguments and assertions are therefore worthless at best or invalid at worst. How sad to waste your considerable intellect on such a pointless exercise.

Are you saying just that , simply because you cannot deal with THE biggest and THE most important mystery of them all : consciousness ? Yours or otherwise .
What are you afraid of then ? Are you afraid of the implications of "taking the most serious and most important mystery of them all seriously ' ?
Is it a rational or a scientific thing to do to dismiss or ignore the huge importance of the biggest mystery of them all ,just because it is ?
Well, science is all about ,or  rather  should be all about , facing almost all mysteries of the universe ,by taking on those challenges ,  including and especially that of consciousness without which there can be no science ,in the first place to begin with , consciousness through which science is practiced by humans conscious scientists .
Just imagine with me what science would be like ,if science would deliberately choose to ignore some mysteries of this universe ,through scientists of course ,  simply because those mysteries  do happen to be  extremely hard ,if not impossible, to deal with empirically,or simply because the very nature of those mysteries cannot be accounted for by the a-priori held belief assumptions of those scientists  .

Science would become just a kind of dogmatic irrational orthodox ossified secular religion , as it almost has been the case , thanks to the mainstream materialist dogmatic false orthodox 'scientific world view ",despite all scientific huge achievements and despite the fact that science has been extremely successful , the latter facts that could be /can be, and will be accomplished only thanks to the effective and unparalleled scientific method that's like no other indeed = materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with the latter facts ..

Hard -core or die- hard materialists lunatics such as Dennett , for example ,do even deny the very existence of consciousness as such ,ironically paradoxically enough , while they do experience consciousness every single day of their own lives,consciousness without which they cannot be functioning , thinking ,living, and behaving as they have been doing  .
Not to mention the fact that mainstream materialists do equate consciousness with brain activity , consciousness as an epiphenomena ,an almost  useless by-product of evolution they say,without any causal effect on matter ,while those same materialists do experience their own subjective and rational decision -making processes every single day of their lunatic lives  : how can consciousness, subjective and other conscious experiences rise from just neurochemsitry or from physics and chemistry then ?
Oh, yeah, right , we are just hardware programmed by consciousness as a software : how convenient= false machine analogy regarding life  .
And how can the most important process of them all be an epiphenomena or a by-product of biological evolution, the latter or just the materialist version of which that cannot account , per definition, for consciousness, and hence evolution cannot be just biological , but also mental non-physical .
Materialists just choose deliberatly to "see " consciousness within the context of that a-priori held materialist belief assumption of theirs ,that's just an extension of the materialist false "all is matter ,including the mind " conception of nature , otherwise they would be refuting their own materialism in the process .
Materialists are in fact just afraid of the implications "of taking consciousness seriously ",otherwise they would be knocking the last nail on the coffin of their own materialism ,or they would be just pulling the trigger of their own self-torturing conscience -gun  by triggering  the last bullet of mercy toward  the very soulless ,and already dead and false corpse of materialism  : they do  not even have  to do just that : their materialism corpse is already dead : was born dead in fact : a freak of nature : there is nothingelse in fact more serious and more important and vital than ...consciousness ,the nature of which has been reduced to just matter by materialists , just for materialist convenient ideological purposes  .
.....................
Come on , i know you're better than that you were saying here above .
Do i have to repeat the same answer to your same question , over and over again ? Come on, be serious , please .
There is nothing more important out there than our human consciousness through which we do practice science and most of the rest,science that's just a human conscious activity  : human consciousness as both THE obstacle today and THE key to understanding ourselves and the universe .
Do i have to define your own consciousness to you ? Get in touch with your own self ,or with your own subjective conscious inner life then .
Try to do some introspection : there is a whole universe out there within yourself waiting for you to dust it off , waiting for you to discover and explore,Mr.scientist  .
There is nothing out there better than trying to explore and discover our own subjective  conscious  inner lives .
Consciousness is the self , or self-identity , the soul or whatever .
That there still can be no clear definition out there of consciousness did not / does not and will not prevent scientists , thinkers or philosophers  , artists ....from trying to approach or relatively understand the mystery of consciousness : consciousness as THE mystery of them all ,science cannot afford to ignore as such any longer ....
Science must first try to reject its own materialist mainstream false "scientific world view " ,if science wanna be able to deal seriously and somehow empirically with consciousness .....the latter that's no useless epiphenomena or a minor by-product of evolution, as materialism wanna make you believe it is , consciousness that's not confined to the brain, that's not brain activity , consciousness that's nowhere and everywhere = non-local = within you and without ..........
There is nothing more fascinating or more important than ...consciousness .
Let's hope evolutionary science will be able in the future to shed some light at least on the most important ,vital , and extremely puzzling mysteries of them all : consciousness the amazing and fundamental power of which is almost unlimited ...
Science would benefit a lot form that , you have no idea ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/12/2013 22:01:42


I am too outraged,angry  and appaled by your unscientific denials and attitudes right now to be able to continue this discussion .

So, i am leaving this forum ,right now , in order to cool down , and i will return to this forum only when i would see you all abandoning your unscientific and irrational accusations and materialist inquisitions.

Best wishes .

Ciao .
That was remarkably fast, so have you calmed down yet?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 22:11:42

Only religious idealism is true = reality is both matter and mind , the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again = that's the only conception of nature out there that does make sense in fact .
"Only religious idealism is true"..........Another example of your fight against the secular.

One does not need to abandon rational science to have faith. And, to attack one or the other is an attempt to defeat any chance for their co-existence. I value good science and my faith. I personally choose to preserve them both.

Who would reject science proper ? only idiots fools or ignorant folks would maybe .

You do neither know what you're talking about , nor are you aware or conscious of your own intrinsic paradox ,by both believing in the immaterial realm ,and in the materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " ,the latter that has absolutely nothing to do with science whatsoever , even though science has been assuming that 'all is matter ,including the mind ", thanks to materialism .
The current "scientific world view " has been just the false materialist conception of nature .
How can't you understand these simple facts , i have been repeating to you and to the rest for so long now , over and over again : the more reason i should be repeating them thus .
.......................
Besides :
I meant religious dualism in fact : i am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine , but i do not impose it as the 'scientific world view " ,as false materialism has been doing to all sciences for that matter , for so long now,by imposing its own false materialist conception of nature , world view ,philosophy or ideology as "the scientific world view " , for so long now , since the 19th century at least  .
Dualism period is the only plausible conception of nature that makes sense in fact,dualism that's been already present at the level of quantum mechanics  .
Dualism that's almost unfalsifiable =unscientific , as materialism is by the way , but dualism is not necessarily false ,as materialism is :see the difference ?
Materialism makes no sense whatsoever : matter cannot be the only reality thus : consciousness has been sending that myth to Alice's wonderland ,all along,and materialists do know that fact , deep down : they cannot  do acknowledge that simple fact  , otherwise they would be refuting their own materialism in the process  .
Materialists are thus just afraid of the implications of consciousness regarding materialism : that's why they either deny the existence of consciousness as such , or just reduce it to just brain activity ...for obvious materialist ideological purposes .

What has science to do with all that ?

Science has been materialist : that's the problem with science : the latter must reject materialism thus , in order to be less dogmatic , and more scientific , in order to be able to progress and regain its lost evolutionary nature and power .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2013 22:33:51
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426381#msg426381
But ,the main issue here is that materialism is false , so, we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness .
To continue trying to defend the indefensible materialism, by trying to refute dualism or other non-materialist theories of nature , can't make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence materialism must be rejected by all sciences .

That might seem like the "main issue" to you, but that is your take on it. Other people might be interested in consciousness for other reasons, just interested in the topic itself, and their comments are not necessarily a "distraction" or irrelevant - consciousness was, after all, the original title of the thread, not "materialism is false."

 What's more, asking you to support your claims or ideas with evidence is not equivalent to defending materialism.  You would be expected to provide evidence, even if you were on a forum with just other dualists or believers in the immaterial,  in order to  support your particular version of it.

(One can only imagine what that debate would be like)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 22:37:31


I am too outraged,angry  and appaled by your unscientific denials and attitudes right now to be able to continue this discussion .

So, i am leaving this forum ,right now , in order to cool down , and i will return to this forum only when i would see you all abandoning your unscientific and irrational accusations and materialist inquisitions.

Best wishes .

Ciao .
That was remarkably fast, so have you calmed down yet?

Don't worry about just that : i do know that all of you are relatively rational intelligent people , that's why i feel i do have to pursue this discussion ,regarding THE biggest mystery of them all (consciousness ) through which science is practiced ,  until the ..."end ", hoping that you would come back to your senses , unless confirmation bias , unless your a-priori held dogmatic beliefs , and other bias + other factors : cultural psychological ideological social economic political ...would prevent you from 'seeing the light " ....Don't misinterpret the last sentence "religiously " then. .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2013 22:44:12
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=48746.msg426381#msg426381
But ,the main issue here is that materialism is false , so, we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness .
To continue trying to defend the indefensible materialism, by trying to refute dualism or other non-materialist theories of nature , can't make the fact go away that materialism is false , and hence materialism must be rejected by all sciences .

That might seem like the "main issue" to you, but that is your take on it. Other people might be interested in consciousness for other reasons, just interested in the topic itself, and their comments are not necessarily a "distraction" or irrelevant - consciousness was, after all, the original title of the thread, not "materialism is false."

Well, that's the point :
Well, for your info, lady : materialism is false , mainly thanks to consciousness .
It is materialism in science , or the mainstream materialist false 'scientific world view " that has been preventing science from shedding light somehow on ...consciousness : "materialism is false " and this consciousness thread are intimately linked, in the above mentioned sense thus , more than you could ever know .

Quote
What's more, asking you to support your claims or ideas with evidence is not equivalent to defending materialism.  You would be expected to provide evidence, even if you were on a forum with just other dualists or believers in the immaterial,  in order to  support your particular version of it.

What do you think i have been doing all along , also via my relevant tons of posted  material on the subject here , that have been supporting my claims ?

I have been doing all that , by violating copyright and other issues , so ....= that's like stealing food for starving  people such as yourselves , guys: not much wrong about just that thus  .

Gotta go, ciao, take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/12/2013 22:55:28


Besides :
I meant religious dualism in fact : i am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine , but i do not impose it as the 'scientific world view "

Listen just once Don....., you like myself have every right to our personal beliefs. I'm not here to change your mind my friend. I only stand to support science where it has given man the ability to improve his life.

If I want to boil an egg, I must reach a certain temperature relative to atmospheric pressure for a prescribed period of time. This knowledge is necessary to accomplish a physical act. That is Physics in it's purest form.

Now let's talk about the non-materialist.

You contend that consciousness is non-materialistic, and to some limited extent, I might agree. But let's get real here. Unless we are born into this material world and develop physically as a new born, our consciousness would never appear. So we should all realize that the origin of consciousness has to start in the brain.

Wherever consciousness takes us after that, it must still start in the physical brain. Nevertheless, I might be willing to agree with you that ultimately, consciousness may evolve beyond the physical, we really can't know for sure. But that is really beside the point. That state beyond the physical is where faith and religion are invariably drawn into the argument. And the problem we're having here Don.... is; You can't mix science with faith and expect to prove anything.








Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 12/12/2013 00:04:10
Quote
Consciousness is the self , or self-identity , the soul or whatever .
That there still can be no clear definition out there of consciousness

And therein lies the pointlessness of any discussion. Whatever facet of existence, behaviour or perception I explain, you will say "ah, but that isn't what I mean by consciousness".

My business as a scientist is to answer questions, not to guess what the questioner might be thinking about. And if you start the conversation by saying "you cannot possibly answer this question, or if you do, I won't believe you" then I dismiss you as a timewaster. Ars longa, vita brevis, my friend. Don't spend your vita being an ars.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 12/12/2013 00:33:28
I was just teasing dlorde by calling him silly, since he implies that since there are still no falsifiable non-materialist theories of consciousness out there yet ,there will be none tomorrow, and hence   materialism must be not false .
I neither implied that nor meant it. You're reading your own prejudices into my posts.

Having said that, I know of no falsifiable non-materialist theories, I don't see how a non-materialist theory could be falsifiable, and I don't see a useful alternative to materialism at present.

The two Qualia Soup links express my current views on this quite well.

If you have anything beyond the plain assertion, incredulity, and hand-waving you've presented so far, such as evidence or plausible argument of any kind, to support a non-materialist theory, I'll consider it. However, I've already asked you this many times before without any useful result, so I won't hold my breath.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 12/12/2013 01:03:58
My business as a scientist is to answer questions, not to guess what the questioner might be thinking about. And if you start the conversation by saying "you cannot possibly answer this question, or if you do, I won't believe you" then I dismiss you as a timewaster.
This is exactly what he has done - he admits he can't explain the consciousness experiments discussed earlier, so he dismisses them as flawed because they contradict his assumptions about materialism which are, in turn, based on his assumptions about consciousness itself, ("materialism is false , mainly thanks to consciousness"). He rejects empirical evidence about consciousness because it contradicts his a-priori assumptions about consciousness...

I'm sure he's aware that the gaping hole in that ridiculous circular 'logic' is the unsupported assumption that consciousness cannot be of material origin, but he seems quite unable even to consider the alternative. The truth is, we don't yet know, but Don insists that he does with a vehemence that suggests it's a threat to his entire belief system.







Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/12/2013 04:03:51

Besides :
I meant religious dualism in fact : i am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine , but i do not impose it as the 'scientific world view " ,

That's exactly what you've been advocating for the last 51 pages, scientific acceptance of your dualistic view.


[/quote]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 12/12/2013 14:29:27

None can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists

Don, only you would claim that anyone who disagrees with you is biased. Do not you not see anything amusing about that?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 19:30:09

None can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists

Don, only you would claim that anyone who disagrees with you is biased. Do not you not see anything amusing about that?

Try to read me well, sis :

Most scientists ,including  all materialists can only try to confirm the current materialist mainstream 'scientific world view ", so , none can be more guilty of confirmation bias than ...materialists in fact  ,  in the above mentioned sense thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 19:34:00

Besides :
I meant religious dualism in fact : i am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine , but i do not impose it as the 'scientific world view " ,

That's exactly what you've been advocating for the last 51 pages, scientific acceptance of your dualistic view.

I am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine : i just do not impose it as "the scientific world view ", as materialism has been doing to all sciences for that matter , by imposing its materialist false conception of nature , as the 'scientific world view ".
Non-materialists views of the world are unfalsifiable = unscientific , as materialism is by the way , but that does not mean they are all necessarily false , as materialism is .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 19:39:21
My business as a scientist is to answer questions, not to guess what the questioner might be thinking about. And if you start the conversation by saying "you cannot possibly answer this question, or if you do, I won't believe you" then I dismiss you as a timewaster.
This is exactly what he has done - he admits he can't explain the consciousness experiments discussed earlier, so he dismisses them as flawed because they contradict his assumptions about materialism which are, in turn, based on his assumptions about consciousness itself, ("materialism is false , mainly thanks to consciousness"). He rejects empirical evidence about consciousness because it contradicts his a-priori assumptions about consciousness...

I'm sure he's aware that the gaping hole in that ridiculous circular 'logic' is the unsupported assumption that consciousness cannot be of material origin, but he seems quite unable even to consider the alternative. The truth is, we don't yet know, but Don insists that he does with a vehemence that suggests it's a threat to his entire belief system.

Since materialism is false , then those experiments and other ones must be explained in non-materialist ways , if they happened / happen to be flawless at least .

Since materialism is false , thanks to consciousness mainly , then the latter must be non-physical or non-material, since not 'all is matter " .

Consciousness that cannot have arisen from just physics and chemistry , no way .
When are you gonna be able to get this simple fact then ?
How can the subjective qualitative qualia "emerge or rise ' from neuro-chemistry , from matter , via some sort of magical materialist metaphysical 'computation or emergence property trick " , since consciousness is totally different from its alleged original neural components it allegedly 'emerged " from : it's a total form of lunacy to assume that consciousness can rise or emerge from the physical brain activity = materialist magic in science ,the latter must be liberated from , if science wanna be able to shed some sort of light on ...consciousness = materialism has been the one that has been preventing science from trying to do  just the latter .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 19:41:26
How to Study  Consciousness ...Scientifically ? :

Guys : it goes without saying that i do not agree much with John Searle's views , as displayed here below , but , do feel free to  express your own views on the subject :

Thanks, appreciate indeed :

Here you go :

How to Study Consciousness Scientifically:
The most important scientific problem of the present era is one that until recently
most scientists did not regard as a suitable topic for scientific investigation at all.
It is simply this:
 How exactly do brain processes cause consciousness?
 Given our present models of brain functioning, it would be an answer to the question, "How do lower level neuronal firings at the synaptic connections cause all of our subjective experiences?" This is one of those areas of science where our ability to get a solution to the scientific problem is impeded by a series of philosophical obstacles and misunderstandings.
 We have in previous lectures begun to see some of these misunderstandings, and in this lecture, I want to make them fully explicit so that we can remove them.
This is one of those areas of science where progress is impeded by philosophical errors.
There are certain general background assumptions that underlie these specific
errors, and I will try to make these assumptions fully explicit as well.
 As with most philosophical mistakes, once you articulate the problem exactly, you can see its solution.

I. Three Background Assumptions:
A. Residual Cartesian dualism:
We still tend to think that mental phenomena in general, and consciousness in particular, are not part of the ordinary physical world in which we live.
B. The distinction between nature and machine.
Like the mind-body distinction, this was a useful distinction in the seventeenth century that has become an obstacle to progress in the twentieth century.
 The recent debates about chess playing computers reveal the sorts of confusions we are making.
C. The failure to distinguish between those features of reality that are intrinsic or observer-independent, from those that are observer-dependent or observer-relative.
 It is important to see that consciousness is observer-independent.
 It is an intrinsic feature of reality.
II. Here are nine philosophical errors that have prevented us from getting progress on this subject matter.
 I try to state and expose each:
A. Consciousness cannot be defined. We do not have a satisfactory definition.
Answer: We need to distinguish analytical from common-sense definitions.
 Analytic definitions come at the end, not at the beginning of our investigation.
 We can get a common-sense definition of consciousness easily at the outset.
B. Consciousness is, by definition, subjective; science is objective, so there
can be no science of consciousness.
Answer: We need to distinguish the epistemic sense of the objective-subjective
distinction from the ontological sense.
 Consciousness is ontologically subjective, but that does not prevent an epistemically
objective science.
C. We could never explain how the physical causes the mental.
Answer: We know that it happens. Our puzzles are like earlier problems in the history of science such as explaining life and electromagnetism.
D. We need to separate qualia from consciousness and leave the problem of
qualia on one side.
Answer: There is no distinction between consciousness and qualia.
Conscious states are qualia down to the ground.
E. Epiphenomenalism: Consciousness cannot make a difference to the world.
Answel": Consciousness is no more epiphenomenal than any other higher level features of reality.
F. What is the evolutionaty function of consciousness? It plays no role.
Answer: Even our most basic activities, eating, procreating, raising our young, are conscious activities. If anything, the evolutionary role of consciousness is too obvious.
G. The causal relation between brain and consciousness implies dualism.
Answer: This objection confuses event causation with bottom-up causation.
H. Science is by definition, reductionistic. A scientific account of consciousness must reduce it to something else.
Answer: We need to distinguish explanatory reductions from eliminative reductions. You cannot eliminate anything that really exists and consciousness really exists.
I. Any scientific account of consciousness must be an information processing account.
Answer: Information processing is observer-relative. Consciousness is intrinsic, observer-independent.

John Searle .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 14/12/2013 20:26:14



I am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine : i just do not impose it as "the scientific world view ", as materialism has been doing to all sciences for that matter , by imposing its materialist false conception of nature , as the 'scientific world view ".
Non-materialists views of the world are unfalsifiable = unscientific , as materialism is by the way , but that does not mean they are all necessarily false , as materialism is .


What is the difference between religious dualism and the scientific kind? What specific properties do they share, or what is a property one has that the other does not have?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 20:39:57
"Mind , Matter and Quantum Mechanics " By Henry Stapp :


Introduction
1 . . . and then a Miracle Occurs
A satisfactory understanding of the connection between mind and matter
should answer the following questions: What sort of brain action corresponds
to a conscious thought? How is the content of a thought related to
the form of the corresponding brain action? How do conscious thoughts
guide bodily actions?
Answers to these questions have been heretofore beyond the reach of
science: the available empirical evidence has been unable to discriminate
between alternative theories. Recently, however, mind/brain research has
provided powerfully discriminating data that lift these questions from the
realm of philosophy to that of science and lend strong support to definite
answers.
In attempts to understand the mind–matter connection it is usually assumed
that the idea of matter used in Newtonian mechanics can be applied
to the internal workings of a brain. However, that venerable concept does
not extrapolate from the domain of planets and falling apples to the realm of
the subtle chemical processes occurring in the tissues of human brains. Indeed,
the classical idea of matter is logically incompatible with the nature of
various processes that are essential to the functioning of brains. To achieve
logical coherence one must employ a framework that accommodates these
crucial processes. A quantum framework must be used in principle.
Quantum theory is sometimes regarded as merely a theory of atomic
phenomena. However, the peculiar form of quantum effects entails that ordinary
classical ideas about the nature of the physical world are profoundly
incorrect in ways that extend far beyond the properties of individual atoms.
Indeed, the model of physical reality most widely accepted today among
physicists, namely that of Heisenberg, has gross large-scale nonclassical
effects. These, when combined with contemporary ideas about neural processing,
lead to a simple model of the connection between mind and brain
that is unlike anything previously imagined in science. This model accommodates
the available empirical evidence, much of which is highly restrictive
and from traditional viewpoints extremely puzzling.
4 1 . . . and then a Miracle Occurs
Competing theories of the mind–brain connection seem always to have
a logical gap, facetiously described as “. . . and then a miracle occurs”. The
model arising from Heisenberg’s concept of matter has no miracles or special
features beyond those inherent in Heisenberg’s model of physical reality
itself. The theory fixes the place in brain processing where consciousness
enters, and explains both the content of the conscious thought and its causal
efficacy.
This model of the mind/brain system is no isolated theoretical development.
It is the rational outcome of a historical process that has occupied
most of this century, and that links a series of revolutions in psychology and
physics. Although the model can be discussed in relative isolation, it is best
seen within the panorama of the twentieth-century scientific thought from
which it arose.
The historical and logical setting for these developments is the elucidation
byWilliam James, at the end of nineteenth century, of the clash between
the phenomenology of mind and the precepts of classical physics. I shall
presently describe some of James’s key points, and will then review, from
the perspective they provide, some of the major twentieth-century developments
in psychology: the behaviorist movement, the cognitive revolution,
and the dominant contemporary theme, materialism. On the physics side,
the crucial developments are Einstein’s special theory of relativity, quantum
theory, the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox, and the development
of some models of physical reality that meet the demands imposed by the
nature of quantum phenomena. Among these models the one proposed by
Heisenberg is, in my opinion, the best.
Coupled to James’s conception of
mind it produces a model of the mind–matter universe that realizes within
contemporary physical theory the idea that brain processes are causally influenced
by subjective conscious experience.

This model of the mind/brain links diverse strands of science, principally
physics, psychology, and brain physiology. I shall endeavor to provide the
necessary background in all three areas. However, I do not follow historical
order but construct instead a rational narrative.
The first critical point, which underlies everything else, is the fact that the
peculiarities of nature revealed by quantum phenomena cannot be dismissed
as esoteric effects that appear only on the atomic scale. The Einstein–
Podolsky–Rosen paradox, by itself, makes manifest the need for a radical
restructuring of our fundamental ideas about the nature of physical reality.
It also shows that this restructuring cannot be confined to the atomic scale.
Quantum physicists have for years been proclaiming this need for a profound
revision of ordinary ideas about the nature of the physical world. But their
reasons have usually been based upon interpretations of atomic phenomena

that are accessible only to experts in the field. To outsiders the whole
business has remained shrouded in mystery. But the EPR paradox is a
puzzle that can be expressed wholly in terms of behaviors of objects that are
directly observable to the unaided eye.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 20:45:10



I am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine : i just do not impose it as "the scientific world view ", as materialism has been doing to all sciences for that matter , by imposing its materialist false conception of nature , as the 'scientific world view ".
Non-materialists views of the world are unfalsifiable = unscientific , as materialism is by the way , but that does not mean they are all necessarily false , as materialism is .


What is the difference between religious dualism and the scientific kind? What specific properties do they share, or what is a property one has that the other does not have?

What are you talking about ?  what scientific kind ? what do you mean exactly ?

Science has been materialist ,since the 19th century at least , remember .

I don't get what you were trying to say .

Can you be more specific, please ?

P.S.: I am a dualist period , leave that "religious " out of it then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 20:49:02
Guys :

I am just 'stealing " food , food for the mind ,food   for you as starving "soulless " (kidding ) materialists : nothing much wrong about just that ,so, don't complain about that ,please: you should be thanking me for that in fact : no need though  .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .
Ciao.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 21:02:48
Quantum physicist Henry Stapp seems to be my kindda scientist ,whose work i am gonna try to explore , really : awesome .

Stapp does introduce some real fresh and innovative air ,into the suffocating dark exclusive false orthodox dogmatic materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " : great .

Quote
Consciousness:

Some of Stapp's work concerns the implications of quantum mechanics for consciousness.

Stapp favors the idea that quantum wave functions collapse only when they interact with consciousness as a consequence of "orthodox" quantum mechanics. He argues that quantum wave functions collapse when conscious minds select one among the alternative quantum possibilities.[6]His hypothesis of how mind may interact with matter via quantum processes in the brain differs from that of Penrose and Hameroff. While they postulate quantum computing in the microtubules in brain neurons, Stapp postulates a more global collapse, a 'mind like' wave-function collapse that exploits certain aspects of the quantum Zeno effect within the synapses. Stapp's view of the neural correlate of attention is explained in his book, Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (2007).[7]

In this book he also credits John Von Neumann's Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1955, 1932) with providing an "orthodox" quantum mechanics demonstrating mathematically the essential role of quantum physics in the mind.

Wikipedia .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2013 21:46:11
Damn : i should have studied quantum mechanics ....I will, eventually ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/12/2013 12:16:40
Since materialism is false , then those experiments and other ones must be explained in non-materialist ways , if they happened / happen to be flawless at least .
It is your logic that is flawed, not the experiments. The truth or falsity of materialism has no bearing on whether some unexplained phenomenon has a material explanation.

Quote
Since materialism is false , thanks to consciousness mainly , then the latter must be non-physical or non-material, since not 'all is matter " .
The flaws in that circular logic have already been explained.

Quote
Consciousness that cannot have arisen from just physics and chemistry , no way .
Argument from incredulity.

Quote
When are you gonna be able to get this simple fact then ?
How can the subjective qualitative qualia "emerge or rise ' from neuro-chemistry , from matter , via some sort of magical materialist metaphysical 'computation or emergence property trick " , since consciousness is totally different from its alleged original neural components it allegedly 'emerged " from : it's a total form of lunacy to assume that consciousness can rise or emerge from the physical brain activity...
Common sense fallacy (http://corkskeptics.org/2011/05/03/the-common-sense-fallacy/). The interacting patterns of cellular automata are totally different from the grid of cells they emerge from; nevertheless they can emulate universal computing machines.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 17:20:37



Henry P. Stapp
MIND, MATTER AND
QUANTUM MECHANICS:





Henry P. Stapp
MIND, MATTER AND
QUANTUM MECHANICS
Third Edition


Preface to the First Edition:
Nature appears to be composed of two completely different kinds of things:
rocklike things and idealike things. The first is epitomized by an enduring
rock, the second by a fleeting thought. A rock can be experienced by many
of us together, while a thought seems to belong to one of us alone.
Thoughts and rocks are intertwined in the unfolding of nature, as
Michelangelo’s David so eloquently attests. Yet is it possible to understand
rationally how two completely different kinds of things can interact
with each other? Logic says no, and history confirms that verdict. To form
a rational comprehension of the interplay between the matterlike and mindlike
parts of nature these two components ought to be understood as aspects
of some single primal stuff. But what is the nature of a primal stuff that can
have mind and matter as two of its aspects?
An answer to this age-old question has now been forced upon us. Physicists,
probing ever deeper into the nature of matter, found that they were
forced to bring into their theory the human observers and their thoughts.
Moreover, the mathematical structure of the theory combines in a marvelous
way the features of nature that go with the concepts of mind and
matter. Although it is possible, in the face of this linkage, to try to maintain
the traditional logical nonrelatedness of these two aspects of nature, that
endeavor leads to great puzzles and mysteries. The more reasonable way, I
believe, is to relinquish our old metaphysical stance, which though temporarily
useful was logically untenable, and follow where the new mathematics
leads.
This volume brings together several works of mine that aim to answer
the question: How are conscious processes related to brain processes? My
goal differs from that of most other quantum physicists who have written
about the mind–brain problem. It is to explain how the content of each
conscious human thought, as described in psychological terms, is related
to corresponding processes occurring in a human brain, as described in
the language of contemporary physical science. The work is based on a
substantial amount of empirical data and a strictly enforced demand for
Preface to the First Edition XI
logical coherence. I call the proposed solution the Heisenberg/James model
because it unifies Werner Heisenberg’s conception of matter with William
James’s idea of mind.
The introduction, “. . . and then a Miracle Occurs”, was written specially
for this volume. It is aimed at all readers, including workers in psychology,
cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Those fields, like physics,
have witnessed tremendous changes during the century sinceWilliam James
wrote his monumental text. My introduction places the Heisenberg/James
model in the context of that hundred-year development.
The main features of the model are described in “A Quantum Theory of
the Mind-Brain Interface”. This paper is an expanded version of a talk I gave
at a 1990 conference, Consciousness Within Science. The conference was
attended by neuroanatomists, neuropsychologists, philosophers of mind,
and a broad spectrum of other scientists interested in consciousness. The
talk was designed to be understandable by all of them, and the paper retains
some of that character. Together with the introduction and appendix (“A
Mathematical Model”) it is the core of the present volume.
“The Copenhagen Interpretation” is an older paper of mine, reprinted
from the American Journal of Physics. It describes the Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum theory. That interpretation held sway in physics for
six decades, and it represents our point of departure.
The other papers deal with closely related issues. Many of the ideas
are to be found in my first published work on the problem, the 1982 paper
“Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics”, from which this volume takes
its title. An overview of the model is given in “A Quantum Theory of
Consciousness”, which summarizes a talk I gave at a 1989 conference on
the mind–brain relationship.
The theory of the mind–brain connection described above is based on
Heisenberg’s ideas, and it accepts his position that the element of chance
is to be regarded as primitive. Einstein objected to this feature of orthodox
quantum thought, and Wolfgang Pauli eventually tried to go beyond the
orthodox view, within the context of a psychophysical theory that rested in
part on work of C. G. Jung. The possibility of extending the present theory
in this way is discussed in “Mind, Matter, and Pauli”.
“Choice and Meaning in the Quantum Universe” first describes some
attempts by physicists to understand the nature of reality, and then attempts
to discern, tentatively, a meaning intrinsic to natural process itself from an
analysis of the form of that process alone, without tying meaning to any
outside thing.
The mind–body problem is directly linked to man’s image of himself,
and hence to the question of values. The Heisenberg/James model of mind
XII Preface to the First Edition
and man is separated by a huge logical gulf from the competing Cartesian
model, which has dominated Western philosophic and scientific thought
for three centuries. Two of the included papers, “Future Achievements to
Be Gained through Science” and “A Quantum Conception of Man”, were
presented at international panels dealing with human issues, and they explore
the potential societal impact of replacing the Cartesian model of man by the
Heisenberg/James model. The second of these papers is the best introduction
to this book for readers interested in seeing the bottom line before going
into the technical details of how it is achieved.
The final chapter, “Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature”, is
a contribution to the book Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, which
is to appear this year. It examines the question of the impact of quantum
theory upon our idea of the place of mind in nature. This article can serve
as a short philosophical introduction to the present volume, although it was
a subsequent development in the evolution of my thinking.
In the above works I have tried to minimize the explicit use of mathematics.
But in an appendix prepared for this volume I have transcribed
some key features of the model from prose to equations.
Among the scientists and philosophers who have suggested a link between
consciousness and quantum theory are Alfred North Whitehead, Erwin
Schr¨odinger, John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, David Albert and
Barry Loewer, Euan Squires, Evans Harris Walker, C. Stuart, Y. Takahashi,
and H. Umezawa, Amit Goswami, Avshalom Elitzur, Alexander Berezin,
Roger Penrose, Michael Lockwood, and John Eccles. Only the final two
authors address in any detail the problem addressed here: the nature of the
relationship between the physical and physiological structures. Eccles’s
approach is fundamentally different from the present one. Lockwood’s approach
is more similar, but takes a different tack and does not attain the same
ends.
Berkeley, February 1993 Henry P. Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 17:22:56
Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer:



Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer



Preface:
This book concerns your nature as a human being. It is about the
connection of your mind to your body.
You may imagine that your mind – your stream of conscious
thoughts, ideas, and feelings – influences your actions. You may believe
that what you think affects what you do. You could be right. However,
the scientific ideas that prevailed from the time of Isaac Newton to the
beginning of the twentieth century proclaimed your physical actions to
be completely determined by processes that are describable in physical
terms alone. Any notion that your conscious choices make a difference
in how you behave was branded an illusion: you were asserted to be
causally equivalent to a mindless automaton.
We now know that that earlier form of science is fundamentally
incorrect. During the first part of the twentieth century, that classicalphysics-
based conception of nature was replaced by a new theory that
reproduces all of the successful predictions of its predecessor, while
providing also valid predictions about a host of phenomena that are
strictly incompatible with the precepts of eighteenth and nineteenth
century physics. No prediction of the new theory has been shown to
be false.
The new theory departs from the old one in many important ways,
but none is more significant in the realm of human affairs than the role
it assigns to your conscious choices. These choices are not fixed by the
laws of the new physics, yet these choices are asserted by those laws to
have important causal effects in the physical world. Thus contemporary
physical theory annuls the claim of mechanical determinism. In
a profound reversal of the classical physical principles, its laws make
your conscious choices causally effective in the physical world, while
failing to determine, even statistically, what those choices will be.
More than three quarters of a century have passed since the overturning
of the classical laws, yet the notion of mechanical determinism
still dominates the general intellectual milieu. The inertia of that superceded
physical theory continues to affect your life in important

ways. It still drives the decisions of governments, schools, courts, and
medical institutions, and even your own choices, to the extent that
you are influenced by what you are told by pundits who expound as
scientific truth a mechanical idea of the universe that contravenes the
precepts of contemporary physics.
The aim of this book is to explain to educated lay readers these
twentieth century developments in science, and to touch upon the social
consequences of the misrepresentations of contemporary scientific
knowledge that continue to hold sway, particularly in the minds of our
most highly educated and influential thinkers.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 17:30:29
Since materialism is false , then those experiments and other ones must be explained in non-materialist ways , if they happened / happen to be flawless at least .
It is your logic that is flawed, not the experiments. The truth or falsity of materialism has no bearing on whether some unexplained phenomenon has a material explanation.

Quote
Since materialism is false , thanks to consciousness mainly , then the latter must be non-physical or non-material, since not 'all is matter " .
The flaws in that circular logic have already been explained.

Quote
Consciousness that cannot have arisen from just physics and chemistry , no way .
Argument from incredulity.

Quote
When are you gonna be able to get this simple fact then ?
How can the subjective qualitative qualia "emerge or rise ' from neuro-chemistry , from matter , via some sort of magical materialist metaphysical 'computation or emergence property trick " , since consciousness is totally different from its alleged original neural components it allegedly 'emerged " from : it's a total form of lunacy to assume that consciousness can rise or emerge from the physical brain activity...
Common sense fallacy (http://corkskeptics.org/2011/05/03/the-common-sense-fallacy/). The interacting patterns of cellular automata are totally different from the grid of cells they emerge from; nevertheless they can emulate universal computing machines.

Just cut the crap, and see above : Quantum theory of the mind by a prominent quantum physicist : Henry P.Stapp .
You might learn something from that ,instead of sticking to your dead false outdated superceded 19th century absurd materialism that was built on the classical physics' fundamentally incorrect sand castles  .
It is a simple obvious and undeniable fact that materialism is false , and hence the current 'scientific world view " is also false as a result .
Quantum physics have been showing to us all that science must undergo a revolutionary shift of meta-paradigm, not just a paradigm shift ...

So, i am not interested in your absurd crap, sorry ,thanks anyway .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 17:44:48
Folks:

I am a bit pissed off today , so, i will just say the following ,for the time being at least :

These stubborn dogmatic rock-solid (quantum mechanics has been revealing the new revolutionary conception of matter ,ironically enough , by superceding the Newtonian materialism in the process ) absurd materialists here won't cheer me up, either : they are neither inspiring , challenging , funny nor progressive, let alone innovative or imaginative  :
I see it's totally useless and pointless to try to talk some sense to our "mindless soulless "  (kidding )  brainwashed materialists  robots  here ,whose minds have been still confined to classical physics , despite the huge progress of quantum mechanics ,as to consider consciousness or the mind as just useless epiphenomena or by-products ,side effects of evolution , through the physical brain activity ,while they do experience every single day of their lunatic (kidding again ) lives the fact that the mental has fundamental causal effects on matter , brain and body ..............the mental or consciousness without which they would not be living , thinking , feeling , behaving , functioning ...as they have been doing ...

But , fact is : "the gain is worth the loss " : this thread has been opning up whole new unexpected vistas and universes to me = an understatement thus , you have no idea :
Henry Stapp is my latest "Bible " on the subject : the man's thought , analysis ,insights , ideas ....are fascinating and extremely refreshing inspiring  indeed = an understatement thus : i am thrilled by "discovering " all that ,step by step ....
This is just the beginning of that new quest of mine ....awesome .
Materialist folks :
Just remain confined to that dead outdated superceded false absurd implausible 19th century materialist ideology ,if that would make you feel any better then .
Who cares .......
Science itself ,as modern physics have been showing , will leave you behind ,soon enough ;no doubt in my mind about just that .
We might then have to put you all in some sort of a museum for the next generations to reflect on .....
Ciao.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 17:59:12
Happy holidays anyway , you "mindless soulless heartless " (kidding ) Newtonian deterministic materialist robots .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 18:06:17
You know what ?:
I think it would be much much much better for me to go breath and smell  the extermely reviving , fascinating and inspiring fresh air of Henry P.Stapp , instead of  continuing to be  hanging in  this suffocating materialist dark sterile dead materialist impotent nest  here ,while wasting my time  and energy  in the process,on deaf and blind robots such as yourselves  .
So, ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/12/2013 18:12:33
You know what ?:
I think it would be much much much better for me to go breath and smell  the extermely reviving , fascinating and inspiring fresh air of Henry P.Stapp , instead of  continuing to be  hanging in  this suffocating materialist dark sterile dead materialist impotent nest  here ,while wasting my time  and energy  in the process,on deaf and blind robots such as yourselves  .
You still here?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/12/2013 18:15:36
So, i am not interested in your absurd crap, sorry ,thanks anyway .
You must be in the wrong forum.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 18:38:19
So, i am not interested in your absurd crap, sorry ,thanks anyway .
You must be in the wrong forum.

I am in the right one ,i am just not interested in your materialist  Newtonian deterministic  dogmatic superceded outdated and false crap : try to read the above : you might learn something from Henry Stapp.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2013 20:29:26
Quantum mechanics might be the key to solving the mystery of consciousness , relatively speaking thus .
Who knows ?
Henry P.Stapp here above might be on the right track in that regard at least ,who knows ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 15/12/2013 22:49:23
Quantum mechanics might be the key to solving the mystery of consciousness , relatively speaking thus .
Who knows ?
Henry P.Stapp here above might be on the right track in that regard at least ,who knows ?
No-one knows yet. The 'consciousness collapses the wave function' interpretation is less popular among physicists than it once was, and Stapp has little competition for his somewhat opaque 'action template theory' based on the quantum Zeno effect (probably Penrose & Hammerof's Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) is the nearest competitor). But it has the same basic problems as the other quantum mechanics based hypotheses (I posted a summary earlier in the thread)  [::)]

However, Stapp's 'action template theory' is entirely quantum mechanical in conception, so it is a physical, material hypothesis. In appealing to quantum mechanics as the root of consciousness rather than classical mechanics, he's not invoking some disembodied 'immaterial' consciousness - he sees the quantum formulation of the brain as a “collection of classically conceived alternative possible states of the brain” that are concurrent parallel parts of “a potentiality for future additions to a stream of consciousness”. There does seem to be an awkward 'bootstrapping', using volitional effort, of the multiple microscopic quantum brain states his idea requires, but I've only skimmed it; I probably missed a bit  [???]

Regarding the 'conscious measurement' that collapses the wave function, Stapp also says:
Quote
From the point of view of the mathematics of quantum theory it makes no sense to treat a measuring device as intrinsically different from the collection of atomic constituents that make it up. A device is just another part of the physical universe... Moreover, the conscious thoughts of a human observer ought to be causally connected most directly and immediately to what is happening in his brain, not to what is happening out at some measuring device... Our bodies and brains thus become...parts of the quantum mechanically described physical universe. Treating the entire physical universe in this unified way provides a conceptually simple and logically coherent theoretical foundation...

On the other hand, Eugene Wigner's formulation of 'consciousness collapses wave function', on which Stapp's approach seems to be based, does imply some external non-physical 'mind' the sole task of which is to somehow make the measurement by selecting from the quantum superposition of possible brain states. How one could distinguish this from a purely physical stochastic selection process is unclear, and the problem remains how such a non-physical mind can select a superposed brain state, on what grounds could it do so, and a raft of other unanswerable questions; given that stochastic selection looks identical and has none of those issues, it seems redundant - perhaps should we apply Ockham's Razor?  [;D]

It's worth noting that the complications of measurement resulting in wave function collapse go away if you adopt the 'many worlds' interpretation, where the wave function is treated as a purely mathematical formulation that doesn't 'collapse' per se, but simply no longer applies when you take the view of any particular superposition it describes (i.e., switch from the objective to a subjective view). In this interpretation, at the point of measurement the objective view comes to include the measuring device or observer in the quantum system and its superposition of measurement outcomes  [8D]


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2013 03:12:57


Folks:

I am a bit pissed off today , so, i will just say the following ,for the time being at least :



I don't know what you are so cranky about today. At any rate what you've posted is a vast improvement over Sheldrake. I would love nothing more than there to be a plausible, scientific "in road" for free will. It would cheer me immensely, as determinism can be so dreary at times.

But I don't understand your all-or-nothing, ideological mindset - your obsession with falsification, your insistence that somehow science denies, and even conspires to exclude the immaterial, or anything else, when all it asks for is evidence. Should quantum mechanics contribute something new to the understanding of the brain (or the mind, if you prefer) I doubt neuroscientists will be leaping to their deaths, or that what is already known about the brain and supported by reproducible experiments will have to be "thrown out the window."

I will do my best to look at Stapp's ideas, although my impoverished math background is a hindrance.

If you're interested in his work, I would suggest you look for his most recent writings, as it appears he has made a few revisions or qualifications in response to other physicists' criticisms or suggestions. You may not like the article, because it is somewhat critical, but it does mention some changes Stapps made to his theory.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060623070312/http://individual.utoronto.ca/dbourget/download/QLPM.pdf


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2013 03:36:31



I am entiteld to hold that opinion or belief of mine : i just do not impose it as "the scientific world view ", as materialism has been doing to all sciences for that matter , by imposing its materialist false conception of nature , as the 'scientific world view ".
Non-materialists views of the world are unfalsifiable = unscientific , as materialism is by the way , but that does not mean they are all necessarily false , as materialism is .


What is the difference between religious dualism and the scientific kind? What specific properties do they share, or what is a property one has that the other does not have?

What are you talking about ?  what scientific kind ? what do you mean exactly ?

Science has been materialist ,since the 19th century at least , remember .

I don't get what you were trying to say .

Can you be more specific, please ?

P.S.: I am a dualist period , leave that "religious " out of it then .

My point was this: If you can't identify, describe, or verify anything about that other non-physical half of your dualist model, does it matter what you call it?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/12/2013 15:30:01
... You may not like the article, because it is somewhat critical, but it does mention some changes Stapps made to his theory.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060623070312/http://individual.utoronto.ca/dbourget/download/QLPM.pdf
Thanks for that link Carol, it does confirm a few of my doubts. It also points out that while Stapp's view of consciousness as based in multiple patterns of neural activity (representing qualia) is broadly reasonable - pace his need to introduce quantum phenomena, which looks like a case of 'man with a hammer' syndrome - it conflicts with his seemingly dualistic interpretation of free will, which appears to be some unexplained volitional agency that delays wave function collapse until a high probability of the desired outcome is achieved (or something like that). But this apparently separates and distinguishes free will (unexplained volitional agency) from conscious intent (also volitional agency, but based in neural activity), which raises questions of precedence and redundancy.

Further, if the neural processing in the brain can give rise to consciousness and a superposition of options for action, yet is insufficient to select the appropriate action, we must ask how the judgement of suitability or desirability in this dualistic, solipsistic view, is made - it would seem that this unexplained non-physical system would also need to somehow process the same data, either to generate a sample desirable outcome to compare with the superposed options arrived at by the physical processing, or to analyse the desirability of some particular outcome on-the-fly. If the physical system is unable to make appropriate selections without an external agency, how this external agency can make its choices without also needing another parallel system to analyse the desirability of its own choices, and so-on, recursively, is unexplained. It smacks of the infinite regression of Dennett's 'Cartesian Theatre' argument.

It's a lot of unnecessary effort based on trying to accommodate an incoherent concept of free will. If one simply accepts that the brain already contains all the information necessary to process and generate an outcome compatible with our desires, wishes, predilections, etc., and that these desires, wishes, predilections, etc., are encoded in the brain as a result of a lifetime of development and interaction with the environment, personal experiences, etc., to make us who and what we are, these problems go away. Classical computational processes can account for an assessment of situational context, the projective modelling of potential plans of action, the selection of appropriate plans of action based on current mental and physical state (nicluding desires, wishes, predilections, etc.), and the execution of those plans. No requirement to shoehorn any unexplained non-physical agency into apparent causal gaps in quantum theory. YMMV.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 16/12/2013 16:11:34


It's a lot of unnecessary effort based on trying to accommodate an incoherent concept of free will. If one simply accepts that the brain already contains all the information necessary to process and generate an outcome compatible with our desires, wishes, predilections, etc., and that these desires, wishes, predilections, etc., are encoded in the brain as a result of a lifetime of development and interaction with the environment, personal experiences, etc., to make us who and what we are, these problems go away.
Excellent explanation detailing exactly why Don's argument is irrelevant. Without the physical brain, consciousness would not be possible. Therefore, however we describe the conscious state, whether physical or beyond, it can not be achieved without the physical application of the brain. All verifiable evidence must and will always be associated with the physical senses man possesses. PERIOD
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2013 16:43:17
My best understanding of Stapp’s theory and other rival ones is that quantum mechanics may provide some freedom of choice, a yes/no selection of options or brain states. If this is true, as I said, I’m delighted. It certainly breathes new air into the free will discussion, which the determinists have been winning.

But strangely, it seems to offer little insight into any of the specific quailities or the content of consciousness itself, at least at this point.  The physicists mainly seem interested in the free will aspect and treat consciousness and "the mental" as if it were a single, discreet entity. As Bourget asks in the link I posted, how would quantum mechanics affect mental activity that is ongoing below our level awareness? Or does it? Ironically, I think classical interpretations of brain states actually does a more thorough job of explaining qualia and its function, even though qualia has been so intertwined with the concept of consciousness and sometimes used to define it. (To be fair, it may be unfair to criticize research in its infancy.)

 The physicist’s view of consciousness as a single, discreet entity  seems  incompatible with the neuroscientific understanding of its  diverse and layered processes, as well as our everyday experiential understanding of consciousness.  If Don was unsatisfied with the ability of  materialist mechanisms to explain the richness and diversity of mental activity – thoughts, ideas, imagination, emotions, dreams, memories, qualia, intuition, etc, one would think he’d find quantum mechanics even more impoverished. That is, unless he is actually using it simply as a bridge to another realm, where the content of ideas originates and the real work of consciousness is done. But I don’t see anything in Stapps model that suggests something like this, or if he did originally, he has back peddled since.

Even if quantum mechanics is involved in free choice, there is top down control in the brain already known to function in decision making processes that may have more impact at the macro level. Some materialists do not see a contradiction in the idea of the whole constraining the parts, and they base this belief on the wealth of two way tracts, up and down communication in the brain. Here is a brief explanation of top down control from an article in the journal Neuron:

“Complex information that is represented at higher stages of processing influences simpler processes occurring at antecedent stages. The role of top-down influences is then to set the cortex in a specific working mode according to behavioral requirements that are updated dynamically. In effect, these ideas reverse the central dogma of sensory processing, with a flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas playing a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. The construction of a subjective percept involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences. Conversely, the top-down expectations and hypotheses are set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. Under this view, there is no starting point for information flow.”

(Italics mine)


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 17:41:22


Cheryl : Most materialists do still view the world through the fundamentally incorrect Newton's classical physics on which sand castles 19th century outdated and superseded false materialism was built :
Quantum mechanics have been changing all that ,also by revolutionizing our conventional classical conception of matter .....
That all has serious implications for the Newtonian materialist determinism : see below :

"So, Are We Free ?":


And what does all this imply about free will? Sperry writes that “the proposed brain model provides in
large measure the mental forces and abilities to determine one’s own actions. It provides a high degree
of freedom from outside forces as well as mastery over the inner molecular and atomic forces of the
body. In other words, it provides plenty of free will as long as we think of free will as selfdetermination.”
32 So, accordingly, a person does indeed determine with his own mind what he is going
to do from a range of alternatives, but the ultimate choice is restricted by a variety of factors,
including available information and mental acuity. Perhaps the ultimate form of free will would not be
complete freedom from all causal factors but rather unlimited causal contact with all relevant
information, scenarios, choices, and possible results.
And, of course, our choices are in large part determined by our personal preferences, experiences,
and cultural and inherited factors. It could be argued that this is a form of determinism, but do we
really wish to be free from ourselves? As Arthur Schopenhauer wondered, “We may be free to do as
we please, but are we free to please as we please?”
With this conception of free will it could be argued that the more we learn, the wider the experience
we gain, the more logical we become, the greater our knowledge of ourselves and of history, the more
our sciences advance, the greater then the extent of true human freedom. However, an interesting
experiment was performed by a psychologist in the late 1980s that seems to have bearing on the
subject of free will and may imply a different conclusion.
Benjamin Libet, at the University of California at San Francisco, asked subjects to push a button at
a moment of their choosing while they noted the moment of their decision as displayed on a clock. He
found that subjects on average took about a fifth of a second to flex their fingers after they had
decided to do so. But data from an electroencephalograph monitoring their brain waves showed a
spike in electrical activity about a third of a second before they consciously decided to push the
button. Some have interpreted this result as implying that our decisions may be unconsciously
determined for us before we are aware of the decision, and thus free will is only an illusion.
Before we jump to this conclusion, however, we immediately recognize that we do not typically
make our decisions the way these subjects arbitrarily decided to flex their fingers. Decisions on
anything important are usually made by gathering information and mulling over the different
possibilities and their implications. The decision to push a button at the moment of our choosing, by
contrast, seems to involve waiting for the trivial urge to strike us, a rather random, indeterminate
process.
Libet himself believes that one implication of his work is an altered view of how we exercise free
will:
The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place.
We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as “bubbling up” in the brain. The conscious-will then selects
which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto or abort, with no act appearing. . . . The existence
of a veto possibility is not in doubt. The subjects in our experiments at times reported that a conscious wish or urge to act
appeared but that they suppressed or vetoed that. . . . All of us, not just experimental subjects, have experienced our vetoing a
spontaneous urge to perform some act. This often occurs when the urge to act involves some socially unacceptable
consequence, like an urge to shout some obscenity at the professor.33
He also considers and rejects the possibility that the conscious veto itself may have its origin in
preceding unconscious processes, writing that
the conscious veto is a control function, different from simply becoming aware of the wish to act. There is no logical imperative
in any mind-brain theory, even identity theory, that requires specific neural activity to precede and determine the nature of a
conscious control function. And, there is no experimental evidence against the possibility that the control process may appear
without development by prior unconscious processes.
Popper would take this as another example of downward causation, as nonrandom selection from a
choice of random alternatives: “The selection of a kind of behavior out of a randomly offered
repertoire may be an act of choice, even an act of free will.”34 If quantum phenomena have any real
effect in the brain, then perhaps their random influences are accepted when they fit into the higherlevel
structure; otherwise they are rejected.
But there is another interpretation, due to another of Libet’s experiments. In 1973 Libet found that
electrical stimulation of the sensory cortex—that part of the brain’s surface primarily responsible for
processing tactile information from the skin—did not result in conscious sensation unless the
stimulation was prolonged for at least 500 milliseconds (0.5 second). The necessity of 500
milliseconds of cortical stimulation before the signal was felt also held for stimulation of the skin: in
both cases, if the signal as recorded in the cortex was less than half a second long, it was not
consciously experienced. This does not mean that the signal at the skin must last half a second, but
rather that the secondary signals at the surface of the brain must last at least half a second before they
can be consciously experienced.
However, Libet found that patients experienced their finger shocks almost immediately, between 10
and 20 milliseconds after the shock was applied. Typical reaction time—the time it takes to perceive a
shock and push a button—is about 100 milliseconds (0.1 second). So how can Libet’s observation that
500 milliseconds of neural activity is required before a shock can be felt be reconciled with the fact
that we can perceive and respond to such shocks in about one-fifth the time they apparently require to
become part of conscious experience?
In a series of ingenious experiments involving electrical stimulation of both skin and cortex, Libet
resolved this paradox. What appears to happen is that the tactile signal reaches the cortex in about 10
milliseconds but is not consciously perceived. However, the arrival time is unconsciously marked in
some manner. Then, if the cortical activity due to the skin response is not interrupted but allowed to
continue for at least 500 milliseconds, the shock is felt. But it is not felt half a second late: rather, it is
“backdated” to the original arrival time of the signal.
These surprising results seem to refute the idea that every mental experience is directly correlated
with a physical process in the brain. Or, as neuroscientist John Eccles put it, “there can be a temporal
discrepancy between neural events and the experiences of the self conscious mind.”v
Dean Radin takes this idea a step further: He notes that the equations of both classical and quantum
physics are neutral with respect to the direction of time and so do not rule out the possibility of future
events causing events in the past. In addition, he has presented some experimental evidence that
individuals can subconsciously react to future events.
At the University of Nevada, people were shown a series of pictures on a computer screen. Most of
the images were of an emotionally calming nature, such as images of landscapes and various nature
scenes, but some were meant to be arousing or disturbing, including pornographic photos and pictures
of corpses. At the beginning of each trial, the screen was blank. The participant would start the trial by
pressing a mouse button. After five seconds, one of these images, calm or emotional, was shown for
three seconds, and then the screen would go blank again. Ten seconds later, a message informed
participants that they could press the mouse button again whenever they felt ready for the next trial.
Five seconds after pressing the mouse button, another picture would be displayed, and the session
would continue until forty pictures had been shown. The order in which the pictures were displayed
was chosen randomly by the computer. Throughout the session the participants’ heart rate, skin
resistance, and blood volume in the fingertips were monitored.
Not surprisingly, dramatic changes in all three physiological measures were recorded when the
emotional pictures were shown. But what was remarkable was that the arousal began before the
emotional picture was displayed, even though the participants could not have known by any normal
means what sort of picture was going to be displayed next. This effect, of unconsciously preparing for
a reaction to an impending event, has been labeled “presentiment” and has been replicated
independently by a laboratory in Holland.35
As Radin notes, if we allow “for the possibility of signals traveling backward in time, then what
Libet saw [in the experiment involving deciding when to push a button] may be the brain’s response to
its own decision taking place a third of a second in the future.”36 In other words, given the apparent
temporal discrepancy between neural events and the experiences of the self-conscious mind, the
subconscious mind may generate neural activity in order to prepare the brain for the execution of an
impending decision. The second experiment described may be an example of the reverse: the mind
may experience and respond to a sensation because of a signal from the future state of the brain.

Chris Carter


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/12/2013 18:02:17
My best understanding of Stapp’s theory and other rival ones is that quantum mechanics may provide some freedom of choice, a yes/no selection of options or brain states. If this is true, as I said, I’m delighted. It certainly breathes new air into the free will discussion, which the determinists have been winning.
My concern is freedom of choice by what, and how? Given a number of potential actions, why is it not sufficient to select the most appropriate by matching with one's predilections? why invoke any unexplained phenomena to make a selection in an unexplained way?

It seems to me that not only is the popular concept of free will incoherent, it is being used in two quite different ways - as the driver for a subjective sense of volitional agency, and as the basis for the objective cultural attribution of moral responsibility. 

Quote
... Here is a brief explanation of top down control from an article in the journal Neuron: ...
How else can we reasonably account for the influence of expectation on perception and experience?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/12/2013 18:14:27
...Sperry writes that “the proposed brain model provides in large measure the mental forces and abilities to determine one’s own actions. It provides a high degree of freedom from outside forces as well as mastery over the inner molecular and atomic forces of the body. In other words, it provides plenty of free will as long as we think of free will as self-determination.”
So, accordingly, a person does indeed determine with his own mind what he is going to do from a range of alternatives, but the ultimate choice is restricted by a variety of factors, including available information and mental acuity. Perhaps the ultimate form of free will would not be complete freedom from all causal factors but rather unlimited causal contact with all relevant information, scenarios, choices, and possible results.
And, of course, our choices are in large part determined by our personal preferences, experiences, and cultural and inherited factors. It could be argued that this is a form of determinism, but do we really wish to be free from ourselves? As Arthur Schopenhauer wondered, “We may be free to do as we please, but are we free to please as we please?”
With this conception of free will it could be argued that the more we learn, the wider the experience we gain, the more logical we become, the greater our knowledge of ourselves and of history, the more our sciences advance, the greater then the extent of true human freedom. However, an interesting experiment w

I don't disagree with the bulk of that quote of Sperry (except for "mastery over the inner molecular and atomic forces of the body" which needs explanation). However, although it's possible that quantum mechanics may play a part in it, nothing in there that requires it. Classical computation is quite sufficient.

Also bear in mind that classical and quantum physics are not in opposition, each is useful at its respective scale; and Newtonian physics has been superseded by the more precise relativity of Einstein as the classical model.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 18:30:31
Cheryl :
"Mind-Body Interaction" :



............In the brain model proposed here the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or
a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the
same brain, in neighboring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact
with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the
evolutionary scene yet.

Mind-Body Interaction:


Critics of mentalism and dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties, such as
mind and matter, could possibly interact. How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or
physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes:
The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind interact with the extended
body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the
physical theory that the universe is a closed system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event.
This assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.28
Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave
function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is
of course based on classical physics.
Furthermore, by asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is
making the implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in
common in order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity? Or is it rather an empirical
truth, a fact about nature? As David Hume pointed out long ago, anything in principle could be the
cause of anything else, and so only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John
Beloff considers the issue logically:
If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely want to say that the second event
was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or not the two had anything else in common. As for such a
principle being an empirical truth, how could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and
matter, as candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are independent is to
beg the question. . . . It says something about the desperation of those who want to dismiss radical dualism that such phony
arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly reputable philosophers who should know better.29
Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on
obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another we have interaction
between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper
considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality of different kinds of forces,
and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles. Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis
that only like things can act upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields
—by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and
then the modified field acts upon another body.30
It should be clear that the idea that only like can act upon like rests upon an obsolete, billiard-ball
notion of causation in physics.

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 19:32:45
Cheryl :
Application to Neuropsychology:




The most direct evidence pertaining to the effects of conscious choices
upon brain activities comes from experiments in which consciously
controlled cognitive efforts are found to be empirically correlated to
measured physical effects in the brain. An example is the experiment of
Ochsner et al. (2001). The subjects are trained how to cognitively reevaluate
emotional scenes by consciously creating and holding in place
an alternative fictional story of what is really happening in connection
with an emotion-generating scene they are viewing.
The trial began with a 4-second presentation of a negative or
neutral photo, during which participants were instructed simply
to view the stimulus on the screen. This interval was intended to
provide time for participants to apprehend complex scenes and
allow an emotional response to be generated that participants
would then be asked to regulate. The word ‘attend’ (for negative
or neutral photos) or ‘reappraise’ (negative photos only) then
appeared beneath the photo and the participants followed this
instruction for 4 seconds.
To verify whether the participants had, in fact, reappraised in
this manner, during the post-scan rating session participants
were asked to indicate for each photo whether they had reinterpreted
the photo (as instructed) or had used some other type
of reappraisal strategy. Compliance was high: On less than 4%
of trials with highly negative photos did participants report
using another type of strategy.
Reports such as these can be taken as evidence that the streams of
consciousness of the participants do exist and contain elements identifiable
as efforts to reappraise.
Patterns of brain activity accompanying reappraisal efforts were
assessed by using functional magnetic imaging resonance (fMRI). The
fMRI results were that reappraisal was positively correlated with increased
activity in the left lateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (regions thought to be connected to cognitive
control) and decreased activity in the (emotion-related) amygdala and
medial orbito-frontal cortex.
How can we explain the correlation revealed in this experiment
between the mental reality of ‘conscious effort’ and the physical reality
of measured brain behavior?
According to the precepts of classical physics, the subject’s behavior
is controlled by physically described variables alone, and his feeling
that his ‘conscious effort’ is affecting his thinking is an illusion: the
causal chain of physical events originating in the instructions being
fed to the trained subject is controlling the brain response, and his
feeling of ‘conscious effort’ is an epiphenomenal side-effect that has no
effect whatever on his brain.
The validity of that picture cannot be empirically verified or confirmed:
it is an unverifiable conjecture. Nor has this conjecture any
rational foundation in science or basic physics. The conjecture originates
from the classical principle of the causal closure of the physical,
which does not generally hold in quantum theory. That principle rests
on a classical-physics-based bottom-up determinism that starts at the
elementary particle level and works up to the macro-level. But, according
to the quantum principles, the determinism at the bottom (ionic)
level fails badly in the brain. The presumption that it gets restored at
the macro-level is wishful and unprovable.
According to quantum mechanics, the microscopic uncertainties
must rationally be expected to produce, via the Schroedinger equation
(of brain plus environment), macroscopic variations that, to match
observation, need to be cut back by quantum reductions. This means
process 1 interventions. This leads, consistently and reasonably, to
the entry of mental causation as described above, where the subject’s
conscious effort is actually causing what his conscious understanding
believes, on the basis of life-long experience, that effort to be causing.
There is no rational explanation for the existence of the ‘illusion of
conscious influence’ when no such influence exists, but a completely
reasonable explanation for the subject’s believing that his conscious
effort has an influence when that experienced effort has an influence
that incessantly demonstrates itself to the subject.
As regards causation, the structure of quantum theory effects a
replacement, within the dynamics, of what is unknowable in principle,
namely the empirically inaccessible microscopic features of the
brain, by data of a different kind, which are knowable in principle,
namely our efforts. This replacement of inaccessible-in-principle data by accessible-in-practice data leads to statistical predictions connecting
empirically describable conscious intentions to empirically describable
perceptual feedbacks. The psychologically described and mathematically
described components of the theory become cemented together
by quantum rules that work in practice.
What is the rational motivation for adhering to the classical approximation?
The applicability of the classical approximation to this phenomenon
certainly does not follow from physics considerations: calculations
based on the known properties of nerve terminals indicate that quantum
theory must in principle be used. Nor does it follow from the
fact that classical physics works reasonably well in neuroanatomy and
neurophysiology: quantum theory explains why the classical approximation
works well in those domains. Nor does it follow rationally from
the massive analyses and conflicting arguments put forth by philosophers
of mind. In view of the turmoil that has engulfed philosophy
during the three centuries since Newton’s successors cut the bond between
mind and matter, the re-bonding achieved by physicists during
the first half of the twentieth century must be seen as a momentous
development. Ignoring in the scientific study of the mind–brain connection
this enormously pertinent development in basic science appears
to be, from a scientific perspective, an irrational choice.
The materialist claim is that someday the mind will be understood
to be the product of completely mindless matter. Karl Popper called
this prophecy “promissory materialism”
. But can these connections
reasonably be expected to be understood in terms of a physical theory
that is known to be false, and, moreover, to be false because it is an
approximation that eliminates a key feature of the object of study,
namely the causal effects of mental effort upon brain activity.
The only objections I know to applying the basic principles of orthodox
contemporary physics to brain dynamics are, first, the forcefully
expressed opinions of some non-physicists that the classical approximation
provides an entirely adequate foundation for understanding
mind–brain dynamics, in spite of quantum calculations that indicate
just the opposite; and, second, the opinions of some conservative
physicists, who, apparently for philosophical reasons, contend that the
practically successful orthodox quantum theory, which is intrinsically
dualistic, should, be replaced by a theory that re-converts human consciousness
into a causally inert witness to the mindless dance of atoms,
as it was in 1900. Neither of these opinions has any rational basis in
contemporary science, as will be further elaborated upon in the sections that follow. And they leave unanswered the hard question: Why
should causally inert consciousness exist at all, and massively deceive
us about its nature and function?

Source : Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 19:36:11
Cheryl :   Nerve Terminal and the Need to Use Quantum Theory:


Many neuroscientists who study the relationship of consciousness to
brain processes want to believe that classical physics will provide an
adequate rational foundation for that task. But classical physics has
bottom-up causation, and the direct rational basis for the claim that
classical physics is applicable to the full workings of the brain rests on
the basic presumption that it is applicable at the microscopic level.
However, empirical evidence about what is actually happening at the
trillions of synapses on the billions of neurons in a conscious brain
is virtually nonexistent, and, according to the uncertainty principle,
empirical evidence is in principle unable to justify the claim that deterministic
behavior actually holds in the brain at the microscopic
(ionic) scale. Thus the claim that classical determinism holds in living
brains is empirically indefensible: sufficient evidence neither does, nor
can in principle, exist.
Whether the classical approximation is applicable to macroscopic
brain dynamics can, therefore, only be determined by examining the
details of the physical situation within the framework of the more general
quantum theory, to see, from a rational perspective, to what extent
use of the classical approximation can be theoretically justified. The
technical questions are: How important quantitatively are the effects
of the uncertainty principle at the microscopic (ionic) level; and if they
are important at the microscopic level, then why can this microscopic
indeterminacy never propagate up to the macro-level?
Classical physical theory is adequate, in principle, precisely to the
extent that the smear of potentialities generated at the microscopic
level by the uncertainty principle leads via the purely physically described
aspects of quantum dynamics to a macroscopic brain state
that is essentially one single classically describable state, rather than
a cloud of such states representing a set of alternative possible conscious
experiences. In this latter case the quantum mechanical state of
the brain needs to be reduced, somehow, to the state corresponding to
the experienced phenomenal reality.
To answer the physics question of the extent of the micro-level
uncertainties we turn first to an examination of the quantum dynamics
of nerve terminals.
4.1 Nerve Terminals
Nerve terminals lie at the junctions between two neurons, and mediate
the functional connection between them. Neuroscientists have developed,
on the basis of empirical data, fairly detailed classical models
of how these important parts of the brain work. According to the
classical picture, each ‘firing’ of a neuron sends an electrical signal,
called an action potential, along its output fiber. When this signal
reaches the nerve terminal it opens up tiny channels in the terminal
membrane, through which calcium ions flow into the interior of the
terminal. Within the terminal are vesicles, which are small storage areas
containing chemicals called neurotransmitters. The calcium ions
migrate by diffusion from their entry channels to special sites, where
they trigger the release of the contents of a vesicle into a gap between
the terminal and a neighboring neuron. The released chemicals influence
the tendency of the neighboring neuron to fire. Thus the nerve
terminals, as connecting links between neurons, are basic elements in
brain dynamics.
The channels through which the calcium ions enter the nerve terminal
are called ion channels. At their narrowest points they are only
about a nanometer in width, hence not much larger than the calcium
ions themselves. This extreme smallness of the opening in the
ion channels has profound quantum mechanical import. The consequence
of this narrowness is essentially the same as the consequence of
the squeezing of the state of the simple harmonic oscillator, or of the
narrowness of the slits in the double-slit experiments. The narrowness
of the channel restricts the lateral spatial dimension. Consequently,
the uncertainty in lateral velocity is forced by the quantum uncertainty
principle to become non-zero, and to be in fact about 1% of the
longitudinal velocity of the ion. This causes the quantum probability
cloud associated with the calcium ion to fan out over an increasing
area as it moves away from the tiny channel to the target region where
the ion will be absorbed as a whole on some small triggering site, or
will not be absorbed at all on that site. The transit distance is estimated
to be about 50 nanometers (Fogelson & Zucker 1985; Schweizer,
Betz, & Augustine 1995), but the total distance traveled is increased
many-fold by the diffusion mechanism. Thus the probability cloud becomes
spread out over a region that is much larger than the size of the
calcium ion itself, or of the trigger site. This spreading of the ion wave
packet means that the ion may or may not be absorbed on the small
triggering site.
Many different calcium ions contribute to the release of neurotransmitter
from a vesicle. The estimated probability that a vesicle on a
cerebral neuron will be released, per incident input action potential
pulse, is far less than 100% (maybe only 50%). The very large quantum
uncertainty at the individual calcium level ensures that this large
empirical uncertainty of release entails that the quantum state of the
nerve terminal will become a quantum mixture of states where the
neurotransmitter is released, or, alternatively, is not released. This
quantum splitting occurs at every one of the trillions of nerve terminals
in the brain. This quantum splitting at each of the nerve terminals
propagates, via the quantum mechanical process 2, first to neuronal
behavior, and then to the behavior of the whole brain, so that, according
to quantum theory, the state of the brain can become a cloudlike
quantum mixture of many different classically describable brain states.
In complex situations where the outcome at the classical level depends
on noisy elements the corresponding quantum brain will evolve into a
quantum mixture of the corresponding states.
The process 2 evolution of the brain is highly nonlinear, in the
(classical) sense that small events can trigger much larger events, and
that there are very important feedback loops. Some neurons can be
on the verge of firing, so that small variations in the firing times of
other neurons can influence whether or not this firing occurs. In a system
with such a sensitive dependence on unstable elements, and on
massive feedbacks, it is not reasonable to suppose, and not possible to
demonstrate, that the process 2 dynamical evolution will lead generally
to a single (nearly) classically describable quantum state. There
might perhaps be particular special situations during which the massively
parallel processing all conspires to cause the brain dynamics to
become essentially deterministic and perhaps even nearly classically
describable. But there is no likelihood that during periods of mental
groping and uncertainty there cannot be bifurcation points in which
one part of the quantum cloud of potentialities that represents the
brain goes one way and the remainder goes another, leading to a quantum
mixture of very different classically describable potentialities. The
validity of the classical approximation certainly cannot be proved under
these conditions, and, in view of the extreme nonlinearity of the
neural dynamics, any claim that the large effects of the uncertainly
principle at the synaptic level can never lead to quantum mixtures of
macroscopically different states cannot be rationally justified.
What, then, is the effect of the replacement of a single, unique, classically
described brain of classical physics by a quantum brain state
composed of a mixture of several alternative possible classically describable
brain states, each corresponding to a different possible experience?
A principal function of the brain is to receive clues from the environment,
then to form an appropriate plan of action, and finally to
direct the activities of the brain and body specified by the selected
plan of action. The exact details of the chosen plan will, for a classical
model, obviously depend upon the exact values of many noisy and uncontrolled
variables. In cases close to a bifurcation point the dynamical
effects of noise might, at the classical level, tip the balance between
two very different responses to the given clues: e.g., tip the balance
between the ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ response to some shadowy form, but in
the quantum case one must allow and expect both possibilities at the
macroscopic level a smear of classically alternative possibilities. The
automatic mechanical process 2 evolution generates this smearing, and
is in principle unable to resolve or remove it.
According to orthodox (von Neumann) quantum theory, achievement
of a satisfactory reduction of the smeared out brain state to a
brain state coordinated with the subject’s streams of conscious experiences
is achieved through the entry of a process 1 intervention, which
selects from the smear of potentialities generated by the mechanical
process 2 evolution a particular way of separating the physical state
into a collection of components, each corresponding to some definite
experience. The form of such an intervention is not determined by the
quantum analog (process 2) of the physically deterministic continuous
dynamical process of classical physics: some other kind of input is
needed.
The choice involved in such an intervention seems to us to be influenced
by consciously felt evaluations, and there is no rational reason
why these conscious realities, which certainly are realities, cannot have
the sort of effect that they seem to have.

Source : Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 20:37:07
Why the Newtonian 19th Century outdated and superseded Materialism is False ? :
Cheryl : This Nobel prize Winner Neurobiologist Roger Sperry might interest you , since you are so fond of neurobiology :



........in the 1960s, the concept of mentalism began to spread in acceptance among
cognitive scientists, mostly due to the writings of neurobiologist Roger Sperry. Sperry, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain,rightly recognized that the profound mystery of consciousness makes a choice between the alternatives difficult:
Once we have materialism squared off against mentalism in this way, I think we must all agree that neither is going to win the
match on the basis of direct, factual evidence.
 The facts do not simply go far enough. Those centermost processes of the brain
with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at
present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature.
Apart from the dwindling number of pure materialists who still deny the existence of
consciousness, and the dwindling number of researchers in the field of artificial intelligence still trying to raise money for the construction of “thinking machines,”this position is reflected in the writings of most serious scientists. Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner writes, “We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physiochemical processes with the state of the mind.”
Physicist Nick Herbert concurs:
Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not simply that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human
awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with
the head, rather than the foot.24
Materialists sometimes claim to represent the scientific viewpoint. But materialism is in no sense a
more “scientific” hypothesis than the alternatives, as it does not draw stronger support from current
scientific thinking. Materialism is a legacy of classical physics, which actually had two ways of
dealing with the problem of consciousness and free will. The first, followed by Descartes and Newton,
was to place mind outside of the scope of physics and consider it the sole exception in an otherwise
deterministic, mechanistic universe. The other approach, followed by popularizers of Newton’s work,
such as Diderot and Voltaire, was to assume that the physics of the time was a complete description of
the world, and to argue that consciousness must then be epiphenomenal. But we now know that
classical physics is fundamentally incorrect, and so any worldview based upon it must be flawed.
Sperry writes:
To conclude that conscious, mental, or psychic, forces have no place in filling this gap in our explanatory picture is at least to
go well beyond the facts into the realm of intuition and speculation. The doctrine of materialism in behavioral science, which
tends to be identified with a rigorous scientific approach, is thus seen to rest, in fact, on an insupportable mental inference that
goes far beyond the objective evidence and hence is founded on the cardinal sin of science.25
Our common sense would certainly seem to suggest that mental events such as perceptions, beliefs,
emotions, intentions, and so forth all have causal effects. We normally speak and think as if our
thoughts, feelings, and values do determine our course of action. And, of course, our moral judgments
also presuppose that these things have a real impact on human behavior. But common sense
arguments, however seemingly compelling, are not sufficient by themselves to draw strong
conclusions, as on many occasions science has shown common sense to have been dead wrong.
What, then, is the argument in favor of the causal efficacy of mental events? It is simple and
straightforward. First, it contends that mind and consciousness are emergent properties of living
brains, and then it goes a critical step further and asserts that these emergent properties have causal
potency, just as they do elsewhere in the universe. In other words, it applies the concepts of emergent
properties and downward causation to mind and consciousness, and to everything they seem to affect.
It is important to stress that the lower-level forces and properties of atoms, molecules, and cells all
continue to operate, and all continue to exert upward (and in most cases downward) causal influence.
None of these causal forces have been canceled or replaced, but they have been superseded by the
properties of a higher organizational structure. According to this new view, mind and consciousness
exert just as much (or even more) causal effect on the lower-level structures than the lower-level
structures exert on them. Mental events interact with other mental events at their own level, according
to their own rules, and in the process exert downward control over the lower-level structures. Sperry’s
model puts mind back into the driver’s seat, and, accordingly, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotion,
judgment, and so forth are recognized as having a real, not just an imaginary, impact on the world.
The ultimate paradox of materialism is that the one feature of the universe which alone gives
meaning to all the rest is the one feature which has to be declared redundant! Nothing can
account for its emergence; nothing follows from its existence.
JOHN BELOFF
Shortly after Sperry first proposed these ideas in the mid 1960s, the philosopher Karl Popper seems
to have come to an almost identical conclusion, although from a somewhat different perspective.
Popper points out that no Darwinist should accept the one-sided action of body on mind proposed by
the materialists. In his books On the Origin of Species and Natural Selection, Darwin discussed the
mental powers of animals and men, and argued that these are products of natural selection.
Now if that is so, then mental powers must assist organisms in their struggle for survival. And it
follows from this that mental powers must exert causal influence on the behavior of animals and
people. If conscious states exist, then, according to Darwinism, we should look for their uses. If they
are useful for living, then they must have real effects on the physical world.
As mentioned earlier, Darwin’s close friend Thomas Huxley was a thoroughgoing materialist.
While he did not deny the existence of mental events, he wrote that the relationship between mind and
body was strictly one-sided, with the mental having no effect on the physical. Since mental events for
Huxley were just useless by-products of brain activity, he thought people and animals were just
automata, with useless consciousness along for the ride.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s
opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Popper rightly points out:
The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the one-sided action of body on mind
and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in
sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had
been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved . . . by natural selection.26
So from a strictly Darwinian standpoint, the mental powers of animals and humans should be
expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to
this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more
highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have. We
should conclude from this that the mental powers of humans exert more causal potency than that of
any other living creatures on earth, as, arguably, we are the only creatures on earth with ideas and
ideals. Sperry writes:
In the brain model proposed here the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or
a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the
same brain, in neighboring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact
with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the
evolutionary scene yet............

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 20:40:27
Cheryl :

Thanks for the PDF : you know i am interested in Stapp,simply because his approaches differ radically from those of other mainstream materialist scientists  who have been still looking at the world from the fundamentally incorrect deterministic Netwonian classical physics point of view on which sand castles 19th century outdated false and superseded materialism was built , once again .

Henry P.Stapp and other non-orthodox scientists have been indeed introducing some inspiring fascinating ,reviving and innovative fresh air into the materialist mainstream suffocating dogmatic dark and false "scientific world view " .
Our dlorde   here is 1 representative of that dogmatic hard-core materialism by the way,that's been losing the "battles" and the "war" altogether ,without even being aware of that fact  .
I am just starting to explore what Stapp has to say on the subject of consciousness via his own attempts to come up with a quantum theory of consciousness ,so.
Sperry and others have also been grabbing my attention .
They help me try to to give form to my own dualist conception of the world , ironically paradoxically enough : long story thus .

Nice holidays , girl ,have fun .
Take care
Best wishes .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2013 21:32:24
Roger Sperry & Split Brain Research:


Roger Sperry; His Life and Works by Darden White:

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 16/12/2013 23:59:06
Roger Sperry & Split Brain Research:

As Sperry himself says, "[Each hemisphere is] indeed a conscious system in its own right... both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneouly in different, even mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel."

You didn't address this subject when someone else brought it up, but since you've now brought it up directly yourself, you're presumably ready to discuss it.

So how does the non-physical external consciousness hypothesis account for the appearance of two separate conscious entities in place of one original when the corpus callosum is transsectioned? Can cutting the physical brain split the immaterial consciousness associated with it?

How does it account for each new consciousness having the proportional skills and abilities of the corresponding hemispheres that were integrated in the original consciousness?

What do you suppose happened to the original immaterial consciousness? Is it floating adrift of its physical vehicle? did it have to split into two less able consciousnesses?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 00:53:11




However, an interesting
experiment was performed by a psychologist in the late 1980s that seems to have bearing on the
subject of free will and may imply a different conclusion.
Benjamin Libet, at the University of California at San Francisco, asked subjects to push a button at
a moment of their choosing while they noted the moment of their decision as displayed on a clock. He
found that subjects on average took about a fifth of a second to flex their fingers after they had
decided to do so. But data from an electroencephalograph monitoring their brain waves showed a
spike in electrical activity about a third of a second before they consciously decided to push the
button. Some have interpreted this result as implying that our decisions may be unconsciously
determined for us before we are aware of the decision, and thus free will is only an illusion.
Before we jump to this conclusion, however, we immediately recognize that we do not typically
make our decisions the way these subjects arbitrarily decided to flex their fingers. Decisions on
anything important are usually made by gathering information and mulling over the different
possibilities and their implications.

Well, regardless of whether it is deemed a trivial decision or an important one, the results still have to be explained. If conscious awareness is key, then it should come before.

Quote
The decision to push a button at the moment of our choosing, by
contrast, seems to involve waiting for the trivial urge to strike us, a rather random, indeterminate
process.
Libet himself believes that one implication of his work is an altered view of how we exercise free
will:
The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place.
We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as “bubbling up” in the brain. The conscious-will then selects
which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto or abort, with no act appearing. . . . The existence
of a veto possibility is not in doubt. The subjects in our experiments at times reported that a conscious wish or urge to act
appeared but that they suppressed or vetoed that. . . . All of us, not just experimental subjects, have experienced our vetoing a
spontaneous urge to perform some act. This often occurs when the urge to act involves some socially unacceptable
consequence, like an urge to shout some obscenity at the professor.33
He also considers and rejects the possibility that the conscious veto itself may have its origin in
preceding unconscious processes, writing that
the conscious veto is a control function, different from simply becoming aware of the wish to act.
Saying that decisions somehow take time to "bubble up" would suggest that it is a brain process, not some instantaneous immaterial conscious one. And yes, even materialists say that "choice" if by free will or some other mechanism, may operate in the form of a veto power, or arise when one competing brain process outlasts or dominates another one.

Quote
There is no logical imperative
in any mind-brain theory, even identity theory, that requires specific neural activity to precede and determine the nature of a
conscious control function.

No, just  a lot of empirical evidence that says that is what happens.

Quote
And, there is no experimental evidence against the possibility that the control process may appear
without development by prior unconscious processes.

You're asking me to prove there is not a rhinoceros in my basement again, no matter how many times I check.

Quote
Popper would take this as another example of downward causation, as nonrandom selection from a
choice of random alternatives: “The selection of a kind of behavior out of a randomly offered
repertoire may be an act of choice, even an act of free will.”34 If quantum phenomena have any real
effect in the brain, then perhaps their random influences are accepted when they fit into the higherlevel
structure; otherwise they are rejected.
But there is another interpretation, due to another of Libet’s experiments. In 1973 Libet found that
electrical stimulation of the sensory cortex—that part of the brain’s surface primarily responsible for
processing tactile information from the skin—did not result in conscious sensation unless the
stimulation was prolonged for at least 500 milliseconds (0.5 second). The necessity of 500
milliseconds of cortical stimulation before the signal was felt also held for stimulation of the skin: in
both cases, if the signal as recorded in the cortex was less than half a second long, it was not
consciously experienced. This does not mean that the signal at the skin must last half a second, but
rather that the secondary signals at the surface of the brain must last at least half a second before they
can be consciously experienced.
However, Libet found that patients experienced their finger shocks almost immediately, between 10
and 20 milliseconds after the shock was applied. Typical reaction time—the time it takes to perceive a
shock and push a button—is about 100 milliseconds (0.1 second). So how can Libet’s observation that
500 milliseconds of neural activity is required before a shock can be felt be reconciled with the fact
that we can perceive and respond to such shocks in about one-fifth the time they apparently require to
become part of conscious experience?
In a series of ingenious experiments involving electrical stimulation of both skin and cortex, Libet
resolved this paradox. What appears to happen is that the tactile signal reaches the cortex in about 10
milliseconds but is not consciously perceived. However, the arrival time is unconsciously marked in
some manner. Then, if the cortical activity due to the skin response is not interrupted but allowed to
continue for at least 500 milliseconds, the shock is felt. But it is not felt half a second late: rather, it is
“backdated” to the original arrival time of the signal.

The brain does back date events. And it slows the reception of sensory data from various parts of the body to coordinate it in time. For example, if I touch your cheek and your toe at exactly the same time, your brain will perceive as happening at the same time, even though it takes slightly longer for a nerve impulse to reach your brain from the toe than from the cheek. The brain slows down impulses coming from closer parts so that they can arrive no faster than the ones from the one more distant parts. And while you would not think the difference is significant, shorter athletes have an advantage in that they perceive or feel everything happening sooner than taller athletes by .05 m/s for each inch difference in height.
Quote
These surprising results seem to refute the idea that every mental experience is directly correlated
with a physical process in the brain. Or, as neuroscientist John Eccles put it, “there can be a temporal
discrepancy between neural events and the experiences of the self conscious mind.”v
Consciousness awareness is not the only measure. The temporal discrepancy can be explained by different types of nerve processing. You remove your hand from a hot burning element before you are "consciously aware" of the pain. This happens because of a reflex arc that only goes to the spinal cord and shoots back out through a motor nerve. Another, slower message gets sent to the brain informing it that you have damaged your hand, making you say "Ow!" and probably storing that information so you are more careful next time.

Quote
Dean Radin takes this idea a step further: He notes that the equations of both classical and quantum
physics are neutral with respect to the direction of time and so do not rule out the possibility of future
events causing events in the past. In addition, he has presented some experimental evidence that
individuals can subconsciously react to future events.
Well, then he'll need to prove it.

Quote
At the University of Nevada, people were shown a series of pictures on a computer screen. Most of
the images were of an emotionally calming nature, such as images of landscapes and various nature
scenes, but some were meant to be arousing or disturbing, including pornographic photos and pictures
of corpses. At the beginning of each trial, the screen was blank. The participant would start the trial by
pressing a mouse button. After five seconds, one of these images, calm or emotional, was shown for
three seconds, and then the screen would go blank again. Ten seconds later, a message informed
participants that they could press the mouse button again whenever they felt ready for the next trial.
Five seconds after pressing the mouse button, another picture would be displayed, and the session
would continue until forty pictures had been shown. The order in which the pictures were displayed
was chosen randomly by the computer. Throughout the session the participants’ heart rate, skin
resistance, and blood volume in the fingertips were monitored.
Not surprisingly, dramatic changes in all three physiological measures were recorded when the
emotional pictures were shown. But what was remarkable was that the arousal began before the
emotional picture was displayed, even though the participants could not have known by any normal
means what sort of picture was going to be displayed next. This effect, of unconsciously preparing for
a reaction to an impending event, has been labeled “presentiment” and has been replicated
independently by a laboratory in Holland.35
As Radin notes, if we allow “for the possibility of signals traveling backward in time, then what
Libet saw [in the experiment involving deciding when to push a button] may be the brain’s response to
its own decision taking place a third of a second in the future.”36 In other words, given the apparent
temporal discrepancy between neural events and the experiences of the self-conscious mind, the
subconscious mind may generate neural activity in order to prepare the brain for the execution of an
impending decision. The second experiment described may be an example of the reverse: the mind
may experience and respond to a sensation because of a signal from the future state of the brain.
No, I can't explain the results of that experiment. I'd have to look at how it was done. You would expect some anticipatory spike in excitement before the next picture. And you'd have to make sure the participants had not figured out, consciously or subconsciously, any pattern in when a good or bad picture would be shown next.





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 02:58:02
Why the Newtonian 19th Century outdated and superseded Materialism is False ? :
Cheryl : This Nobel prize Winner Neurobiologist Roger Sperry might interest you , since you are so fond of neurobiology :



I can't help but think you are now playing my Nobel prize winner can beat up your Nobel prize winner, like Godzilla vs Megalon.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 14:35:09
No, I can't explain the results of that experiment. I'd have to look at how it was done. You would expect some anticipatory spike in excitement before the next picture. And you'd have to make sure the participants had not figured out, consciously or subconsciously, any pattern in when a good or bad picture would be shown next.
Psychical researchers had been experimenting with retroactive experiments of this type for years before Bem, with no clear results. The Bem's data analysis has been criticised (see below). Problems have been found in the few experiments he claims replicate his results (he even cited an earthworm study that had 'almost significant' results!). Bem claims a meta-analysis of all studies shows significance, but as usual, when you start removing the poorly designed, documented, and/or controlled studies, the significance drops into noise. There have been many failures to replicate, for example, Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's ‘Retroactive Facilitation of Recall’ Effect (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033423). See the discussion section of that paper for 5 references to critical accounts of Bem's analysis.

It seems to me that much of the effort to support a dualist interpretation for free will in particular, and consciousness in general, is driven by a perceived need to see only consciousness as the 'real' you, and the non-conscious processes as simply some kind of dumb janitor behind the scenes, emptying the bins and handling the mail. However, evidence has been accumulating for some time that it is the sum of the non-conscious processes in the brain that constitute the 'real' you, and that conscious awareness is an evolutionary latecomer to the feast providing a reflective awareness of what the whole is doing. It's less an agent, more a representative or monitor, providing a unified view of the self;  The only 'illusion' of consciousness is the way things are arranged so that the conscious process feels it is the whole rather than being only an awareness of the whole, but that's the way it has to be if you want an integrated conscious sense of self. This misplaced sense of sole agency can be strong enough to produce a sense of complete independence - the concept of a non-physical consciousness that carries on after death - but taking the credit for the team is one thing, that's how it's explicitly set up, but the idea that it can function without them is like the Face of L'Oreal thinking she's the one who makes and sells the perfumes & cosmetics and can still make and sell them even if all the factories burn down and the company goes bust...

So I see the 'real you' as a team effort involving all brain processes, and consciousness is one process on the team who's kept informed, is allowed to sit in on the important meetings, and is led to believe it's all his own work [;)]

Of course, this is just a hypothesis, a speculative model, but it seems to fit the data I've seen better than the other models I've seen, and it does account rather well for those disturbing moments of daily life where the illusion of conscious control is broken, such as when you 'find yourself' doing something you didn't intend to do, or when you do something but don't know why, or when you 'can't stop yourself' doing something, etc. (e.g. when you accidentally blurt out the 'wrong thing' - how can that happen if you're really in conscious control of what you say?).

The model I described above is deliberately at the extreme end of the 'thin consciousness' or 'consciousness lite' range, to emphasise the degree of role reversal over the conventional, intuitive model.

In practice, the roles are not as clear cut, as it's a tightly integrated system, and to some extent the participatory level of consciousness depends on how narrowly or how broadly you draw the (fuzzy) boundaries in the system. I think it's quite likely that areas associated with consciousness will be involved early in the gestation of some activities, and somewhere 'in the loop' for others, but for the vast majority it gets retrospective notification, with timing adjustments to maintain a consistent sense of agency.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 17/12/2013 15:13:20


Of course, this is just a hypothesis, a speculative model, but it seems to fit the data I've seen better than the other models I've seen, and it does account rather well for those disturbing moments of daily life where the illusion of conscious control is broken, such as when you 'find yourself' doing something you didn't intend to do, or when you do something but don't know why, or when you 'can't stop yourself' doing something, etc. (e.g. when you accidentally blurt out the 'wrong thing' - how can that happen if you're really in conscious control of what you say?).



It is obvious that there are details about consciousness we still have to learn about. But having said that, I really like the manner in which you've described the interaction between the conscious mind and it's co-operative agents. I haven't been following this debate very closely of late so if the following has already been discussed, I'll ask to be pardoned. Nevertheless:

If, as Don contends, the conscious mind is a sovereign agent, above and beyond any material description or control, how does he reconcile the UNCONSCIOUS state we call sleep? Because; thru experiment we have recorded brain wave activity that is separate and distinct from waking moments. Here is the evidence to show that consciousness can be measured and this measuring of it proves it's material basis. If it were completely nonmaterial, these measurements would not be possible...............................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 15:34:26
Cheryl :
"Mind-Body Interaction" :



............In the brain model proposed here the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or
a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the
same brain, in neighboring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact
with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the
evolutionary scene yet.

Mind-Body Interaction:


Critics of mentalism and dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties, such as
mind and matter, could possibly interact. How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or
physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes:
The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind interact with the extended
body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the
physical theory that the universe is a closed system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event.
This assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.28
Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave
function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is
of course based on classical physics.
Furthermore, by asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is
making the implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in
common in order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity? Or is it rather an empirical
truth, a fact about nature? As David Hume pointed out long ago, anything in principle could be the
cause of anything else, and so only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John
Beloff considers the issue logically:
If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely want to say that the second event
was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or not the two had anything else in common. As for such a
principle being an empirical truth, how could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and
matter, as candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are independent is to
beg the question. . . . It says something about the desperation of those who want to dismiss radical dualism that such phony
arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly reputable philosophers who should know better.29
Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on
obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another we have interaction
between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper
considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality of different kinds of forces,
and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles. Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis
that only like things can act upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields
—by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and
then the modified field acts upon another body.30
It should be clear that the idea that only like can act upon like rests upon an obsolete, billiard-ball
notion of causation in physics.

Chris Carter

Well, ok. It seems like almost a reversal, though, of the original argument that the mental and the physical are two totally different things, but now suddenly thoughts can effect fields that can effect the physical things.  What field is he referring to?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 15:51:01

[/b]Application to Neuropsychology:[/size]



The most direct evidence pertaining to the effects of conscious choices
upon brain activities comes from experiments in which consciously
controlled cognitive efforts are found to be empirically correlated to
measured physical effects in the brain. An example is the experiment of
Ochsner et al. (2001). The subjects are trained how to cognitively reevaluate
emotional scenes by consciously creating and holding in place
an alternative fictional story of what is really happening in connection
with an emotion-generating scene they are viewing.
The trial began with a 4-second presentation of a negative or
neutral photo, during which participants were instructed simply
to view the stimulus on the screen. This interval was intended to
provide time for participants to apprehend complex scenes and
allow an emotional response to be generated that participants
would then be asked to regulate. The word ‘attend’ (for negative
or neutral photos) or ‘reappraise’ (negative photos only) then
appeared beneath the photo and the participants followed this
instruction for 4 seconds.
To verify whether the participants had, in fact, reappraised in
this manner, during the post-scan rating session participants
were asked to indicate for each photo whether they had reinterpreted
the photo (as instructed) or had used some other type
of reappraisal strategy. Compliance was high: On less than 4%
of trials with highly negative photos did participants report
using another type of strategy.
Reports such as these can be taken as evidence that the streams of
consciousness of the participants do exist and contain elements identifiable
as efforts to reappraise.
Patterns of brain activity accompanying reappraisal efforts were
assessed by using functional magnetic imaging resonance (fMRI). The
fMRI results were that reappraisal was positively correlated with increased
activity in the left lateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (regions thought to be connected to cognitive
control) and decreased activity in the (emotion-related) amygdala and
medial orbito-frontal cortex.
How can we explain the correlation revealed in this experiment
between the mental reality of ‘conscious effort’ and the physical reality
of measured brain behavior?


Maybe I don't understand the set up of the experiment. Any time you ask subjects to perform a contradictory task, like read the word of a color when it's printed in another color, the brain has to work a little harder, expend more energy. It also tends to slow down a bit. On the fMRI, the parts of the brain that were active were the parts I think you'd expect to be active. What am I missing here?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 16:09:40
... You may not like the article, because it is somewhat critical, but it does mention some changes Stapps made to his theory.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060623070312/http://individual.utoronto.ca/dbourget/download/QLPM.pdf
Thanks for that link Carol, it does confirm a few of my doubts. It also points out that while Stapp's view of consciousness as based in multiple patterns of neural activity (representing qualia) is broadly reasonable - pace his need to introduce quantum phenomena, which looks like a case of 'man with a hammer' syndrome - it conflicts with his seemingly dualistic interpretation of free will, which appears to be some unexplained volitional agency that delays wave function collapse until a high probability of the desired outcome is achieved (or something like that). But this apparently separates and distinguishes free will (unexplained volitional agency) from conscious intent (also volitional agency, but based in neural activity), which raises questions of precedence and redundancy.

Further, if the neural processing in the brain can give rise to consciousness and a superposition of options for action, yet is insufficient to select the appropriate action, we must ask how the judgement of suitability or desirability in this dualistic, solipsistic view, is made - it would seem that this unexplained non-physical system would also need to somehow process the same data, either to generate a sample desirable outcome to compare with the superposed options arrived at by the physical processing, or to analyse the desirability of some particular outcome on-the-fly. If the physical system is unable to make appropriate selections without an external agency, how this external agency can make its choices without also needing another parallel system to analyse the desirability of its own choices, and so-on, recursively, is unexplained. It smacks of the infinite regression of Dennett's 'Cartesian Theatre' argument.




It almost seems that Stapp and others are tip toeing around what the conscious agency actually consists of, or they don't really care, and are just interested in seeing if it is possible to work in free will in some way. Stapp is not shy about admitting that objective. And I agree he is looking for a way to re-instate personal accountability he feels is being undermined by neuroscience.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 16:28:48
It is obvious that there are details about consciousness we still have to learn about.
Sure, and if new evidence emerges that suggests a better or different model, I won't be wailing and gnashing my teeth - I just want to know how it all works.

Quote
If, as Don contends, the conscious mind is a sovereign agent, above and beyond any material description or control, how does he reconcile the UNCONSCIOUS state we call sleep? Because; thru experiment we have recorded brain wave activity that is separate and distinct from waking moments. Here is the evidence to show that consciousness can be measured and this measuring of it proves it's material basis. If it were completely nonmaterial, these measurements would not be possible...............................
It's a good question; while there seems to be partial or fragmentary consciousness for quite a lot of sleep (what I've called the 'conscious process' is the activities of a large number of sub-processes), but there are periods when too few of these are either active or synchronised enough for any coherent consciousness to be generated. Does the immaterial consciousness need to sleep too? [;)]

I'm curious to know what he says about questions raised by the split-brain studies he quoted - though judging by previous responses, he'll either ignore them, dump some blather and handwaving about science and materialist ideology, or post a few chapters of someone-else's book...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 17/12/2013 16:38:22
Let's look at the statistics of an "anticipatory response" (y) to emotive pictures. Suppose I have equal numbers of neutral (X) and emotive (Y) images, displayed at random. After a few trials, my subject will have a pretty good idea that they are about equally likely, so if he sees the sequence XX, YX, or XXX he will expect the next image to be Y. Therefore the probability of an anticipatory  y response will be greater than then actual incidence of Y images. Summed over a large number of trials, this will look like "the subject correctly anticipated Y significantly more than chance" but the statistically correct inference is that time is unidirectional and people try to impose pattern on random events. Why else would anyone choose lottery numbers based on previous outcomes? And why do lotteries make a profit?   The problem with the experiment is that there is no true zero.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 17/12/2013 16:54:33


I'm curious to know what he says about questions raised by the split-brain studies he quoted - though judging by previous responses, he'll either ignore them, dump some blather and handwaving about science and materialist ideology, or post a few chapters of someone-else's book...
I'm exceptionally confident he'll respond with the same arrogant style he has demonstrated throughout this entire thread. He refuses to answer when challenged and dumps continuous, repetitious, and worthless reiterations.

Every time we pose an interesting challenge, he either completely ignores it or vomits up full pages of nonsense in an attempt to move the discussion past and beyond it so he can, to coin a football phrase, move the goal post in hopes that the question will be overlooked and forgotten.

There is no middle ground with Don...., this is the very reason I've limited my participation here. I firmly believe he has a secret religious agenda.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 17:07:01
It almost seems that Stapp and others are tip toeing around what the conscious agency actually consists of, or they don't really care, and are just interested in seeing if it is possible to work in free will in some way. Stapp is not shy about admitting that objective.
Yes; I think they feel that explaining free will will lead to an account of conscious agency, which seems logical, but there is a notable absence of a clear and coherent definition of what they mean by free will  [:-X]

Don himself started a thread on free will because he "just wanted to hear [my] opinion on the subject of free will" - carelessly, he didn't tell me about it, or actually ask me for my opinion, but I eventually found it and asked him exactly what he meant by free will; so far he has failed to respond...  [::)]

Quote
And I agree he is looking for a way to re-instate personal accountability he feels is being undermined by neuroscience.
I don't see much of a problem with simple personal accountability per se - if an individual can be shown to have acted [without coercion], they can be said to be responsible for that action, and can be asked to account for it (although they may not be able to account for it). For me, the problem arises when you start with an abstraction of cultural convenience, like 'moral responsibility', reify it, generate another (ill-defined, incoherent) abstraction to justify it (i.e. free will), then insist on finding neural or physical correlates for it.

By tweaking the concept of free will to make it coherent, it can quite easily be applied, and arises naturally out of even an entirely deterministic behavioural model without any need to find explanatory gaps or uncertainties in quantum mechanics to wedge it into. The question is whether making it coherent spoils the party for moral responsibility - and I rather suspect it does.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 17:17:49
Let's look at the statistics of an "anticipatory response" (y) to emotive pictures. Suppose I have equal numbers of neutral (X) and emotive (Y) images, displayed at random. After a few trials, my subject will have a pretty good idea that they are about equally likely, so if he sees the sequence XX, YX, or XXX he will expect the next image to be Y. Therefore the probability of an anticipatory  y response will be greater than then actual incidence of Y images. Summed over a large number of trials, this will look like "the subject correctly anticipated Y significantly more than chance" but the statistically correct inference is that time is unidirectional and people try to impose pattern on random events. Why else would anyone choose lottery numbers based on previous outcomes? And why do lotteries make a profit?   The problem with the experiment is that there is no true zero.
True enough, although I'd expect a well designed experiment to control for this, or to account for it in the analysis (e.g. by subtracting the number of false positives). I did study the papers in some detail when they were first published, but can't remember now whether this might have been a problem or not... it's not something I'd care to repeat  [|)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 17:19:05
... I firmly believe he has a secret religious agenda.
You reckon? [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2013 17:47:51
Guys :
Due to some unexpected beautiful amazing  special circumstances , i cannot but have to leave you and  this forum , for a while , untill  the start of next year : 2014 ,hopefully .

So, know theyself, i should say : that's THE key to understanding your own selves and this universe .

Science ,at this materialist stage at least , cannot help you much in that regard ,i am afraid .
Science will ,in the future , maybe .
I am not sure either of returning back to this forum .
It's been an enormous pleasure to have been talking to you all, guys .
I have been learning a lot from these discussions, from you all , that have been opening up whole new vistas and unimaginable unexpected new universes to me , you have no idea : thanks a lot for that indeed .
This site is in fact an unparalleled one, believe  me  i can tell  : my warm and friendly compliments to those running it ,really: great job : they should be proud of this site indeed , as you all should be  .
My sincere and genuine apologies for having been a kind of a jerk haha ,from time to time  : nothing personal : it's just that i am so passionate about human consciousness , that's all:but , the mainstream false materialist "scientific world view " has been the one preventing science from shedding some sort of light on consciousness , for so long now, to mention just that fact  :  i cannot imagine anythingelse more important than trying to understand our own human consciousness without which there would be no science , no civilization, no progress .... .
So, science should be liberated from materialism ,if science wanna be able to try to tackle THE  scientific mystery of them all : consciousness,as the end of materialism is nearer than ever  .

Trying to understand our own consciousness , and hence ourselves and this universe ,is THE key  to evolving as to try to reach the high level of human consciousness that might help us all achieve  peace , tolerance , real progress , human care , human love ......for all humanity : no cliche really : this utopia can be achieved through consciousness,then and only then, we might be becoming "gods " under God, by actively participating to the still ongoing creation of this still expanding and evolutionary maginificent beautiful fascinating wonderful universe , more than Einstein himself could have ever imagined (And ,oh , boy or girl haha , that  genius had indeed a lots of imagination,no wonder that he said :"Imagination is more important than knowledge " .) , when he said that science has been turning humans into "gods ", before deserving  to be humans  .
I do thus feel nothing but love for you all , seriously , and i wish you all the best ,in your own lives , work , in relation to your own loved ones ...
Human consciousness that's THE biggest and most important mystery of them all : consciousness as THE obstacle today ,and THE key to understanding ourselves and the universe ,so, i really cannot understand how ,on earth, could science ignore consciousness as such , for so long now, thanks to materialism , untill recently .
Thanks a lot for all your interesting replies ,i do appreciate very much indeed .
I see that you did not address the key issues raised  by my above displayed posted excerpts , especially those regarding the fact that most mind-brain  or mind -body relationships have been largely viewed  or studied , thought about ,  under the fundamentally incorrect classical physics' points of view , thanks to materialism thus, not to mention the fact that there is still no single serious falsifiable theory of consciousness out there yet : so, i do not understand why you do behave and think as if there is  .
P.S.: You did not address  the fact that materialism is false either , as talked about in those same above displayed excerpts  .
Second : scientists still do not know much,if anything at all in fact ,  about how mental processes or conscious states can relate to or can be linked to their alleged corresponding neuronal activity ....

Modern physics might indeed hold THE key to trying to relatively solve the consciousness mystery : the biggest of them all: the most important one of them all  .

Nice holidays , folks .
Merry Christmas and happy new year 2014 ,in advance : see ya next year then .
Best wishes .
"All you need is ...love " indeed , as the Beattles used to sing .

Editing :
I see that Ethos who still cannot realise the simple obvious and undeniable fact that he has been extremely bizarre and paradoxical = an understatement thus: extremely weird or odd  , as to believe both in the false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " ,and in his own faith (religion, i guess ) ,at the same time = 2 mutually exclusive world views .
I see that he repeats that silly "religious agenda " accusation of his , in relation to my own person's motivations : i did respond to that earlier :
I do have the same "agenda " and motivations as those of atheist Nagel and other atheists , as that of Sheldrake and those of other non-materialists , either the religious or the non-religious ones :
That "agenda " and real motivation of mine , once again , is the wish to liberate science from its false mainstream materialist current "scientific world view " ,that has been preventing science from shedding light on consciounsess, to mention just that fact .
If only that bizzare and paradoxical Ethos could understand what i have been saying all along (It's been obvious that he has not been able to understand a single thing of what i have been saying thus,even though i have been stating simple facts concerning the obvious falsehood of the mainstream materialist "scientific world view "  .) , if only he could , he would have been realising his own paradoxical weird odd bizarre "thinking " on the subject : a form of a split personality of his , schizophrenia, or split-brain haha , unfortunately enough for him .
His problem, not mine : one can only take people to the fountain , but one can certainly not make them drink from it indeed .
.............
Bye , guys .
All the best .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2013 18:27:30
... I firmly believe he has a secret religious agenda.
You reckon? [;)]

Haha :  amazing : no wonder that Ethos has been a bizarre paradoxical weird odd guy ,with his own bizzare and tragic -hilarious conception of ...science , ironically enough :
Well , see above : "The human will to believe is ....inexhaustible " indeed , as T.Nagel said in his " Why is the materialist neo-darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " book .
But , to believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , that's a bizzare something that cannot be "achieved " but by guys like ...Ethos here . haha
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 18:53:27

I don't see much of a problem with simple personal accountability per se - if an individual can be shown to have acted [without coercion], they can be said to be responsible for that action, and can be asked to account for it (although they may not be able to account for it). For me, the problem arises when you start with an abstraction of cultural convenience, like 'moral responsibility', reify it, generate another (ill-defined, incoherent) abstraction to justify it (i.e. free will), then insist on finding neural or physical correlates for it.

By tweaking the concept of free will to make it coherent, it can quite easily be applied, and arises naturally out of even an entirely deterministic behavioural model without any need to find explanatory gaps or uncertainties in quantum mechanics to wedge it into. The question is whether making it coherent spoils the party for moral responsibility - and I rather suspect it does.


The courts have always taken into account whether a person could control their actions, or if they were unable to because of insanity, mental retardation,brain tumors or brain injuries, youth, even the "heat of the moment" or panic. Neuroscience may have nudged that dividing line in finding more biological causes for behavior.  But all I think will happen, and in many respects it already has, is that justice will based less on determining responsibility, and more on whether the person has proven they are a danger to others. It may also come to rely more on the idea of modifiability.

If a child scribbles on the wall, we assume this behavior can be modified, either by positive or negative reinforcement, or simply by explaining that paper is for drawing, not walls. The behavior is modifiable. If he scribbled on the wall because he was sleep walking, nothing we say or do the next morning is likely to prevent it from happening again the next time he sleeps walks. We can say he wasn't in control of his actions, but we could also simply say it is not modifiable behavior, other than by directly intervening, placing the crayons out of reach, etc.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 20:23:37
So there we have it - when the going gets interesting, cut and run.

Two posts, one long enough to answer at least some of the questions, instead used to make a theatrical lovey ('darlings, I love you all, mwaah!') exit; the other, an incoherent insult [:o)]

No surprises there, then  [::)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2013 20:34:33

It seems to me that much of the effort to support a dualist interpretation for free will in particular, and consciousness in general, is driven by a perceived need to see only consciousness as the 'real' you, and the non-conscious processes as simply some kind of dumb janitor behind the scenes, emptying the bins and handling the mail.
I wonder if we take our innate resistance to being compelled or restricted from doing things against our will by others and turn it against ourselves or the idea of our own subconscious.
Sometimes I even wonder if people's fear of their own subconscious acting without their awareness or consent is related to a primitive fear of parasites.

Quote

However, evidence has been accumulating for some time that it is the sum of the non-conscious processes in the brain that constitute the 'real' you, and that conscious awareness is an evolutionary latecomer to the feast providing a reflective awareness of what the whole is doing. It's less an agent, more a representative or monitor, providing a unified view of the self;  The only 'illusion' of consciousness is the way things are arranged so that the conscious process feels it is the whole rather than being only an awareness of the whole, but that's the way it has to be if you want an integrated conscious sense of self. This misplaced sense of sole agency can be strong enough to produce a sense of complete independence - the concept of a non-physical consciousness that carries on after death - but taking the credit for the team is one thing, that's how it's explicitly set up, but the idea that it can function without them is like the Face of L'Oreal thinking she's the one who makes and sells the perfumes & cosmetics and can still make and sell them even if all the factories burn down and the company goes bust...

So I see the 'real you' as a team effort involving all brain processes, and consciousness is one process on the team who's kept informed, is allowed to sit in on the important meetings, and is led to believe it's all his own work

In addition to providing a unified sense of self, the concept of free will might result simply because I can't foresee the future. Because I don't know exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow or next week or next year, and nothing appears to be constraining me, I believe I can control what happens or what I decide to do. Even if someone successfully predicts what I do or how I react, I still feel that it could have been otherwise, especially if I didn't predict it. If it's an illusion, it's an oddly inescapable one, except by rephrasing the question, as you have, and asking "free from what?" Do we really want to be free from all causation - learning, past experience, genetic abilities, automatic behavior that allows us to walk across the room without issuing specific instructions to each muscle group? The only thing I can think of that most people wish to be free of is reacting impulsively in ways they will later regret, kind of like worrying that there is a rogue or deficient player on your team. Casinos often hire pretty women because statistically, men spend more money and take greater risks in the presence of an attractive women, even if they are not aware of doing so, or consciously trying to impress her. Conversely, I once heard of a stock broker who never worked at home because he knew that environment would make him too conservative and risk averse. Does trying to stack ones own the deck, so to speak, support the idea of free will, or is ultimately a contradiction, or make no sense at all?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 20:44:06
The courts have always taken into account whether a person could control their actions, or if they were unable to because of insanity, mental retardation,brain tumors or brain injuries, youth, even the "heat of the moment" or panic. Neuroscience may have nudged that dividing line in finding more biological causes for behavior.  But all I think will happen, and in many respects it already has, is that justice will based less on determining responsibility, and more on whether the person has proven they are a danger to others. It may also come to rely more on the idea of modifiability.

If a child scribbles on the wall, we assume this behavior can be modified, either by positive or negative reinforcement, or simply by explaining that paper is for drawing, not walls. The behavior is modifiable. If he scribbled on the wall because he was sleep walking, nothing we say or do the next morning is likely to prevent it from happening again the next time he sleeps walks. We can say he wasn't in control of his actions, but we could also simply say it is not modifiable behavior, other than by directly intervening, placing the crayons out of reach, etc.
I hope you're right; I'd like to see a greater emphasis on effective deterrence (punitive punishment doesn't work well), rehabilitation, and reparation. Retributive punishment may the victims feel better, but has more negative than positive consequences overall; positive reinforcement is known to be more effective than negative, and I think reparation is the future, where the offender meets the victim, apologises, and makes at least partial amends (or where the victim is non-specific, makes general reparation to society through work or fines, etc).

But I do see plenty of potential for defence solicitors to argue their client's genetic pre-disposition combined with a troubled childhood are significant mitigating factors in their offences; and there's enough evidence already to suggest that they could sometimes be right. It will take a sophisticated and enlightened legal system to deal fairly with these claims, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and it won't be easy to educate the public to acknowledge these considerations. There's potential for plenty of choppy waters ahead...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2013 20:55:57
So there we have it - when the going gets interesting, cut and run.

Two posts, one long enough to answer at least some of the questions, instead used to make a theatrical lovey ('darlings, I love you all, mwaah!') exit; the other, an incoherent insult [:o)]

No surprises there, then  [::)]

Before i go , the following :
Why do you take your own speculations  for granted  as some sort of facts ?
Where did you detect ...insults ?
Who said i am running away then ?
Try to answer the key issues of my excerpts ,and then when i will  come back , i will try to address your eventual replies .

Those posted excerpts do answer many of your questions , you just cannot but continue sticking to your own materialist crap , no offense , and that's no insult either : crap it is .

And what's wrong about saying that i feel nothing but love for you , guys ? : nothing theatrical about that : as a die-hard materialist , you cannot but dismiss love as just an illusion also ,so , you "mindless heartless insensitive soulless " (kidding ) lunatic materialist haha

"The will to believe is inexhaustible " indeed .


Take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2013 21:08:02
I will be watching you , from time to time , whenever i can : let's see whether you, guys , can or not progress in this discussion without me ............
Whenever i am gone , this discussion becomes clinically dead , untill i come back and revive it again .
Let's hope , it wouldn't be the case this time .
Big brother will be  watching you thus .
And when i will come back, if i come back, i do promise that i will be delivering some challenging material that will be rocking your materialist sand castles , to the point where its sand grains will be flying in all directions ,thanks to the stormy wind that i will be triggering ...
P.S.: I hope that some "geniuses " here such as Ethos will be decent enough to leave this thread , since he cannot ,obviously , understand simple statements ....while he keeps on making wild and silly specualtions accusations ....in order to hide his paradoxical ignorance in the process ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 22:08:54
I wonder if we take our innate resistance to being compelled or restricted from doing things against our will by others and turn it against ourselves or the idea of our own subconscious.

Sometimes I even wonder if people's fear of their own subconscious acting without their awareness or consent is related to a primitive fear of parasites.

I hadn't really considered that. It does seem to me there's an instinctive wariness, fear even, of what's hidden, or unknown, and the subconscious has a reputation for being the source of primitive, dark, repressed thoughts. To then suggest that it is in control, makes consciousness look like the helpless puppet of a scary stranger... The key is the recognition that the 'you' beloved of friends and family belies that, and the recognition that it really is 'you' in control, but your consciousness only has a limited awareness of what that means [8D] 

Quote
In addition to providing a unified sense of self, the concept of free will might result simply because I can't foresee the future. Because I don't know exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow or next week or next year, and nothing appears to be constraining me, I believe I can control what happens or what I decide to do. Even if someone successfully predicts what I do or how I react, I still feel that it could have been otherwise, especially if I didn't predict it.
Yes, exactly; it's a kind of cultural fig leaf for our ignorance of all the complex detail of what goes into our (and other people's) decisions. We know they're not random, that our preferences are definitely involved - it's not always clear how, but they're our choices, so what other explanation is there but free will; and it's interesting that the more unpredictable and random looking our choice, the more we're inclined to invoke free will:
"Why'd you do that? you never do that!"
"I've got free will, haven't I?"
"Yeah, but seriously, why'd you do it?"
"Well, er, I don't know really..."
it's ironic, but even in a purely deterministic universe, we'd act as if we had free will - we'd have no choice!

Quote
If it's an illusion, it's an oddly inescapable one, except by rephrasing the question, as you have, and asking "free from what?" Do we really want to be free from all causation - learning, past experience, genetic abilities, automatic behavior that allows us to walk across the room without issuing specific instructions to each muscle group?
Quite; and if all our knowledge, memories, personality and experience aren't determining our decisions, in what sense are the decisions ours?

Quote
The only thing I can think of that most people wish to be free of is reacting impulsively in ways they will later regret, kind of like worrying that there is a rogue or deficient player on your team. Casinos often hire pretty women because statistically, men spend more money and take greater risks in the presence of an attractive women, even if they are not aware of doing so, or consciously trying to impress her. Conversely, I once heard of a stock broker who never worked at home because he knew that environment would make him too conservative and risk averse. Does trying to stack ones own the deck, so to speak, support the idea of free will, or is ultimately a contradiction, or make no sense at all?
I don't quite understand what you mean here.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2013 22:17:37
I will be watching you , from time to time , whenever i can...
Creepy...  [:o]

Quote
And when i will come back, if i come back, i do promise that i will be delivering some challenging material that will be rocking your materialist sand castles , to the point where its sand grains will be flying in all directions ,thanks to the stormy wind that i will be triggering ...
Yeah, right  [::)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 17/12/2013 22:36:52
I will be watching you , from time to time , whenever i can : let's see whether you, guys , can or not progress in this discussion without me ............
I'm missing you already..............

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Whenever i am gone , this discussion becomes clinically dead , untill i come back and revive it again .
I feel the life draining away as I speak.   
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Let's hope , it wouldn't be the case this time .
We're all holding our collective breaths.

Quote from: DonQuichotte
P.S.: I hope that some "geniuses " here such as Ethos will be decent enough to leave this thread , since he cannot ,obviously , understand simple statements ....while he keeps on making wild and silly specualtions accusations ....in order to hide his paradoxical ignorance in the process ...
Now,........ is that anyway to talk about someone you LOVE?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 17/12/2013 22:45:56
Just a quick note:   I'll wager Don won't be gone very long, he just can't help it!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/12/2013 00:44:58
The complexity of the thought process, "consciousness" can not presently be isolated to the quantum level and possibly never will be. While it is true that Quantum mechanics works very well with the micro world, a comprehensive understanding of it's relevance to the macro world is lacking at this time in history. With this understanding in tow, we should be very careful when trying to attribute any significance to spooky quantum interactions as having measureable influence on cranial activity. And where good science is practiced, accurate measurements are absolutely necessary.

It's important to remember that when someone offers a maybe this or maybe that, interesting maybe's lead nowhere unless verifiable evidence can be presented. To suggest that one is correct only because another can not prove them wrong is worthless and dishonest.

It's entirely OK to speculate and ponder about the nature of reality. This is why I am open to religious questions that people wonder about sometime. But when it comes to inserting religion or philosophy into understanding the physical world we live in, I draw the line. 

If you want to talk science, give me evidence that fits into the world of my five senses.

If you want to talk religion, we're pretty much free to speculate about infinite possibilities.

Just don't start mixing them together, you'll end up with worthless results.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/12/2013 00:45:23

I don't quite understand what you mean here.

Well, some people, myself included, know they have a tendency to behave a certain way in certain circumstances, and instead of trying to use "will power" they simply prearrange those circumstances so that it less likely to have those effects. I know that if I go grocery shopping when I'm hungry I will spend too much money and buy crazy things that probably aren't healthy. So I have a small snack before I go.  Or someone else might say he knows every time he stops by his friend Bob's, Bob will offer him a beer and probably several more, and he won't say no, but he has to get up early the next day so he doesn't stop in. And people put money in Christmas accounts that cannot be withdrawn until November without penalty. It's the equivalent of Odysseus lashing himself to the ships mast so he could not be lured to his death by the Sirens' song.

  If I had total free will, I should not need to trick myself, but simply decide what I am going to do and do it. On the other hand, one could argue that I am using my free will or some aspect of consciousness to circumvent my subconscious programs at some point in the future. Of course a strict determinist would say that too was predetermined.

A really silly example of trying to outsmart myself is that I used to set my clocks ahead so I wouldn't be late to go places. It got a little out of hand though when I discovered other benefits. At one point I had them set a half hour ahead because it made me sleepier early, and I went to bed on time. My boyfriend at the time said it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard of. "Don't you just get used to your clocks being a half hour fast and factor that in? How can you trick yourself over and over?"

I also liked the fact that I arrived at work the same time I left home. It seemed to make the trip shorter.  And he said, "Yeah, but then the trip home is twice as long!"
"I don't care about that," I said "because I'm never in a big rush then. I only need to get some where fast in the morning."
 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/12/2013 00:59:14

I also liked the fact that I arrived at work the same time I left home. It seemed to make the trip shorter.  And he said, "Yeah, but then the trip home is twice as long!"
"I don't care about that," I said "because I'm never in a big rush then. I only need to get some where fast in the morning."
This is quite amusing to me Cheryl because my wife does the same thing. And I, like most males I'm sure, responds exactly like your boy friend did. But that's a subject for an entirely different thread, or is it?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/12/2013 01:14:11
Here's an article from Science Daily that's kind of relevant to control or veto power.
Scientists Improve Human Self-Control Through Electrical Brain Stimulation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131213094949.htm
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: RD on 18/12/2013 03:18:45
... my five senses ...

Looks like there are more than five (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense#Definition), e.g. thermoception , proprioception , nociception.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/12/2013 06:47:00
Quote
But , to believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , that's a bizzare something that cannot be "achieved " but by guys like ...Ethos here . haha

It's the very essence of faith and many other perversions. Remarkably common among congregations and psychopaths.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 18/12/2013 12:00:03
Well, some people, myself included, know they have a tendency to behave a certain way in certain circumstances, and instead of trying to use "will power" they simply prearrange those circumstances so that it less likely to have those effects.
...
Interesting point - I suppose it depends on your precise definition of free will. This is part of the definition problem - you don't have free will in some situation if there are explicit constraints on your choices or actions, or if you are coerced, but as you say, you may be free to solve the problem or make the choice another way, so you are free to exercise your will in one way but not in another...

There's a distinction to be made between being a creature that has free will, and being able to exercise free will in some context.

My everyday definition is a simple one: "the capability to act according to our preference without the perception of undue external coercion or constraint".

I say 'perception', because we may not be aware of all the choices, constraints or coercions, so it's entirely subjective, and you might change your mind with hindsight (e.g. "I thought I was making a free choice, but I was deceived").

I also mention 'external' coercion or constraint, but it's complicated by the issues of ethics, morals, and norms. One person might see the presence of a policeman as an external constraint on their freedom to take certain actions, another might not dream of taking those actions because they have internalised the moral constraints of that culture.

This is a contradiction at the heart of free will in respect of moral responsibility - we are said to be free to act against morals of the culture, but are expected to follow them; but while we may not be physically constrained from acting, are we not in some way constrained or coerced by our cultural programming, our conscience? And doesn't our cultural programming, our conscience, influence our preferences, our will?
So internalised cultural morality influences our will through our conscience, but also can be seen as a mental constraint or coercion on our freedom of action...

It's one of those abstract cultural concepts that seems to have superficial meaning, but is malleable enough to mean whatever you like, and when examined closely appears to have no substance or meaning at all.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 18/12/2013 12:16:51
Here's an article from Science Daily that's kind of relevant to control or veto power.
Scientists Improve Human Self-Control Through Electrical Brain Stimulation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131213094949.htm
This must be the same braking circuit that was mentioned in those studies where brain activity consistent with a decision to act was detected before the subject was consciously aware of it, but apparently they were still able to veto the action before it took place.

It's unclear whether that action veto would be a feedback from conscious processes or the result of another pre-conscious decision process they subsequently became conscious of... I think the latter would be more interesting [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 18/12/2013 12:28:27
Quote
But , to believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , that's a bizzare something that cannot be "achieved " but by guys like ...Ethos here . haha

It's the very essence of faith and many other perversions. Remarkably common among congregations and psychopaths.
Yes, it's not uncommon; the mathematician & logician Charles Dodgeson (Lewis Carroll) was fascinated by it. In 'Through The Looking Glass', he has Alice and the White Queen discussing it:

"I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day."
"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/12/2013 14:14:27
I think that last phrase may have influenced Eddington, who said "the student of physics must get accustomed to having his common sense violated six times before breakfast". But abandoning a defective hypothesis (science) is not the same as holding mutually exclusive views (everything else).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/12/2013 15:47:30
... my five senses ...

Looks like there are more than five (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense#Definition), e.g. thermoception , proprioception , nociception.
I stand corrected.............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/12/2013 20:30:27


This is quite amusing to me Cheryl because my wife does the same thing. And I, like most males I'm sure, responds exactly like your boy friend did. But that's a subject for an entirely different thread, or is it?

Gender differences might not be irrelevant to the topic of consciousness, although it’s possible if I respond in much detail a moderator will split off that discussion into a new thread. (Although maybe in the “New Theories” category, anything goes.)

The other problem is I am well aware I have a huge bias concerning the biological bases of gender differences. I would like, or strongly prefer, there not to be significant differences between men and women, or between races, because of the potential for discrimination, and probably because of my own issues of self-identity. I sometimes ask myself what I would do  if  confronted with irrefutable evidence that men were superior in many ways to women. How would I react? Would I, like Don, fervently deny it because of the threat it presents to my world view, or would I simply accept it, shrug my shoulders, and say, “Sucks to be me, I guess.” I’m really not sure.
Despite my bias, I can still make my best effort to think about the question reasonably. My strongest argument against strong sexual dimorphism is that only two of the 46 chromosomes are sex chromosomes, and the X is shared by males. So any differences between men and women have to be explained by genes on the Y chromosome (which contains surprisingly little information) regulatory effects of those genes on the Y, or selective gene expression through hormones. You’d have show what genes, and how many, on the autosomes are modulated by hormones.

Even if there are different evolutionary pressures on males and females, as long as a selective trait is not a disadvantage for the opposite gender, I don’t see why it would be suppressed. For example, distance vision might be more important for male hunters, and near vision for female gatherers, but if neither is a disadvantage or somehow  incompatible (where you can’t have one without the expense of the other) why would both sexes not inherit genes for both good near and distance vision?

My other argument is that physical differences that make men and women look so different are primarily related to mate selection and reproduction, but mental differences, like intelligence, perception, problem solving, language may be more important to survival in general,  in order to live to the age to reproduce, and facilitate  the survival of the group and off-spring.

On the other hand, there are documented behavioral differences between men and women, but they are somewhat statistical. It’s been proven in multiple ways that statistically that men are more aggressive than women, but that said, there are many assertive women and many shy passive men. Aggression in men and women are probably overlapping bell shaped curves. Behavioural differences don’t seem to be absolute differences like either having ovaries, or not having ovaries.

The other problem with statistical differences, is that statistics are more important to doctors, actuaries, and in marketing research, and less important (and accurate) in our daily relationships with a small number of individuals. Even if you can show statistically that men are better at math, or there are more male math geniuses, what difference does it make to the brilliant female mathematician that she is a statistical anomaly? How would an institution benefit by screening out all females and possibly overlooking her as the best candidate among the rest?

Here’s another everyday example. Hunting is a more popular sport among men than women. Yet in the small office I once worked, all of the hunters were female. This is probably explained by the fact that most of the women grew up here, a rural area, where hunting is a popular social activity and even needed in order to have a freezer full of meat all winter. All of the men in the office were doctors imported from cities and suburbs, where hunting is not as common (as were the female doctors.) But the rule of thumb that “most hunters are men”, wasn’t reflected in that small group, and if you applied that rule, you would be wrong.

There has been a lot of bias in evolutionary psychology, in my probably biased opinion. A popular book in the 70s was Desmond Morris’s “The Naked Ape” in which every evolutionary change in homo sapiens (walking up right, tool making, language, etc.) was connected to hunting. Obtaining food is a key  evolutionary pressure, but so is anything that effects the survival of offspring, especially helpless and late developing offspring like humans, and he just seemed to ignore  any evolutionary pressures on females. And I won’t even get into the bad science in books like “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.”

My final argument is that I do not own numerous pairs of shoes. Therefore, any scientific evidence of gender differences must be a result of the  “false misconception of nature by main stream scientists blinded by their outdated 19th century, Eurocentric world view.” (Okay, now I know I am biased.)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/12/2013 22:14:29


This is quite amusing to me Cheryl because my wife does the same thing. And I, like most males I'm sure, responds exactly like your boy friend did. But that's a subject for an entirely different thread, or is it?

Gender differences might not be irrelevant to the topic of consciousness, although it’s possible if I respond in much detail a moderator will split off that discussion into a new thread. (Although maybe in the “New Theories” category, anything goes.)

The other problem is I am well aware I have a huge bias concerning the biological bases of gender differences. I would like, or strongly prefer, there not to be significant differences between men and women, or between races, because of the potential for discrimination, and probably because of my own issues of self-identity. I sometimes ask myself what I would do  if  confronted with irrefutable evidence that men were superior in many ways to women. How would I react? Would I, like Don, fervently deny it because of the threat it presents to my world view, or would I simply accept it, shrug my shoulders, and say, “Sucks to be me, I guess.” I’m really not sure.
Despite my bias, I can still make my best effort to think about the question reasonably. My strongest argument against strong sexual dimorphism is that only two of the 46 chromosomes are sex chromosomes, and the X is shared by males. So any differences between men and women have to be explained by genes on the Y chromosome (which contains surprisingly little information) regulatory effects of those genes on the Y, or selective gene expression through hormones. You’d have show what genes, and how many, on the autosomes are modulated by hormones.

Even if there are different evolutionary pressures on males and females, as long as a selective trait is not a disadvantage for the opposite gender, I don’t see why it would be suppressed. For example, distance vision might be more important for male hunters, and near vision for female gatherers, but if neither is a disadvantage or somehow  incompatible (where you can’t have one without the expense of the other) why would both sexes not inherit genes for both good near and distance vision?

My other argument is that physical differences that make men and women look so different are primarily related to mate selection and reproduction, but mental differences, like intelligence, perception, problem solving, language may be more important to survival in general,  in order to live to the age to reproduce, and facilitate  the survival of the group and off-spring.

On the other hand, there are documented behavioral differences between men and women, but they are somewhat statistical. It’s been proven in multiple ways that statistically that men are more aggressive than women, but that said, there are many assertive women and many shy passive men. Aggression in men and women are probably overlapping bell shaped curves. Behavioural differences don’t seem to be absolute differences like either having ovaries, or not having ovaries.

The other problem with statistical differences, is that statistics are more important to doctors, actuaries, and in marketing research, and less important (and accurate) in our daily relationships with a small number of individuals. Even if you can show statistically that men are better at math, or there are more male math geniuses, what difference does it make to the brilliant female mathematician that she is a statistical anomaly? How would an institution benefit by screening out all females and possibly overlooking her as the best candidate among the rest?

Here’s another everyday example. Hunting is a more popular sport among men than women. Yet in the small office I once worked, all of the hunters were female. This is probably explained by the fact that most of the women grew up here, a rural area, where hunting is a popular social activity and even needed in order to have a freezer full of meat all winter. All of the men in the office were doctors imported from cities and suburbs, where hunting is not as common (as were the female doctors.) But the rule of thumb that “most hunters are men”, wasn’t reflected in that small group, and if you applied that rule, you would be wrong.

There has been a lot of bias in evolutionary psychology, in my probably biased opinion. A popular book in the 70s was Desmond Morris’s “The Naked Ape” in which every evolutionary change in homo sapiens (walking up right, tool making, language, etc.) was connected to hunting. Obtaining food is a key  evolutionary pressure, but so is anything that effects the survival of offspring, especially helpless and late developing offspring like humans, and he just seemed to ignore  any evolutionary pressures on females. And I won’t even get into the bad science in books like “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.”

My final argument is that I do not own numerous pairs of shoes. Therefore, any scientific evidence of gender differences must be a result of the  “false misconception of nature by main stream scientists blinded by their outdated 19th century, Eurocentric world view.” (Okay, now I know I am biased.)
Unlike some other contributors to this thread, I really enjoy the attention you pay to detail Cheryl. Your posts are always thoughtful and precise.

I'm confident we all have our personal biases, if that were not the case, we could all be classified as little more than robotic conformists. But yet, while bias is necessary to preserve our individuality, unreasonable biases construct walls of disagreement which can not be scaled. Case in point; Represented many times in this thread by an individual that is unwilling to view circumstances from any position but their own.

You continue to be one of my favorite personalities here at NSF and I'm not in the least bashful about spreading the word....................Ethos
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 19/12/2013 01:31:24
..My final argument is that I do not own numerous pairs of shoes. Therefore, any scientific evidence of gender differences must be a result of the  “false misconception of nature by main stream scientists blinded by their outdated 19th century, Eurocentric world view.” (Okay, now I know I am biased.)
Lol! nice one, Don [;D]

However, the evidence coming in is surprising and interesting... Brain Connectivity Study Reveals Striking Differences Between Men and Women (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131202161935.htm). But it's not all bad - '"It's quite striking how complementary the brains of women and men really are," said Dr. Ruben Gur.'
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 16:49:01
I hate to say : "I told you so .",didn't i ?   
It took only 48 hrs to declare this thread clinically dead ...
I am not Jesus though : i cannot resurrect the dead , just the almost dead  like this thread is ...

Cheryl :

I do not reject any sort of empirical evidence, just the ,oh yes, the mainstream materialist false "scientific world view " = THE biggest lie ever .

And yes, there are differences between men and women, they just cannot be accounted for  just in terms of physics and chemistry alone indeed ,not fully at least , since the mental side of man cannot be reduced to just physics and chemistry .

So, don't worry , men are not 'superior  " to women : they are bot equal , at the human level : women are even smarter in many ways , they are the ones in charge in fact , while succeeding in making us , men , believe we are haha .

Women are the most beautiful graceful intelligent subtle ...you name it ...creatures on earth in fact .

Men and women do  have both feminine and masculin sides as well .

This world would be a better place ,if women would get impowered as they deserve to be , as the equals of men .

Try to read this unique book that might change your life in many ways :
" Lifting the veil : The feminine face of science " by organic chemist and neo-feminist Linda Jean Shepherd : a neo-feminist post-modern philosophy of science , ethics ....
Very enlightening indeed .

Take care .

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Ethos :

Why have you been remaining silent in relation to your paradoxical mutually exclusive held beliefs ,you have not been addressing ?

dlorde :

How does it feel to replace a big lie ,by yet a bigger one , by a "scientific " one ?

Oh, boy , i hate to be in your shoes : i do sympathise with you in that regard .

You have just replaced your ex-christianity by yet another irrational dogmatic orthodox  religion,a secular one  : materialism .
Sweet dreams in your owm materialist wonderland, Alice  .
Don Quixote did realise the falsehood ,the absurdity and ridicule of his own  unrealistic and imaginary  idealism , i do hope the same for you , in relation to your own absurd outdated superseded and false ..."scientific " materialism  .

See ya , guys .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2013 19:18:54
As usual, Don's got time to drop in and post pointless guff about forum contributors, but not contribute anything of note himself.

So much for his 'promise':
Quote
And when i will come back, if i come back, i do promise that i will be delivering some challenging material that will be rocking your materialist sand castles , to the point where its sand grains will be flying in all directions ,thanks to the stormy wind that i will be triggering ...
[::)]

So what about the split-brain studies you linked to, Don?

So how does the non-physical external consciousness hypothesis account for the appearance of two separate conscious entities in place of one original when the corpus callosum is transsectioned? Can cutting the physical brain split the immaterial consciousness associated with it?

How does it account for each new consciousness having the proportional skills and abilities of the corresponding hemispheres that were integrated in the original consciousness?

What do you suppose happened to the original immaterial consciousness? Is it floating adrift of its physical vehicle? did it have to split into two less able consciousnesses?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 19:59:25
As usual, Don's got time to drop in and post pointless guff about forum contributors, but not contribute anything of note himself.

So much for his 'promise':
Quote
And when i will come back, if i come back, i do promise that i will be delivering some challenging material that will be rocking your materialist sand castles , to the point where its sand grains will be flying in all directions ,thanks to the stormy wind that i will be triggering ...
[::)]

So what about the split-brain studies you linked to, Don?

So how does the non-physical external consciousness hypothesis account for the appearance of two separate conscious entities in place of one original when the corpus callosum is transsectioned? Can cutting the physical brain split the immaterial consciousness associated with it?

How does it account for each new consciousness having the proportional skills and abilities of the corresponding hemispheres that were integrated in the original consciousness?

What do you suppose happened to the original immaterial consciousness? Is it floating adrift of its physical vehicle? did it have to split into two less able consciousnesses?

As for my promise , later then , as promised thus .
As for your above displayed questions :
Don't forget to bring to mind those tv set and radio relative analogies ,while you are at it :
If the tv set or radio are damaged , and then they stop functioning normally , that does not mean that the tv images or radio broadcasts are created by respectively the tv set or radio device .
In the case of human mind-body hard problem : the non-physical consciousness and the physical brain and body are inseparable = 1 .
As for the case of the split -brain phenomena : i can only speculate about that , in the sense that the disconnection of the 2 hemispheres might result  in those disconnected 2 different forms of corresponding consciousness ,almost in the same fashion in the case of myopia , for example, or in that of double sight : it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain .
Consciousness needs a vehicle , i guess , since body and mind are inseparable, in this life at least ,i don't know .
The brain is just a medium for consciousness ,since brain and mind are inseparable , in this life at least .
If the brain is damaged or altered ,thanks to injuries , disease , genetic malfunction or inheritance  ....then, the corresponding consciousness gets disconnected or does not get through , but it is still there though .

The bottom line is : there is still no serious falsifiable theory of consciounsness out there yet ,so, we can only speculate , at this stage at least , regarding mind-body or brain-mind interactions or relationships correlations ...
And since materialism is undeniably false ,and hence the mind is not in the brain, or the mind is no brain activity ,  then, we should be looking for non-materialist explanations of those and other phenomena , due to brain damage, brain disease , disorder .................
That there are no non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness out there today yet , does not mean there will be none tomorrow .

In short :
If i knew the answers to those question of yours , i wouldn't be here , would i ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 20:23:28
It's really absurd and total non-sense to even try to assume that the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity,despite all appearances (Remember that appearances are deceptive and illusionary ) : the mind or consciousness, the soul, the self or whatever cannot rise  from  , let alone be the product of brain activity : neurons' interactions or neuro-transmitters ,neuro-chemistry cannot account for our subjective conscious states and experiences :  science is still totally in the dark regarding how brain activity can somehow be related to subjective conscious states and experiences .........
Otherwise ,folks, try to tell me what extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering so far for its "all is matter , including the mind " extraordinary claims , regarding the nature of reality ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2013 20:28:11
As for the case of the split -brain phenomena : i can only speculate about that , in the sense that the disconnection of the 2 hemispheres might result  in those disconnected 2 different forms of corresponding consciousness ,almost in the same fashion in the case of myopia , for example, or in that of double sight : it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain .
Interesting; so you're speculating that one supposedly immaterial consciousness splitting into two is 'almost the same' as shortsightedness (nearsightedness), or double vision - which are both due to physical (mechanical) misalignments? Really?  [;D] [:o)]

If 'it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain' how come damage to the eyes and brain causes visual impairment or blindness corresponding to the damage?

Quote
In short :
If i knew the answers to those question of yours , i wouldn't be here , would i ?
You have no idea at all, do you? All this variety of evidence we've posted that is entirely consistent with, and generally supportive of, consciousness being a process of the brain; seemingly none of it consistent with or plausibly explicable by the immaterial consciousness hypothesis, and much of it apparently contradicting that hypothesis - can you not put  2 and 2 together [?]

Truly is it said, 'none are so blind as those who will not see'   [xx(]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 20:28:33
As promised , i will be behaving like Sint-Claus haha ,as to be delivering and offering you, guys , some christmas ' gifts , regarding the phony false materialism , and hence regarding the fact that the mind is not in the brain .................
If you think that science requires materialism, "just wait and see ", as Chalmers used to say ...

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Love is in the air .............

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 20/12/2013 20:34:32


Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Love is in the air .............
The only surprise I ever expect to receive from you Don..... is for you to produce evidence. Now,.............that would be a complete surprise!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2013 20:35:34
It's really absurd and total non-sense to even try to assume that the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity,despite all appearances (Remember that appearances are deceptive and illusionary ) : the mind or consciousness, the soul, the self or whatever cannot rise  from  , let alone be the product of brain activity...
In other words, ignore all the evidence (it's just 'appearances'), and just believe the bare, unsupported assertion. The 'it's obvious / absurd / nonsensical' claim is known as the 'Commonsense Fallacy', and, as previously explained, belief held despite all evidence to the contrary, is known as delusion.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2013 20:36:57
As promised , i will be behaving like Sint-Claus haha ,as to be delivering and offering you, guys , some christmas ' gifts , regarding the phony false materialism , and hence regarding the fact that the mind is not in the brain .................
If you think that science requires materialism, "just wait and see ", as Chalmers used to say ...

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha
Yeah right  [::)]   - just like last time  [:o)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 20/12/2013 20:41:26

It took only 48 hrs to declare this thread clinically dead ...


If only that were really true. I think we should bury it quickly so it doesn't resurrect.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 20/12/2013 20:48:34


Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha


Come on Don.....Surprise me with your evidence. It would be the first you've offered!!!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 20:51:28
As for the case of the split -brain phenomena : i can only speculate about that , in the sense that the disconnection of the 2 hemispheres might result  in those disconnected 2 different forms of corresponding consciousness ,almost in the same fashion in the case of myopia , for example, or in that of double sight : it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain .
Interesting; so you're speculating that one supposedly immaterial consciousness splitting into two is 'almost the same' as shortsightedness (nearsightedness), or double vision - which are both due to physical (mechanical) misalignments? Really?  [;D] [:o)]

If 'it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain' how come damage to the eyes and brain causes visual impairment or blindness corresponding to the damage?

Beware of appearances , they are deceptive :
What makes you conclude from all that that the mind is in the brain then ?
Let's assume ,just for this discussion sake , that brain activity produces consciousness or is consciousness : if A causes B : does that mean that A=B or that B is in A ?
Causation is not even explanation either : you still have to prove how A causes B  exactly  .
You cannot just jump to saying A is B or that B is in A : how can you "justify " such an insane absurd and illogic jump then,without any medium or other bridge that links B to A  ?
Science has not been able so far to tell us anything at all regarding how qualitative subjective conscious states  experiences can be "related " to the activity of the brain : there is no empirical evidence whatsover "linking " the one to the other ,as there is no faslifiable scientific theory of consciousness out there yet : why do you think and behave as if there is one then ?.
Brain damage , diseases , genetic inheritance ...factors and phenomena such as spli brain, alzheimer .....are just circumstancial , no conclusive , evidence for  the materialist "fact " or rather for the a-priori held materialist belief assumption that the brain is the mind or that the mind is in the brain .
It's the mind that sees , not the eyes or  the brain : the latter are just physical mediums for the non-physical consciousness : it's consciousness that gives subjective qualitative abstract olfactory visual feeling ...and other forms to the sensory "inputs " that "hit " the brain : when scientific progress and technology will be advanced enough , blind people might be cured from their blindness through surgery : the latter does not mean that it is the eye that sees .
Otherwise , try to tell me how sight through the eyes to the brain ,via light , "creates" faces , images , landscapes , abstract ideas and the like then ?if the mind is not the one that sees, and therefore it is the mind or consciousness that gives subjective qualitative forms to the external stimuli that hits the brain  through the senses .

Quote
In short :
If i knew the answers to those question of yours , i wouldn't be here , would i ?

Quote
You have no idea at all, do you? All this variety of evidence we've posted that is entirely consistent with, and generally supportive of, consciousness being a process of the brain; seemingly none of it consistent with or plausibly explicable by the immaterial consciousness hypothesis, and much of it apparently contradicting that hypothesis - can you not put  2 and 2 together [?]

Truly is it said, 'none are so blind as those who will not see'  ;)
[/quote]


See above .
All i know is that you cannot conclude from all that that the mind is in the brain ,or that the mind is just brain activity , see above .

Your  materialist mind is blind , not your eyes .
If only , you could see through your mind , not just through your eyes , as you should be doing .
It's through your own materialist mind that you do 'change " what you see , as to make it fit into your materialist  a-priori held  world view .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 20:54:38


Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha


Come on Don.....Surprise me with your evidence. It would be the first you've offered!!!!!!

You wouldn't be able to recognize it as such , even if it would hit you in the eye,as you have been showing all along  .
Why don't you tell me why , on earth , do you happen to believe in those mutually exclusive world views ? for starters then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 20:57:41

It took only 48 hrs to declare this thread clinically dead ...


If only that were really true. I think we should bury it quickly so it doesn't resurrect.

Haha , funny and interesting religious symbolism Freudian slip of the tongue you uttered there :
Should we bury the truth or facts ? burn books or heretics ?
You can't burn or bury kill ideas , you know .haha
Ideas that cannot be the product of brain activity .
You were born too late for that , you were born in the "wrong" century : you should have been born under the supremacy of the medieval church .
What are you afraid of then ?
I think that the inherent intrinsic inquisition "property quality " of christianity has never left you , i guess .
Inquisitions are doomed to fail , remember , either the religious or the secular ones, and are self-refuting and self-defeating also .............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 21:02:01
As promised , i will be behaving like Sint-Claus haha ,as to be delivering and offering you, guys , some christmas ' gifts , regarding the phony false materialism , and hence regarding the fact that the mind is not in the brain .................
If you think that science requires materialism, "just wait and see ", as Chalmers used to say ...

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha
Yeah right  [::)]   - just like last time  [:o)]

Just wait and see then .
Only time will tell ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 21:17:59
It's really absurd and total non-sense to even try to assume that the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity,despite all appearances (Remember that appearances are deceptive and illusionary ) : the mind or consciousness, the soul, the self or whatever cannot rise  from  , let alone be the product of brain activity...
In other words, ignore all the evidence (it's just 'appearances'), and just believe the bare, unsupported assertion. The 'it's obvious / absurd / nonsensical' claim is known as the 'Commonsense Fallacy', and, as previously explained, belief held despite all evidence to the contrary, is known as delusion.

No, it's exactly the other way around :  there is no empirical evidence whatsoever "linking " brain activity to subjective conscious states experiences : you cannot logically ,let alone empirically , conclude from the apparent effects of alzheimer , brain damage, split-brain phenomena ....that the mind is in the brain ,or that the mind is just brain activity : see above .

You're the one trying to make the apparent circumstancial, no conclusive ,evidence , fit into your own a-priori held materialist belief assumptions regarding the nature of reality , and hence regarding that of consciousness .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 21:25:24


Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Love is in the air .............
The only surprise I ever expect to receive from you Don..... is for you to produce evidence. Now,.............that would be a complete surprise!!

Look who's talking : amazing :
Read my tons of posted material and other on the subject here  , if you can at least .
You wouldn't be able to recognize evidence , even if it would hit you in the eye , as you have been showing all along , also by failing to realise how paradoxical and absurd you have been all along , by believing in 2 mutually exclusive world views ...
pfff...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2013 21:39:28
Not to mention the fact that you have been applying classical physics to the atomic and molecular brain activity , paradoxically enough .
Not to mention the fact that the mind , or emotions feelings , psyche , beliefs, the human will  ...can have causal effects on the brain activity ,and hence on that of the body as well .
I think that the mind or consciounsness do have causal effects on the brain and body at the very micro quantum level ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 20/12/2013 23:33:02

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 21/12/2013 00:08:50

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.
A word to the wise is sufficient. But were Don is concerned???

And BTW; DON...., I never once detailed what that faith centered around. But now for the record:

I believe in what I can measure with repeatable results, it's called science. Something you have yet to learn Don.

What I can't measure with repeatable results, I may still wonder about the whys and wherefors until new evidence surfaces.

But what I don't do is come to a SCIENCE forum vomiting up spooky and ill defined trash like the author of this thread.

I thank folks like alancalverd for also knowing the difference between science and everyday what ifs.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 17:43:11
Despised Dualism:


Scientists in different fields are free, to some extent, to use concepts
that appear to work for them, without regard to other scientific disciplines.
However, many of the greatest advances in science have come
from unifying the treatments of neighboring realms of phenomena. We
are now engaged a great scientific endeavor to rationally connect the
neurophysiological and psychological aspects of the conscious brain.
The problem is to understand, explain, or describe the connections
between two realms that are conceived of – and are described in –
two very different ways. What seems pertinent is that basic physics
was forced by the character of empirical phenomena to an incredibly
successful way to link these same two realms. It seems reasonable to
at least try to apply the solution discovered by physicists to the parallel
problem in neuropsychology. Why should there be such scorn in
brain science for this natural and reasonable idea of bringing mind
into neuropsychology in the same way that it was brought into physics
in connection with the relationship between the empirically described
and physically described aspects of scientific practice?
Contemporary physics is essentially psychophysical, hence dualistic.
Dualism is seen as a bˆete noire by many philosophers. Hence the
quantum approach tends to be peremptorily rejected because it belongs
to this despised category. But why are dualistic theories held in
such contempt? There is an historical reason.

............

Historical Background:

I shall begin with a brief summary, abstracted from Nahmias (2002), of
the principal developments in psychology during the twentieth century.
In 1898 the introspectionist E.B. Titchener delineated the proper
study of psychology as the conscious mind, defined as “nothing more
than the whole sum of mental processes experienced in a single lifetime”.
And: “We must always remember that, within the sphere of 12.3 Squaring with Contemporary Neuroscience.

Flawed Argument:

Daniel Dennett (1991) gives a reason. His book Consciousness Explained
has a chapter entitled Why Dualism Is Forlorn, which begins
with the words:
The idea of mind as distinct [. . . ] from the brain, composed
not of ordinary matter but of some other special kind of stuff
is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today. [. . . ] The
prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism:
there is one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical
stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology – and the mind is
somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the
mind is the brain.
Dennett then asks: “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it
in such disfavor?” He answers:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the
trajectory of a particle is an acceleration requiring the expenditure
of energy [. . . ] this principle of conservation of energy [. . . ]
is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between
standard physics and dualism has been endlessly discussed since
Descartes’ own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.
This argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical
physics. The argument collapses when one goes over to contemporary
physics, in which, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, trajectories
of particles are replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which
conscious choices can influence physically described activity without
violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum physics.
Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann
form entails, an interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the
laws of physics. Any perception merely reduces the possibilities.
........Squaring with Contemporary Neuroscience:
How does the quantum conception of mind–brain dynamics square
with contemporary neuroscience?
Steven Pinker is an able reporter on contemporary neuroscience. In
the lead article The Mystery of Consciousness in the January 29, 2007

Mind & Body Special Issue of Time Magazine he notes that while
certain mysteries remain, neuroscientist agree on one thing: “Francis
Crick called it ‘the astonishing hypothesis’ – the idea that our
thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological
activity in the tissues of the brain.”
Of course, the phrase ‘physiological activity’ needs to be replaced
by ‘psychophysiological activity’ since this activity is being explicitly
asserted to have psychological or experiential content. Later Pinker
says that: “Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events
distributed across the brain.” These events should evidently be labeled
psychophysical events, since being located in the brain is a physical
attribute, while being the components of consciousness entails that
these events have psychological aspects.
These psychophysiological or psychophysical characterizations fit
quantum theory perfectly. According to von Neumann’s formulation
each of the quantum events in the brain has both a psychological aspect
and a physical aspect. The physical aspect is the jump of the
quantum state of the brain to that part of itself that is compatible
with the increment in knowledge specified by its psychologically described
aspect. It is this tight linkage between the psychologically and
physically described aspects of the events that keeps a person’s brain
in alignment with his or her experiences. These repeated reductions
are both possible and needed because the indeterminacy present at
the microscopic/ionic level, keeps generating at the macroscopic level
a profusion of brain states corresponding to mutually incompatible
observations. These dynamically needed interventions, whose causal
origin is left unspecified by the physical theory, provide a natural vehicle
for mental causation.
This all depends on accepting the utility of the quantum mechanical
program of building science’s conception of nature on the notion of
a sequence of macroscopically localized psychophysical events, rather
than on the notion of mindless matter.
Pinker refers to ‘The Hard Problem’. He says:
The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience
arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because
no one knows what a solution would look like or even is a genuine
scientific problem in the first place. And not surprisingly
everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) is a
mystery.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 18:00:37
Of course this ‘hard’ problem is – and will remain – a mystery insofar
as one’s thinking is imprisoned within the fundamentally invalid
conceptual framework postulated by classical physics, which has no
rational place for consciousness. Within that framework the problem
is seen to be “explaining how subjective experience arises from neural
computation”, since all that is given is mindless matter. But the mystery
immediately dissolves when one passes over to quantum theory,
which was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between
physical descriptions and conscious thoughts, and which comes
with an elaborate and highly tested machinery for relating these two
kinds of elements.
Some quantum physicists want to justify basing neuroscience on
classical physics by suggesting that once the neural activity reaches
a classically describable level, say at the firing of a neuron (i.e., the
triggering of an action potential), one may assume that the quantum
jump from ‘potential’ to ‘actual’ has occurred, and hence that one
can deal simply with the actualities of neuron firings, and ignore their
quantum underpinnings.
That approach would be a misuse of the quantum mechanical use of
the concepts of classical mechanics. The founders of quantum mechanics
were very clear about the use, in the theory of observations, of the
concepts of classical mechanics. Those concepts were needed and used
in order “to communicate to others what we have done and what we
have learned”. The use of the classical concepts is appropriate in that
context because those pertinent experiences are actually describable
in terms of the classical concepts, not because something was mysteriously
supposed to actually happen merely when things became big
enough for classical ideas to make sense. That criterion was too vague
and ambiguous to be used to construct a satisfactory physical theory.
The boundary between the large and the small could be shifted at will,
within limits, but actuality cannot be shifted in this way.
When one is describing one’s perceptions of devices lying outside
one’s body the experience itself is well described in terms of classical
ideas about where the parts of the device are and how they are moving.
But one’s subjective phenomenal experience is not geometrically similar
to the pattern of neural firings that constitute the neural correlate
of that experience.
If one assumes that the reduction events in the subject’s brains are
tied fundamentally to classicality per se, rather than to increments
in the subject’s knowledge, then one loses the essential connection
between physical description and subjective experience that quantum
theory is designed to provide This quasi-classical approach of accepting
quantum mechanics at the microscopic level, but tying the reduction
events occurring in the subject’s brain to some objective condition
of classicality, rather than to the subject’s experiences, has the great
virtue – relative to the approach of simply accepting a fully classical
conception of the brain – of not just ignoring a hundred years of development
in physics. However, in the context of solving the problem of
the mind–brain connection, it inherits the fatal deficiency of the classical
approach: the conceptual framework does not involve mind. There
is, as in the classical approach, no intrinsic conceptual place for, or dynamical
need for, our conscious experiences. There is within the given
structure no entailment either of any reason for conscious experiences
to exist at all, or of any principle that governs how these experiences
are tied to brain activity. “The Hard Problem of explaining how subjective
experience arises from neural computation” remains, as Pinker
said “a mystery”. Moreover, the quasi-classical approach inherits also
the principal difficulty of all the quantum theories that accept reductions,
but reject the orthodox principle of placing the reduction events
at the boundary between the physically described and psychologically
defined aspects of our scientific understanding of nature. Where, within
such an approach that does not involve consciousness, can one find either
any reason for any reduction to occur at all, or any objective
principle that specifies where, between one single atom and the more
than 1024 atoms in the brain, do the collapses occur. Orthodox quantum
theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’
together in a practically useful way, and provides, simultaneously, a
way for the universe to acquire meaning.
theory is designed to provide This quasi-classical approach of accepting
quantum mechanics at the microscopic level, but tying the reduction
events occurring in the subject’s brain to some objective condition
of classicality, rather than to the subject’s experiences, has the great
virtue – relative to the approach of simply accepting a fully classical
conception of the brain – of not just ignoring a hundred years of development
in physics. However, in the context of solving the problem of
the mind–brain connection, it inherits the fatal deficiency of the classical
approach: the conceptual framework does not involve mind. There
is, as in the classical approach, no intrinsic conceptual place for, or dynamical
need for, our conscious experiences. There is within the given
structure no entailment either of any reason for conscious experiences
to exist at all, or of any principle that governs how these experiences
are tied to brain activity. “The Hard Problem of explaining how subjective
experience arises from neural computation” remains, as Pinker
said “a mystery”. Moreover, the quasi-classical approach inherits also
the principal difficulty of all the quantum theories that accept reductions,
but reject the orthodox principle of placing the reduction events
at the boundary between the physically described and psychologically
defined aspects of our scientific understanding of nature. Where, within
such an approach that does not involve consciousness, can one find either
any reason for any reduction to occur at all, or any objective
principle that specifies where, between one single atom and the more
than 1024 atoms in the brain, do the collapses occur. Orthodox quantum
theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’
together in a practically useful way, and provides, simultaneously, a
way for the universe to acquire meaning.

Source : Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 18:42:05
Impact of Quantum Mechanics
on Human Values:


Philosophers have tried doggedly for three centuries to understand the
role of mind in the workings of a brain conceived to function according
to principles of classical physics. We now know no such brain exists:
no brain, body, or anything else in the real world is composed of those
tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be made of.
Hence it is hardly surprising that those philosophical endeavors were
beset by enormous difficulties, which led to such positions as that of
the ‘eliminative materialists’, who hold that our conscious thoughts
must be eliminated from our scientific understanding of nature; or of
the ‘epiphenomenalists’, who admit that human experiences do exist,
but claim that they play no role in how we behave; or of the ‘identity
theorists’, who claim that each conscious feeling is exactly the same
thing as a motion of particles that nineteenth century science thought
our brains, and everything else in the universe, were made of, but
that twentieth century science has found not to exist, at least as they
were formerly conceived. The tremendous difficulty in reconciling consciousness,
as we know it, with the older physics is dramatized by the
fact that for many years the mere mention of ‘consciousness’ was considered
evidence of backwardness and bad taste in most of academia,
including, incredibly, even psychology and the philosophy of mind.
What you are, and will become, depends largely upon your values.
Values arise from self-image: from what you believe yourself to
be. Generally one is led by training, teaching, propaganda, or other
forms of indoctrination, to expand one’s conception of the self: one is
encouraged to perceive oneself as an integral part of some social unit
such as family, ethnic or religious group, or nation, and to enlarge
one’s self-interest to include the interests of this unit. If this training
is successful your enlarged conception of yourself as good parent, or
good son or daughter, or good Christian, Muslim, Jew, or whatever,
will cause you to give weight to the welfare of the unit as you would
your own. In fact, if well conditioned you may give more weight to the
interests of the group than to the well-being of your bodily self.

In the present context it is not relevant whether this human tendency
to enlarge one’s self-image is a consequence of natural malleability,
instinctual tendency, spiritual insight, or something else. What is
important is that we human beings do in fact have the capacity to
expand our image of ‘self’, and that this enlarged concept can become
the basis of a drive so powerful that it becomes the dominant determinant
of human conduct, overwhelming every other factor, including
even the instinct for bodily survival.
But where reason is honored, belief must be reconciled with empirical
evidence. If you seek evidence for your beliefs about what you
are, and how you fit into Nature, then science claims jurisdiction, or
at least relevance. Physics presents itself as the basic science, and it
is to physics that you are told to turn. Thus a radical shift in the
physics-based conception of man from that of an isolated mechanical
automaton to that of an integral participant in a non-local holistic process
that gives form and meaning to the evolving universe is a seismic
event of potentially momentous proportions.
The quantum concept of man, being based on objective science
equally available to all, rather than arising from special personal circumstances,
has the potential to undergird a universal system of basic
values suitable to all people, without regard to the accidents of their
origins. With the diffusion of this quantum understanding of human
beings, science may fulfill itself by adding to the material benefits it
has already provided a philosophical insight of perhaps even greater
ultimate value.
This issue of the connection of science to values can be put into
perspective by seeing it in the context of a thumb-nail sketch of history
that stresses the role of science. For this purpose let human intellectual
history be divided into five periods: traditional, modern, transitional,
post-modern, and contemporary.
During the ‘traditional’ era our understanding of ourselves and our
relationship to Nature was based on ‘ancient traditions’ handed down
from generation to generation: ‘Traditions’ were the chief source of
wisdom about our connection to Nature. The ‘modern’ era began in
the seventeenth century with the rise of what is still called ‘modern
science’. That approach was based on the ideas of Bacon, Descartes,
Galileo and Newton, and it provided a new source of knowledge that
came to be regarded by many thinkers as more reliable than tradition.
The basic idea of ‘modern’ science was ‘materialism’: the idea that
the physical world is composed basically of tiny bits of matter whose
contact interactions with adjacent bits completely control everything

that is now happening, and that ever will happen. According to these
laws, as they existed in the late nineteenth century, a person’s conscious
thoughts and efforts can make no difference at all to what
his body/brain does: whatever you do was deemed to be completely
fixed by local interactions between tiny mechanical elements, with your
thoughts, ideas, feelings, and efforts, being simply locally determined
high-level consequences or re-expressions of the low-level mechanical
process, and hence basically just elements of a reorganized way of describing
the effects of the absolutely and totally controlling microscopic
material causes.
This materialist conception of reality began to crumble at the beginning
of the twentieth century with Max Planck’s discovery of the
quantum of action. Planck announced to his son that he had, on that
day, made a discovery as important as Newton’s. That assessment was
certainly correct: the ramifications of Planck’s discovery were eventually
to cause Newton’s materialist conception of physical reality to
come crashing down. Planck’s discovery marks the beginning of the
‘transitional’ period.
A second important transitional development soon followed. In 1905
Einstein announced his special theory of relativity. This theory denied
the validity of our intuitive idea of the instant of time ‘now’, and
promulgated the thesis that even the most basic quantities of physics,
such as the length of a steel rod, and the temporal order of two events,
had no objective ‘true values’, but were well defined only ‘relative’ to
some observer’s point of view.
Planck’s discovery led by the mid-1920s to a complete breakdown,
at the fundamental level, of the classical material conception of nature.
A new basic physical theory, developed principally by Werner Heisenberg,
Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born, brought ‘the observer’
explicitly into physics. The earlier idea that the physical world
is composed of tiny particles (and electromagnetic and gravitational
fields) was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in
which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential
role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen
quantum theory.
This turning away by science itself from the tenets of the objective
materialist philosophy gave impetus to, and lent support to, postmodernism.
That view, which emerged during the second half of the
twentieth century, promulgated, in essence, the idea that all ‘truths’
were relative to one’s point of view, and were mere artifacts of some
particular social group’s struggle for power over competing groups.
...............16 Impact of Quantum Mechanics on Human Values
Thus each social movement was entitled to its own ‘truth’, which was
viewed simply as a socially created pawn in the power game.
The connection of post-modern thought to science is that both
Copenhagen quantum theory and relativity theory had retreated from
the idea of observer-independent objective truth. Science in the first
quarter of the twentieth century had not only eliminated materialism
as a possible foundation for objective truth, but seemed to have discredited
the very idea of objective truth in science. But if the community
of scientists has renounced the idea of objective truth in favor of
the pragmatic idea that ‘what is true for us is what works for us’, then
every group becomes licensed to do the same, and the hope evaporates
that science might provide objective criteria for resolving contentious
social issues.
This philosophical shift has had profound social and intellectual
ramifications. But the physicists who initiated this mischief were generally
too interested in practical developments in their own field to get
involved in these philosophical issues. Thus they failed to broadcast
an important fact: already by mid-century, a further development in
physics had occurred that provides an effective antidote to both the
‘materialism’ of the modern era, and the ‘relativism’ and ‘social constructionism’
of the post-modern period. In particular, John von Neumann
developed, during the early thirties, a form of quantum theory
that brought the physical and mental aspects of nature back together
as two aspects of a rationally coherent whole. This theory was elevated,
during the forties – by the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger –
to a form compatible with the physical requirements of the theory of
relativity.
Von Neumann’s theory, unlike the transitional ones, provides a
framework for integrating into one coherent idea of reality the empirical
data residing in subjective experience with the basic mathematical
structure of theoretical physics. Von Neumann’s formulation
of quantum theory is the starting point of all efforts by physicists to
go beyond the pragmatically satisfactory but ontologically incomplete
Copenhagen form of quantum theory.
Von Neumann capitalized upon the key Copenhagen move of bringing
human choices into the theory of physical reality. But, whereas the
Copenhagen approach excluded the bodies and brains of the human
observers from the physical world that they sought to describe, von
Neumann demanded logical cohesion and mathematical precision, and
was willing to follow where this rational approach led. Being a mathematician,
fortified by the rigor and precision of his thought, he seemed

less intimidated than his physicist brethren by the sharp contrast between
the nature of the world called for by the new mathematics and
the nature of the world that the genius of Isaac Newton had concocted.
A common core feature of the orthodox (Copenhagen and von Neumann)
quantum theory is the incorporation of efficacious conscious
human choices into the structure of basic physical theory. How this is
done, and how the conception of the human person is thereby radically
altered, has been spelled out in lay terms in this book, and is something
every well informed person who values the findings of science
ought to know about. The conception of self is the basis of values and
thence of behavior, and it controls the entire fabric of one’s life. It is
irrational, from a scientific perspective, to cling today to false and inadequate
nineteenth century concepts about your basic nature, while
ignoring the profound impact upon these concepts of the twentieth
century revolution in science.
It is curious that some physicists want to improve upon orthodox
quantum theory by excluding ‘the observer’, who, by virtue of his subjective
nature, must, in their opinion, be excluded from science. That
stance is maintained in direct opposition to what would seem to be
the most profound advance in physics in three hundred years, namely
the overcoming of the most glaring failure of classical physics, its inability
to accommodate us, its creators. The most salient philosophical
feature of quantum theory is that the mathematics has a causal gap
that, by virtue of its intrinsic form, provides a perfect place for Homo
sapiens as we know and experience ourselves.
Conclusions :

How can our world of billions of thinkers ever come into general concordance
on fundamental issues? How do you, yourself, form opinions
on such issues? Do you simply accept the message of some ‘authority’,
such as a church, a state, or a social or political group? All of
these entities promote concepts about how you as an individual fit
into the reality that supports your being. And each has an agenda of
its own, and hence its own internal biases. But where can you find an
unvarnished truth about your nature, and your place in Nature?
Science rests, in the end, on an authority that lies beyond the pettiness
of human ambition. It rests, finally, on stubborn facts. The
founders of quantum theory certainly had no desire to bring down
the grand structure of classical physics of which they were the inheritors,
beneficiaries, and torch bearers. It was stubborn facts that forced
their hand, and made them reluctantly abandon the two-hundred-yearold
classical ideal of a mechanical universe, and turn to what perhaps
should have been seen from the start as a more reasonable endeavor:
the creation an understanding of nature that includes in a rationally
coherent way the thoughts by which we know and influence the world
around us. The labors of scientists endeavoring merely to understand
our inanimate environment produced, from its own internal logic, a rationally
coherent framework into which we ourselves fit neatly. What
was falsified by twentieth-century science was not the core traditions
and intuitions that have sustained societies and civilizations since the
dawn of mankind, but rather an historical aberration, an impoverished
world view within which philosophers of the past few centuries have
tried relentlessly but fruitlessly to find ourselves. The falseness of that
deviation of science must be made known, and heralded, because human
beings are not likely to endure in a society ruled by a conception
of themselves that denies the essence of their being.

Source : Henry .P.Stapp , Mindful Universe
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 19:26:38

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.
A word to the wise is sufficient. But were Don is concerned???

And BTW; DON...., I never once detailed what that faith centered around. But now for the record:

I believe in what I can measure with repeatable results, it's called science. Something you have yet to learn Don.

What I can't measure with repeatable results, I may still wonder about the whys and wherefors until new evidence surfaces.

But what I don't do is come to a SCIENCE forum vomiting up spooky and ill defined trash like the author of this thread.

I thank folks like alancalverd for also knowing the difference between science and everyday what ifs.

Despite your denials , you said previously that you were a man of faith from which i did conclude that you did believe in one  or another form of religion, the latter that's incompatible with the materialist mainstream "all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " =2 mutually exclusive world views thus .
Not to mention the fact that you do confuse science proper with materialism , the latter that's just a false conception of nature , an Eurocentric  ideology , a world view , a philosophy that goes back all the way to the 19th century , outdated superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the fundamentally incorrect Newton's classical physics .
Not to mention the fact that i have been supporting my claims via tons of posted material on the subject .

In short :
You just talk non-sense ,just out of ignorance : you're just using empty and irrelevant rhetorics ....

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 19:28:04

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.


Quote
But , to believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , that's a bizzare something that cannot be "achieved " but by guys like ...Ethos here . haha

It's the very essence of faith and many other perversions. Remarkably common among congregations and psychopaths.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2013 20:59:50
Try to read the above , folks : i will be posting more relevant stuff that will be refuting the false outdated superseded mainstream materialist 'scientific world view " ...
I hope that you will have enough scientific vision courage and honesty to be able to stomach swallow digest or deal with all those facts ,you cannot dismiss deny or ignore as such  any longer .
Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2013 12:07:24
You still haven't grasped the nature of discussion forums, have you? If you're going to quote fringe opinion in support of your point, you should be able to explain how it's relevant, and summarise or point to the key propositions. Your current approach is lazy, careless, and intellectually bankrupt.

However, the breach of copyright is interesting; although slightly mangled by clumsy copy-n-paste, those excerpts actually expose Stapp as a misleading and unreliable source. I wasn't expecting that.

He has revised the history of quantum mechanics and in particular, the Copenhagen Interpretation, to make his own hypothesis appear to have a firmer foundation than it otherwise would. 

He says, "quantum theory, ... was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between physical descriptions and conscious thoughts", and talks of "the essential connection between physical description and subjective experience that quantum theory is designed to provide", and "Orthodox quantum theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’ together", and "The earlier idea ... was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen quantum theory."

This is all simply false. Quantum theory was formulated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics) as a model to explain observations of the quantisation of energy and the wave-like properties of matter. The Copenhagen interpretation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation) is one attempt to reconcile experimental observation with the mathematics of quantum theory in terms of the collapse of the wave function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse).

There are many interpretations that address the nature of that collapse, the idea that consciousness is causal is just one -minority- view (as I mentioned in an earlier post). As Werner Heisenberg said, "... the Copenhagen interpretation is often confused with the idea that consciousness causes collapse, it defines an "observer" merely as that which collapses the wave function". I've mentioned previously that this observer can be any interacting particle. And suggesting that conscious collapse is 'orthodox' quantum theory is like saying the orthodox view in zoology is that Big Foot is really out there.

That an experienced quantum physicist would distort the truth in this way is surprising - is it deliberate? is his attachment to his hypothesis distorting his view of reality?  The fact that he was 79 when he published 'Mindful Universe' might be significant...

These errors only heighten my distrust of his work, and I see no reason to revise my previously expressed opinion of it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 17:40:15
You still haven't grasped the nature of discussion forums, have you? If you're going to quote fringe opinion in support of your point, you should be able to explain how it's relevant, and summarise or point to the key propositions. Your current approach is lazy, careless, and intellectually bankrupt.

However, the breach of copyright is interesting; although slightly mangled by clumsy copy-n-paste, those excerpts actually expose Stapp as a misleading and unreliable source. I wasn't expecting that.

He has revised the history of quantum mechanics and in particular, the Copenhagen Interpretation, to make his own hypothesis appear to have a firmer foundation than it otherwise would. 

He says, "quantum theory, ... was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between physical descriptions and conscious thoughts", and talks of "the essential connection between physical description and subjective experience that quantum theory is designed to provide", and "Orthodox quantum theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’ together", and "The earlier idea ... was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen quantum theory."

This is all simply false. Quantum theory was formulated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics) as a model to explain observations of the quantisation of energy and the wave-like properties of matter. The Copenhagen interpretation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation) is one attempt to reconcile experimental observation with the mathematics of quantum theory in terms of the collapse of the wave function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse).

There are many interpretations that address the nature of that collapse, the idea that consciousness is causal is just one -minority- view (as I mentioned in an earlier post). As Werner Heisenberg said, "... the Copenhagen interpretation is often confused with the idea that consciousness causes collapse, it defines an "observer" merely as that which collapses the wave function". I've mentioned previously that this observer can be any interacting particle. And suggesting that conscious collapse is 'orthodox' quantum theory is like saying the orthodox view in zoology is that Big Foot is really out there.

That an experienced quantum physicist would distort the truth in this way is surprising - is it deliberate? is his attachment to his hypothesis distorting his view of reality?  The fact that he was 79 when he published 'Mindful Universe' might be significant...

These errors only heighten my distrust of his work, and I see no reason to revise my previously expressed opinion of it.

You can't look at  the world  but through this  false orthodox  outdated and superseded materialist key hole of yours ,via this materialist orthodox quantum theory : the above displayed statements of yours through your materialist mind are evidence enough for the fact that the observer does affect the observed , through one's own a -priori held beliefs , psych ....and hence consciousness does also have causal effect on matter , including  at the micro quantum level :
You cannot deny the fact that consciousness has  causal effects on matter ,and hence on brain and body , as you do experience that fact every single day of your own life , and the fact that the observer does affect the observed ,as you cannot deny the fact that classical physics cannot be applied to the micro quantum level of course , and hence cannot be applied to the atomic and molecular brain activity via the so -called upward causation that allegedly gives rise to consciousness at the macro level  .
The man must be senile , since he dares to 'sing outside of the mainstream materialist phony orchestra " ,as Nagel was some sort of fame freak , as you said earlier about the latter , so, i see no point in talking to you about all this any further , since you are not willing to view things from non-materialist perspectives, materialism you still do continue confusing with science ,while the latter does not either require materialism  nor needs to be materialist  .
What a waste of time indeed .
And you did have the nerve to accuse me earlier of being biased ( None in fact can be more biased or none can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists who cannot but try to confirm their mainstream "scientific world view " = their a-priori held false materialist conception of nature .)  ,to the point where i allegedly stick to my a -priori held beliefs ,even in the face of evidence : That's exactly the other way around : you were just projecting thus :
You're the one trying to distort evidence as to squeeze it into your own a-priori held materialist false belief .
Not to mention the fact that i saw no attempts from you , whatsoever , to try to address all that overwhelming evidence contained in my tons of posted material on the subject ,regarding the undeniable and obvious falsehood of materialism  which has been superseded by even modern physics  itself , ironically enough , materialism  that was built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics' ruins .
P.S.: The aim of posting all those excerpts is to provide you, guys, with qualified views on the subject through prominent scientists , thinkers ....= what's wrong about that then ?
And i did tell you that i have been stealing food for the mind for you ,guys , as starving superseded materialists ,so, cut the crap about that copywright thing ....you can't use as some sort of leverage or 'argument " the latter or your silly accusations regarding the sanity or motives of those scientists and thinkers from whose works i have been posting excerpts  .
pfff...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 17:58:14
How can one take these superseded materialists seriously , when they keep on denying the undeniable fact that consciousness or the mind do have causal effects on matter , brain and body (an undeniable  fact they do experience every single day of their own lives , ironically paradoxically enough ) , and hence at the micro quantum level , just because their false outdated and superseded classical physics' materialism does , per definition, exclude any causal effect of the mind on matter : a total form of insane materialist lunacy-delusion  : denying the undeniable ,just because it does not fit into their own a -priori held materialist beliefs : that's called dogma in fact= sticking to one's own stubborn irrational false beliefs , even in the very face of evidence  ....Amazing .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 18:02:51
It's very convenient to call any non-orthodox  scientist ,  philosopher ....senile , a fame freak or worse , just because they happen to challenge the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view " : why not send them to the "goulag " , burn them at the stake ............: self-refuting and self-defeating forms of materialist ...inquisitions .pfff...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 18:14:06
The stubborn facts or evidence will force the reluctant denying absurd surreal hands of materialists into accepting them as such  eventually  , otherwise materialist would be , as they have been all along in fact , anti-scientific , in the same fashion stubborn facts or evidence  did in relation to classical physics (on which fundamentally incorrect ruins the 19th century outdated superseded and false materialism was built , ironically paradoxically enough .) through  quantum theory .......
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 18:34:19
The Physical Effectiveness of Conscious Will
and the Quantum Zeno Effect:



A crucial question now arises: How does this dynamical psychoneurological
connection via process 1, which can merely pose a question,
but not answer it, allow a person’s effort to influence his or her
physical actions?
Take an example. Suppose you are in a situation that calls for you to
raise your arm. Associations via stored memories should elicit a brain
activity having a component that when active on former occasions
resulted in your experiencing your arm rise, and in which the template
for arm-raising is active. According to the theory, this component of
brain activity will, if sufficiently strong, cause an associated process
1 action to occur. This process 1 action will partition the quantum
state of your brain in such a way that one component, labeled ‘Yes’,
will be this component in which the arm-raising template is active. If
the ‘Yes’ option is selected by nature then you will experience yourself
causing your arm to rise, and the state of your brain will be such that
the arm-raising template is active.
But the only dynamical freedom offered by the quantum formalism
in this situation is the freedom to perform at a selected time some
process 1 action. Whether or not the ‘Yes’ component is actualized is
determined by ‘nature’ on the basis of a statistical law. So the effectiveness
of the ‘free choice’ of this process 1 in achieving the desired
end would generally be quite limited. The net effect of this ‘free choice’
would tend to be nullified by the randomness in nature’s choice between
‘Yes’ and its negation ‘No’.
A well-known non-classical feature of quantum theory provides,
however, a way to overcome this problem, and convert the available
‘free choices’ into effective mental causation.
The Quantum Zeno Effect:
A well studied feature of the dynamical rules of quantum theory is this:
Suppose a process 1 query that leads to a ‘Yes’ outcome is followed

by a rapid sequence of very similar process 1 queries. That is, suppose
a sequence of identical or very similar process 1 actions is performed,
that the first outcome is ‘Yes’, and that the actions in this sequence
occur in very rapid succession on the time scale of the evolution of
the original ‘Yes’ state. Then the dynamical rules of quantum theory
entail that the sequence of outcomes will, with high probability, all
be ‘Yes’: the original ‘Yes’ state will, with high probability, be held
approximately in place by the rapid succession of process 1 actions,
even in the face of very strong physical forces that would, in the absence
of this rapid sequence of actions, quickly cause the state to evolve into
some very different state (Stapp 2004a, Sect. 12.7.3).
The timings of the process 1 actions are, within the orthodox formulations,
controlled by the ‘free choices’ on the part of the agent.
Mental effort applied to a conscious intent increases the intensity of
the experience. Thus it is consistent and reasonable to suppose that
the rapidity of a succession of essentially identical process 1 actions can
be increased by mental effort. But then we obtain, as a mathematical
consequence of the basic dynamical laws of quantum mechanics described
by von Neumann, a potentially powerful effect of mental effort
on the brain of the agent! Applying mental effort increases the rapidity
of the sequence of essentially identical intentional acts, which then
causes the template for action to be held in place, which then produces
the brain activity that tends to produce the intended feedback.
This ‘holding-in-place’ effect is called the quantum Zeno effect, an
appellation that was picked by the physicists E.C.G. Sudarshan and
R. Misra (1977) to highlight a similarity of this effect to the ‘arrow’
paradox discussed by the fifth century B.C. Greek philosopher, Zeno
the Eleatic. Another name for this effect is ‘the watched-pot effect’.
The quantum Zeno effect can, in principle, hold an intention and
its template in place in the face of strong mechanical forces that would
tend to disturb it. This means that agents whose mental efforts can
sufficiently increase the rapidity of process 1 actions would enjoy a survival
advantage over competitors that lack such features. They could
sustain beneficial templates for action in place longer than competitors
who lack this capacity. Thus the dynamical rules of quantum mechanics
allow conscious effort to be endowed with the causal efficacy needed
to permit its deployment and evolution via natural selection.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 18:38:14

 William James’s Theory of Volition:



This theory was already in place when a colleague, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz,
brought to my attention some passages from Psychology: The Briefer
Course, written by William James. In the final section of the chapter
on Attention, James (1892) writes:
I have spoken as if our attention were wholly determined by
neural conditions. I believe that the array of things we can attend
to is so determined. No object can catch our attention
except by the neural machinery. But the amount of the attention
which an object receives after it has caught our attention
is another question. It often takes effort to keep mind upon
it. We feel that we can make more or less of the effort as we
choose. If this feeling be not deceptive, if our effort be a spiritual
force, and an indeterminate one, then of course it contributes
coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result. Though it
introduce no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay in
consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more
quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than
a second in duration – but that second may be critical; for in
the rising and falling considerations in the mind, where two associated
systems of them are nearly in equilibrium it is often a
matter of but a second more or less of attention at the outset,
whether one system shall gain force to occupy the field and develop
itself and exclude the other, or be excluded itself by the
other. When developed it may make us act, and that act may
seal our doom. When we come to the chapter on the Will we
shall see that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on
the attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor
ideas may receive.
In the chapter on Will, in the section entitled Volitional Effort is Effort
of Attention, James writes:
Thus we find that we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition
when we ask by what process it is that the thought of any given
action comes to prevail stably in the mind.
And later
The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most
‘voluntary’, is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast

before the mind. [. . . ] Effort of attention is thus the essential
phenomenon of will.
Still later, James says:
Consent to the idea’s undivided presence, this is effort’s sole
achievement. [. . . ] Everywhere, then, the function of effort is
the same: to keep affirming and adopting the thought which, if
left to itself, would slip away.
James apparently recognized the incompatibility of these pronouncements
with the physics of his day. At the end of Psychology: The
Briefer Course, he said, presciently, of the scientists who would one
day illuminate the mind–body problem:
The best way in which we can facilitate their advent is to understand
how great is the darkness in which we grope, and
never forget that the natural-science assumptions with which
we started are provisional and revisable things.
It is a testimony to the power of the grip of old ideas on the minds
of scientists and philosophers alike that what was apparently evident
to William James already in 1892 – namely that a revision of the mechanical
precepts of nineteenth century physics would be needed to
accommodate the structural features of our conscious experiences –
still fails to be recognized by many of the affected professionals even
today, more than three-quarters of a century after the downfall of classical
physics, apparently foreseen by James, has come, much-heralded,
to pass.
James’s description of the effect of volition on the course of mind–
brain process is remarkably in line with what had been proposed, independently,
from purely theoretical considerations of the quantum
physics of this process. The connections described by James are explained
on the basis of the same dynamical principles that had been
introduced by physicists to explain atomic phenomena. Thus the whole
range of science, from atomic physics to mind–brain dynamics, is
brought together in a single rationally coherent theory of a world that
is constituted not of matter, as classically conceived, but rather of
an informational structure that causally links the two elements that
combine to constitute actual scientific practice, namely the psychologically
described contents of our streams of conscious experiences and
the mathematically described objective tendencies that tie our chosen
actions to experience.
No comparable success has been achieved within the framework of
classical physics, in spite of intense efforts spanning more than three
centuries. The reasons for this failure are easy to see: classical physics
systematically exorcizes all traces of mind from its precepts, thereby
banishing any logical foothold for recovering mind. Moreover, according
to quantum physics all causal effects of consciousness act within
the latitude provided by the uncertainty principle, and this latitude
shrinks to zero in the classical approximation, eliminating the causal
effects of consciousness.

Source : Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2013 20:19:42
dlorde :

See my replies to you here above , and do try to read the excerpts i did post today as well on the same subject , please .

You have to try to face the evidence regarding the undeniable causal effects of consciousness on matter , and hence on the brain and body ,instead of sticking to your own outdated superseded and false ...secular religion in science = the mainstream materialist false "scientific world view " .
It's up to you indeed .
Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2013 20:29:40
It's very convenient to call any non-orthodox  scientist ,  philosopher ....senile , a fame freak or worse , just because they happen to challenge the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view " : why not send them to the "goulag " , burn them at the stake ............: self-refuting and self-defeating forms of materialist ...inquisitions .pfff...
Come on Don, you can do better than this; Stapp's hypothesis has less meat on it's bones than Penrose and Hammerof's; he trying to buttress the credibility of his idea with an incorrect and misleading description of the development of quantum theory and its interpretations - don't you want to address those criticisms?

Or are you just intending to continue this repetitive argument from spurious authority and refusal to address the resulting criticism?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2013 20:46:44
You have to try to face the evidence regarding the undeniable causal effects of consciousness on matter
I'm quite prepared to accept that consciousness may have causal effects on matter - brain processes do that all the time.

So, show me this evidence you speak of.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2013 17:36:50
dlorde :

(Prior note :
Normally , when scientists or thinkers  are confronted with the proven falsehood of their a-priori held theories or beliefs , they should either partly or entirely reject the latter , while looking for more or less valid alternatives to them:
But ,you , dlorde , are still in stubborn denial regarding the undeniable falsehood of your beloved or cherished materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " , and hence you just try to refute non-orthodox or non-materialist views or world views ,by looking for their flaws only , instead of learning from them .)

There is a lots of evidence contained in those tons of posted excerpts i have been delivering all along , concerning the undeniable and obvious falsehood of the  mainstream materialist "scientific world view " ,as there is plenty of evidence regarding the fact that consciousness has obvious undeniable causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain , you do experience every single day of your own life as well , and hence consciousness cannot but have causal effects also at the  micro quantum level : and those are the main facts : instead of addressing the latter , you just deliberately choose to focuss on  minor irrelevant issues .
Way to go , man .
So, try to learn from non-orthodox or non-materialist scientists and philosophers on the subject such as Nagel,Sheldrake, Stapp and the rest , instead of sticking  and listening  to your own materialist false music only .
If you are just interested in trying to refute them ,instead of learning from  them , you will end up just learning nothing , you will end up just closing your mind to non-orthodox and non-materialist views ,or you will end up just trying to confirm your own materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view , via confirmation and other biases, by becoming rock-solid dogmatic in the very face of evidence  .
If you are just interested in refuting them, you will be just looking for their confirmatory inevitable logical and other flaws ,instead of noticing and learning about their positive  ideas , insights , inspirations , innovations ...


It's up to you indeed ,once again .

P.S : When i do provide you with non-orthodox or non-materialist views ,as i have been doing all along , for so long now ,  i do that , despite knowing the a -priori fact that those views do contain some inevitable and inescapable logical and other flaws , but they nevertheless do contain many more valuable facts , insights , innovations as well : so, if you would just try to look for their flaws , you would end up missing the whole idea , you would be missing their valuable insights , ideas , innovations ....

The choice is yours indeed .
Take care ,and good luck to you regarding  your own search and journey .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2013 00:05:30
...There is a lots of evidence contained in those tons of posted excerpts i have been delivering all along , concerning the undeniable and obvious falsehood of the  mainstream materialist "scientific world view "
Such as? I didn't notice any - please be specific.

Quote
If you are just interested in trying to refute them ,instead of learning from  them , you will end up just learning nothing , you will end up just closing your mind to non-orthodox and non-materialist views ,or you will end up just trying to confirm your own materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view , via confirmation and other biases, by becoming rock-solid dogmatic in the very face of evidence .
If you are just interested in refuting them, you will be just looking for their confirmatory inevitable logical and other flaws ,instead of noticing and learning about their positive  ideas , insights , inspirations , innovations ...
I read what you posted; it's just speculation - there's nothing there to refute.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 24/12/2013 00:23:17
Aha! Zeno's paradox and the uncertainty principle rear their irrelevant heads at last! Two sure signs that the author doesn't understand (a) differential calculus and (b) physics.

There's no shame in ignorance, but bombastic bullshit is unforgiveable.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 24/12/2013 02:44:02
Outdated and superceded theories?? William James knowledge of neurology from 1892??? Seriously? I wish i hadnt used up all my bandwidth for this month.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 24/12/2013 15:04:40


There is a lots of evidence contained in those tons of posted excerpts i have been delivering all along , concerning the undeniable and obvious falsehood of the  mainstream materialist "scientific world view " ,as there is plenty of evidence regarding the fact that consciousness has obvious undeniable causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain
You've got it backwards Don............There is plenty of evidence regarding the fact that the chemistry of the body and brain has undeniable causal effects on consciousness.

You have offered absolutely no evidence to show this relationship to be in  reverse order.

Get a grip Don..........................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/12/2013 03:28:33
Merry Christmas!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 13:24:11
Merry Christmas & happy New Year to all!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 16:48:18
Merry Christmas to you all and wishing everyone a Happy and prosperous New Year!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 17:31:44
...There is a lots of evidence contained in those tons of posted excerpts i have been delivering all along , concerning the undeniable and obvious falsehood of the  mainstream materialist "scientific world view "
Such as? I didn't notice any - please be specific.

Quote
If you are just interested in trying to refute them ,instead of learning from  them , you will end up just learning nothing , you will end up just closing your mind to non-orthodox and non-materialist views ,or you will end up just trying to confirm your own materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view , via confirmation and other biases, by becoming rock-solid dogmatic in the very face of evidence .
If you are just interested in refuting them, you will be just looking for their confirmatory inevitable logical and other flaws ,instead of noticing and learning about their positive  ideas , insights , inspirations , innovations ...
I read what you posted; it's just speculation - there's nothing there to refute.

( He's asking me to be specific haha : what a silly joke ) : what , on earth , do you think Nagel , Sheldrake , and the rest whose works i have been extensively quoting all along , were  doing then , regarding the undeniable faslehood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view "  at least ? haha ,amazing: come on , you gotta be kidding me  .

Yeah, right : nothing is true but what materialism and its false 'scientific world view " say it is , even though science is not about the truth, the rest is just 'scientific " heresy , pseudo-science at best , or just speculations or non-sense ,just because the false materialist mainstream dogmatic irrational "scientific world view " secular religion - church  says so  : there has been nothing  but speculation and utter non-sense  in my tons of posted material and excerpts ,from Nagel's book , to those of Stapp and beyond, through Sheldrake's  and the rest , regarding the undeniable falsehood of materialism , and hence regarding that of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " ,and regarding the rest , that i cannot but be confirmed by your confirmation and other materialist biases , to the point where you have been insulting peoples' intelligence,and yours in the process,  by calling all that just speculations or non-sense : none can be more guilty of confirmation and other biases than materialists and their followers are ,as this thread  has been showing all along: ignorance is bliss ,as  all  irrational dogmatic orthodox beliefs are,including the materialist false  mainstream 'scientific world view " of course that's been just the materialist false conception of nature , the mainstream materialist false 'scientific world view " that has been  THE biggest unscientific lie ever , in all mankind's history so far at least, and that in the name of no-less than ...science itself , the latter that has been having absolutely nothing to do with , even though science has been materialist for so long now   .

I am a naive optimist , as to have been hoping that you would be able to see the obvious and undeniable falsehood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " , at some stage of this discussion .
I have been  too much of a naive utopian optimist , as to believe in the utopian unrealistic metaphysically- neutral science -myth ,and in its mythical objectivity , despite knowing that they do not exist ,and cannot exist as such , simply because science is just a human activity , just a reflection of the highest and of the lowest which are in all of us  = irrational dogmatic beliefs such as materialism , and hence such as the current "scientific world view " cannot  but be  intrinsically and per -definition exclusive in relation  to any kind of evidence ,except to "those  delivered " by  ...materialism and  by  its false 'scientific world view " thus : science is the main victim of that,as a result  .

There is nothingelse  in the room  than what you , guys ,have been seeing through your materialist narrow-minded handicaped key hole , no wonder,silly me  .

It's pointless to try to bring people irrational dogmatic believers such as yourselves to their senses , the more  when you  have been taking your  own materialist beliefs for granted as science = taking the materialist false conception of nature for granted as the 'scientific world view " = you cannot but dismiss ideas , insights , evidence ,innovations,theories  ...that happen to be singing outside of the materialist mainstream  false  'scientific world view " orchestra , no wonder .


I wanna wish you merry christmas and a happy new year , but then again, as die -hard irrational dogmatic materialists ,it would be non-sense to wish you anything at all for that matter , since you cannot be but  mindless heartless soulless insensitive ....hardware machines robots programmed by software ,without any degree of free will , without any real desires , will, emotions, feelings ; love ,conscience , consciousness , ....as such , according to your own materialist false world view thus .

Talking to just some sort of a pc program , to an intelligent machine or robot , or to just my cat , no offense , might turn out to be  way more interesting than talking to you , guys , as stubborn irrational dogmatic materialists .

But then again , " the gain is worth the loss " , once again, you have no idea .

P.S . : Science will leave you behind , no doubt in my mind about that , when science will be rejecting materialism, and hence  when science will be rejecting  its current false 'scientific world view " in the process  , outdated superseded and false materialism- 'scientific world view "  that  were built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics , just in order to pretend to be 'scientific " ,for obvious materialist ideologiocal purposes back then and up to this present date and counting .

Science that's all about , or should be all about at least , dispelling dogmas , lies , half-truths ,falsehood ....

Science that's just about temporary approximate conjectural knowledge , not about the truth ,while you have been thinking and behaving as if materialism or its 'scientific world view " meta-paradigm were ...true somehow , were absolutely true = definite,sub-consciously or consciously , implicitly or explicitly thus  :

Why practice science then ,if you think and behave as if you have somehow already reached the "truth " then ?

As a so-called scientist , you are nothing but an insult , an obstacle and a silly joke to the evolutionary nature of science in fact .

"Scientific rational logical " people you are , my ass , excuse my French ...

Enough reasons to leave this "science " forum , untill science will be able to expell its materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " form science , without mercy , regret , without looking back ....

Otherwise ,science will just remain a source of lies , deceit , myths ,dogmas ....a theater of ideological struggle and materialist supremacy and power , despite the huge achievements of science , and despite the fact that science has been extremely successfull , the latter that has been accomplished only thanks to the effective and unparalleled scientific method that's like no other : materialism or its false 'scientific world view " has been having absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific wonderful achievements , science that should be neither materialist nor otherwise indeed : but fact is : science has been materialist for so long now that it has not been fully deserving to be called science ,untill science will cease to be materialist = ideological dogmatic , then and only then , science will be more scientific and less dogmatic ...hopefully .

Untill then , people should learn how to differentiate science and scientific results , empirical evidence from ...materialist bullshit in science that has been sold to the people as ...science , for so long now, by turning science into a secular irrational dogmatic orthodox exclusive religion through its false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " ...

What a hopeless predicament  in which science is the main victim  .

What a serious desillusion delusion for all those people who have been thinking and behaving ,as if science has been truely metaphysically neutral or objective , as one of the "best " sources of ...knowledge ....

How depressingly and hopelessly pathetic  this science delusion has been like no other = the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " .

Sweet dreams then in this false  materialist  'scientific world view " delusion wonder land of yours ,guys : ignorance is bliss indeed .

Way to go, 'scientific " folks haha: if science could speak ,as it has been actually doing all along , but for few select  people to hear , via science's esoteric core and nature for not every ear to hear , science would be saying , as it has been doing all along : leave me alone ,silly materialist lunatics, enemies of science  : i have been having nothing to do with you all along , even though you have been turning me into a materialist dogmatic religion  : my unparalled scientific world view or evolutionary nature will send you back to the garbage of history,soon enough ,  where you do belong and come from : which means you are in the wrong side of history , in the non-materialist sense at least  .

Only time will tell then indeed ...

................



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 18:45:06
In short : as to finish the above :

Materialist science through its false materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been THE  biggest and worst lie and crime against science itself, against humanity .....so far at least , for so long now (despite the fact that science has been extremely successfull ,thanks only and exclusively to its own effective and unparalleled method thus ) ,science must  be delivered from ,as science will be in fact = inevitable = just a matter of ...time thus .

I am afraid though, that materialism will be just replaced by yet another false conception of nature ,as Nagel said ,or in other words :

"The human will to believe is inexhaustible " indeed , as Nagel said also ...

Human beliefs are inevitable and unavoidable in science ,since science is just a human activity = the metaphysically -neutral science is a myth , and hence as objectivity in science is : hopeless  unavoidable unsolvable predicament = that's THE intrinsic incurable lethal disease of human science  .....the latter that has been able to cure , defeat ,erase ...many human and other diseases but its core human own .

I wish i could leave this 'science " forum via a positive note , but i cannot , for the above mentioned undeniable reasons at least ...I wish i could thus .....i cannot , otherwise , i would be lying indeed .....or i would be a hypocrit ....as a result .

We don't want the latter , do we ,folks ?

Oh yeah , i do keep forgetting that you have been believeing in a big 'scientific " lie ,you have been taking for granted as science for so long now , a hypocritical  ideological one in the form and shape of the false mainstream materialist 'scientific world view "=THE biggest and worst lie and form of hypocrisy and dishonesty ever ,so, you would not notice the ...difference , if i would happen to be lying or if i would happen to be hypocritical or dishonest about it anyway ....which i am not ,by the way , for your info ...just for the record then, just for the real seeing honest true people watching ,in this land of the blind, land of liars or hypocrits dishonest current false 'scientific world view "  .

How does it feel to have been believing in that 'scientific " hypocritical false and dishonest , not to mention outdated superseded .....lie ever then ?

I don't wanna be in your shoes , guys , never , ever, not in a trillion years to come , not for all the power and glory of this world  : i can't bear such a big lie : THE biggest one ever ,no way ,sorry .

My empathy or sympathy goes to you all in that regard .....no one can or should bear such a big lie , never , ever .......unless deluded ,dishonest hypocritical ,brainwashed indoctrinated or blind ...
...........................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 19:27:41

I am a naive optimist
I think you nailed the naïve part of that self assessment Don......

Quote from: DonQuichotte
I have been  too much of a naive utopian optimist
Surprising, you even repeated that accurate self assessment, astounding!!

Quote from: DonQuichotte
As a so-called scientist , you are nothing but an insult , an obstacle and a silly joke to the evolutionary nature of science in fact .

"Scientific rational logical " people you are , my ass , excuse my French ...
Sounds to me like you're the one making all the insulting remarks SIR DON!!

Quote from: DonQuichotte
Enough reasons to leave this "science " forum

I hear applause in the background, quite loud I might say.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 25/12/2013 19:43:11
And it's Isaac Newton's birthday too!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 19:53:58
...There is a lots of evidence contained in those tons of posted excerpts i have been delivering all along , concerning the undeniable and obvious falsehood of the  mainstream materialist "scientific world view "
Such as? I didn't notice any - please be specific.
( He's asking me to be specific haha : what a silly joke )
True; you haven't been able to give a specific answer yet. A joke indeed.

Quote
: what , on earth , do you think Nagel , Sheldrake , and the rest whose works i have been extensively quoting all along , were  doing then , regarding the undeniable faslehood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view "  at least ? haha ,amazing: come on , you gotta be kidding me  .
Ah; now I see the problem - you can't tell the difference between speculation and evidence. No wonder you're so confused [:o)]

Quote
I am a naive optimist...
Can't argue with that [8D]

Quote
I wanna wish you merry christmas and a happy new year , but then again, as die -hard irrational dogmatic materialists ,it would be non-sense to wish you anything at all for that matter , since you cannot be but  mindless heartless soulless insensitive ....hardware machines robots programmed by software ,without any degree of free will , without any real desires , will, emotions, feelings ; love ,conscience , consciousness , ....as such , according to your own materialist false world view thus .
So much for seasonal goodwill. These kinds of disturbed feelings of detachment &  alienation from your fellow man might be better expressed to a qualified counsellor or mental health professional. Just sayin'  [:o]

Quote
Enough reasons to leave this "science " forum
How many times have you left the forum now? I've not been counting...

Last time you said you'd bring back "some challenging material that will be rocking your materialist sand castles , to the point where its sand grains will be flying in all directions ,thanks to the stormy wind that i will be triggering", such rousing hyperbole - but, surprise, surprise, it didn't happen - did the dog eat your homework Don? Did the 'stormy wind' blow it all away? [::)]

Quote
What a hopeless predicament  in which science is the main victim  .

What a serious desillusion delusion for all those people who have been thinking and behaving ,as if science has been truely metaphysically neutral or objective , as one of the "best " sources of ...knowledge ....

How depressingly and hopelessly pathetic  this science delusion has been like no other = the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " .
Oops - cheer up, it's Christmas! Guess we'd better scratch the 'optimist' from 'naive optimist'; that leaves plain 'naive'  [;D]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 20:00:40
And it's Isaac Newton's birthday too!

Happy birthday Isaac!  - and if his equal and opposite reaction to Don's diatribe is to spin in his grave, I expect he'll keep spinning unless acted on by some external force...  [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 20:06:16
Merry Christmas to you also DonQuichotte, we might as well be charitable where charity is sorely needed. Ohhh yes, and Happy birthday Sir Isaac as well.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:12:58
"Why Materialism is False ? " :


Excerpts from   "The Science Delusion " or  "Science Set Free : 10 Paths To New Discovery " By Rupert Sheldrake : Introduction :



Introduction:
THE TEN DOGMAS OF MODERN SCIENCE:

The “scientific worldview” is immensely influential because the sciences have been so successful.
They touch all our lives through technologies and through modern medicine. Our intellectual world
has been transformed by an immense expansion of knowledge, down into the most microscopic
particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an everexpanding
universe.
Yet in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when science and technology seem to be at the
peak of their power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems
indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Most scientists take it for
granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but
some, including myself, think they are symptoms of a deeper malaise.
In this book, I argue that science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have
hardened into dogmas. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting and
more fun.
The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still
need working out but, in principle, the fundamental questions are settled.
Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical. There is no
reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter
is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in
human heads.
These beliefs are powerful, not because most scientists think about them critically but because they
don’t. The facts of science are real enough; so are the techniques that scientists use, and the
technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an
act of faith, grounded in a nineteenth-century ideology.
This book is pro-science. I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that
the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them.


The scientific creed:
Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.
1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather
than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering
robots,” in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically
programmed computers.
2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human
consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big
Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they
will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other
material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree,
the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your
brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.
Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption
is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds. This belief system became dominant
within science in the late nineteenth century, and is now taken for granted. Many scientists are
unaware that materialism is an assumption: they simply think of it as science, or the scientific view of
reality, or the scientific worldview. They are not actually taught about it, or given a chance to discuss
it. They absorb it by a kind of intellectual osmosis.
In everyday usage, materialism refers to a way of life devoted entirely to material interests, a
preoccupation with wealth, possessions and luxury. These attitudes are no doubt encouraged by the
materialist philosophy, which denies the existence of any spiritual realities or non-material goals, but
in this book I am concerned with materialism’s scientific claims, rather than its effects on lifestyles.
In the spirit of radical skepticism, I turn each of these ten doctrines into a question. Entirely new
vistas open up when a widely accepted assumption is taken as the beginning of an inquiry, rather than
as an unquestionable truth. For example, the assumption that nature is machine-like or mechanical
becomes a question: “Is nature mechanical?” The assumption that matter is unconscious becomes “Is
matter unconscious?” And so on.
In the Prologue I look at the interactions of science, religion and power, and then in Chapters 1 to
10, I examine each of the ten dogmas. At the end of each chapter, I discuss what difference this topic
makes and how it affects the way we live our lives. I also pose several further questions, so that any
readers who want to discuss these subjects with friends or colleagues will have some useful starting
points. Each chapter is followed by a summary.

The credibility crunch for the “scientific worldview”:
For more than two hundred years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain
everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex
machines, minds are nothing but brain activity and nature is purposeless. Believers are sustained by
the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper
called this stance “promissory materialism” because it depends on issuing promissory notes for
discoveries not yet made.1 Despite all the achievements of science and technology, materialism is now
facing a credibility crunch that was unimaginable in the twentieth century.
In 1963, when I was studying biochemistry at Cambridge University, I was invited to a series of
private meetings with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in Brenner’s rooms in King’s College, along
with a few of my classmates. Crick and Brenner had recently helped to “crack” the genetic code. Both
were ardent materialists and Crick was also a militant atheist. They explained there were two major
unsolved problems in biology: development and consciousness. They had not been solved because the
people who worked on them were not molecular biologists—or very bright. Crick and Brenner were
going to find the answers within ten years, or maybe twenty. Brenner would take developmental
biology, and Crick consciousness. They invited us to join them.
Both tried their best. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on the development
of a tiny worm, Caenorhabdytis elegans. Crick corrected the manuscript of his final paper on the brain
the day before he died in 2004. At his funeral, his son Michael said that what made him tick was not
the desire to be famous, wealthy or popular, but “to knock the final nail into the coffin of vitalism.”
(Vitalism is the theory that living organisms are truly alive, and not explicable in terms of physics and
chemistry alone.)
Crick and Brenner failed. The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many
details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more
precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone
(see Chapters 1, 4 and 8).
The fundamental proposition of materialism is that matter is the only reality. Therefore
consciousness is nothing but brain activity. It is either like a shadow, an “epiphenomenon,” that does
nothing, or it is just another way of talking about brain activity. However, among contemporary
researchers in neuroscience and consciousness studies there is no consensus about the nature of minds.
Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies
publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David
Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the “hard problem.” It is hard because
it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to
red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.
In biology and psychology the credibility rating of materialism is falling. Can physics ride to the
rescue? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend
on modern physics, not nineteenth-century theories of matter. But physicalism’s own credibility rating
has been reduced by physics itself, for four reasons.
First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into
account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics
presupposes the minds of physicists.2
Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, string and M-theories, with ten and
eleven dimensions respectively, take science into completely new territory. Strangely, as Stephen
Hawking tells us in his book The Grand Design (2010), “No one seems to know what the ‘M’ stands
for, but it may be ‘master’, ‘miracle’ or ‘mystery.’ ” According to what Hawking calls “modeldependent
realism,” different theories may have to be applied in different situations. “Each theory
may have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that is acceptable so
long as the theories agree in their predictions whenever they overlap, that is, whenever they can both
be applied.”3
String theories and M-theories are currently untestable so “model-dependent realism” can only be
judged by reference to other models, rather than by experiment. It also applies to countless other
universes, none of which has ever been observed. As Hawking points out,
M-theory has solutions that allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending
on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal
spaces, perhaps as many as 10500, which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with
its own laws … The original hope of physics to produce a single theory explaining the apparent
laws of our universe as the unique possible consequence of a few simple assumptions may have
to be abandoned.4
Some physicists are deeply skeptical about this entire approach, as the theoretical physicist Lee
Smolin shows in his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science
and What Comes Next (2008).5 String theories, M-theories and “model-dependent realism” are a shaky
foundation for materialism or physicalism or any other belief system, as discussed in Chapter 1.
Third, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become apparent that the known kinds
of matter and energy make up only about 4 percent of the universe. The rest consists of “dark matter”
and “dark energy.” The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure (see Chapter 2).
Fourth, the Cosmological Anthropic Principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had
been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and
hence we would not be here to think about it (see Chapter 3). So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws
and constants in the beginning? To avoid a creator God emerging in a new guise, most leading
cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of
parallel universes, all with different laws and constants, as M-theory also suggests. We just happen to
exist in the one that has the right conditions for us.6
This multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam’s Razor, the philosophical principle that
“entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or in other words, that we should make as few
assumptions as possible. It also has the major disadvantage of being untestable.7 And it does not even
succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes.8
Materialism provided a seemingly simple, straightforward worldview in the late nineteenth century,
but twenty-first-century science has left it behind. Its promises have not been fulfilled, and its
promissory notes have been devalued by hyperinflation.
I am convinced that the sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into
dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. These beliefs protect the citadel of established science, but
act as barriers against open-minded thinking.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:14:32
"Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False"  By Thomas Nagel :

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755




"Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery" By Rupert Sheldrake :



http://www.amazon.com/Science-Set-Free-Paths-Discovery/dp/0770436722





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:16:15

Why Materialism is False ? :


Source : http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?15753-Why-Materialism-is-False

Prior Note :

Materialism is just a false conception of nature : a belief assumption = unscientific , per definition .

Science has been dominated and hijacked by materialism , materialism as a false and unscientific world view or philosophy , since the 19th century at least .

Materialism goes beyond science and its unparalleled effective scientific method  that's unlike any other for that matter  , by assuming that the universe or reality nature are exclusively material .

The following article does not necessarily reflect my own opinions or views on the subject :

The critique of materialism goes way beyond what the following article tries to approach ,summarize or tackle  :
-I-I do not agree with the author's allegations that materialism has succeeded in "solving " the challenge or hard problem of life , design, thought , morality ...
0_Materialism is just a dogmatic belief system or rather a false secular religion ideology  in science , a misconsception of nature in science , that has absolutely nothing to do with science thus , and that just tries to "validate " itself through science , in vain of course , logically and per-definition .
I_Those so-called neurocomputation mechanisms cannot account for such  non-physical non-biological  processes such as thought either .
II-Darwin's theory of evolution is only and exclusively biological physical , so, it tackles only the physical biological side of evolution, but materialists , per definition, just try to extend it to non-physical non-biological processes ,for obvious materialist ideological "reasons " that have ,obviously , nothing to do with science  .
III- That life can be approached via physics and chemistry does not mean that life is just that .
IV_ Materialism cannot , per definition, succeed in "refuting " the existence of God, design ................behind all those laws of physics ............

V-Neither the materialist version or rather the materialist misinterpretation of Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution , nor Darwin's exclusively biological physical theory of evolution can account for human morality, cognition,  life or of consciousness "fully" ........let alone their  evolution .
VI-Materialism can, per definition , not account for consciousness, life ,feelings , emotions,  human cognition , human conscience , human morality , ...."fully" , let alone their origins evolution or emergence .
_VII-The brain does not cause consciousness : that alleged causality that's ,obviously , just a materialist misinterpretation of that   mutual actual factual correlation or interaction between the brain and consciousness thus  , was never proven to be true, ever , that's just a materialist belief assumption : causation is no explanation either .
VIII-There is a lot more to say on the subject , so, i will just leave it at that ,for the time being at least .


Quote :

" Why Materialism is False:

    In short, I think materialism is false. Below is why, with a detour through the reasons why Materialism isn't false.

    I don't mind if you read this or not, just thought I'd share for anyone remotely interested. No, it's not particularly well written or well structured, and there is so much more that could be said on this topic, but ... meh.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Materalism, I define as follows:
    'The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.' - Answers.com
    First, there is an important distinction to be made. Materialism and Science are not the same thing. Science is the study of the natural world, so Science has no jurisdiction over any theory regarding that which cannot be empirically tested.

    For example, suppose a Theist were to conjecture that God is the law enforcer of the universe, ensuring that at every moment, at every place, all physical occurrences obeyed the laws that God has decreed. This conjecture is impossible to test scientifically, since all possible experimental observations are consistent with its predictions. However, the unscientific character of our Theist's conjecture does not mean that it is false; the answer to the question is simply outside of the jurisdiction of the Scientific method.

    The philosophy of Materialism goes beyond the Scientific Method, postulating that only the material exists. This would place the Materialist in disagreement with our Theist. If it is true that only the material exists, then the Theist's law enforcer God does not exist, since that God would qualify as immaterial.

    The above constitutes the important distinction between Materialism and Science, whilst also explaining why Materialists are always Scientists. However the philosophy of Materialism should not be conflated with that of Science, as it is possible to both be a Scientist and not be a Materialist.

    _______________________________________________________________


    Materialism has always been an unpopular philosophy, with critics branding it as cold, uncaring and fundamentally amoral. The philosophy has had its most bitter rivals in that of Theism, as Materialism denies the truth of religious scripture, denying the existence of God, the afterlife and the immortal soul. Despite this, Materialism has stumbled on, with proponents offering Materialistic solutions to many of the long standing problems in philosophy. The problems listed below have stood as criticisms to the Materialistic philosophy now and in the past. The list is not comprehensive, but does reflect what I believe to have been the key problems that Materialism has overcome.

    1) The problem of life
    2) The problem of design
    3) The problem of thought
    4) The problem of morality
    Here I will sketch a brief overview of what each problem is and how I believe the Materialist can solve it.

    The first and easiest is the problem of life. The problem arises from the unique properties and capabilities of living organisms; it had seemed incomprehensible that the mechanical world of physics could explain the biological. Something else was needed, so it was postulated that a vital force animated living matter, imbuing it with lifelike qualities. The doctrine held that life was inexplicable in terms of physicochemical interactions. If the Materialist could not explain life, then Materialism must be false.

    The Materialist did not get his answer to this problem in one sweeping theory, but rather a cumulation of experimental findings, from William Harvey's discovery that the circularitory system was a cleverly engineered mechanism to pump blood around the body, to Fracis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The march of scientific progress has unveiled the fine structure of cellular machinery, all working impeccably from physicochemical laws without the need for a vital animating force.

    Here the Materialist can explain how life works without appealing to any immaterial vital essence, but there still remains another problem to be solved. This is the problem of design. How is it that this incredible arrangement of organised matter came into being? The odds that such organisation would occur by chance are astronomically low, but life is bustling all around us in a multitude of forms. If the Materialist cannot explain this design, then Materialism must be false.

    In 1859, in a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace that explanation was provided. The Materialist now had The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection i.e. The gradual accumulation of adaptive organisation by selective advantage. This elegant theory has provided the Materialist with an answer to the problem of design, which has in time been corroborated by a vast amount of evidence, from practically every field of scientific study.

    The problem of design had been solved, but an interesting disagreement between Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin persisted. The problem of thought presented itself. To Wallace, the human capacity for reasoned thought was beyond the reach of evolution, a feat which could simply not have been achieved by anything other than supernatural intervention, or in other words: God given. How could it be that a physical system could possibly think? If Materialism cannot explain how it is that we think, then Materialism must be false.

    The answer to the problem today is all around us, in front of anyone reading this at this very moment, i.e. computation. Alan Turing's Turing machine and the advent of modern electronics are a vivid illustration that complex computational architecture, obeying only the laws of physics can perform intelligent operations. The Materialist can now look to neurobiology, where cognition is explained as the consequent of neurocomputations occurring in parallel throughout the central nervous system. The Materialist now has his answer to Wallace's conjecture that the capacity for reason is unevolvable and must be God given.

    So the Materialist has provided powerful arguments to solve the problem of life, the problem of design and the problem thought. Unlike these three problems, the final problem on my list cannot refute Materialism. If Materialism is indeed amoral, it would be a nonsequitor to conclude from Materialism's amorality that it is false. For this reason, the problem of morality is a special case, but nonetheless very powerful. Briefly, the argument claims that if we are nothing but an unintentional consequence of natural selection, nothing but elaborate machines and built by selfish genes, then there is no reason to work for a higher purpose. For what reason should we treat our fellow man with compassion? What becomes of right and wrong with no God?

    The answer to this problem is the combined product of evolutionary biology, neurobiology and philosophy. The combined solutions to the previous three problems set the stage for solving the problem of morality. First, evolutionary biology, far from undermining the basis of morality, can explain why we have a moral sense in the first place. Second, neurobiology has provided scientists with evidence of how the human brain computes moral decisions. Finally, philosophers have raised objections to the accusation that Materialism is inherently amoral, refuting the accusations with powerful solutions and counterarguments.

    Note: I am sure many reading this may object to the solutions I have presented to the 'four problems,' such objections are welcome and I encourage further criticism.

    ________________________________________________________________

    I have taken this detour through the successes of Materialism to drive home that I have no political agenda against the philosophy, religiously motivated or otherwise. I now wish to draw attention to my fifth problem for Materialism:

    5) The problem of consciousness
    A single element of conscious experience is called a quale, a group of quale are known as qualia. A quale might be the subjective experience of red, cold or pain. All quale are symbolic representations of frequencies and angles. The problem for Materialism is explaining qualia, the subjective experience of life, the very subjective experience without which we cannot imagine life being worth living at all. How can a physical system such as the brain be responsible for consciousness?. This is no small problem, for if Materialism cannot explain consciousness, then Materialism is false.

    The problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers for centuries. To clarify the problem, imagine opening up my brain whilst displaying a large red circle to my eyes. After some probing, you discover a cluster of neurons whose combined activity is responsible for my conscious experience of red. However, all you have is my word to go on, there is nothing special about that particular cluster of neurons, no telltale sign that these are responsible for my conscious experience. To the outside observer, the entire neurocomputational system would work exactly the same whether or not I was actually consciously experiencing the red circle. To make make matters more puzzling, even if I am consciously experiencing life, how do you know that what you call red is what I call red? So long as the frequencies and angles which these qualia represent maintain a constant relation to each other, then for all you know my conscious experience of red might be radically different to yours.

    No matter where you look in my brain, even if you are looking at that particular cluster of neurons responsible for my conscious experience of red, you cannot sensibly say that you are looking at the quale redness. The redness I see is qualitively independent of the neural substrate that is responsible for that quale. To put this another way, I would argue that qualia are ontologically irreducible to the neural substrate, that is, qualia have independent qualities which cannot be explained at the physical level. However, I also would argue that consciousness is entirely caused by the neural substrate, that consciousness has no informational content or cognitive ability above that which occurs on the neurocomputational level i.e. consciousness is causally reducible to the neural substrate.

    To clarify, we can play a thought experiment involving two billiard balls. Billiard ball 1 and billiard ball 2. First take these two examples:

    1) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    2) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, both have a change of velocity.
    Notice that in example number 2 we infer the existence of ball 2 because of the change in velocity of ball 1. We cannot directly experience ball 2, so our knowledge of ball 2 is limited by it's relationship to ball 1. Now, take a third example:

    3) Imagine ball 1 moving on a trajectory toward ball 2. This time, imagine that ball 2 is invisible and has a one way causal relationship to ball 1. As ball 1 strikes ball 2, only ball 2 changes its velocity and ball 1 carries on at a constant speed, in a straight line.
    In this thought experiment, ball 2 exists and it's change in velocity is caused by ball 1, but to any observer unable to register ball 2, it remains completely invisible and undetectable. My conjecture is that qualia are like ball 2, which is why the conscious experience of other human beings is impossible to detect, the causal interaction is one way.

    The problem for the Materialist is that consciousness itself is immaterial, the frequencies and angles that make up subjective experience may be caused by, but are not part of the Material world. Thus, I conclude that Materialism is false.

    ________________________________________________________________

    A possible criticism of my theory is that consciousness is an emergent consequence of brain activity. This is a tempting view to take, analogous to the quality of wetness. A body of water is wet, even though no particular element of that body of water is wet. To clarify, a single molecule of H2O cannot be wet, because the quality of wetness is dependent upon the interactions of the constituent parts, without belong to any of those particular constituent parts. Wetness is an emergent property. A critic might conjecture that consciousness is also an emergent property of brain activity.

    I do not think that consciousness is an emergent product of brain activity. The difference between wetness and consciousness is that the quality of wetness follows from the physical laws governing the behavior of H2O, that is, given only the laws of physics I could predict that particular chemical substances would have the emergent property of wetness. The same cannot be said of consciousness. Given only the laws of physics, I could not predict the emergence of consciousness, it simply does not follow that from any complex neurocomputational system that consciousness should be." End Quote.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:18:11

Just watch and listen to the following on the subject :


SCIENCE SET FREE - Rupert Sheldrake





Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion | London Real


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 20:20:56
More copy and paste, will it never end?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:30:06
Nagel, Sheldrake , Chalmers , John Searle , and the rest were just speculating about materialism indeed , while not knowing the difference between speculation and evidence or arguments of course .....
For all those interested , try to read their speculations and utter non-sense ,according to these folks at least , via those tons of posted excerpts of their books and more , as displayed in this and other threads of mine ....

Nagel , Sheldrake and the rest were / are all speculative naive idiots indeed ,simply because they dare to challenge the extremely absurd surreal stupid ideological implausible ....you name it ...false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " unfalsifiable secular religion  authority  ......................

Of course ...

dlorde :


How does it feel to replace a medieval big lie by yet a 19th century bigger one , a "scientific " one at that ?

Talking about replacing a medieval delusion by a bigger one , a 'scientific " materialist one ,and you do have the nerve to call me a naive guy haha : look who's talking,or rather projecting  ...amazing ...


So, why should one ever take you seriously , despite your scientific qualifications ...
Sweet dreams  in your materialist dogmatic "scientific " delusion  wonderland , Alice :

Dogmatic materialist "Scientists " such as  yourself  are an utter insult to the evolutionary nature of science ,and to science period  as well , once again : congratulations ...

pfff....pathetic ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 20:32:29
Naïve; according to Websters:

unaffectedly simple, credulous

Credulous: tending to believe too readily,...................Don's personality in a nutshell.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:35:11
More copy and paste, will it never end?

I am afraid they were/are  just pearls for ...swine ,as David Cooper once said in that regard .
Let's hope some more intelligent people who  have been watching have been able to grasp the revolutionary character of some of those excerpts that will be triggering a scientific revolution ...soon enough = inevitable = just a question of time thus .

Only time will tell then ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:40:06
Naïve; according to Websters:

unaffectedly simple, credulous

Credulous: tending to believe too readily,...................Don's personality in a nutshell.

Yeah , right , and that coming from the most simple-minded and extremely paradoxical guy here = an understatement : i do take that as a ............compliment indeed ...

Some words are not meant for every ear to hear ...esoteric knowledge is not for everybody ,as pearls are not for ...swine ...

So, .....................pfff.........amazing ...

"The human will to believe is inexhaustible " indeed ...

I am out of here , out of this "science " forum , for good : i should have done so from day ....0 ....instead of casting valuable and priceless pearls before swine ....

Nevertheless, "the gain is worth the loss " , you have no idea = beyond your narrow-minded  materialist false key hole imaginations ...
................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/12/2013 20:51:00
There is nothing more stimulating for human intelligence than schoks indeed , as it is an undeniable fact that cognitive intelligence is by far not the highest form of intelligence or intellect , not even remotely close thus ........

.............ciao ............done .............gone ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 20:57:50
.. you do have the nerve to call me a naive guy haha : look who's talking,or rather projecting  ...amazing ...
It's getting worse - now you can't tell the difference between yourself and me [;)]

It was you who called yourself naive, Don. Don't you remember?

Quote
So, why should one ever take you seriously , despite your scientific qualifications ...
Sweet dreams  in your materialist dogmatic "scientific " delusion  wonderland , Alice :

Dogmatic materialist "Scientists " such as  yourself  are an utter insult to the evolutionary nature of science ,and to science period  as well , once again : congratulations ...

pfff....pathetic ...
Insults are not arguments, they just make you look puerile.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 21:03:38
I am out of here , out of this "science " forum , for good...

Have a rest, Don - you only just got back from your last theatrical flounce out [:)]

Any bets on how long before he's back yet again?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/12/2013 22:18:20
I am out of here , out of this "science " forum , for good...

Have a rest, Don - you only just got back from your last theatrical flounce out [:)]

Any bets on how long before he's back yet again?
If he stays true to form, it will be less than two days. But even during his last departure, I saw him logged in to the forum later the same day that he supposedly left. He'll be back, he just can't help himself................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2013 22:21:59
I hope this time he remembers that the plural of 'bollocks speculation' isn't 'evidence'  [;D]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 26/12/2013 01:54:47

Quote
Sweet dreams then in this false  materialist  'scientific world view " delusion wonder land of yours ,guys : ignorance is bliss indeed .

The only delusion around here is that there might be a "scientific world view". At least the eponymous Don Q tilted at real windmills. This clown is chasing moonbeams that nobody else can see.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 26/12/2013 16:55:45
I am out of here , out of this "science " forum , for good...

Have a rest, Don - you only just got back from your last theatrical flounce out [:)]

Any bets on how long before he's back yet again?
If he stays true to form, it will be less than two days. But even during his last departure, I saw him logged in to the forum later the same day that he supposedly left. He'll be back, he just can't help himself................
He's back..................Don just logged in. He just took a sneak peek and now he's gone again. I told you he couldn't stay away. It won't be long and he'll be posting again.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 26/12/2013 17:35:28
A short description of the book Don Quichotte

Alonso Quijano, the protagonist of the novel, is a retired country gentleman nearing fifty years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, his reading of books of chivalry in excess has had a profound effect on him, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true though, for the most part, the content of these books is clearly fiction. Otherwise, his wits are intact.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 26/12/2013 18:26:11
A short description of the book Don Quichotte

Alonso Quijano, the protagonist of the novel, is a retired country gentleman nearing fifty years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, his reading of books of chivalry in excess has had a profound effect on him, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true though, for the most part, the content of these books is clearly fiction. Otherwise, his wits are intact.
Yes, it's quite a good match for the recently departed, perhaps soon to return, Don. I did think the tag might be a hint that he'd be wilfully trolling, but given the persistence and obsessive nature of his posts, it now looks more like an ironic coincidence or subconscious 'tell' that he knows his view is absurd...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 17:03:00
I will have to break my promise to leave this forum ,once again then ,just to try to make you realise how absurd surreal implausible,stupid ...you name it ... and false the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " is : all your speculations about me and my motives are false thus :

So, let's start all over again :

What extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering for its extraordinary claims , regarding the nature of reality ?

Do try to answer that simple question , folks, for starters then .

By the way :

Merry christmas and a happy new year , to you all .

P.S.: I did choose deliberately this nick of mine , as a kind of irony or sarcasm : which means that those excerpts i have been delivering from all those "chivalry " books have been no absurd fiction , the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " is , the latter as a Donxichotian absurdity those excerpts have been refuting .....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 27/12/2013 17:51:02
You just can't resist breaking your promises, can you?

What extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering for its extraordinary claims , regarding the nature of reality ?

You're the one claiming an 'immaterial something' extra; the burden of proof for that is on you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 18:07:27
You just can't resist breaking your promises, can you?

I can't rather resist the temptation,desire  and urge to make you realise the undeniable absurdity and falsehood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " .

Quote
What extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering for its extraordinary claims , regarding the nature of reality ?

You're the one claiming an 'immaterial something' extra; the burden of proof for that is on you.

No , it's exactly the other way around : the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view " has been assuming that "all is matter , including the mind " thus : the burden of proof is yours to deliver thus : so, just try to answer that simple question then .

P.S.: My sincere and genuine apologies for having been rude to you , scientist : all the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 18:36:59


I can't rather resist the temptation,desire  and urge to make you realise
Welcome back Don.............., The only way to make us realize anything is for you to present evidence, which to date, you have not!

You are the author of this thread and it is incumbent upon you to provide the evidence in support of your views, not for us to prove you wrong! If you ever expect any of us to agree with you, you'll need to provide some tangible evidence. And not just copied and pasted excerpts from spurious sources.

The reason material evidence is necessary is; None of us is able to read your, or for that matter, any one else's mind. You can't just declare that your evidence exists in your own mind, you must be able to share it with others and that takes tangible material evidence.

Can you at least understand that simple reasoning?

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 27/12/2013 18:43:44
Your wrong Don, you started the thread, its your theory
its down to you to prove it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 27/12/2013 18:46:34
Quote
the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view "

Sorry, Don, repeating this mantra doesn't give it meaning. It may make you happy to do so, but it's a waste of your talent. There is no "scientific world view". Science is a process, not a philosophy.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 18:56:30
Quote
the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view "

Sorry, Don, repeating this mantra doesn't give it meaning. It may make you happy to do so, but it's a waste of your talent. There is no "scientific world view". Science is a process, not a philosophy.
Absolutely Alan....., and the process demands sharable and repeatable evidence. And when I say sharable, that demands an ability to present evidence that can be tested. And to be tested, the evidence must be observable and distinguishable from its surroundings, whether material or not.

BTW, no scientist here has ever said that all evidence must be MATERIAL. But evidence must be repeatable and observable and can't just come from the idea of an abstract consciousness. Consciousness is a process enabled by the physical workings of the physical brain..........period.

Ask yourself one question.....................Is consciousness possible without a brain? I think your intelligent enough to know the answer Don!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 18:57:03


I can't rather resist the temptation,desire  and urge to make you realise
Welcome back Don.............., The only way to make us realize anything is for you to present evidence, which to date, you have not!

You are the author of this thread and it is incumbent upon you to provide the evidence in support of your views, not for us to prove you wrong! If you ever expect any of us to agree with you, you'll need to provide some tangible evidence. And not just copied and pasted excerpts from spurious sources.

The reason material evidence is necessary is; None of us is able to read your, or for that matter, any one else's mind. You can't just declare that your evidence exists in your own mind, you must be able to share it with others and that takes tangible material evidence.

Can you at least understand that simple reasoning?

(There is , once again, plenty of evidence and arguments contained in my posted excerpts ,for everybody to see,not just speculations or opinions views,regarding the undeniable falsehood  and absurdity  of the materialist mainstream "scientific world view "  .)

Well,thanks, appreciate indeed :  just try to answer the simple question i did ask dlorde to address then :

The materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming , for so long now , that reality is just material or physical, including the mind: the 'scientific world view " has been taking that false assumption, or rather false materialist conception of nature for granted as an 'empirical fact " so far :
The burden of proof is yours to address then.............

In other words :

Has science ever proved the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist core belief assumption to be "true ", regarding the nature of reality ?

Is the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " 's version of reality an empirical fact then ? Is reality just material or physical as all sciences have been assuming it to be , since the 19th century at least ?


Can you   try to answer  just that ?

Best wishes : my sincere and genuine apologies to you ,and to the others here , i have been rude to .

Nice weekend to you all indeed , by the way ..........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:04:01
Your wrong Don, you started the thread, its your theory
its down to you to prove it.

The burden of proof is all yours to address , since the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming that "all is matter ,including the mind ", thanks to materialism, and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just the product of brain activity .

My take on that is : materialism ,and hence its "scientific world view " are false , mainly because physics and chemistry alone or neurochemistry ...cannot account for consciousness as such .
So:
What extraordinary evidence the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been delivering so far , for its extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality then ? and hence for the "scientific fact " that the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity .

Try to answer just that , instead of sending the ball back to me .

Thanks, appreciate indeed .

All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:10:38
Quote
the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view "

Sorry, Don, repeating this mantra doesn't give it meaning. It may make you happy to do so, but it's a waste of your talent. There is no "scientific world view". Science is a process, not a philosophy.

Well, ironically and paradoxically enough , the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " has been just the materialist false conception of nature , has been thus just the materialist world view , philosophy , ideology ..........through the materialist meta-paradigm in science .
So, it is an undeniable fact that all sciences for that matter have been assuming that reality is just material or physical = all is matter , including the mind, thanks to materialism ...

It's absurd to try to deny that fact .

Nice weekend .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 19:14:48


Well,thanks, appreciate indeed :  just try to answer the simple question i did ask dlorde to address then :



As the author of this thread, it is incumbent upon you to offer any evidence, not for us to do so. All the evidence we understand suggests that you are wrong. And here is why:

To prove your position you must prove the existence of consciousness without a brain. If you can do that, you may be on to something. Can you do that Don....?

Here's your chance to deliver evidence, all you need to do is provide good evidence that consciousness can exist without the instrument of the brain. Go for it Don........ We're all waiting..................................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:19:37
Will somebody here,please,  try to prove  the following "empirical fact " to be "true " ?:
I am not gonna be tired of repeating this same simple question over and over again, untill  i get an answer to that , hopefully :
According to the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " : "all is matter , including the mind" , and hence the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity = that's a "scientific fact " : try to prove the latter to be "true " as such then, since all sciences have been taking this 'scientific fact ",or rather this core materialist belief assumption ,regarding the nature of reality ,  for granted as an "empirical fact "  , for so long now, thanks to materialism thus ...

Thanks , appreciate indeed .

Nice weekend .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 19:26:24
Will somebody here,please,  try to prove  the following "empirical fact " to be "true " ?:
I am not gonna be tired of repeating this same simple question over and over again, untill  i get an answer to that , hopefully :
According to the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " : "all is matter , including the mind" , and hence the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity = that's a "scientific fact " : try to prove the latter to be "true " as such then, since all sciences have been taking this 'scientific fact ",or rather this core materialist belief assumption ,regarding the nature of reality ,  for granted as an "empirical fact "  , for so long now, thanks to materialism thus ...

Thanks , appreciate indeed .

Nice weekend .
Evidently you're not as smart as I thought you were.

Who's thread is this anyway?

It's your thread Don....................You provide your evidence!

Can consciousness exist without the brain?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:26:57


Well,thanks, appreciate indeed :  just try to answer the simple question i did ask dlorde to address then :



As the author of this thread, it is incumbent upon you to offer any evidence, not for us to do so. All the evidence we understand suggests that you are wrong. And here is why:

To prove your position you must prove the existence of consciousness without a brain. If you can do that, you may be on to something. Can you do that Don....?

Here's your chance to deliver evidence, all you need to do is provide good evidence that consciousness can exist without the instrument of the brain. Go for it Don........ We're all waiting..................................

Just try to answer the above mentioned and repeated simple question : is "all is matter ,including the mind " ? , the latter is  an  "empirical fact " : try to prove it to be as such then .

And of course consciousness and brain or body are inseparable ,in this life at least , and do have some sort of mutual correlations , interactions or whatever with each other .....What has that to do with anything ?...............
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 19:31:12


And of course consciousness and brain or body are inseparable ,in this life at least , and do have some sort of mutual correlations , interactions or whatever with each other .....What has that to do with anything ?...............
Because consciousness is brain dependent, and the brain is material, you can't have consciousness without the brain. Therefore, consciousness is material dependent. Now,.......argue about that!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 19:33:08
I submit that Don just admitted that consciousness is MATERIAL dependent!!!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:34:38
Will somebody here,please,  try to prove  the following "empirical fact " to be "true " ?:
I am not gonna be tired of repeating this same simple question over and over again, untill  i get an answer to that , hopefully :
According to the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " : "all is matter , including the mind" , and hence the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity = that's a "scientific fact " : try to prove the latter to be "true " as such then, since all sciences have been taking this 'scientific fact ",or rather this core materialist belief assumption ,regarding the nature of reality ,  for granted as an "empirical fact "  , for so long now, thanks to materialism thus ...

Thanks , appreciate indeed .

Nice weekend .
Evidently you're not as smart as I thought you were.

Who's thread is this anyway?

It's your thread Don....................You provide your evidence!

Can consciousness exist without the brain?


See above .
I am challenging the current "scientific world view " ,and i say it is not only unscientific = unfalsifiable and false , but it has been also just the materialist false conception of nature .

Try to prove me wrong then .

Brain and mind are 2 totally different processes in any 1 given living organism = 1 ,and do thus have mutual interactions with each other , once again .

"The mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity " is just an extension of the materialist 'all is matter ,including the mind " false conception of nature ,or false "scientific world view " ,once again .

Is that so hard to understand ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:40:09


And of course consciousness and brain or body are inseparable ,in this life at least , and do have some sort of mutual correlations , interactions or whatever with each other .....What has that to do with anything ?...............
Because consciousness is brain dependent, and the brain is material, you can't have consciousness without the brain. Therefore, consciousness is material dependent. Now,.......argue about that!

The fact that consciousness, in this life at least , is relatively brain dependent ,does that imply that consciousness is material or biological ,as the "scientific world view " has been assuming it to be  ,thanks to materialism thus ? Does that imply that the mind is in the brain or that the mind is just brain activity ?Obviously ...not .
So, just try to answer that simple question i have been asking all along ,but nobody here dares to try to face ...
Amazing.........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 27/12/2013 19:44:31
Don you keep saying "in this life at least". You have religion then ?.
no wonder you cant see the wood for the trees.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:47:22
If the mind is just brain activity ,absurd,  how come the mind has causal effect on matter , and hence on brain and body or brain activity as well ? : is that some sort of backward causation ? haha = the mind causing brain activity that has allegeldy caused it ...

Do your won will , feelings , emotions, desires , longings ,love .ambitions, beliefs .....not have causal effects on your brain activity and bodies ? How come then ? ,according to you.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 19:57:39
Don you keep saying "in this life at least". You have religion then ?.
no wonder you cant see the wood for the trees.

Nevermind what i do happen to believe in ,that's neither my motivation nor my 'argument " in relation to trying to make you realise the undeniable falshood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view ",  i just do keep my own beliefs outside of science , in total contrast with materialism as a dogmatic unfalsifiable false secular religion in science that has been imposing itself as the "scientific world view ".
Just answer that simple and repeated question then, i have been asking then .

P.S.: All beliefs are ,per definition ,unfalsifiable = unscientific , but they are not all necessarily false , as materialism is .
But , fact is , materialism goes beyond science ,beyond its method ,beyond its realm and jurisdiction , by assuming that reality is just physical or material .
Worse : that false materialist world view has been the 'scientific world view " = all sciences have been materialist ,in the above mentioned sense thus , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise .
Science should be metaphysically neutral thus = an utopia so far ...
Science must thus be liberated from materialism ,if science wanna be less dogmatic and more scientific ....at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 27/12/2013 20:05:51
For science to be liberated from materialism you need to provide proof.
I am sure science would love a new branch, but science is not going to
accept you theory just on your faith in it .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 20:26:30
Don you keep saying "in this life at least". You have religion then ?.
no wonder you cant see the wood for the trees.
Exactly Grimbo,.......He has a spiritual agenda. And the minute anyone begins to agree with his absurd assertions, about consciousness somehow transcending the material brain, he'll begin to associate it with his religious belief system.

Brain activity equals consciousness.
Without brain activity, no consciousness.

Maybe he should start referring to his position as SPIRTUIAL AWARENESS instead of consciousness. He'll have to disassociate the brain from his theory if he's going to be the least bit consistent. In any case, I think that's where he is ultimately headed anyway.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 20:28:12
For science to be liberated from materialism you need to provide proof.
I am sure science would love a new branch, but science is not going to
accept you theory just on your faith in it .

Well, you already answered your own words : materialism is just a false conception of nature , just a 19th century outdated and superseded world view that was built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics , just a philosophy ....just a  belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific, and hence its 'scientific world view " is also false , as a result , that's why science must be liberated from materialism that's no science , even though materialism has been taken for granted as science , as the 'scientific world view ", for so long now, without question .

Otherwise , try to prove to me that reality is just material or physical then , as materialism, and hence as its 'scientific world view ", and therefore as all sciences for that matter have been assuming reality to be,thanks to materialism thus  .

Deal ?

If you think or rather believe that reality is just material or physical, then try to prove that "empirical fact " , or rather that materialist core belief assumption to be "true" then .

Ok? Make my day then .........

If you think that this is just a religiously motivated thing , you're totally wrong about that : i just wanna make you realise the undeniable fact that materialism is false ,and hence the current "scientific world view " is also false = i just would love to see science delivered from that false materialist dogmatic secular religion in science ,that has been taken for granted as science , as the 'scientific world view ". for so long now, since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism , as many atheists and other non-religious people would love to see science get rid of its false materialist conception of nature or meta-paradigm .
A revolutionary and radical meta-paradigm shift, not just a paradigm shift , is hardly needed to deliver science from materialism , and that will be triggering a major scientific revolution, soon enough = inevitable = just a matter of ...time ......
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 20:31:46


Nevermind what i do happen to believe in
That's right, you'll bring that up later. And BTW, your position is nothing but belief, no facts and no evidence. I think they call that FAITH.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 20:40:40
Don you keep saying "in this life at least". You have religion then ?.
no wonder you cant see the wood for the trees.
Exactly Grimbo,.......He has a spiritual agenda. And the minute anyone begins to agree with his absurd assertions, about consciousness somehow transcending the material brain, he'll begin to associate it with his religious belief system.

Don't be silly as to take that self-refuting and self-defeating religious agenda accusations out of  the closet again : that's not my motivation, once again : i am so pro-science that i would love to see it get rid of its false materialism,the latter that has been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view "  , as many atheists such as Thomas Nagel and others do whose works i have been extensively quoting all along ....

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Brain activity equals consciousness.
Without brain activity, no consciousness.

Yeah, right : the tv set or radio device do also create or are their respectively received signals images and sounds ,or their own created received broadcaststs : Obama must be living inside of the tv sets ,as Hitler was living inside of the radio haha

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Maybe he should start referring to his position as SPIRTUIAL AWARENESS instead of consciousness. He'll have to disassociate the brain from his theory if he's going to be the least bit consistent. In any case, I think that's where he is ultimately headed anyway.

Consciousness is nothing but its subjective content experiences states ...or qualia that cannot be accounted for by brain activity ,or by physics and chemistry .

Science has not been able so far , for obvious reasons , to link the subjective conscious states and experiences to ...brain activity .

Consciousness that cannot be but non-physical or non-material = irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 20:45:06


Consciousness is nothing but its subjective content experiences states ...or qualia that cannot be accounted for by brain activity ,or by physics and chemistry .

Science has not been able so far , for obvious reasons , to link the subjective conscious states and experiences to ...brain activity .

Consciousness that cannot be but non-physical or non-material = irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again .
You're preaching to the choir Don.............., a membership of one. I think you're singing solo Don......................and off key I might add.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/12/2013 20:58:57


Consciousness is nothing but its subjective content experiences states ...or qualia that cannot be accounted for by brain activity ,or by physics and chemistry .

Science has not been able so far , for obvious reasons , to link the subjective conscious states and experiences to ...brain activity .

Consciousness that cannot be but non-physical or non-material = irreducible to the physical or to the material ,once again .
You're preaching to the choir Don.............., a membership of one. I think you're singing solo Don......................and off key I might add.

Ethos : don't be silly , please : try to read my simple words , they are so simple and so undeniable that you cannot misunderstand them ,can you ?
Try to answer that simple question i have been asking you all , all along :
Is reality just material or physical ? Can science be metaphysically not neutral as to pretend to know the nature of reality as a whole as such already , science that's still a relatively young effective and unparalled methodic adventurer like no other ,science which has been  confined  to just the materialist false version of reality , by making science "believe" that that's  all what there is to reality ,while such a great  young  adventurer such as science should be in fact totally free in exploring all parts of reality  with which science can deal empirically,instead of being confined to just a single part of reality . ..............

Get that ? How ,on earth, can you not ?

Hopeless ...

Ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 27/12/2013 22:38:44
For science to be liberated from materialism you need to provide proof.
I am sure science would love a new branch, but science is not going to
accept you theory just on your faith in it .
You're wasting your time; we've been over this many times, why he's attacking a straw man, why he has the burden of proof, the lack of evidence for the immaterial, the evidence consciousness is a material process, etc., etc.

He has failed to absorb any of it, or is being deliberately obtuse. He won't provide intelligent argument or explanation, just obsessively repeats his anti-materialist dogma, interspersed with insult-laden rants and chapters of copyright material from the speculative fringe.

Boring.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 27/12/2013 23:14:40


Hopeless ...


In a nutshell!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 16:21:28
For science to be liberated from materialism you need to provide proof.
I am sure science would love a new branch, but science is not going to
accept you theory just on your faith in it .
You're wasting your time; we've been over this many times, why he's attacking a straw man, why he has the burden of proof, the lack of evidence for the immaterial, the evidence consciousness is a material process, etc., etc.

He has failed to absorb any of it, or is being deliberately obtuse. He won't provide intelligent argument or explanation, just obsessively repeats his anti-materialist dogma, interspersed with insult-laden rants and chapters of copyright material from the speculative fringe.

Boring.

Yeah, right : you cannot address my legetimate raised  issues ,so, it's very convenient to say what you have been saying here above,in order to avoid addressing those issues = self-defeating or self-refuting exit strategy : way to go , scientist: boring indeed .
I did deliver the arguments concerning the undeniable falsehood of materialism , mainly via relevant excerpts of top books on the subject .
That you choose deliberately to ignore all that , is your problem .
You have not been delivering any kind of evidence proving consciousness to be just a biological process = you cannot , simply because science is not yet able to tackle the issue or hard problem of consciousness , simply because science is still materialist , and simply because there are not falsifiable theories of consciousness out there yet .
So, what makes you think that consciousness is just a biological process then, since science cannot deliver yet any conclusive evidence regarding the latter materialist claim .

Furthermore , you cannot or you do not want to try to deliver the oxtraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism regarding the nature of reality : the burden  of proof is thus all yours to address ,since the materialist false conception of nature has been taken for granted by all of you ,without question , as the "scientific world view " ,so.

In other words :
"The mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity " is just an extension of the materialist false "all is matter ,including the mind " version of reality ,no empirical fact .

Amazing how materialist dogmatic beliefs have been taken for granted as 'empirical facts " , even by some of the most intelligent people on this planet , a fact which proves that cognitive intelligence is not the highest form of human intelligence , not even remotely close thus .

Materialists and their followers cannot be but guilty of confirmation and other biases thus , by refusing stubbornly to face the undeniable falsehood of their materialist a -priori held beliefs , they have been taking for granted as 'empirical facts ", even in the face of counter -arguments such as the ones  that have been delivered by my tons of posted material and excerpts on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 16:36:22

I did deliver the arguments concerning the undeniable falsehood of materialism , mainly via relevant excerpts of top books on the subject .


Not evidence,............nothing but vague speculations.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/12/2013 16:38:20

(There is , once again, plenty of evidence and arguments contained in my posted excerpts ,for everybody to see,not just speculations or opinions views,regarding the undeniable falsehood  and absurdity  of the materialist mainstream "scientific world view "  .)
There's lots of argument in your excerpts, but very little evidence, and almost none of it empirical or from experiments. The vast majority is criticism of materialism for not immediately providing answers to everything, and the leap in logic that therefore "materialism is false"

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The materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming , for so long now , that reality is just material or physical, including the mind

It doesn't assume that. It just requires evidence from anyone who claims a supernatural or immaterial process is a mechanism for why something happens. It requires the same thing from anyone claiming a new, unknown material mechanism, so there is no double standard.

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the 'scientific world view " has been taking that false assumption, or rather false materialist conception of nature for granted as an 'empirical fact " so far :
The only thing that is an "empirical fact" are the individual, specific empirical facts and observations from individual, specific reproducible experiments.
Deliver your experimental evidence and that evidence will be an empirical fact as well.

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The burden of proof is yours to address then.............

No, it's not. Again, you're attributing to others a claim  that was never made, and demanding that they defend an argument that they haven't put forth.

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In other words :

Has science ever proved the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist core belief assumption to be "true ", regarding the nature of reality ?

Is the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " 's version of reality an empirical fact then ? Is reality just material or physical as all sciences have been assuming it to be , since the 19th century at least ?


Can you   try to answer  just that ?

No, because your request is impossible and illogical. The only way to prove that "all is matter" is to prove that nothing is, was, or ever will be, or even could be, immaterial. Again, you are asking people to prove an infinite number of propositions an infinite number of times.

Science has also not proved that ancient astronauts didn't visit the earth and provide technological assistance to ancient cultures, help build the pyramids. Do you believe this? Why or why not? Do you believe Q-ray ion bracelets relieve pain from arthritis? Do you believe in homeopathic medicine? Chakra readings? Reiki? Channeling the spirits of the dead? L Ron Hubbard's Scientology? Creationism? Torsion fields? Numerology? Pyramidology? Crystal healing? Alien abductions?

Since you don't require empirical evidence to support your own claims or theories, and since materialist scientific world view is obviously false and based on a misconception of nature, and its findings can't be trusted, there is no reason why you shouldn't accept any and all of the above things as equally valid ideas.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 16:49:41


Science has also not proved that ancient astronauts didn't visit the earth and provide technological assistance to ancient cultures, help build the pyramids. Do you believe this? Why or why not? Do you believe Q-ray ion bracelets relieve pain from arthritis? Do you believe in homeopathic medicine? Chakra readings? Reiki? Channeling the spirits of the dead? L Ron Hubbard's Scientology? Creationism? Torsion fields? Numerology? Pyramidology? Crystal healing? Alien abductions?

Since you don't require empirical evidence to support your own claims or theories, and since materialist scientific world view is obviously false and based on a misconception of nature, and its findings can't be trusted, there is no reason why you shouldn't accept any and all of the above things as equally valid ideas.
It's called: "naïve"..........."credulous"........Believing something too readily. Accepting a belief by faith without sufficient evidence.
Don's personality in a nutshell!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 28/12/2013 16:50:50
By Don's logic magic, astrology, religion, etc. are also science
and its up to science to disproof them.
He does not understand the scientific process at all.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 16:53:24
By Don's logic magic, astrology, religion, etc. are also science
and its up to science to disproof them.
He does not understand the scientific process at all.
Exactamoondo.....................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/12/2013 16:56:21
Nevermind what i do happen to believe in ,that's neither my motivation nor my 'argument " in relation to trying to make you realise the undeniable falshood of the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view ",  i just do keep my own beliefs outside of science ,

When Supercryptid and Ethos have said they separate their spiritual beliefs from science, you attack them for being "paradoxical." Why is it reasonable and acceptable when you do this, but no one else?

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in total contrast with materialism as a dogmatic unfalsifiable false secular religion in science that has been imposing itself as the "scientific world view ".

How is the requirement for evidence a form of secular religion?

Quote
But , fact is , materialism goes beyond science ,beyond its method ,beyond its realm and jurisdiction , by assuming that reality is just physical or material .

How is requiring evidence going beyond the realm and jurisdiction of science?

Quote
Worse : that false materialist world view has been the 'scientific world view " = all sciences have been materialist ,in the above mentioned sense thus , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise .
Science should be metaphysically neutral thus

How is simply requiring evidence, whether it is for a immaterial mechanism or an unknown material mechanism, not metaphysically neutral?


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 17:00:49
By Don's logic magic, astrology, religion, etc. are also science
and its up to science to disproof them.
He does not understand the scientific process at all.

Non-sense : you have just landed , Eagle ,so, you're not in a position ,and you have no right to utter such utter non-sense,simply because you have missed a lot here that's been going on in this and other threads as well  .
You might be the one who does need to improve your own  conception of science , i guess .
I might help you achieve just the latter ....just give me a sign then , and i will be delivering .
Since you cannot all but confuse materialism with science , you're the ones who are in urgent need of improving your own conceptions of the nature of science .
I might call my friend Karl Popper in his own grave to tell you what science exactly is , and what is it not as well .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 17:06:31
By Don's logic magic, astrology, religion, etc. are also science
and its up to science to disproof them.
He does not understand the scientific process at all.

Non-sense : you have just landed , Eagle ,so, you're not in a position ,and you have no right to utter such utter non-sense,simply because you have missed a lot here that's been going on in this and other threads as well  .
You might be the one who does need to improve your own  conception of science , i guess .


Talking down to a new member simply out of an over grown ego is worthy of banishment in my humble opinion. I think an administrator should be advised.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 28/12/2013 17:29:10
Thanks Ethos but I can look after my self ok.
Don
I may not have been here long but I have read this thread.
Your right that Science should be metaphysically neutral but what you don't seem to understand
is that it is neutral. the problem is no body has ever demonstrated anything non  materialistic.
call your friend Karl Popper in his grave. If he answers get him on here, then you will have a convert.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 17:44:13

(There is , once again, plenty of evidence and arguments contained in my posted excerpts ,for everybody to see,not just speculations or opinions views,regarding the undeniable falsehood  and absurdity  of the materialist mainstream "scientific world view "  .)
There's lots of argument in your excerpts, but very little evidence, and almost none of it empirical or from experiments. The vast majority is criticism of materialism for not immediately providing answers to everything, and the leap in logic that therefore "materialism is false"

Wrong , lady :
Materialism is false , not because it cannot explain 'everything " (materialism is just a false conception of nature without any explanatory power whatsoever in fact .)  , but mainly because it cannot account for consciousness that's irreducible to the physical .
My tons of posted material and excerpts on the subject do say why , relatively speaking , you just don't listen to them .
(Not to mention that you should try as well not to take that promissory messianic materialism argument " out of the closet , in the sense that materialism will be 'explaining " tomorrow what it cannot "explain" today,simply because materialism has no explanatory power whatsoever , once again ,due to the fact that materialism is just a belief ,no science  .)
Not to mention the fact that the false materialist world view has been equated with "the scientific world view " ,while materialism is just a belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific ,despite its scientific claims .

Otherwise , try to deliver the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism, regarding the nature of reality then .

As a belief= unfalsifiable = unscientific ,as all beliefs are by the way  , as a belief thus ,materialism goes beyond science , beyond its scientific method thus , beyond science's jurisdiction and realm, by pretending to know the nature of reality already

Quote
Quote

The materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming , for so long now , that reality is just material or physical, including the mind

It doesn't assume that. It just requires evidence from anyone who claims a supernatural or immaterial process is a mechanism for why something happens. It requires the same thing from anyone claiming a new, unknown material mechanism, so there is no double standard.

You simply cannot deny the undeniable fact that all sciences for that matter have been dominated by the materialist meta-paradigm ,the latter that has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view " .
So, all sciences for that matter have been assuming that reality is just material or physical, that matter is the only reality , thanks to materialism .

Quote
Quote
the 'scientific world view " has been taking that false assumption, or rather false materialist conception of nature for granted as an 'empirical fact " so far :
The only thing that is an "empirical fact" are the individual, specific empirical facts and observations from individual, specific reproducible experiments.
Deliver your experimental evidence and that evidence will be an empirical fact as well.

What extraordinary evidence has materialism been delivering so far then, for its extraordinary claims -"empirical facts " ,regarding the nature of reality ?,since materialism gets equated with "the scientific world view " .
Quote
Quote
The burden of proof is yours to address then.............

No, it's not. Again, you're attributing to others a claim  that was never made, and demanding that they defend an argument that they haven't put forth.

Once again , the current "scientific world view ' has been just the materialist 'all is matter ,including the mind " version of reality : what makes it so 'scientific " then ?
The burden of proof is yours to address thus , as self-declared materialists .

Quote
Quote
In other words :

Has science ever proved the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist core belief assumption to be "true ", regarding the nature of reality ?

Is the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream 'scientific world view " 's version of reality an empirical fact then ? Is reality just material or physical as all sciences have been assuming it to be , since the 19th century at least ?


Can you   try to answer  just that ?

No, because your request is impossible and illogical. The only way to prove that "all is matter" is to prove that nothing is, was, or ever will be, or even could be, immaterial. Again, you are asking people to prove an infinite number of propositions an infinite number of times.

Once again , the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " version of reality = the current 'scientific world view " : what makes it so "scientific " then ? Why has materialism as just a world view, a belief , a philosophy .....been taken for granted as  the 'scientific world view " ?

Quote
Science has also not proved that ancient astronauts didn't visit the earth and provide technological assistance to ancient cultures, help build the pyramids. Do you believe this? Why or why not? Do you believe Q-ray ion bracelets relieve pain from arthritis? Do you believe in homeopathic medicine? Chakra readings? Reiki? Channeling the spirits of the dead? L Ron Hubbard's Scientology? Creationism? Torsion fields? Numerology? Pyramidology? Crystal healing? Alien abductions?

See above .
 What has this talk of yours to do with what i have been saying ?


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Since you don't require empirical evidence to support your own claims or theories, and since materialist scientific world view is obviously false and based on a misconception of nature, and its findings can't be trusted, there is no reason why you shouldn't accept any and all of the above things as equally valid ideas.

Materialism is just a false world view , without any explanatory power whatsoever , no science , even though science has been materialist , in the above mentioned sense at least : why do you keep on confusing materialism with science then ?

Science has been extremely suuccessful only and exclusively thanks to its own effective and unparalleled scientific method , materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that , once again .

Since materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, then, we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness : there are none today ,but that does not mean there will be none tomorrow .

The bottom line is thus :
Science must be liberated from its own dogmatic materialist belief system ,in order to be able to progress .................

Thanks, appreciate indeed , lady .
Nice weekend ,and a happy non-materialist haha new year to you and to all your beloved ones as well .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 17:45:23

Don

call your friend Karl Popper in his grave. If he answers get him on here, then you will have a convert.
Giving the slightest credibility to Don's view of the scientific method, he might just believe in Popper's resurrection?

That eventuality would convert many of us.......................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 28/12/2013 17:49:52
Besides Don I have read loads about this theory. You may have started this thread
but its hardly a new theory is it. and it most certainly is not yours. faith in the immaterial is
as old as the human race. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 28/12/2013 18:21:15
If a belief= unfalsifiable = unscientific, how can you post it on a science forum as a new scientific theory !!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 18:25:03
Thanks Ethos but I can look after my self ok.
Don
I may not have been here long but I have read this thread.
Your right that Science should be metaphysically neutral but what you don't seem to understand
is that it is neutral. the problem is on body has ever demonstrated anything non  materialistic.
call your friend Karl Popper in his grave. If he answers get him on here, then you will have a convert.

( Prior note :
Science does not require materialism,my friend,  as science does not have to be materialist ,as science has been for so long now ,simply because science ,in its ideallistic form at least , should be neither materialist nor otherwise ,and simply because materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness that's irreducible to the physical or to the material , as physics and chemistry  alone  cannot explain  or account for  "everything " .
The current false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been trying indeed to explain 'everything" , just in terms of physics and chemistry alone ,since it has been assuming so wrongly that reality is just material or physical, thanks to materialism thus .
Consciousness as the anomaly that proves materialism to be false ,and hence the mind is not in the brain, or the mind is not brain activity ,consciousness thus cannot be accounted for by the materialist version of evolution, and hence even evolution itself cannot be exclusively biological or material physical ....to mention just that ,for the time being at least .)

It's pretty undeniable that science has not been metaphysically neutral ,since the 19th century at least = science has been materialist since then , while science should neither be materialist nor otherwise,in principle at least  .

But , since science is just a human activity , just a reflection of the highest and of the lowest which are in all of us , then science cannot be metaphysically neutral .
Metaphysically neutral science is an utopia , a myth so far , for ever maybe .

As atheist Thomas Nagel said in his fascinating "Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " book (Nagel should have titled that book of his " Why the materialist ...conception of nature is certainly false " in fact ) , he said, in similar words to the same effect at least  :
Since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism is false ,and since materialism requires reductionism ,then materialism is also false .
And then a bit further ,he goes on by saying ,  the materialist reductionist naturalist conception of nature will be most probably just replaced by yet another false conception of nature , a non-reductionist naturalist one at that ,the human will to believe is inexhaustible , he added .

So, since science is just a human activity , human beliefs are unavoidable in science .

As for Karl Popper , let's just mention his falsifiability theory regarding any theories ,ideas , insights ............that should pass the falsifiability test in order to be able to be raised to the scientific status : the materialist 'all is matter , including the mind " mainstream "scientific world view " does not only fail in that falsifiability test , but it is also ...unfalsifiable = unscientific .

According to Popper thus , the only way to distinguish science from pseudo-science is by applying the falsifiability test to any given theory which pretends to be scientific .

Popper,unlike B.Russel ,  did succeed indeed in solving Hume's logical rejection of induction dilemma ,induction  without which science is not suppoed to exist , by admitting that induction does not exist indeed ,so, he argued that human knowledge or science are not inductive , but merely a matter of try and error ,which also means that no scientific theory out there , no scientific knowledge out there can be  true (science is not about the truth indeed ) , no matter how many amounts of unsuccessfull  falsifications of those scientific theories or knowledge are accomplished , and it would take only 1 single successfull falsification of any given scientific  theories to declare them as false .

Materialism is not only unfalsifiable , but it does also get 'corroborated verified and predicted by everything " ,the latter is not a strength , but a weakness .

Thanks, appreciate indeed .

Happy new year ,and nice weekend as well .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 18:32:11
If a belief= unfalsifiable = unscientific, how can you post it on a science forum as a new scientific theory !!

I haven't been posting any "scientific " theories based on belief ,simply because all beliefs are unfalsifiable = unscientific , but they are not all necessarily false , as materialism is .

All i have been trying   to do is to make you realise  that the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been just the materialist false conception of nature = a belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific ,and hence the mind is not in the brain, or the mind is not brain activity .

That's why we should be looking for non-materialist falsifiable = scientific theories of consciousness ...........

I did post some excerpts of some scientific and of some philosophy of the mind books which were trying to come up with  faslifiable  non-reductionist  theories of consciousness , and even with some  falsifiable  non-reductionist quantum theories of consciousness such as that of Henry P.Stapp ....as well, so .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/12/2013 18:54:30
Yeah, right <bs snipped>
We've provided reasoned arguments based on multiple examples of clear empirical evidence that are inconsistent with your claims. You've provided nothing but bare, unsupported assertion and vague, speculative hand-waving.

You can't help but be well aware that if you wish to have your proposal of there being something more than the physical taken seriously, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that. Your assertion of some extraneous immaterial non-stuff, defined only by what it is not, and with unknown provenance and properties, is incoherent, unsubstantiated, and unfalsifiable faith.

I suspect you haven't even attempted to make a coherent argument for it because you know there isn't one beyond vapid speculation, and that your repeated insulting rants are because you know all the evidence is inconsistent with your claims and you realise that the 'immaterial', by definition, is unlikely ever to supply any in favour. It's a matter of an incohate faith in pursuit of the indefensible and undefinable. Good luck with that.

Blue Fairies on the Moon (http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=168) are every bit as real, and much more entertaining.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/12/2013 19:05:35
I did post some excerpts of some scientific and of some philosophy of the mind books which were trying to come up with  faslifiable  non-reductionist  theories of consciousness , and even with some  falsifiable  non-reductionist quantum theories of consciousness such as that of Henry P.Stapp ....as well, so .
You do know that quantum mechanics is entirely physical, don't you Don? If quantum mechanical effects really did explain consciousness, it would torpedo your immaterial external consciousness claims.

But if you'd read Stapp properly, you'd have seen that he's just trying to find a suitable gap in QM (in his case, the uncertainty of the stochastic collapse of the wave function) where he can shoehorn in some unexplained immaterial agency. I refer you back to previous criticisms of the problems with such attempts, on this thread.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/12/2013 19:16:30
Quote
So, it is an undeniable fact that all sciences for that matter have been assuming that reality is just material or physical = all is matter , including the mind, thanks to materialism ...

No. Once again, science is a process, not a philosophy. You really need to understand the difference.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:22:41
Yeah, right <bs snipped>
We've provided reasoned arguments based on multiple examples of clear empirical evidence that are all inconsistent with your claims. You've provided nothing but bare, unsupported assertion and vague, speculative hand-waving.

You can't help but be well aware that if you wish to have your proposal of there being something more than the physical taken seriously, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that. Your assertion of some extraneous immaterial non-stuff, defined only by what it is not, and with unknown provenance and properties, is incoherent, unsubstantiated, and unfalsifiable faith.

I suspect you haven't even attempted to make a coherent argument for it because you know there isn't one beyond vapid speculation, and that your repeated insulting rants are because you know all the evidence is inconsistent with your claims and you realise that the 'immaterial', by definition, is unlikely ever to supply any in favour. It's a matter of an incohate faith in pursuit of the indefensible and undefinable. Good luck with that.

Then, go read Nagel's, Sheldrake's, Carter's, Chalmer's ,Searle's , Stapp's and other excerpts i have been posting on the subject ,concerning the falsehood of reductionism .
Your materialist beliefs you take for granted as science are just acts of faith grounded in a 19th century   false  ideology,no science  .
Science has been providing nothing ,how can science do just that ?, that supports the materialist extraordinary claims neither regarding the materialist nature of reality , nor regarding the "the mind is in the brain " extension of materialism ,that's just a materialist belief assumption, no empirical fact .

You refuse to address my repeated simple question ,regarding the non-existence of any extraordinary evidence for the materialist extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality ................

You keep on believing that "the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity ", without any sort of conclusive empirical evidence ,since science cannot so far , if ever , link conscious subjective  states or experiences to brain activity ..........

You just assume that the tv set or radio device do create their own received respectively images and sounds , or broadcasts : you keep on believing that Obama does live inside of the tv , as Hitler was living inside of the radio .......... when the tv set or radio are damaged ,and you cannot  find no Obama inside of the tv ,or Hitler inside of the radio , then they were created by the tv set or radio ...haha

I told you many times , as Nagel did , that since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism must be false , and since materialism does require reductionism, then , materialism is also false , which means that we should be looking for non-materialist or non-reductionist theories of consciousness at least ,while providing some such as those of Chalmers , Searle , Stapp ..............

I also have been repeating the fact that since there are still no serious non-materialist falsifiable theories   of consciousness out there today  , that does not mean that materialism is not false ...

What do you want more then ?

Stop confusing science with materialism then : science does not either require materialism or needs to be materialist : science should be neither materialist nor otherwise , in principle at least ,but fact is : science has been materialist ,since the 19th century at least , while science should be in fact metaphysically neutral , in principle at least .

So, stop projecting your own materialist non-sense on me , please .

Ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:27:37
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So, it is an undeniable fact that all sciences for that matter have been assuming that reality is just material or physical = all is matter , including the mind, thanks to materialism ...

No. Once again, science is a process, not a philosophy. You really need to understand the difference.

Undeniable fact is : science has been materialist since the 19th century at least , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise : science should be metaphysically neutral ,in principle at least = the latter is an utopia or a myth so far .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:35:43
I did post some excerpts of some scientific and of some philosophy of the mind books which were trying to come up with  faslifiable  non-reductionist  theories of consciousness , and even with some  falsifiable  non-reductionist quantum theories of consciousness such as that of Henry P.Stapp ....as well, so .
You do know that quantum mechanics is entirely physical, don't you Don? If quantum mechanical effects really did explain consciousness, it would torpedo your immaterial external consciousness claims.

But if you'd read Stapp properly, you'd have seen that he's just trying to find a suitable gap in QM (in his case, the uncertainty of the stochastic collapse of the wave function) where he can shoehorn in some unexplained immaterial agency. I refer you back to previous criticisms of the problems with such attempts, on this thread.

What is matter ? Is it entirely physical or material ? nevermind :  matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all , so to speak thus .
Stapp tried  to prove the undeniable fact that the mind has causal effects on matter ,an undeniabke fact you do experience every single day of your own life ,don't you ?

How can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?

How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 20:33:41
David Cooper :  Help :

Please , haha , do try to address some of this inexplicable materialist magic in science ,pleeeaaasssseee  haha .

Amazing how people confuse science with materialist inexplicable magic ,no wonder , most scientists today do , as the mainstream 'scientific world view " has been ...materialist ,for so long now, no wonder  .

Centuries long materialist brainwash indoctrinations conditioning are not that easy or that quick to ...undo indeed .

It takes  a lots of  time, patience , energy , a lots of persuasive  repetitions ...and much more to try to do just that .

But my time , energy , patience ,and even my desire,appetite  and passion to do so are running out ,folks .

I am only human, all too human, you know .

I should get paid for investing so much time, energy ....on this in fact ,but , i have been rewarded for that via a lots of priceless insights , ideas , inspiration .....from unexpected sources and people anyway  .............

"The gain is worth the loss " anyway .

But , to be honest , my patience is nearing its end .

So, folks, try to make some effort to undo that materialist brainwash in yourselves at least .

Good luck .

All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 20:49:40

What is matter ? Is it entirely physical or material ? nevermind :  matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all , so to speak thus .

"Matter might turn out to be not made of matter" ???

Unquestionably the most incoherent disconnected semantically distorted rational I've ever heard in my 71 years.

Matter is just the name we give to localized orbital energy flux. If matter is not made of matter, one would be just as correct to say:


Water isn't made of water
Air isn't made of air
Stupid isn't made of stupid

You're playing with words Don......., really beneath your apparent intelligence??

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 28/12/2013 21:15:00
I can't help you Don - there's too much here to read and too much repetition to make it rewarding, so I only skim through it every day to read other people's posts (not yours) so that I don't miss anything interesting that appears in them. I do think you've achieved something remarkable in tying up so much talent here. That's a win, I reckon.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/12/2013 21:34:28
There is a very good reason Webster's publishes their dictionary. It's called continuity of language and without it, none of us would be able to understand each other properly. It's a similar situation with the scientific method, without the testing and verification that repeatable results obtain, scientists would all be speaking different languages. It's why, we require evidence that all participants can observe and form a common consensus that offers the progress we all desire.

Webster's.................evidence;
something that makes another something evident
a sign
a statement of a witness
an object

In short; evidence is something witnessed, a sign and or an object

If it's witnessed, it can be measured.
If it's a sign, it can also be measured.
If it's an object, it can be measured as well.

Sir Don,....................when you have verified measurement of the so-called non-material, present it to us. Maybe then we'll find something to agree upon, until then, you have presented no evidence......... period.



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 28/12/2013 22:23:31

Wrong , lady :
Materialism is false , not because it cannot explain 'everything " (materialism is just a false conception of nature without any explanatory power whatsoever in fact .)  , but mainly because it cannot account for consciousness that's irreducible to the physical .

Well, person with a Y chromosome, neither can your immaterial dualism  explain consciousness, but that doesn't seem to bother you.
 
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My tons of posted material and excerpts on the subject do say why , relatively speaking , you just don't listen to them .
(Not to mention that you should try as well not to take that promissory messianic materialism argument " out of the closet , in the sense that materialism will be 'explaining " tomorrow what it cannot "explain"
You are more than willing to accept any promissory, messianic claims from people like Sheldrake or Carter. Why do you apply a different standard to them? 
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Simply because materialism has no explanatory power whatsoever , once again ,due to the fact that materialism is just a belief ,no science
Chemistry and physics has explained many things, and you have admitted this in the past. I'll go back and find your statements to refresh your memory.

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Not to mention the fact that the false materialist world view has been equated with "the scientific world view " ,while materialism is just a belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific ,despite its scientific claims.

How does requiring evidence for any particular claim constitute "a world view"?

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Otherwise , try to deliver the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of materialism, regarding the nature of reality then.

Extraordinary evidence is not required. Only verifiable, reproducible results for each specific observation.
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As a belief= unfalsifiable = unscientific ,as all beliefs are by the way  , as a belief thus ,materialism goes beyond science , beyond its scientific method thus , beyond science's jurisdiction and realm, by pretending to know the nature of reality already

I've never seen a scientific experiment in any journal about "the nature of reality".
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The materialist mainstream "scientific world view " has been assuming , for so long now , that reality is just material or physical, including the mind

Wrong, person with Y chromosome.It doesn't assume that. It just requires evidence from anyone who claims a supernatural or immaterial process is a mechanism for why something happens. It requires the same thing from anyone claiming a new, unknown material mechanism, so there is no double standard.
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You simply cannot deny the undeniable fact that all sciences for that matter have been dominated by the materialist meta-paradigm ,the latter that has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view " .

If it has been "dominated" by that view, it is because of the failure of those who believe in the supernatural to deliver evidence for their claims, not because of "secular" conspiracy against it.




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/12/2013 22:50:04
Your materialist beliefs you take for granted as science are just acts of faith grounded in a 19th century   false  ideology,no science  .
Straw man - I already told you my view.

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You refuse to address my repeated simple question ,regarding the non-existence of any extraordinary evidence for the materialist extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality
Because it's another straw man. As I've told you repeatedly, it's not possible to find evidence that some unspecified unknown non-physical or 'immaterial' doesn't exist. My view (again) is that we simply follow the evidence. We have plenty of evidence of the material, none whatsoever of the immaterial. Until we have some evidence, we have little choice but to deal with the material.

Yet again - if you can suggest a practical way to investigate your proposed immaterial non-stuff, we can try it. All attempts to date have failed, so I'm not holding my breath.

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You keep on believing that "the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity ", without any sort of conclusive empirical evidence ,since science cannot so far , if ever , link conscious subjective  states or experiences to brain activity
I'm just following the evidence, which will never be 'conclusive' if you propose the involvement of something unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable.  However, in most cases, we can say that a theory can explain the observations beyond reasonable doubt and that there is no need to invoke the involvement of anything unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable. As Laplace (apocryphally?) responded to Napoleon's query of the absence of god from his analysis, "I had no need of that hypothesis". In the case of consciousness, the growing accumulation of empirical evidence that is inconsistent with the immaterial hypothesis and entirely consistent with the material hypothesis, suggests to me that it is now beyond reasonable doubt. Your mileage may vary.

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You just assume that the tv set or radio device do create their own received respectively images and sounds , or broadcasts : you keep on believing that Obama does live inside of the tv , as Hitler was living inside of the radio .......... when the tv set or radio are damaged ,and you cannot  find no Obama inside of the tv ,or Hitler inside of the radio , then they were created by the tv set or radio ...haha
It has already been explained to you why that is a fatally flawed analogy. You seem to have the memory (or comprehension) of a goldfish.

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I told you many times , as Nagel did , that since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism must be false , and since materialism does require reductionism, then , materialism is also false...

I also have been repeating the fact that since there are still no serious non-materialist falsifiable theories   of consciousness out there today  , that does not mean that materialism is not false ...

What do you want more then ?
Certainly no more repetition. Constant repetition doesn't make your logic less flawed. If you start with false premises, the whole house of cards falls. You have started with an unfounded assumption to reach the conclusion you desire. It is not known whether consciousness is reducible to the physical or not - although the evidence strongly suggests that it is, and you have yet to supply a good reason why it should not be.

There are many things we haven't yet explained or understood that we have good reason to believe have a material basis. You have said yourself that materialism is unfalsifiable, so to claim that the unexplained somehow falsifies it is absurdly contradictory.

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... science should be in fact metaphysically neutral , in principle at least .
As I've said several times, I quite agree. That my expressed opinion doesn't suit your agenda is your problem, not mine. Inventing world views and beliefs to project onto others is a transparent ploy you use habitually to cover the pointlessness of your claims. Everyone else here is well aware you're attacking a fantasy adversary, just like your namesake.

Tilting at windmills.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 28/12/2013 23:11:55
... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .
I think that sums up your level of argument.

Quote
How can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?

How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?
That's an equivocation of 'mind', semantic games. The mind is brain activity.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/12/2013 00:32:39
... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .
I think that sums up your level of argument.

Quote
How can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?

How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?
That's an equivocation of 'mind', semantic games. The mind is brain activity.

E gads! I've missed so much. "How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?"  It just gets crazier every day.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/12/2013 00:49:42
E gads! I've missed so much. "How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?"  It just gets crazier every day.
I know; every time I think I'm bored with it, he comes up with some even loopier variation on the theme - it's like a car crash, a fascination with the tragic makes it hard to look away. [xx(]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/12/2013 01:00:23
Why is the mind irreducible to the material? That has never been fully (and Don is a big fan of "fully") explained. What is it - specifically - about the mind that is not explained? If it's memory, then lets talk about memory. If it's creativity, then let's talk about creativity. If it's "free will" then we can talk about free will. Or qualia. Or what ever you want.

So, Don, take your pick of the mental aspect of consciousness that can't be explained by materialism - cowboy up. Let's stop zig-zagging back and forth.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 29/12/2013 01:14:04
Undeniable fact is : science has been materialist since the 19th century at least , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise : science should be metaphysically neutral ,in principle at least = the latter is an utopia or a myth so far .

Crap. Science is a process, not a collection of philosophical mumbo jumbo, nor an entity with a manifesto.

You can't say what science should be, any more than you can say what a cow should be. A cow is a ruminant quadruped with horns and udders, science is an algorithmic process. These are definitions, not open to debate.

There's little point in discussing milk production or the human mind if you don't share the axioms of discussion.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/12/2013 01:22:02


Science has been extremely suuccessful only and exclusively thanks to its own effective and unparalleled scientific method , materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that , once again .
Name one scientific experiment as an example of what you mean by that. Name one scientific experiment that demonstrates that "effective and unparalleled method" of which you speak and admire so much. And explain how its findings had nothing to do with measurements or observations that were materialistic. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 17:21:37
I can't help you Don - there's too much here to read and too much repetition to make it rewarding, so I only skim through it every day to read other people's posts (not yours) so that I don't miss anything interesting that appears in them. I do think you've achieved something remarkable in tying up so much talent here. That's a win, I reckon.

Thanks anyway, appreciate indeed : i was just referring to the fact that you were/are the only person here intelligent enough to reject that absurd materialist "emergence " trick performance inexplicable magic in relation to the nature or orign of consciousness .
It's ok not to read my posts , i am not offended by that , although i have to admit i have been repeating almost the same things  over and over again : i have been having no choice but to do just that , and that's not been all i have been doing here either  .
Just try to read those relevant excerpts i have been posting then .
I do miss your valuable and unparalleled input in fact .
Anyway , if we would except Cheryl, you're almost the only interesting guy here though,even when you were /are abscent  : your spirit has been floating in or flying above  this thread all along,without ever getting burned by its inevitable flames  .
You're a creative  artist scientist , in the positive Kafkaian sense ,when Kafka defined art as being a free flying bird around and above the truth , without getting burned by its fire .
All the best , and happy non-materialist and non-mechanical haha creative  new year by the way  to you and to all your beloved ones as well  .

P.S.: It would be interesting and fascinating to try to tell us about your creative work ,from time to time , so, we can have at least some sort of a glimpse of that .
Despite its undeniable falsehood ,the mechanistic view of the world has been delivering some interesting insights , ideas , breakthroughs , inspirations ....anyway .

Final note :

"The gain is worth the loss " indeed : i have been learning a lot form this forum and people and beyond , you have no idea , despite everything .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 17:39:25


Science has been extremely suuccessful only and exclusively thanks to its own effective and unparalleled scientific method , materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that , once again .
Name one scientific experiment as an example of what you mean by that. Name one scientific experiment that demonstrates that "effective and unparalleled method" of which you speak and admire so much. And explain how its findings had nothing to do with measurements or observations that were materialistic.

This is exactly what i have been talking about all along :

Materialism and science or the scientific method are 2 totally different "things " :
materialism is just a false conception of nature , a world view , a philosophy ,an outdated and superceded  19th century ideology that was built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics : what has materialism then to do with science ,with the scientific method or with any scientific achevements for that matter then ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 17:56:26
Why is the mind irreducible to the material? That has never been fully (and Don is a big fan of "fully") explained. What is it - specifically - about the mind that is not explained? If it's memory, then lets talk about memory. If it's creativity, then let's talk about creativity. If it's "free will" then we can talk about free will. Or qualia. Or what ever you want.

Try to read in that regard Nagel's excerpts i did post on the subject then .
It's pretty undeniable that consciousness or the mind are irreducible to the physical , and hence reductionism must be false ,and since materialism requires reductionism, then materialism must also be false .

Science has never proved the materialist "fact ", or rather the materialist belief assumption to be "true " that consciousness is just a biological process , the latter is just an extension of the materialist "all is matter ,including the mind " false conception of nature -'scientific world view " .

That materialist 'emergence " inexplicable magic ,regarding the origin or nature of consciousness is just that : materialist inexplicable magic , no empirical fact , not even remotely close thus .

Since materialist science has been assuming that 'all is matter , including the mind ". then the mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity, memory is stored  in the brain ................

But materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness ,and hence the mind is not in the brain, the mind is no brain activity , memory is not stored in the brain , creativity , imagination, free will neither ...

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So, Don, take your pick of the mental aspect of consciousness that can't be explained by materialism - cowboy up. Let's stop zig-zagging back and forth.

Materialism is just a false conception of nature , once again , just a world view that assumes so wrongly that reality is just material or physical : materialism has no explanatory power whatsoever thus ,and the materialist  conception of nature cannot account for consciousness ,so, it is false .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 18:04:49
... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .
I think that sums up your level of argument.

Quote
How can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?

How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?
That's an equivocation of 'mind', semantic games. The mind is brain activity.

E gads! I've missed so much. "How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?"  It just gets crazier every day.

No, materialism gets everyday more and more untenable ,absurd , implausible ,false , outdated , superceded .
Fact is ,  a fact we all do experience as such every single day of our lives , is that the mind or consciousness do have causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain : your own thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longins , will ,ambitions .....do have causal effects on your bodies and brains ...

P.S.: Why do you keep on ignoring what Stapp and others have been saying regarding the undeniable causal effects of the mind on matter , and the rest , while so stubbornly sticking to your own false materialism you do continue confusing with science , i wonder .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 19:06:16
Your materialist beliefs you take for granted as science are just acts of faith grounded in a 19th century   false  ideology,no science  .
Straw man - I already told you my view.

It is an undeniable fact that :
"Matter is the only reality " has been just the materialist false conception of nature that has been equated with "the scientific world view " ,so, all sciences for that matter have been materialist , have been assuming that reality is just material or physical = why has that matrialist world view been taken for granted as the 'scientific world view " then ? What makes it so "scientific " then ?

Science should be neither materialist nor otherwise ,in principle at least ,so, why has science been materialist then, since the 19th century at least , thanks to materialism ?

Try to answer that ,if you dare at least , instead of denying the undeniable  .

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You refuse to address my repeated simple question ,regarding the non-existence of any extraordinary evidence for the materialist extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality
Because it's another straw man. As I've told you repeatedly, it's not possible to find evidence that some unspecified unknown non-physical or 'immaterial' doesn't exist. My view (again) is that we simply follow the evidence. We have plenty of evidence of the material, none whatsoever of the immaterial. Until we have some evidence, we have little choice but to deal with the material.


It's not a matter of evidence , it's just a matter of materialist belief  that science has been assuming that matter is the only reality , that's why the false materialist conception of nature or world view has been equated with "the scientific world view " = materialism as just a belief has been taken for granted as an "empirical fact " , materialism has been taken for granted as ...'scientific " : how can any belief for that matter be "scientific " = falsifiable then , including materialism ?
You tell me ...Popper must be spinning in his grave like crazy .
Science should be free in exploring all parts of reality with which which science can deal empirically , not just the material or physical part of reality which science has been taking for granted as the whole reality , thanks to materialism , don't you think ?

In other words :

Science has been materialist = science has been taking the materialist version of reality as a "scientific fact " ,as the 'scientific world view " = there is nothing but matter = absurd  .

So, it's not a matter of evidence or lack of it that has been turning science into a materialist dogmatic monopoly exclusive property , it's just a matter of materialist belief that has been making science take for granted that matter is the only reality out there as a " scientific fact " = materialism gets equated with science = the materialist belief gets equated with science = absurd = an understatement thus .

I cannot be more clearer than that .

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Yet again - if you can suggest a practical way to investigate your proposed immaterial non-stuff, we can try it. All attempts to date have failed, so I'm not holding my breath.

The bottom line is :
Science has been materialist , by taking the materialist version of reality as a "scientific fact " = materialist science has been a-priori, per se and per definition,  excluding any existence of the non-physical or non -material, period  .

In short :

Regardless of how should science deal with the non-physical or non-material side of reality , the point is : materialist science has been , per definition, excluding the existence of the latter as such , by reducing it to just physical material or biological processses , including consciousness that's irreducible to the physical or to the material .
Reality is not just material or physical , so, science must learn how to deal with that fact, by rejecting materialism first  : science has no choice but to do that .

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You keep on believing that "the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity ", without any sort of conclusive empirical evidence ,since science cannot so far , if ever , link conscious subjective  states or experiences to brain activity
I'm just following the evidence, which will never be 'conclusive' if you propose the involvement of something unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable.  However, in most cases, we can say that a theory can explain the observations beyond reasonable doubt and that there is no need to invoke the involvement of anything unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable. As Laplace (apocryphally?) responded to Napoleon's query of the absence of god from his analysis, "I had no need of that hypothesis". In the case of consciousness, the growing accumulation of empirical evidence that is inconsistent with the immaterial hypothesis and entirely consistent with the material hypothesis, suggests to me that it is now beyond reasonable doubt. Your mileage may vary.

Just cut the crap : science has never proved the materialist belief assumption that consciousness is a biological process , or that the mind is in the brain, let alone that the mind is just brain activity = that's been just the materialist extension of the materialist "all is matter , including the mind " core belief assumption regarding the nature of reality = no empirical fact thus = that materialist "emergence property " trick regarding the nature or origins of consciousness has been thus just inexplicable materialist magic in science ,as David Cooper ,for example, has been intelligent enough to reject as such at least .

I do suspect that he might reject materialism altogether at some stage of his life and work : he's got what it takes to do just that ,in total contrast with you , dlorde ,  i guess, i don't know .

You do not have it in you to be capable of rejecting your false materialist beliefs you still do confuse with science   .

I hope i am wrong , for your own sake .

Good luck on that , even though i do not believe in the existence of such a "thing " such as luck .

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You just assume that the tv set or radio device do create their own received respectively images and sounds , or broadcasts : you keep on believing that Obama does live inside of the tv , as Hitler was living inside of the radio .......... when the tv set or radio are damaged ,and you cannot  find no Obama inside of the tv ,or Hitler inside of the radio , then they were created by the tv set or radio ...haha
It has already been explained to you why that is a fatally flawed analogy. You seem to have the memory (or comprehension) of a goldfish.

Yeah, right : just start insulting when you cannot do any better .
The tv and radio analogies were just relative analogies ,but they were /are very relevant to the subject of consciousness and brain : unlike the tv set and radio device which are both material physical ,together with their received signals or sound waves , consciousness is non-phyiscl or non -material non-biological, while the brain is physical + brain and consciousness are inseparable in any given living organism = 1 .

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I told you many times , as Nagel did , that since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism must be false , and since materialism does require reductionism, then , materialism is also false...

I also have been repeating the fact that since there are still no serious non-materialist falsifiable theories   of consciousness out there today  , that does not mean that materialism is not false ...

What do you want more then ?
Certainly no more repetition. Constant repetition doesn't make your logic less flawed. If you start with false premises, the whole house of cards falls. You have started with an unfounded assumption to reach the conclusion you desire. It is not known whether consciousness is reducible to the physical or not - although the evidence strongly suggests that it is, and you have yet to supply a good reason why it should not be.

Read Nagel's excerpts on the subject i did extensively post then,instead of sticking to your own absurd materialist non-sense .
How , on earth , then can the totally different subjective qualitative conscious states ,experiences ..."rise " from or "be " just physics and chemistry then ? : science has never been able to answer just that , for obvious reasons = there is no evidence whatsoever that suggests that consciousness is just a biological process, for obvious reasons : those materialist 'emergence " bullshit ,computation ...behaviorism, functionalism ...non-sense were /are just extensions of the materialist false conception of nature , no science .

Materialism cannot be but false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness that's irreducible to the physical or to the material = there is no way that the 'unconscious " matter can give rise to consciousness,unless through  some sort of materialist inexplicable unscientific magic  .

Only when you would try to eliminate materialism from the 'equation" , you would be able to grasp the latter .


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There are many things we haven't yet explained or understood that we have good reason to believe have a material basis. You have said yourself that materialism is unfalsifiable, so to claim that the unexplained somehow falsifies it is absurdly contradictory.

Typically  desperate bankrupt  promissory messianic materialism .
Materialism is false , not because it cannot "explain everything " , materialism is just a false world view in fact without any explanatory power whatsoever ,once again ,so, materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness ,the latter that's irreducible to the material or to the physical, and hence even evolution itself cannot be just biological ...to mention just that .

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... science should be in fact metaphysically neutral , in principle at least .
As I've said several times, I quite agree. That my expressed opinion doesn't suit your agenda is your problem, not mine. Inventing world views and beliefs to project onto others is a transparent ploy you use habitually to cover the pointlessness of your claims. Everyone else here is well aware you're attacking a fantasy adversary, just like your namesake.

Yeah, right , i just invented that , as Nagel, Sheldrake and many others did : we are are just delusional or conspiracy theorists lunatics with hidden agendas ,regarding the science delusion under materialism indeed= religious people and non-religious ones , including some atheists ,do have the same hidden underlying delusions ,conspiracy theories and secret agendas haha   .

It is an undeniable fact that science has been materialist , not metaphysically neutral thus , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise .
Metaphysically neutral science is just an utopia , a myth in fact , since science is just a human activity .



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Tilting at windmills.

You're the ones who have been Don Quixotian all along , by taking the materialist false conception of nature for granted as science , as the 'scientific world view " ,as a "scientific fact ".

But then again , the fictitious Don Quixote was at least an endless source of humor , an andless source of inspiration, while he did realise the falsehood ,ridicule and absurdity of his own idealistic delusions,after all , at the end  : you , materialists , are none of that : you are not even funny , let alone inspirational or capable of detecting your own materialist Don Quixotian absurd delusions inside the very heart of science .

Way to go, scientist ...pfff...

So, sweet dreams in your own delusional materialist wonderland , Alice,once again : materialist science has been just a Promethean ideological materialist Frankenstein's monster created by Frankenstein = materialism ,despite all the huge scientific achievements which hve been having nothing to do whatsoever with materialism ,they were /are and will be just the products of the effective and unparalled scientific method through materialist scientists or otherwise .

Science whose core evolutionary nature and irresistible persuasive power will be rejecting and dispelling dogmas , lies , falsehood ....such as those reincarnated by ...materialism = inevitable = just a matter of time = you , materialists ,cannot hold back science forever,cannot hold it imprisonned within those absurd materialist dogmatic key hole false walls forever....Science will break free from materialism , no doubt in my non-physical  haha mind about that ...


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 29/12/2013 19:12:08

Fact is ,  a fact we all do experience as such every single day of our lives , is that the mind or consciousness do have causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain : your own thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longins , will ,ambitions .....do have causal effects on your bodies and brains ...
How does the immaterial or even quantum mechanics create or transmit or select or store  (I'll let you chose the correct term, since you introduced the theory) those things - thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longings , will ,ambitions. How does it work?
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P.S.: Why do you keep on ignoring what Stapp and others have been saying regarding the undeniable causal effects of the mind on matter , and the rest , while so stubbornly sticking to your own false materialism you do continue confusing with science , i wonder .

I haven't ignored it at all, infact I agree. Many neuroscientists do think there is top- down control, and that mental activity does affect not only brain states but even structure, such as increasing plasticity, and forming new neural pathways. That is the basis of learning. I posted this quote a few pages back.

“Complex information that is represented at higher stages of processing influences simpler processes occurring at antecedent stages. The role of top-down influences is then to set the cortex in a specific working mode according to behavioral requirements that are updated dynamically. In effect, these ideas reverse the central dogma of sensory processing, with a flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas playing a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. The construction of a subjective percept involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences. Conversely, the top-down expectations and hypotheses are set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. Under this view, there is no starting point for information flow.”

(Italics mine)


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765

I would be very much interested in a more detailed explanation of how quantum mechanics might work in the brain, or any actual experimental evidence.

ps. Here's a article by Serale you might be interested in. He agrees with you on certain key points but draws a different conclusion. It's kind of interesting because he feels he has been misinterpreted by both sides - by strict materialists as well as idealists.

Here are the two passages I found most interesting:

"There is clearly a difference between consciousness and the material or physical world. We know this from our own experience, but it is also obvious from science. The material world is publicly accessible and is pretty much as described by physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences; but the conscious, experiential, phenomenological world is not publicly accessible. It has a distinct private existence. We know it with certainty from our inner, private, subjective experiences.
We all know that the private world of consciousness exists, we know that it is part of the real world, and our question is to find out how it fits into the public material world, specifically, we need to know how it fits into the brain.
Because neither consciousness nor matter is reducible to the other, they are distinct and different phenomena in the world. Those who believe that consciousness is reducible to matter are called materialists; those who believe that matter is reducible
to consciousness are called idealists. Both are mistaken for the same reason. Both try to eliminate something that really exists in its own right and cannot be reduced to something else. Now, because both materialism and idealism are false, the only reasonable alternative is dualism. But substance dualism seems out of the question for
a number of reasons. For example it cannot explain how these spiritual substances came into existence in the first place and it cannot explain how they relate to the physical world. So property dualism seems the only reasonable view of the mind–body problem. Consciousness really exists, but it is not a separate substance on its own, rather it is a property of the brain."



"Here is where the inadequacy of the traditional terminology comes out most obviously. The property dualist wants to say that consciousness is a mental and therefore not physical feature of the brain. I want to say consciousness is a mental and therefore biological and therefore physical feature of the brain. But because the traditional vocabulary was designed to contrast the mental and the physical, I cannot say what I want to say in the traditional vocabulary without sounding like I am saying something inconsistent. Similarly when the identity theorists said that consciousness is nothing but a neurobiological process, they meant that consciousness as qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy,touchy feely, etc.) does not even exist, that only third-person neurobiological processes exist. I want also to say that consciousness is nothing but a neurobio-logical process, and by that I mean that precisely because consciousness is qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy, touchy feely, etc.) it has to be a neurobiological process; because, so far, we have not found any system that can cause and realize conscious states except brain systems. Maybe someday we will be able to create conscious artifacts, in which case subjective states of consciousness will be ‘physical’ features of those artifacts."


http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 29/12/2013 19:45:20
... Here's a article by Serale you might be interested in. He agrees with you on certain key points but draws a different conclusion. It's kind of interesting because he feels he has been misinterpreted by both sides - by strict materialists as well as idealists.

"There is clearly a difference between consciousness and the material or physical world. We know this from our own experience, but it is also obvious from science. The material world is publicly accessible and is pretty much as described by physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences; but the conscious, experiential, phenomenological world is not publicly accessible. It has a distinct private existence. We know it with certainty from our inner, private, subjective experiences.
We all know that the private world of consciousness exists, we know that it is part of the real world, and our question is to find out how it fits into the public material world, specifically, we need to know how it fits into the brain.
Because neither consciousness nor matter is reducible to the other, they are distinct and different phenomena in the world. Those who believe that consciousness is reducible to matter are called materialists; those who believe that matter is reducible to consciousness are called idealists. Both are mistaken for the same reason. Both try to eliminate something that really exists in its own right and cannot be reduced to something else. Now, because both materialism and idealism are false, the only reasonable alternative is dualism. But substance dualism seems out of the question for a number of reasons. For example it cannot explain how these spiritual substances came into existence in the first place and it cannot explain how they relate to the physical world. So property dualism seems the only reasonable view of the mind–body problem. Consciousness really exists, but it is not a separate substance on its own, rather it is a property of the brain."


"Here is where the inadequacy of the traditional terminology comes out most obviously. The property dualist wants to say that consciousness is a mental and therefore not physical feature of the brain. I want to say consciousness is a mental and therefore biological and therefore physical feature of the brain. But because the traditional vocabulary was designed to contrast the mental and the physical, I cannot say what I want to say in the traditional vocabulary without sounding like I am saying something inconsistent. Similarly when the identity theorists said that consciousness is nothing but a neurobiological process, they meant that consciousness as qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy,touchy feely, etc.) does not even exist, that only third-person neurobiological processes exist. I want also to say that consciousness is nothing but a neurobio-logical process, and by that I mean that precisely because consciousness is qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy, touchy feely, etc.) it has to be a neurobiological process; because, so far, we have not found any system that can cause and realize conscious states except brain systems. Maybe someday we will be able to create conscious artifacts, in which case subjective states of consciousness will be ‘physical’ features of those artifacts."

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf
That isn't so far from my own view, with some minor reservations about the terminology.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 19:50:34

Fact is ,  a fact we all do experience as such every single day of our lives , is that the mind or consciousness do have causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain : your own thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longins , will ,ambitions .....do have causal effects on your bodies and brains ...
How does the immaterial or even quantum mechanics create or transmit or select or store  (I'll let you chose the correct term, since you introduced the theory) those things - thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longings , will ,ambitions. How does it work?
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P.S.: Why do you keep on ignoring what Stapp and others have been saying regarding the undeniable causal effects of the mind on matter , and the rest , while so stubbornly sticking to your own false materialism you do continue confusing with science , i wonder .

I haven't ignored it at all, infact I agree. Many neuroscientists do think there is top- down control, and that mental activity does affect not only brain states but even structure, such as increasing plasticity, and forming new neural pathways. That is the basis of learning. I posted this quote a few pages back.

“Complex information that is represented at higher stages of processing influences simpler processes occurring at antecedent stages. The role of top-down influences is then to set the cortex in a specific working mode according to behavioral requirements that are updated dynamically. In effect, these ideas reverse the central dogma of sensory processing, with a flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas playing a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. The construction of a subjective percept involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences. Conversely, the top-down expectations and hypotheses are set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. Under this view, there is no starting point for information flow.”

(Italics mine)


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765

I would be very much interested in a more detailed explanation of how quantum mechanics might work in the brain, or any actual experimental evidence.

ps. Here's a article by Serale you might be interested in. He agrees with you on certain key points but draws a different conclusion. It's kind of interesting because he feels he has been misinterpreted by both sides - by strict materialists as well as idealists.

Here are the two passages I found most interesting:

"There is clearly a difference between consciousness and the material or physical world. We know this from our own experience, but it is also obvious from science. The material world is publicly accessible and is pretty much as described by physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences; but the conscious, experiential, phenomenological world is not publicly accessible. It has a distinct private existence. We know it with certainty from our inner, private, subjective experiences.
We all know that the private world of consciousness exists, we know that it is part of the real world, and our question is to find out how it fits into the public material world, specifically, we need to know how it fits into the brain.
Because neither consciousness nor matter is reducible to the other, they are distinct and different phenomena in the world. Those who believe that consciousness is reducible to matter are called materialists; those who believe that matter is reducible
to consciousness are called idealists. Both are mistaken for the same reason. Both try to eliminate something that really exists in its own right and cannot be reduced to something else. Now, because both materialism and idealism are false, the only reasonable alternative is dualism. But substance dualism seems out of the question for
a number of reasons. For example it cannot explain how these spiritual substances came into existence in the first place and it cannot explain how they relate to the physical world. So property dualism seems the only reasonable view of the mind–body problem. Consciousness really exists, but it is not a separate substance on its own, rather it is a property of the brain."



"Here is where the inadequacy of the traditional terminology comes out most obviously. The property dualist wants to say that consciousness is a mental and therefore not physical feature of the brain. I want to say consciousness is a mental and therefore biological and therefore physical feature of the brain. But because the traditional vocabulary was designed to contrast the mental and the physical, I cannot say what I want to say in the traditional vocabulary without sounding like I am saying something inconsistent. Similarly when the identity theorists said that consciousness is nothing but a neurobiological process, they meant that consciousness as qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy,touchy feely, etc.) does not even exist, that only third-person neurobiological processes exist. I want also to say that consciousness is nothing but a neurobio-logical process, and by that I mean that precisely because consciousness is qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy, touchy feely, etc.) it has to be a neurobiological process; because, so far, we have not found any system that can cause and realize conscious states except brain systems. Maybe someday we will be able to create conscious artifacts, in which case subjective states of consciousness will be ‘physical’ features of those artifacts."


http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf


The ideas of Searle, Stapp ,Sheldrake,  Chalmers , Nagel .....i did post just help me  make you try to consider  the falsehood of reductionism and thus that of materialism  in a way ,that's all = they do not necessarily reflect my own views on the subject of consciousness and brain , no false pretences or false modesty = they are just stages within the evolutionary nature and power of science that will lead to other more advanced stages ,hopefully: this consciousness revolution is just starting , just in its infantile stage  .

Science is thus moving away from orthodox materialism ,step by step , but still through a shy or timid and slow way , and science will reject materialism in the end : that will be a major scientific revolution like no other before .

Popper must be delighted in his grave,after all  .

That cannot be but ...good news on the scientific evolutionary path that will be leading to advanced scientific non-materialist theories of consciousness and more ,hopefully .

Humanity and human science will be benefitting from all that in ways that are still beyond anyone's imagination or wildest dreams thus .

The human consciousness revolution or evolution might be leading to the achievement of that utopia and myth of them all,at the end of the road  = to the metaphysically neutral science ,hopefully ,at least .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 20:06:53
Cheryl :

It is humanly impossible to reply to all posts here,my apologies for not having time or energy enough to reply to all your interesting posts ,and to all those of others here  as well .
I did reply to some , but having to reply to a lots of posts everyday  , that cannot but make me be way less effective or concise than i should be .
I wish i had some like-minded members helping me engage all these materialist views , i cannot do it alone thus : no time or energy enough for that indeed  .

P.S.: Ethos and  Supercryptid have been paradoxical by both believing in  the mutually exclusive following world views :

both in  the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " ,and in their own what they called their ...faiths ....

I do believe in both the metaphysically neutral science ,and in my own faith ,while separating the 2 from each other in the process as well = very compatible with each other , go hand in hand with each other , complete each other , they are the both sides of the same medal : no wonder that science itself did originate or was born from the very womb of my own fertile faith .
......................
Not to forget to mention the fact that the immaterial is just the other side of the same reality : there is thus nothing "supernatural " about it : the immaterial is normal thus = reality is both material physical and non-material non-physical .

The materialist version of reality has been just an act of faith,no empirical fact , an act of faith  grounded in the 19th century outdated and superceded false materialist world view, conception of nature , philosophy , ideology ...no science,even though science has been  materialist since .

And , please , do stop thinking and behaving as if i have been holding some sort of lunatic conspiracy theory or some sort of hidden agenda of some sort : i have already addressed those silly accusations : i have been just talking about the fact that materialism and science are not the same , even though science has been materialist while it should be neither materialist nor otherwise .

I just wat science to be liberated from materialism, as atheist Nagel and many other atheists as well, as Sheldrake and other religious and non-religious scientists philosophers .... do .


Thanks for all your interesting and inspiring charming posts ,appreciate indeed .
Happy non-materialist haha new year , lady , all the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 20:49:43
" You  cannot or should not see but what i do want to see, or tell you to see,there is nothingelse out there but what i want to see   "  ,One of the old Pharaons used to say :
That's exactly what the materialist science has been saying ,thanks to materialism .
How come ,folks, that i am the only one here who can see the undeniable and obvious  simple  fact that the emperor is naked ?

Materialist science just happens to be looking  at reality through the dogmatic narrow-minded materialist key hole version of reality ,while assuming that that's all what there is to reality .

When science will be liberated from materialism , as the latter is nearing its end , science will be able to see way much more than what it has been seeing so far under materialism : that will expand and broaden the scope ,realm and jurisdiction of science way beyond the key hole materialist version of reality , you have no idea ...

Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .

So, i cannot but wish you all a happy and beyond materialism's key hole  new year .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: David Cooper on 29/12/2013 21:40:01
It's ok not to read my posts , i am not offended by that , although i have to admit i have been repeating almost the same things  over and over again : i have been having no choice but to do just that , and that's not been all i have been doing here either  .

I am still reading chunks of your posts when they're quoted by others - pressure of work makes it impossible to find all the best bits directly, so I'm taking advantage of the work others are doing in identifying them for me. I'm doubtless missing a few gems here and there as a result, but I'm sure they'll all come round again.

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All the best , and happy non-materialist and non-mechanical haha creative  new year by the way  to you and to all your beloved ones as well  .

And the same to you, and everyone else in this thread, with the "non-"s retained or removed as appropriate.

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P.S.: It would be interesting and fascinating to try to tell us about your creative work ,from time to time , so, we can have at least some sort of a glimpse of that .
Despite its undeniable falsehood ,the mechanistic view of the world has been delivering some interesting insights , ideas , breakthroughs , inspirations ....anyway .

I'll get it in front of you sooner by not stopping to describe it now. If you have access to a copy of Lewis Carroll's book Symbolic Logic, starting from book XIII, chapter III there are some rather nice logic problems which I am currently trying to get a machine to solve. It turns out that the first one can be solved using just four transformations and using only premisses 6, 9 and 10, so the puzzles themselves are being ripped apart by the mechanical analysis which I'm applying to them. The process is 100% mechanistic. The only thing that's a problem to explain in us is sentience, so you're wasting your time whenever you argue that reason, thought and language are anything more than mechanistic processes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 30/12/2013 00:50:08
Yeah, right : just start insulting when you cannot do any better .
LOL!  that was no insult, "just hard talk = my own expression of tough love for you as a fellow human being (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg417195#msg417195)" [;D]

Like I said, such a short memory... remember this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416688#msg416688), and this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416712#msg416712)?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: sastryemani on 30/12/2013 01:49:39
When you are in a deep sleep, your mind is dead (figuratively speaking). You time and space does not exist. You (I mean the mind) is not aware where you are, whether you are sleeping on the bed or you are married and your kids exist. Totally you are "brain dead".

Also when you are dreaming (not in a deep sleep), your mind is some what imagining all kinds of strange events (thoughts).

But when you get up, your mind awakes and start the process of (waking) "I", the thoughts.
 
Also when you get up, you know whether you had a deep sleep or not, although you were not aware of yourself in the deep sleep.

This tells that "I" exist all the time. That is consciousness.
 
What is happening in the deep sleep is all thoughts come to zero, except your mind is dead. If your mind is awake in your deep sleep time, then that "I" is in blissful state. It is in the state of Stillness and deep calm, unfortunately you can't perceive that as long as your mind is sleeping.

Answer is you stop all your thoughts and perceive the "True I" with your mind in that stillness of thoughtless mind.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 30/12/2013 13:42:43
If consciousness is non materialistic, how does it stay with me given that my body is hurtling
through space at thousands of MPH ?
Any connection I can think of  must be materialistic!
Maybe part of string theory? or maybe its glue-don.

There would have to be some kind of link between mind and body. This could explain
Many mental disorders, something like this
Close  link = Genius .
Medium link =average stable person.
Long link=more spiritual person=consciousness more out of body than in.
Very long link= gibbering idiot=consciousness out in space.
Broken link=dead=consciousness drifts in the cold dark void of space for ever.
Or I could just be away with the fairies lol.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/12/2013 15:48:12


Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .



Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 30/12/2013 17:19:30


Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .



Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?
Ohhh goodie, goodie, goodie, we're going to have a party. I think I'll come dressed in my birthday suit. That shouldn't bother anyone there because my everyday set of cloths isn't material either. Should make not difference, in fact, why even go to the party? Nobody's there, just waves of  immaterial nothingness. Only waves of the indescribable, non measureable, ghostly apparitional disconnected consciousness from the unconscious realm of Doctor Don.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:21:27


Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .



Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?


PHENOMENA QUANTUM MECHANICAL MODELS OF MIND CAN EXPLAIN:



Does a dualistic, non-materialistic model of mind-brain interaction account for the observed facts
better than a materialistic model? The answer is clearly yes: such a model can account for several
phenomena that remain utterly inexplicable by materialism. These would include:
The placebo effect
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Psychic abilities, also known as psi
The NDE
The placebo effect is well known in medicine. It refers to the healing effect created by a sick
person’s belief that a powerful remedy has been applied when the improvement could not have been
the physical result of the remedy. It should not be confused with the body’s natural healing process, as
it depends specifically on the patient’s mental belief that a specific remedy will work. Neuroscientist
Mario Beauregard describes the well-known effectiveness of placebos:
Since the 1970’s, a proposed new drug’s effectiveness is routinely tested in controlled studies
against placebos, not because placebos are useless but precisely because they are so useful.
Placebos usually help a percentage of patients enrolled in the control group of a study, perhaps 35
to 45 percent. Thus, in recent decades, if a drug’s effect is statistically significant, which means
that it is at least 5 percent better than a placebo, it can be licensed for use.
In 2005, New Scientist, hardly known for its support of nonmaterialist neural theory, listed “13
Things That Don’t Make Sense,” and the placebo effect was number one on the list. Of course,
the placebo effect “doesn’t make sense” if you assume that the mind either does not exist or is
powerless.31
A nonmaterialist approach to the mind has also been instrumental in developing treatments for
various psychiatric disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the assumption that directed,
willed mental effort can reorganize a disordered brain and has been used to treat obsessivecompulsive
disorder and various phobias. Jeffrey Schwartz, a nonmaterialist neuropsychiatrist at the
University of California, Los Angeles, routinely treats obsessive-compulsive disorder as a case of an
intact mind troubled by a malfunctioning brain. Schwartz has developed a treatment designed to help
patients realize that faulty brain messages cause the problem and to help the patients actually rewire
their brains to bypass the problem. PET scans of the patients’ brains before and after treatment
showed that the patients really had changed their brains.32 Schwartz writes, “The time has come for
science to confront the serious implications of the fact that directed, willed mental activity can clearly
and systematically alter brain function.”33 *27
Reports of demonstrated psychic abilities are a persistent embarrassment to materialism.
Considered as a scientific hypothesis, materialism makes a bold and admirable prediction: psychic
abilities such as telepathy simply do not exist. If they are shown to exist, then materialism is clearly
refuted. But psychic abilities—or psi as they are called—have been demonstrated again and again
under the most rigorously controlled experimental conditions.*28 However, as I have shown in my
previous book, Parapsychology and the Skeptics, the materialists have gone to extraordinary lengths
to try to dismiss, explain away, and even suppress the data.34 29 In any other field of inquiry, the
collective evidence would have been considered extremely compelling decades ago. 30 However,
parapsychology is not like any other field of inquiry. The data of parapsychology challenge deeply
held worldviews, worldviews that are concerned not only with science but also with religious and
philosophical issues. As such, the data arouse strong passions and, for many, a strong desire to dismiss
them.
Refusing to accept data that proves a scientific theory false turns the theory into an ideology, a
belief held as an article of faith; in other words, a belief that simply must be true, because it is
considered so important. Concerning this point, Beauregard writes,
Materialists have conducted a running war against psi research for decades, because any evidence
of psi’s validity, no matter how minor, is fatal to their ideological system. Recently, for example,
self-professed skeptics have attacked atheist neuroscience grad student Sam Harris for having
proposed, in his book titled The End of Faith (2004), that psi research has validity. Harris is only
following the evidence. But in doing so, he is clearly violating an important tenet of materialism:
materialist ideology trumps evidence.35
The NDE, in which people have reported clear memories of conscious experience at times when
their brains did not seem to be functioning, also strongly challenges materialism. As you read through
this book, you may come to realize that many of the arguments challenging a transcendental
interpretation of these experiences are motivated by an a priori commitment to a materialist
worldview.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:23:52
MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND:

The doctrine of materialism is one of the implications of taking classical physics to be a complete
description of all of nature, including human beings.*31 It is essentially the idea that all events have a
physical cause; in other words, that all events are caused by the interaction between particles of matter
and force fields. It follows from this that mind has no causal role in nature but is at most merely a
useless by-product produced by the brain, and so in short, all that matters is matter.
There are three basic materialist approaches: the mind does not exist, the mind is identical to the
brain, or the mind is a useless by-product produced by the brain.
The eliminative materialists seriously argue that consciousness and the self do not exist, but that
children are indoctrinated by “folk psychology” into believing that they exist as conscious, thinking
beings. For instance, journalist Michael Lemonick writes, “Despite our every instinct to the contrary,
there is one thing that consciousness is not: some entity deep inside the brain that corresponds to the
‘self,’ some kernel of awareness that runs the show, as the ‘man behind the curtain’ manipulated the
illusion of a powerful magician in The Wizard of Oz. After more than a century of looking for it, brain
researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located
in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.”36
This may sound bizarre, but since materialism cannot account for consciousness, some materialists
simply deny their own existence as conscious beings. They are driven to this act of desperation by
their conviction that science, which they understand as applied materialism, supports them. Note the
self-refuting nature of this position: If I believe that consciousness does not exist, then how could my
belief exist? If my consciousness does not exist, then neither does my belief. And if my professed
belief is nothing more than a machine going through its motions, then you have no reason to accept it
as correct.
The identity theory holds great attraction for many philosophers, as it seems to offer a simple and
easy solution to the problem. It says, for instance, that the subjective awareness of a red patch is
objectively the movement of particles taking place in one’s brain. Some identity theorists hope that
neuroscience will one day be able to map out the brain states that correspond to mental states, so that
we will be able to simply describe mental activity as the activity of the brain. But Beauregard points
out why this is a false hope:
Every human mind and brain moves through life differently, changing as it goes, so the
information obtained for his brain would not apply to anyone else’s—or even to his own brain at
a later time! This point bears repeating because it is so contrary to materialist hopes that it is
often ignored in public discussions. One outcome, for example, is that [Jean-Peirre] Changeux’s
view that mind states and brain states are completely identical is untestable and lacks predictive
value.37
Any theory that is untestable and lacks predictive value does not belong to science, but rather to
philosophy at best, ideology at worse. And it does get worse. How are we even to understand the
assertion that thoughts and brain states are really one and the same? If they are the same, then every
characteristic of one must be a characteristic of the other; but this leads to nonsense, as physicist and
philosopher C. D. Broad pointed out.
There are some questions which can be raised about the characteristics of being a molecular
movement, which it is nonsensical to raise about the characteristics of being an awareness of a
red patch; and conversely. About a molecular movement it is perfectly reasonable to raise the
question: Is it swift or slow, straight or circular, and so on? About the awareness of a red patch it
is nonsensical to ask whether it is a swift or slow awareness, a straight or a circular awareness,
and so on. Conversely, it is reasonable to ask about an awareness of a red patch whether it is a
clear or a confused awareness; but it is nonsense to ask of a molecular movement whether it is a
clear or a confused movement. Thus the attempt to argue that “being a sensation of so and so”
and “being a bit of bodily behavior of such and such a kind” are just two names for the same
characteristic is evidently hopeless.38
Eliminative materialism and identity theory are varieties of monism, the idea that only one kind of
substance exists in the universe. A materialist monist believes that matter is all that exists, in contrast
to a dualist, who believes that reality contains two sorts of essences: psychical and physical. The
materialist believes that the full authority of science supports his position and that dualism is an
outmoded legacy of a prescientific era, but many modern scientists disagree. Astronomer V. A. Firsoff
writes, “To assert there is only matter and no mind is the most illogical of propositions, quite apart
from the findings of modern physics, which show that there is no matter in the traditional meaning of
the term.”39 As we saw earlier, many quantum theorists were driven to the conclusion that prior to
conscious observation, matter exists only in a half-real state as possibility waves, without definite
values for dynamic attributes such as position or velocity. Hence Walker’s remark that “duality is
already a part of physics.”
Wolfgang Pauli, one of the major contributors to quantum theory, concluded, “The only acceptable
point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the
qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can embrace them
simultaneously.”40
Epiphenomenalism does not deny the existence of consciousness, but holds that the interaction
between the brain and mind runs strictly one way, from brain to mind. This view was popularized by
Darwin’s friend and colleague Thomas Huxley, who described the mind as a mere epiphenomena—a
useless by-product of brain activity. According to this theory, free will and intent are only illusions.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s
opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Karl Popper rightly pointed out.
The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the onesided
action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the
body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our
expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had
been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.41
So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected
to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to this
account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more highly
developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.
However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could
specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics,
being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary
theory. However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has
eliminated the causal closure of the physical.
Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, pointed
out that while biologists have been relentlessly moving toward the hard-core materialism that
characterized nineteenth-century physics, “at the same time, physicists, faced with compelling
experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly mechanical models of the universe to a
view that sees the mind as playing an integral role in all physical events. It is as if the two disciplines
were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the
tracks.”42 For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline
should rethink its position—physics or biology? On a practical note, can we reasonably expect much
progress in neuroscience, given the problems, if we do not begin by reassessing the materialism that
has characterized our hypotheses for decades?”43
Materialist theories of mind are based on the assumption that brain activity, and hence mental
activity, is driven from below by the deterministic, observer-independent motions of elementary
particles in the brain, as described by classical physics. But we have known since the early years of the
twentieth century that classical physics fails drastically at the atomic and subatomic levels, and that
the behavior of such particles is indeterministic and observer dependent. The irony here is that while
materialists often describe themselves as promoting a scientific outlook, it is possible to be a
materialist only by ignoring the most successful scientific theory of matter the world has yet seen. The
materialist believes that consciousness is created by matter, yet the best theory we have about the
nature of matter seems to require that consciousness exists independently of matter. And materialist
models of mind utterly fail to answer the hard problem: why should consciousness exist in the first
place and then constantly deceive us as to its function?
Materialist philosopher of mind John Searle has lamented the bankruptcy of most work in the
philosophy of mind and has candidly suggested that the motivation behind acceptance of materialist
views is more emotional than rational.
Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their
truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives. That is, the choice we are tacitly
presented with is between a ‘scientific’ approach, as represented by one or another of the current
versions of ‘materialism,’ and an ‘anti-scientific’ approach, as represented by Cartesianism or
some other traditional religious conception of the mind.44
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:25:57

THE DREADED INTERACTION PROBLEM:




Critics of dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties such as mind and matter
could possibly interact (materialist philosopher William Lycan calls this the “dreaded” interaction
problem).45 How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or physical dimensions, possibly
influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes,
The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind
interact with the extended body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed
by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the physical theory that the universe is a closed
system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event. This
assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.46
Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave
function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is
of course based on classical physics.
By asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is making the
implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in common in
order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity or is it rather an empirical truth, a fact
about nature? As philosopher and historian David Hume pointed out long ago, we form our idea of
causation from observations of constant correlation; and since anything in principle could correlate
with anything else, only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John Beloff
considers the issue logically:
If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely
want to say that the second event was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or
not the two had anything else in common. As for such a principle being an empirical truth, how
could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and matter, as
candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are
independent is to beg the question… . It says something about the desperation of those who want
to dismiss radical dualism that such phony arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly
reputable philosophers who should know better.47 *32
Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on
obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another, we have interaction
between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper
considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality
of different kinds of forces, and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory
principles. Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis that only like things can act
upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields
—by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon
fields, which they modify, and then the modified field acts upon another body.48
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:29:15
THE OBJECTIONS OF DANIEL DENNETT:

Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained has a chapter titled “Why Dualism is Forlorn,” which
begins with the following words: “The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of
ordinary matter but of some other kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today… .
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism: there is one sort of stuff,
namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow
nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain.”49
Dennett then asks, “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it in such disfavor?” His answer:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an
acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy … this principle of conservation of energy … is
apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has
been endlessly discussed since Descartes’s own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.50
Shortly after this, he writes: “This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, it
most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule
that dualism is to be avoided at all costs.”51
Commenting on the argument Dennett presents, Stapp writes,
The argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical physics. The argument
collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics, in which trajectories of particles are
replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically
described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum
mechanics. Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an
interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the laws of physics.52 (emphasis in original)
Rosenblum and Kuttner also reject Dennett’s arguments:
Some theorists deny the possibility of duality by arguing that a signal from a non-material mind
could not carry energy and thus could not influence material brain cells. Because of this inability
of a mind to supply energy to influence the neurons of the brain, it is claimed that physics
demonstrates an inescapable flaw of dualism. However, no energy need be involved in
determining to which particular situation a wave function collapses. Thus the determination of
which of the physically possible conscious experiences becomes the actual experience is a
process that need not involve energy transfer. Quantum mechanics therefore allows an escape
from the supposed fatal flaw of dualism. It is a mistake to think that dualism can be ruled out on
the basis of physics.53
Finally, as Broad pointed out decades ago, at a time when quantum mechanics was still in its
infancy, even if all physical-to-physical causation involves transfer of energy, we have no reason to
think that such transfer would also be required in mental-to-physical or physical-to-mental
causation.54 This, of course, is completely consistent with the point made above by Rosenblum and
Kuttner.*33

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

Cognitive scientist Roger Sperry has proposed that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
A simple example of an emergent property is the fluidity of water, which is nothing like any property
of hydrogen and oxygen. Another example is the geometrical and optical properties of crystals,
properties that the molecules that compose them do not possess. Sperry proposes that consciousness
emerges from the configuration of the brain in the way that fluidity emerges from combining
hydrogen and oxygen.
This is different from the materialist production theory, according to which the brain produces
consciousness the way the liver produces bile. It is a temporal distinction: in the production theory,
brain states precede the conscious states they produce, but if conscious states are emergent properties
of brain states, then they occur simultaneously with them.
However, as philosopher of mind B. Alan Wallace notes,
A genuine emergent property of the cells of the brain is the brain’s semi-solid consistency, and
that is something that objective, physical science can well comprehend … but they do not
understand how the brain produces any state of consciousness. In other words, if mental
phenomena are in fact nothing more than emergent properties and functions of the brain, their
relation to the brain is fundamentally unlike every other emergent property and function found in
nature.55 (emphasis in original)
The von Neumann interpretation of reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an
emergent but rather an elemental property, that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as
energy and force fields. This idea is seriously entertained by physicists such as Herbert, and in its
favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox that is raised by the von Neumann
interpretation: if consciousness depends on the physical world and if the value of many quantum
physical properties depends on consciousness, then how did the physical world ever bring about
consciousness in the first place? The solution to this puzzle is apparently what Jeans means when he
writes, “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather
hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.”56 *34
Quantum mechanics can thereby be considered as supporting an interactive dualism similar to that
of Descartes. Cartesian dualism holds that there are two kinds of entirely separate substances: mind
and matter. This theory fell into disrepute among many philosophers because classical physics
provided no mechanism by which mind could influence material substance.
The classical idea of substance—self-sufficient, unchanging, with definite location, motion, and
extension in space—has been replaced by the idea that physical reality is not made out of any material
substance, but rather out of events and possibilities for those events to occur. These possibilities, or
potentials, for events to occur have a wavelike structure and can interfere with each other. They are
not substance-like, that is, static or persisting in time. Rather than being concerned with “substances”
in the classical sense of the term, modern interactive dualism conceives of two differently described
aspects of reality: the psychical and the physical.
Stapp sums up how a modern interactive dualism based on quantum mechanics simplifies the
conceptual relationship between the two aspects of reality.
This solution is in line with Descartes’ idea of two “substances,” that can interact in our brains,
provided “substance” means merely a carrier of “essences.” The essence of the inhabitants of res
cogitans is “felt experience.” They are thoughts, ideas, and feelings: the realities that hang
together to form our streams of conscious experiences. But the essence of the inhabitants of res
extensa is not at all that sort of persisting stuff that classical physicists imagined the physical
world to be made of … their essential nature is that of “potentialities for the psychophysical
events to occur.” Those events occur at the interface between the psychologically described and
physically described aspects of nature. The causal connections between “potentialities for
psychologically described events to occur” and the actual occurrence of such events are easier to
comprehend and describe than causal connections between the mental and physical features of
classical physics. For, both sides of the quantum duality are conceptually more like “ideas” than
like “rocks.”

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:35:39


Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .



Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?

See above , dear materialist deluded person  with an X chromosome .
I really wish you a way beyond the materialist key hole version of reality new year ,sincerly .
All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:40:50


Untill then , just continue having fun  and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .



Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?
Ohhh goodie, goodie, goodie, we're going to have a party. I think I'll come dressed in my birthday suit. That shouldn't bother anyone there because my everyday set of cloths isn't material either. Should make not difference, in fact, why even go to the party? Nobody's there, just waves of  immaterial nothingness. Only waves of the indescribable, non measureable, ghostly apparitional disconnected consciousness from the unconscious realm of Doctor Don.

It's the mind that sees , not the eyes or the brain , it's the mind that enjoys parties , not the body or brain . it's the mind that practices science , not the brain or body , ..........body and brain are just mediums vehicles ..........

Have fun , and happy healthy new year for your body brain and non-physical paradoxical confused mind  beyond materialism  , Ethos .
All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 18:51:28
I have been reading "The Alchemist " by Paulo Cohelho ,and i cannot but see myself , or my dualism, as some sort of a river  on which reflection Narcissus (materialism ) used to admire his "beautiful face " every morning .
The fresh water of that river was transformed into salty water,when Narcissus died  .
When the same river knew that Narcissus died , it could not but express its sadness .
When asked "Why are you weeping ? " ,the river replied : "I am weeping for Narcissus " .
Yes , It's no surprise that you weep for Narcissus , but you were the only one lucky enough to admire his "beauty " .
The stunned river said : was he beautiful ?
The river was told : you should know that of all creatures , because Narcissus used to admire his "beauty " on your reflection .
I did not notice his "beauty " , the river said , i never saw  him ,nor his face .

I am weeping  because i used to see my own beauty reflected in the very eyes of Narcissus .


"What a lovely story " the alchemist thought .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: sastryemani on 30/12/2013 18:52:53
The mind is incapable of understanding consciousness. It is like explaining 4 and 5 dimensions to humans in a 2 dimension world.  That is why it is so difficult for human mind to fathom the depth. Human minds logic are made of thoughts. Consciousness is beyond that. But mind is the only link to understanding consciousness. How? By focusing or concentrating only on that, devoid of other distractions. Then only mind becomes one with the True Self (Consciousness). It is again like being in the 5 dimension and you are very capable of what is all about in lower dimensions ie... only after knowing what the True Self is, you are capable of what the wakeup world and dream world is all about. Even when you are aware of the True Self, it is hard to explain to people who do not have that understanding because language and logic is insufficient. It is like explaining extraterrestrials' how a banana taste like when they never tasted nor know what it is.
 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 19:14:51
The mind is incapable of understanding consciousness. It is like explaining 4 and 5 dimensions to humans in a 2 dimension world.  That is why it is so difficult for human mind to fathom the depth. Human minds logic are made of thoughts. Consciousness is beyond that. But mind is the only link to understanding consciousness. How? By focusing or concentrating only on that, devoid of other distractions. Then only mind becomes one with the True Self (Consciousness). It is again like being in the 5 dimension and you are very capable of what is all about in lower dimensions ie... only after knowing what the True Self is, you are capable of what the wakeup world and dream world is all about. Even when you are aware of the True Self, it is hard to explain to people who do not have that understanding because language and logic is insufficient. It is like explaining extraterrestrials' how a banana taste like when they never tasted nor know what it is.
 

That's the main problem indeed : the mind or consciousness (the subject ) trying to understand the subject (itself ) .

The self is an illusion though ,you have to "die before  death " : you have to get rid of your illusory self , if you wanna reach the true enlightenment .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 19:35:31
It's ok not to read my posts , i am not offended by that , although i have to admit i have been repeating almost the same things  over and over again : i have been having no choice but to do just that , and that's not been all i have been doing here either  .

I am still reading chunks of your posts when they're quoted by others - pressure of work makes it impossible to find all the best bits directly, so I'm taking advantage of the work others are doing in identifying them for me. I'm doubtless missing a few gems here and there as a result, but I'm sure they'll all come round again.

Indeed : in short :  I love materialists haha ,in the sense that they cannot but reflect the beauty of dualism ,as the story of Narcissus and the river on which reflection Narcissus used to see his beauty goes, in "The Alechemist " by Paulo Cohelho , i did mention here above .
When materialism will be dead , soon enough, i will be weeping for its death , simply because it has been reflecting  the beauty of my dualism  ,but i have never noticed or seen the supposed beauty of Narcissus = materialism .

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All the best , and happy non-materialist and non-mechanical haha creative  new year by the way  to you and to all your beloved ones as well  .

And the same to you, and everyone else in this thread, with the "non-"s retained or removed as appropriate.

It's mutual indeed , all the best .Let's hope you will be progressing enough in your own creative work as to be able to see the undeniable falsehood of materialism and its mechanical world view (despite the fact that the mechanistic world view does have some elements of the truth: consciousness is the main anomaly that proves materialism to be false . ) : i know you have it in you to be capable of just the latter .
Who knows , Good luck .

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P.S.: It would be interesting and fascinating to try to tell us about your creative work ,from time to time , so, we can have at least some sort of a glimpse of that .
Despite its undeniable falsehood ,the mechanistic view of the world has been delivering some interesting insights , ideas , breakthroughs , inspirations ....anyway .

I'll get it in front of you sooner by not stopping to describe it now. If you have access to a copy of Lewis Carroll's book Symbolic Logic, starting from book XIII, chapter III there are some rather nice logic problems which I am currently trying to get a machine to solve. It turns out that the first one can be solved using just four transformations and using only premisses 6, 9 and 10, so the puzzles themselves are being ripped apart by the mechanical analysis which I'm applying to them. The process is 100% mechanistic. The only thing that's a problem to explain in us is sentience, so you're wasting your time whenever you argue that reason, thought and language are anything more than mechanistic processes.

Sounds extremely fascinating indeed , i mean it , do please  tell us about that , whenever you can , thanks , appreciate indeed .
I am downloading Carroll's mentioned book, as we speak, so to speak .
Thanks for the tip , Mr.kafka .

All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 19:43:57
Yeah, right : just start insulting when you cannot do any better .
LOL!  that was no insult, "just hard talk = my own expression of tough love for you as a fellow human being (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg417195#msg417195)" [;D]

Like I said, such a short memory... remember this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416688#msg416688), and this (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48315.msg416712#msg416712)?

Haha , not quite the same , not quite the same , Mr. what was the name again of that doctor companion of Sherlock Holmes ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 30/12/2013 20:03:23

Have fun , and happy healthy new year for your body brain and non-physical paradoxical confused mind  beyond materialism  , Ethos .
All the best .
Happy New Year to you as well Doc. Don..........Don't drink too much Vodka, it's effects are very destructive where consciousness is concerned.

And a very, very Happy New Year to all of my esteemed scientific compatriots:

delorde
Cheryl j
alancalverd
Grimbo

ENJOY!!!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2013 20:16:20

Have fun , and happy healthy new year for your body brain and non-physical paradoxical confused mind  beyond materialism  , Ethos .
All the best .
Happy New Year to you as well Doc. Don..........Don't drink too much Vodka, it's effects are very destructive where consciousness is concerned.

Thanks , the same to you paradoxical Ethos .
I am high on life , i have already kissed alcohol goodbye, relatively a long time ago .
Have fun, life is short ,and take care of your physical body brain and non-physical mind as well .
All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/12/2013 20:28:37
Okay, I'll bite. How does quantum mechanics explain the placebo effect? What happens?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 30/12/2013 20:56:58
I do appreciate your excerpts, but at the same time find it frustrating that they all seem to cite examples in the vaguest of terms. Quantum mechanics or the immaterial explains X. How? In what way? What's the process? Show me the steps, the links. That was, it seemed to me, Cooper's problem with neuroscience - the links between neural correlates and mental activity were not tight enough for him. So why is it not a problem with quantum mechanics? Show me how  quantum mechanics generates dreams, thoughts, memories, hopes, love, jokes, emotions, imagination, dreams, qualia, etc.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 30/12/2013 21:25:24
I do appreciate your excerpts, but at the same time find it frustrating that they all seem to cite examples in the vaguest of terms. Quantum mechanics or the immaterial explains X. How? In what way? What's the process? Show me the steps, the links. That was, it seemed to me, Cooper's problem with neuroscience - the links between neural correlates and mental activity were not tight enough for him. So why is it not a problem with quantum mechanics? Show me how  quantum mechanics generates dreams, thoughts, memories, hopes, love, jokes, emotions, imagination, dreams, qualia, etc.
Absolutely, this is what we're missing from you Doc. Don......  We need to see the linkage, step by step. Math is a magnificant vehicle to demonstrate abstract ideas, maybe you could detail your idea's using math? Take advantage of this venue, math can be abstract, and immaterial, right up your alley. Go for it my man, explain this vision of yours using math. The greatest scientific tool ever invented!!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2013 01:12:22
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Show me how  quantum mechanics generates dreams, thoughts, memories, hopes, love, jokes, emotions, imagination, dreams, qualia, etc.

Hypothesis: (a) Quantum mechanics determines the shape of molecules and (b) hence the structure and function of our brains, (c) in which all these other things are made.

Discussion: (a) is well established, both by analysis and by synthesis. Brain anatomy and physiology can be analysed and altered with a fair degree of repeatability by chemistry, hence (b) is a consequence of (a).

Test: There have been no reports of dreams etc from individuals with no brain, but we can detect some or all of these activities in all humans and many species with analogous brains to ours, hence (c) is established within the bounds of experimental error.

QED.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 31/12/2013 03:19:04
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Show me how  quantum mechanics generates dreams, thoughts, memories, hopes, love, jokes, emotions, imagination, dreams, qualia, etc.

Hypothesis: (a) Quantum mechanics determines the shape of molecules and (b) hence the structure and function of our brains, (c) in which all these other things are made.
 

Something tells me that is not the direction he is headed.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 31/12/2013 03:24:54



PHENOMENA QUANTUM MECHANICAL MODELS OF MIND CAN EXPLAIN:



Does a dualistic, non-materialistic model of mind-brain interaction account for the observed facts
better than a materialistic model? The answer is clearly yes: such a model can account for several
phenomena that remain utterly inexplicable by materialism.

How does the application of quantum mechanics make the model dualistic? Quantum mechanics has been studied in other biological systems, like photosynthesis, and none of the researchers connected it to mystical forces.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2013 08:43:02
Something tells me that is not the direction he is headed.

To quote my old navigation instructor:"Start from where you are, and check the compass before you start the engine. Then you won't get lost before you take off."

Which suggests a definition of a philosopher as someone who enters an intellectual dogfight without a reality check.

And whilst I have the floor, DQ deployed this philosophical chaff a few posts ago
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How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or physical dimensions, possibly
influence spatially bound matter?

Photons do it all the time, which is how you can read this, thanks to quantum mechanics.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2013 08:56:31
And more crap:

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Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave
function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event.

Drivel! The wave function is not a physical entity but an intellectual model of a physical property. This absurd statement suggests that Schrodinger's cat can be killed by my dog's thoughts before you open the box, which is exactly the opposite of Schrodinger's postulate: the model of observation collapsing a wave function only applies to a single observer. It predicts, but does not replicate, reality.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 31/12/2013 18:13:42

 : you have to get rid of your illusory self , if you wanna reach the true enlightenment .
Unless you provide us with some evidence in support of this quote; "matter might turn out to be not made of matter, after all". You might truly consider taking your own advice.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 31/12/2013 18:45:13
Below are  three links to articles about quantum consciousness.

The first one is written by Stapp himself in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.  I believe Don will enjoy this article, and it even includes  several digs at materialism. I don’t think Don has already posted this, but I was away for a while. What’s interesting about this article is that in the attempt, I think, to steal the thunder of any critics, Stapp also points out some weaknesses of his theory, but I don’t feel he does a very good job at refuting these possible criticisms. (In fact, when I first read the article, I mistakenly thought it was written by someone else defending Stapp, and wondered if the author left out some key ideas that Stapp himself would have included!)

The second article is by Matthew Donald of Cambridge. He begins by saying “For many years, Henry Stapp and I have been working separately and independently on mind-centered interpretations of quantum theory. In this review, I discuss his work and contrast it with my own. There is much that we agree on, both in the broad problems we have addressed and in some of the specific details of our analyses of neural physics, but ultimately we disagree fundamentally in our views on mind, matter, and quantum mechanics.”

So it provides a slightly different view on the topic. He says “My theory is dualistic in the sense that there are physical laws and there are observers, but there are no mental computations without observable physical structure. My theory is epiphenomenalistic in the sense that a mind does not direct a pattern of observed physical events, rather it has to make sense of such a pattern as it unfolds. Ultimately, however, my theory should probably be considered as idealistic because, in its final form, the central structures in the theory are mental structures. Physics just supplies the probabilities by which those mental structures change. Mental structures give meaning to their realities by understanding themselves in terms of observable physical structures and observed physical events.”

Although his theory is in some respects even more abstract than Stapp’s, I find it a bit easier to swallow because he seems to avoid Stapp’s problematic conscious agency (or at least a completely independent, acausal one) Stapp's conscious agency is according to Donald basically another form of the homunculus, of which he is quite critical.

Donald raises another issue regarding the conservation of energy, which seems to be important and I would appreciate it if anyone else could comment on it. At the end of page six, Donald says: ”In Stapp (1993 §1.10), Stapp states that his theory 'makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.' Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, 'No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts'."

I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart?

The first two are long articles, but if you have nothing to do New Years Day, they might be worth a look.

The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”


http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdf

http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 31/12/2013 19:22:54


I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart?

The first two are long articles, but if you have nothing to do New Years Day, they might be worth a look.

The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”


http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdf

http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html
Excellent work Cheryl j

"Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement."

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2013 20:31:41



"Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement."


[/quote]

Thank goodness for that! Astronomical observation suggests that quantum mechanics has been going on for a lot longer than philosophy, or any other human vanity. But who cares about the obvious, when there's money to be made peddling mystical nonsense?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 31/12/2013 20:59:45


Thank goodness for that! Astronomical observation suggests that quantum mechanics has been going on for a lot longer than philosophy,
Precisely alan,.....................according to material measurement approx. 13.7 billion years. Quantum mechanics has been doing rather well without any human intervention for at least 99.99999 percent of that period.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 31/12/2013 22:02:03
This whole argument centers around the double slit experiment and the peculiar results that the Schoedinger's Cat paradox suggests. Those of the more mystical persuasion, like Doc. Don, see these quantum peculiarities as proving conscious intervention. But not so fast, let's ask one of the brightest minds to ever consider these questions and see what he says.




Richard Feynman had a different view concerning the double slit experiment and The Schoedinger's Cat paradox. He suggests that as the electron passed from it's origin it bumps into a photon. This collision not only reverses it's direction in space, it also reverses it's direction in time. Now moving backwards in time and space, the electron bumps into another photon returning it to the present observers time and space. But in the course of both these collisions, the observer now sees two separate electrons instead of the single one produced at the outset. The light the observer uses to view this experiment supplies the necessary photons.

Thus we have the best answer for the double slit experiment and the ultimate elimination of any conscious influence for being the cause.

As we speak, this is the best and most widely accepted argument for these phenomenon IMHO. If Doc. Don and his mystical colleagues want to believe in spooky, undefinable, irrational, immaterial, nonsensical, non scientific myths, they are free to do so. But I for one will challenge them to produce evidence of which they have been so far unsuccessful, and I predict they will continue to be unsuccessful far into the distant future.

Doc. Don... is the author of this thread and as such has the responsibility to provide evidence in support of his claims. He continues to misdirect us and challenge us to prove him wrong while offering us no proof of his own. I have resisted offering what I deem as accepted proof in opposition to his claims because I'm convinced he'll simply deny their validity even though they come from one of the greatest minds in physical science..

It is incumbent upon him as author of this thread to provide evidence in his own words and not just to copy and past. If he understands his theory, which I doubt,  he should explain it and prove it himself, without plagiarist.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 01/01/2014 00:05:56
I have one more link. What New Years Eve would be complete without inviting the evil neuroscientists themselves to the party? One of the authors is Patricia Churchland, the Wicked Witch of Materialism (You're all just atoms and molecules. And you're little dog, too!)

I searched this mainly because, while reading Stapp's article, it occurred to me that microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton of all kinds of cells, not just neurons. They are abundant in cilia and flagella and the centrioles that divide chromosomes in cell division. Are there superimposed kidney states as well as brain states? Calcium channels are wide spread in physiology, for example in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of muscle cells during muscle contraction, in the pacemaker cells of heart muscle, etc. So I wanted to see what  biologists other than Hameroff thought of the microtubule thing.

Another question that bothered me: I also don’t see how all of this works in a big wet sloppy biological system.
I don’t know what constitutes a “detector” in quantum mechanics. The slits in the double slit experiment and the detector collapse the wave function. But what happens if the particle “bumps” into anything on its journey? Does the wave function collapse? How are the quantum events isolated from anything else in the brain that might register some effect? Doesn’t any interaction with the macroscopic environment cause decoherence? (This was actually one of the weaknesses mentioned by Stapp himself, but not really well answered.)

The double slit experiment deals with particles. But I have a hard time conceiving of quantum brain states, or the choice process, as not somehow engaging large numbers of particles and cellular structures spread out across the brain, if the information stored in the brain is in anyway important to that choice. I don't know how consciousness "recognizes" the information that correlates to the brain state it wants to select, if that makes any sense. 

The first part of the article deals with the part Penrose's argument involving Gödel Incompleteness Result and non algorithmic thought processes, which was of less interest to me, (but might be relevant to AI and things that Cooper is interested in) The second half has more to do with microtubules and brain physiology.

http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/penrose/penrosehtml/penrose-text.html

Happy New Year.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2014 00:19:28
... Matthew Donald of Cambridge... says “My theory is dualistic in the sense that there are physical laws and there are observers, but there are no mental computations without observable physical structure. My theory is epiphenomenalistic in the sense that a mind does not direct a pattern of observed physical events, rather it has to make sense of such a pattern as it unfolds. Ultimately, however, my theory should probably be considered as idealistic because, in its final form, the central structures in the theory are mental structures. Physics just supplies the probabilities by which those mental structures change. Mental structures give meaning to their realities by understanding themselves in terms of observable physical structures and observed physical events.”
Good stuff, Cheryl!
Yes; I particularly like how he's expressed statement I bolded, and to paraphrase what he says, what makes this idea resonate is that the mind is itself a pattern of physical events that in turn maps the observed pattern (as described in Damasio's 'Self Comes To Mind').

Quote
Although his theory is in some respects even more abstract than Stapp’s, I find it a bit easier to swallow because he seems to avoid Stapp’s problematic conscious agency (or at least a completely independent, acausal one) Stapp's conscious agency is according to Donald basically another form of the homunculus, of which he is quite critical.
Yes again - this is the homunculus of Dennett's 'Cartesian Theatre'  that I was critical of earlier (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.msg426812#msg426812), which raises the question why the brain needs to be complex enough do all this thinking to get to the point of a quantum superposition of options for action (but not quite complex enough to make the selection), if there's a separate conscious agency that has the ability to select a preferred option (somehow) - to do which must involve all the work the brain has already done, and more...

Quote
Donald raises another issue regarding the conservation of energy, which seems to be important and I would appreciate it if anyone else could comment on it.
Conservation of energy in controlling the quantum zeno effect is the least of the problems - where does the energy come from to maintain this independent conscious agency in the first place? It would also take energy to compute the preferred option before applying energy to 'stack the deck' in favour of that option. Nor is there the remotest hint of a mechanism for any of this subversion of quantum decoherence.

Quote
Donald says: ”... Stapp states that his theory 'makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.' Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, 'No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts'."

I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart?
Absolutely it does, I don't think your understanding is mistaken. But the mere existence of an independent immaterial conscious agency capable of computing a preferred result violates the conservation of energy - how does it receive its information? how does it process it? with what? how does it effect that physical quantum  zeno stacking? Stapp is carefully concealing the magical homunculus behind a theatrical curtain of quantum flim-flam and hoping we don't notice. Someone needs to tell him, "Conscious agency is what you're trying to explain Stapp, you can't use it as part of your explanation!!"

Quote
The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”

http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdf

http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html

Thanks for those links, Cheryl - something to nurse my hangover by!

Happy New Year!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2014 01:05:51
I searched this mainly because, while reading Stapp's article, it occurred to me that microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton of all kinds of cells, not just neurons. They are abundant in cilia and flagella and the centrioles that divide chromosomes in cell division. Are there superimposed kidney states as well as brain states? Calcium channels are wide spread in physiology, for example in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of muscle cells during muscle contraction, in the pacemaker cells of heart muscle, etc. So I wanted to see what  biologists other than Hameroff thought of the microtubule thing.
The Penrose & Hameroff's microtubule quantum thing has been comprehensively trashed by Max Tegmark, among others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction#Criticism).

Quote
Another question that bothered me: I also don’t see how all of this works in a big wet sloppy biological system.
I don’t know what constitutes a “detector” in quantum mechanics. The slits in the double slit experiment and the detector collapse the wave function. But what happens if the particle “bumps” into anything on its journey? Does the wave function collapse?
You're right to be concerned, and yes - on any interaction, the wave function collapses, the superposition decoheres. In QM, an observer or detector is any interacting particle.

Quote
How are the quantum events isolated from anything else in the brain that might register some effect?
Magic?

Quote
Doesn’t any interaction with the macroscopic environment cause decoherence? (This was actually one of the weaknesses mentioned by Stapp himself, but not really well answered.)
Yup.

Quote
... I have a hard time conceiving of quantum brain states, or the choice process, as not somehow engaging large numbers of particles and cellular structures spread out across the brain, if the information stored in the brain is in anyway important to that choice. I don't know how consciousness "recognizes" the information that correlates to the brain state it wants to select, if that makes any sense.
Yep, that's the immaterial 'homunculus' at work - it presumably can analyse the complex superposition resulting from all that brain processing, recognise and understand its implications, and magically interfere with the timing of decoherence via the quantum zeno effect, all in a few femtoseconds, to produce the desired outcome... [rather than the brain itself just acting on the strongest pattern of activation resulting from its own computations, which makes more sense to me].

Quote
http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/penrose/penrosehtml/penrose-text.html
The Churchland & Grush seem to cover the bases; it's Quantum Woo (loved this: "Nothing we have said in this paper demonstrates the falsity of the quantum-consciousness connection. Our view is just that it is no better supported than any one of a gazillion caterpillar-with-hookah hypotheses.")

Quote
Happy New Year.
Likewise [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 16:22:10
2 A Quantum Theory of Consciousness:



2.1 Introduction:

Classical physics has no natural place for consciousness. According to the
classical precepts, the sole ingredients of the physical universe are particles
and local fields, and every physical system is completely described by specifying
the dispositions in space and time of these two kinds of localizable
parts. Furthermore, the dispositions of these parts at early times determine,
through certain “laws of motion”, their dispositions at all times. The system
is logically complete in the sense that it does not logically require, for its
description of nature, any things beyond the dispositions of the particles and
local fields.
The two cited features of classical physics, namely its local-reductionistic
and deterministic aspects, do not entail that there can be no conglomerates
that act cohesively as unified wholes. Nor do they entail that such conglomerates
cannot control in large measure the motions of their own parts. But
these two features of classical physics do entail that, to the extent that classical
physics is valid, the motions of material things can be controlled only by
things that are themselves deterministically controlled, and, moreover, dynamically
equivalent to the forces of classical physics. In particular, because
subjective conscious experience is not logically entailed by the concepts of
classical physics, any control over brain activity exercised by a conscious
experience is, to the extent that classical physics is valid, dynamically equivalent
to the control exercised by the classical forces. This equivalence renders
conscious experience superfluous, in the sense that the evolution of the
physical universe would be exactly the same whether subjective conscious
experience exists or not.
The condition “to the extent that classical physics is valid” is critical.
It is not satisfied in nature. Classical physics is unable to explain the basic
properties of materials, even in inorganic, nonliving, unconscious systems.
Yet the operation of the brain depends critically upon the subtle properties of
the tissues that make it up. Hence there is no scientific basis for supposing

that classical physical theory could provide an adequate conceptual foundation
for understanding the dynamics of the mind–brain system. On the other
hand, there are ample philosophical reasons to reject the notion that classical
physical theory is adequate for this task. Without going here into these
reasons I merely cite the complete failure of the three-century-old effort to
reconcile the properties of mind with the concepts of classical physics.
Scientists other than quantum physicists often fail to comprehend the
enormity of the conceptual change wrought by quantum theory in our basic
conception of the nature of matter. For example, it has been claimed, in
connection with the mind–brain problem, that the switch to the quantum
ideas is “incremental”. That is hardly the case. The shift is from a local, reductionistic,
deterministic conception of nature in which consciousness has
no logical place, and can do nothing but passively watch a preprogrammed
course of events, to a nonlocal, nonreductionistic, nondeterministic, conception
of nature in which there is a perfectly natural place for consciousness,
a place that allows each conscious event, conditioned, but not bound, by
any known law of nature, to grasp a possible large-scale metastable pattern
of neuronal activity in the brain, and convert its status from “possible” to
“actual”.
Two revisions in physics lead to the possibility of this profound change
in the role of subjective conscious experience in mind–brain dynamics.
The first is the opening up, by Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle, of at
least the logical possibility that some entity not strictly controlled by the
mechanical laws of physics could exercise supervenient downward control
over the course of physical events. The second is the introduction into
physics of physical events that are appropriate counterparts to conscious
events, in the critical sense that each such physical event can actualize,
as a whole, a complex large-scale metastable pattern of physical activity
generated within a complex physical system by the action of the mechanical
laws.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 16:27:33
Folks :

You really gotta try to stop looking at reality,including especially the mind-brain issue ,  via the false determinist mechanical materialist  key hole version of reality through the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect ....classical physics .
Not to mention that you gotta stop viewing quantum theory from an exclusively materialist perspective ...quantum mechanics that have been dualist in relation to their non-classical conception of nature ...and hence , QM have been superceding materialism ....

Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 16:37:42
Neuroscientists must also cease dealing with the mind -brain hard problem exclusively through the determinist mechanical approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics' point of view ,as if there has been no such a "thing " such as quantum theory ...
The latter that might be THE key to trying to approach the fundamental causal effects of consciousness on matter , and hence on body and brain ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 16:47:28
Roger Penrose’s Theory
and Quantum Decoherence:



Increased interest in quantum mechanical theories of mind has been
kindled by two recent books by Roger Penrose. These books, The Emperor’s
New Mind, and Shadows of the Mind, along with a paper by
Hameroff and Penrose (1996), propose a quantum theory of consciousness
that, like the present one, is based on von Neumann’s formulation
of quantum theory. But the Penrose–Hameroff theory brings in some
controversial ideas that are not used in the more direct application of
orthodox quantum mechanics described in this book.
An essential difference between the present proposal and that of
Penrose and Hameroff is that their theory depends on the assumption
that a property called ‘quantum coherence’ extends over a large
portion of the brain, whereas the theory described here does not.
This property is a technical matter that I do not want to enter into
right here, beyond remarking that most quantum physicists deem it
highly unlikely that the quantum coherence required by the Penrose–
Hameroff theory could be sustained in a warm, wet, living brain. Quantitative
estimates that appear to back up this negative opinion have
been made by Tegmark (2000). A rebuttal has been offered by Hagen,
Hameroff, and Tuszynski (2002), but the needed level of coherence still
looks very difficult to achieve.
The expected (by most physicists) lack of long-range quantum coherence
in a living brain is, in fact, a great asset to the von Neumann
approach described in this book. This lack of coherence (decoherence)
means that the quantum brain can be conceived to be, to a very good
approximation, simply a collection of classically conceived alternative
possible states of the brain. The point here is that the interaction
with the environment effectively washes out all observable effects of
the possible-in-principle interferences between parts of the brain that
are spatially separated by an appreciable distance: the only quantum
effects that survive decoherence are those associated with very close
neighbors. Thus the quantum state of the brain is effectively, to a
very good approximation, simply a collection of alternative possible
classically described brains. They all exist together as ‘parallel’ parts
of a potentiality for future additions to a stream of consciousness.
The residual quantum effects arise from the fact that these quasiclassical
‘parallel’ brain states are allowed to interact with their very
close neighbors. Still, these surviving linkages to close neighbors make
the quantum model significantly different in principle from a purely
classical model: no classical possibility can interact with an alternative
classical possibility, no matter how close together they are.
The only macroscopic quantum effect that appears to survive the
decoherence effects is the quantum Zeno effect. This permits neuroscientists
unfamiliar with quantum theory to have a very accurate,
simple, intuitive idea of the quantum state of a brain. It can be imagined
to be an evolving set of nearly classical brains with, however, the
following four non-classical properties:
1. Each almost-classical possibility is slightly smeared out in space
relative to a strictly classical idealization, and it fans out in accordance
with the uncertainty principle.
2. At each occurrence of a conscious thought, the set of possibilities
is reduced to the subset compatible with the occurring increment
of knowledge.
3. Microscopic chemical interactions are treated quantum mechanically.
4. In the presence of effortful intent, the quantum Zeno effect acts
to keep the associated template for action in place for longer than
classical mechanics would allow.
A second principal difference between the Penrose–Hameroff theory
and the one being described here is that the former depends on the
complex question of the nature of quantum gravity, which is currently
not under good theoretical control, whereas the present approach is
based only on the fundamental principles of orthodox quantum theory,
which, thanks to the efforts of John von Neumann, are under good
control. Penrose’s proposal strongly links consciousness to the gravitational
interactions of parts of the brain with other parts of the same
brain, whereas the theory being advanced here supposes gravitational
interactions between parts of the same brain to be negligible.
The third difference is that Penrose’s approach involves a very much
disputed argument that claims to deduce from (1) the fact that mathematicians
construct proofs that they believe to be valid, and from (2)
some deep mathematical results due to Kurt G¨odel, the conclusion that
brain processes must involve a non-algorithmic (not discretely describ

able) process. According to the present approach, contemporary orthodox
quantum theory already requires the physically described process
2 aspects of brain processes to be influenced by process 1 interventions
coming from streams of consciousness. The theory leaves open the important
question of how these interventions, which are treated pragmatically
simply as experimenter-selected choices of boundary conditions,
come to be what they turn out to be: this is the causal gap!
These interventions are not required by present understanding to be
governed by algorithmic processes.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 17:02:11
1 Science, Consciousness and Human Values:

1 Science, Consciousness and Human Values:
A tremendous burgeoning of interest in the problem of consciousness
is now in progress. The grip of the behaviorists who sought to banish
consciousness from science has finally been broken. This shift was
ratified, for example, by the appearance several years ago of a special
issue of Scientific American entitled The Hidden Mind (August 2002).
The lead article, written by Antonio Damasio, begins with the assertion:
“At the start of the new millennium, it is apparent that one
question towers above all others in the life sciences: How does the set
of processes we call mind emerge from the activity of the organ we
call brain?” He notes that some thinkers “believe the question to be
unanswerable in principle”, while: “For others, the relentless and exponential
increase in knowledge may give rise to the vertiginous feeling
that no problem can resist the assault of science if only the science
is right and the techniques are powerful enough” (my emphasis). He
notes that: “The naysayers argue that exhaustive compilation of all
these data (of neuroscience) adds up to correlates of mental states but
to nothing resembling an actual mental state” (his emphasis). He adds
that: “In fact, the explanation of the physics related to biological events
is still incomplete” and states that “the finest level of description of
mind [. . . ] might require explanation at the quantum level.” Damasio
makes his own position clear: “I contend that the biological processes
now presumed to correspond to mind in fact are mind processes and
will be seen to be so when understood in sufficient detail.”
Damasio at least hints at the idea that “biological process [. . . ]
understood in sufficient detail” is a quantum understanding.
The possibility that quantum physics might be relevant to the connection
between conscious process and brain process was raised also
by Dave Chalmers, in his contribution ‘The Puzzle of Conscious Experience’
to The Hidden Mind. However, Chalmers effectively tied that
possibility to the proposal put forth by Roger Penrose (1989, 1994)
and, faulting that particular approach, rejected the general idea.
The deficiency of Penrose’s approach identified by Chalmers is that
it fails to bring in consciousness. It is about certain brain processes
that may be related to consciousness, but “the theory is silent about
how these processes might give rise to conscious experience. Indeed,
the same problem arises with any theory of consciousness based only
on physical processing.”
Penrose’s treatment does indeed focus on physical processing. But
quantum theory itself is intrinsically psychophysical: as designed by
its founders, and as used in actual scientific practice, it is ultimately
a theory about the structure of our experience that is erected upon a
radical mathematical generalization of the laws of classical physics.
Chalmers goes on to expound upon the ‘explanatory gap’ between,
on the one hand, theoretical understanding of the behavioral and functional
aspects of brain processes and, on the other hand, an explanation
of how and why the performance of those functions should be accompanied
by conscious experience. Such a gap arises in the classical
approximation, but not in orthodox quantum theory, which is fundamentally
a causal weaving together of the structure of our streams of
conscious experiences, described in psychological terms, with a theoretical
representation of the physical world described in mathematical
language.
The conflating of Nature herself with the impoverished mechanical
conception of it invented by scientists during the seventeenth century
has derailed the philosophies of science and of mind for more than three
centuries, by effectively eliminating the causal link between the psychological
and physical aspects of nature that contemporary physics
restores.
But the now-falsified classical conception of the world still exerts a
blinding effect. For example, Daniel Dennett (1994, p. 237) says that
his own thinking rests on the idea that “a brain was always going
to do what it was caused to do by current, local, mechanical circumstances”.
But by making that judgment he tied his thinking to the
physical half of Cartesian dualism, or its child, classical physics, and
thus was forced in his book Consciousness Explained (Dennett 1991)
to leave consciousness out, as he himself admits, and tries to justify, at
the end of the book. By effectively restricting himself to the classical
approximation, which squeezes the effects of consciousness out of the
more accurate consciousness-dependent quantum dynamics, Dennett
cuts himself off from any possibility of validly explaining the physical
efficacy of our conscious efforts.
Francis Crick and Christof Koch begin their essay in The Hidden
Mind entitled ‘The Problem of Consciousness’ with the assertion: “The
overwhelming question in neurobiology today is the relationship between
the mind and the brain.” But after a brief survey of the difficulties
in getting an answer they conclude that: “Radically new concepts
may indeed be needed – recall the modifications in scientific thinking
forced on us by quantum mechanics. The only sensible approach is to
press the experimental attack until we are confronted with dilemmas
that call for new ways of thinking.”
However, the two cases compared by Crick and Koch are extremely
dissimilar. The switch to quantum theory was forced upon us by the
fact that we had a very simple system – consisting of a single hydrogen
atom interacting with the electromagnetic field – that was so simple
that it could be exactly solved by the methods of classical physics,
but the calculated answer did not agree with the empirical results.
There was initially no conceptual problem. It was rather that precise
computations were possible, but gave wrong answers. Here the problem
is reversed: precise calculations of the dynamical brain processes
associated with conscious experiences are not yet possible, and hence
have not revealed any mismatch between theory and experiment. The
problem is, rather, a conceptual one: the concepts of classical physics
that many neurobiologists are committed to using are logically inadequate
because, unlike the concepts of quantum physics, they effectively
exclude our conscious thoughts.
Dave Chalmers emphasizes this conceptual difficulty, and concludes
that experimental work by neurobiologists is not by itself sufficient to
resolve ‘The Puzzle of Conscious Experience’. Better concepts are also
needed. He suggests that the stuff of the universe might be information,
but then, oddly, rejects the replacement of classical physical theory,
which is based on material substance, by quantum theory, which is
built on an informational structure that causally links experienced
increments of knowledge to physically described processes.
During the nineteenth century, before the precepts of classical
physics had been shown to be false at the fundamental level, scientists
and philosophers had good reasons to believe that the physical
aspects of reality were causally closed: that the mathematically described
physical aspects of nature were completely determined, by the
laws of Nature, in terms of earlier properties of the same kind. However,
even then this led to a certain unreasonableness noted by William
James (1890, p. 138): consciousness seems to be “an organ, superadded
to the other organs which maintain the animal in its struggle for existence; and the presumption of course is that it helps him in some
way in this struggle, just as they do. But it cannot help him without
being in some way efficacious and influencing the course of his bodily
history.” James went on to examine the circumstances under which
consciousness appears, and ended up saying: “The conclusion that it
is useful is, after all this, quite justifiable. But if it is useful it must be
so through its causal efficaciousness, and the automaton-theory must
succumb to common-sense” (James 1890, p. 144).
That was James’s conclusion even at a time when deterministic
classical physical theory seemed secure and unchallengeable, and the
notion that we human beings are mechanical automata was the rationally
inescapable consequence of a triumphant physics. James’s analysis
was vindicated, however, by the ascendancy of quantum mechanics
during the first half of the twentieth century. The aim of this book is
to describe the development of this revised conceptualization of the
connection between our minds and our brains, and the consequent revision
of the role of human consciousness in the unfolding of reality.
This revision in our understanding of ourselves and our place in nature
infuses the subject with a significance that extends far beyond the
narrowly construed boundaries of science. These changes penetrate to
the heart of important sociological and philosophical issues.
Science has improved our lives in many ways. It has lightened the
load of tedious tasks and expanded our physical powers, thereby contributing
to a great flowering of human creativity. On the other hand,
it has given us also the capacity to ravage the environment on an unprecedented
scale and to obliterate our species altogether. Yet along
with this fatal power it has provided a further offering which, though
subtle in character and still hardly felt in the minds of men, may ultimately
be its most valuable contribution to human civilization, and
the key to human survival.
Science is not only the enterprise of harnessing nature to serve the
practical needs of humankind. It is also part of man’s unending search
for knowledge about the universe and his place within it. This quest
is motivated not solely by idle curiosity. Each of us, when trying to
establish values upon which to base conduct, is inevitably led to the
question of one’s place in the greater whole. The linkage of this philosophical
inquiry to the practical question of personal values is no mere
intellectual abstraction. Martyrs in every age are vivid reminders of the
fact that no influence upon human conduct, even the instinct for bodily
self-preservation, is stronger than beliefs about one’s relationship
to the rest of the universe and to the power that shapes it. Such beliefs
form the foundation of a person’s self-image, and hence, ultimately, of
personal values.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 17:03:12
It is often claimed that science stands mute on questions of values:
that science can help us to achieve what we value once our priorities
are fixed, but can play no role in fixing these weightings. That claim is
certainly incorrect. Science plays a key role in these matters. For what
we value depends on what we believe, and what we believe is strongly
influenced by science.
A striking example of this influence is the impact of science upon the
system of values promulgated by the church during the Middle Ages.
That structure rested on a credo about the nature of the universe,
its creator, and man’s connection to that creator. Science, by casting
doubt upon that belief, undermined the system of values erected upon
it. Moreover, it put forth a credo of its own. In that ‘scientific’ vision
we human beings were converted from sparks of divine creative power,
endowed with free will, to mechanical automata – to cogs in a giant
machine that grinds inexorably along a preordained path in the grip
of a blind causal process.
This material picture of human beings erodes not only the religious
roots of moral values but the entire notion of personal responsibility.
Each of us is asserted to be a mechanical extension of what existed
prior to his or her birth. Over that earlier situation one has no control.
Hence for what emerges, preordained, from that prior state one can
bear no responsibility.
This conception of man undermines the foundation of rational
moral philosophy, and science is doubly culpable: It not only erodes
the foundations of earlier value systems, but also acts to strip man of
any vision of himself and his place in the universe that could be the
rational basis for an elevated set of values.
During the twentieth century this morally corrosive mechanical conception
of nature was found to be profoundly incorrect. It failed not
just in its fine details, but at its fundamental core. A vastly different
conceptual framework was erected by the atomic physicists Werner
Heisenberg, Niels Bohr,Wolfgang Pauli and their colleagues. Those scientists
were forced to a wholesale revision of the entire subject matter
of physical theory by the peculiar character of the new mathematical
rules, which were invariably validated by reliable empirical data.
The earlier ‘classical’ physics had emerged from the study of the
observed motions of the planets and large terrestrial objects, and the
entire physical universe was, correspondingly, conceived to be made,
essentially, out of miniaturized versions of these large visible objects.
Called “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles” by Newton
(1704), these tiny objects were conceived to act upon each other
by contact interactions, much like billiard balls, except for the mysterious
action at a distance called gravity. Newton himself rejected the
idea that gravity could really act at distance without any intervening
carrier. Nevertheless, provisional rules were found that were imagined
to control the behavior of these tiny entities, and thus also the objects
composed of them. These laws were independent of whether or
not anyone was observing the physical universe: they took no special
cognizance of any acts of observation performed by human beings, or
of any knowledge acquired from such observations, or of the conscious
thoughts of human beings. All such things were believed, during the
reign of classical physics, to be completely determined, insofar as they
had any physical consequences, by the physically described properties
and laws that acted wholly mechanically at the microscopic scale. But
the baffling features of new kinds of data acquired during the twentieth
century caused the physicists who were studying these phenomena,
and trying to ascertain the laws that governed them, to turn the whole
scientific enterprise upside down.
Perhaps I should say that they turned right side up what had been
upside down. For the word ‘science’ comes from the Latin word ‘scire’,
‘to know’, and what the founders of the new theory claimed, basically,
is that the proper subject matter of science is not what may or may not
be ‘out there’, unobserved and unknown to human beings. It is rather
what we human beings can know, and can do in order to know more.
Thus they formulated their new theory, called quantum mechanics,
or quantum theory, around the knowledge-acquiring actions of human
beings, and the knowledge we acquire by performing these actions,
rather than around a conjectured causally sufficient mechanical world.
The focus of the theory was shifted from one that basically ignored our
knowledge to one that is about our knowledge, and about the effects
of the actions that we take to acquire more knowledge upon what we
are able to know.
This modified conception differs from the old one in many fascinating
ways that continue to absorb the interest of physicists. However, it
is the revised understanding of the nature of human beings, and of the
causal role of human consciousness in the unfolding of reality, that is, I
believe, the most exciting thing about the new physics, and probably,
in the final analysis, also the most important contribution of science
to the well-being of our species.
The rational foundation for this revised conceptual structure emerged
from the intense intellectual struggles that took place during the
twenties, principally between Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and
Wolfgang Pauli. Those struggles replaced the then-prevailing Newtonian
idea of matter as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable
particles” with a new concept that allowed, and in fact required, an
entry into the causal structure of the physical effects of conscious decisions
made by human subjects. This radical change swept away the
meaningless billiard-ball universe, and replaced it with a universe in
which we human beings, by means of our value-based intentional efforts,
can make a difference first in our own behaviors, thence in the
social matrix in which we are imbedded, and eventually in the entire
physical reality that sustains our streams of conscious experiences.
The existing general descriptions of quantum theory emphasize puzzles
and paradoxes in a way that tend to make non-physicists leery of
using in any significant away the profound changes in our understanding
of both man and nature wrought by the quantum revolution. Yet
in the final analysis quantum mechanics is more understandable than
classical mechanics because it is more deeply in line with our common
sense ideas about our role in nature than the ‘automaton’ notion
promulgated by classical physics. It is the three hundred years of indoctrination
with mechanistic ideas that now makes puzzling a conception
of ourselves that is fully concordant with both normal human intuition
and the full range of empirical facts.
The founders of quantum mechanics presented this theory to their
colleagues as essentially a set of rules about how to make predictions
about the empirical feedbacks that we human observers will experience
if we take certain actions. Classical mechanics can, of course, be viewed
in exactly the same way, but the two theories differ profoundly in their
logical and mathematical structures, and consequently, and even more
profoundly, in what they purport to be fundamentally about.
In classical mechanics the state of any system, at some fixed time
t, is defined by giving the location and the velocity of every particle
in that system, and by giving also the analogous information about
the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. All observers and their
acts of observation are conceived to be simply parts or aspects of the
continuously evolving fully mechanically pre-determined physically described
universe. A person’s stream of consciousness is considered to
be some mysterious, but causally irrelevant or redundant, by-product
or counterpart of his or her classically conceived and described brain
activity.
But this classical idea that our conscious experiences are just some
idea-like counterparts of a continuously evolving brain state encounters
a certain difficulty. The classically conceived evolution of the brain
is continuous, and hence the number of different physical states that
occur during any temporal interval of continuous change is infinite.
Thus a natural mind–brain connection should give, it would seem, a
continuously changing state of consciousness, composed of parts in a
way analogous to the neural activity that it represents. But this surmise
seems at odds with the empirical evidence. According to William
James (1911):
[. . . ] a discrete composition is what actually obtains in our perceptual
experience. We either perceive nothing, or something
already there in a sensible amount. This fact is what is known
in psychology as the laws of the ‘threshold’. Either your experience
is of no content, of no change, or it is of a perceptible
amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with reality
grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually
and on reflection you can divide these into components, but as
immediately given they come totally or not at all.
A similar discreteness is the signature of quantum phenomena: the
quantum wave is spread out over a vast region covering many detectors,
but only one detector fires, the rest do not. The element of discreteness,
the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ of the Geiger counter’s ‘click’ is an elemental feature
of quantum theory. Thus Bohr (1962, p. 60) speaks of: “The element
of wholeness, symbolized by the quantum of action and completely
foreign to classical physical principles.”
In psychology the identity and form of the percept that actually
enters into a stream of consciousness depends strongly on the intention
of the probing mind: a person tends to experience what he or she is
looking for, provided the potentiality for that experience is present.
The observer does not create what is not potentially there, but does
participate in the extraction from the mass of existing potentialities
individual items that have interest and meaning to the perceiving self.
Quantum theory exhibits, as we shall see, a similar feature. Thus
both psychology and physics, when examined in depth, reveal observerinfluenced
whole elements that seem “foreign to classical physical principles”.
Insofar as it has been tested, the new theory, quantum theory, accounts
for all the observed successes of the earlier physical theories,
and also for the immense accumulation of new data that the earlier
concepts cannot accommodate. But, according to the new conception,
the physically described world is built not out of bits of matter, as
matter was understood in the nineteenth century, but out of objective
tendencies – potentialities – for certain discrete, whole actual events
to occur. Each such event has both a psychologically described aspect,
which is essentially an increment in knowledge, and also a physically
described aspect, which is an action that abruptly changes the mathematically
described set of potentialities to one that is concordant with
the increase in knowledge. This coordination of the aspects of the theory
that are described in physical/mathematical terms with aspects
that are described in psychological terms is what makes the theory
practically useful. Some empirical predictions have been verified to
the incredible accuracy of one part in a hundred million.
The most radical change wrought by this switch to quantum mechanics
is the injection directly into the dynamics of certain choices
made by human beings about how they will act. Human actions enter,
of course, also in classical physics. But the two cases are fundamentally
different. In the classical case the way a person acts is fully determined
in principle by the physically described aspects of reality alone. But in
the quantum case there is an essential gap in physical causation. This
gap is generated by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which opens
up, at the level of human actions, a range of alternative possible behaviors
between which the physically described aspects of theory are in
principle unable to choose or decide. But this loss-in-principle of causal
definiteness, associated with a loss of knowable-in-principle physically
describable information, opens the way, logically, to an input into the
dynamics of another kind of possible causes, which are eminently knowable,
both in principle and in practice, namely our conscious choices
about how we will act. These interventions in the dynamics take the
form of specifications of new boundary conditions.
The specifications of boundary conditions is, of course, the traditional
job of the experimenters. But in classical physics the only
needed setting of boundary conditions is the one done by God at the
beginning of time. On the other hand, the conventional laws of quantum
mechanics have both a dynamical opening for, and a logical need
for, additional choices made later on. Thus contemporary orthodox
physics delegates some of the responsibilities formerly assigned to an
inscrutable God, acting in the distant past, to our present knowable
conscious actions.
Niels Bohr emphasized this freedom of action of the experimenters
in passages such as:
The freedom of experimentation, presupposed in classical physics,
is of course retained and corresponds to the free choice of
experimental arrangement for which the mathematical structure
of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the appropriate
latitude. (Bohr 1958, p. 73)
To my mind, there is no other alternative than to admit that,
in this field of experience, we are dealing with individual phenomena
and that our possibilities of handling the measuring
instruments allow us only to make a choice between the different
complementary types of phenomena that we want to study.
(Bohr 1958, p. 51)
In John von Neumann’s rigorous mathematical formulation of quantum
mechanics the effects of these free choices upon the physically
described world are specifically called ‘interventions’ (von Neumann
1955/1932, pp. 358, 418). These choices are ‘free’ in the sense that
they are not coerced, fixed, or determined by the physically described
aspects of the theory. Yet these choices, which are not fixed or determined
by any law of orthodox contemporary physics, and which seem
to us to depend partly upon ‘reasons’ based on felt values, definitely
have potent effects upon the physically described aspects of the theory.
These effects are specifically described by the theory.
Nothing like this effective action of mind upon physically described
things exists in classical physics. There is nothing in the principles of
classical physics that requires, or even hints at, the existence of such
things as thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and certainly no opening for
aspects of nature not determined by the physically describable aspects
of nature to ‘intervene’ and thereby influence the future physically
described structure. In fact, it is precisely the absence from classical
physics of any notion of experiential-type realities, or of any job for
them to do, or of any possibility for them to do anything not already
done locally by the mechanical elements, that has been the bane of
philosophy for three hundred years. Eliminating this scientifically unsupported
precept of the causal closure of the physical opens the way
to a new phase of science-based philosophy.
The preceding remarks give a brief overview of the theme of this
work. I shall begin my more detailed account of these twentieth century
developments in science by emphasizing, in the words of the founders
themselves, the central role played in the new theory by ‘our knowledge’.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 17:06:39
You really gotta try to see things from a broader view, folks : see above , enjoy all that relevant and fascinating reading + see some of my short replies as well here above .
In some of the latest above displayed excerpts , Stapp discusses almost all those theories of consciousness out there , from that of Francis crick to Chalmers' through Dennett's  , and most of the rest .
Consciousness is relatively the one running the whole show , almost then .
I've got almost all scientific books concerning consciousness ,the most important and relevant ones at least , so.

And all those theories of consciousness out there are relatively still in their infantile stages that will be leading to some advanced truely dualist scientific theories of consciousness, soon enough , hoepfully .

So, don't behave and think as if you have already reached the final stage of all that : science is all about approximate conjectural temporary knowledge , not about the complete truth ,and even the so-called laws of physics are never complete ....are they ? , the same goes for scientific knowledge in general ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 17:17:36
Below are  three links to articles about quantum consciousness.

The first one is written by Stapp himself in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.  I believe Don will enjoy this article, and it even includes  several digs at materialism. I don’t think Don has already posted this, but I was away for a while. What’s interesting about this article is that in the attempt, I think, to steal the thunder of any critics, Stapp also points out some weaknesses of his theory, but I don’t feel he does a very good job at refuting these possible criticisms. (In fact, when I first read the article, I mistakenly thought it was written by someone else defending Stapp, and wondered if the author left out some key ideas that Stapp himself would have included!)

The second article is by Matthew Donald of Cambridge. He begins by saying “For many years, Henry Stapp and I have been working separately and independently on mind-centered interpretations of quantum theory. In this review, I discuss his work and contrast it with my own. There is much that we agree on, both in the broad problems we have addressed and in some of the specific details of our analyses of neural physics, but ultimately we disagree fundamentally in our views on mind, matter, and quantum mechanics.”

So it provides a slightly different view on the topic. He says “My theory is dualistic in the sense that there are physical laws and there are observers, but there are no mental computations without observable physical structure. My theory is epiphenomenalistic in the sense that a mind does not direct a pattern of observed physical events, rather it has to make sense of such a pattern as it unfolds. Ultimately, however, my theory should probably be considered as idealistic because, in its final form, the central structures in the theory are mental structures. Physics just supplies the probabilities by which those mental structures change. Mental structures give meaning to their realities by understanding themselves in terms of observable physical structures and observed physical events.”

Although his theory is in some respects even more abstract than Stapp’s, I find it a bit easier to swallow because he seems to avoid Stapp’s problematic conscious agency (or at least a completely independent, acausal one) Stapp's conscious agency is according to Donald basically another form of the homunculus, of which he is quite critical.

Donald raises another issue regarding the conservation of energy, which seems to be important and I would appreciate it if anyone else could comment on it. At the end of page six, Donald says: ”In Stapp (1993 §1.10), Stapp states that his theory 'makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.' Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, 'No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts'."

I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart?

The first two are long articles, but if you have nothing to do New Years Day, they might be worth a look.

The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”


http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdf

http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html


(You really should try to read those extremely interesting books of Stapp "Quantum mechanics , mind and matter " and "Mindful universe ..." , thanks for those above displayed interesting links of yours by the way )
All the above depends on one's a -priori held world view belief ,so.
Concerning the conservation of energy "argument " : that's the same 'argument " raised by Dennett in page 61, i did post = from calssical physics' point of view= wrong  .

P.S.: It is an undeniable fact that consciousness does have causal effects on matter ,and hence on the physical brain and body : i do think that consciousness does affect matter at the quantum level (A top- down causation ) and that has effects (donwn-top causation ) on the brain and body .

I will provide you with some more relevant excerpts on the subject as well ,since i do not have time enough to dwell on these matters repeatedly, over and over again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2014 18:37:23

Concerning the conservation of energy "argument " : that's the same 'argument " raised by Dennett in page 61, i did post = from calssical physics' point of view= wrong  .


Physicist Matthew Donald's objection is not based on classical physics. He says, if I understand him correctly, that energy would only be conserved if  'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities." But the whole point of the theory is changing those probabilities by an act of will.
Why is he wrong?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:12:56

Concerning the conservation of energy "argument " : that's the same 'argument " raised by Dennett in page 61, i did post = from calssical physics' point of view= wrong  .


Physicist Matthew Donald's objection is not based on classical physics. He says, if I understand him correctly, that energy would only be conserved if  'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities." But the whole point of the theory is changing those probabilities by an act of will.
Why is he wrong?

He's wrong : here below is why :
Dennett has raised that same conservation of energy 'argument" ,as follows :

THE OBJECTIONS OF DANIEL DENNETT:

Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained has a chapter titled “Why Dualism is Forlorn,” which
begins with the following words: “The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of
ordinary matter but of some other kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today… .
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism: there is one sort of stuff,
namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow
nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain.”49
Dennett then asks, “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it in such disfavor?” His answer:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an
acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy … this principle of conservation of energy … is
apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has
been endlessly discussed since Descartes’s own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.50
Shortly after this, he writes: “This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, it
most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule
that dualism is to be avoided at all costs.”51
Commenting on the argument Dennett presents, Stapp writes,
The argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical physics. The argument
collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics, in which trajectories of particles are
replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically
described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum
mechanics. Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an
interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the laws of physics.52 (emphasis in original)
Rosenblum and Kuttner also reject Dennett’s arguments:
Some theorists deny the possibility of duality by arguing that a signal from a non-material mind
could not carry energy and thus could not influence material brain cells. Because of this inability
of a mind to supply energy to influence the neurons of the brain, it is claimed that physics
demonstrates an inescapable flaw of dualism. However, no energy need be involved in
determining to which particular situation a wave function collapses. Thus the determination of
which of the physically possible conscious experiences becomes the actual experience is a
process that need not involve energy transfer. Quantum mechanics therefore allows an escape
from the supposed fatal flaw of dualism. It is a mistake to think that dualism can be ruled out on
the basis of physics.53
Finally, as Broad pointed out decades ago, at a time when quantum mechanics was still in its
infancy, even if all physical-to-physical causation involves transfer of energy, we have no reason to
think that such transfer would also be required in mental-to-physical or physical-to-mental
causation.54 This, of course, is completely consistent with the point made above by Rosenblum and
Kuttner.*33

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

Cognitive scientist Roger Sperry has proposed that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
A simple example of an emergent property is the fluidity of water, which is nothing like any property
of hydrogen and oxygen. Another example is the geometrical and optical properties of crystals,
properties that the molecules that compose them do not possess. Sperry proposes that consciousness
emerges from the configuration of the brain in the way that fluidity emerges from combining
hydrogen and oxygen.
This is different from the materialist production theory, according to which the brain produces
consciousness the way the liver produces bile. It is a temporal distinction: in the production theory,
brain states precede the conscious states they produce, but if conscious states are emergent properties
of brain states, then they occur simultaneously with them.
However, as philosopher of mind B. Alan Wallace notes,
A genuine emergent property of the cells of the brain is the brain’s semi-solid consistency, and
that is something that objective, physical science can well comprehend … but they do not
understand how the brain produces any state of consciousness. In other words, if mental
phenomena are in fact nothing more than emergent properties and functions of the brain, their
relation to the brain is fundamentally unlike every other emergent property and function found in
nature.55 (emphasis in original)
The von Neumann interpretation of reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an
emergent but rather an elemental property, that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as
energy and force fields. This idea is seriously entertained by physicists such as Herbert, and in its
favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox that is raised by the von Neumann
interpretation: if consciousness depends on the physical world and if the value of many quantum
physical properties depends on consciousness, then how did the physical world ever bring about
consciousness in the first place? The solution to this puzzle is apparently what Jeans means when he
writes, “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather
hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.”56 *34
Quantum mechanics can thereby be considered as supporting an interactive dualism similar to that
of Descartes. Cartesian dualism holds that there are two kinds of entirely separate substances: mind
and matter. This theory fell into disrepute among many philosophers because classical physics
provided no mechanism by which mind could influence material substance.
The classical idea of substance—self-sufficient, unchanging, with definite location, motion, and
extension in space—has been replaced by the idea that physical reality is not made out of any material
substance, but rather out of events and possibilities for those events to occur. These possibilities, or
potentials, for events to occur have a wavelike structure and can interfere with each other. They are
not substance-like, that is, static or persisting in time. Rather than being concerned with “substances”
in the classical sense of the term, modern interactive dualism conceives of two differently described
aspects of reality: the psychical and the physical.
Stapp sums up how a modern interactive dualism based on quantum mechanics simplifies the
conceptual relationship between the two aspects of reality.
This solution is in line with Descartes’ idea of two “substances,” that can interact in our brains,
provided “substance” means merely a carrier of “essences.” The essence of the inhabitants of res
cogitans is “felt experience.” They are thoughts, ideas, and feelings: the realities that hang
together to form our streams of conscious experiences. But the essence of the inhabitants of res
extensa is not at all that sort of persisting stuff that classical physicists imagined the physical
world to be made of … their essential nature is that of “potentialities for the psychophysical
events to occur.” Those events occur at the interface between the psychologically described and
physically described aspects of nature. The causal connections between “potentialities for
psychologically described events to occur” and the actual occurrence of such events are easier to
comprehend and describe than causal connections between the mental and physical features of
classical physics. For, both sides of the quantum duality are conceptually more like “ideas” than
like “rocks.”

Chris Carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/01/2014 19:13:47
I might be convinced to read Stapp on the subject if someone can provide a one-line quote: what is Stapp's definition of consciousness? 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/01/2014 19:17:12
I might be convinced to read Stapp on the subject if someone can provide a one-line quote: what is Stapp's definition of consciousness?
Don't hold your breath alan, Doc. Don is quite incapable of meaningful and efficient one liners................................
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2014 19:18:24

"The shift is from a local, reductionistic, deterministic conception of nature in which consciousness has no logical place, and can do nothing but passively watch a preprogrammed course of events, to a nonlocal, nonreductionistic, nondeterministic, conception of nature in which there is a perfectly natural place for consciousness, a place that allows each conscious event, conditioned, but not bound, by any known law of nature, to grasp a possible large-scale metastable pattern of neuronal activity in the brain, and convert its status from “possible” to “actual”."
(underlining mine)

How that "grasping" takes place is the most interesting part, not just, as he later says "a technical matter that I do not want to enter into right here."

Penrose should at least get some points for trying, instead of just dismissing those pesky details.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:20:46
I might be convinced to read Stapp on the subject if someone can provide a one-line quote: what is Stapp's definition of consciousness?

The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,  the mental that's irreducible to the physical : there is nothing supernatural or mystic about it = normal .

So, scientists have been trying lately to try to figure out how consciousness and brain do interact with each other somehow : QM might be able to shed some light on just that somehow ,via the mental causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain , at the micro quantum level ,via a top-down form of causation ............

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:24:54

"The shift is from a local, reductionistic, deterministic conception of nature in which consciousness has no logical place, and can do nothing but passively watch a preprogrammed course of events, to a nonlocal, nonreductionistic, nondeterministic, conception of nature in which there is a perfectly natural place for consciousness, a place that allows each conscious event, conditioned, but not bound, by any known law of nature, to grasp a possible large-scale metastable pattern of neuronal activity in the brain, and convert its status from “possible” to “actual”."

(underlining mine)

How that "grasping" takes place is the most interesting part, not just, as he later says "a technical matter that I do not want to enter into right here."

Penrose should at least get some points for trying, instead of just dismissing those pesky details.

Stapp tackled that issue later on in that book of his : i will try to find the relevant quotes on the subject in question .
Neuroscientists still view the mind-brain issue just through the mechanical determinist approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics ' point of view .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/01/2014 19:25:15


The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,
The other side of reality......................Just what exactly is that supposed to mean????
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2014 19:27:49
date=1388683056]



He's wrong : here below is why :


Chris Carter's explanation doesn't address or explain Donald's point specifically. All he says is that "it doesn't." That's not a "why"
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:36:26

10 Quantum Theory
and the Place of Mind in Nature:




Classical physics can be viewed as a triumph of the idea that mind should be
excluded from science, or at least from the physical sciences. Although the
founders of modern science, such as Descartes and Newton, were not so rash
as to proclaim that mind has nothing to do with the unfolding of nature, the
scientists of succeeding centuries, emboldened by the spectacular success
of the mechanical view of nature, were not so timid, and today we are
seeing even in psychology a strong movement towards “materialism”, i.e.,
toward the idea that “mind is brain”. But while psychology has been moving
toward the mechanical concepts of nineteenth-century physics, physics itself
has moved in just the opposite direction.
The mentalistic bias of contemporary physics is perhaps best summarized
in Heisenberg’s statement that
we are finally led to believe that the laws of nature that we formulate mathematically
in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles themselves
but with our knowledge of the elementary particles . . . The conception of
the objective reality of the particles has thus evaporated in a curious way,
not into a fog of some new, obscure, or not yet understood reality concept,
but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer
the behavior of the elementary particles but rather our knowledge of this
behaviour.1
This shift in the physicist’s conception of nature, or at least in his conception
of his theory about nature, away from the mechanical and toward
the experiential, is expressed also by Bohr’s statements:
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of
phenomena but only to track down as far as possible relations between the
multifold aspects of experience.2
. . . the goal of science is to augment and order our experience . . .3
Bohr and Heisenberg each sought to deflate the idea that either he, or
quantum theory itself, was asserting that the character of nature herself was
essentially mental. Bohr emphasized that quantum theory was merely a tool
for making predictions about our experiences:
194 10 Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature
Strictly speaking, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and
electrodynamics merely offers rules of calculation for the deduction of expectations
about observations obtained under well defined conditions specified
by classical physical concepts.4
Heisenberg went even further:
If we want to describe what happens in an atomic event we have to realize
that the word “happens”. . . applies to the physical not the psychical act
of observation, and we may say that the transition from the “possible” to
the “actual” takes place as soon as the interaction between the [atomic]
object and the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world, has
come into play; it is not connected with the act of registration of the result
in the mind of the observer. The discontinuous change in the probability
function, however, takes place with the act of registration, because it is the
discontinuous change in our knowledge in the instant of registration that has
its image in the discontinuous change in the probability function.5
The final sentence affirms Heisenberg’s position that the mathematical
probability function of quantum theory represents “our knowledge”. However,
the statements that precede it affirm his belief that there are also some
real “happenings” outside the minds of the human observers, and that these
external events have the character of transitions of the “possible” to the
“actual”.
To describe these external events themselves in mathematical form one
can introduce the idea of an objective wave function—awave function that is
like the one of Bohr and Heisenberg with respect to its mathematical properties
(i.e., evolution via the Schr¨odinger equation etc.), but that represents the
external world itself, and changes when the transitions from “possible” to
“actual” take place, rather than with the registration of a result in the mind
of the observer/scientist. This procedure would seem to be a reasonable
step toward providing a conceivable description of nature herself, since it
would allow the detailed and precise mathematical properties represented in
quantum theory to be understood directly as mathematical characteristics of
the world itself. This transformation can be termed the ontologicalization
of quantum theory: it converts that theory from a structure conceived to be
a mere tool for scientists—a tool to be used for very limited purposes—to a
putative description of nature herself.
If we follow this tack, and endeavor to construe the mathematical structure
represented by quantum theory as a feature of the world itself, then we
may ask: What is the nature of that world? What sort of world do we live
in?
The world represented by an ontogically interpreted quantum theory,
with the quantum jumps representing transitions from “possible” to “actual”,
would be a strange sort of beast. The evolving quantum state, al10
Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature 195
though controlled in part by mathematical laws that are direct analogs of
the laws that in classical physics govern the motion of “matter”, no longer
represents anything substantive. Instead, this evolving quantum state would
represent the “potentialities” and “probabilities” for actual events. Thus the
“primal stuff” represented by the evolving quantum state would be idealike
in character rather than matterlike, apart from its conformity to mathematical
rules. On the other hand, mathematics has seemed, at least since the
time of Plato, to be more a resident of a world of ideas, than a structure in
the world of matter. Hence even this mathematical aspect of nature can be
regarded as basically idealike. Indeed, quantum theory provides a detailed
and explicit example of how an idealike primal stuff can be controlled in
part by mathematical rules based in spacetime.
The actual events in quantum theory are likewise idealike: each such
happening is a choice that selects as the “actual”, in a way not controlled by
any known or purported mechanical law, one of the potentialities generated
by the quantum-mechanical law of evolution.
In view of these uniformly idealike characteristics of the quantumphysical
world, the proper answer to our question “What sort of world
do we live in?” would seem to be this: “We live in an idealike world, not a
matterlike world.” The material aspects are exhausted in certain mathematical
properties, and these mathematical features can be understood just as
well (and in fact better) as characteristics of an evolving idealike structure.
There is, in fact, in the quantum universe no natural place for matter. This
conclusion, curiously, is the exact reverse of the circumstance that in the
classical physical universe there was no natural place for mind.
These remarks may appear to be nothing but a word game. But I think
not. The change in our words indicates a change in our perception. By
changing our perception of the kind of world we live in we change our
perception of the possibilities. If some of the possibilities opened up by this
altered perception of the basic nature of the physical world can be actualized
within science then this change ofwords and perceptions will certainly count
for something.
One possibility immediately opened up by this change is the possibility
of integrating human consciousness into the physical sciences. This possibility
was effectively blocked off when physical science meant, in the final
analysis, classical physics. For there is an enormous conceptual gulf between
the classical physicist’s conceptualization of the physical world and
the psychologist’s conceptualization of the mentalworld. The essence of the
classical physicist’s conception of matter is its local-reductionistic nature:
the idea the physical world can be decomposed into elementary local quantities
that interact only with immediately adjacent neighbors. But conscious

thoughts appear to be complex wholes, not merely at the functional level
but also as directly experienced. Insofar as the experienced quality of a
conscious thought constitutes its essence it is not possible to conceptualize
a thought as a resident of the physical world, as that world was conceived of
in classical physics. To bring a human conscious thought into the physicist’s
conception of the physical world one needs, within that conception, something
having, in its essence, the integrity and complexity of that thought.
The world as it is conceived of in classical physics is essentially reductive
and therefore admits no essentially complex wholes.
This problem of unity is brought into clear focus by Daniel Dennett’s
book Consciousness Explained.6 The thesis of the book is that brain processes
proceed in “parallel pandemonium”, with each of the processing units
doing its own thing. The problem is then to bring the outputs of all these
processes together into the integrated forms that we seem to experience in
our stream of conscious thoughts. Dennett argues that this integration is, in
fact, not possible, and hence that our thoughts cannot be what they seem to
be.
This conclusion may indeed be what would emerge from a classical
conception of what is going on in a human brain. But quantum theory opens
completely new vistas. For the actual event in quantum theory can perfectly
well be the actualization, as a unit, of an entire high-level pattern of neural
firings. Such a pattern could have all of the complexity of a conscious
thought, and yet be, in essence, a single actualized structure. From a logical
point of view we have, therefore, the foundation of a rational way of linking
conscious thoughts into the physicist’s conception of nature.
It is, of course, one thing to have the logical basis of a rational way of
integrating conscious thoughts into the physical sciences and another thing to
have a consistent and coherent theory that really achieves this. There are the
problems of explaining the linkage of brain states to the functional efficacy
of the conscious thoughts and to the experiential qualities of conscious
thoughts. Yet neither of these problems seems to be in principle beyond the
bounds of rational explanation, within the quantum framework, which as
explained earlier provides an intricate tapestry of idealike qualities.
The line of thinking described above has led to a serious attempt to bring
human conscious experience into the quantum-mechanical description of
nature.7 This endeavor, though hardly complete, is, I believe, sufficiently
successful to warrant considerable optimism as regards the prospects of
ultimate success: a great deal of empirical information that had seemed
very puzzling from a classical point of view now falls neatly into place.
In view of these developments I believe that the verdict of history will
be that the Copenhagen interpretation was a half-way house: it was a right
face that was the first step of an about face.
The scientific community has, rightly, a considerable amount of inertia.
A complete turn around on the basic classical idea that mind should be
rigorously excluded from the theory of the workings of the material universe
was neither possible norwarranted during the 1920s and 1930s. Any attempt
to correlate the revolutionary findings in the domain of atomic physics to
the subtleties of the connection between mind and brain would have been
extravagantly premature in view of the then-prevailing rudimentary state of
our understanding of the workings of the brain. The appropriate course of
action was first to see how far the new quantum ideas would carry us in
domains that were under better empirical control.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:39:13
During the past thirty years, however, the Copenhagen interpretation has
lost a good deal of its hold on the minds of physicists. The words of Murray
Gell-Mann give an indication of this shift:
Niels Bohr brain-washed a whole generation of physicists into believing
that the problem had been solved fifty years ago.8
The reasons for this change in attitude are many and diverse. One
important reason is the expansion of the scope of quantum theory. The
theory was originally designed to cover the domain of atomic physics, and
was therefore concerned with things that were far beyond the range of our
direct observation, and were thus approachable only indirectly with the aid
of sophisticated measuring devices. Now, however, a problem that looms
large in the minds of physicists is quantum gravity, which deals with quantum
effects at the creation of the universe, and in the evolution of black holes.
These phenomena are quite unlike the laboratory experiments in atomic
physics that physicists were focussing on during the beginning of the century.
The atomic-physics format of preparation-then-measurement fails to apply
to these new problems. On the other hand, the ontological approach is far
more demanding in terms of logical cohesion. The additional constraints
imposed by the demand for a coherent ontology can provide guidance in our
attempts to extend physical theory into the interesting new domains.
A second reason for the loosening of the grip of the Copenhagen interpretation
is the fallout from the 1964 paper of John Bell.9 The startling
character of Bell’s results caused physicists to take a careful look at the
whole Bohr–Einstein controversy, and this left many of them with an uneasy
sense that something important was perhaps being obscured by Bohr’s
subtle epistemological reasonings, which did not clearly do justice to the
arguments of Einstein pertaining to locality.

A third reason for the fading influence of the Copenhagen interpretation
is the construction by David Bohm of a thoroughly realistic model that
reproduces all of the predictions of quantum theory.10 This model laid to
rest an opinion that was in the background of Copenhagen thinking, namely
the idea that it was simply impossible to understand atomic phenomena in a
realistic way. Although most physicists did not accept the idea that Bohm’s
simple model describes the way things really work, they were nonetheless
quickly disabused of the impression that Bohr (or von Neumann) had showed
that all realistic approaches were necessarily doomed to fail.
A fourth reason lies in the philosophical climate of the times. During
the early part of the last century physicists were reeling from the impact of
the loss of the “ether” and “absolute time”. The whole idea that the universe
could be understood in a completely clear mechanical way had been
shattered. How could there be waves in a void: waves in a space devoid of
medium? How could one understand the unfolding of our thoughts if there
were no similar unfolding of nature herself; i.e., if the whole of spacetime
history already “exists”, as relativity theory seemed to require. The swallowing
of such mysteries seemed to condition physicists not to balk at the
even greater mysteries that quantum theory left unresolved. Furthermore,
the parallel behavioristic movement in psychology, which also focussed on
measurable quantities at the expense of any understanding of the unfolding
stream of conscious thoughts, seemed to place all of science on the same
operational track.
Now, however, the behaviorist approach to psychology seems to have
failed, for technical reasons. In psychology as in physics scientists are
finding that increasingly complex models are needed to account for the
complexity of the empirical data. But in the search for suitable complex
models some orientation is needed. The data alone is insufficient: one needs
some philosophy, and not merely an austere philosophy that recommends
exclusive focussing upon the empirical facts obtained in a single narrow
discipline. The insufficiency of the data in the various narrow disciplines,
taken separately, is forcing scientists to bring into their theorizing information
from an increasingly broad band of fields. Now in physics, for example,
the problem of the innermost structure of the atoms is intertwined with the
problem of the birth of the entire universe. Particle physics, astrophysics,
and cosmology have merged into one field, at least at the level of theory.
Bold conceptions of large scope are needed to tie all these things together.
The epistemological formulation of the Copenhagen interpretation seems,
in the face of this complex situation, insufficiently helpful. Einstein’s words
in this connection are worth recalling:

It is my opinion that the contemporary quantum theory by means of certain
definitely laid down basic concepts, which on the whole are taken over from
classical physics, constitutes an optimum formulation of [certain] connections.
I believe, however, that this theory offers no useful point of departure
for future development.
If what Einstein was judging to be insufficient was a science based upon
the separation of the world into an ineffable nonclassical reality, and a thenunexplained
classical character of our perceptions of that reality, then his
judgement probably accords with the contemporary developments in science.
But if, on the other hand, the nonclassical mathematical regularities
identified by quantum theory are accepted as characteristics of the world
itself, a world whose primal stuff is therefore essentially idealike, and if,
moreover, these mathematical properties account in a natural and understandable
way for the classical characteristic of our conscious perceptions,
as they seem to do, then we appear to have found in quantum theory the
foundation for a science that may be able to deal successfully in a mathematically
and logically coherent way with the full range of scientific thought,
from atomic physics, to biology, to cosmology, including also the area that
had been so mysterious within the framework of classical physics, namely
the connection between processes in human brains and the stream of human
conscious experience.

Henry Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:42:04
The Copenhagen interpretation haha
Come on, Niels Bohr ...even you could deliver some non-sense ,no wonder , being just a human , so ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:51:21
1 more thing , just concerning the collapse of the wave function : are  the observing or  measuring device + the observer human not made of atoms ,sub-atoms .....themselves ?
So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?
In the case of the human observer scientist , how can his mind or consciousness not have causal effects on the observed as well ?
In short :
We do only get our own human interpretations of what's going on regarding the objective reality as a whole, including and especially at the quantum level ...
See the excerpts of Stapp on the subject above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 19:57:56
The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look
more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental
intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.
PHYSICIST JAMES JEANS
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:05:57


The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,
The other side of reality......................Just what exactly is that supposed to mean????

Reality , including you and i , is both material physical and non-material non-physical mental at the same time .
You're not just your physical material biological brain and body , but also a consciousness that's irreducible to the physical or to the material : your own consciousness is more fundamental than your physical brain or body can ever be : see that quote of that physicist here above on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:10:46
date=1388683056]



He's wrong : here below is why :


Chris Carter's explanation doesn't address or explain Donald's point specifically. All he says is that "it doesn't." That's not a "why"


DETERMINISM AND THE ROLE OF THE OBSERVER:



Quantum mechanics replaces the deterministic universe described by classical physics with a
probabilistic universe. This is the idea that the behavior and various properties of subatomic systems
and particles cannot be predicted precisely, that only a range of probable values can be specified. If
you roll a series of marbles at a hill at less than a certain critical velocity, all the marbles will roll
back down, and if you roll the marbles at more than the critical velocity, all the marbles will make it
over the hill. In our classical macroscopic world, either they all get over or they all fall back. Things
are not so simple at the quantum level.*16
For instance, if subatomic particles such as electrons are fired at a potential barrier at a given
velocity, it may not be possible to say with certainty whether an individual electron will pass through
the barrier. Fire the electrons at a low enough velocity and most will be reflected, although a minority
will pass through; at a high enough velocity most will pass through; and at some intermediate velocity
about half will pass through and half will be reflected. But for any individual electron (out of a group
of apparently identical electrons), all we can specify is the probability that the electron will pass
through.
Another example of quantum randomness is radioactive decay. Say we have radioactive uranium
isotope A that decays into isotope B with a half-life of one hour. One hour later, half of the uranium
atoms will have decayed into isotope B. By all the known methods of physics, all of the uranium
isotope A atoms appeared to be identical, yet one hour later, half have decayed and half are
unchanged. The half-life of isotope A is highly predictable in a statistical sense, yet the precise time at
which any individual atom decays is completely unpredictable.
Probability enters here for a different reason than it does in the tossing of a coin, the throw of dice,
or a horse race: in these cases probability enters because of our lack of precise knowledge of the
original state of the system. But in quantum theory, even if we have complete knowledge of the
original state, the outcome would still be uncertain and only expressible as a probability.
(Philosophers refer to these two sources of uncertainty as subjective and objective probability.
Quantum mechanics suggests that in some situations probability has an objective status.)
Another surprising proposition was that subatomic particles do not have definite properties for
certain attributes, such as position, momentum, or direction of spin, until they are measured. It is not
simply that these properties are unknown until they are observed, instead, they do not exist in any
definite state until they are measured.
This conclusion is based, in part, on the famous “two-slit” experiment, in which electrons are fired
one at a time at a barrier with two slits. Measuring devices on a screen behind the barrier indicate the
electrons seem to behave as waves, going through both slits simultaneously, with patterns of
interference typical of wave phenomena: wave crests arriving simultaneously at the same place in
time will reinforce each other, but waves and troughs arriving simultaneously at the same place will
cancel each other (interference patterns result when two wave fronts meet, for instance, after dropping
two stones into a pond). These waves are only thought of as probability waves, or wave functions, as
they do not carry any energy, and so cannot be directly detected. Only individual electrons are
detected by the measuring device on the screen behind the barrier, but the distribution of numerous
electrons shows the interference patterns typical of waves. It is as though each unobserved electron
exists as a wave until it arrives at the screen to be detected, at which time its actual location (the place
at which the particle is actually observed on the screen) can only be predicted statistically according
to the interference pattern of its wave function.
If, however, a measuring device is placed at the slits, then each electron is observed to pass through
only one slit and no interference pattern in the distribution of electrons is observed. In other words,
electrons behave as waves when not observed, but as particles in a definite location when observed!*17
All quantum entities—electrons, protons, photons, and so on—display this wave-particle duality,
behaving as wave or particle depending on whether they are directly observed.
A variation of this experiment by physicists Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner3 makes this bizarre
point even more clearly. If a wave corresponding to a single atom encounters a semitransparent
reflecting surface (such as a thin film), it can be split into two equal parts, much as a light wave both
going through and reflecting from a windowpane. The two parts of the wave can then be trapped in
two boxes, as shown in figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1. The wave function at three successive times: t1, t2, and t3.
Since the wave was split equally, if you repeated this process many times, then each time you
looked into the boxes you would find a whole atom in box A about half the time and in box B about
half the time. But according to quantum theory, before you looked the atom was not in any particular
box. The position of the atom is thus an observer-created reality. Its position will also be the same for
all subsequent observers, so it is a reality that depends on an initial observation only.
You may be tempted to think that the atom really was in one box or the other before you looked, but
it can be demonstrated that before observation the atom as a wave was in a “superposition state,” a
state in which it was simultaneously in both box A and box B. Take a pair of boxes that have not been
looked into and cut narrow slits at one end, allowing the waves to simultaneously leak out and
impinge on a photographic film. At points where wave crests from box A and box B arrive together,
they reinforce each other to give a maximum amplitude of the wave function at that point—a
maximum of “waviness.” At some points higher or lower, crests from box A arrive simultaneously
with troughs from box B. The two waves are of opposite signs at these positions and therefore cancel
to give zero amplitude for the wave function at these points.
Since the amplitude of an atom’s wave function at a particular place determines the probability for
the atom to be found there when observed, the atom emerging from the box-pair is more likely to
appear on the film at places where the amplitude of the wave function is large, but can never appear
where it is zero. If we repeat this process with a large number of box-pairs and the same film, many
atoms land to cause darkening of the film near positions of wave function amplitude maximums, but
none appear at wave function minimums. The distribution of darker and lighter areas on the film
forms the interference pattern.
Figure 4.2. The box-pair experiment: (a) waves emanating from slits in the two boxes travel distances da and db and impinge
on a film at F; (b) the resulting pattern formed on the film from many box pairs.
The distribution of electrons on the film will show the interference patterns typical of two waves,
which overlap to cancel each other at some places. To form the interference pattern, the wave function
of each atom had to leak out of both boxes since each and every atom avoids appearing in regions of
the film where the waves from the two boxes cancel. Each and every atom therefore had to obey a
geometrical rule that depends on the relative position of both boxes. So, the argument goes, the atom
had to equally be in both boxes, as an extended wave. If instead of doing this interference experiment
you looked into the pair of boxes, you would have found a whole atom in a particular box, as a
particle. Before you looked, it was in both boxes; after you looked, it was only in one.
Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle:
Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its
predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.
However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the socalled
measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have
proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
After you look it was in a single box. It was thus your observation that created the reality of each
atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed. But it was
not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell
game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not
include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation. This hard-to-accept
observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.4
Up until the moment of measurement, certain properties of quantum phenomena, such as location,
momentum, and direction of spin, simply exist as a collection of probabilities, known as the wave
function, or state vector. The wave function can be thought of as the probability distribution of all
possible states, such as, for instance, the probability distribution of all possible locations for an
electron.*18
But this is not the probability that the electron is actually at certain locations, instead, it is the
probability that the electron will be found at certain locations. The electron does not have a definite
location until it is observed. Upon measurement, this collection of all possible locations “collapses” to
a single value—the location of the particle that is actually observed.
Physicist Nick Herbert expresses it this way:
The quantum physicist treats the atom as a wave of oscillating possibilities as long as it is not
observed. But whenever it is looked at, the atom stops vibrating and objectifies one of its many
possibilities. Whenever someone chooses to look at it, the atom ceases its fuzzy dance and seems
to “freeze” into a tiny object with definite attributes, only to dissolve once more into a quivering
pool of possibilities as soon as the observer withdraws his attention from it. The apparent
observer-induced change in an atom’s mode of existence is called the collapse of the wave
function.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:11:55

Measurements thus play a more positive role in quantum mechanics than in classical physics,
because here they are not merely observations of something already present but actually help produce
it. According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics popular among many theorists, it is the
existence of consciousness that introduces intrinsic probability into the quantum world.
This interpretation owes its origin to mathematician John von Neumann, one of the most important
intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In addition to his contributions to pure mathematics, von
Neumann also invented game theory, which models economic and social behavior as rational games,
and made fundamental contributions to the development of the early computers. In the 1930s, von
Neumann turned his restless mind to the task of expressing the newly developed theories of quantum
mechanics in rigorous mathematical form, and the result was his classic book The Mathematical
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. In it he tackled the measurement problem head on and rejected
the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which was becoming the orthodox position among
physicists. Although it is somewhat vague, the central tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation seem to
be (1) that all we have access to are the results of observations, and so it is simply pointless to ask
questions about the quantum reality behind those observations, and (2) that although observation is
necessary for establishing the reality of quantum phenomena, no form of consciousness, human or
otherwise, is necessary for making an observation. Rather, an observer is anything that makes a record
of an event, and so it is at the level of macroscopic measuring instruments (such as Geiger counters)
that the actual values of quantum phenomena are randomly set from a range of statistical possibilities.
Von Neumann objected to the Copenhagen interpretation practice of dividing the world in two
parts: indefinite quantum entities on the one side, and measuring instruments that obey the laws of
classical mechanics on the other. He considered a measuring apparatus, a Geiger counter for example,
in a room isolated from the rest of the world but in contact with a quantum system, such as an atom
simultaneously in two boxes. The Geiger counter is set to fire if the atom is found in one box, but to
remain unfired if it is found in the other. This Geiger counter is a physical instrument, hence subject
to the rules of quantum mechanics. Therefore, it should be expected to enter into a superposition state
along with the atom, a state in which it is simultaneously fired and unfired.
Should the Geiger counter be in contact with a device that records whether the counter has fired,
then logically, it too should enter a superposition state that records both situations as existing
simultaneously. Should an observer walk into the room and examine the recording device, this logic
can be continued up the “von Neumann chain” from the recording device, to photons, to the eyes and
brain of the observer, which are also physical instruments that we have no reason to suppose are
exempt from the rules of quantum mechanics. The only peculiar link in the von Neumann chain is the
process by which electrical signals in the brain of the observer become a conscious experience.
Von Neumann argued that the entire physical world is quantum mechanical, so the process that
collapses the wave functions into actual facts cannot be a physical process; instead, the intervention of
something from outside of physics is required. Something nonphysical, not subject to the laws of
quantum mechanics, must account for the collapse of the wave function: the only nonphysical entity in
the observation process that von Neumann could think of was the consciousness of the observer. He
reluctantly concluded that this outside entity had to be consciousness and that prior to observation,
even measuring instruments interacting with a quantum system must exist in an indefinite state.
Von Neumann extended the Copenhagen interpretation by requiring the measurement process to
take place in a mind. He was reluctantly driven to this conclusion by his relentless logic: the only
process in the von Neumann chain that is not merely the motion of molecules is the consciousness of
the observer. His arguments were developed more completely by his illustrious followers, most
notably Fritz London, Edmond Bauer, and Eugene Wigner. Wigner, who went on to win the Nobel
Prize in physics, wrote, “When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass
microscopic phenomena, through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness
came to the fore again; it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully
consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”6
The box-pair experiment also bears on the role of consciousness and free will. After all, you can
choose to look in one of the boxes or to do an interference experiment, and you will get different
“realities,” one being particle-like, the other wavelike. But your choice of which experiment to do is
not determined, even statistically, by anything in the physical theory. Nothing in quantum mechanics
says you must choose one experiment rather than the other. If you deny that consciousness collapses
the wave function, then this means atoms prior to observation existed as either particle or wave.
Somehow you chose to only look in those boxes that contained particle atoms and you chose to only
do an interference experiment with wave-form atoms. This would also deny free will, because then
your illusion of choice is determined by a conspiracy of the physical universe with the state of your
brain and your perceived choice. This replaces the deterministic universe with one that is
deterministic and conspiratorial.
This is how von Neumann, Wigner, and others brought mind back into nature and made a strong
case against the causal closure of the physical. As we will see, the case gets even stronger.
At this point, it should be stressed that this is only one interpretation of the facts of quantum
mechanics: in addition to the Copenhagen interpretation, there are several other speculations about
what is really happening when quantum possibilities settle down into one actuality. Most attempt to
rescue the determinism and observer independence of classical physics.
For instance, the hidden variable theory holds that the indeterminacy of quantum physics is an
illusion due to our ignorance: if we knew more about the system in question—that is, if we knew the
value of some “hidden variables”—then the indeterminacy would vanish. However, there are several
reasons why the general community of quantum physicists never held the hidden-variable theory in
high regard.
One reason, according to quantum physicist Euan Squires, is that the hidden variable theory is
“extremely complicated and messy. We know the answers from quantum theory and then we construct
a hidden-variable, deterministic theory specifically to give these answers. The resulting theory
appears contrived and unnatural.” Squires points out that the hidden variable theory never gained
widespread acceptance because “the elegance, simplicity and economy of quantum theory contrasted
sharply with the contrived nature of a hidden-variable theory which gave no new predictions in return
for its increased complexity; the whole hidden-variable enterprise was easily dismissed as arising
from a desire, in the minds of those too conservative to accept change, to return to the determinism of
classical physics.”7 Another reason the general community of quantum physicists consider the hidden
variable theory highly implausible is that it explains away indeterminacy by postulating the existence
of an ad hoc quantum force that, unlike any of the other four forces in nature, behaves in a manner
completely unaffected by distance.
The many worlds hypothesis is perhaps the strangest of all. It is the only one that denies the
existence of nonlocality, but it does so by postulating that all possible values of a measured property
exist simultaneously in coexisting universes. When a measurement is made, we are told, the universe
we are in splits into multiple universes, with one of the possible results in each of them. For instance,
if a measurement may yield two possible results, then at the instant of measurement the entire
universe splits in two, with each possible result realized in each universe. If a measurement may yield
a continuum of possible states—such as the position of an electron—then the instant such a
measurement occurs, it is proposed that the universe splits into an infinite number of universes! Since
it is further assumed that these parallel universes cannot interact with each other, this hypothesis is
completely untestable. Entities are being multiplied with incredible profusion. William of Occam
must be spinning in his grave.
In the opinion of many physicists, the last two interpretations are simply desperate, last-ditch
attempts to rescue the classical assumptions of determinism and observer independence that have been
abandoned by quantum mechanics. For instance, one interpretation salvages determinism from
classical physics by postulating hidden variables and the other by speculating that everything that can
happen does in fact happen in an infinite number of constantly splitting parallel universes, regardless
of the way things may appear to any particular version of our constantly splitting selves.
At any rate, these four interpretations are all consistent with the observed facts. They are attempts
to describe what reality is really like between observations, to account for the seemingly bizarre
behavior of matter predicted so accurately by the theory of quantum physics. They are not usually
considered to be scientific theories about the nature of reality, but rather metaphysical theories, as
within quantum mechanics there does not currently seem to be any obvious experiment that one could
perform in order to choose between them.*19
Physicist J. C. Polkinghorne sums up the metaphysical confusion many quantum theorists feel when
he writes:
It is a curious tale. All over the world measurements are continually being made on quantum
mechanical systems. The theory triumphantly predicts, within its probabilistic limits, what their
outcomes will be. It is all a great success. Yet we do not understand what is going on. Does the
fixity on a particular occasion set in as a purely mental act of knowledge? At a transition from
small to large physical systems? At the interface of matter and mind that we call consciousness?
In one of the many subsequent worlds into which the universe has divided itself?9 *20
Perhaps one interpretation is simpler or more logically consistent, or perhaps one of the
interpretations is more aesthetically pleasing than the others. These considerations may provide
philosophical reasons for preferring one over the others, but such reasons can hardly be considered
decisive. However, a fascinating set of experiments performed by physicist Helmut Schmidt and
others appears to show that conscious intent can affect the behavior of otherwise purely random
quantum phenomena. Could an experiment be designed to test the von Neumann interpretation?
Consciousness is central to the von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to
this interpretation, some properties of quantum phenomena do not exist in any definite state except
through the intervention of a conscious mind, at which point the wave function of possibilities
collapses into a single state. The usual form of this interpretation allows the observer to collapse the
wave function to a unique outcome but not to have any effect on what outcome actually occurs: the
actual outcome is assumed to be randomly chosen by nature from the range of values provided by the
wave function. But the experiments of German physicist Helmut Schmidt and other physicists indicate
that the consciousness of the observer may not only collapse the wave function to a single outcome
but may also help specify what outcome occurs by shifting the odds in a desired direction.

Chris carter
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/01/2014 20:15:32

So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?

"how can't they not" ......double negative Don. Your English leaves us a bit confused Sir Don. Was just wondering if English is your native language? Considering your constant use of copy and pasted excerpts from others, it does cause one wonder??
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:19:50
The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look
more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental
intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.
PHYSICIST JAMES JEANS
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:23:44

So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?

"how can't they not" ......double negative Don. Your English leaves us a bit confused Sir Don. Was just wondering if English is your native language? Considering your constant use of copy and pasted excerpts from others, it does cause one wonder??

Nevermind : i do type  quickly , so, "how can they not" haha
Try to read those excerpts , Ethos : they are highly interesting  and fascinating : they can explain many things better than i can do ,since i am no expert of QM, not even remotely close thus , not at the present moment at least .... .
Enjoy
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2014 20:25:31


The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,
The other side of reality......................Just what exactly is that supposed to mean????

"The other side of the same coin" is a vague analogy that allows one to say simultaneously that A is the same as B, and A is different from B. 

It's vague enough, that one can just as easily apply it to the material position is that "the mental" is just other side of the same coin of physical brain processes described in different vocabulary, or how these  processes are experienced subjectively on the macro level (like Searle's view) I'm surprised that Don likes that "different sides of the same coin" analogy, because it dualism doesn't  seem to accept that the mental and the physical might be different ways of looking at or describing the very same phenomena.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 20:31:00


The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,
The other side of reality......................Just what exactly is that supposed to mean????

"The other side of the same coin" is a vague analogy that allows one to say simultaneously that A is the same as B, and A is different from B. 

It's vague enough, that one can just as easily apply it to the material position is that "the mental" is just other side of the same coin of physical brain processes described in different vocabulary, or how these  processes are experienced subjectively on the macro level (like Searle's view) I'm surprised that Don likes that "different sides of the same coin" analogy, because it dualism doesn't  seem to accept that the mental and the physical might be different ways of looking at or describing the very same phenomena.



The mental is just the other side of reality ,your other side as well,
The other side of reality......................Just what exactly is that supposed to mean????

Reality , including you and i , is both material physical and non-material non-physical mental at the same time .
You're not just your physical material biological brain and body , but also a consciousness that's irreducible to the physical or to the material : your own consciousness is more fundamental than your physical brain or body can ever be : see that quote of that physicist here above on the subject .

In short :

We are made of 2 totally different substances : matter and the mental ,the latter that's irreducible to the physical or to the material = dualism .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/01/2014 21:29:44
I'm surprised that Don likes that "different sides of the same coin" analogy, because it dualism doesn't  seem to accept that the mental and the physical might be different ways of looking at or describing the very same phenomena.
Quite right Cheryl.......I was shocked he would accept the physical side as equally important.

One thought about reality.

I know that there are those that insist that reality is relative to the individual's interpretation. I believe however in an absolute reality, one that transcends all opinions and or personal illusions. This is the reason I continue to defend the scientific method.

For us to define reality, we must define the word real. And that can't be done with vain speculation and countless what if's. I personally think the word if allows way to much room for mysticism, I want to know why things we observe exist and how to explain them. So far, Don has been suggesting largely what if's and very few why's and absolutely no explanations for how.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2014 21:33:14
Here's some reading for you, Don.

 "Is Consciousness Universal?

Panpsychism, the ancient doctrine that consciousness is universal, offers some lessons in how to think about subjective experience today"
By Christof Koch

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-consciousness-universal&page=3

Although, I should warn you, he is not using panpsychism in the groovy, Deepak Chopra sense of the word. Here are some passages from the link above.

Panpsychism is the belief that everything is “enminded.” All of it. Whether it is a brain, a tree, a rock or an electron. Everything that is physical also possesses an interior mental aspect. One is objective—accessible to everybody—and the other phenomenal—accessible only to the subject. That is the sense of the quotation by British-born Buddhist scholar Alan Watts with which I began this essay.
I will defend a narrowed, more nuanced view: namely that any complex system, as defined below, has the basic attributes of mind and has a minimal amount of consciousness in the sense that it feels like something to be that system. If the system falls apart, consciousness ceases to be; it doesn't feel like anything to be a broken system. And the more complex the system, the larger the repertoire of conscious states it can experience.”


His theory of consciousness has to do with integrated information.


"These ideas can be precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy. Given a particular brain, with its neurons in a particular state—these neurons are firing while those ones are quiet—one can precisely compute the extent to which this network is integrated. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number, &PHgr; (pronounced “fi”) [see “A Theory of Consciousness,” Consciousness Redux; Scientific American Mind, July/August 2009]. Measured in bits, &PHgr; denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with the network of causally interacting parts being in one particular state. Think of &PHgr; as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has and the more conscious it is. If individual brain regions are too isolated from one another or are interconnected at random, &PHgr; will be low. If the organism has many neurons and is richly endowed with synaptic connections, &PHgr; will be high. Basically, &PHgr; captures the quantity of consciousness. The quality of any one experience—the way in which red feels different from blue and a color is perceived differently from a tone—is conveyed by the informational geometry associated with &PHgr;. The theory assigns to any one brain state a shape, a crystal, in a fantastically high-dimensional qualia space. This crystal is the system viewed from within. It is the voice in the head, the light inside the skull. It is everything you will ever know of the world. It is your only reality. It is the quiddity of experience. The dream of the lotus eater, the mindfulness of the meditating monk and the agony of the cancer patient all feel the way they do because of the shape of the distinct crystals in a space of a trillion dimensions—truly a beatific vision. The water of integrated information is turned into the wine of experience.

Integrated information makes very specific predictions about which brain circuits are involved in consciousness and which ones are peripheral players (even though they might contain many more neurons, their anatomical wiring differs). The theory has most recently been used to build a consciousness meter to assess, in a quantitative manner, the extent to which anesthetized subjects or severely brain-injured patients, such as Terri Schiavo, who died in Florida in 2005, are truly not conscious or do have some conscious experiences but are unable to signal their pain and discomfort to their loved ones [see “A Consciousness Meter,” Consciousness Redux; Scientific American Mind, March/April 2013].

IIT addresses the problem of aggregates by postulating that only “local maxima” of integrated information exist (over elements and spatial and temporal scales): my consciousness, your consciousness, but nothing in between. That is, every person living in the U.S. is, self by self, conscious, but there is no superordinate consciousness of the U.S. population as a whole."

Unlike classical panpsychism, not all physical objects have a &PHgr; that is different from zero. Only integrated systems do. A bunch of disconnected neurons in a dish, a heap of sand, a galaxy of stars or a black hole—none of them are integrated. They have no consciousness. They do not have mental properties.

Last, IIT does not discriminate between squishy brains inside skulls and silicon circuits encased in titanium. Provided that the causal relations among the circuit elements, transistors and other logic gates give rise to integrated information, the system will feel like something


To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/01/2014 21:45:31


To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.
Quite appropriate for this time, place, and personalities I must say!

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/01/2014 23:43:51
I might be convinced to read Stapp on the subject if someone can provide a one-line quote: what is Stapp's definition of consciousness?
Don't hold your breath alan, Doc. Don is quite incapable of meaningful and efficient one liners................................

I gave up reading most of Don Q's repetitive drivel several pages ago, but I was hoping that someone might have found just one reasonably selfconsistent, or at least published, definition of consciousness that might provide some kind of anchor for this otherwise pointless discussion. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 02/01/2014 23:59:38
1 more thing , just concerning the collapse of the wave function : are  the observing or  measuring device + the observer human not made of atoms ,sub-atoms .....themselves ?
So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?

In the case of the human observer scientist , how can his mind or consciousness not have causal effects on the observed as well ?
How so? are you unaware how vision works?

Did you forget what a measuring device or observer actually is in QM?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/01/2014 00:16:16
1 more thing , just concerning the collapse of the wave function : are  the observing or  measuring device + the observer human not made of atoms ,sub-atoms .....themselves ?
So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?
In the case of the human observer scientist , how can his mind or consciousness not have causal effects on the observed as well ?
In short :


Well, I'm glad you asked that. It brings up another question Donald had:

"Stapp has not explained how he supposes such changes are
limited. Why should they be restricted to changes within a brain? If mental forces can effectively decide the trajectories of atoms or molecules inside a brain, why can they not decide the trajectories of electrons in a laboratory or of prey in the ocean? What determined the point in evolutionary history when brains are supposed to have started to be able to make choices?"


In other words, if my conscious agency can choose which brain state I will experience, why cannot I choose yours as well? Why can I not use the Zeno effect to change the outcome of anything in the macro world that might be have some non-deterministic, quantum element? There would certainly be a huge evolutionary pay off if I could.

 And speaking of evolution, which animals get to have a conscious agency and why?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2014 00:16:25
To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.
The integrated information hypothesis is a good start  - consciousness clearly involves the integration of information, and but it's debatable precisely what information must be integrated, and how. Unless you're careful, it can end up being a circular argument - the information required by consciousness must be integrated in a way that results in consciousness... but the information theory approach using connectedness & synergy looks promising and does at least give some crude quantifiability.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/01/2014 01:41:18
To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.
The integrated information hypothesis is a good start  - consciousness clearly involves the integration of information, and but it's debatable precisely what information must be integrated, and how. Unless you're careful, it can end up being a circular argument - the information required by consciousness must be integrated in a way that results in consciousness... but the information theory approach using connectedness & synergy looks promising and does at least give some crude quantifiability.

There's probably a lot of problems with the theory. But I don't see how it is any more vague or abstract than a physicist saying (as in Don's James Jeans quote) that information, and not physical matter or energy, is the true basis of everything in the universe, and hence explains consciousness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2014 10:43:30
The integrated information hypothesis is a good start  - consciousness clearly involves the integration of information, and but it's debatable precisely what information must be integrated, and how. Unless you're careful, it can end up being a circular argument - the information required by consciousness must be integrated in a way that results in consciousness... but the information theory approach using connectedness & synergy looks promising and does at least give some crude quantifiability.
There's probably a lot of problems with the theory. But I don't see how it is any more vague or abstract than a physicist saying (as in Don's James Jeans quote) that information, and not physical matter or energy, is the true basis of everything in the universe, and hence explains consciousness.
I think Integrated Information is a lot less vague and abstract than that pan-informationalism, and it seems to have far greater explanatory and predictive power - it's one of very few high level models that is testable because it's quantifiable. They've applied it to a variety of information handling & processing systems (biological and non-biological), and it appears to correspond well with our native assessment of consciousness in those systems, which suggests it has captured something useful about consciousness. The devil is in the detail, of course.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2014 11:23:55
More evidence consistent with consciousness as a brain process and inconsistent with the immaterial hypothesis:   two patients who were having conscious-&-aware brain surgery for epilepsy both reported strong sensations of foreboding and determination to overcome adversity when the same part of the brain (anterior midcingulate cortex) was stimulated. When the stimulation stopped, the sensations stopped. See Brain Stimulation Gives Will To Persevere (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24703-brain-stimulation-gives-you-will-to-persevere.html).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/01/2014 14:03:12


There's probably a lot of problems with the theory. But I don't see how it is any more vague or abstract than a physicist saying (as in Don's James Jeans quote) that information, and not physical matter or energy, is the true basis of everything in the universe, and hence explains consciousness.
Here is one instance where I can partially agree with Don, but that agreement only refers to the administration of information. Where he comes up short is, he fails to recognize that like anything else, information has to be stored somewhere. The storage of information is processed in the brain and the application of that information is applied there as well.

Mysticism only complicates the natural process we call mental activity.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/01/2014 15:09:50
Why can I not use the Zeno effect to change the outcome of anything in the macro world that might be have some non-deterministic, quantum element? There would certainly be a huge evolutionary pay off if I could.

Because all the work that purports to show a connection between observation and behaviour actually involves "active" observation, where the "observer" interferes with the system being observed.

You can't passively observe events in real time - even the simplest quantum transition that emits a photon, has to occur a few nanoseconds before you observe it because the photon has to travel to the detector. Thus a true Zeno effect requires the system to "know" that you are waiting for it to do something, without you having "told" it in any way.

Therefore either the entire universe is predestined down to the last photon, or there is no Zeno effect.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/01/2014 15:19:43
Thus a true Zeno effect requires the system to "know" that you are waiting for it to do something, without you having "told" it in any way.

Therefore either the entire universe is predestined down to the last photon, or there is no Zeno effect.   


Well. That's a bit troublesome, isn't it?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:11:43
Cheryl : See this : Highly interesting and fascinating : Concerning the consciousness -dependent observation , the original Copenhagen interpretation, How Planck's constant that paved the way to quantum theory replaced numbers by actions , and much more :
If the following does not succeed in convincing you of what i have been saying , then , nothingelse will :


"Human Knowledge
as the Foundation of Science" :



In the introduction to his book Quantum Theory and Reality the
philosopher of science Mario Bunge (1967, p. 4) said:
The physicist of the latest generation is operationalist all right,
but usually he does not know, and refuses to believe, that the
original Copenhagen interpretation – which he thinks he supports
– was squarely subjectivist, i.e., nonphysical.
Let there be no doubt about this point. The original form of quantum
theory is subjective, in the sense that it is forthrightly about relationships
among conscious human experiences, and it expressly recommends
to scientists that they resist the temptation to try to understand
the reality responsible for the correlations between our experiences
that the theory correctly describes. The following brief collection
of quotations by the founders gives a conspectus of the Copenhagen
philosophy:
The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles
has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality
concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics
that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather
our knowledge of this behavior. (Heisenberg 1958a, p. 100)
[. . . ] the act of registration of the result in the mind of the
observer. The discontinuous change in the probability function
[. . . ] takes place with the act of registration, because it is the
discontinuous change in our knowledge in the instant of registration
that has its image in the discontinuous change of the
probability function. (Heisenberg 1958b, p. 55)
When the old adage “Natura non facit saltus” (Nature makes
no jumps) is used as a basis of a criticism of quantum theory,
we can reply that certainly our knowledge can change suddenly,
and that this fact justifies the use of the term ‘quantum jump’.
(Heisenberg 1958b, p. 54)
It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics
in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
(Wigner 1961b, p. 169)
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the
real essence of phenomena but only to track down as far as possible
relations between the multifold aspects of our experience.
(Bohr 1934, p. 18)
Strictly speaking, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics
merely offers rules of calculation for the deduction of
expectations about observations obtained under well-defined
classical concepts. (Bohr 1963, p. 60)
[. . . ] the appropriate physical interpretation of the symbolic
quantum mechanical formalism amounts only to prediction
of determinate or statistical character, pertaining to individual
phenomena appearing under conditions defined by classical
physics concepts. (Bohr 1958, p. 64)
The references to ‘classical (physics) concepts’ is explained by Bohr as
follows:
[. . . ] it is imperative to realize that in every account of physical
experience one must describe both experimental conditions and
observations by the same means of communication as the one
used in classical physics. Bohr (1958, p. 88)
[. . . ] we must recognize above all that, even when phenomena
transcend the scope of classical physical theories, the account
of the experimental arrangement and the recording of observations
must be given in plain language supplemented by technical
physical terminology. (Bohr 1958)
Bohr is saying that scientists do in fact use, and must use, the concepts
of classical physics in communicating to their colleagues the specifications
on how the experiment is to be set up, and what will constitute
a certain type of outcome. He in no way claims or admits that there
is an actual objective reality out there that conforms to the precepts
of classical physics.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:13:03
In his book The Creation of Quantum Mechanics and the Bohr–
Pauli Dialogue, the historian John Hendry (1984) gives a detailed account
of the fierce struggles by such eminent thinkers as Hilbert, Jordan,
Weyl, von Neumann, Born, Einstein, Sommerfeld, Pauli, Heisenberg,
Schroedinger, Dirac, Bohr and others, to come up with a rational
way of comprehending the data from atomic experiments. Each man
had his own bias and intuitions, but in spite of intense effort no rational
comprehension was forthcoming. Finally, at the 1927 Solvay conference
a group including Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, and Born come into
concordance on a solution that came to be called the Copenhagen interpretation,
due to the central role of Bohr and those working with
him at his institute in Denmark.
Hendry says: “Dirac, in discussion, insisted on the restriction of the
theory’s application to our knowledge of a system, and on its lack of
ontological content.” Hendry summarized the concordance by saying:
“On this interpretation it was agreed that, as Dirac explained, the wave
function represented our knowledge of the system, and the reduced
wave packets our more precise knowledge after measurement.”
These quotations make it clear that, in direct contrast to the ideas
of classical physical theory, orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory is
about ‘our knowledge’. We, and in particular our mental aspects, have
entered into the structure of basic physical theory.
This profound shift in physicists’ conception of the basic nature
of their endeavor, and of the meanings of their formulas, was not a
frivolous move: it was a last resort. The very idea that in order to comprehend
atomic phenomena one must abandon physical ontology, and
construe the mathematical formulas to be directly about the knowledge
of human observers, rather than about external reality itself, is
so seemingly preposterous that no group of eminent and renowned
scientists would ever embrace it except as an extreme last measure.
Consequently, it would be frivolous of us simply to ignore a conclusion
so hard won and profound, and of such apparent direct bearing on our
effort to understand the connection of our conscious thoughts to our
bodily actions.
Einstein never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation. He said:
What does not satisfy me, from the standpoint of principle, is
its attitude toward what seems to me to be the programmatic
aim of all physics: the complete description of any (individual)
real situation (as it supposedly exists irrespective of any act
of observation or substantiation). (Einstein 1951, p. 667; the
parenthetical word and phrase are part of Einstein’s statement.)
and
What I dislike in this kind of argumentation is the basic positivistic
attitude, which from my view is untenable, and which
seems to me to come to the same thing as Berkeley’s principle,
esse est percipi. [Transl: To be is to be perceived] (Einstein
1951, p. 669)
Einstein struggled until the end of his life to get the observer’s knowledge
back out of physics. He did not succeed! Rather he admitted (ibid.
p. 87) that:
It is my opinion that the contemporary quantum theory constitutes
an optimum formulation of the [statistical] connections.
He also referred (ibid, p. 81) to:
[. . . ] the most successful physical theory of our period, viz., the
statistical quantum theory which, about twenty-five years ago
took on a logically consistent form. This is the only theory at
present which permits a unitary grasp of experiences concerning
the quantum character of micro-mechanical events.
One can adopt the cavalier attitude that these profound difficulties
with the classical conception of nature are just some temporary retrograde
aberration in the forward march of science. One may imagine,
as some do, that a strange confusion has confounded our best minds
for seven decades, and that the weird conclusions of physicists can
be ignored because they do not fit a tradition that worked for two
centuries. Or one can try to claim that these problems concern only
atoms and molecules, but not the big things built out of them. In this
connection Einstein said (ibid, p. 674): “But the ‘macroscopic’ and
‘microscopic’ are so inter-related that it appears impracticable to give
up this program [of basing physics on the ‘real’] in the ‘microscopic’
domain alone.”
These quotations document the fact that Copenhagen quantum
theory brings human consciousness into physical theory in an essential
way. But how does this radical change in basic physics affect science’s
conception of the human person?
To answer this query I begin with a few remarks on the development
of quantum theory.
The original version of quantum theory, called the Copenhagen
quantum theory, or the Copenhagen interpretation, is forthrightly
pragmatic. It aims to show how the mathematical structure of the
theory can be employed to make useful, testable predictions about our
future possible experiences on the basis of our past experiences and
the forms of the actions that we choose to make. In this initial version
of the theory the brains and bodies of the experimenters, and
also their measuring devices, are described fundamentally in empirical
terms: in terms of our experiences/perceptions pertaining to these devices
and their manipulations by our physical bodies. The devices are
treated as extensions of our bodies. However, the boundary between
our empirically described selves and the physically described system
we are studying is somewhat arbitrary. The empirically described measuring
devices can become very tiny, and physically described systems
can become very large, This ambiguity was examined by von Neumann
(1932) who showed that we can consistently describe the entire physical
world, including the brains of the experimenters, as the physically described
world, with the actions instigated by an experimenter’s stream
of consciousness acting directly upon that experimenter’s brain. The
interaction between the psychologically and physically described aspects
in quantum theory thereby becomes the mind–brain interaction
of neuroscience and neuropsychology.
It is this von Neumann extension of Copenhagen quantum theory
that provides the foundation for a rationally coherent ontological interpretation
of quantum theory – for a putative description of what is
really happening. Heisenberg suggested an ontological description in
his 1958 book Physics and Philosophy and I shall adhere to that ontology,
formulated within von Neumann’s framework in which the brain,
as part of the physical world, is described in terms of the quantum
mathematics. This localizes the mind–matter problem at the interface
between the quantum mechanically described brain and the experientially
described stream of consciousness of the human agent/observer.
My aim in this book is to explain to non-physicist the interplay
between the psychologically and physically described components of
mind–brain dynamics, as it is understood within the orthodox (von
Neumann–Heisenberg) quantum framework.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:28:14
Actions, Knowledge, and Information:
 The Anti-Newtonian Revolution:




From the time of Isaac Newton until about 1925 science relegated
consciousness to the role of passive viewer: our thoughts, ideas, and
feelings were treated as impotent bystanders to a march of events
wholly controlled by microscopically describable interactions between
mechanically behaving microscopic basic elements. The founders of
quantum mechanics made the revolutionary move of bringing conscious
human experiences into basic physical theory in a fundamental way.
After two hundred years of neglect, our thoughts were suddenly thrust
into the limelight. This was an astonishing reversal of precedent because
the enormous successes of the prior physics were due in large
measure to the policy of excluding all mention of idea-like qualities
from the formulation of the physical laws.
What sort of crisis could have forced the creators of quantum theory
to contemplate, and eventually embrace, this radical idea of injecting
our thoughts explicitly into the basic laws of physics?
The answer to this question begins with a discovery that occurred
at the end of the nineteenth century. In December of 1900 Max Planck
announced the discovery and measurement of the ‘quantum of action’.
Its measured value is called Planck’s constant. This constant specifies
one of three basic quantities that are built into the fundamental fabric
of the physical universe. The other two are the gravitational constant,
which fixes the strength of the force that pulls every bit of matter
in the solar system toward every other bit, and the speed of light,
which controls the response of every particle to this force, and to every
other force. The integration into physics of each of these three basic
quantities generated a monumental shift in our conception of nature.
Isaac Newton discovered the gravitational constant, which linked
our understandings of celestial and terrestrial dynamics. It connected
the motions of the planets and their moons to the trajectories of cannon
balls here on earth, and to the rising and falling of the tides. In
sofar as his laws are complete the entire physical universe is governed
by mathematical equations that link every bit of matter to every other
bit, and moreover fix the complete course of history for all times from
physical conditions prevailing in the primordial past.
Einstein recognized that the ‘speed of light’ is not just the rate
of propagation of some special kind of wave-like disturbance, namely
‘light’. It is rather a fundamental number that enters into the equations
of motion of every kind of material substance, and, among other things,
prevents any piece of matter from traveling faster than this universal
maximum value. Like Newton’s gravitational constant it is a number
that enters ubiquitously into the basic structure of Nature.
But important as the effects of these two quantities are, they are,
in terms of profundity, like child’s play compared to the consequences
of Planck’s discovery.
Planck’s ‘quantum of action’ revealed itself first in the study of
light, or, more generally, of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy
emerging from a tiny hole in a heated hollow container can be decomposed
into its various frequency components. Classical nineteenth
century physics gave a prediction about how that energy should be
distributed among the frequencies, but the empirical facts did not fit
that theory. Eventually, Planck discovered that the empirically correct
formula could be obtained by assuming essentially that the energy was
concentrated in finite packets, with the amount of energy in each such
unit being directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation that
was carrying it. The ratio of energy to frequency is called Planck’s
constant. Its value is extremely small on the scale of normal human
activity, but becomes significant when we come to the behavior of the
atomic particles and fields out of which our bodies, brains, and the
large physical objects around us are made.
Planck’s discovery shattered the classical laws that had been for two
centuries the foundation of the scientific world view. During the years
that followed many experiments were performed on systems whose
behaviors depend sensitively upon the properties of their atomic constituents.
It was repeatedly found that the classical principles did not
work: they gave well defined predictions that turned out to be flat-out
wrong, when confronted with the experimental evidence. The fundamental
laws of physics, which every physics student had been taught,
and upon which much of the industrial and technological world of that
era was based, were failing. More importantly, and surprisingly, they
were failing in ways that no mere tinkering could ever fix. Something
was fundamentally amiss. No one could say how these laws, which were
so important, and that had seemed so perfect, could be fixed. No one
could foresee whether a new theory could be constructed that would
explain these strange and unexpected results, and restore rational order
to our understanding of nature. But one thing was clear to those
working feverishly on the problem: Planck’s constant was somehow at
the center of it all.
3.2 The World of Actions
Werner Heisenberg was, from a technical point of view, the principal
founder of quantum theory. He discovered in 1925 the completely
amazing and wholly unprecedented solution to the puzzle: the quantities
that classical physical theory was based upon, and which were
thought to be numbers, must be treated not as numbers but as actions!
Ordinary numbers, such as 2 and 3, have the property that the
product of any two of them does not depend on the order of the factors:
2 times 3 is the same as 3 times 2. But Heisenberg discovered
that one could get the correct answers out of the old classical laws if
one decreed that certain numbers that occur in classical physics as the
magnitudes of certain physical properties of a material system are not
ordinary numbers. Rather, they must be treated as actions having the
property that the order in which they act matters!
This ‘solution’ may sound absurd or insane. But mathematicians
had already discovered that logically consistent generalizations of ordinary
mathematics exist in which numbers are replaced by ‘actions’
having the property that the order in which they are applied matters.
The ordinary numbers that we use for everyday purposes like buying a
loaf of bread or paying taxes are just a very special case from among a
broad set of rationally coherent mathematical possibilities. In this simplest
case, A times B happens to be the same as B times A. But there
is no logical reason why Nature should not exploit one of the more
general cases: there is no compelling reason why our physical theories
must be based exclusively on ordinary numbers rather than on actions.
The theory based on Heisenberg’s discovery exploits the more general
logical possibility. It is called quantum mechanics, or quantum theory.
The difference between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics
is specified by Planck’s constant, which is a tiny number on the
scale of human actions. Thus this tweaking of laws of physics might
seem to be a bit of mathematical minutia that could scarcely have
any great bearing on the fundamental nature of the universe, or of
our role within it. But replacing numbers by actions upsets the whole
apple cart. It produced a seismic shift in our ideas about both the
nature of reality, and the nature of our relationship to the reality that
envelops and sustains us. The aspects of nature represented by the
theory are converted from elements of being to elements of doing. The
effect of this change is profound: it replaces the world of material substances
by a world populated by actions, and by potentialities for the
occurrence of the various possible observed feedbacks from these actions.
Thus this switch from ‘being’ to ‘action’ allows – and according
to orthodox quantum theory demands – a draconian shift in the very
subject matter of physical theory, from an imagined universe consisting
of causally self-sufficient mindless matter, to a universe populated by
allowed possible physical actions and possible experienced feedbacks
from such actions. A purported theory of matter alone is converted
into a theory of the relationship between matter and mind.
What is this momentous change introduced by Heisenberg?
In classical physics the center point of each physical object has, at
each instant of time, a well defined location, which can be specified
by giving its three coordinates (x, y, z) relative to some coordinate
system. For example, the location of (the center point of) a spider
dangling in a room can be specified by letting z be its distance from
the floor, and letting x and y be its distances from two intersecting
walls. Similarly, the velocity of that dangling spider, as she drops to
the floor, blown by a gust of wind, can be specified by giving the rates
of change of these three coordinates (x, y, z). If each of these three
rates of change, which together specify the velocity, are multiplied by
the weight (= mass) of the spider, then one gets three numbers, say
(p, q, r), that define the momentum of the spider. In classical physics
one uses the set of three numbers denoted by (x, y, z) to represent the
position of the center point of an object, and the set of three numbers
labeled by (p, q, r) to represent the momentum of that object. These
six numbers are just ordinary numbers that obey the commutative
property of multiplication that we all, hopefully, learned in third grade:
x ∗ p equals p ∗ x, where ∗ means multiply.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:29:05

The six-dimensional space of all possible values (x, y, z; p, q, r) is
called phase space: it is the space of all possible instantaneous ‘states’
of the particle.
Heisenberg’s analysis showed that in order to make the formulas of
classical physics work in general, x ∗ p must be different from p ∗ x. He
found that the difference between these two products must be Planck’s
constant. (Actually, the difference is Planck’s constant divided by 2π
and multiplied by the imaginary unit i, which is a number such that
i times i is minus one.) Thus modern quantum theory was born by
recognizing, or declaring, that the symbols used in classical physical
theory to represent ordinary numbers actually represent actions such
that their ordering in a sequence of actions matters. The procedure of
creating the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics from that
of classical physics, by replacing numbers by corresponding actions, is
called ‘quantization’.
The idea of replacing the numbers that specify where a particle is,
and how fast it is moving, by mathematical quantities that violate the
simple laws of arithmetic may strike you – if this is the first you’ve
heard about it – as a giant step in the wrong direction. You might
mutter that scientists should try to make things simpler, rather than
abandoning one of the things we really know for sure, namely that
the order in which one multiplies factors does not matter. But against
that intuition one must recognize that this change works beautifully in
practice: all of the tested predictions of quantum mechanics are borne
out, and these include predictions that are correct to the incredible
accuracy of one part in a hundred million. There must be something
very, very right about this replacement of numbers by actions.
In classical physical theory each elementary particle is asserted to
have at each instant of time a definite location, defined by a set of three
numbers (x, y, z), and definite momentum, defined by a set of three
numbers (p, q, r). In quantum theory one generally considers systems
of many particles, but insofar as one can consider one particle alone
the state of that particle at any instant of time would be represented
by a cloud of pairs of numbers, with one pair of numbers (called a
complex number) assigned to each point in three-dimensional (position)
space. Someone might choose to perform a phenomenologically
(i.e., experimentally/experientially) described probing action on this
‘particle’. In quantum mechanics each such possible probing action
turns out to have an associated set of distinct experientially distinguishable
possible outcomes. The cloud of numbers taken as a whole
determines the probability for the appearance of each of the alternative
possible outcomes of that chosen probing action. The theory thus
gives specified rules for computing the probabilities for each of the distinct
alternative possible empirically described feedbacks from each of
the alternative possible experimental probing actions that the human
experimenter might chose to perform, but no rules that specify which
probing action he or she will choose.
In classical physical theory when one descends from the macroscopic
world of visible objects to the microscopic world of their elemen
tary constituents one arrives at a world containing the ‘solid, massy,
hard, impenetrable moveable particles’ that Newton spoke of. But in
quantum theory one arrives instead at clouds, or quantum smears, of
numbers that taken as a whole have empirical meaning in terms of
probabilities of alternative possible experiences.
Briefly stated, the orthodox formulation of quantum theory (see
Appendix D) asserts that, in order to connect adequately the mathematically
described state of a physical system to human experience,
there must be an abrupt intervention in the otherwise smoothly evolving
mathematically described state of that system.
According to the orthodox formulation, these interventions are
probing actions instigated by human agents who are able to ‘freely’
choose which one, from among various alternative possible probing actions,
they will perform. The physically describable effect of the chosen
probing action is to separate (partition) the prior physical state of the
system being probed in some particular way into a set of component
parts. Each physically described part corresponds to one perceivable
outcome from the set of distinct alternative possible perceivable outcomes
of that particular probing action.
If such a probing action is performed, then one of its allowed perceivable
feedbacks will appear in the stream of consciousness of the
observer, and the mathematically described state of the probed system
will then jump abruptly from the form it had prior to the intervention
to the partitioned portion of that state that corresponds to
the observed feedback. This means that, according to orthodox contemporary
physical theory, the ‘free’ choices of probing actions made
by agents enter importantly into the course of the ensuing psychologically
and physically described events. Here the word ‘free’ means,
however, merely that the choice is not determined by the (currently)
known laws of physics; not that the choice has no cause at all in the
full psychophysical structure of reality. Presumably the choice has some
cause or reason – it is unreasonable that it should simply pop out of
nothing at all – but the existing theory gives no reason to believe that
this cause must be determined exclusively by the physically described
aspects of the psychophysically described nature alone.
If one sets Planck’s constant equal to zero in the quantum mechanical
equations then one recovers (the fundamentally incorrect) classical
mechanics. Thus classical physics is an approximation to quantum
physics. It is the approximation in which Planck’s constant, wherever
it appears, is replaced by zero. In this approximation the quantum
smearing does not occur – each cloud is reduced to a point – and one
recovers classical physics, along with the physical determinism (the
causal closure of the physical) entailed by classical physics.
In the classical approximation there is no need for, and indeed no
room for , any effect of any probing action. The uncertainty – arising
from the non-zero size of the quantum cloud – that in the unapproximated
theory needs to be resolved by the intervention of some
particular probing action is already reduced to zero by the replacement
of Planck’s constant by zero. Thus all effects upon the physically/
mathematically described aspects of nature’s process that are
instigated by the actions ‘freely’ chosen by agents are eliminated by
the classical approximation. Consequently, any attempt to understand
or explain within the framework of classical physics the physical effects
of consciousness is irrational, because the classical approximation
eliminates the effect one is trying to study.
3.3 Intentional Actions and Experienced Feedbacks
The concept of intentional actions by agents is of central importance.
Each such action is intended to produce an experiential feedback. For
example, a scientist might act to place a Geiger counter near a radioactive
source, with the intention to see the counter either ‘fire’, or
‘not fire’, during a certain time interval. The experienced response,
‘Yes’ or ‘No’, to the query ‘Does the counter fire?’ specifies one bit
of information. The basic move in quantum theory is to shift, fundamentally,
from the airy plane of high-level abstractions, such as the
unseen precise trajectories of invisible elementary material particles,
to the nitty-gritty realities of consciously chosen intentional actions
and their experienced feedbacks, and to the theoretical specification
of the mathematical procedures that allow us successfully to predict
relationships among these empirical realities.
Probing actions of this kind are performed not only by scientists.
Every healthy and alert infant is engaged in making willful efforts that
produce experiential feedbacks, and he or she soon begins to form expectations
about what sorts of feedbacks are likely to follow from some
particular kind of felt effort. Thus both empirical science and normal
human life are based on paired realities of this action–response kind,
and our physical and psychological theories are both basically attempts
to understand these linked realities within a rational conceptual framework.
A purposeful action by a human agent has two aspects. One aspect
is his conscious intention, which is described in psychological
terms. The other aspect is the linked physical action, which is described
in physical terms; i.e., in terms of mathematical entities assigned to
spacetime points. For successful living the physically described action
should be a functional counterpart of the conscious intention: after sufficient
empirical honing by effective learning processes the physically
described aspect of the felt intentional act should have a tendency to
produce the intended experiential feedback.
John von Neumann, in his seminal book, Mathematical Foundations
of Quantum Mechanics, calls by the name ‘process 1’ the basic
probing action that partitions a potential continuum of physically described
possibilities into a (countable) set of empirically recognizable
alternative possibilities. I shall retain that terminology. Von Neumann
calls the orderly mechanically controlled evolution that occurs between
interventions by name ‘process 2’. This process is the one controlled by
the Schroedinger equation. The numbering, 1 and 2, emphasizes the
important fact that the conceptual framework of orthodox quantum
theory requires first an acquisition of knowledge, and second, a mathematically
described propagation of a representation of this acquired
knowledge to some later time at which a further inquiry is made.
There are two other associated processes that need to be recognized.
The first of these is the process that selects the outcome, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’,
of the probing action. Dirac calls this intervention a “choice on the
part of nature”, and it is subject, according to quantum theory, to
statistical rules specified by the theory. I call by the name ‘process 3’
this statistically specified choice of the outcome of the action selected
by the prior process 1 probing action
Finally, in connection with each process 1 action, there is, presumably,
some process that is not described by contemporary quantum
theory, but that determines what the so-called ‘free choice’ of the experimenter
will actually be. This choice seems to us to arise, at least in
part, from conscious reasons and valuations, and it is certainly strongly
influenced by the state of the brain of the experimenter. I have previously
called this selection process by the name ‘process 4’, but will use
here the more apt name ‘process zero’, because this process must precede
von Neumann’s process 1. It is the absence from orthodox quantum
theory of any description on the workings of process zero that
constitutes the causal gap in contemporary orthodox physical theory.
It is this ‘latitude’ offered by the quantum formalism, in connection
with the “freedom of experimentation” (Bohr 1958, p. 73), that blocks
the causal closure of the physical, and thereby releases human actions
from the immediate bondage of the physically described aspects of
reality.
3.4 Cloudlike Forms
The quantum state of a single elementary particle can be visualized,
roughly, as a continuous cloud of (complex) numbers, one assigned to
every point in three-dimensional space. This cloud of numbers evolves
in time and, taken as a whole, it determines, at each instant, for each
allowed process 1 action, an associated set of alternative possible experiential
outcomes or feedbacks, and the ‘probability of finding (i.e.,
experiencing)’ that particular outcome.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle specifies that if one squeezes this
spatial cloud – the spatial region in which the numbers are nonzero –
into a sufficiently small region, it will violently explode outward when
the constricting force is removed.
3.5 Simple Harmonic Oscillators
One of the most important and illuminating examples of this cloudlike
feature of the quantum state is the one corresponding to a pendulum,
or more precisely, to what is called a simple harmonic oscillator. Such
a system is one in which there is a restoring force that tends to push
the center point of the object to a single ‘base point’, and in which the
strength of this restoring force is directly proportional to the distance
of the center point of the object from this base point.
According to classical physics any such system has a state of lowest
possible energy. In this state the center point of the object lies motionless
at the base point. In quantum theory this system again has a
state of lowest possible energy. But this state is not localized at the
base point. It is a cloudlike spatial structure that is spread out over a
region that extends to infinity. However, the probability distribution
represented by this cloudlike form has the shape of a bell: it is largest
at the base point, and falls off in a prescribed manner as the distance
of the center point from the base point increases.
If one were to put this state of lowest energy into a container, then
squeeze it into a more narrow space, and then let it loose, the cloudlike
form would explode outward, but then settle into an oscillating motion.
Thus the cloudlike spatial structure behaves rather like a swarm
of bees, such that the more they are squeezed in space the faster they
move relative to their neighbors, and the faster the squeezed cloud
will explode outward if the squeezing constraint is released. This ‘explosive’
property of narrowly confined states plays a key role in quantum
brain dynamics, as we shall soon see. This explosive property is a
consequence of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which entails that a
severe confinement of the cloud in ordinary (coordinate) space entails
a large spread in a corresponding cloud in momentum (hence velocity)
space.
3.6 The Double-Slit Experiment
There is a crucial difference between the behavior of the quantum
cloudlike form and the somewhat analogous probability distribution
of classical statistical mechanics. This difference is exhibited by the
famous double-slit experiment. If one shoots an electron, a calcium
ion, or any other quantum counterpart of a tiny classical object, at
a narrow slit then if the object passes through the slit the associated
cloudlike form will fan out over a wide angle, due essentially to the
reaction to squeezing mentioned above. But if one opens two closely
neighboring narrow slits, then what passes through the slits is described
by a probability distribution that is not just the sum of the
two separate fanlike structures that would be present if each slit were
opened separately. Instead, at some points the probability value will be
nearly twice the sum of the values associated with the two individual
slits, and in other places the probability value drops nearly to zero,
even though both individual fanlike structures give a large probability
value at that place. This non-additivity – or interference – property
of the quantum cloudlike structure makes that structure very different
from a probability distribution of classical physics, because in the
classical case the probabilities arising from the two individual slits will
simply add.
This non-additivity property, which holds for a quantum particle
such as an electron or a calcium ion, persists even when the particles
come one at a time! According to classical ideas each tiny individual
object must pass through either one slit or the other, so the probability
distribution must be just the sum of the contributions from the two
separate slits. But this is not what happens empirically. Quantum
mechanics deals consistently with this non-additivity property, and
with all the other non-classical properties of these cloudlike structures.
The non-additivity property is not at all mysterious or strange if one
accepts the basic idea that reality is not made out of any material
substance, but rather out of ‘events’ (actions) and ‘potentialities’ for
these events to occur. Potentialities are not material realities, and there
is no logical requirement that they be simply additive. According to
the mathematically consistent rules of quantum theory, the quantum
potentialities are not simply additive: they have a wave-like nature,
and can interfere like waves.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:38:35
Nerve Terminals
and the Need to Use Quantum Theory:




Many neuroscientists who study the relationship of consciousness to
brain processes want to believe that classical physics will provide an
adequate rational foundation for that task. But classical physics has
bottom-up causation, and the direct rational basis for the claim that
classical physics is applicable to the full workings of the brain rests on
the basic presumption that it is applicable at the microscopic level.
However, empirical evidence about what is actually happening at the
trillions of synapses on the billions of neurons in a conscious brain
is virtually nonexistent, and, according to the uncertainty principle,
empirical evidence is in principle unable to justify the claim that deterministic
behavior actually holds in the brain at the microscopic
(ionic) scale. Thus the claim that classical determinism holds in living
brains is empirically indefensible: sufficient evidence neither does, nor
can in principle, exist.
Whether the classical approximation is applicable to macroscopic
brain dynamics can, therefore, only be determined by examining the
details of the physical situation within the framework of the more general
quantum theory, to see, from a rational perspective, to what extent
use of the classical approximation can be theoretically justified. The
technical questions are: How important quantitatively are the effects
of the uncertainty principle at the microscopic (ionic) level; and if they
are important at the microscopic level, then why can this microscopic
indeterminacy never propagate up to the macro-level?
Classical physical theory is adequate, in principle, precisely to the
extent that the smear of potentialities generated at the microscopic
level by the uncertainty principle leads via the purely physically described
aspects of quantum dynamics to a macroscopic brain state
that is essentially one single classically describable state, rather than
a cloud of such states representing a set of alternative possible conscious
experiences. In this latter case the quantum mechanical state of
the brain needs to be reduced, somehow, to the state corresponding to
the experienced phenomenal reality.
To answer the physics question of the extent of the micro-level
uncertainties we turn first to an examination of the quantum dynamics
of nerve terminals.
4.1 Nerve Terminals
Nerve terminals lie at the junctions between two neurons, and mediate
the functional connection between them. Neuroscientists have developed,
on the basis of empirical data, fairly detailed classical models
of how these important parts of the brain work. According to the
classical picture, each ‘firing’ of a neuron sends an electrical signal,
called an action potential, along its output fiber. When this signal
reaches the nerve terminal it opens up tiny channels in the terminal
membrane, through which calcium ions flow into the interior of the
terminal. Within the terminal are vesicles, which are small storage areas
containing chemicals called neurotransmitters. The calcium ions
migrate by diffusion from their entry channels to special sites, where
they trigger the release of the contents of a vesicle into a gap between
the terminal and a neighboring neuron. The released chemicals influence
the tendency of the neighboring neuron to fire. Thus the nerve
terminals, as connecting links between neurons, are basic elements in
brain dynamics.
The channels through which the calcium ions enter the nerve terminal
are called ion channels. At their narrowest points they are only
about a nanometer in width, hence not much larger than the calcium
ions themselves. This extreme smallness of the opening in the
ion channels has profound quantum mechanical import. The consequence
of this narrowness is essentially the same as the consequence of
the squeezing of the state of the simple harmonic oscillator, or of the
narrowness of the slits in the double-slit experiments. The narrowness
of the channel restricts the lateral spatial dimension. Consequently,
the uncertainty in lateral velocity is forced by the quantum uncertainty
principle to become non-zero, and to be in fact about 1% of the
longitudinal velocity of the ion. This causes the quantum probability
cloud associated with the calcium ion to fan out over an increasing
area as it moves away from the tiny channel to the target region where
the ion will be absorbed as a whole on some small triggering site, or
will not be absorbed at all on that site. The transit distance is estimated
to be about 50 nanometers (Fogelson & Zucker 1985; Schweizer,
Betz, & Augustine 1995), but the total distance traveled is increased
many-fold by the diffusion mechanism. Thus the probability cloud becomes
spread out over a region that is much larger than the size of the
calcium ion itself, or of the trigger site. This spreading of the ion wave
packet means that the ion may or may not be absorbed on the small
triggering site.
Many different calcium ions contribute to the release of neurotransmitter
from a vesicle. The estimated probability that a vesicle on a
cerebral neuron will be released, per incident input action potential
pulse, is far less than 100% (maybe only 50%). The very large quantum
uncertainty at the individual calcium level ensures that this large
empirical uncertainty of release entails that the quantum state of the
nerve terminal will become a quantum mixture of states where the
neurotransmitter is released, or, alternatively, is not released. This
quantum splitting occurs at every one of the trillions of nerve terminals
in the brain. This quantum splitting at each of the nerve terminals
propagates, via the quantum mechanical process 2, first to neuronal
behavior, and then to the behavior of the whole brain, so that, according
to quantum theory, the state of the brain can become a cloudlike
quantum mixture of many different classically describable brain states.
In complex situations where the outcome at the classical level depends
on noisy elements the corresponding quantum brain will evolve into a
quantum mixture of the corresponding states.
The process 2 evolution of the brain is highly nonlinear, in the
(classical) sense that small events can trigger much larger events, and
that there are very important feedback loops. Some neurons can be
on the verge of firing, so that small variations in the firing times of
other neurons can influence whether or not this firing occurs. In a system
with such a sensitive dependence on unstable elements, and on
massive feedbacks, it is not reasonable to suppose, and not possible to
demonstrate, that the process 2 dynamical evolution will lead generally
to a single (nearly) classically describable quantum state. There
might perhaps be particular special situations during which the massively
parallel processing all conspires to cause the brain dynamics to
become essentially deterministic and perhaps even nearly classically
describable. But there is no likelihood that during periods of mental
groping and uncertainty there cannot be bifurcation points in which
one part of the quantum cloud of potentialities that represents the
brain goes one way and the remainder goes another, leading to a quantum
mixture of very different classically describable potentialities. The
validity of the classical approximation certainly cannot be proved under
these conditions, and, in view of the extreme nonlinearity of the
neural dynamics, any claim that the large effects of the uncertainly
principle at the synaptic level can never lead to quantum mixtures of
macroscopically different states cannot be rationally justified.
What, then, is the effect of the replacement of a single, unique, classically
described brain of classical physics by a quantum brain state
composed of a mixture of several alternative possible classically describable
brain states, each corresponding to a different possible experience?
A principal function of the brain is to receive clues from the environment,
then to form an appropriate plan of action, and finally to
direct the activities of the brain and body specified by the selected
plan of action. The exact details of the chosen plan will, for a classical
model, obviously depend upon the exact values of many noisy and uncontrolled
variables. In cases close to a bifurcation point the dynamical
effects of noise might, at the classical level, tip the balance between
two very different responses to the given clues: e.g., tip the balance
between the ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ response to some shadowy form, but in
the quantum case one must allow and expect both possibilities at the
macroscopic level a smear of classically alternative possibilities. The
automatic mechanical process 2 evolution generates this smearing, and
is in principle unable to resolve or remove it.
According to orthodox (von Neumann) quantum theory, achievement
of a satisfactory reduction of the smeared out brain state to a
brain state coordinated with the subject’s streams of conscious experiences
is achieved through the entry of a process 1 intervention, which
selects from the smear of potentialities generated by the mechanical
process 2 evolution a particular way of separating the physical state
into a collection of components, each corresponding to some definite
experience. The form of such an intervention is not determined by the
quantum analog (process 2) of the physically deterministic continuous
dynamical process of classical physics: some other kind of input is
needed.
The choice involved in such an intervention seems to us to be influenced
by consciously felt evaluations, and there is no rational reason
why these conscious realities, which certainly are realities, cannot have
the sort of effect that they seem to have.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:40:48
Templates for Action:


The feature of a brain state that tends to produce some specified experiential
feedback can reasonably be expected to be a highly organized
large-scale pattern of brain activity that, to be effective, must endure
for a period of perhaps tens or hundreds of milliseconds. It must endure
for an extended period in order to be able to bring into being
the coordinated sequence of neuron firings needed to produce the intended
feedback. Thus the neural (or brain) correlate of an intentional
act should be something like a collection of the vibratory modes of a
drumhead in which many particles move in a coordinated way for an
extended period of time.
In quantum theory the enduring states are vibratory states. They
are like the lowest-energy state of the simple harmonic oscillator discussed
above, which tends to endure for a long time, or like the states
obtained from such lowest-energy states by spatial displacements and
shifts in velocity. Such states tend to endure as organized oscillating
states, rather than quickly dissolving into chaotic disorder.
I call by the name ‘template for action’ a macroscopic brain state
that will, if held in place for an extended period, tend to produce some
particular action. Trial and error learning, extended over the evolutionary
development of the species and over the life of the individual agent,
should have the effect of bringing into the agent’s repertoire of intentional
process 1 actions the ‘Yes–No’ partitions such that the ‘Yes’
response will, if held in place for an extended period, tend to generate
an associated recognizable feedback corresponding to the successful
achievement of the intent. Successful living demands the generation
through effort-based learning of templates for action.
My earlier discussion of the quantum indeterminacies that enter
brain dynamics in association with the entry of calcium ions into the
nerve terminals was given in order to justify the claim that the brain
must be treated as a quantum system. However, the fact that quantum
indeterminacies enter brain dynamics at the microscopic/ionic
level does not mean that the process 1 interventions that are needed
to link the evolving state of a person’s brain to his or her conscious
experiences must act microscopically. According to von Neumann’s
formulas, each process 1 intervention is specified by a set of nonlocal
projection operators. This means that the effect of a process 1 action
on a person’s brain is generally macroscopic. Thus the quantum indeterminacies
that enter brain dynamics at the microscopic/ionic level
propagate via the Schroedinger equation (process 2) up to the macroscopic
level where they produce a smear of potentialities that needs to
be reduced to a form compatible with the occurrence of a conscious
thought, if that thought is to enter a stream of consciousness. This dynamics
expresses the core idea of the quantum theory of observation,
which is that the reduction events are associated with increments in
knowledge, and correspondingly reduce the physical state to the part
of itself that is compatible with the knowledge entering a stream consciousness.
On the other hand, the only freedom provided by the quantum
rules is the freedom to select the next process 1 action, and the instant
at which it is applied. Thus a person’s ‘free choice’ of what he or she
intends to do can certainly enter the brain dynamics at the macroscopic
level , but only as a process 1 action. This is where the ‘latitude’ offered
by the quantum formalism, and associated with the ‘free choice’ of the
experimenter emphasized by Bohr, enters the dynamics. This process
1 action can in fact be one whose ‘Yes’ alternative selects the set of
brain states such that the template for the intended action is active.
But this ‘free choice’ merely sets the stage for the entry of the statistical
choice between the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ alternatives whose relative statistical
weights are specified by the quantum rules.

Source : "Mindful Universe and Quantum Mechanics " By Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:48:57
Folks :
Try to read the above , even though they are lengthy excerpts : it's worth it though :
You are still looking at the universe through the fundamentally incorrect classical physics , and hence you have been believing in the false causally closed universe classical assumption  , not to mention the fact that most non-physicists scientists ,especially neuroscientists and biologists such as our dlorde   here , have been thinking and behaving as if QM do not exist .
The Copenhagen interpretation itself is in fact subjective , in the sense that it is observer or consciousness-dependent , which also means that we only get  our own expected interpretations of the objective reality out there , through our own a -priori held beliefs : we also design experiments as to fit what we expect to find ...
Quantum theory thus depends largely on the intrinsic interventions of our minds ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 17:58:28
1 more thing , just concerning the collapse of the wave function : are  the observing or  measuring device + the observer human not made of atoms ,sub-atoms .....themselves ?
So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?

In the case of the human observer scientist , how can his mind or consciousness not have causal effects on the observed as well ?
How so? are you unaware how vision works?

Did you forget what a measuring device or observer actually is in QM?

Try to read the above , dlorde : highly interesting fascinating stuff really : you can't argue with that , that might change your classical views :
Biology neurobiology and modern physics have been moving in totally different directions : the formers have been becoming more and more mechanical materialist , while QM have been dualist :  the QM's quest at the level of the fundamental components of matter has been discovering  the mind -body interaction at the quantum level,paradoxically enough  .
See in those above displayed excerpts how Von Neumann ,for example , could not explain the problem of measurements in QM but through the factual  intervention of somet non-physical process outside of the laws of physics : the mind ,and much more .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/01/2014 18:01:31

 However, the boundary between
our empirically described selves and the physically described system
we are studying is somewhat arbitrary. The empirically described measuring
devices can become very tiny, and physically described systems
can become very large, This ambiguity was examined by von Neumann
(1932) who showed that we can consistently describe the entire physical
world, including the brains of the experimenters, as the physically described
world, with the actions instigated by an experimenter’s stream
of consciousness acting directly upon that experimenter’s brain.




The dividing line in process one might be arbitrary, but I don't see how it is meaningless or not arguable. In fact, this is what I don't get - von Neumann incorporated consciousness into his model, and therefore it's no longer a big issue,  but then Stapp seems to turn around and exempt the conscious agency from all physical laws, in a sense taking it back out of the whole system, but at the same time using Von Neumann's position as proof that consciousness matters.

I may be hopelessly confused, but at least I make some attempt to understand this stuff myself, instead of just letting my physicist beat up your physicist.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 18:07:54


There's probably a lot of problems with the theory. But I don't see how it is any more vague or abstract than a physicist saying (as in Don's James Jeans quote) that information, and not physical matter or energy, is the true basis of everything in the universe, and hence explains consciousness.
Here is one instance where I can partially agree with Don, but that agreement only refers to the administration of information. Where he comes up short is, he fails to recognize that like anything else, information has to be stored somewhere. The storage of information is processed in the brain and the application of that information is applied there as well.

Mysticism only complicates the natural process we call mental activity.

...stored   somewhere ? Why per se then ? : you cannot but think in a materialistic spacial way , i see : see the above displayed highly fascinating excerpts .
I do think now that the universe , including ourselves thus , is not made of any substance , but is rather 'made " of actions, deeds , possibilities , potentialities , events ..waiting to happen : we do choose from that probability distribution from all those wide ranges of potentialities : the collapse of the wave function through the mind does actualize our specific choice of the moment .

Our consciousness cannot thus but intervene in our own experiences and experiments , views of the world .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 18:19:01

 However, the boundary between
our empirically described selves and the physically described system
we are studying is somewhat arbitrary. The empirically described measuring
devices can become very tiny, and physically described systems
can become very large, This ambiguity was examined by von Neumann
(1932) who showed that we can consistently describe the entire physical
world, including the brains of the experimenters, as the physically described
world, with the actions instigated by an experimenter’s stream
of consciousness acting directly upon that experimenter’s brain.




The dividing line in process one might be arbitrary, but I don't see how it is meaningless or not arguable. In fact, this is what I don't get - von Neumann incorporated consciousness into his model, and therefore it's no longer a big issue,  but then Stapp seems to turn around and exempt the conscious agency from all physical laws, in a sense taking it back out of the whole system, but at the same time using Von Neumann's position as proof that consciousness matters.

I may be hopelessly confused, but at least I make some attempt to understand this stuff myself, instead of just letting my physicist beat up your physicist.

If you try to read the rest of that , you will notice that Von Neumann could not ,mathematically in his monumental book on the subject , explain the measurements problem in QM but through the intervention of a non-physical process outside of the laws of physics = he could not logically think of anythingelse in that regard but the consciousness of the observer , logically and mathematically .

But you, guys , are still confined to the superseded mechanical approximately valid , but fundamentally incorrect classical physics ,as if Q Theory has never existed , the latter that has been revolutionizing our own conception of matter  and nature of reality ...
See above how neuroscientists have been commited to the classical physics ' fundamentally false and superseded mechanical view of the world in relation to the mind -body hard problem ...as if quantum theory does not exist ,the latter that's THE key to dealing empirically with the mind -brain interaction ,beyond Newton's determinist mechanical false causally closed universe notion ,and beyond his false classical conception of what matter is and of what the physical reality is ....

P.S.: QM have been proving also the fact that the collapse of the wave function through the intervention of the mind does not require energy , unlike what materialists think , thanks to their own materialism that was built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics .
The ineviatble inescapable intervention of the mind in our own experiences, experiments , views of the world explains perfectly how materialists can be guilty of confirmation and other biases , also by designing experiments , as to fit their own a -priori held beliefs through their minds , by choosing what they expect to find from all those potentialities , possibilities , events ...out there .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 18:35:55
To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.
The integrated information hypothesis is a good start  - consciousness clearly involves the integration of information, and but it's debatable precisely what information must be integrated, and how. Unless you're careful, it can end up being a circular argument - the information required by consciousness must be integrated in a way that results in consciousness... but the information theory approach using connectedness & synergy looks promising and does at least give some crude quantifiability.

There's probably a lot of problems with the theory. But I don't see how it is any more vague or abstract than a physicist saying (as in Don's James Jeans quote) that information, and not physical matter or energy, is the true basis of everything in the universe, and hence explains consciousness.

See Von Neumann's  mathematical ,empirical and logical arguments concerning the intervention of the mind at the quantum level ,here above ,in those excerpts i did display : see also what Heseinberg,Einstein, Bohr , Pauli  ...used to think of that as well   .
The 'stuff "  of which the universe is made might be no physical or other substance , but actions , potentialities , events ...........: see QM on the subject ,concerning its non-classical or anti-classical  conception of matter ,and concerning the mind -brain interaction at that level ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 18:54:00
Here's some reading for you, Don.

 "Is Consciousness Universal?

Panpsychism, the ancient doctrine that consciousness is universal, offers some lessons in how to think about subjective experience today"
By Christof Koch

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-consciousness-universal&page=3

Although, I should warn you, he is not using panpsychism in the groovy, Deepak Chopra sense of the word. Here are some passages from the link above.

Panpsychism is the belief that everything is “enminded.” All of it. Whether it is a brain, a tree, a rock or an electron. Everything that is physical also possesses an interior mental aspect. One is objective—accessible to everybody—and the other phenomenal—accessible only to the subject. That is the sense of the quotation by British-born Buddhist scholar Alan Watts with which I began this essay.
I will defend a narrowed, more nuanced view: namely that any complex system, as defined below, has the basic attributes of mind and has a minimal amount of consciousness in the sense that it feels like something to be that system. If the system falls apart, consciousness ceases to be; it doesn't feel like anything to be a broken system. And the more complex the system, the larger the repertoire of conscious states it can experience.”


His theory of consciousness has to do with integrated information.


"These ideas can be precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy. Given a particular brain, with its neurons in a particular state—these neurons are firing while those ones are quiet—one can precisely compute the extent to which this network is integrated. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number, &PHgr; (pronounced “fi”) [see “A Theory of Consciousness,” Consciousness Redux; Scientific American Mind, July/August 2009]. Measured in bits, &PHgr; denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with the network of causally interacting parts being in one particular state. Think of &PHgr; as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has and the more conscious it is. If individual brain regions are too isolated from one another or are interconnected at random, &PHgr; will be low. If the organism has many neurons and is richly endowed with synaptic connections, &PHgr; will be high. Basically, &PHgr; captures the quantity of consciousness. The quality of any one experience—the way in which red feels different from blue and a color is perceived differently from a tone—is conveyed by the informational geometry associated with &PHgr;. The theory assigns to any one brain state a shape, a crystal, in a fantastically high-dimensional qualia space. This crystal is the system viewed from within. It is the voice in the head, the light inside the skull. It is everything you will ever know of the world. It is your only reality. It is the quiddity of experience. The dream of the lotus eater, the mindfulness of the meditating monk and the agony of the cancer patient all feel the way they do because of the shape of the distinct crystals in a space of a trillion dimensions—truly a beatific vision. The water of integrated information is turned into the wine of experience.

Integrated information makes very specific predictions about which brain circuits are involved in consciousness and which ones are peripheral players (even though they might contain many more neurons, their anatomical wiring differs). The theory has most recently been used to build a consciousness meter to assess, in a quantitative manner, the extent to which anesthetized subjects or severely brain-injured patients, such as Terri Schiavo, who died in Florida in 2005, are truly not conscious or do have some conscious experiences but are unable to signal their pain and discomfort to their loved ones [see “A Consciousness Meter,” Consciousness Redux; Scientific American Mind, March/April 2013].

IIT addresses the problem of aggregates by postulating that only “local maxima” of integrated information exist (over elements and spatial and temporal scales): my consciousness, your consciousness, but nothing in between. That is, every person living in the U.S. is, self by self, conscious, but there is no superordinate consciousness of the U.S. population as a whole."

Unlike classical panpsychism, not all physical objects have a &PHgr; that is different from zero. Only integrated systems do. A bunch of disconnected neurons in a dish, a heap of sand, a galaxy of stars or a black hole—none of them are integrated. They have no consciousness. They do not have mental properties.

Last, IIT does not discriminate between squishy brains inside skulls and silicon circuits encased in titanium. Provided that the causal relations among the circuit elements, transistors and other logic gates give rise to integrated information, the system will feel like something


To be honest, I see nothing less reasonable in the above than Stapp's proposal. But I suspect it would not appeal to someone looking for a bridge to a mystical realm or hoping to incorporate their religious views into science.

I viewed most consciousness theories out there (The materialist ones are of course superseded outdated false and counter-intuitive , absurd ,not to mention unscientific = materialist magic in science ...needless to  add  ) : none is more reasonable and coherent ,clear ...logical , historically correct ,scientifically correct ...than those  of Stapp and Walker  : i do recommend strongly that you try to read those 2 books of Stapp at least  on the subject : extremely interesting fascinating really : i can provide you with some free download links concerning those books of his , if you want to :

I have not been incorporating any religious views in science , i have been just providing you , guys , with non-materialist views , especially those regarding QM and the role of consciousness in it ,as Von Neumann , Einstein, Heseinberg , Pauli ,Bohr and many others thought of the role of consciousness in QM .so.

I have been also saying that i do separate my own beliefs from science , beliefs which are ,per definition, unscientific = unfalsifiable ,as all beliefs are for that matter , including materialism thus .

It is   materialism in fact thus that should be ,and rightly so, accused of selling its own unscientific unfalsifiable beliefs as ...science , for so long now : QM have been breaking the spine of classical physics' materialism irreversibly thus ...

Instead of accusing me falsely , you should try to realise the fact that materialism as a belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific , has  been the one that has been not only pretending to be "scientific " by equating itself with science , but materialism has also been sold to the people as science ,so you are just projecting , dear materialist girl .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 19:02:37
dlorde , Ethos :

As some scientist or thinker said : " matter is not made of matter ",so to speak : see the revolutionary non-classical and anti-classical conception of matter and that of the physical reality which have been provided by ...QM :
We might be thus not made of any physical or other substance : the universe , including ourselves , might be just a "matter"  of probability distribution in the 'forms " of actions , potentialities , possibilities, events ....as some scientists modern physicists such as Stapp, Walker and others think the universe is .
Who knows ?
So, try to be up to date by realising the revolutionary character of QM in that and in other regards ,instead of sticking to your own absurd outdated false and superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics ....
Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 19:18:12
1 more thing , just concerning the collapse of the wave function : are  the observing or  measuring device + the observer human not made of atoms ,sub-atoms .....themselves ?
So, how can't they not have effects on the observed ?
In the case of the human observer scientist , how can his mind or consciousness not have causal effects on the observed as well ?
In short :


Well, I'm glad you asked that. It brings up another question Donald had:

"Stapp has not explained how he supposes such changes are
limited. Why should they be restricted to changes within a brain? If mental forces can effectively decide the trajectories of atoms or molecules inside a brain, why can they not decide the trajectories of electrons in a laboratory or of prey in the ocean? What determined the point in evolutionary history when brains are supposed to have started to be able to make choices?"


In other words, if my conscious agency can choose which brain state I will experience, why cannot I choose yours as well? Why can I not use the Zeno effect to change the outcome of anything in the macro world that might be have some non-deterministic, quantum element? There would certainly be a huge evolutionary pay off if I could.

 And speaking of evolution, which animals get to have a conscious agency and why?

Von Neumann and others should have convinced you of the fact that consciousness or the mind are central in forming and shaping our own experiences , behavior, values , thoughts ,feelings , emotions ... expectations, interpretations of reality ...through our own a-priori held world views  ............as our own everyday lives do prove .
So, our own world views do shape our consciousness , and the latter does the rest  through the brain and body via physical actions ,including in science thus : all those views concerning the role or lack of it of consciousness are all a matter of their own respective world views and interpretations of reality .

Needless to say that consciousness has a central evolutionary efficient survival and other fundamental roles, evolution that cannot be exclusively biological  of course , otherwise it cannot account for consciousness itself , consciousness that's more fundamental than matter can ever be,logically ,and now empirically thanks to QM  : some materialists cannot but consider consciousness as just a useless by-product of evolution= an epiphenomena , paradoxically absurdly enough ,  according to their own absurd version of evolution that's just an extension of their own  false conception of nature , other materialists  just do equate consciousness  with brain activity,or just assume that consciousness is "produced " by brain activity , or that consciousness 'emerged " from just brain activity (QM do refute those absurd and unscientific materialist magical claims in science , needless to say )  ...thanks to their own a -priori held materialist absurd beliefs that have been shaping their own minds ,and hence their own experiments , experiences ,interpretations,behaviors  ...through their own expectations , confirmation and other biases :
QM do not only refute materialism , but they also explain why materialists scientists believe what they do, even in the very face of counter empirical logical and other evidence  ...

Love you , Stapp ...metaphorically relatively speaking.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/01/2014 21:05:46
Try to read the above , dlorde : highly interesting fascinating stuff really : you can't argue with that , that might change your classical views
There's nothing new there. None of it addresses the criticisms of Stapp's consciousness hypothesis already posted here.

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2014 21:36:23
Try to read the above , dlorde : highly interesting fascinating stuff really : you can't argue with that , that might change your classical views
There's nothing new there. None of it addresses the criticisms of Stapp's consciousness hypothesis already posted here.

Come on, be serious : have you read all those excerpts  already , i just posted  ? Impossible ,unless you do possess some sort of a sophisticated scanner  of some sort haha implanted  in your brain or rather mind .
Stapp talked about the history genesis and developement of mind-dependent quantum theory ,through  Von Neumann and beyond , and much more ...from the original Copenhagen interpretation , before after and beyond through Dennett's classical conservation of energy "argument " ....and much more ....

All that is addressed by Stapp's excerpts i just posted , and more .

Unless you would try to eliminate your false classical materialism from the 'equation ", you will not be able but to try to refute any non-materialist approaches on the subject,regardless of whether or not they might be correct  : Von Neumann had already explained why people such as yourself do stick to their own a-priori held beliefs that shape their minds and behavior ,ironically enough, in the very face of counter -evidence  .

P.S.: Biology, neurobiology microbiology  has been becoming more and more mechanical and materialist , unlike QM that have been moving in the opposite and totally different direction, no wonder thus that you , dlorde ,as a biologist ,  have been becoming more and more materialist mechanical, as if QM do not exist .
Way to go, scientist .
So, you need to grasp and incorporate QT into your materialist classical mechanical world view ,just to find out that they are ...incompatible , the former has been superseding and refuting the latter : congratulations and condolences .

I am already starting to weep for the death of materialism , simply because it has been reflecting the beauty of dualism , while i have never noticed or saw the supposed hypothetical beauty of Narcissus ( materialism or materialists  , in this case at least ) .
Bye, Narcissus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/01/2014 21:53:01
dlorde , Ethos :

As some scientist or thinker said : " matter is not made of matter ",so to speak : see the revolutionary non-classical and anti-classical conception of matter and that of the physical reality which have been provided by ...QM :
We might be thus not made of any physical or other substance : the universe , including ourselves , might be just a "matter"  of probability distribution in the 'forms " of actions , potentialities , possibilities, events ....as some scientists modern physicists such as Stapp, Walker and others think the universe is .
Who knows ?
So, try to be up to date by realising the revolutionary character of QM in that and in other regards ,instead of sticking to your own absurd outdated false and superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics ....
Good luck .
Lol! keep attacking that straw man - but don't forget that what seems new and exciting to you now is not necessarily new to everyone else [::)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 04/01/2014 22:35:58
Come on, be serious : have you read all those excerpts  already , i just posted  ? Impossible ,unless you do possess some sort of a sophisticated scanner  of some sort haha implanted  in your brain or rather mind .
A sophisticated scanner - like eyes? they can be quite effective for reading, and fast enough if you don't read aloud  [::)]

Quote
Stapp talked about the history genesis and developement of mind-dependent quantum theory ,through  Von Neumann and beyond , and much more ...from the original Copenhagen interpretation , before after and beyond through Dennett's classical conservation of energy "argument " ....and much more ....

All that is addressed by Stapp's excerpts i just posted , and more .
Not much wrong with Stapp's physics history, although he understandably focuses on the QM interpretation that suits his purpose.

Where does he address any of Dawson's criticisms (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf)?

Quote
P.S.: Biology, neurobiology microbiology  has been becoming more and more mechanical and materialist , unlike QM that have been moving in the opposite and totally different direction, no wonder thus that you , dlorde ,as a biologist ,  have been becoming more and more materialist mechanical, as if QM do not exist .
Way to go, scientist .
You couldn't have got that more wrong ('not even wrong' as they say). QM is at the heart of the biochemistry that underlies biology, with a great deal of recent work and many new discoveries, like the unexpected use of quantum effects in the optimization of electron transfer in photosynthesis (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620142932.htm), and quantum coherence in the magnetoreception of robins (http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/110121.html); some people are calling it 'Quantum Biology' (though it's not a popular monicker).
Quote
So, you need to grasp and incorporate QT into your materialist classical mechanical world view ,just to find out that they are ...incompatible , the former has been superseding and refuting the latter : congratulations and condolences .
Lol! - BTDTGTTS years ago. QM is nearly 100 years old - You just posted its history - it's been the standard formulation for atomic physics since the late 1920s; it's been widely accepted and taught as mainstream physics for many years - it may be new and exciting to you, but you haven't just rediscovered it [:o)]

I'm beginning to think the Dunning-Kruger Effect is involved here  [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/01/2014 01:21:06
Thus a true Zeno effect requires the system to "know" that you are waiting for it to do something, without you having "told" it in any way.

Therefore either the entire universe is predestined down to the last photon, or there is no Zeno effect.   


Well. That's a bit troublesome, isn't it?

Something of an understatement. It completely buggers the entire Zeno concept because Heisenberg won't allow predestination.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2014 12:36:34
However plausible, or otherwise, Stapp's QM speculations, none of it would be necessary if he wasn't trying to support an incoherent model or definition of free will; and however he reaches the quantum superposition of states he wants free will to resolve, he's left with the unsustainable homunculus of free will, and a quantum version of Dennett's Cartesian Theatre.

With Don's facile version, if you start with an unsupportable a-priori assumption such as 'consciousness must be immaterial', you are quite likely to end up trying to deny contrary evidence (as we saw), and chasing less transparently obvious versions like Stapp's; but they are both built with the same flaw in their foundations, and both can be discarded as redundant simply by accepting a simpler interpretation of free will as the sense of agency accompanying a decision or action.

Don seems to have a religious underlay for his immaterial dogma, but I wonder what Stapp's excuse reason is?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/01/2014 15:46:06
So, try to be up to date by realising the revolutionary character of QM in that and in other regards ,instead of sticking to your own absurd outdated false and superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics ....

Quantum theory has been around since 1877 and quantum mechanics has featured in the school physics syllabus since about 1920.

The "revolution" was no more than a realisation that a simple hypothesis explained a lot of observations and predicted a lot more. That is the essence of science. No heads rolled in the gutter, nobody was crucified, burned at the stake or subject to fatwah. All that happened was scientists around the world said "that makes sense, thank you, and it's worth a Nobel Prize".

Which is why science is good, philosophy bad. 
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 05/01/2014 16:01:17
All that happened was scientists around the world said "that makes sense, thank you, and it's worth a Nobel Prize".

Which is why science is good, philosophy bad.
Absolutely alan, and that's the reason why this thread is without significant value. Nothing but speculation and philosophy, making no honest attempt to follow the scientific method.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:06:06
How QM Have been refuting the mechanical materialist determinist classical world view :

"A Quantum Conception of Man "  By Henry P.Stapp :

Introduction :



Science has enlarged tremendously the potential of human life. By augmenting
our powers it has lightened the weight of tedious burdens, and opened
the way to a full flowering of man’s creative capacities. Yet, ironically, it is
the shallowness of a conception of man put forth in the name of science that
is the cause today of the growing economic, ecological, and moral problems
that block that full flowering.
How could a shallow conception of ourselves, a mere idea, be the cause
of such deep troubles? The answer is this: Our beliefs about ourselves in
relation to the world around us are the roots of our values, and our values
determine not only our immediate actions, but also, over the course of time,
the form of our society. Our beliefs are increasingly determined by science.
Hence it is at least conceivable that what science has been telling us for three
hundred years about man and his place in nature could be playing by now
an important role in our lives. Let us look at what actually happened.
The seventeenth century was time of momentous change in men’s ideas
about the world. During that period thinkers like Galileo, Descartes, and
Newton transformed theworld, as seen by educated men, from a place where
spirits and magic could flourish, to a world of machines: the entire universe
came to be viewed as a giant machine, running on automatic, with each of us
a tiny cog within it. The symbols of the age that followed were the factory,
the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile. Later on, during our own
century, this mechanical age would become transformed in turn by thinkers
such as Heisenberg, Schr¨odinger, and Bohr into the quantum age, whose
symbols would be not roaring factories but giant transistorized computers,
silently bonding all parts of the planet, with men becoming not so much
bodily cogs in a giant machine as mental hubs in a burgeoning network of
ideas.
The seventeenth-century transition from the medieval to the mechanical
age was triggered by a seemingly miniscule change in a single idea: the
182 9 A Quantum Conception of Man
orbits of the planets were found to be neither circles, nor circles moving on
circles, but ellipses. This apparently trivial and recondite detail, discovered
by the scientist Johannes Kepler, through laborious analysis of a mass of
astronomical data, was the foundation upon which Isaac Newton built modern
science, and simultaneously discredited both centuries of philosophical
dogmas and the methods of thinking that produced them. Painstaking observation
of nature, and analysis of the empirical findings, came to be seen as a
truer source of knowledge than pure philosophical reflection. That kind of
reflection had led to the notion that, because circles are perfect figures, and
everything in the heavens must be perfect, all planets must move on circles,
or at least on circles compounded. But Newton’s laws decreed that the orbits
of planets were ellipses, not epicycles, and the entire empire of medieval
thought began to crumble. In its place rose another, based on Newton’s idea
of the world as machine. Later on, when this mechanical idea gave way in
turn to the quantum one, it was again a mass of esoteric data, analyzed to
reveal a totally unexpected structure in nature, that combined to overthrow
a conception of the world that had become by then an integral part of the
fabric of human life.
The focus of our interest here is on the relationship between the mental
and material parts of nature. Human beings have an intuitive feeling that
their bodies are moved by their thoughts. Thus it is natural for them to
imagine that thoughts of some similar kind inhabit heavenly bodies, rivers
and streams, and myriads of other moving things. However, the key step in
the development of modern science was precisely to banish all thoughtlike
things from the physical universe, or at least to limit severely their domain
of influence. In particular, Descartes, in the seventeenth century, divided all
nature into two parts, a realm of thoughts and a realm of material things,
and proposed that the motions of material things were completely unaffected
by thoughts throughout most of the universe. The only excepted regions,
where thoughts were allowed to affect matter, were small parts of human
brains called pineal glands: without this exception there would be no way
for human thoughts to influence human bodies. But outside these glands the
motions of all material things were supposed to be governed by mathematical
laws.
Carrying forward the idea of Descartes, Isaac Newton devised a set of
mathematical laws that appeared to describe correctly the motions of both
the heavenly bodies and everything on earth. These laws referred only to
material things, never to thoughts, and they were complete in the sense that,
once the motions of the material parts of the universe during primordial
times were fixed, these laws determined exactly the motions of atoms, and
all other material things, for the rest of eternity. Although Newton’s laws
9.1 Introduction 183
were expressed as rules governing the motions of atoms and other tiny bits
of matter, these laws were tested only for large objects, such as planets,
cannon balls, and billiard balls, never for atoms themselves.
According to Descartes’s original proposal the purely mechanical laws of
motion must fail to hold within our pineal glands, in order for our thoughts
to be able affect our bodily actions. However, orthodox scientists of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tolerating no exceptions to the laws
of physics, held that each atom in a human body, or in any other place,
must follow the path fixed by the laws of physics. This rigid enforcement
of the physical laws entailed, of course, that men’s thoughts could have
no effects upon their actions: that each human body, being composed of
preprogrammed atoms, is an automaton whose every action was predetermined,
long before he was born, by purely mechanical considerations, with
no reference at all to thoughts or ideas.
This conclusion, that human beings are preprogrammed automata, may
sound absurd. It contradicts our deepest intuition about ourselves, namely
that we are free agents. However, science, by pointing to other situations
where intuition is faulty, or dead wrong, was able to maintain, on the basis
of its demonstrated practical success and logical consistency, that its view
of man was in fact the correct one, and that our feeling of freedom is a
complete illusion.
This picture of man led, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
to an associated moral system. It was based on the principle that each of us,
being nothing but a mechanical device, automatically pursues his calculated
self-interests, as measured by a certain bodily physical property, which is
experienced in the realm of thought as pleasure. This principle, whichwas in
line with the commercial temper of the times, was fundamentally hedonistic,
though, from the scientific viewpoint, realistic. However, philosophers were
able to elevate it to a more socially satisfactory idea by arguing that the
“enlightened” rational man must act to advance his own “enlightened” selfinterest:
he must act to advance the general welfare in order to advance, in
the end, his own welfare. Yet there remained in the end only one basic human
value: no noble, heroic, or altruistic aim could have any value in itself; its
value must be rooted in the common currency of personal pleasure. This
kind of morality may seem to be immoral but it appears to be the rational
outcome of accepting completely the mechanical or materialistic view of
man.
This view of man and morals did not go unchallenged. Earlier traditions
lost only slowly their grip on the minds of men, and romantic and idealistic
philosophies rose to challenge the bondage of the human spirit decreed by
science. From the ensuing welter of conflicting claims, each eloquently
184 9 A Quantum Conception of Man
defended, followed a moral relativism, where every moral viewpoint was
seen as based on arbitrary assumptions. This pernicious outcome was a
direct consequence of the schism between the mental and material aspects
of nature introduced by science. That cleavage, by precluding any fully
coherent conception of man in nature, made every possible view incomplete
in some respect, and hence vulnerable.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:07:48
 In the resulting moral vacuum the
lure of material benefits and the increasing authority of science combined to
insinuate the materialistic viewpoint ever more strongly into men’s thoughts.
This science-based creed contains, however, the seeds of its own destruction.
For behind a facade of social concern it preaches material selfaggrandizement.
We are now in the thralls of the logical denouement of
that preaching. With the accelerating disintegration of the established cultural
traditions, brought on by increased fluxes of peoples and ideas, the
demand for satisfaction of inflated material desires has spiraled out of control.
This has led to a plundering of future generations, both economically
and ecologically. We are now beginning to feel the yoke laid upon us by our
predecessors, yet are shifting still heavier burdens onto our own successors.
This materialist binge cannot be sustained. Yet the doctrine of enlightened
self-interest has no rational way to cope with the problem, as long as each
human “self” continues to be perceived as a mere bundle of flesh and bones.
For if we accept a strictly materialistic way of thinking, then our own pleasure
can be enhanced by ignoring calamities that we ourselves will never
face.
Men are not base creatures: all history shows them to be capable of
elevated deeds. But elevated deeds and aspirations spring from elevated
ideas, and today all ideas, if they are long to survive, must stand up to withering
scrutiny. They must in the end be rationally coherent, and consistent
with the empirical evidence gathered by science. The mechanical ideas of
seventeenth-century science provided no rational or intellectual foundation
for any elevated conception of man. Yet the ideas of twentieth-century science
do. Quantum theory leads naturally to a rationally coherent conception
of the whole of man in nature. It is profoundly different from the sundered
mechanical picture offered by classical physics. Like any really new idea
this quantum conception of man has many roots. It involves deep questions:
What is consciousness? What is choice? What is chance? What can science
tell us about the role of these things in nature? How does science itself allow
us to transcend Newton’s legacy? It is to these questions that we now turn.
9.2 Science, Tradition, and Values 185
9.2 Science, Tradition, and Values
This is the third UNESCO Forum for Science and Culture. Our focus
throughout the series has been on the interplay of science, tradition, and
values in mankind’s search for a sustainable future. At the first forum, held
inVenice in 1986, the specter of nuclear annihilation loomed as the principal
perceived threat to human survival. By the time of the second forum, in
Vancouver in 1989, it was the impending disruption of global ecological
balances that seemed most critical. Today, in 1992, the nuclear threat may
have receded. But the ecological crisis seems to be worsening, and we are
faced with problems of socioeconomic collapse: in the former Soviet Union
and eastern Europe one of the world’s two premier socioeconomic systems
has already collapsed, and in the West and the Third World pressures of
ethnic rivalries and economic malaise are tending to make many formerly
prosperous and stable countries increasingly ungovernable.
Science has been perceived as the major cause of these problems. It gave
man the capacity to ignite a nuclear holocaust, to disrupt the ecosystem on a
global scale, and to effect swift, massive and untested social and economic
changes. At a deeper level of causation, science has revised man’s basic idea
of himself in relation to nature. In traditional cultures nature was perceived
as a mysterious provider, to be revered and deified. But Francis Bacon,
herald of science, proclaimed a new gospel for the age of science: man,
abetted by science, was to achieve the conquest of nature.
At an even deeper level of causation the Cartesian separation between the
minds of men and the rest of nature, which was the key to the seventeenthcentury
scientific revolution, eroded the foundations of moral thought, and
left man adrift with no rationally coherent image of himself within nature.
He proclaimed himself to be, on the one hand, ruler of nature, yet was, on
the other hand, according to the very scientific theories that were to give
him dominion, a mere mechanical cog in a giant mindless machine. He
was stripped of responsibility for his acts, since each human action was
preordained prior to the birth of species, and was reduced to an isolated
automaton struggling for survival in a meaningless universe.
In the face of these science-induced difficulties one must ask: Whoneeds
science? What we obviously need is strong remedial action—a curtailing
of science-inflated population growth, consumption, waste, and poverty.
But howcan the required global actions be brought about? Direwarnings
have minimal effects on populations inured to media hype. An immediate
disaster at one’s doorstep might suffice, but by then full global recovery may
be out of reach.
186 9 A Quantum Conception of Man
To change human actions globally one must change human beliefs globally.
Global beliefs, to the extent they they exist at all, are the beliefs generated
by science. However, some of the most important science-generated
beliefs that now pervade the world are beliefs that arose from science during
the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and are now outdated.
Twentieth-century science has wrought immense changes in precisely those
beliefs that have in large measure created our present problems.
9.3 Science and a New Vision of Nature
Twentieth-century science yields a conception of nature that is profoundly
different from the picture provided by the seventeenth century science of
Newton, Galileo, and Descartes. Three changes are particularly important.
The first great twentieth-century change is the dethronement of determinism.
Determinism is the idea that each stage of the coming into being
of the physical universe is completely controlled by what has already come
into being. A failure of determinism means that what is happening, or
coming into being, at certain stages of the evolutionary process is not completely
fixed by what has come before. Those aspects of the evolutionary
process that are not completely fixed by prior developments can be called
“choices” or “decisions”. They are in some sense “free”, because they are
not completely fixed by what has come before.
The second great twentieth-century change is in science’s idea of the
nature of “matter”, or of the “material universe”, which I take to be that
part of nature that is completely controlled by mathematical laws analogous
to the laws of classical physics. The material universe can no longer be
conceived to consist simply of tiny objects similar to small billiard balls,
or even things essentially like the electric and magnetic fields of classical
physics. Opinions of physicists differ on how best to understand what lies
behind the phenomena described so accurately by quantum theory. But the
idea most widely accepted by quantum physicists is, I believe, the one of
Heisenberg. According to this idea the “material universe” consists of none
of the things of classical physics. It consists rather of “objective tendencies”,
or “potentialities”. These tendencies are tendencies for the occurrence of
“quantum events”. It is these quantum events that are considered to be
the actual things in nature, even though the potentialities are also real in
some sense. Each actual event creates a new global pattern of potentialities.
Thus the basic process of nature is no longer conceived to be simply a
uniform mathematically determined gradual evolution. Rather it consists
of an alternating sequence of two very different kinds of processes. The
9.4 Science and a New Vision of Man 187
first phase is a mathematically controlled evolution of the potentialities for
the next quantum event. This first phase is deterministic, and the laws that
control it are closely analogous to the laws of classical physics. The next
phase is a quantum event. This event is not, in general, strictly controlled
by any known physical law, although collections of events exhibit statistical
regularities. Thus each individual quantum event creates a new world of
potentialities, which then evolves in accordance with certain deterministic
mathematical laws. These potentialities define the “tendencies” for the next
event, and so on. Each quantum event, because it is not fixed by anything in
the physicist’s description of prior nature represents a “choice”. The critical
fact is that each such choice can actualize a macroscopic integrated pattern
of activity in the newly created material universe of potentialities.
The third great twentieth-century change in science is the recognition
of a profound wholeness in nature, of a fundamental inseparability and
entanglement of those aspects of nature that have formerly been conceived
to be separate. The apparent separateness of ordinary physical objects turns
out, in this view of nature, to be a statistical effect that emerges from the
multiple actions of many quantum events. It is only at the level of the
individual events that the underlying wholeness reveals itself.
9.4 Science and a New Vision of Man
The most important consequence of this altered vision of nature is the
place it provides for human minds. Consciousness is no longer forced
to be an impotent spectator to a mechanically determined flow of physical
events. Conscious events can be naturally identified with certain special
kinds of quantum events, namely quantum events that create large-scale
integrated patterns of neuronal activity in human brains. These events represent
“choices” that are not strictly controlled by any known physical laws.
Each such event in the brain influences the course of subsequent events in
the brain, body, and environment through the mechanical propagation of the
potentialities created by that event.
This revised idea of man in relation to nature has profound moral implications.
In the first place, it shows that the pernicious mechanical idea of
man and nature that arose from seventeenth-century science was dependent
upon assumptions that no longer rule science.
Contemporary science certainly allows human consciousness to exercise
effective top-down control over human brain processes. Hence the idea
that man is not responsible for his acts has no longer any basis in science.
Moreover, the separateness of man within nature that had formerly seemed to
188 9 A Quantum Conception of Man
be entailed by science is now reversed. The image of man described above
places human consciousness in the inner workings of a nonlocal global
process that links the whole universe together in a manner totally foreign
to both classical physics and the observations of everyday life. If the world
indeed operates in the way suggested by Heisenberg’s ontology then we are
all integrally connected into some not-yet-fully-understood global process
that is actively creating the form of the universe.
The strongest motives of men arise from their perception of themselves
in relation to the creative power of the universe. The religious wars of past
and recent history give ample evidence that men will gladly sacrifice every
material thing, and even their lives, in the name of their convictions on these
issues. Thus the quantum-mechanical conception of man described above,
infused into the global consciousness, has the capacity to strongly affect
men’s actions on a global scale.
Science recognizes no authority whose ex cathedra pronouncements can
be claimed to express a divine will. Nevertheless, this new conception of
the universe emphasizes an intricate and profound global wholeness and it
gives man’s consciousness a creative, dynamical, and integrating role in the
intrinsically global process that forms the world around us. This conception
of man’s place in nature represents a tremendous shift from the idea of man
as either conqueror of a mindless nature, or as a helpless piece of protoplasm
struggling for survival in a meaningless universe. Just this conceptual shift
alone, moving the minds of billions of people empowered by the physical
capacities supplied by science, would be a force of tremendous magnitude.
Implicit in this conceptual shift in man’s perception of his relationship to the
rest of nature is the foundation of a new ethics, one that would conceive the
“self” of self-interest very broadly, in away thatwould include in appropriate
measure all life on our planet.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:09:24
Discussion:


 
Varela: How does your picture account for the many levels of structure in
brain processing that lie between the quantum events at the atomic level and
consciousness?
Stapp: In the first place the quantum events are not at the atomic level.
According to Heisenberg’s idea, the quantum events, that is the actual events,
occur only when the interaction between the quantum system and the measuring
device, “and hence the rest of the world”, comes into play. The actual
events that I am talking about occur at a macroscopic level: the whole Geiger

counter “fires”, or the whole pointer on the measuring device is actualized
as swinging to the left, rather than to the right. The quantum events select
from among the alternative possible cohesive macroscopic patterns of
activity. As for the many levels of processing in the brain, these are considered
to be mechanical brain processes: they are consequences of the
quantum-mechanical laws of motion, which determine the evolution of the
“propensities” for the various alternative possible quantum events. In most
other theories of the mind–brain connection there is no basis for a fundamental
ontological difference between brain processes that are consciously
experienced and those that are not. This is because their basic ontological
structure is monistic, rather than dualistic, as it is in quantum theory. Quantum
theory thus allows for a fundamental physical difference between brain
processes that are experienced and those that are not.
Varela: What empirical evidence is there that quantum theory is important
in brain processes that are directly connected to consciousness?
Stapp: Chemical processes are essential to brain operation, and hence a
quantum description is mandated. In fact, quantum mechanics is essential to
any understanding of the properties of materials, be they inorganic, organic,
or biological. Classical ideas do not suffice to explain properties of materials,
and properties of various materials play an essential role in the functioning
of the brain.
Varela: The microscopic atomic properties lead to macroscopic properties,
such as electric pulses along neurons, that can be described classically.
What empirical evidence is there that a classical description is inadequate
for describing those brain processes that are directly connected to conscious
process?
Stapp: The processes that can be described classically can also be described
quantum mechanically, and the latter description is fundamentally better because
it fits onto the lower-level chemical processes in a rationally coherent
way. Thus one can use a quantum description, and at least in principle,
should use a quantum description, because it is universal, or at least can be
universal: classical physics is known to be inadequate in some respects: it
is known to be nonuniversal.
The quantum description is not only required to explain the underlying
atomic and chemical processes, it is fundamentally richer also in the treatment
of macroscopic properties, as the theory of consciousness described
here shows.
As Quine has emphasized, theories are underdetermined by data. In
order to have any hope of achieving a reasonably unique understanding of
nature we must insist upon the unity of science, and strive for a coherent

understanding that covers the entire range of scientific knowledge. It is only
if science can give us a unified comprehension of nature that we can turn to
it with any confidence for an understanding of our place in nature.
McLaren: You say that a quantum jump selects one of the alternative possibilities,
and that this selection is not under the strict control of any known
lawof nature. And certain of these jumps control the course of brain activity.
My question is this: Are not these jumps arbitrary, and if so are we not back
in a random universe?
Stapp: These jumps are not strictly controlled by any known law of nature.
And contemporary quantum theory treats these events as random variables,
in the sense that only their statistical weights are specified by the theory:
the specific actual choice of whether this event or that event occurs is not
fixed by contemporary theory.
The fact that contemporary physical theory says nothing more than this
does not mean that science will always be so reticent. Many physicists of
today claim to believe that it is perfectly possible, and also satisfactory, for
there to be choices that simply come out of nowhere at all. I believe such
a possibility to be acceptable as an expression of our present state of scientific
knowledge, but that science should not rest complacently in that state:
it should strive to do better. And in this striving all branches of scientific
knowledge ought to be brought into play. There is currently in science a
movement toward fragmentation, reflecting the departmentalization of our
universities, whereby each discipline within science asserts its autonomy:
its right to stand alone as an independent field of study. I believe this movement
to be retrograde: that science can succeed in creating a unique plausible
picture of all of nature, including ourselves, only by accepting the scientifically
established results from all the fields and insisting on a rationally
coherent theoretical understanding of all scientifically acquired knowledge.
In this broader context the claim that the choice comes out of nowhere at
all should be regarded as an admission of contemporary ignorance, not as a
satisfactory final word.
Contemporary science certainly allows the choices to be other than
“purely random”. Indeed, in a model of the quantum world devised by
David Bohm these choices are deterministically controlled. The basic question,
however, is whether there is a rationally coherent possibility that is both
compatible with all scientifically acquired data, yet intermediate to these two
alternative possibilities of “pure chance” and “pure determinism”.
The philosopher A. N. Whitehead speaks of such an intermediate possibility,
which is closer to the intuitive idea that our choices are, in some
sense, self-determining: namely that they are conditioned by what has come
before, yet are not strictly determined by the past, but are nonetheless not
without sufficient reason. I think such a possibility is open, but to give this
logical possibility a nonspeculative foundation will require enlarging the
boundaries of scientific knowledge.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/01/2014 17:14:02
Crap.

Or, if you dislike four-letter words, philosophy.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:16:00
For those who just want to know the summary of Stapp 's work , the following interview :


At the end of the summer of 2006 Harald Atmanspacher conducted an
interview of me that appeared in the September 2006 issue of J. Consciousness
Studies (Volume 13, No. 6). Professor Atmanspacher raised
many pertinent questions that had not been dealt with in my prior
writings, and have not been adequately covered in the foregoing parts
of this book. My answers added important details to my elaboration
of von Neumann’s work. Atmanspacher’s formulations of his questions
have been widely praised, and any attempt by me to re-structure the
content of the interview would be inappropriate. I shall therefore, with
his permission, and that of JCS, reproduce that interview here:
HA: You have been actively interested in the relationship between
mind and matter for almost half a century. Shortly after receiving
your PhD at Berkeley, you went to work with Wolfgang Pauli at the
ETH in Zurich, in 1958, the year Pauli died. During that period, you
told me, you drafted a manuscript entitled Mind, Matter and Quantum
Mechanics, which was never published. But its title reappeared in your
book of 1993. What stimulated your interest so early on in your career,
and what were your ideas at that time?
HPS: 1959 was indeed early in my career as a PhD, but more than
a dozen years into my concerns with these matters. Already in high
school I had become very interested in the wave–particle puzzle, and
my driving motive in becoming a physicist was really to solve that
mystery. Looking now at my 1959 essay I find it remarkably mature.
I had a solid grasp of the technical and philosophical aspects of the
situation. I find in it today nothing that I would emend or consider
naive or deficient. It is a well-reasoned and sober assessment of the situation,
and ends with the conclusion that quantum theory “primarily
is a synthesis of the idealistic and materialistic world views. To some
extent it also reconciles the monistic and pluralistic attitudes, provides
a natural understanding of creation, and permits a reconciliation of the
deterministic aspects of nature with the action of free will.” I now say
much more about these matters, but nothing contrary to what I said
then.
HA: Since a bit more than a decade, the problem of how to relate
consciousness to brain activity has been put back onto the agenda,
first in the philosophy of mind, notably due to the courageous efforts
of David Chalmers and others. This has led to an increased attention in
other fields as well, including cognitive neuroscience, complex systems
research, evolutionary biology, and others. However, I think it is fair
to say that the mainstream position in the sciences is still that mental
activity can be reduced to brain activity in the sense that the mind
will be completely understood once the brain is completely understood.
Yet there are counterarguments against this position, for instance the
famous qualia arguments. How do you think about them, and which
of these counterarguments appear to be most striking to you?
HPS: I believe that the arguments advanced in favor of the idea that
‘understanding the brain’ entails ‘understanding the mind’ are malformed
and irrational. What does ‘understanding the brain’ mean?
What does the word ‘brain’ mean as opposed to ‘mind’? The aimedat,
and completely reasonable, meaning in this context of the phrase
‘understanding the brain’ is that this understanding should be basically
in terms of the laws and concepts of physics. If ‘understanding the
brain’ is not basically tied into understanding the brain in terms of the
laws and concepts of physics then the notions ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ are
nebulous and ill-defined, and no sharp conclusions can be reached. But
if the phrase means understanding the brain in terms of the laws and
concepts of physics then the first question is: which physics, classical
or quantum?
The answer is clear! The classical laws are fundamentally incorrect
at the ionic level at which the basic dynamics occurs, hence one must
in principle use the quantum laws and concepts. There is no rational
controversy about whether or not quantum effects occur in the brain
– of course they do! The crucial question is the extent to which the
quantum, as opposed to classical, precepts are essential for the dynamics
of the brain; and to what extent a classical approximation is valid
in a warm, wet, noisy brain?
To resolve these issues one must examine how well the possible
quantum effects can survive in an environment that is potentially lethal
to many of them. Careful analysis shows that one particular quantum
effect, the ‘quantum Zeno effect’ can survive, and indeed can play an
essential role in the causal relationship between a mind and its brain.
Of course, understanding any aspect of nature ‘completely’ may
very well entail understanding all of nature completely. But this does
not mean that understanding what physics alone can say about the
mind–brain system completely entails understanding the psychologically
described aspects completely. In fact, in the orthodox quantum
description neither of the two kinds of aspects is, by itself, dynamically
complete – rather, they complement each other. A specific problem is
that within contemporary quantum theory the physical description
does not by itself determine the occurrence or the character of certain
interventions that are needed to complete the dynamics. In actual scientific
practice the causal roots of these interventions are described in
psychological terms, e.g., in terms of the intentions of experimenters.
Thus, according to contemporary orthodox basic physical theory, but
contrary to many claims made in the philosophy of mind, the physical
domain is not causally closed. A causally open physical description
of the mind–brain obviously cannot completely account for the mind–
brain as a whole.
HA: In your articles you emphasize that your way to address the mind–
matter problem does not go beyond what you like to call ‘orthodox
quantum theory’. However, quantum physics in its usual understanding
excludes anything like mind, mental states, psyche, etc., even if
issues of observation and measurement are discussed. Obviously, most
experiments today are carried out in an entirely automatized way, so
conscious human observers are not at all needed to register a measured
outcome.
HPS: By ‘orthodox quantum theory’ I mean, specifically, versions of
quantum theory (such as the original pragmatic Copenhagen interpretation,
validated by actual scientific practice, and also von Neumann’s
extension of it) that explicitly recognize the fact that, prior to the appearance
of an experimental outcome, a particular experiment needs to
be set up. This ‘setting up’ partitions a continuum of quantum potentialities
into a finite set of discrete possibilities. A simple example of
such a partitioning is the placing of a detector of some particular size
and shape in some particular location. The distinction between the
firing and non-firing of this detector during some specified temporal
interval then induces a bifurcation of a continuous space of potentialities
into two subspaces, each correlated with a distinctive event, or
lack thereof.
Von Neumann referred to this essential physical act of partitioning
as ‘process 1’ and represented it in terms of projections onto different
subspaces. Quantum theory depends upon the injection of such process
1 interventions into the dynamical evolution of the state of the
system under study, which, except at the moments of these interventions,
is controlled by the Schroedinger equation (which von Neumann
called ‘process 2’). An adequate theory of nature must accommodate
physical process 1 actions even in situations in which no human agent
seems to be involved. These interventions into the physical dynamics
are perhaps the most radical innovation of quantum theory, vis-`a-vis
classical physics.
HA: If the formal structure of orthodox quantum theory remains unchanged
in your approach, this can only mean that it also remains
restricted to the material aspects of reality. This implies that, in order
to include the mental domain, you have to invoke truly substantial
additions to your framework of thinking, which are outside the realm
of established physics. For this purpose you must have an ontology
which (i) is consistent with our knowledge of (quantum) physics; (ii)
allows a plausible incorporation of the mental, and (iii) provides ideas
about how the two are related to each other – quite a program! How
would you briefly sketch such an ontology?
HPS: In the first place, the structure of orthodox quantum theory
allows us to make statistical predictions about correlations between
initially known experimental conditions and the knowledge gleaned
from their experienced outcomes. In Bohr’s words (Bohr 1963, p. 60):
“Strictly speaking, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics
and electrodynamics merely offers rules of calculation for deduction
of expectations about observations obtained under well-defined experimental
conditions specified by classical physical concepts.” In this
sense, quantum theory concerns directly (i) the creation and experiencing
of “well defined conditions specified by classical physical concepts”;
(ii) the experiencing of outcomes of these actions; and (iii) certain predictions
concerning relations among these two kinds of experiences. An
adequate conceptual framework must provide an understanding of our
role in the creation of conditions that will allow us to make quantum
predictions pertaining to our resulting experiences.
In short, already the orthodox version of quantum mechanics, unlike
classical mechanics, is not about a physical world detached from
experiences; detached from minds. It is about predictions of relationships
– entailed by a particular theoretical structure – between certain
specified kinds of experiences.
The natural ontology for quantum theory, and most particularly for
relativistic quantum field theory, has close similarities to key aspects
of Whitehead’s process ontology. Both are built around psychophysical
events and objective tendencies (Aristotelian ‘potentia’, according
to Heisenberg) for these events to occur. On Whitehead’s view, as
expressed in his Process and Reality (Whitehead 1978), reality is constituted
of ‘actual occasions’ or ‘actual entities’, each one of which is
associated with a unique extended region in spacetime, distinct from
and non-overlapping with all others. Actual occasions actualize what
was antecedently merely potential, but both the potential and the actual
are real in an ontological sense. A key feature of actual occasions
is that they are conceived as ‘becomings’ rather than ‘beings’ – they
are not substances such as Descartes’ res extensa and res cogitans, or
material and mental states: they are processes.
HA: So what you suggest is to start from the ontologically neutral
Copenhagen interpretation and supplement it with an ontology that
is different from all other ontological interpretations of quantum theory
that we know of. It combines Heisenberg’s ontology of potentia
with Whitehead’s process ontology. Let us first talk about Heisenberg’s
ideas, and how they go beyond the picture of a materially tangible reality.
HPS: In his Physics and Philosophy, Heisenberg (1958b, p. 50) asked:
“What happens ‘really’ in an atomic event?” He referred to events as
happenings: “Observation [. . . ] selects of all possible events the one
that has actually happened [. . . ]. Therefore, the transition from ‘possible’
to ‘actual’ takes place during the act of observation” (Heisenberg
1958b, p. 54).
Heisenberg’s ontology is about sudden events and about ‘objective
tendencies’ for such events to happen. The natural ontological
character of the ‘physical’ aspect of quantum theory, namely the part
described in terms of a wave function or quantum state, is that of a ‘potentia’
or ‘tendency’ for an event to happen. Tendencies for events to
happen are not substance-like: they are not static or persisting in time.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:16:56
When a detection event happens in one region, the objective tendency
for such an event to occur elsewhere changes abruptly. Such behavior
does not conform to the philosophical conception of a substance.
Thus, neither the event nor its tendency to happen are ontologically
substantive or self-sufficient: they are intrinsically connected to one another.
Descartes’ identification of two different ‘substances’ in reality is
neither helpful for nor concordant with quantum theory. However, the
conception of two differently described aspects of reality accords with
both the theoretical and the practical elements of quantum theory.
HA: Whitehead’s ontology is particularly radical insofar as it considers
process as primordial, not substance – substance as understood
in a philosophical sense. This is in contradistinction to all established
sciences and almost all mainstream philosophy. How do you see the
chances to establish a process ontology in the sciences?
HPS: Heisenberg never fully reconciled his ontological ideas with the
epistemological stance of the Copenhagen interpretation. Chapter 3 of
Physics and Philosophy (Heisenberg 1958b) is clearly an effort to bring
these two aspects together. But to bring them successfully together in
a rationally coherent and intellectually satisfying scheme requires one
to say something about how the particular event that actually occurs
comes to be selected.
Heisenberg did not address this issue, but Whitehead’s account
aims to explain it. Whitehead’s fundamental process is the process
of combining the pre-existing psychologically and physically described
aspects of reality together to form a new psychophysical actual entity,
or actual occasion, that is identifiable as an actual event (`a la Heisenberg),
whose physical manifestation is represented by a von Neumann
process 1 action. I am merely proposing that Heisenberg’s incomplete
ontology be completed by accepting what I regard as Whitehead’s main
ideas. The aim of this approach is to understand how the psychological
and physical aspects of reality conspire to select the events that
actually occur. It allows the basically anthropocentric features of the
pragmatic epistemological Copenhagen interpretation to be embedded
within the general framework of a non-anthropocentric world process.
HA: So introducing Whitehead not only brings in process; it also, at the
same time, integrates the psychologically described and the physically
described aspects of reality into an overall processual dynamics.
HPS: Yes. And getting now to your question about the possibility of
infiltrating these ideas in science, I need to stress that the core idea
that the events in our streams of consciousness are two-way causally
linked to events in the physical world lies at the intuitive heart of our
daily dealings with reality. A theory that breaks this link is highly
counterintuitive, and is also difficult to really make sense of, either in
everyday life or in scientific practice.
School children during the mechanical age were readily able to accept
the idea that the solid appearance of a table was an illusion;
that the table was ‘actually’ mostly empty space, with tiny particles
whirling around inside. How much easier will it be for future scientists
growing up in the age of information, computers and flashing pixels
to accept the idea of a world made of events and of potentialities for
these events to occur?
My point here is that our most profound and deeply held intuition
is not about the nature of the external physical world. It is rather
that our human thoughts and efforts can make a difference in the
behavior of our bodies. Our entire lives are based squarely on this
perpetually re-validated intuition, as opposed to the proclamation of
some philosophers, that our direct awareness of the physical efficacy
of our thoughts is an illusion. The Heisenberg/Whitehead quantum
ontology is thus concordant with both our most basic intuitions and
with actual scientific practice. For this reason, I don’t see why it should
be difficult to shift science over to this improved way of conceptualizing
nature and our role in nature.
HA: Whitehead treats matter and mind in terms of physical and mental
poles of an actual occasion. This has the flavor of a dual-aspect
approach, for which a number of other examples exist, such as Pauli’s,
Bohm’s, Chalmers’, or Velmans’. How do they differ from Whitehead’s
thinking, and from your own?
HPS: Pauli, in his discussion with Bohr about the notion of a ‘detached
observer’, emphasized that the questions we pose cause nature
some ‘trouble’. The actions that instantiate these questions are the
logically needed process 1 partitionings described by von Neumann.
My work carries forward Pauli’s emphasis on this crucial point, but
I remain so far uninfected by his speculations about archetypes and
the like. Bohm’s approach to consciousness brings in an infinite tower
of explicate and implicate orders, each one ‘in-forming’ the one below
and ‘in-formed’ by the one above. This picture is altogether different
from the much more concrete Whiteadian quantum ontology. Chalmers
appears to be moving in the right direction, but I believe he lacks a
sufficiently firm grasp of quantum theory to be able to develop his
approach in a way that I think would be fruitful. Velmans proposes
an “ontological monism combined with an epistemological dualism” in
which the quantum-induced failure of causal closure at the microphysical
level is compensated for by a causal closure at the neurophysiological
level. However, our conscious experiences are ontological realities
in their own right, not mere epistemological bits of knowledge. So the
claim of ontological monism seems unnatural, and the possibility of
uncontrolled microscopic fluctuations exploding into uncontrolled neurophysiological
fluctuations makes problematic the claim of dynamical
completeness at the neurophysiological level.
But why go that route at all when quantum theory offers the possibility
of bona fide straightforward real influences of conscious efforts
upon physical brains, and consequently upon bodily behavior, without
any demand of a causal closure of the physical at any level? Why hang
onto one of the most controversial aspects of a materialist worldview,
namely the notion that the causal efficacy of our conscious efforts is
an illusion, when orthodox quantum theory seems to say just the opposite,
and moreover provides the technical means for implementing
the causal efficacy of our efforts?
HA: What about panpsychism, a key feature of both dual-aspect types
of approaches and Whitehead’s ontology? At which point in biological
evolution do you think that the psychological aspect, the mental pole
of actual occasions, becomes manifest? Or does it go all the way down
to elementary particles?
HPS: Reduction events cannot act microscopically on individual particles.
That would destroy the oft-observed interference effects. So we
do not have end-to-end ‘panpsychism’. Indeed, von Neumann’s analysis
of the measurement problem shows that it is nearly impossible
to establish, below the level of human involvement, any failure of the
unitary law (process 2) of purely physically determined evolution. The
need for actual occasions even at the human level derives only from
the philosophical commitment to accept as the foundation of objective
science the outcomes of experiments “regarding which we are able to
communicate to others what we have done and what we have learned”
(Bohr 1963, p. 3). At present, we lack the empirical evidence needed
to specify, on objective scientific grounds, the details of the embedding
non-anthropocentric ontology which Whitehead’s ideas demand. But
we are certainly not yet at the end of science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 05/01/2014 17:18:16
More crap.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:19:08

HA: As to the physical pole of Whitehead’s actual occasions, you suggest
a drastic reinterpretation, or better a major extension, of von Neumann’s
account of quantum measurement (von Neumann 1955/1932,
Chaps. 5 and 6). While von Neumann discussed the physical aspects
of measurement only, you refer to Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s distinction
of (i) choices made by an observer (or experimenter) in terms of
questions that are posed to nature and (ii) choices made by nature in
order to answer those questions. The second aspect clearly refers to
physics and places us in the role of detached observers, i.e., as ‘impotent
witnesses’. However, the first aspect introduces intentional actions
by conscious human beings, at least if controlled experiments are discussed.
As such, it escapes a purely physical discussion and points to
the causal gap that you indicated above.
HPS: Von Neumann, the mathematician, described the purely physical
aspect of the probing action, whereas Bohr, as physicist–philosopher,
described the enveloping conceptual structure needed to tie the mathematical
formalism to the activities and the knowledge of human beings.
Bohr’s pragmatic epistemology rationally accommodates the process 1
partitioning that is not understandable from within the causal framework
provided by the mathematical formalism alone. This deficiency
in the purely physical description is the causal gap. Bohr’s pragmatic
epistemology, eschewing ontological commitments, fills this gap by referring
to the free choices of human beings. But Whiteheadian quantum
ontology accepts in reality what Bohr accepts only pragmatically,
namely the idea that our conscious intentions cause, at least in part,
our intentional actions. This can be achieved by regarding the quantum
reduction events to be the physical manifestations of the termination
of a psychophysical process. Bohr’s free choices are the psychological
correlate of such a process 1 action, and, conversely, von Neumann’s
process 1 actions are the physical correlates of these conscious choices.
The physical and psychological aspects of reality are thus tied together
in the notion of a quantum event.
Within orthodox thinking, the physical process 1 action results
from, as von Neumann’s words emphasize, an intervention from outside
the physically described domain. This process has, according to
contemporary quantum theory, no sufficient causal roots in the physical
alone. The experimenter’s ‘free choice’ participates in the selection
of the needed partition that physical processes alone are unable to
achieve. It is then the job of a satisfactory ontology to place these anthropocentric
elements of human effortful attention within a broader
non-anthropocentric conception of reality.
Ontological uniformity requires, plausibly, every such quantum
event to have some experiential or felt component. But it does not
require every actual occasion to have the full richness of a fully developed
‘high-grade’ human experience. The richness of the experience
would naturally be expected to be correlated with the complexity of
the physical system upon which von Neumann’s process 1 acts.
HA: The correlation between physical state reduction (via projection)
and mental subjective experience is posited as an assumption in your
ontology, but it certainly does not follow from quantum theory! It is
very much analogous to von Neumann’s assumption of a psychophysical
parallelism of brain and mind. Although von Neumann sometimes
alludes to the mind (‘abstract ego’), he actually refers to the brain in
his discussion of quantum measurement.
HPS: Von Neumann focused on the mathematics, and avoided getting
overly enmeshed in philosophical issues of interpreting quantum
theory. But Heisenberg, speaking from the pragmatic epistemological
perspective, said: “The observation itself changes the probability function
discontinuously; it selects of all possible events the actual one that
has taken place” (Heisenberg 1958b, p. 54). Thus, Heisenberg tied the
mathematically described reduction events to the process of ‘observation’.
In order to have a useful scientific theory one needs to link the mathematics
to the perceptual aspects of our experience. The mathematical
structure of quantum theory is such that the classical materialist accounts
of the physical aspects of nature simply do not work. To achieve
a conceptualization that ties the new mathematics to actual empirical
scientific practice, in a rationally coherent and practically useful
way, the founders of quantum theory switched to a conceptualization
of the physical world based upon empirical events, such as the click of
a Geiger counter, and upon potentialities for such events to occur. The
mathematics thereby becomes linked to empirical phenomena within
the theory itself.
HA: The notion of an interaction between mind and matter, as in your
recent paper (Stapp 2005) on ‘interactive dualism’, may be somewhat
misleading. It seems to me that things are much more subtle than
a straightforward interaction between the mental and the physical
(which one might naively interpret as basically similar to a collision of
billiard balls). The proposal by Eccles, whose physical features were
worked out by Beck, has this overly simplistic appeal because some
‘mental force’ is assumed to act directly on synaptic, i.e. material,
transport processes. Your picture is definitely much more subtle: the
requirement that physical and mental outcomes of an actual occasion
must match, i.e., be correlated, acts as a constraint on the way in which
these outcomes are formed within the actual occasion. So the notion
of an interaction should be replaced by the notion of a constraint set
by mind–matter correlations.
HPS: It would indeed be misleading to understand the ‘action of mind
upon brain’ directly via a ‘force’. The effect is associated with a modulation
of the frequency of certain process 1 actions that act directly
upon large-scale (brain-sized) patterns of neurological activity. This
modulation of frequencies is achieved, strictly within the pragmatic
framework (that is, without any of Whitehead’s ontological superstructure)
by exploiting certain human ‘free choices’ that are allowed within
that pragmatic framework. This language suggests that the conscious
act is the cause, and the correlated physical process 1 action is the effect.
This interpretation ties the theory most naturally and directly to
actual scientific practice. In actual practice the experimenter chooses
on the basis of reasons and goals which of the experimental options will
be pursued, within the array of possibilities that the structure of the
physical theory provides. Bohr (1958, p. 73) spoke, accordingly, of “the
free choice of experimental arrangement for which the mathematical
structure of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the appropriate
latitude”. We are dealing here with the sophisticated way in which
mental intention influences quantum processes in the brain. Ideas do
not simply push classically conceived particles around!
HA: A major point in your ontological framework is that physical state
reduction and mental subjective experience jointly constitute the transition
from the continuous and the potential to the discrete and the
actual. Another significant issue is the contrast between instantaneous
projections, which von Neumann introduced as an idealization that he
characterized as ‘not enjoyable’, versus an objective dynamical process
of measurement that takes time, as advocated by a number of physicists.
For instance, Penrose strongly argues that way in his speculations
about mind and matter. Of course, this would require an individual
rather than a statistical description of quantum measurement, of which
no broadly accepted version is available so far.
HPS: The mathematical neatness of instantaneous (along a spacelike
surface) reduction makes it the better option, technically and mathematically,
and I see no reason to complicate the dynamics by smearing
out in time the reduction events. Indeed, to do so would confuse everything,
since the smearing would not be strictly confined, and hence
process 2 would never hold rigorously.
The fact that we experience process as involving duration is adequately
explained by James’ ‘marching band’ metaphor. Each instantaneous
‘snap shot’ corresponding to a single experience would catch
the components of brain activity correlated with the various stages
from just beginning to be experienced, to full blown vivid consciousness,
to fading out. This structure creates the impression that the
experience has duration, although it is really instantaneous – or confined
to a spacelike surface, when mapped into real spacetime (Stapp
1993/2004, Sect. 6.6).
HA: For details of what happens at the mental pole of an actual occasion,
the notions of attention and intention according to William
James in combination with your concept of a ‘template for action’ figure
prominently in your work, e.g., in Stapp (1999) and in Schwartz,
Stapp, and Beauregard (2005). Could you outline how these terms are
related to one another?
HPS: A template for action is defined to be a macroscopic (extending
over a large portion of the brain) pattern of neurological activity that,
if held in place for a sufficiently long period, will tend to produce a
brain activity that will tend to produce an intended experienced feedback.
This pattern of brain activity is the neural correlate (specified
by a process 1 action) of a conscious effort to act in an intended way.
William James (1892, p. 227) says that “no object can catch our attention
except by the neural machinery. But the amount of attention that
an object receives after it has caught our attention is another matter.
It often takes effort to keep mind upon it. We feel we can make more
or less of the effort as we choose. [. . . ] This feeling [. . . ] will deepen
and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else
would fade away more quickly.”
Effort is a particular feature of consciousness that we feel we can
control, and that has the effect of intensifying experience. Hence it is
reasonable to suppose that increasing effort increases the rate at which
conscious events are occurring. If the rate becomes sufficiently great
then the quantum Zeno effect will, according to the quantum laws,
kick in, and the repetitious interventions of the probing actions will
tend to hold in place the template for action. That effect will, in turn,
tend to make the intended action occur. By virtue of this dynamically
explained causal effect of willful conscious effort upon brain activity,
trial-and-error learning should hone the correlation between the consciously
experienced intention and an associated template for action
that produces, via the physical laws, the intended feedback. This explains
dynamically the capacity of an effortful intention to bring about
its intended consequence.
HA: From a psychological point of view, one might distinguish a series
of steps: from a mental state with a particular intensity of attention
to the shift of that attention and finally to an intention to make a
decision, which is correlated with a neural template for action. This
template precedes the action – it is not already the action itself. Are
there empirically accessible psychological observables for these different
steps?
HPS: Actions include brain actions that control or guide other brain
actions. The theory says that each of the different experienced stages
should occur in conjunction with a different template for action. For
instance, the actualization of one early template could tend to set
in motion a multi-component sequence leading from neural activity
somewhere in the cortex to activity in the motor cortex to muscular
activity.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:19:54

HA: Concerning the neural correlates of such psychological states and
observables, we need the notion of a neural assembly. If you assume
that such neural assemblies are subject to a quantum Zeno effect,
this requires that they be in an unstable state, such as a quantum
superposition, or an entangled state. How do you think this condition
can be realized for an assembly of thousands of neurons?
HPS: Environmental decoherence effects will reduce the entire brain
state in question (represented by a reduced density matrix) to a statistical
mixture of states each of which is essentially a slightly smeared
out classically conceived possible state of the entire brain. This decomposition
of the state of the brain into a mixture of almost-classical
states is very useful in connection with this theory. It allows neuroscientists
to quite accurately conceive of the brain as a collection of
almost-classical possibilities that continually diffuse into more diversified
collections, but that are occasionally trimmed back, in association
with a conscious experience, to the subcollection compatible with that
experience. These processes all involve, or can involve, assemblies of
thousands or millions of neurons.
HA: What do you mean by “slightly smeared out” and “almostclassical”?
If you have some remaining quantum features in the brain
state – which you need for the quantum Zeno effect to act – you must
assume that the brain state was a quantum state to begin with. How
is such a state constituted, or prepared? Or do you assume that every
system is fundamentally a quantum system which, under the influence
of its environment, decoheres more or less rapidly into classical
subsystems?
HPS: By “slightly smeared out” and “almost-classical” I mean what
you would get from a classically conceived state if you replaced each
point particle by a very tiny continuous cloud of possibilities. Each
physical system – including a brain or a template for action – inherits
quantum features from the quantum state of the universe as a whole.
In the case of a brain, decoherence mechanisms are acting strongly at
all times, and they never allow its state to be anything other than a
mixture of almost-classical (i.e., slightly smeared out) states. Hence
the classical intuitions of neuroscience about the brain are generally
valid, except for two things. Firstly, at almost every instant the cloud
of possibilities is growing and diffusing into a wider set of possibili
ties which, however, every once in a while (at a reduction event) gets
reduced to a subset. Secondly, the diffusing action can be curtailed
by the quantum Zeno effect which arises from the small, but nonzero,
quantum smearing of each one of the almost-classical components.
In this way, the brain is described strictly quantum mechanically,
yet it can be understood to be very similar to a classical statistical
ensemble. Importantly, the relevance of the quantum aspects for
consciousness is not due to some macroscopic quantum superposition
effect, which would be extremely hard to realize. The pertinent nonclassical
feature is the occasional occurrence of a sudden reduction of
the ensemble to a sub-ensemble that is compatible with the content of
a co-occurring conscious experience.
The occurrences of such reductions are logically possible because
the state of the brain represents not an evolving material substance
but rather an evolving set of potentialities for a psychophysical event
to occur. The occurrences of such reductions are logically necessary because
the expanding ensemble of almost classical states is a continuous
structure that must be decomposed into a collection of discrete alternatives,
each associated with a distinct kind of experience. It is only
by means of this partitioning that the theory is tied securely to human
experiences, and to the empirically validated rules of quantum theory.
The smear of almost-classical possibilities must be partitioned, prior
to each experience, into a specified collection of components at least
one of which corresponds to a distinctive experience, or lack thereof.
HA: As you said before, brain states or templates for action cannot be
Zeno-stabilized simply by the direct action of something like a mental
force – this would lead to the same basic problem that Eccles has with
his proposal for a direct mental influence on synaptic processes. So
what do you concretely assume at the neural level that is capable of
exerting a quantum Zeno effect upon the template for action?
HPS: As an example, let us suppose that the occurring process 1 action
partitions the state of the brain into two parts. One of them, the
‘Yes’ part, is the neural correlate of the mental intent to, say, ‘raise the
arm’. This neural correlate is a template for action. The immediately
felt psychological effect of an increased intentional effort is an intensified
experience of the projected intended feedback. These projected
experiences are constructed from the memories of earlier experiences,
as discussed in Stapp (1993, Sect. 6).
Now the timings of the process 1 actions are an aspect of the ‘free
choice’ on the part of the human observer. It is therefore plausible
to conjecture that the effort-induced increase in the intensity of the
projected intended experience is caused by an increase in the observercontrolled
rate at which the associated process 1 actions are occurring.
If the essentially identical process 1 actions occur in sufficiently rapid
succession, then the associated neural correlate (i.e., the template for
action) will be held in place by the quantum Zeno effect. The resulting
persistent neural pattern of activity will then tend to cause the
intended action to occur. The effect of the effort-induced increase in
the rate of the process 1 probing actions is thus to hold in place the
entire macroscopic template for action. The dynamical effect, via the
neural machinery, of this holding in place is the likely occurrence of
the intended action.
This scenario differs in two important ways from the proposal by
Beck and Eccles. First, the action does not take place at the synaptic,
i.e., microscopic, level: the effect is directly upon the entire template
for action, specified by von Neumann’s process 1 action. And, in answer
to your question about ‘mental force’, there is no action of any
forces, mental or otherwise, upon the parts of a material substrate: no
pushing around of the atoms in a way that produces, in some totally
miraculous and unaccountable way, the action that the person has in
mind. No! The effect of the effort is on an entire macroscopic neural
pattern of brain activity. This pattern has been singled out by von
Neumann’s process 1 action and is held in place by the quantum Zeno
effect. By coupling von Neumann’s dynamical rules to learning, one
can rationally account for the observed – and essential for human life
and survival – correspondence between experienced intent and experienced
feedback.
HA: After all, this amounts to an overall theoretical picture that offers
a strong sense of formal and conceptual coherence and is intuitively
appealing in a number of respects, but also confronts us with a remarkable
degree of complexity. What do you think: Is there any chance
that empirical work can confirm or falsify particular features of your
approach?
HPS: First of all, it is evidently forever impossible to falsify, by empirical
data alone, the opposing blatant assertion that the apparent
causal efficacy of our conscious efforts is an illusion. It is impossible
to disprove empirically the physicalist contention that our conscious
experiences are merely causally irrelevant pyrotechnics that seem to
be influencing the course of bodily events, but are, in reality, merely
impotent by-products of causally self-sufficient neural activities. But
what rational argument could adequately justify such an outrageous
and completely unsupported claim? Like solipsism, such a claim cannot
be empirically falsified, but only rejected on the grounds of its lack
of reasonableness and utility.
During the nineteenth century, before the precepts of classical
physics had been shown to be fundamentally false, scientists and
philosophers had some sound reasons to conjecture that the physical
aspects of reality were causally closed. However, even then this
led to an unreasonableness noted by William James (1890, p. 138):
consciousness seems to be “an organ, superadded to the other organs
which maintain the animal in its struggle for existence; and the presumption
of course is that it helps him in some way in this struggle,
just as they do. But it cannot help him without being in some way efficacious
and influencing the course of his bodily history.” James went
on to examine the circumstances under which consciousness appears,
and ended up saying: “The conclusion that it is useful is, after all this,
quite justifiable. But if it is useful it must be so through its causal
efficaciousness, and the automaton-theory must succumb to commonsense”
(James 1890, p. 144).
That was James’s conclusion even at a time when classical physical
theory seemed irrefutable, and the thesis of brains as mechanical
automata was rationally supported by physics-based legs. Today, however,
classical physics has been superseded by a theory with causal
gaps that need to be filled in some way, and that can be filled by allowing
our efforts to do what they seem to be doing. Embedded in
an adequate ontology, quantum theory has the technical capacity to
explain how a person’s conscious efforts can influence his or her bodily
actions. Consequently, there is now no rational reason whatsoever to
reject William James’s persuasive argument.
Beyond these philosophical considerations one can reasonably claim
that the entire body of neuropsychological experimentation is confirmatory
of this theory. All the data, to the extent that they are precise
enough to say anything about the relationship between mind and
brain, are in line with this theory. A large number of particular empirical
findings in neuropsychology and in the psychology of attention
are discussed in Schwartz, Stapp, and Beauregard (2005).
HA: The current support for this novel picture, especially as far as
cognitive neuroscience is concerned, is merely qualitative though.
HPS: Well, there are plenty of ways to falsify the quantum model. It
demands close connections between the psychological and the physical
aspects of psychophysical events. This includes, in particular, the
putative attention-induced quantum Zeno effect of holding in place
the templates for intentional action. But there is evidently no way
to counter the claim that whatever connections are empirically found
are exactly what the it’s-all-an-illusion proponents could claim that
their theory allows. For that position has no theoretical foundation in
established physics, and hence no basis upon which to falsify it.
Many scientists and philosophers have forced themselves to accept
the rationally unsatisfactory and unsupported physicalist position in
the mistaken belief that this is what basic physical theory demands.
But the converse is true: contemporary physical theory demands certain
interventions into the physical! The associated causal gap in a
purely physically determined causation provides a natural opening to
an interactive but non-Cartesian dualism.
HA: Since your approach does emphatically refer to attention, intention
and, if I may use this term, ‘free will’, it must have ethical implications.
Would you say that proper ethical behavior can be facilitated or
even entailed by reflecting and realizing the ontological conditions of
a given situation? Or, conversely, is that ethical misbehavior a consequence
of lacking insight of appropriate ontological conditions? Might
a processually conceived quantum theory, comprehending both psychological
and physical aspects of nature, provide insights that could
underpin a science-based rational ethical theory?
HPS: Behavior, insofar as it concerns ethics, is guided by conscious
reflection and evaluation. It is not mere unreflective response. The
output of such reflections and evaluations depends, of course, on the
input, and the core of the effective input is the individual’s self-image
in relation to his or her conception of the situation in which he or
she is embedded. One’s weighting of the welfare of the whole, and
one’s sensitivity to the feelings of others will surely be enhanced when
the individual sees his or her own judgments and efforts as causally
effective – hence important – inputs into a cooperative effort to develop
the vast yet-to-be-fixed potentialities of a quantum universe that, as
Bohr emphasized, can be properly conceived only as an intricately
interconnected whole.
Such a comprehension of self stands in strong contrast to an image
of the self as a cog in a pre-ordained mechanical universe – a cog
that thinks of his or her strenuous efforts to choose rightly as making
no actual difference whatever in the course of physical events. Such
a degradation in self-image will undoubtedly be correlated with a debasement
in behavior. Conversely, what you call ethical misbehavior
would surely be diminished by a shift in self-image from mechanical
cog to quantum player.
HA: If this is extended beyond individual human beings, it must also
have implications for human societies and their ways to interact with
each other.
HPS: The proposition, foisted upon us by a materialism based on classical
physics – that we human beings are essentially mechanical automata,
with every least action and thought fixed from the birth of
the universe by microscopic clockwork-like mechanisms – has created
enormous difficulties for ethical theory. These difficulties lie like the
plague on Western culture, robbing its citizens of any rational basis
for self-esteem or self-respect, or esteem or respect for others. Quantum
physics, joined to a natural embedding ontology, brings our human
minds squarely into the dynamical workings of nature. With our physically
efficacious minds now integrated into the unfolding of uncharted
and yet-to-be-plumbed potentialities of an intricately interconnected
whole, the responsibility that accompanies the power to decide things
on the basis of one’s own thoughts, ideas, and judgments is laid upon
us. This leads naturally and correctly to a concomitant elevation in
the dignity of our persons and the meaningfulness of our lives. Ethical
theory is thereby supplied with a rationally coherent foundation that
an automaton account cannot match.
But beyond supplying a rational foundation for Western culture,
the rooting of ethics in science, with its universal character and appeal,
shifts values toward the ecumenical, and away from those aspects of
religions that are hostile to, and preach violence against, followers of
other faiths. Such a shift is sorely needed today.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:22:09
More crap.

You're on a science forum, remember , that's no way to reply , behave ,please .
QT is more of a metaphysical philosophical view of the world = mind-dependent ,remember .
Stapp is a quantum physicist with more than 50 years of experience on the field , you cannot call that monumental work of his just ...crap , "scientist " ,can you ?
Are you unable to understand what Stapp has been saying ? = that's more like it .
So, don't try to hide your ignorance on the subject behind vulgar insults , the latter are no "arguments ",silly .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:35:12
All that happened was scientists around the world said "that makes sense, thank you, and it's worth a Nobel Prize".

Which is why science is good, philosophy bad.
Absolutely alan, and that's the reason why this thread is without significant value. Nothing but speculation and philosophy, making no honest attempt to follow the scientific method.

QT is mind-dependent , and hence world-views dependent , since consciousness is shaped by the corresponding world view .
Stapp and others whose excerpts i have been posting have not been using the scientific method ,according to you ?
Stapp that's a quantum physicist with more than 50 years of experience on the field : was he using the alien method then ?
............
Pearls are not for ...swine, remember .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:39:11
dlorde , Ethos :

As some scientist or thinker said : " matter is not made of matter ",so to speak : see the revolutionary non-classical and anti-classical conception of matter and that of the physical reality which have been provided by ...QM :
We might be thus not made of any physical or other substance : the universe , including ourselves , might be just a "matter"  of probability distribution in the 'forms " of actions , potentialities , possibilities, events ....as some scientists modern physicists such as Stapp, Walker and others think the universe is .
Who knows ?
So, try to be up to date by realising the revolutionary character of QM in that and in other regards ,instead of sticking to your own absurd outdated false and superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics ....
Good luck .
Lol! keep attacking that straw man - but don't forget that what seems new and exciting to you now is not necessarily new to everyone else [::)]

I am talking here about theories of consciousness which are consistent with the 20th century contemporary science and with QM thus , the latter that have been refuting the materialist mechanical determinist classical view of the world : see my newly posted excerpts today on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:44:42
Come on, be serious : have you read all those excerpts  already , i just posted  ? Impossible ,unless you do possess some sort of a sophisticated scanner  of some sort haha implanted  in your brain or rather mind .
A sophisticated scanner - like eyes? they can be quite effective for reading, and fast enough if you don't read aloud  [::)]

Quote
Stapp talked about the history genesis and developement of mind-dependent quantum theory ,through  Von Neumann and beyond , and much more ...from the original Copenhagen interpretation , before after and beyond through Dennett's classical conservation of energy "argument " ....and much more ....

All that is addressed by Stapp's excerpts i just posted , and more .
Not much wrong with Stapp's physics history, although he understandably focuses on the QM interpretation that suits his purpose.

Where does he address any of Dawson's criticisms (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf)?

Quote
P.S.: Biology, neurobiology microbiology  has been becoming more and more mechanical and materialist , unlike QM that have been moving in the opposite and totally different direction, no wonder thus that you , dlorde ,as a biologist ,  have been becoming more and more materialist mechanical, as if QM do not exist .
Way to go, scientist .
You couldn't have got that more wrong ('not even wrong' as they say). QM is at the heart of the biochemistry that underlies biology, with a great deal of recent work and many new discoveries, like the unexpected use of quantum effects in the optimization of electron transfer in photosynthesis (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620142932.htm), and quantum coherence in the magnetoreception of robins (http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/110121.html); some people are calling it 'Quantum Biology' (though it's not a popular monicker).
Quote
So, you need to grasp and incorporate QT into your materialist classical mechanical world view ,just to find out that they are ...incompatible , the former has been superseding and refuting the latter : congratulations and condolences .
Lol! - BTDTGTTS years ago. QM is nearly 100 years old - You just posted its history - it's been the standard formulation for atomic physics since the late 1920s; it's been widely accepted and taught as mainstream physics for many years - it may be new and exciting to you, but you haven't just rediscovered it [:o)]

I'm beginning to think the Dunning-Kruger Effect is involved here  [;)]

Wrong : Stapp did address all that in his major books : " Mind ,matter ,and quantum mechanics " and "Mindful universe and quantum mechanics " : those specific parts of those books are 2 lengthy to post + 2 technical mostly ,for people here to read .

He also addressed Dennett's "Cartesian theater " and other lunatics materialists ' 'arguments " as well .

And yes, biology neurology microbiology have been classical, as if QM has never existed : see my newly posted excerpts on the subject as well .

P.S.: See Stapp's interview here above regarding the absurd and false materialist " mind is in the brain, or the mind is just brain activity " bullshit ,among many other things concerning his work , while you're at it then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 17:56:09
However plausible, or otherwise, Stapp's QM speculations, none of it would be necessary if he wasn't trying to support an incoherent model or definition of free will; and however he reaches the quantum superposition of states he wants free will to resolve, he's left with the unsustainable homunculus of free will, and a quantum version of Dennett's Cartesian Theatre.

With Don's facile version, if you start with an unsupportable a-priori assumption such as 'consciousness must be immaterial', you are quite likely to end up trying to deny contrary evidence (as we saw), and chasing less transparently obvious versions like Stapp's; but they are both built with the same flaw in their foundations, and both can be discarded as redundant simply by accepting a simpler interpretation of free will as the sense of agency accompanying a decision or action.

Don seems to have a religious underlay for his immaterial dogma, but I wonder what Stapp's excuse reason is?

(Prior note : QT is mind -dependent , Von Neumann and others have proved the fact , mathematically and empirically , that the measurement problem in QM can only be solved by concluding that the intervention of a non-physical process outside of the laws of physics might be the explanation of that = the mind of the observer .
So, my world view or belief is consistent with what modern 20th century science and QM have been saying on the subject ,relatively speaking .
It's you that have been starting with a false facile  materialist ideological belief assumption regarding the nature of reality , and hence regarding that of the mind,a false materialist belief assumption you have been equating with science  thus ,so, you were just projecting again .)
There is nothing more coherent than Stapp's work .His free will model is the best so far and it is consistent with our intuitive experiences on the subject as well , unlike the counter-intuitive absurd materialist mechanical classical determinism bullshit .
No, Stapp was not doing what you said here above : how can you speculate so widely about the man's work without having a complete view  about it , by just repeating  what others said in that regard .....
Did you read his books or follow his work , obviously not .
Did you read those excerpts of his books i have been posting , obviously not .

Or you have been doing all  that ,relatively speaking ,   just through your materialist mind : Stapp's scientific mind-dependent QT that was built on those of the founders of QT ,  is evidence enough for the fact that we all do view the world through our respective world views that shape our consciousness , and hence our behaviours , thoughts , actions, ethics ...

Do you know how he responded to Dennett and others , and what models he proposed in order to solve some dilemmas and apparent flaws of dualism ? Obviously not .

Stapp has not been Cartesian ,  he does not view reality as being made of 2 different separate substances ,no : he's a dualist in the sense that reality has 2 aspects or rather processes...........that do 'conspire " to actualize certain specific actions events potentialities from a wide range of existing possibilities , events , potentialities ...waiting to happen .

The universe thus ,including ourselves, might be "made " of no physical or other substance , just of processes , possibilities, events , actions, potentialities ...Who knows ?

Science is just an evolutionary process,remember , just about approximate conjectural knowledge , not about the truth , so, Stapp's work is certainly not the final stage or word on the subject .

Stapp has been innovative ,intelligent , visionary ,  honest and couragoeus enough as to challenge and go beyond the current false materialist mainstream classical mechanical determinist "scientific world view " , thanks to QM :

So, just have the decency to shut up then .

As a superseded outdated materialist , you're irrelevant  and totally uninteresting , obviously  .
You cannot but view reality just through the false outdated and superseded mechanical classical determinist materialist key hole version of reality ,despite the fact that QM have been dualist and hence have been refuting classical materialism, together with its mechanical classical determinism ...

Your materialist world view shapes your consciousness ,and hence your thoughts , behaviour ,ethics , actions ...as the mind -dependent QT proves that fact to be correct : we all do view the world through our respective world views or beliefs indeed .

And i am not religiously motivated in all of this,once again  : i have just been trying to show to the people here how the 19th century materialism is a false outdated and superseded belief that's no science , even though materialism has ben equated with science for so long now .

Stapp has been motivated by what QM have been telling him , that's his scientific 'excuse " or reason ....
Amazing .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 05/01/2014 18:11:58
No end to the crap........

But that's why I keep coming back, why spend all my time listening to logical science when I can make fun of philosophy and those who stake their reputation on it's IMMATERIAL so-called evidence?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 18:36:30
No end to the crap........

But that's why I keep coming back, why spend all my time listening to logical science when I can make fun of philosophy and those who stake their reputation on it's IMMATERIAL so-called evidence?

(Why do you keep  on  imitating others , i wonder : even monkeys are not really imitators )

Well, coming from you , that's a real compliment indeed .
Q physicist Stapp has more than 50 years experience on the field , and you dare to call the man's monumental work just crap : very 'scientific " reply indeed .
Pfff...
AS a paradoxical guy who cannot but believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , you're also totally irrelevant in fact : i have been casting priceless pearls before swine such as yourselves indeed ,silly me .

Nevertheless , i will keep on doing what i have been doing and much more , just for the people watching,some of whom that might be intelligent and honest objective enough as to be able to value the priceless worth of those pearls i have been casting here .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2014 18:38:27
Where does he address any of Dawson's criticisms (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf)?
Wrong : Stapp did address all that in his major books : " Mind ,matter ,and quantum mechanics " and "Mindful universe and quantum mechanics " : those specific parts of those books are 2 lengthy to post + 2 technical mostly ,for people here to read .
Perhaps you can summarise or simplify them for us, or just give us the page references; otherwise we have only your word for it, and given the grasp of QM you have demonstrated here, I think you're blowing smoke.

Quote
He also addressed Dennett's "Cartesian theater " and other lunatics materialists ' 'arguments " as well .
How?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 18:51:58
Where does he address any of Dawson's criticisms (http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdf)?
Wrong : Stapp did address all that in his major books : " Mind ,matter ,and quantum mechanics " and "Mindful universe and quantum mechanics " : those specific parts of those books are 2 lengthy to post + 2 technical mostly ,for people here to read .
Perhaps you can summarise or simplify them for us, or just give us the page references; otherwise we have only your word for it, and given the grasp of QM you have demonstrated here, I think you're blowing smoke.

Quote
He also addressed Dennett's "Cartesian theater " and other lunatics materialists ' 'arguments " as well .
How?

(I have never pretended  to be an expert on QM, not even remotely close thus , i am not , and neither are you ,so, what do have those silly insinuations of yours to do with anything then ...)
Well, do some effort and go look for just that : i am not gonna do the work for you anymore ,since you cannot value priceless pearls that are not meant for your narrow-minded outdated and unscientific classical mechanical  determinist absurd ...mind,as you have been showing all long  .
Nothing out there , no evidence or lack thereof would be able to make you change your materialist mind : only idiots fools or materialists indeed are unable to change their minds ...





Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 18:52:48
"Scientific " people, my a....pfff .
Amazing .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2014 19:10:46
Any given scientist , philosopher ...who dare to challenge the false materialist mechanical classical determinist outdated superseded mainstream 'scientific world view, thanks to QM or otherwise , materialism that was built on the approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics , then, he or she must have some hidden "excuse " reason agenda ,or some sort of lunatic conspiracy theory of some sort haha ,he or she must be senile , a fame freak or worse ,  including atheist T.Nagel, Stapp, Chalmers and the rest of those dissident religious and non-religious scientists ,philosophers ...: how convenient indeed .

Well, materialist folks ,does it ever occur to you that their motivation or agenda ....were /are what 20th century  science has been telling them on the subject ?
Does it ever occur to you that materialism is false ,and cannot be true ?
Why do you keep on assuming that materialism is true then ? implicitly or explicitly , consciously or sub-consciously ....

Science is not about the truth, remember .

Why do you keep on confusing or equating materialism with science then ?

QM have been refuting the false outdated superseded mechanical classical determinist materialism : can't you see just that ,through your indoctrinated materialist minds that shape your thoughts , behaviours , ethics ....and much more ?

Of course not , unless you would try to eliminate materialism from the 'equation " as QM have been doing .

Good luck,dear ...swine , i am really fed up with you  .

What a waste ,pathetic ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2014 20:06:31
(Prior note : QT is mind -dependent , Von Neumann and others have proved the fact , mathematically and empirically , that the measurement problem in QM can only be solved by concluding that the intervention of a non-physical process outside of the laws of physics might be the explanation of that = the mind of the observer .
Just for the record, this interpretation has long been abandoned by mainstream physics.

Quote
So, my world view or belief is consistent with what modern 20th century science and QM have been saying on the subject ,relatively speaking .
As above, no. Your view, and Stapp's, is way out on the fringe.

Quote
There is nothing more coherent than Stapp's work .His free will model is the best so far and it is consistent with our intuitive experiences on the subject as well , unlike the counter-intuitive absurd materialist mechanical classical determinism bullshit .
It's his definition of free will that is incoherent. His model seems to require an immaterial 'homunculus' to make an appropriate choice to resolve the quantum superposition. Unless you can explain how it doesn't?

Quote
No, Stapp was not doing what you said here above : how can you speculate so widely about the man's work without having a complete view  about it , by just repeating  what others said in that regard .....
Did you read his books or follow his work , obviously not .
Did you read those excerpts of his books i have been posting , obviously not .
I haven't read his books, obviously, but I've read what you've posted, and it seems to me that Stapp may be a competent physicist, but he's a poor scientist, and a lousy philosopher:

He initially talks of intuition quite sensibly:

"Human beings have an intuitive feeling that their bodies are moved by their thoughts. Thus it is natural for them to imagine that thoughts of some similar kind inhabit heavenly bodies, rivers and streams, and myriads of other moving things"

Which seems to acknowledge the fallibility of intuition. But then:

"This rigid enforcement of the physical laws entailed, of course, that men’s thoughts could have no effects upon their actions... It contradicts our deepest intuition about ourselves, namely that we are free agents"

And he goes on to build his entire edifice on the assumption that 'our deepest intuition' must be how things really are... Then he leaves physics behind altogether (a bit odd for a physicist don't you think?):

"Those aspects of the evolutionary process that are not completely fixed by prior developments can be called “choices” or “decisions”. They are in some sense “free”, because they are not completely fixed by what has come before"

Sadly, he supplies no evidence or support for this. Next he starts with the sematic games:

"Conscious events can be naturally identified with certain special kinds of quantum events, namely quantum events that create large-scale integrated patterns of neuronal activity in human brains. These events represent “choices” that are not strictly controlled by any known physical laws"

Here he's talking about superposition preceding wave function collapse; note his careful usage - 'not strictly controlled by any known physical laws'. He can insert some unspecified immaterial interference at this point because of this ambiguity; but this is where his theory becomes special pleading - because, apart from the conservation of energy problem highlighted by Dawson, while we may not know what physical laws are involved, we do know, more precisely than anything else in physics, that the outcomes of repeated measurements correspond exactly to the probabilities provided by the wave function calculated from the prior system state. Quantum Zeno effect or no, any external influence that disturbs that probability distribution contradicts both empirical knowledge and mathematical understanding.

Even if we accept wavefunction collapse as a physical process, rather than simply an expression of the observer's knowledge of the system, there are plausible rational (albeit ultimately unsatisfying) arguments that consciousness is not required, e.g. Measurement Problem? (http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0509/0509042.pdf).

Also, Shimon Malin's argument needs a response:
Quote
Suppose a measurement of an electron's spin component along some direction is being measured. The result can either be "up" or "down". The result of the measurement is automatically communicated to a printer that can either print "up" or "down". If human consciousness is what causes the collapse to the observed state, then the collapse would only occur when someone read the printout, and not before. Now suppose that the printer has just enough ink to print "up", and not enough ink to print "down". Furthermore, if the printer runs out of ink, a bell sounds in a secretary's office. If the secretary hears the bell, a collapse to "down" has clearly occurred before the bell sounded. If the secretary does not hear the bell, a collapse to "up" must have occurred--and no human interaction was necessary at all.
Quote
...Stapp's scientific mind-dependent QT that was built on those of the founders of QT ,  is evidence enough for the fact that we all do view the world through our respective world views that shape our consciousness , and hence our behaviours , thoughts , actions, ethics ...
Evidence enough that scientific understanding moves on - even the greatest minds get things wrong or are overtaken by better, more complete models and deeper understanding.

Quote
Do you know how he responded to Dennett and others , and what models he proposed in order to solve some dilemmas and apparent flaws of dualism ? Obviously not .
As I said, I know Stapp's work by what you've posted - there's no explanation there. How did he respond? what models did he propose?  - references or summaries, I don't mind.

Quote
The universe thus ,including ourselves, might be "made " of no physical or other substance , just of processes , possibilities, events , actions, potentialities ...Who knows ?
Clearly not you.

Quote
Stapp has been innovative ,intelligent , visionary ,  honest and couragoeus enough to challenge and go beyond the current false materialist mainstream classical mechanical determinist "scientific world view " , thanks to QM :

So, just have the decency to shut up then .
Not the greatest argument I've heard  [::)]

Quote
As a superseded outdated materialist , you're irrelevant  and totally uninteresting , obviously  .
You cannot but view reality just through the false outdated and superseded mechanical classical determinist materialist key hole version of reality ,despite the fact that QM have been dualist and hence have been refuting classical materialism, together with its mechanical classical determinism ...

Your materialist world view shapes your consciousness ,and hence your thoughts , behaviour ,ethics , actions ...as the mind -dependent QT proves that fact to be correct : we all do view the world through our respective world views or beliefs indeed .
Ah, now we get to the meat of it. You think QM is dualist and, because I'm not, that means I must support classical physics and reject QM... which really emphasises your ignorance of the relationship between classical physics and QM; and, reading between the lines, the fact that I enthusiastically endorse QM without being a dualist, and have provided solid criticisms of your flavour-of-the-month fringe 'philosophers', causes you cognitive dissonance, to which you respond with intemperate outbursts like that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2014 20:17:23
Wrong : Stapp did address all that in his major books : " Mind ,matter ,and quantum mechanics " and "Mindful universe and quantum mechanics " : those specific parts of those books are 2 lengthy to post + 2 technical mostly ,for people here to read .
Perhaps you can summarise or simplify them for us, or just give us the page references; otherwise we have only your word for it, and given the grasp of QM you have demonstrated here, I think you're blowing smoke.
Well, do some effort and go look for just that : i am not gonna do the work for you anymore ,since you cannot value priceless pearls that are not meant for your narrow-minded outdated and unscientific classical mechanical  determinist absurd ...mind,as you have been showing all long  .
I thought so, just blowing smoke. If you really had those references, you'd post them just to make us squirm, but you can't because you made them up, and rather than admit it honestly you put up a smokescreen of insults. Prove me wrong.

Oh Don, for shame... what a piece of work thou art  [:o)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2014 20:24:13
...Good luck,dear ...swine , i am really fed up with you  .

What a waste ,pathetic ...
If you're flouncing out again, we can give you style marks this time [::)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 05/01/2014 20:47:00


Good luck,dear ...swine , i am really fed up with you  .

What a waste ,pathetic ...
You're correct about this being a waste Don. but you should be looking in the mirror when you make that remark.

BTW, I'm really fond of pork myself. I'll wager a guess that you don't partake.......do you?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/01/2014 00:15:16
Nor do I (at least not in public - there's a good joke I'll tell you later). But I don't transcribe pages of crap.

Here's the definitive test. Look at the spectrum of a distant star. You will see a whole lot of lines associated with specific quantum events. Allowing for red shift, no matter where you look, those lines are always the same. But the quantum event you are observing took place somewhere between 8 minutes and several million years ago (depending on which star you are looking at), long before any living observers existed. Ergo the presence of an observer has no effect on quantum events.

And just in case DQ is still lurking in the shadows
Quote
I must support classical physics and reject QM
Wrong! Quantum mechanics underpins classical physics, as any scientist knows!  Nothing to do with dualism or choice. QM is to newtonian physics as thermodynamics is to steam engines.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 00:29:15
No end to the crap........

But that's why I keep coming back, why spend all my time listening to logical science when I can make fun of philosophy and those who stake their reputation on it's IMMATERIAL so-called evidence?

(Why do you keep  on  imitating others , i wonder : even monkeys are not really imitators )


Not imitating Don,......just repeating something worthy of repetition.
CRAP...........CRAP.......I rather like saying that word, especially when it fits so VERY VERY well.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 11:48:10
And just in case DQ is still lurking in the shadows
Quote
I must support classical physics and reject QM
Wrong! Quantum mechanics underpins classical physics, as any scientist knows!  Nothing to do with dualism or choice. QM is to newtonian physics as thermodynamics is to steam engines.
[my bolding]
That's a nice way to put it!

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 12:55:43
A bit more research to ponder for those who believe that moral & ethical behaviours are mediated by a consciousness external to, or independent of, the physical brain:

These are studies of morals and ethics in subjects with prefontal cortex damage.

Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10526345).
Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17377536).
Damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex impairs judgment of harmful intent (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20346759).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 16:47:25
Impact of Quantum Mechanics
on Human Values:


 Impact of Quantum Mechanics
on Human Values:
Philosophers have tried doggedly for three centuries to understand the
role of mind in the workings of a brain conceived to function according
to principles of classical physics. We now know no such brain exists:
no brain, body, or anything else in the real world is composed of those
tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be made of.
Hence it is hardly surprising that those philosophical endeavors were
beset by enormous difficulties, which led to such positions as that of
the ‘eliminative materialists’, who hold that our conscious thoughts
must be eliminated from our scientific understanding of nature; or of
the ‘epiphenomenalists’, who admit that human experiences do exist,
but claim that they play no role in how we behave; or of the ‘identity
theorists’, who claim that each conscious feeling is exactly the same
thing as a motion of particles that nineteenth century science thought
our brains, and everything else in the universe, were made of, but
that twentieth century science has found not to exist, at least as they
were formerly conceived. The tremendous difficulty in reconciling consciousness,
as we know it, with the older physics is dramatized by the
fact that for many years the mere mention of ‘consciousness’ was considered
evidence of backwardness and bad taste in most of academia,
including, incredibly, even psychology and the philosophy of mind.
What you are, and will become, depends largely upon your values.
Values arise from self-image: from what you believe yourself to
be. Generally one is led by training, teaching, propaganda, or other
forms of indoctrination, to expand one’s conception of the self: one is
encouraged to perceive oneself as an integral part of some social unit
such as family, ethnic or religious group, or nation, and to enlarge
one’s self-interest to include the interests of this unit. If this training
is successful your enlarged conception of yourself as good parent, or
good son or daughter, or good Christian, Muslim, Jew, or whatever,
will cause you to give weight to the welfare of the unit as you would
your own. In fact, if well conditioned you may give more weight to the
interests of the group than to the well-being of your bodily self.
In the present context it is not relevant whether this human tendency
to enlarge one’s self-image is a consequence of natural malleability,
instinctual tendency, spiritual insight, or something else. What is
important is that we human beings do in fact have the capacity to
expand our image of ‘self’, and that this enlarged concept can become
the basis of a drive so powerful that it becomes the dominant determinant
of human conduct, overwhelming every other factor, including
even the instinct for bodily survival.
But where reason is honored, belief must be reconciled with empirical
evidence. If you seek evidence for your beliefs about what you
are, and how you fit into Nature, then science claims jurisdiction, or
at least relevance. Physics presents itself as the basic science, and it
is to physics that you are told to turn. Thus a radical shift in the
physics-based conception of man from that of an isolated mechanical
automaton to that of an integral participant in a non-local holistic process
that gives form and meaning to the evolving universe is a seismic
event of potentially momentous proportions.
The quantum concept of man, being based on objective science
equally available to all, rather than arising from special personal circumstances,
has the potential to undergird a universal system of basic
values suitable to all people, without regard to the accidents of their
origins. With the diffusion of this quantum understanding of human
beings, science may fulfill itself by adding to the material benefits it
has already provided a philosophical insight of perhaps even greater
ultimate value.
This issue of the connection of science to values can be put into
perspective by seeing it in the context of a thumb-nail sketch of history
that stresses the role of science. For this purpose let human intellectual
history be divided into five periods: traditional, modern, transitional,
post-modern, and contemporary.
During the ‘traditional’ era our understanding of ourselves and our
relationship to Nature was based on ‘ancient traditions’ handed down
from generation to generation: ‘Traditions’ were the chief source of
wisdom about our connection to Nature. The ‘modern’ era began in
the seventeenth century with the rise of what is still called ‘modern
science’. That approach was based on the ideas of Bacon, Descartes,
Galileo and Newton, and it provided a new source of knowledge that
came to be regarded by many thinkers as more reliable than tradition.
The basic idea of ‘modern’ science was ‘materialism’: the idea that
the physical world is composed basically of tiny bits of matter whose
contact interactions with adjacent bits completely control everything
that is now happening, and that ever will happen. According to these
laws, as they existed in the late nineteenth century, a person’s conscious
thoughts and efforts can make no difference at all to what
his body/brain does: whatever you do was deemed to be completely
fixed by local interactions between tiny mechanical elements, with your
thoughts, ideas, feelings, and efforts, being simply locally determined
high-level consequences or re-expressions of the low-level mechanical
process, and hence basically just elements of a reorganized way of describing
the effects of the absolutely and totally controlling microscopic
material causes.
This materialist conception of reality began to crumble at the beginning
of the twentieth century with Max Planck’s discovery of the
quantum of action. Planck announced to his son that he had, on that
day, made a discovery as important as Newton’s. That assessment was
certainly correct: the ramifications of Planck’s discovery were eventually
to cause Newton’s materialist conception of physical reality to
come crashing down. Planck’s discovery marks the beginning of the
‘transitional’ period.
A second important transitional development soon followed. In 1905
Einstein announced his special theory of relativity. This theory denied
the validity of our intuitive idea of the instant of time ‘now’, and
promulgated the thesis that even the most basic quantities of physics,
such as the length of a steel rod, and the temporal order of two events,
had no objective ‘true values’, but were well defined only ‘relative’ to
some observer’s point of view.
Planck’s discovery led by the mid-1920s to a complete breakdown,
at the fundamental level, of the classical material conception of nature.
A new basic physical theory, developed principally by Werner Heisenberg,
Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born, brought ‘the observer’
explicitly into physics. The earlier idea that the physical world
is composed of tiny particles (and electromagnetic and gravitational
fields) was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in
which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential
role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen
quantum theory.
This turning away by science itself from the tenets of the objective
materialist philosophy gave impetus to, and lent support to, postmodernism.
That view, which emerged during the second half of the
twentieth century, promulgated, in essence, the idea that all ‘truths’
were relative to one’s point of view, and were mere artifacts of some
particular social group’s struggle for power over competing groups.
Thus each social movement was entitled to its own ‘truth’, which was
viewed simply as a socially created pawn in the power game.
The connection of post-modern thought to science is that both
Copenhagen quantum theory and relativity theory had retreated from
the idea of observer-independent objective truth. Science in the first
quarter of the twentieth century had not only eliminated materialism
as a possible foundation for objective truth, but seemed to have discredited
the very idea of objective truth in science. But if the community
of scientists has renounced the idea of objective truth in favor of
the pragmatic idea that ‘what is true for us is what works for us’, then
every group becomes licensed to do the same, and the hope evaporates
that science might provide objective criteria for resolving contentious
social issues.
This philosophical shift has had profound social and intellectual
ramifications. But the physicists who initiated this mischief were generally
too interested in practical developments in their own field to get
involved in these philosophical issues. Thus they failed to broadcast
an important fact: already by mid-century, a further development in
physics had occurred that provides an effective antidote to both the
‘materialism’ of the modern era, and the ‘relativism’ and ‘social constructionism’
of the post-modern period. In particular, John von Neumann
developed, during the early thirties, a form of quantum theory
that brought the physical and mental aspects of nature back together
as two aspects of a rationally coherent whole. This theory was elevated,
during the forties – by the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger –
to a form compatible with the physical requirements of the theory of
relativity.
Von Neumann’s theory, unlike the transitional ones, provides a
framework for integrating into one coherent idea of reality the empirical
data residing in subjective experience with the basic mathematical
structure of theoretical physics. Von Neumann’s formulation
of quantum theory is the starting point of all efforts by physicists to
go beyond the pragmatically satisfactory but ontologically incomplete
Copenhagen form of quantum theory.
Von Neumann capitalized upon the key Copenhagen move of bringing
human choices into the theory of physical reality. But, whereas the
Copenhagen approach excluded the bodies and brains of the human
observers from the physical world that they sought to describe, von
Neumann demanded logical cohesion and mathematical precision, and
was willing to follow where this rational approach led. Being a mathematician,
fortified by the rigor and precision of his thought, he seemed
less intimidated than his physicist brethren by the sharp contrast between
the nature of the world called for by the new mathematics and
the nature of the world that the genius of Isaac Newton had concocted.
A common core feature of the orthodox (Copenhagen and von Neumann)
quantum theory is the incorporation of efficacious conscious
human choices into the structure of basic physical theory. How this is
done, and how the conception of the human person is thereby radically
altered, has been spelled out in lay terms in this book, and is something
every well informed person who values the findings of science
ought to know about. The conception of self is the basis of values and
thence of behavior, and it controls the entire fabric of one’s life. It is
irrational, from a scientific perspective, to cling today to false and inadequate
nineteenth century concepts about your basic nature, while
ignoring the profound impact upon these concepts of the twentieth
century revolution in science.
It is curious that some physicists want to improve upon orthodox
quantum theory by excluding ‘the observer’, who, by virtue of his subjective
nature, must, in their opinion, be excluded from science. That
stance is maintained in direct opposition to what would seem to be
the most profound advance in physics in three hundred years, namely
the overcoming of the most glaring failure of classical physics, its inability
to accommodate us, its creators. The most salient philosophical
feature of quantum theory is that the mathematics has a causal gap
that, by virtue of its intrinsic form, provides a perfect place for Homo
sapiens as we know and experience ourselves.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 16:48:44
Conclusions :

How can our world of billions of thinkers ever come into general concordance
on fundamental issues? How do you, yourself, form opinions
on such issues? Do you simply accept the message of some ‘authority’,
such as a church, a state, or a social or political group? All of
these entities promote concepts about how you as an individual fit
into the reality that supports your being. And each has an agenda of
its own, and hence its own internal biases. But where can you find an
unvarnished truth about your nature, and your place in Nature?
Science rests, in the end, on an authority that lies beyond the pettiness
of human ambition. It rests, finally, on stubborn facts. The
founders of quantum theory certainly had no desire to bring down
the grand structure of classical physics of which they were the inheritors,
beneficiaries, and torch bearers. It was stubborn facts that forced
their hand, and made them reluctantly abandon the two-hundred-yearold
classical ideal of a mechanical universe, and turn to what perhaps
should have been seen from the start as a more reasonable endeavor:
the creation an understanding of nature that includes in a rationally
coherent way the thoughts by which we know and influence the world
around us. The labors of scientists endeavoring merely to understand
our inanimate environment produced, from its own internal logic, a rationally
coherent framework into which we ourselves fit neatly. What
was falsified by twentieth-century science was not the core traditions
and intuitions that have sustained societies and civilizations since the
dawn of mankind, but rather an historical aberration, an impoverished
world view within which philosophers of the past few centuries have
tried relentlessly but fruitlessly to find ourselves. The falseness of that
deviation of science must be made known, and heralded, because human
beings are not likely to endure in a society ruled by a conception
of themselves that denies the essence of their being.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 16:50:16
A Gazzaniga’s The Ethical Brain:


Michael S. Gazzaniga is a renowned cognitive neuroscientist. He was
Editor-in-Chief of the 1447 page book The Cognitive Neurosciences,
which, for the past decade, has been the fattest book in my library,
apart from ‘the unabridged’. His recent book The Ethical Brain has a
Part III entitled Free Will, Personal Responsibility, and the Law. This
part addresses, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, some
of the moral issues that have been dealt with in the present book.
The aim of his Part III is to reconcile the materialist idea that brain
activity is determined with the notion of moral responsibility, which
normally depends upon the idea that we human beings possess free
will.
Gazzaniga asserts:
Based on the modern understanding of neuroscience and on the
assumptions of legal concepts, I believe the following axioms:
Brains are automatic, rule-governed, determined devices, while
people are personally responsible agents, free to make their own
decisions.
One possible interpretation of these words – the quantum-theoretic
interpretation – would be that a person has both a mind (his stream of
conscious thoughts, ideas, and feelings) and a brain (made of neurons,
glia, etc), and that his decisions (his conscious moral choices) are free
(not determined by any known law), and that, moreover, the rules
that govern his brain determine the activity of his brain jointly from
the physically described properties of the brain combined with these
conscious decisions. That interpretation is essentially what orthodox
(von Neumann) quantum mechanics – and also common sense intuition
– asserts.
If this interpretation is what Gazzaniga means, then there is no
problem. But I believe that this is not what Gazzaniga means. Earlier
on he said:
The brain determines the mind, and the brain is a physical
entity subject to all the rules of the physical world. The physical
world is determined, so our brains must also be determined.
This seems to be suggesting that by ‘determined’ he means determined
solely by physically described properties, as would be the case if the
concepts of classical physics were applicable. However, what he actually
said was that “the brain is a physical entity subject to all the rules
of the physical world”. The rules of the physical world, as specified by
contemporary (orthodox quantum) theory, explain how the brain is
governed in part by the brain and in part by our conscious choices,
which themselves are not governed by any known laws. If this physicsbased
understanding of ‘determined’ is what Gazzaniga means then
there is no difficulty in reconciling the fact that an agent’s brain is
‘determined’ with the fact that this agent’s person is ‘free’: the agent’s
brain is determined partly by his brain and partly by his conscious
free choices, and hence the person whose actions this brain controls is
likewise jointly controlled by these two factors, neither of which alone
suffices.
If this contemporary-physics-based interpretation is what Gazzaniga
meant, then he could have stopped his book right there: that
interpretation is in complete accord with common sense, with normal
ethical theory, and with contemporary physics. Thus the fact that he
did not stop, but went on to write his book, including Part III, suggests
that he is using not the quantum mechanical meaning of ‘determined’;
but rather the meaning that would hold in the classical approximation,
which exorcizes all the physical effects of our conscious choices.
Indeed, he goes on to say:
If our brains are determined, then [. . . ] is the free will we seem
to experience just an illusion? And if free will is an illusion,
must we revise our concepts of what it means to be personally
responsible for our actions?
I am assuming in this appendix that Gazzaniga is adhering essentially
to nineteenth century physics, so that ‘determined’ means automatically/
mechanically determined by physically described properties
alone, like a clock, and that he is thus endeavoring to address the
question: How can one consider a person with an essentially clocklike
body-brain to be morally responsible for his actions? How can we
uphold the concept of ethical behavior within the confines of an understanding
of nature that reduces each human being to a mechanical
automaton?
Gazzaniga’s answer is built upon a proposed restructuring (redefining)
the meanings of both ‘free will’ and ‘moral responsibility’. Following
an idea of David Hume, and more recently of A.J. Ayer, the word
‘free’ is effectively defined to mean ‘unconstrained by external bonds’.
Thus a clock is ‘free’ if the movements of its hands and cogs are not
restricted by external bonds or forces. However, the ‘free will’ of traditional
ethical theory refers to a type of freedom that a mechanically
controlled clock would not enjoy, even if it had no external bonds.
This latter – morally pertinent – kind of free will is specifically associated
with consciousness. Thus a physically determined clock that
has no consciousness is not subject to moral evaluation, even if it
is not constrained by external bonds, whereas a person possessing a
conscious ‘will’ that is physically efficacious, yet not physically determined,
is subject to moral evaluation when he is not constrained by
external bonds. Thus the morally pertinent idea of ‘possessing free
will’ is not the same as ‘unconstrained by external bonds or forces’.
The Hume/Ayer move obscures the morally pertinent idea of freedom,
which is intimately linked to consciousness, by confounding it with different
idea that does not specifically involve consciousness. This move
throws rational analysis off track by suppressing (on the basis of an
inapplicable approximation) the involvement of consciousness in the
morally relevant conception of ‘free will’.
Ethical and moral values traditionally reside in the ability of a person
to make discerning conscious judgments pertaining to moral issues,
coupled with the capacity of the person’s conscious effort to willfully
force his body to act in accordance with the standards he has consciously
judged to be higher, in the face of strong natural tendencies
to do otherwise. The whole moral battle is fought in the realm of conscious
thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Where there is no consciousness
there is no moral dimension. Moreover, if consciousness exists but is
permitted by general rules to make no physical difference – that is,
if consciousness is constrained by the general laws to be an impotent
witness to mechanically determined process – then the seeming struggle
of will becomes a meaningless charade, and the moral dimension
again disappears.
It is the imposition, by virtue of the classical approximation, of
this law-based kind of impotency that eliminates the moral dimension
within that approximation. The morally pertinent free will is eradicated
by the classical approximation even if there are no external
bounds. Calling a system ‘free’ just because it is not constrained by
external bonds does not suffice to give that system the kind of free will
that undergirds normal ethical ideas.
Gazzaniga’s attack on the problem has also a second prong. He
avers that: “Personal responsibility is a public concept.” He says of
things such as personal responsibility that:
Those aspects of our personhood are – oddly – not in our brains.
They exist only in the relationships that exist when our automatic
brains interact with other automatic brains. They are in
the ether.
This idea that these pertinent things are “in the ether” and exist “only
in the relationships” is indeed an odd thing for a materialisticallyoriented
neuroscientist to say. It seems mystical. Although ideas about
personal responsibility may indeed arise only in social contexts, one
would normally say that the resulting ideas about personal responsibility
exist in the streams of consciousness of the interacting persons,
and a materialist would be expected to say that these ideas are ‘in’ or
are ‘some part of’ the brains of those socially interacting persons. Yet
if the causes of self-controlled behavior are wholly in the brains and
bodies of the agents, and these brains and bodies are automatically
determined by the physically described body-brain alone, then it is
hard to see how these agents, as persons, can have the kind of free will
upon which our moral and ethical theories are based. Some sort of odd
or weird move is needed to endow a person with morally relevant free
will if his body and brain are mechanically determined.
But if some sort of weirdness is needed to rescue the social concept
of personal responsibility, then why not use ‘quantum weirdness’. The
quantum concepts may seem weird to the uninitiated, but they are
based on science, and they resolve the problem of moral responsibility
by endowing our conscious choices with causal influence in the selection
of our physical actions.
It is hard to see the advantage of introducing the changes described
by Gazzaniga compared to the option of simply going beyond the inprinciple-
inadequate classical approximation. Why do thinkers dedicated
to rationality resist so tenaciously the option of accepting (contemporary
orthodox quantum) physics, which says that our conscious
choices intervene, in a very special and restricted kind of way, in the
mechanically determined time development of the physically described
aspects of a system – during the process by means of which the conscious
agent acquires new knowledge about that system? Because acquiring
new knowledge about a system normally involves a probingem, it is not at all weird that the system being examined
should be affected by the extraction of knowledge from it, and hence
comes to depend upon how it was probed.
The advantages of accepting quantum mechanics in cognitive neuroscience,
and ultimately in our lives, are:
• It is compatible with basic physical theory, and thus will continue to
work in increasingly complex and miniaturized empirical situations.
• It specifies how a person’s consciously experienced intentional
choices are represented in the physically described aspects of the
theory.
• It removes the incoherency of a known-to-be-real ontological element
that contains the empirical data, yet resides in a realm that
has no law-based connection to the flow of physical events.
• It provides a foundation for understanding the co-evolution of mind
and brain, because each of these two parts contributes to the dynamics
in a way that is linked to the other by laws that are specified,
at least in part.
• It provides for a free will of the kind needed to undergird ethical
theory.
• It produces a science-based image of oneself, not as a freak-accident
out-cropping – with consciousness riding like a piece of froth on
the ocean – but rather as an active component of a deeply interconnected
world process that is responsive to value-based human
judgments.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 17:05:14
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader and a lousy scientist ( which makes what you said about Stapp's scientific, philosophical and other skills worthless and irrelevent ) , since you still cannot see that QM have been superseding  the materialist mechanical determinist mainstream false "scientific world view " you are still equating and confusing with science  ,and you cannot but try to refute non-materialist views but through your false materialism = wrong from the very start= starting from a false premise or belief assumption which are ...the false materialist world view  that's no science,  that Matthew J.Donald provided criticism of Stapp 's work is worthless  also  , in the sense that he is a materialist, and hence most of his views he takes for granted as science are just materialist beliefs  : i will not read or listen to views coming from materialists ( I viewed them enough to be able to say that they are mostly materialist bullshit , no science )  , since materialism is false   , and hence most of your own views are also worth nothing , since they are mostly based on the false secular religion in science that's been equated and confused with science for so long now .
I said that classical physics were /are approximately valid but fundamentally incorrect : they are thus still valid of course , to some extent at least , QM have been superseding classical physics , in the sense that they can explain what classical physics cannot (especially thus at the atomic molecular and sub-atomic levels ) and more : QM thus do have more explanatory power than the fundamentally incorrect classical determinist mechanical physics .

See Ethics from the point of view of Stapp's interpretation of QT , and from that of neuroscientist Gazzaniga  here above  ...

P.S.: Those specific Stapp's excerpts you were asking me to display here are ,once again, 2 lengthy and 2 technical to post here .
And since i am not qualified  to try to give a summary of all that , i will not risk distorting them .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 17:32:52
A materialist scientist such as dlorde   here who has been equating and confusing his own materialist false beliefs with science thinks that he is in a position ,ironically paradoxically enough haha , to question Stapp's scientific philosophical ethical ...work through his own false materialism which he has been taking for granted as ...science haha : tragic-hilarious : that dlorde still does take his own false materialist beliefs for granted as science is evidence enough for the fact that the observed is mind-dependent (we all in fact do distort the  "observed" objective reality  thus out there  via our minds through our a -priori held beliefs ,regarding the nature of reality )   , even at the macroscopic level thus : that illusory separation between the mind and the physical reality , between the mind of the observer and the observed is a myth thus = they are inseparable : QT has proved the fact that our thoughts ,consciousness or mind do intervene in  our interpretations of the physical reality = inevitable : our own daily experiences do prove that fact to be correct on the macroscopic level thus also .
Worse : scientists do design experiments in ways which fit into or suit their own expectations or their a-priori held beliefs : major proof ? : materialism as a false belief , a false outdated superseded 19th century philosophy , a false world view or a false conception of nature has been taken for granted as science ,as the 'scientific world view " ...no wonder .

Who's the poor scientist ,and the lousy philosopher , you dlorde or Stapp , the latter that has almost 50 years of experience on the field .
Stapp that 's a visionnary scientist thinker enough to dare to challenge the false absurd outdated mechanical materialist determinist mainstream  superseded by QM  'scientific world view " ...

The answer is obvious ...it doesn't take a genius to know just that .

Amazing ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/01/2014 17:58:10
Just one more time, Don, before I give up trying to help you.

1. There is no conflict between quantum mechanics and classical physics. QM underpins Newtonian physics and explains a few things that are not obvious in a continuum model.

2. No scientist who understands and uses quantum mechanics thinks otherwise.

3. If you read my last posting, you will see that quantum mechanics cannot be dependent on consciousness, however you define it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 18:46:17
Just one more time, Don, before I give up trying to help you.

1. There is no conflict between quantum mechanics and classical physics. QM underpins Newtonian physics and explains a few things that are not obvious in a continuum model.

2. No scientist who understands and uses quantum mechanics thinks otherwise.

3. If you read my last posting, you will see that quantum mechanics cannot be dependent on consciousness, however you define it.

1-I did not say there was .See above .

2.Who said otherwise ?

3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
Major proof for the fact that the observed objective reality is mind -dependent ? ,even at the macroscopic level : materialism as a false belief in science that has been taken for granted as science or as the 'scientific method " ,since the 19th century at least thus .
Besides, we all do experience the fact every single day of our lives that our own consciousness does have causal effects on our brains and body via triggering our physical actions .
A fact only materialists idiots or fools can deny as such .
Since materialism assumes or rather believes that matter is the only reality out there , then it's pretty logical from the materialist point of view at least that the mind is in the brain or the mind is just brain activity , and hence the mind has no causal effects on matter ,brain or body .
So, try to separate science from materialism  then ,for your own sake ,as a scientist  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 19:09:43
Stapp's just doing the usual business of working back from an incoherent cultural/philosophic assumption based on special pleading, and struggling to find a way to connect it to physical reality. In this case the assumption is that people are 'morally responsible agents' because they have a special kind of control that only they can exercise - what he calls "the morally pertinent idea of ‘possessing free will’" - that somehow transcends physical causality (special pleading). Naturally, it's not easy to connect what is beyond physical causality to causal physical processes. The best he can do is find a point of unknown causality in QM (the outcome of decoherence) and say the (unspecified) magic happens there.

What puzzles me is why he, and so many others (usually religious apologetics) find it necessary to explain the abstract cultural conveniences of moral responsibility and free will in these terms. If there's anything more to it than having an excuse for (i.e. not feeling guilty about) blame, punishment (and, perhaps retribution), I'd like to hear it.

Personally, I see my free will as the freedom to act as determined by what makes me uniquely 'me' - my state of mind at the time of the decision, which in turn, is determined by the genetic inheritance my parents gave me, and a lifetime of development and growth, interaction with my environment and experiences; what I've been taught, and what I've learnt, and what I've thought about. That's what makes me uniquely 'me'; what else do the advocates of causal transcendence think should be involved?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 19:13:14
Just one more time, Don, before I give up trying to help you.

1. There is no conflict between quantum mechanics and classical physics. QM underpins Newtonian physics and explains a few things that are not obvious in a continuum model.

2. No scientist who understands and uses quantum mechanics thinks otherwise.

3. If you read my last posting, you will see that quantum mechanics cannot be dependent on consciousness, however you define it.

1-I did not say there was .See above .

2.Who said otherwise ?

3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 19:22:22
You're a lousy reader and a lousy scientist ( which makes what you said about Stapp's scientific, philosophical and other skills worthless and irrelevent )
... that Matthew J.Donald provided criticism of Stapp 's work is worthless  also  , in the sense that he is a materialist, and hence most of his views he takes for granted as science are just materialist beliefs
Rather than address the arguments, you explicitly use an extreme version of the 'Poisoning the Well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well)' fallacy - we're materialists therefore our criticisms are 'worthless and irrelevant'; priceless!

Quote
P.S.: Those specific Stapp's excerpts you were asking me to display here are ,once again, 2 lengthy and 2 technical to post here .
That rings hollow, given you're in the habit of posting entire chapters of other people's work  [::)]
Quote
And since i am not qualified  to try to give a summary of all that , i will not risk distorting them .
So post the relevant chapter and page references (as I requested last time).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 19:30:13
3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
Do you really think 'Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others' were talking about subjective reality?  [:o)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 19:35:10
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.
True; these days I'm posting for the exercise and entertainment - as I said before, whenever it gets boring you can just wait a while, and he'll always come back with some new inanity [;D]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 19:49:05
Just one more time, Don, before I give up trying to help you.

1. There is no conflict between quantum mechanics and classical physics. QM underpins Newtonian physics and explains a few things that are not obvious in a continuum model.

2. No scientist who understands and uses quantum mechanics thinks otherwise.

3. If you read my last posting, you will see that quantum mechanics cannot be dependent on consciousness, however you define it.

1-I did not say there was .See above .

2.Who said otherwise ?

3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.

You're just projecting again : you are all so blinded and indoctrinated by materialism that you cannot but equate it or confuse it with science , no wonder that most scientists today do also  , since materialism has been equated with the 'scientific world view " for so long now .
That's by the way THE major proof for the fact that the observed objective reality gets distorted by the mind of the observer through his /her a -priori held beliefs or world views ,THE major proof for the fact that the mind of the observer does intervene in relation to the observed , and that the separation between the mind and the physical reality , between the observed and the observer is a scientific myth .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 19:53:12

True; these days I'm posting for the exercise and entertainment - as I said before, whenever it gets boring you can just wait a while, and he'll always come back with some new inanity [;D]
When I first started reading this thread, I found Don very interesting and considered him to be quite intelligent. As time has progressed and I began to see this pattern of his, for constant repetition of his spurious sources, I've come to the conclusion that he is not as bright as I once thought. To tell you the truth, I don't think he really understands this questionable theory that he uses as his source. I doubt he's intelligent enough to separate the facts from the fiction and simply takes the assertions of these sources as real science. And he is so committed that even were he to realize the errors, he would just casually ignore them.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 19:54:39
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.
True; these days I'm posting for the exercise and entertainment - as I said before, whenever it gets boring you can just wait a while, and he'll always come back with some new inanity [;D]

Yeah ,right , just keep on deluding yourself then .
See above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 19:59:20
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.
True; these days I'm posting for the exercise and entertainment - as I said before, whenever it gets boring you can just wait a while, and he'll always come back with some new inanity [;D]

Yeah ,right , just keep on deluding yourself then .
See above .
The only delusion being exercised here is taking Stapp's word on these questions for granted. Look in the mirror Don!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:02:09
3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
Do you really think 'Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others' were talking about subjective reality?  [:o)]

No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:08:56
You're a lousy reader and a lousy scientist ( which makes what you said about Stapp's scientific, philosophical and other skills worthless and irrelevent )
... that Matthew J.Donald provided criticism of Stapp 's work is worthless  also  , in the sense that he is a materialist, and hence most of his views he takes for granted as science are just materialist beliefs
Rather than address the arguments, you explicitly use an extreme version of the 'Poisoning the Well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well)' fallacy - we're materialists therefore our criticisms are 'worthless and irrelevant'; priceless
!

I told you you were a lousy reader , didn't i ? You have just confirmed that fact , once again :
I said that since materialism gets equated with science , then most materialists ' views, including those of yourself as a materialist thus , are just materialist bullshit , no science .
See above ,and try to read carefully what i have been saying .
Quote
Quote
P.S.: Those specific Stapp's excerpts you were asking me to display here are ,once again, 2 lengthy and 2 technical to post here .
That rings hollow, given you're in the habit of posting entire chapters of other people's work  [::)]
Quote
And since i am not qualified  to try to give a summary of all that , i will not risk distorting them .
So post the relevant chapter and page references (as I requested last time).

Ok, next time then .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:12:28
It should be obvious to everyone participating in this thread that Don is beyond help. He won't listen to reason, he won't compromise, it is highly unlikely that he ever will. I'm giving up on him, more important things to do besides trying to coax him toward reality.
True; these days I'm posting for the exercise and entertainment - as I said before, whenever it gets boring you can just wait a while, and he'll always come back with some new inanity [;D]

Yeah ,right , just keep on deluding yourself then .
See above .
The only delusion being exercised here is taking Stapp's word on these questions for granted. Look in the mirror Don!

Look who's talking : a paradoxical guy who happens to be believing in 2 mutually exclusive world views : don't you think that that fact does put you in no position to judge what others might or might not believe in ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 20:20:23


Look who's talking : a paradoxical guy who happens to be believing in 2 mutually exclusive world views : don't you think that that fact does put you in no position to judge what others might or might not believe in ?
You can believe what ever you like Don and I'll believe what I find evidence for. And Stapp is obviously wrong on several counts. But that's OK, trust in your Guru if you like, I'll stick to the facts.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:29:58
Stapp's just doing the usual business of working back from an incoherent cultural/philosophic assumption based on special pleading, and struggling to find a way to connect it to physical reality. In this case the assumption is that people are 'morally responsible agents' because they have a special kind of control that only they can exercise - what he calls "the morally pertinent idea of ‘possessing free will’" - that somehow transcends physical causality (special pleading). Naturally, it's not easy to connect what is beyond physical causality to causal physical processes. The best he can do is find a point of unknown causality in QM (the outcome of decoherence) and say the (unspecified) magic happens there.

What puzzles me is why he, and so many others (usually religious apologetics) find it necessary to explain the abstract cultural conveniences of moral responsibility and free will in these terms. If there's anything more to it than having an excuse for (i.e. not feeling guilty about) blame, punishment (and, perhaps retribution), I'd like to hear it.

Personally, I see my free will as the freedom to act as determined by what makes me uniquely 'me' - my state of mind at the time of the decision, which in turn, is determined by the genetic inheritance my parents gave me, and a lifetime of development and growth, interaction with my environment and experiences; what I've been taught, and what I've learnt, and what I've thought about. That's what makes me uniquely 'me'; what else do the advocates of causal transcendence think should be involved?

You don't think , you just assume that you think : it's your materialist world view that shapes your mind that's been doing the 'thinking " for you .
You're not the one doing the thinking here thus : that's just your materialist world view that's doing just that on your behalf , your own materialist world view that shapes your mind and thus thoughts , behaviour , actions, ethics ...
Materialism that can only be mechanical and determinist : so, how can you talk about free will within the framework of materialism then ? absurd .
materialism that was built on the 19th century mechanical determinist approximately valid and fundamentally incorrect classical physics .
Since materialism assumes or rather believes that matter is the only reality out there , then the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain activity,and hence the mind has no causal effects on matter brain or body  : where does that free will you were talking about come from then ,within the framework of materialism ?
How can free will rise from the classically materialist mechanical determinist conception of the physical reality or of  the physical  brain then ? 
at the other hand , it is an undeniable fact we do experience every single day of our own lives that consciousness does have fundamental causal effects on our brains and bodies at the macroscopic level thus ,why then can't the mind intervene at the quantum level as well ?


See above ..........
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:35:03


Look who's talking : a paradoxical guy who happens to be believing in 2 mutually exclusive world views : don't you think that that fact does put you in no position to judge what others might or might not believe in ?
You can believe what ever you like Don and I'll believe what I find evidence for. And Stapp is obviously wrong on several counts. But that's OK, trust in your Guru if you like, I'll stick to the facts.

Haha

What facts , paradoxical guy ?
The materialist "facts " or rather the materialist belief assumptions, or the scientific facts  ? : when you will be able to learn how to differentiate between materialism and science , then, and only then, i will be listening to you  .

When you will stop believing in  2 mutually exclusive world views ( The materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " and what you called your faith ) ,  then and only then , i will be taking you seriously ...

Deal ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2014 20:45:58
Folks :

In short :

The objective reality  out there is way beyond our reach , and beyond  that of science as well , since science is just a human activity , and since the observed objective reality out there gets distorted by the minds of the observers through their a-priori held beliefs or world views that do shape their minds , and hence their thoughts , behaviours , ethics , actions ,views , opinions ....

Major proof ,once again ? : the materialist false belief or false world view that's been equated with science for so long now .
Objectivity is thus a myth , together with the so-called metaphysically -neutral science .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 21:01:01
When I first started reading this thread, I found Don very interesting and considered him to be quite intelligent. As time has progressed and I began to see this pattern of his, for constant repetition of his spurious sources, I've come to the conclusion that he is not as bright as I once thought. To tell you the truth, I don't think he really understands this questionable theory that he uses as his source. I doubt he's intelligent enough to separate the facts from the fiction and simply takes the assertions of these sources as real science. And he is so committed that even were he to realize the errors, he would just casually ignore them.
I think he's intelligent enough, but he seems to have no idea of rational argument or critical thinking, always starting from an unsustainable assumption or working back from his desired conclusion. He gives me the impression he's used to getting his own way through bluff and bluster rather than reasoned debate, losing his temper or flouncing out if he fails.

Quite amusing though [;)]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 21:02:20
Folks :

In short :

The objective reality  out there is way beyond our reach , and beyond  that of science as well ,
And beyond Stapp and DonQuichotte as well if we are to accept these preposterous immaterial assertions. In final analysis, nothing can be known, nothing we see is really there, nothing we measure is valid, even the sound we hear is only illusion, so I might as well quit listening to your crab Don because you're not real either nor will you ever be!..........................right?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 21:04:41
When I first started reading this thread, I found Don very interesting and considered him to be quite intelligent. As time has progressed and I began to see this pattern of his, for constant repetition of his spurious sources, I've come to the conclusion that he is not as bright as I once thought. To tell you the truth, I don't think he really understands this questionable theory that he uses as his source. I doubt he's intelligent enough to separate the facts from the fiction and simply takes the assertions of these sources as real science. And he is so committed that even were he to realize the errors, he would just casually ignore them.
I think he's intelligent enough, but he seems to have no idea of rational argument or critical thinking, always starting from an unsustainable assumption or working back from his desired conclusion. He gives me the impression he's used to getting his own way through bluff and bluster rather than reasoned debate, losing his temper or flouncing out if he fails.

Quite amusing though [;)]
Just a spoiled little BRAT. I wonder if he's even 21 years old yet, still wet behind the ears!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 21:15:10
Reminds me of an Arab Muslim I used to know. His father owned a vast amount of Gulf oil and this son of his thought the world revolved around himself and every thing he touched. Don reminds me a lot of that spoiled brat, makes me wonder what allegiances Don might secretly have ..........just wondering???
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 21:57:37
No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
Oh dear; no, QM is emphatically not subjective, the 'founders' of QM didn't think so either. Yes, there are a number of interpretations of QM, and which interpretation you subscribe to is (obviously) subjective, but they're just interpretations - ways to visualise what is happening; they make no difference whatsoever to the QM calculations. The maths tells you precisely what to expect if you do any given experiment.

Equally obviously, every observer has a subjective view of any event - in relativity, two observers in relative motion will see each other's clocks run slow. This is a real effect, and by understanding the physics behind it, the two observers can agree on a common view of the situation.

Quote
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....
[???] Nobody is denying that reality has a distorted representation in mind of the observer, that's why the scientific method was developed. That has nothing to do with the subjective nature of context-dependent observations or quantum decoherence.

If you want a full discussion of the relationship between QM and consciousness, you'll find it here:

Is Consciousness Involved in Wave Function Collapse? (http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=507154)

You'll need to understand the difference between a 'pure' and a 'mixed' state, between 'unitary' and 'non-unitary' processes, and between 'decoherence' and the 'collapse of the wave function'. Be very careful not to jump to conclusions & to be sure you understand exactly what they're saying.

Then you can see the difference between saying 'QM is subjective' and the measurement problem (i.e. it takes a conscious observer to perceive a single outcome).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/) gives the background to the measurement problem.

You might be interested in a recent paper that shows how standard quantum statistical mechanics is sufficient to explain the unique result of a measurement and provides compatibility with classical mechanics: Solution To Quantum Problem (http://phys.org/news/2013-07-physicists-publish-solution-quantum-problem.html) (full article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370157312004085).
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 21:58:33
Reminds me of an Arab Muslim I used to know. His father owned a vast amount of Gulf oil and this son of his thought the world revolved around himself and every thing he touched. Don reminds me a lot of that spoiled brat, makes me wonder what allegiances Don might secretly have ..........just wondering???
No comment...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/01/2014 22:07:29
Reminds me of an Arab Muslim I used to know. His father owned a vast amount of Gulf oil and this son of his thought the world revolved around himself and every thing he touched. Don reminds me a lot of that spoiled brat, makes me wonder what allegiances Don might secretly have ..........just wondering???
No comment...
Yeah, I suppose drawing any parallels between Don and my former acquaintance would be as unscientific as Don declaring the supremacy of his theory of the immaterial nature of reality over our contemporary understanding.

I stand corrected.......But I did say; "just wondering" didn't I.

Not nearly as offensive as calling dlorde a swine or calling me a monkey!!

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2014 22:23:26
.. where does that free will you were talking about come from then ,within the framework of materialism ?
How can free will rise from the classically materialist mechanical determinist conception of the physical reality or of  the physical  brain then ?
Read what I posted (reposted below). If you don't understand what I mean by any of it, just say what part(s) you don't understand and I'll explain. If you could have a stab at answering the question at the end, I'd be interested to hear your answer.
Personally, I see my free will as the freedom to act as determined by what makes me uniquely 'me' - my state of mind at the time of the decision, which in turn, is determined by the genetic inheritance my parents gave me, and a lifetime of development and growth, interaction with my environment and experiences; what I've been taught, and what I've learnt, and what I've thought about. That's what makes me uniquely 'me'; what else do the advocates of causal transcendence think should be involved?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/01/2014 04:04:28
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader and a lousy scientist
And you're a lousy debater and by no means, any kind of scientist!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 07/01/2014 10:37:01
Quote
Not nearly as offensive as calling dlorde a swine or calling me a monkey!!

Why is that offensive? AFAIK neither species gets involved with religion, philosophy, or discussions about a subject they refuse to define, which makes them more intelligent and rational  than most humans.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/01/2014 12:26:39
Quote
Not nearly as offensive as calling dlorde a swine or calling me a monkey!!

Why is that offensive? AFAIK neither species gets involved with religion, philosophy, or discussions about a subject they refuse to define, which makes them more intelligent and rational  than most humans.
How true!
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/01/2014 17:20:09
I have allowed this discussion to become way too personal, and for that, I apologize to everyone participating in it. For that reason, I will withdraw myself from it. I'm sure Don will applaud this action but I leave him with one piece of sincere advice:

Sir Don;

Please try to examine honestly the issues raised by your fellow contributors like; delorde, Cheryl, and alancalverd. If you're wise and honest, you have a chance to learn something of value. If you continue to insist that it's your way or the high way, the remaining participants here may decide to depart as well leaving you alone with your thoughts and your theory.

Regards to all....................................Ethos



Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 17:20:45
Folks :

In short :

The objective reality  out there is way beyond our reach , and beyond  that of science as well ,
And beyond Stapp and DonQuichotte as well if we are to accept these preposterous immaterial assertions. In final analysis, nothing can be known, nothing we see is really there, nothing we measure is valid, even the sound we hear is only illusion, so I might as well quit listening to your crab Don because you're not real either nor will you ever be!..........................right?

You obviously did not understand those statements of mine who were corroborated and supported by Stapp, by post-modernists , as well as by the pragmatic science that's not about the truth : try to read that relevant excerpt of Stapp on the subject regarding materialist neuroscientist Gazzaniga's ethical brain then ,instead of making such a fool of yourself through these sort of empty rhetorics of yours .

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: yor_on on 07/01/2014 17:31:57
Folks :

In short :

The objective reality  out there is way beyond our reach , and beyond  that of science as well , since science is just a human activity , and since the observed objective reality out there gets distorted by the minds of the observers through their a-priori held beliefs or world views that do shape their minds , and hence their thoughts , behaviours , ethics , actions ,views , opinions ....

Major proof ,once again ? : the materialist false belief or false world view that's been equated with science for so long now .
Objectivity is thus a myth , together with the so-called metaphysically -neutral science .

May I jump into this discussion?

I don't think it is impossible to define, what may be impossible is to agree on whether we have a shaper of it, or if it's just a 'fluke'. Myself I don't know, sometimes I think of the universe as something shaped to consciousness, possibly by consciousness? therefore I will not argue with people of faith, as long as I can recognize my humanity in their thoughts. There's a big difference to me, between someone having a personally felt faith, and a organization telling you what 'it is'.

also I like us all here, we don't need to agree, as long as we allow each other the opportunity to think.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:00:58
I have allowed this discussion to become way too personal

I am afraid , you haven't done anything different here so far: irrelevant though : i do not see myself reflected  in any way   whatsoever in your personal 'attacks " ,so, don't worry about just that : you might have been  just projecting ,who knows   .
Or as a great poet said : "....And i say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So, the wicked and the weak cannot fall below the lowest which  is  in you also ..."

Your confessions do not belong on a science forum either  ,go to the church for that then .

Quote
, and for that, I apologize to everyone participating in it.

No need to .Go see a priest then for that, or a therapist  .I am not one .


Quote
For that reason, I will withdraw myself from it. I'm sure Don will applaud this action but I leave him with one piece of sincere advice:

You're leaving this thread , just because you have been too personal ? What kind of "reason " is that then ?
This is not the first time you say you're leaving though : you're starting to sound like me in this regard at least  , i guess .  haha
You are starting to sound  more  like Dostoyevsky in fact who used to enjoy his repetitive confessions,after committing his 'sins " over and over again  : Nietzsche could not but despise that .


Quote
Sir Don;

Please try to examine honestly the issues raised by your fellow contributors like; delorde, Cheryl, and alancalverd. If you're wise and honest, you have a chance to learn something of value. If you continue to insist that it's your way or the high way, the remaining participants here may decide to depart as well leaving you alone with your thoughts and your theory.

I have been learning a lot from these and other materialists,you have no idea ,  who have been reflecting the beauty of my dualism ,once again, but i have never noticed or seen the hypothetical beauty of materialism .


In fact , you are the ones who do not want to listen to what some great scientists and philosophers have been saying such as T.Nagel , Sheldrake, Stapp, Chalmers , and the rest whose excerpts i have been extensively quoting all along, by violating copyright issues , just to provide you with that food for the mind  i have been 'stealing " just for you , guys  ,since you all do seem to be so starving  .
You just stick to your own materialist outdated superseded and false beliefs you have been confusing with science .

You , Ethos , do even believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views on top of that , so : you are the one that's of urgent need of that advice of yours .Thanks anyway .

Quote
Regards to all....................................Ethos

Likewise .
Take care, paradoxical Ethos : even this nick of yours is paradoxical in relation to your own mutually exclusive beliefs  .
My own nick  has been just a form of irony or sarcasm though .

You are also a very moody person through your paradoxical personality , i guess .

Ironically enough , you, Ethos , of all people here should have been agreeing with me  all along  in relation to materialism, simply because you are "a man of faith " , as you put it once .

But , i have not been religiously motivated in attacking materialism  though  ,as i said many times on the occasion : i just want you, guys , to realise the fact that materialism is no science , even though science has been materialist for so long now : i just would love to see science getting liberated from its own false materialist world view , simply because materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for ...consciousness .

P.S.: I have just started reading " Angels and Demons " ( I do not want to watch the movie before reading the book ) By Dan Brown (Quite a fictitious  ,inspiring ,entertaining and educational based -on- the- Eurocentric -history thriller , via religious symbolism and more  ) , regarding mainly the old-new conflict between christianity and science ; such conflict that explains how when and why science has been materialist and much more , while Islam has not only never been hostile to science , but was also the creator of science ,the latter that originated from the very fertile womb, so to speak, of my own faith thus .

All the best .


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: yor_on on 07/01/2014 18:15:41
Sorry, that reads as trolling for me? Allowing each other to have a view without insulting is important. It's not the game, it is how it is played that matter to me. Then again, it's no good getting too emotionally involved, even though it may touch ones faith of how life is.
==

Spelling sux :)
==

Better give you the highlights of life huh :)

You're born in sh** and P**
You die in sh** and P**

Between you just try to get along, to survive.
And if you're lucky, find something that you think worthwhile.

Now prove me wrong :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 07/01/2014 18:22:59
Still arguing guys lol.
To people with faith, there faith is all they need, faith = fact, evidence and truth.
anything else anyone might propose is all lies. You may not doubt or question the faith.

The fact that Don wants to make this part of science, just shows he does not understand
the scientific method. And he never will.
By his posts you can tell he thinks science should change to match his mystical world view.   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:28:03
Folks :

In short :

The objective reality  out there is way beyond our reach , and beyond  that of science as well , since science is just a human activity , and since the observed objective reality out there gets distorted by the minds of the observers through their a-priori held beliefs or world views that do shape their minds , and hence their thoughts , behaviours , ethics , actions ,views , opinions ....

Major proof ,once again ? : the materialist false belief or false world view that's been equated with science for so long now .
Objectivity is thus a myth , together with the so-called metaphysically -neutral science .

May I jump into this discussion?

I don't think it is impossible to define, what may be impossible is to agree on whether we have a shaper of it, or if it's just a 'fluke'. Myself I don't know, sometimes I think of the universe as something shaped to consciousness, possibly by consciousness? therefore I will not argue with people of faith, as long as I can recognize my humanity in their thoughts. There's a big difference to me, between someone having a personally felt faith, and a organization telling you what 'it is'.

also I like us all here, we don't need to agree, as long as we allow each other the opportunity to think.

You are welcome :
Don't forget the fact that the materialist secular religion has been equated with science , for so long now , while you are at it .
QT has even proved the fact that the "truth " is mind -dependent: a-priori held world views or beliefs do shape our minds in relation to the objective reality out there , the latter that gets distorted by our own a -priori held beliefs or world views which do shape our minds , thoughts , behaviours , ethics, opinions, views ....

The separation between mind and matter is a scientific myth thus , together with objectivity and the so-called metaphysically- neutral science .

That's 1 of the reasons why science has been pragmatic , and has not been about the truth ...
That's why science has been materialist , for so long now .

That's why a lots of scientists today,together with other great minds ,  have been equating and confusing the  19th century  false materialist belief , world view , philosophy , ideology ,secular religion with no less than ...science , no wonder thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:31:09
Still arguing guys lol.
To people with faith, there faith is all they need, faith = fact, evidence and truth.
anything else anyone might propose is all lies. You may not doubt or question the faith.

The fact that Don wants to make this part of science, just shows he does not understand
the scientific method. And he never will.
By his posts you can tell he thinks science should change to match his mystical world view.

You cannot be more ...wrong and totally incorrect about all that : see my posts on the subject .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:32:50
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader and a lousy scientist
And you're a lousy debater and by no means, any kind of scientist!

Well, it is  a matter of opinion or rather ...(mis)interpretation thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:35:01
Reminds me of an Arab Muslim I used to know. His father owned a vast amount of Gulf oil and this son of his thought the world revolved around himself and every thing he touched. Don reminds me a lot of that spoiled brat, makes me wonder what allegiances Don might secretly have ..........just wondering???
No comment...

No comment ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: yor_on on 07/01/2014 18:36:40
Well, when you dead you're dead?
Or will you argue against that one?

As long as your alive. you think, and those thoughts you will argue, as you're not alone in this universe.
Will you argue that one?

What life is, will be a matter of conviction, logic, faith, and unreasonableness :)
That one might be arguable.

So, what does it make us?
Human.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:48:04
No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
Oh dear; no, QM is emphatically not subjective, the 'founders' of QM didn't think so either. Yes, there are a number of interpretations of QM, and which interpretation you subscribe to is (obviously) subjective, but they're just interpretations - ways to visualise what is happening; they make no difference whatsoever to the QM calculations. The maths tells you precisely what to expect if you do any given experiment.

Equally obviously, every observer has a subjective view of any event - in relativity, two observers in relative motion will see each other's clocks run slow. This is a real effect, and by understanding the physics behind it, the two observers can agree on a common view of the situation.

Quote
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....
[???] Nobody is denying that reality has a distorted representation in mind of the observer, that's why the scientific method was developed. That has nothing to do with the subjective nature of context-dependent observations or quantum decoherence.

If you want a full discussion of the relationship between QM and consciousness, you'll find it here:

Is Consciousness Involved in Wave Function Collapse? (http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=507154)

You'll need to understand the difference between a 'pure' and a 'mixed' state, between 'unitary' and 'non-unitary' processes, and between 'decoherence' and the 'collapse of the wave function'. Be very careful not to jump to conclusions & to be sure you understand exactly what they're saying.

Then you can see the difference between saying 'QM is subjective' and the measurement problem (i.e. it takes a conscious observer to perceive a single outcome).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/) gives the background to the measurement problem.

You might be interested in a recent paper that shows how standard quantum statistical mechanics is sufficient to explain the unique result of a measurement and provides compatibility with classical mechanics: Solution To Quantum Problem (http://phys.org/news/2013-07-physicists-publish-solution-quantum-problem.html) (full article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370157312004085).

To make a long story short , the following :
You clearly do not understand what i have been saying :
The separation between matter and mind ,between the observed physical reality and the mind of the observer ,  between the mind of the observer and the observed thus is a scientific ...myth = the mind intervenes in the observed physical reality ,as QT has been showing all along , as Stapp has been explaining .

You still cannot realise the fact that our own a-priori held world views or beliefs do shape our minds , in the sense that you were trying to refute Stapp's arguments just through the extensions of your materialist world view   which you have been equating and confusing with science , by (mis) interpreting the available scientific data as to make it fit into your own materialist world view, the latter which you have been taking for granted as science or as the 'scientific world view "  .

You should in fact try to refute Stapp's dualist world view that's been supported by the dualist nature of QT and thus by science   ,not through your false materialist world view , but through science : if you would try to do just the latter , by first eliminating materialism from the equation thus , you will find out that you will find yourself in a peculiar situation .

Good luck .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 18:58:12
.. where does that free will you were talking about come from then ,within the framework of materialism ?
How can free will rise from the classically materialist mechanical determinist conception of the physical reality or of  the physical  brain then ?
Read what I posted (reposted below). If you don't understand what I mean by any of it, just say what part(s) you don't understand and I'll explain. If you could have a stab at answering the question at the end, I'd be interested to hear your answer.
Personally, I see my free will as the freedom to act as determined by what makes me uniquely 'me' - my state of mind at the time of the decision, which in turn, is determined by the genetic inheritance my parents gave me, and a lifetime of development and growth, interaction with my environment and experiences; what I've been taught, and what I've learnt, and what I've thought about. That's what makes me uniquely 'me'; what else do the advocates of causal transcendence think should be involved?

Try to re-read Stapp's refutation (Through QM ) of materialist neuroscientist Gazzaniga's ethical brain i did post yesterday .

P.S.: I have not been having  time today to look for those Stapp's excerpts you were asking for , later , alligator .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Grimbo1 on 07/01/2014 19:07:34
science does not have to refute any ones view.
I said you did not understand science. and I was correct.
You have not explained how your theory works ie how is consciousness separate from brain.
And despite all your cut and pasting of similar views to yours. You have provided no evidence
either.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 19:34:02
Quote
Not nearly as offensive as calling dlorde a swine or calling me a monkey!!

Why is that offensive? AFAIK neither species gets involved with religion, philosophy, or discussions about a subject they refuse to define, which makes them more intelligent and rational  than most humans.

Your above displayed "definition" of intelligence or rationality is earth-shaking haha ......amazing .
Where are those "civilizations , science , art , history , music , literature , creativity imagination, transcendent ethics, unique language  .....of  those -more-  intelligent -rational -than -some -people  species then ? " pff...

Will you find them for me ?

Which "category" of people   do you assume you belong to ?

What makes you assume that you might be  more intelligent or more rational than some people are then ?
Are the people who deliberately absurdly do eliminate their own  most important and most fundamental feature quality side of them all from reality ,are they better or more intelligent rational than those species your were talking about ?

Are certain people who do equate and confuse their own 19th century materialist irrational dogmatic outdated false and superseded beliefs with science better or more intelligent ?

Clearly , human  cognitive  intelligence is certainly not the highest form of human intelligence thus .

Consciousness does exist and is irreducible to the physical or to the material, despite the absurd fact that your false dogmatic irrational materialist belief tells you it is , science through QT has been saying quite the opposite of what your materialist beliefs on the subject have been saying .
Should we believe what science has been saying on the subject of mind and matter  , through QT, or should we just take your materialist word for it,through your false materialist world view that's been equated with science , for so long now  ? ,
your own materialist belief you have been taking for granted as science or as "the scientific world view" thus  : it's not the " fault" of consciousness that we cannot define it clearly : it clearly cannot be defined ,simply because consciousness is non-local and hence does escape any boundaries we might impose on it through our fruitless and illogical attempts to  try to  imprison it or to localize it  capture it within the boundaries of a conceptual ...definition .
Nevertheless , we can and should study consciousness ,that's not an it in fact , not an entity , but a process , the most fundamental and important process of them all out there without which there can be no science even .

Not to mention the fact that science ,through QT , has been proving the fact that the mind of the observer does intervene in the physical reality = inevitable : the separation between matter and the mind is a scientific myth , once again .
Pfff.....
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 19:53:10
science does not have to refute any ones view.
I said you did not understand science. and I was correct.
You have not explained how your theory works ie how is consciousness separate from brain.
And despite all your cut and pasting of similar views to yours. You have provided no evidence
either.

You're just projecting : science is faslification : call Popper in his own grave and he will tell you all about just that  ...Popper wrote a whole book "Science as refutation, or science as falsification  ...." about that and more ...

Science is not about the truth , science is not about proving some things to be true ,but all about proving some things to be false ....

So, any theory out there , any knowledge out there which pretends to be scientific must pass the falsifiability test  (That's the only way we can distinguish between science and between pseudo-science ,according to Popper ) ,must be falsifiable testable reproducible verifiable ,to be able to be raised to the scientific status .

But , no amount of unsuccessful falsifications of any scientific theory out there whatsoever , now or in the future , can declare those scientific theories to be true ,ever .

And it would have to take only 1 single successful falsification of any scientific theory to declare it as false irreversibly .

Science is thus just about approximate conjectural knowledge , not about the truth .

Science has  been thus in fact pragmatic also , in the sense that what works for us is  "true " ,thanks mainly to William James' philosophical pragmatism that was turned into a scientific one , James' philosophical pragmatism  that changed radically our  "conventional " concept of the truth,by turning the subject -object conventional conception and relationship upside down  in his book " Does consciousness exist ? "  .

James said that consciousness does not exist as such , not as an entity at least (I agree with him on this at least, but i do reject his pragmatism  ) , but as an undivided whole  process .

And since QT has proved the fact to be correct that our version of the objective reality out there is mind-dependent by proving the fact to be correct that the mind does interevene in the physical reality (=the separation between matter and mind is a scientific myth thus ) , post-modernists philosophers have been thinking that the "truth " does not exist as such , not in this life at least (since you seem to focus your attention on the latter only ) .




There is absolutely nothing  faslifiable = testable reproducible verifiable empirical  about the materialist  world view that's been equated and confused with science or with "the scientific world view " for so long now

Materialism that's just a belief = unfalsifiable = unscientific ,as  all beliefs are ,But not all beliefs are necessarily false , as materialism is .

What is so falsifiable = scientific = emprical about the materialist 'all is matter ,including the mind " mainstream "scientific world view " then ?

What extraordinary evidence has materialism been providing for its extraordinary claims ,regarding the nature of reality then ?

Has science ever proved the materialist "fact " , or rather the materialist "all is matter " core belief assumption to be empirically correct ?

Materialism is false though , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness : see how QT has been successfully falsifying materialism .

And what do you think Stapp, Nagel, Sheldrake , Chalmers .....and the rest of those non-reductionists from whose works i have been posting extensive excerpts  were doing ? : were they just using some alien method, instead of the scientific method ?
Were they just chatting or inventing fiction ?

I think you might be just over-estimating your own capacity of judgement , that's more like it ,since you still cannot grasp or understand my simple and clear statements ,let alone those of Stapp, Nagel and the rest .

I think that you are also just confusing materialism with science ...among other possibilities ...

Ciao
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2014 20:27:34

A Gazzaniga’s The Ethical Brain:


Michael S. Gazzaniga is a renowned cognitive neuroscientist. He was
Editor-in-Chief of the 1447 page book The Cognitive Neurosciences,
which, for the past decade, has been the fattest book in my library,
apart from ‘the unabridged’. His recent book The Ethical Brain has a
Part III entitled Free Will, Personal Responsibility, and the Law. This
part addresses, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, some
of the moral issues that have been dealt with in the present book.
The aim of his Part III is to reconcile the materialist idea that brain
activity is determined with the notion of moral responsibility, which
normally depends upon the idea that we human beings possess free
will.
Gazzaniga asserts:
Based on the modern understanding of neuroscience and on the
assumptions of legal concepts, I believe the following axioms:
Brains are automatic, rule-governed, determined devices, while
people are personally responsible agents, free to make their own
decisions.
One possible interpretation of these words – the quantum-theoretic
interpretation – would be that a person has both a mind (his stream of
conscious thoughts, ideas, and feelings) and a brain (made of neurons,
glia, etc), and that his decisions (his conscious moral choices) are free
(not determined by any known law), and that, moreover, the rules
that govern his brain determine the activity of his brain jointly from
the physically described properties of the brain combined with these
conscious decisions. That interpretation is essentially what orthodox
(von Neumann) quantum mechanics – and also common sense intuition
– asserts.
If this interpretation is what Gazzaniga means, then there is no
problem. But I believe that this is not what Gazzaniga means. Earlier
on he said:
The brain determines the mind, and the brain is a physical
entity subject to all the rules of the physical world. The physical
world is determined, so our brains must also be determined.
This seems to be suggesting that by ‘determined’ he means determined
solely by physically described properties, as would be the case if the
concepts of classical physics were applicable. However, what he actually
said was that “the brain is a physical entity subject to all the rules
of the physical world”. The rules of the physical world, as specified by
contemporary (orthodox quantum) theory, explain how the brain is
governed in part by the brain and in part by our conscious choices,
which themselves are not governed by any known laws. If this physicsbased
understanding of ‘determined’ is what Gazzaniga means then
there is no difficulty in reconciling the fact that an agent’s brain is
‘determined’ with the fact that this agent’s person is ‘free’: the agent’s
brain is determined partly by his brain and partly by his conscious
free choices, and hence the person whose actions this brain controls is
likewise jointly controlled by these two factors, neither of which alone
suffices.
If this contemporary-physics-based interpretation is what Gazzaniga
meant, then he could have stopped his book right there: that
interpretation is in complete accord with common sense, with normal
ethical theory, and with contemporary physics. Thus the fact that he
did not stop, but went on to write his book, including Part III, suggests
that he is using not the quantum mechanical meaning of ‘determined’;
but rather the meaning that would hold in the classical approximation,
which exorcizes all the physical effects of our conscious choices.
Indeed, he goes on to say:
If our brains are determined, then [. . . ] is the free will we seem
to experience just an illusion? And if free will is an illusion,
must we revise our concepts of what it means to be personally
responsible for our actions?
I am assuming in this appendix that Gazzaniga is adhering essentially
to nineteenth century physics, so that ‘determined’ means automatically/
mechanically determined by physically described properties
alone, like a clock, and that he is thus endeavoring to address the
question: How can one consider a person with an essentially clocklike
body-brain to be morally responsible for his actions? How can we
uphold the concept of ethical behavior within the confines of an understanding
of nature that reduces each human being to a mechanical
automaton?
Gazzaniga’s answer is built upon a proposed restructuring (redefining)
the meanings of both ‘free will’ and ‘moral responsibility’. Following
an idea of David Hume, and more recently of A.J. Ayer, the word
‘free’ is effectively defined to mean ‘unconstrained by external bonds’.
Thus a clock is ‘free’ if the movements of its hands and cogs are not
restricted by external bonds or forces. However, the ‘free will’ of traditional
ethical theory refers to a type of freedom that a mechanically
controlled clock would not enjoy, even if it had no external bonds.
This latter – morally pertinent – kind of free will is specifically associated
with consciousness. Thus a physically determined clock that
has no consciousness is not subject to moral evaluation, even if it
is not constrained by external bonds, whereas a person possessing a
conscious ‘will’ that is physically efficacious, yet not physically determined,
is subject to moral evaluation when he is not constrained by
external bonds. Thus the morally pertinent idea of ‘possessing free
will’ is not the same as ‘unconstrained by external bonds or forces’.
The Hume/Ayer move obscures the morally pertinent idea of freedom,
which is intimately linked to consciousness, by confounding it with different
idea that does not specifically involve consciousness. This move
throws rational analysis off track by suppressing (on the basis of an
inapplicable approximation) the involvement of consciousness in the
morally relevant conception of ‘free will’.
Ethical and moral values traditionally reside in the ability of a person
to make discerning conscious judgments pertaining to moral issues,
coupled with the capacity of the person’s conscious effort to willfully
force his body to act in accordance with the standards he has consciously
judged to be higher, in the face of strong natural tendencies
to do otherwise. The whole moral battle is fought in the realm of conscious
thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Where there is no consciousness
there is no moral dimension. Moreover, if consciousness exists but is
permitted by general rules to make no physical difference – that is,
if consciousness is constrained by the general laws to be an impotent
witness to mechanically determined process – then the seeming struggle
of will becomes a meaningless charade, and the moral dimension
again disappears.
It is the imposition, by virtue of the classical approximation, of
this law-based kind of impotency that eliminates the moral dimension
within that approximation. The morally pertinent free will is eradicated
by the classical approximation even if there are no external
bounds. Calling a system ‘free’ just because it is not constrained by
external bonds does not suffice to give that system the kind of free will
that undergirds normal ethical ideas.
Gazzaniga’s attack on the problem has also a second prong. He
avers that: “Personal responsibility is a public concept.” He says of
things such as personal responsibility that:
Those aspects of our personhood are – oddly – not in our brains.
They exist only in the relationships that exist when our automatic
brains interact with other automatic brains. They are in
the ether.
This idea that these pertinent things are “in the ether” and exist “only
in the relationships” is indeed an odd thing for a materialisticallyoriented
neuroscientist to say. It seems mystical. Although ideas about
personal responsibility may indeed arise only in social contexts, one
would normally say that the resulting ideas about personal responsibility
exist in the streams of consciousness of the interacting persons,
and a materialist would be expected to say that these ideas are ‘in’ or
are ‘some part of’ the brains of those socially interacting persons. Yet
if the causes of self-controlled behavior are wholly in the brains and
bodies of the agents, and these brains and bodies are automatically
determined by the physically described body-brain alone, then it is
hard to see how these agents, as persons, can have the kind of free will
upon which our moral and ethical theories are based. Some sort of odd
or weird move is needed to endow a person with morally relevant free
will if his body and brain are mechanically determined.
But if some sort of weirdness is needed to rescue the social concept
of personal responsibility, then why not use ‘quantum weirdness’. The
quantum concepts may seem weird to the uninitiated, but they are
based on science, and they resolve the problem of moral responsibility
by endowing our conscious choices with causal influence in the selection
of our physical actions.
It is hard to see the advantage of introducing the changes described
by Gazzaniga compared to the option of simply going beyond the inprinciple-
inadequate classical approximation. Why do thinkers dedicated
to rationality resist so tenaciously the option of accepting (contemporary
orthodox quantum) physics, which says that our conscious
choices intervene, in a very special and restricted kind of way, in the
mechanically determined time development of the physically described
aspects of a system – during the process by means of which the conscious
agent acquires new knowledge about that system? Because acquiring
new knowledge about a system normally involves a probingem, it is not at all weird that the system being examined
should be affected by the extraction of knowledge from it, and hence
comes to depend upon how it was probed.
The advantages of accepting quantum mechanics in cognitive neuroscience,
and ultimately in our lives, are:
• It is compatible with basic physical theory, and thus will continue to
work in increasingly complex and miniaturized empirical situations.
• It specifies how a person’s consciously experienced intentional
choices are represented in the physically described aspects of the
theory.
• It removes the incoherency of a known-to-be-real ontological element
that contains the empirical data, yet resides in a realm that
has no law-based connection to the flow of physical events.
• It provides a foundation for understanding the co-evolution of mind
and brain, because each of these two parts contributes to the dynamics
in a way that is linked to the other by laws that are specified,
at least in part.
• It provides for a free will of the kind needed to undergird ethical
theory.
• It produces a science-based image of oneself, not as a freak-accident
out-cropping – with consciousness riding like a piece of froth on
the ocean – but rather as an active component of a deeply interconnected
world process that is responsive to value-based human
judgments.

Henry P.Stapp

Since you are so fond of instructing everyone to "See this" and "See that," in stead of making any attempt to discuss the ideas yourself, my response is to tell you to go read  Gazzaniga's book, as well as  Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain and several other books for a more accurate understanding of his position.

Wow, that's so easy. No wonder Don likes it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 20:45:48
Ok, genie haha Cheryl : your order is my command , i am Alaaddin and you are my genie who rises from my magical lamp (I can't make you appear whenever i want to, unlike the real   fictitious Alaaddin  in relation to his genie ,as that tale goes .) : i will get on board of my flying carpet to see how  Gazzaniga (weird name by the way )  has been singing in his own materialist wonderland .

But , i am afraid to say that i do know enough of those materialist views to be able to conclude that most of what they have been taking for granted as science , has been just materialist bullshit , no offense , lady ,since materialism has been equated and confused with science or with "the scientific world view " for so long now .

Stapp just confirms my own earlier views on the subject .

Thanks, appreciate indeed .

P.S. where have you been ,lady ? I have been missing your interesting contributions, really , i mean it .

You're such a charming reviving fresh air , despite the fact that you are a materialist .

Gotta go, sorry , time up , i have spent too much time here than usual already, which i can hardly afford .

Bye , lady Narcissus .

Nice to have you back .

Don't disappear again , you do know that i cannot make you re-appear on demand out of the blue , my magical lamp is ...broken ..........you know ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2014 20:47:47
3-It's a matter of interpretation of QT : clearly Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others + all the founders of QT thought , and rightly so,that QT was / is mind-dependent .
Even at the macroscopic level , it is cristal-clear that the observed is mind -dependent ( we all distort the observed objective reality through our conscious a-priori held beliefs : materialists , for example , see life , nature , man and the rest of the universe as being mechanical determined ...dualists ,idealists or otherwise  do not ) : we all view reality through our own a-priori held world views that do shape our consciousness and hence our behaviours , thoughts , feelings , emotions, ethics , actions, ....
Do you really think 'Von Neumann , Einstein, Bohr , Heseinberg and others' were talking about subjective reality?  [:o)]

No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....

You are confusing two entirely different things. Not even Stapp would suggest that misinformation, as in believing something to be true that isn't - or wishful thinking, simply wanting it to be true, actually changes physical reality. If it's -34 degrees in Canada, there is no superpositioned brain state connected to the macro level reality of my car starting in the morning.

I am afraid you did not understand my words ,as dlorde did not ,  not as i have intended them to be at least , later , i really gotta go , thanks .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2014 20:53:31


No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....

You are confusing two entirely different things. Not even Stapp would suggest that misinformation, as in believing something to be true that isn't - or wishful thinking, simply wanting it to be true, actually changes physical reality even for that individual. If it's -34 degrees in Canada, there is no superpositioned brain state connected to the macro level reality of my car starting that morning. Nature's "answer" to that question is no.

Likewise even inside the brain or mind,  if quantum mechanics allows an in road for free will or indeterminacy, or simply speeds up or fine tunes mental processing (which I think may be more likely) there is still reams of evidence for macro level, classically described,  mechanisms and environmental influences that explain abilities and behavior and even choices. You cannot wish these influences away. If you are writhing in pain from appendicitis, I can pretty much predict your "choices" in the very near future with astounding accuracy.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2014 21:04:47


Don't disappear again , you do know that i cannot make you re-appear on demand out of the blue , my magical lamp is ...broken ..........you know ...

I some how managed to burn through my monthly data allotment in a single week (or my daughter did.) I'm posting from a Chapters bookstore in Sudbury today, a city that exists thanks to a meteor hitting the Earth here 1.8 billion years ago.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 07/01/2014 21:42:20
You should in fact try to refute Stapp's dualist world view that's been supported by the dualist nature of QT and thus by science
Already done (with Cheryl J's & Dawson's help). You must have missed it (or, more probably, misunderstood it).

I note your lack of comment on my description of a causally determined free will.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 07/01/2014 23:33:11
Quote
Consciousness does exist

So why not say what it is? Don't be shy!

And whilst you are about it, (a) which observer influences a quantum event that is observed by more than one person? (b) can a dog influence a quantum event? (c) or a bacterium?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 08/01/2014 05:27:12
V.S. Ramachandron (soulless materialist) in “The Tell-Tale Brain”

I find it odd how some people are so ardently drawn to either-or dichotomies. “Are apes self aware or are they automata?” “Is life meaningful or meaningless?” “Are humans ‘just’ animals or are we exalted?” As a scientist, I am perfectly comfortable with settling on categorical conclusions when it makes sense. But with many of these supposedly urgent metaphysical dilemmas, I must admit I don’t see the conflict. For instance, why can’t we be a branch of the animal kingdom and a wholly unique and gloriously novel phenomenon in the universe?
I also find it odd how people so often slip words like “merely” and “nothing but” into statements about our origins. Humans are apes. So too are we mammals. We are vertebrates. We are pulpy, throbbing colonies of tens of trillions of cells. We are all of these things, but we are not “merely” these things. And we are, in addition to all these things, something unique, something unprecedented, something transcendent. We are something new under the sun, with uncharted and perhaps limitless potential. We are the first and only species whose fate has rested in its own hands, not just in the hands of chemistry and instinct. On the great Darwinian stage we call Earth, I would argue there has not been an upheaval as big as us since the origin of life itself. When I think about what we are and what we may yet achieve, I can’t see any place for snide “merelies.”


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2014 10:51:12
JFYI - another destructive criticism of Stapp's hypothesis, this time by Danko Georgiev: Mind Efforts, Quantum Zeno Effect and Environmental Decoherence (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/552)
Quote from: Georgiev
The mind in Stapp's model does not have its own wavefunction or density matrix, but nevertheless can act upon the brain using projection operators. Such usage is not compatible with standard quantum mechanics because one can attach any number of ghostly minds to any point in space that act upon physical quantum systems with any projection operators. Therefore Stapp's model does not build upon "the prevailing principles of physics", but negates them.

Stapp's claim that quantum Zeno effect is robust against environmental decoherence directly contradicts a basic theorem in quantum information theory according to which acting with projection operators upon the density matrix of a quantum system can never decrease the Von Neumann entropy of the system, but can only increase it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 17:24:43
dlorde :

I am a kind of a dualist subjectivist , in the sense that the truth is mind-dependent: all our knowledge is subjective,including the scientific one thus   .

Post-modernists do hold almost the same view , the truth is subjective .

No wonder that science has become pragmatic , in the sense that what works for us is "true " : science can tell us nothing about the essence of things thus ...

Regarding the subjective nature of QT , the following excerpt ,once again , you must have  either missed or ignored :



"Human Knowledge
as the Foundation of Science":





In the introduction to his book Quantum Theory and Reality the
philosopher of science Mario Bunge (1967, p. 4) said:
The physicist of the latest generation is operationalist all right,
but usually he does not know, and refuses to believe, that the
original Copenhagen interpretation – which he thinks he supports
– was squarely subjectivist, i.e., nonphysical.
Let there be no doubt about this point. The original form of quantum
theory is subjective , in the sense that it is forthrightly about relationships
among conscious human experiences, and it expressly recommends
to scientists that they resist the temptation to try to understand
the reality responsible for the correlations between our experiences
that the theory correctly describes. The following brief collection
of quotations by the founders gives a conspectus of the Copenhagen
philosophy:
The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles
has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality
concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics
that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather
our knowledge of this behavior. (Heisenberg 1958a, p. 100)
[. . . ] the act of registration of the result in the mind of the
observer. The discontinuous change in the probability function
[. . . ] takes place with the act of registration, because it is the
discontinuous change in our knowledge in the instant of registration
that has its image in the discontinuous change of the
probability function. (Heisenberg 1958b, p. 55)
When the old adage “Natura non facit saltus” (Nature makes
no jumps) is used as a basis of a criticism of quantum theory,
we can reply that certainly our knowledge can change suddenly,
and that this fact justifies the use of the term ‘quantum jump’.
(Heisenberg 1958b, p. 54)
It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics
in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
(Wigner 1961b, p. 169)
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the
real essence of phenomena but only to track down as far as possible
relations between the multifold aspects of our experience.
(Bohr 1934, p. 18)
Strictly speaking, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics
merely offers rules of calculation for the deduction of
expectations about observations obtained under well-defined
classical concepts. (Bohr 1963, p. 60)
[. . . ] the appropriate physical interpretation of the symbolic
quantum mechanical formalism amounts only to prediction
of determinate or statistical character, pertaining to individual
phenomena appearing under conditions defined by classical
physics concepts. (Bohr 1958, p. 64)
The references to ‘classical (physics) concepts’ is explained by Bohr as
follows:
[. . . ] it is imperative to realize that in every account of physical
experience one must describe both experimental conditions and
observations by the same means of communication as the one
used in classical physics. Bohr (1958, p. 88)
[. . . ] we must recognize above all that, even when phenomena
transcend the scope of classical physical theories, the account
of the experimental arrangement and the recording of observations
must be given in plain language supplemented by technical
physical terminology. (Bohr 1958)
Bohr is saying that scientists do in fact use, and must use, the concepts
of classical physics in communicating to their colleagues the specifications
on how the experiment is to be set up, and what will constitute
a certain type of outcome. He in no way claims or admits that there
is an actual objective reality out there that conforms to the precepts
of classical physics.
In his book The Creation of Quantum Mechanics and the Bohr–
Pauli Dialogue, the historian John Hendry (1984) gives a detailed account
of the fierce struggles by such eminent thinkers as Hilbert, Jordan,
Weyl, von Neumann, Born, Einstein, Sommerfeld, Pauli, Heisenberg,
Schroedinger, Dirac, Bohr and others, to come up with a rational
way of comprehending the data from atomic experiments. Each man
had his own bias and intuitions, but in spite of intense effort no rational
comprehension was forthcoming. Finally, at the 1927 Solvay conference
a group including Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, and Born come into
concordance on a solution that came to be called the Copenhagen interpretation,
due to the central role of Bohr and those working with
him at his institute in Denmark.
Hendry says: “Dirac, in discussion, insisted on the restriction of the
theory’s application to our knowledge of a system, and on its lack of
ontological content.” Hendry summarized the concordance by saying:
“On this interpretation it was agreed that, as Dirac explained, the wave
function represented our knowledge of the system, and the reduced
wave packets our more precise knowledge after measurement.”
These quotations make it clear that, in direct contrast to the ideas
of classical physical theory, orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory is
about ‘our knowledge’. We, and in particular our mental aspects, have
entered into the structure of basic physical theory.
This profound shift in physicists’ conception of the basic nature
of their endeavor, and of the meanings of their formulas, was not a
frivolous move: it was a last resort. The very idea that in order to comprehend
atomic phenomena one must abandon physical ontology, and
construe the mathematical formulas to be directly about the knowledge
of human observers, rather than about external reality itself, is
so seemingly preposterous that no group of eminent and renowned
scientists would ever embrace it except as an extreme last measure.
Consequently, it would be frivolous of us simply to ignore a conclusion
so hard won and profound, and of such apparent direct bearing on our
effort to understand the connection of our conscious thoughts to our
bodily actions.
Einstein never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation. He said:
What does not satisfy me, from the standpoint of principle, is
its attitude toward what seems to me to be the programmatic
aim of all physics: the complete description of any (individual)
real situation (as it supposedly exists irrespective of any act
of observation or substantiation). (Einstein 1951, p. 667; the
parenthetical word and phrase are part of Einstein’s statement.)
and
What I dislike in this kind of argumentation is the basic positivistic
attitude, which from my view is untenable, and which
seems to me to come to the same thing as Berkeley’s principle,
esse est percipi. [Transl: To be is to be perceived] (Einstein
1951, p. 669)
Einstein struggled until the end of his life to get the observer’s knowledge
back out of physics. He did not succeed! Rather he admitted (ibid.
p. 87) that:
It is my opinion that the contemporary quantum theory constitutes
an optimum formulation of the [statistical] connections.
He also referred (ibid, p. 81) to:
[. . . ] the most successful physical theory of our period, viz., the
statistical quantum theory which, about twenty-five years ago
took on a logically consistent form. This is the only theory at
present which permits a unitary grasp of experiences concerning
the quantum character of micro-mechanical events.
One can adopt the cavalier attitude that these profound difficulties
with the classical conception of nature are just some temporary retrograde
aberration in the forward march of science. One may imagine,
as some do, that a strange confusion has confounded our best minds
for seven decades, and that the weird conclusions of physicists can
be ignored because they do not fit a tradition that worked for two
centuries. Or one can try to claim that these problems concern only
atoms and molecules, but not the big things built out of them. In this
connection Einstein said (ibid, p. 674): “But the ‘macroscopic’ and
‘microscopic’ are so inter-related that it appears impracticable to give
up this program [of basing physics on the ‘real’] in the ‘microscopic’
domain alone.”
These quotations document the fact that Copenhagen quantum
theory brings human consciousness into physical theory in an essential
way. But how does this radical change in basic physics affect science’s
conception of the human person?
To answer this query I begin with a few remarks on the development
of quantum theory.
The original version of quantum theory, called the Copenhagen
quantum theory, or the Copenhagen interpretation, is forthrightly
pragmatic. It aims to show how the mathematical structure of the
theory can be employed to make useful, testable predictions about our
future possible experiences on the basis of our past experiences and
the forms of the actions that we choose to make. In this initial version
of the theory the brains and bodies of the experimenters, and
also their measuring devices, are described fundamentally in empirical
terms: in terms of our experiences/perceptions pertaining to these devices
and their manipulations by our physical bodies. The devices are
treated as extensions of our bodies. However, the boundary between
our empirically described selves and the physically described system
we are studying is somewhat arbitrary. The empirically described measuring
devices can become very tiny, and physically described systems
can become very large, This ambiguity was examined by von Neumann
(1932) who showed that we can consistently describe the entire physical
world, including the brains of the experimenters, as the physically described
world, with the actions instigated by an experimenter’s stream
of consciousness acting directly upon that experimenter’s brain. The
interaction between the psychologically and physically described aspects
in quantum theory thereby becomes the mind–brain interaction
of neuroscience and neuropsychology.
It is this von Neumann extension of Copenhagen quantum theory
that provides the foundation for a rationally coherent ontological interpretation
of quantum theory – for a putative description of what is
really happening. Heisenberg suggested an ontological description in
his 1958 book Physics and Philosophy and I shall adhere to that ontology,
formulated within von Neumann’s framework in which the brain,
as part of the physical world, is described in terms of the quantum
mathematics. This localizes the mind–matter problem at the interface
between the quantum mechanically described brain and the experientially
described stream of consciousness of the human agent/observer.
My aim in this book is to explain to non-physicist the interplay
between the psychologically and physically described components of
mind–brain dynamics, as it is understood within the orthodox (von
Neumann–Heisenberg) quantum framework.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 17:31:58

 Mind, Matter, and Pauli:
 Introduction:


Wolfgang Pauli was called by Einstein his “spiritual heir”, and his unrelenting
demand for precision and clarity earned him the title of “the conscience
of physics”. A godson of the great philosopher of science Ernst Mach, he
was philosophically astute and, with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, a
principal architect of the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
theory. This approach to the theory allowed physicists to avoid assigning
paradoxical properties to nature. It did so by adopting a philosophically radical
stance: regard atomic theory not as a description of atomic processes
themselves, but rather as a description of connections between human observations.
This renunciation of the traditional scientific ideal of erecting a
coherent idea of physical reality was the chief objection against the Copenhagen
view raised by Einstein. Though Einstein admitted that it was still
unexplained why science had succeeded even as far as it had in creating
a mathematical understanding of nature, he held that we must nonetheless
persist in the endeavor: otherwise even the possible would not be achieved.
In a 1948 letter to his friend Marcus Fierz, Pauli writes:
When he speaks of “reality” the layman usually means something wellknown,
whereas I think that the important and extremely difficult task of
our time is to build up a fresh idea of reality.1
This idea was meant to encompass not only the material side of nature, but
also its psychic or spiritual side:
It seems to me—however it is thought, whether we speak of “the participation
of things in ideas” or of “inherently real things”—that we must
postulate a cosmic order of nature beyond our control to which both the outward
material objects and the inward images are subject . . . The ordering
and regulating must be placed beyond the difference between “physical”
and “psychical”—as Plato’s “Ideas” have something of the concepts and
also something of the “natural forces . . .”.
In a later letter (13 October 1951) Pauli goes on to say, in regard to the
significance of the entry of a basic element of chance into physics:

Something that previously appeared closed has remained open here, and I
hope that new concepts will penetrate through this gap in the place of [psychophysical]
parallelism, and that they should be uniformly both physical
and psychological. May more fortunate offspring achieve this.2
These ideas of Pauli appear to represent a fascinating reversal of his
earlier position; the quantum element of chance is viewed no longer as a veil
that must obscure forever our complete understanding of reality, but rather
as an opening to a still deeper understanding. Yet Pauli’s view is no mere
conversion to the Einsteinian view that science should strive to represent
physical reality. Einstein accepted the traditional scientific separation of
mind from matter, whereas Pauli is suggesting that the element of chance
in quantum theory provides an opening not to a traditional physical reality
but rather to a reality lying beyond the mind–matter distinction.
My intention here is to explore this idea, which, if correct, would open
up a whole newchapter in science. But before venturing beyond the confines
of mind and matter it will be useful to review briefly the role of mind in
modern science.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 17:34:32
A Quantum Theory
of the Mind–Brain Interface:

 The Origin of the Problem: Classical Mechanics:


Advances in science often unify conceptually things previously thought to
be unconnected. Thus Newtonian mechanics unified our understanding of
stellar and terrestial motions, and Maxwell’s theory unified our understanding
of electromagnetic phenomena and light. Einstein’s special theory of
relativity unified our concepts of space and time, and his general theory
unified our conceptions of spacetime and gravity. My thesis here is that
the integration of consciousness into science requires considering together
two outstanding fundamental problems in contemporary science, namely
the problem of the connection between mind and brain, and the problem of
measurement in quantum theory.
Each of these problems concerns the interface between two domains of
phenomena that are currently described by using different conceptual systems:
mind and brain are described in psychological and physical terms,
respectively, whereas the measurement problem in quantum theory is to reconcile
the concepts of classical physics that are used to describe the world of
visible objects with the concepts of quantum theory that are used to describe
theworld of atomic processes. In each case the problem of constructing a coherent
overarching conceptualization appears to be so intractable that many
scientists have judged the problem to be a pseudoproblem not suited to scientific
study. However, technological advances are now providing data that
bear increasingly on the interfaces between the domains that had heretofore
been empirically separate. Given these newdata, and the prospect of more to
come, science can now profitably take up the challenge of providing a conceptual
framework that unifies the mental, physical, classical, and quantal
aspects of nature.
William James highlighted the seemingly intractable character of the
mind–brain problem with the following two quotations:1
Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in consciousness and a
molecular motion are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing;

we continue utterly incapable of uniting the two so as to conceive the reality
of which they are the two faces. (Spencer)
and
The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the
intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would
allow us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other. (Tyndall)
In commenting on this issue James clearly recognized that the problem
was with the concepts of classical physics. Referring to the scientists who
would one day illuminate the problem he said:
The necessities of the case will make them “metaphysical”. Meanwhile the
best way in which we can facilitate their advent is to understand how great
is the darkness in which we grope, and never forget that the natural-science
assumptions with which we started are provisional and revisable things.2
James evidently foresaw, on the basis of considerations of the mind–
brain problem, the eventual dislodgement of classical mechanics from the
position it held during his day. We now know that classical mechanics fails
at the atomic level: it has been superseded by quantum mechanics.
That classical mechanics is not capable of integrating consciousness
into science is manifest. Classical physics is an expression of Descartes’s
idea that nature is divided into two logically unrelated and noninteracting
parts: mind and matter. However, the integration of consciousness into
science requires, instead, a logical framework in which these two aspects of
nature are linked in ways that can account for both the observed influence of
brain processes on mental processes, and the apparent influence of mental
processes on brain processes.
Brain process depends in a sensitive way upon atomic processes. Hence
a quantum-mechanical treatment is mandated in principle. However, the
brain has a hierarchical structure, with larger structures being built from
smaller ones, and as one moves to higher levels the concepts of classical
physics seem to work increasingly well. Since consciousness appears to be
a high-level process one might think that it should be comprehended within
the conceptual framework of classical physics. In support of this idea some
scientists have noted that, even in nonbiological systems, as one moves
to higher levels of organization new structures often emerge that exercise
effective control over lower-level processes. Thus it is argued that just as a
“vortex” can, within the conceptual framework of classical physics, emerge
as an entity that controls the motions of the molecules from which it is
built, so might there emerge, from a stratum of brain activities completely

compatible with the concepts of classical physics, a “consciousness” that
controls lower-level brain processes.
There is, however, an essential conceptual difference between consciousness
and a system such as a vortex that is compatible with the concepts of
classical physics. The essential characteristic of consciousness is that it is
felt: it is felt experience; felt awareness. Any system that is compatible with
the concepts of classical physics can be described, insofar as its physical
behavior is concerned, as composed of the physical elements provided by
classical physics, such as atoms, and electromagnetic fields. However, the
description in terms of these elements does not, by itself, specify whether
the system has an appended experiential aspect—a feel. Nature may elect
to add feel, but the classical physicists can consider the purely physical
version without any added quality of feel, and this latter version behaves,
according to the precepts of classical physics, in exactly the same way as
the one with feel. Thus within the framework of classical physics feel is,
per se, nonefficacious: it has no effect on the physical world.
This problem has been clearly understood for hundreds of years, and is
the core of the mind–brain problem.
It is only recently that the brain sciences have amassed enough data to
make feasible a serious effort to understand the dynamics of the mind–brain
connection within the framework of the basic laws of physics. An adequate
classical-physics treatment of the mind–brain problem is not possible, for
the reason discussed above. On the other hand, the application of quantum
mechanics appears to be blocked by three major technical problems.
The first problem, which has already been mentioned, is that quantum
theory is primarily a theory of atomic processes, whereas consciousness
appears to be connected with macroscopic brain activities, and macroscopic
processes are well described by classical physics.
The second problem is that, owing to a failure of an essential condition
of isolation, quantum theory, as developed for the study of atomic processes,
does not apply to biological systems, such as brains.
The third problem is that the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of
quantum theory instructs us to regard the quantum formalism as merely
a set of rules for calculating expectations about our observations, not as
a description, or picture, of physical reality itself. However, without a
description of physical reality consciousness becomes a puzzle within an
enigma.
Any acceptable quantum-mechanical treatment of the connection between
mind and brain must resolve these three major technical problems.
In the treatment to be described here the resolution of the third problem
resolves automatically also the other two.

A Quantum Ontology:


The mathematical concepts in quantum theory are fundamentally different
from those of classical physics. This difference makes it difficult to form a
unified conception of nature. The Copenhagen strategy for circumventing
these conceptual difficulties, by settling for a set of computational rules connecting
human observations, rather than striving to comprehend the nature
of the underlying reality, was strongly opposed by Einstein, Schr¨odinger,
and many other principal contributors to the development of quantum theory.
However, those critics were unable to put forth any alternative proposals.
EventuallyWerner Heisenberg, one of the chief architects and strongest defenders
of the Copenhagen interpretation, did try to form a coherent picture
of what is actually happening.
In Heisenberg’s picture, which is the one informally adopted by most
practicing quantum physicists, the classical world of material particles,
evolving in accordance with local deterministic mathematical laws, is replaced
by the Heisenberg state of the universe. This state can be pictured as
a complicated wave, which, like its classical counterpart, evolves in accordance
with local deterministic laws of motion. However, this Heisenberg
state represents not the actual physical universe itself, in the normal sense,
but merely a set of “objective tendencies”, or “propensities”, connected to
an impending actual event. The connection is this: for each of the alternative
possible forms that this impending event might take, the Heisenberg
state specifies a propensity, or tendency, for the event to take that form. The
choice between these alternative possible forms is asserted to be governed
by “pure chance”, weighted by these propensities.
The actual event itself is simply an abrupt change in the Heisenberg state:
it is sometimes called “the collapse of the wave function”. The new state
describes the tendencies associated with the next actual event. This leads
to an alternating succession of states and events, in which the state at each
stage describes the propensities associated with the event that follows it. In
this way the universe becomes controlled in part by strictly deterministic
mathematical laws, and in part by mathematically defined “pure chance”.
The actual events become, in Heisenberg’s ontology, the fundamental
entities from which the evolving universe is built. The properties of these
actual events are determined by the quantum formalism. These properties
are remarkable: they lead to a quantum world profoundly different from the
one pictured in classical physics.
Each Heisenberg actual event has both local and global aspects. Locally,
each such event acts over a macroscopic domain in an integrative fashion: it
actualizes, as a unit, some integrated high-level action or activity, such as the

firing of a Geiger counter. This essential quality of the actual event to grasp
as a unit, and actualize as a whole, an entire high-level pattern of activity
injects into the quantum universe an integrative aspect wholly lacking in
the classical conception of nature. This fundamentally integrative action
of the Heisenberg actual event is the foundation of the quantum theory of
consciousness developed here.
Each actual event has also a global or universal aspect: its action is
not wholly confined to any local region, but extends to distant parts of
the universe. These two intertwined aspects arise from the fact that the
Heisenberg actual event is represented within the quantum formalism by
the change induced in the Heisenberg state of the universe by the action
upon it of a localized operator. This change in the state of the universe,
although induced by the action of a localized operator, produces a global
change in the tendencies for the next actual event. Thus each actual event
is a global change in the tendencies for the next actual event.
By introducing in this way a quantum ontology, and thus departing from
the purely epistemological stance of the strictly orthodox Copenhagen interpretation,
one can remove the subjective human observer from the quantum
description of the physical world and speak directly about the actual dispositions
of the measuring devices, rather than the knowledge of the observer.
Thus the moon can be said to be “really there” even when nobody is looking.
And Schr¨odinger’s cat is, actually, either dead or alive. More importantly,
the degrees of freedom of a biological system that correspond to its macroscopic
features can be considered to be highly constrained, and to specify
a classical framework, or matrix, within which one can consider the atomic
processes that are essential to its functioning.
This useful ontology has two defects. The first is its runaway ontology:
the supposedly actual things to which the tendencies refer consist only of
shifts in tendencies for future actual things, which consist, in turn, only
of shifts in tendencies for still more distantly future things, and so on ad
infinitum: each actuality is defined only in terms of possible future ones, in
a sequence that never ends.
The second defect is the omission from the description of nature of the
one thing really known to exist: human thought.
These two difficulties fit hand-in-glove: the first is that some authentic
actual things are needed to break the infinite regress; the second is that some
authentic actual things have been left out.
These considerations motivate the first basic proposal of thiswork, which
is to attach to each Heisenberg actual event an experiential aspect. The latter
is called the feel of this event, and it can be considered to be the aspect of
the actual event that gives it its status as an intrinsic actuality.

The central question then becomes: What principle determines the structure
of the feel of an actual event? More narrowly: How is the structure of
human experience connected to the structure of human brain processes?
The answer, according to the present theory, is this: Each human experience
has a compositional structure that is isomorphic to the compositional
structure of the actual brain event of which it is the feel.
To understand the nature of these two compositional structures one must
look closely at brain processes and psychological processes. We begin by
giving a general overview of the former.

Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 17:45:44
JFYI - another destructive criticism of Stapp's hypothesis, this time by Danko Georgiev: Mind Efforts, Quantum Zeno Effect and Environmental Decoherence (http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/552)
Quote from: Georgiev
The mind in Stapp's model does not have its own wavefunction or density matrix, but nevertheless can act upon the brain using projection operators. Such usage is not compatible with standard quantum mechanics because one can attach any number of ghostly minds to any point in space that act upon physical quantum systems with any projection operators. Therefore Stapp's model does not build upon "the prevailing principles of physics", but negates them.

Stapp's claim that quantum Zeno effect is robust against environmental decoherence directly contradicts a basic theorem in quantum information theory according to which acting with projection operators upon the density matrix of a quantum system can never decrease the Von Neumann entropy of the system, but can only increase it.

That quote of yours has nothing destructive (just dependent  of the mind of its author, and of the latter 's interpretation of QT that's mind-dependent in its turn  )  in relation to Stapp's QM theory of consciousness,just mind-dependent speculation  : the founders of QT did think that QT is mind -dependent = consciousness does intevene in the physical reality in the fundamental sense .
The fact that QT is subjective (see the explicit excerpt of Stapp on the subject here above ) and thus mind -dependent or psycho-physical = the mind does intervene in the physical reality ,since reality is 2 faced : physical and mental = the separation between matter and mind is a scientific myth .

You still do not realise the revolutionary character of QT in that sense , no wonder since you are a ...materialist :
Our thoughts or mind do intervene in the physical reality: read what Stapp , Pauli , Heseinberg , Von Neumann, Einstein , Bohr ...had to say about that .

Since science has ben dominated by materialism , then , those founders of QT "must be wrong " of course : how convenient .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:05:39


No, QT is the one that's subjective ( The founders of QT saw it as such ,remember ) : mind -dependent = a matter of interpretation , that's why there are a lots of interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation of QT , the latter depends largely on the a -priori held beliefs or world views of the scientists thinkers in question,as we see that reflected in this very thread through Stapp's and through the materialists ' interpretations of QT  such as those of yourselves   .
The observed objective reality out there  in general , either at the microscopic or macroscopic levels , gets distorted by the mind of the observer through the a-priori held beliefs or world views of the observer which do shape his /her mind and hence his thoughts ,behaviours , ethics , actions ....

You are confusing two entirely different things. Not even Stapp would suggest that misinformation, as in believing something to be true that isn't - or wishful thinking, simply wanting it to be true, actually changes physical reality even for that individual. If it's -34 degrees in Canada, there is no superpositioned brain state connected to the macro level reality of my car starting that morning. Nature's "answer" to that question is no.

Likewise even inside the brain or mind,  if quantum mechanics allows an in road for free will or indeterminacy, or simply speeds up or fine tunes mental processing (which I think may be more likely) there is still reams of evidence for macro level, classically described,  mechanisms and environmental influences that explain abilities and behavior and even choices. You cannot wish these influences away. If you are writhing in pain from appendicitis, I can pretty much predict your "choices" in the very near future with astounding accuracy.


Our  physical micro and macroscopic components are intertwined ,and we are "determined " by both our brain activity and by our own conscious relative choices , the latter that do obey to no known physical laws ,as Stapp has been explaining .

See also the above newly posted excerpts of Stapp on the subject of the subjective nature of QT that's psycho-physical .


As long as you keep on equating or confusing your false materialism with science , you will never be able to understand the above , i am afraid , no offense , or you will just dismiss that out of hand , on the basis of your false materialist world view .

The fact that materialism has been taken for granted as science or as "the scientific world view " is THE major evidence for the fact that all our knowledge is subjective or psycho-physical , mind-dependent , including the scientific one , including QT thus .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2014 18:09:13
Regarding the subjective nature of QT , the following excerpt ,once again , you must have  either missed or ignored :
<Stapp stuff>
Stapp equivocates subjectivity for the purpose of his discredited hypothesis. Subjectivity is not part of the quantum formalism; like classical mechanics, it deals with probability distributions. In both cases, the introduction of an observer necessitates a subjective viewpoint. For QM, this change of viewpoint involves the perception of a single outcome rather than the decohered mixed state of the system which is the QM result. How an observer perceives a single outcome of this decohered state is not part of the quantum formalism, and is open to interpretation (in fact, that's why it's open to interpretation, and why the choice of interpretation is of no material consequence).

If you read the link I previously provided, you might understand the difference - although, on second thoughts, you might not...

It is possible to treat objective quantum probabilities under a Bayesian regime, where you can assign subjective priors - see Subjective and Objective Probabilities in Quantum Mechanics (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0501009v2.pdf), but this only serves to aid in refining initial ignorance about the probability state of a quantum system from initially subjective estimates to eventually objective certainties:
Quote
... Eventually, all but strongly biased observers (who can be identified a priori by an examination of their choice of prior probability) will be convinced of the values of the quantum probabilities. In this way, initially subjective probability assignments become more and more objective.

Note that, from the outset, the authors affirm:
Quote
... For example, given a wave function ψ(x, t) for a particle in one dimension, the rules of quantum mechanics (which are apparently laws of nature) tell us that we must assign a probability |ψ(x, t)|2dx to the statement “at time t, the particle is between x and x + dx”. Different people do not appear to have a choice about this assignment. In this sense, quantum probability appears to be objective
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:12:18


Don't disappear again , you do know that i cannot make you re-appear on demand out of the blue , my magical lamp is ...broken ..........you know ...

I some how managed to burn through my monthly data allotment in a single week (or my daughter did.) I'm posting from a Chapters bookstore in Sudbury today, a city that exists thanks to a meteor hitting the Earth here 1.8 billion years ago.

What an old meteor , the poor one .How did that poor old meteor build that city ? kidding .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:23:49
Regarding the subjective nature of QT , the following excerpt ,once again , you must have  either missed or ignored :
<Stapp stuff>
Stapp equivocates subjectivity for the purpose of his discredited hypothesis. Subjectivity is not part of the quantum formalism; like classical mechanics, it deals with probability distributions. In both cases, the introduction of an observer necessitates a subjective viewpoint. For QM, this change of viewpoint involves the perception of a single outcome rather than the decohered mixed state of the system which is the QM result. How an observer perceives a single outcome of this decohered state is not part of the quantum formalism, and is open to interpretation (in fact, that's why it's open to interpretation, and why the choice of interpretation is of no material consequence).

If you read the link I provided, you might understand the difference - although, on second thoughts, you might not...

You can try to deny what Stapp has been saying all night and day long , but that won't make the fact go away that QT is psycho-physical = consciousness cannot but interevene in the physical reality ,(since consciousness is a fundamental active part of reality) ,  at the micro quantum and also at the macroscopic levels = inevitable, since reality is both physical and mental .

As a materialist , you cannot but deny that fact of course = that's an extra evidence for the fact that the "truth" is subjective , that all our knowledge ,including the scientific one , including QT thus , is subjective ,in the sense that all that is mind-dependent and hence  has not much to do with the objective reality out there or with the essence of things ,the latter which are beyond the reach of science that's just a human activity = mind-dependent = consciousness does intervene in the physical reality .

P.S.: I will not read any materialist views on the subject , since materialism is false , and since materialism has been equated and confused with science or with "the scientific world view " , for so long now ,  materialism that has been reducing the mind to just brain activity ,so, the mind has no causal effects on matter , according to the false materialist secular religion in science .

Got that ? Hope so , for your own sake , as a scientist .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:31:59
V.S. Ramachandron (soulless materialist) in “The Tell-Tale Brain”

I find it odd how some people are so ardently drawn to either-or dichotomies. “Are apes self aware or are they automata?” “Is life meaningful or meaningless?” “Are humans ‘just’ animals or are we exalted?” As a scientist, I am perfectly comfortable with settling on categorical conclusions when it makes sense. But with many of these supposedly urgent metaphysical dilemmas, I must admit I don’t see the conflict. For instance, why can’t we be a branch of the animal kingdom and a wholly unique and gloriously novel phenomenon in the universe?
I also find it odd how people so often slip words like “merely” and “nothing but” into statements about our origins. Humans are apes. So too are we mammals. We are vertebrates. We are pulpy, throbbing colonies of tens of trillions of cells. We are all of these things, but we are not “merely” these things. And we are, in addition to all these things, something unique, something unprecedented, something transcendent. We are something new under the sun, with uncharted and perhaps limitless potential. We are the first and only species whose fate has rested in its own hands, not just in the hands of chemistry and instinct. On the great Darwinian stage we call Earth, I would argue there has not been an upheaval as big as us since the origin of life itself. When I think about what we are and what we may yet achieve, I can’t see any place for snide “merelies.”


I wonder why you , materialists , do think that your own false materialist extensions of  your false materialist world view that has been equated with science , i wonder why you do take your false materialist views for granted as science or as valid arguments ? , by quoting materialist scientists ....= what a paradox .

If you want to try to refute Stapp's dualist QT theory of consciousness that has been supported by the dualist scientific  nature of  QT , then you must try to do just that via science , not via materialism : see the difference ?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2014 18:34:52
You can try to deny what Stapp has been saying all night and day long , but that won't make the fact go away that QT is psycho-physical = consciousness cannot but interevene in the physical reality ,(since consciousness is a fundamental active part of reality) ,  at the micro quantum and also at the macroscopic levels = inevitable, since reality is both physical and mental .
It is possible to treat objective quantum probabilities under a Bayesian regime, where you can assign subjective priors - see Subjective and Objective Probabilities in Quantum Mechanics (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0501009v2.pdf), but this only serves to aid in refining initial ignorance about the probability state of a quantum system from initially subjective estimates to eventually objective certainties:
Quote
... Eventually, all but strongly biased observers (who can be identified a priori by an examination of their choice of prior probability) will be convinced of the values of the quantum probabilities. In this way, initially subjective probability assignments become more and more objective.

Note that, from the outset, the authors affirm:
Quote
... For example, given a wave function ψ(x, t) for a particle in one dimension, the rules of quantum mechanics (which are apparently laws of nature) tell us that we must assign a probability |ψ(x, t)|2dx to the statement “at time t, the particle is between x and x + dx”. Different people do not appear to have a choice about this assignment. In this sense, quantum probability appears to be objective
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:41:21
You should in fact try to refute Stapp's dualist world view that's been supported by the dualist nature of QT and thus by science
Already done (with Cheryl J's & Dawson's help). You must have missed it (or, more probably, misunderstood it).


You wish : those were just materialist views ,and since you have been equating and confusing materialism with science , no wonder that you do take those materialist views for granted as science thus .
You delivered  the same paradoxical approaches in relation to Sheldrake, Nagel and to the rest from whose works i have been posting extensive excerpts = just through your false materialist world view , not through science : since you cannot differentiate between materialism and science , and since you cannot but equate materialism with science , then , you cannot but deliver materialist bullshit mostly ,logically .

And the tragic and sad part of all that is that you are not even aware of the above .

Quote
I note your lack of comment on my description of a causally determined free will.

Determinist mechanical materialism and free will cannot be married by any magical materialist priest out there = mutually exclusive .

Only dualism can be married to free will ,as they are indeed ,for so long now : they have been making so many bright beautiful kids all along,such as Stapp .......... .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 18:48:23
You can try to deny what Stapp has been saying all night and day long , but that won't make the fact go away that QT is psycho-physical = consciousness cannot but interevene in the physical reality ,(since consciousness is a fundamental active part of reality) ,  at the micro quantum and also at the macroscopic levels = inevitable, since reality is both physical and mental .
It is possible to treat objective quantum probabilities under a Bayesian regime, where you can assign subjective priors - see Subjective and Objective Probabilities in Quantum Mechanics (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0501009v2.pdf), but this only serves to aid in refining initial ignorance about the probability state of a quantum system from initially subjective estimates to eventually objective certainties:
Quote
... Eventually, all but strongly biased observers (who can be identified a priori by an examination of their choice of prior probability) will be convinced of the values of the quantum probabilities. In this way, initially subjective probability assignments become more and more objective.

Note that, from the outset, the authors affirm:
Quote
... For example, given a wave function ψ(x, t) for a particle in one dimension, the rules of quantum mechanics (which are apparently laws of nature) tell us that we must assign a probability |ψ(x, t)|2dx to the statement “at time t, the particle is between x and x + dx”. Different people do not appear to have a choice about this assignment. In this sense, quantum probability appears to be objective

You still can't get it , i see : i am talking about somethingelse here : as Stapp has been doing ,so , you do not get the most central and revolutionary core of Stapp's  work :

All our knowledge , including the scientific one , including QT thus , is subjective , in the sense that consciousness of the observer does intervene in the observed physical reality , so, the separation between matter and mind , between the mind of the observer and the observed physical reality is a scientific myth :
Major example : the materialist mainstream false 'scientific world view " = the materialist belief that has been equated with science through the minds of materialists and their followers who have been assuming that matter is the only reality , and hence the mind is in the brain , or the mind is just brain activity ,the mind has no causal effects on matter ,  life and the rest of the universe are mechanical determined ............

And since science is just a human activity , and since reality is psycho-physical  or physical and mental , then the mind of the observer scientist will always interevene in the observed physical reality ,and hence pragmatic science that's not about the truth , will never reflect the objective reality out there .

Objectivity is thus a myth , together with the metaphysically -neutral science .

The truth out there we can never reach , is mind-dependent = subjective , even in science itself .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2014 19:02:30
Meh - if you're not prepared to argue your position, discuss rational objections, or even listen to the arguments of those who have a different view, why are you here? is it not obvious to you that naively repeated assertion and reams of uncommented publications from fringe authors are not going to convince anyone capable of rational thought?

[Btw, those were rhetorical questions]
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 19:20:30
I am only referring to the mind-dependent subjective nature of almost all human conceptions of nature and reality out there thus....since  the mind that's a  fundamental  active part of reality cannot but intervene in the obseved phsyical reality out there .
Eliminating the mind from reality , as materialism has been doing , by reducing the mind to just physical brain activity , and hence the mind has no causal effects on matter , have been just materialist bullshit , no science = the separation between matter and mind , between the mind of the observer and the observed physical reality has been just a scientific myth,thanks to materialism,since materialism has been equated with science ,since the 19th century at least  (we can trace back that incorrect separation between mind and matter all the way back to Descartes by the way )  : that's mainly what Stapp has been talking about , i guess :
We can thus no longer eliminate our most important and most fundamental part of them all (consciousness ) from reality .
All our knowledge , including the scientific one, including QT ( we will never know what's really happening within or without concerning the real behaviour of atoms , sub-atoms ....we can just talk about that ,just in terms of probabilities,possibilities , events  ..)  ...can be thus only ...subjective , in the sense that the objective reality concerning what's really happening within and without will always remain out of our reach , and out of that of science ,for ever .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 19:24:29
Meh - if you're not prepared to argue your position, discuss rational objections, or even listen to the arguments of those who have a different view, why are you here? is it not obvious to you that naively repeated assertion and reams of uncommented publications from fringe authors are not going to convince anyone capable of rational thought?

[Btw, those were rhetorical questions]

See above : since you have been equating materialism with science , how can you say the above ? Who's the irrational guy here then ...
I do reject materialism ,together with its scientific claims , so, if you wanna try to talk science , try to eliminate materialism, that's no science , from the equation first .
Trying to refute Sheldrake, Stapp and the rest just through the false materialism is no science , once again .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2014 19:41:33
... you have been equating materialism with science...
This is a fallacy entirely of your own invention. Science is a process, materialism is a philosophy.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 20:29:05
V.S. Ramachandron (soulless materialist) in “The Tell-Tale Brain”

I find it odd how some people are so ardently drawn to either-or dichotomies. “Are apes self aware or are they automata?” “Is life meaningful or meaningless?” “Are humans ‘just’ animals or are we exalted?” As a scientist, I am perfectly comfortable with settling on categorical conclusions when it makes sense. But with many of these supposedly urgent metaphysical dilemmas, I must admit I don’t see the conflict. For instance, why can’t we be a branch of the animal kingdom and a wholly unique and gloriously novel phenomenon in the universe?
I also find it odd how people so often slip words like “merely” and “nothing but” into statements about our origins. Humans are apes. So too are we mammals. We are vertebrates. We are pulpy, throbbing colonies of tens of trillions of cells. We are all of these things, but we are not “merely” these things. And we are, in addition to all these things, something unique, something unprecedented, something transcendent. We are something new under the sun, with uncharted and perhaps limitless potential. We are the first and only species whose fate has rested in its own hands, not just in the hands of chemistry and instinct. On the great Darwinian stage we call Earth, I would argue there has not been an upheaval as big as us since the origin of life itself. When I think about what we are and what we may yet achieve, I can’t see any place for snide “merelies.”

Reply 2 :

Coming from such a materialist scientist , it 's really paradoxical and tragic -hilarious ,to say the least , what he has been saying , regarding how we hold our fates in our hands , how transcendent we might be ,how precious ,how unique ,how beautiful , how superior ( The exact anti-these of the materialist version of evolution ) ...we are  ......while the determinist mechanical materialism has intrinsically no room for all that transcendent romantic idealistic talk , no room for free will , no room for transcendent values ,no room for love ,  no room for much , no room for nothing in fact : materialism is pure desperate nihillism , despite its schizophrenic paradoxical talk ...since materialism has been assuming that the universe , including ourselves , is just a determined mindless soulless heartless  blindly programmed cold machine without any  real feelings , emotions, mind , conscience , consciousness , love , values , purpose ,sense, or intrinsic value .......absurd .

Materialism that's been eliminating the very soul ,mind,heart  and  consciousness  from reality , by reducing them all  to just mindless soulless heartless purposeless blind messy jelly neurochemistry ...while even  the most physical basic science of them all has been "digging up " our most fundamental and most important active priceless treasure of them all ( consciousness ) in its quest to discover the "ultimate  physical building blocks " of this universe : by chasing a mirage , modern physics have been discovering our most valuable treasure of them all in the process ,at the heart and at the central command in relation to the physical reality , by bringing back the mind to physics ,by discovering the  fundamental  active intervention of our minds in the physical reality , by honoring man's active creativity in relation to the physical reality , by proving man to be a creator of his / her own reality and universe , by proving the mind of man to be a co-creator of this universe as the history of man ,creativity and imagination of man at all levels ,  as everyday life and science itself as a human creative evolutionary activity have been proving that fact to be true , not just correct , by reducing the  absurd  Cartesian separation of mind and matter to dust , to nothing in fact .

Descartes can  and should  be forgiven for his absurd separation of mind and matter , simply because by "leaving " the mind to the medieval church , he had no choice but to do that ,in order to avoid the church's terrible persecution or  inquisition, but materialism or materialists have  been having no excuse in reducing the universe , including man, to just physics and chemistry ,to just hardware programmed by software machine , no excuse in reducing our most valuable fundamental active creative treasure to just brain activity , in the name of science .

Materialism that has been sold to the people as science , for so long now .
Materialism that's an ideology of despair , insanity , nihillism,darkness  ...

Utterly disgusting thus is what that hypocrit paradoxical materialist scientist said here above .

pfff...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 20:41:49
... you have been equating materialism with science...
This is a fallacy entirely of your own invention. Science is a process, materialism is a philosophy.

Yeah, right : my own invention , and that of Nagel, Sheldrake , Stapp and that of the rest of all those non-reductionist scientists, philosophers  from whose works  i have been extensively quoting ...: we are all delusional indeed .

Materialism as a false 19th century outdated and superseded philosophy , an ideology , a false conception of nature, a world view, a false belief   ....has been equated with science , has been equated with "the scientific world view " since that time and counting =that's an undeniable fact =  that's been THE worst scientific delusion of them all so far= way worse than any religious delusion out there out of ignorance  .

Science has been thus materialist ,since the 19th century at least , and counting ...

Congratulations , scientist : you have been just a secular materialist false deceptive missionnary jesuit priest selling illusions, delusions , lies ,deceit,  half-truths ...to yourself and to others in the process , in the name of science,despite your scientific practical work and qualifications  .

How does it feel to replace a big medieval christian dogmatic lie , by yet a bigger one , a secular materialist one , a "scientific " one ?

Poor lad .....

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 21:19:25
V.S. Ramachandron (soulless materialist) in “The Tell-Tale Brain”

..................

Reply 3 :

A Quantum Conception of Man:
 Introduction:



Science has enlarged tremendously the potential of human life. By augmenting
our powers it has lightened the weight of tedious burdens, and opened
the way to a full flowering of man’s creative capacities. Yet, ironically, it is
the shallowness of a conception of man put forth in the name of science that
is the cause today of the growing economic, ecological, and moral problems
that block that full flowering.
How could a shallow conception of ourselves, a mere idea, be the cause
of such deep troubles? The answer is this: Our beliefs about ourselves in
relation to the world around us are the roots of our values, and our values
determine not only our immediate actions, but also, over the course of time,
the form of our society. Our beliefs are increasingly determined by science.
Hence it is at least conceivable that what science has been telling us for three
hundred years about man and his place in nature could be playing by now
an important role in our lives. Let us look at what actually happened.
The seventeenth century was time of momentous change in men’s ideas
about the world. During that period thinkers like Galileo, Descartes, and
Newton transformed theworld, as seen by educated men, from a place where
spirits and magic could flourish, to a world of machines: the entire universe
came to be viewed as a giant machine, running on automatic, with each of us
a tiny cog within it. The symbols of the age that followed were the factory,
the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile. Later on, during our own
century, this mechanical age would become transformed in turn by thinkers
such as Heisenberg, Schr¨odinger, and Bohr into the quantum age, whose
symbols would be not roaring factories but giant transistorized computers,
silently bonding all parts of the planet, with men becoming not so much
bodily cogs in a giant machine as mental hubs in a burgeoning network of
ideas.
The seventeenth-century transition from the medieval to the mechanical
age was triggered by a seemingly miniscule change in a single idea: the

orbits of the planets were found to be neither circles, nor circles moving on
circles, but ellipses. This apparently trivial and recondite detail, discovered
by the scientist Johannes Kepler, through laborious analysis of a mass of
astronomical data, was the foundation upon which Isaac Newton built modern
science, and simultaneously discredited both centuries of philosophical
dogmas and the methods of thinking that produced them. Painstaking observation
of nature, and analysis of the empirical findings, came to be seen as a
truer source of knowledge than pure philosophical reflection. That kind of
reflection had led to the notion that, because circles are perfect figures, and
everything in the heavens must be perfect, all planets must move on circles,
or at least on circles compounded. But Newton’s laws decreed that the orbits
of planets were ellipses, not epicycles, and the entire empire of medieval
thought began to crumble. In its place rose another, based on Newton’s idea
of the world as machine. Later on, when this mechanical idea gave way in
turn to the quantum one, it was again a mass of esoteric data, analyzed to
reveal a totally unexpected structure in nature, that combined to overthrow
a conception of the world that had become by then an integral part of the
fabric of human life.
The focus of our interest here is on the relationship between the mental
and material parts of nature. Human beings have an intuitive feeling that
their bodies are moved by their thoughts. Thus it is natural for them to
imagine that thoughts of some similar kind inhabit heavenly bodies, rivers
and streams, and myriads of other moving things. However, the key step in
the development of modern science was precisely to banish all thoughtlike
things from the physical universe, or at least to limit severely their domain
of influence. In particular, Descartes, in the seventeenth century, divided all
nature into two parts, a realm of thoughts and a realm of material things,
and proposed that the motions of material things were completely unaffected
by thoughts throughout most of the universe. The only excepted regions,
where thoughts were allowed to affect matter, were small parts of human
brains called pineal glands: without this exception there would be no way
for human thoughts to influence human bodies. But outside these glands the
motions of all material things were supposed to be governed by mathematical
laws.
Carrying forward the idea of Descartes, Isaac Newton devised a set of
mathematical laws that appeared to describe correctly the motions of both
the heavenly bodies and everything on earth. These laws referred only to
material things, never to thoughts, and they were complete in the sense that,
once the motions of the material parts of the universe during primordial
times were fixed, these laws determined exactly the motions of atoms, and
all other material things, for the rest of eternity. Although Newton’s laws

were expressed as rules governing the motions of atoms and other tiny bits
of matter, these laws were tested only for large objects, such as planets,
cannon balls, and billiard balls, never for atoms themselves.
According to Descartes’s original proposal the purely mechanical laws of
motion must fail to hold within our pineal glands, in order for our thoughts
to be able affect our bodily actions. However, orthodox scientists of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tolerating no exceptions to the laws
of physics, held that each atom in a human body, or in any other place,
must follow the path fixed by the laws of physics. This rigid enforcement
of the physical laws entailed, of course, that men’s thoughts could have
no effects upon their actions: that each human body, being composed of
preprogrammed atoms, is an automaton whose every action was predetermined,
long before he was born, by purely mechanical considerations, with
no reference at all to thoughts or ideas.
This conclusion, that human beings are preprogrammed automata, may
sound absurd. It contradicts our deepest intuition about ourselves, namely
that we are free agents. However, science, by pointing to other situations
where intuition is faulty, or dead wrong, was able to maintain, on the basis
of its demonstrated practical success and logical consistency, that its view
of man was in fact the correct one, and that our feeling of freedom is a
complete illusion.
This picture of man led, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
to an associated moral system. It was based on the principle that each of us,
being nothing but a mechanical device, automatically pursues his calculated
self-interests, as measured by a certain bodily physical property, which is
experienced in the realm of thought as pleasure. This principle, whichwas in
line with the commercial temper of the times, was fundamentally hedonistic,
though, from the scientific viewpoint, realistic. However, philosophers were
able to elevate it to a more socially satisfactory idea by arguing that the
“enlightened” rational man must act to advance his own “enlightened” selfinterest:
he must act to advance the general welfare in order to advance, in
the end, his own welfare. Yet there remained in the end only one basic human
value: no noble, heroic, or altruistic aim could have any value in itself; its
value must be rooted in the common currency of personal pleasure. This
kind of morality may seem to be immoral but it appears to be the rational
outcome of accepting completely the mechanical or materialistic view of
man.
This view of man and morals did not go unchallenged.
Earlier traditions lost only slowly their grip on the minds of men, and romantic and idealistic
philosophies rose to challenge the bondage of the human spirit decreed by
science. From the ensuing welter of conflicting claims, each eloquently
defended, followed a moral relativism, where every moral viewpoint was
seen as based on arbitrary assumptions. This pernicious outcome was a
direct consequence of the schism between the mental and material aspects
of nature introduced by science. That cleavage, by precluding any fully
coherent conception of man in nature, made every possible view incomplete
in some respect, and hence vulnerable. In the resulting moral vacuum the
lure of material benefits and the increasing authority of science combined to
insinuate the materialistic viewpoint ever more strongly into men’s thoughts.
This science-based creed contains, however, the seeds of its own destruction.
For behind a facade of social concern it preaches material selfaggrandizement.
We are now in the thralls of the logical denouement of
that preaching. With the accelerating disintegration of the established cultural
traditions, brought on by increased fluxes of peoples and ideas, the
demand for satisfaction of inflated material desires has spiraled out of control.
This has led to a plundering of future generations, both economically
and ecologically. We are now beginning to feel the yoke laid upon us by our
predecessors, yet are shifting still heavier burdens onto our own successors.
This materialist binge cannot be sustained. Yet the doctrine of enlightened
self-interest has no rational way to cope with the problem, as long as each
human “self” continues to be perceived as a mere bundle of flesh and bones.
For if we accept a strictly materialistic way of thinking, then our own pleasure
can be enhanced by ignoring calamities that we ourselves will never
face.
Men are not base creatures: all history shows them to be capable of
elevated deeds. But elevated deeds and aspirations spring from elevated
ideas, and today all ideas, if they are long to survive, must stand up to withering
scrutiny. They must in the end be rationally coherent, and consistent
with the empirical evidence gathered by science. The mechanical ideas of
seventeenth-century science provided no rational or intellectual foundation
for any elevated conception of man. Yet the ideas of twentieth-century science
do. Quantum theory leads naturally to a rationally coherent conception
of the whole of man in nature. It is profoundly different from the sundered
mechanical picture offered by classical physics. Like any really new idea
this quantum conception of man has many roots. It involves deep questions:
What is consciousness? What is choice? What is chance? What can science
tell us about the role of these things in nature? How does science itself allow
us to transcend Newton’s legacy? It is to these questions that we now turn.


Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2014 21:44:42
V.S. Ramachandron (soulless materialist) in “The Tell-Tale Brain”

Reply 3 : 2nd and last Part  :

Science, Tradition, and Values:

This is the third UNESCO Forum for Science and Culture. Our focus
throughout the series has been on the interplay of science, tradition, and
values in mankind’s search for a sustainable future. At the first forum, held
inVenice in 1986, the specter of nuclear annihilation loomed as the principal
perceived threat to human survival. By the time of the second forum, in
Vancouver in 1989, it was the impending disruption of global ecological
balances that seemed most critical. Today, in 1992, the nuclear threat may
have receded. But the ecological crisis seems to be worsening, and we are
faced with problems of socioeconomic collapse: in the former Soviet Union
and eastern Europe one of the world’s two premier socioeconomic systems
has already collapsed, and in the West and the Third World pressures of
ethnic rivalries and economic malaise are tending to make many formerly
prosperous and stable countries increasingly ungovernable.
Science has been perceived as the major cause of these problems. It gave
man the capacity to ignite a nuclear holocaust, to disrupt the ecosystem on a
global scale, and to effect swift, massive and untested social and economic
changes. At a deeper level of causation, science has revised man’s basic idea
of himself in relation to nature. In traditional cultures nature was perceived
as a mysterious provider, to be revered and deified. But Francis Bacon,
herald of science, proclaimed a new gospel for the age of science: man,
abetted by science, was to achieve the conquest of nature.
At an even deeper level of causation the Cartesian separation between the
minds of men and the rest of nature, which was the key to the seventeenthcentury
scientific revolution, eroded the foundations of moral thought, and
left man adrift with no rationally coherent image of himself within nature.
He proclaimed himself to be, on the one hand, ruler of nature, yet was, on
the other hand, according to the very scientific theories that were to give
him dominion, a mere mechanical cog in a giant mindless machine. He
was stripped of responsibility for his acts, since each human action was
preordained prior to the birth of species, and was reduced to an isolated
automaton struggling for survival in a meaningless universe.
In the face of these science-induced difficulties one must ask: Whoneeds
science? What we obviously need is strong remedial action—a curtailing
of science-inflated population growth, consumption, waste, and poverty.
But howcan the required global actions be brought about? Direwarnings
have minimal effects on populations inured to media hype. An immediate
disaster at one’s doorstep might suffice, but by then full global recovery may
be out of reach.

To change human actions globally one must change human beliefs globally.
Global beliefs, to the extent they they exist at all, are the beliefs generated
by science. However, some of the most important science-generated
beliefs that now pervade the world are beliefs that arose from science during
the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and are now outdated.
Twentieth-century science has wrought immense changes in precisely those
beliefs that have in large measure created our present problems.


 Science and a New Vision of Nature:


Twentieth-century science yields a conception of nature that is profoundly
different from the picture provided by the seventeenth century science of
Newton, Galileo, and Descartes. Three changes are particularly important.
The first great twentieth-century change is the dethronement of determinism.
Determinism is the idea that each stage of the coming into being
of the physical universe is completely controlled by what has already come
into being. A failure of determinism means that what is happening, or
coming into being, at certain stages of the evolutionary process is not completely
fixed by what has come before. Those aspects of the evolutionary
process that are not completely fixed by prior developments can be called
“choices” or “decisions”. They are in some sense “free”, because they are
not completely fixed by what has come before.
The second great twentieth-century change is in science’s idea of the
nature of “matter”, or of the “material universe”, which I take to be that
part of nature that is completely controlled by mathematical laws analogous
to the laws of classical physics. The material universe can no longer be
conceived to consist simply of tiny objects similar to small billiard balls,
or even things essentially like the electric and magnetic fields of classical
physics. Opinions of physicists differ on how best to understand what lies
behind the phenomena described so accurately by quantum theory. But the
idea most widely accepted by quantum physicists is, I believe, the one of
Heisenberg. According to this idea the “material universe” consists of none
of the things of classical physics. It consists rather of “objective tendencies”,
or “potentialities”. These tendencies are tendencies for the occurrence of
“quantum events”. It is these quantum events that are considered to be
the actual things in nature, even though the potentialities are also real in
some sense. Each actual event creates a new global pattern of potentialities.
Thus the basic process of nature is no longer conceived to be simply a
uniform
mathematically determined gradual evolution. Rather it consists
of an alternating sequence of two very different kinds of processes. The

first phase is a mathematically controlled evolution of the potentialities for
the next quantum event. This first phase is deterministic, and the laws that
control it are closely analogous to the laws of classical physics. The next
phase is a quantum event. This event is not, in general, strictly controlled
by any known physical law, although collections of events exhibit statistical
regularities. Thus each individual quantum event creates a new world of
potentialities, which then evolves in accordance with certain deterministic
mathematical laws. These potentialities define the “tendencies” for the next
event, and so on. Each quantum event, because it is not fixed by anything in
the physicist’s description of prior nature represents a “choice”. The critical
fact is that each such choice can actualize a macroscopic integrated pattern
of activity in the newly created material universe of potentialities.
The third great twentieth-century change in science is the recognition
of a profound wholeness in nature, of a fundamental inseparability and
entanglement of
those aspects of nature that have formerly been conceived
to be separate. The apparent separateness of ordinary physical objects turns
out, in this view of nature, to be a statistical effect that emerges from the
multiple actions of many quantum events. It is only at the level of the
individual events that the underlying wholeness reveals itself.


 Science and a New Vision of Man:


The most important consequence of this altered vision of nature is the
place it provides for human minds. Consciousness is no longer forced
to be an impotent spectator to a mechanically determined flow of physical
events. Conscious events can be naturally identified with certain special
kinds of quantum events, namely quantum events that create large-scale
integrated patterns of neuronal activity in human brains. These events represent
“choices” that are not strictly controlled by any known physical laws.
Each such event in the brain influences the course of subsequent events in
the brain, body, and environment through the mechanical propagation of the
potentialities created by that event.
This revised idea of man in relation to nature has profound moral implications.
In the first place, it shows that the pernicious mechanical idea of
man and nature that arose from seventeenth-century science was dependent
upon assumptions that no longer rule science.
Contemporary science certainly allows human consciousness to exercise

effective top-down control over human brain processes. Hence the idea
that man is not responsible for his acts has no longer any basis in science.
Moreover, the separateness of man within nature that had formerly seemed to

be entailed by science is now reversed. The image of man described above
places human consciousness in the inner workings of a nonlocal global
process that links the whole universe together in a manner totally foreign
to both classical physics and the observations of everyday life. If the world
indeed operates in the way suggested by Heisenberg’s ontology then we are
all integrally connected into some not-yet-fully-understood global process
that is actively creating the form of the universe.
The strongest motives of men arise from their perception of themselves
in relation to the creative power of the universe. The religious wars of past
and recent history give ample evidence that men will gladly sacrifice every
material thing, and even their lives, in the name of their convictions on these
issues. Thus the quantum-mechanical conception of man described above,
infused into the global consciousness, has the capacity to strongly affect
men’s actions on a global scale.
Science recognizes no authority whose ex cathedra pronouncements can
be claimed to express a divine will. Nevertheless, this new conception of
the universe emphasizes an intricate and profound global wholeness and it
gives man’s consciousness a creative, dynamical, and integrating role in the
intrinsically global process that forms the world around us. This conception
of man’s place in nature represents a tremendous shift from the idea of man
as either conqueror of a mindless nature, or as a helpless piece of protoplasm
struggling for survival in a meaningless universe. Just this conceptual shift
alone, moving the minds of billions of people empowered by the physical
capacities supplied by science, would be a force of tremendous magnitude.
Implicit in this conceptual shift in man’s perception of his relationship to the
rest of nature is the foundation of a new ethics, one that would conceive the
“self” of self-interest very broadly, in away thatwould include in appropriate
measure all life on our planet.


Henry P.Stapp
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/01/2014 10:46:42
Quote
Quantum theory leads naturally to a rationally coherent conception
of the whole of man in nature. It is profoundly different from the sundered
mechanical picture offered by classical physics. Like any really new idea
this quantum conception of man has many roots. It involves deep questions:
What is consciousness? What is choice? What is chance? What can science
tell us about the role of these things in nature? How does science itself allow
us to transcend Newton’s legacy? It is to these questions that we now turn.

Crap. QM underpins and explains classical physics, it does not contradict or transcend it.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: jeffreyH on 09/01/2014 13:04:08
I haven't been following this thread at all because on consciousness it usually goes over old ground. Think of this. What is the mechanism of cooperation in the brain? Do the synapses and neurons cooperate. OK then lets say they do. What are they made of? Cells. So the cell must have a mechanism that cooperates, but wait aren't the cells made up of smaller components all cooperating to keep the cell running? So what are they made of? Oh yeah atoms and they are made of elementary particles. So to understand consciousness truly is to understand that there is something deeply embedded in particle physics that allows consciousness to emerge. It is a principle that overlays matter itself and allows lots of interconnected parts interact as if they were one whole thing. It is like the whole human race having one mind, not just communicating via electronics but all having the same experience at once.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/01/2014 13:36:42
... It is like the whole human race having one mind, not just communicating via electronics but all having the same experience at once.
There's a difference between entities interacting and cooperating and them all having the same experience at once. The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each.

However, I may have missed your point - maybe you could explain it differently?
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 16:39:48
Quote
Quantum theory leads naturally to a rationally coherent conception
of the whole of man in nature. It is profoundly different from the sundered
mechanical picture offered by classical physics. Like any really new idea
this quantum conception of man has many roots. It involves deep questions:
What is consciousness? What is choice? What is chance? What can science
tell us about the role of these things in nature? How does science itself allow
us to transcend Newton’s legacy? It is to these questions that we now turn.

Crap. QM underpins and explains classical physics, it does not contradict or transcend it.

You obviously did not understand what Stapp was saying .
The Newtonian classical determinist mechanical view of the world has been superseded and refuted by QT,among other things mentioned by Stapp here above .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 16:47:30
... It is like the whole human race having one mind, not just communicating via electronics but all having the same experience at once.
There's a difference between entities interacting and cooperating and them all having the same experience at once. The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each.

However, I may have missed your point - maybe you could explain it differently?

How can neurons have any sort of conscious experiences at all , materialist scientist ?
Yeah, right , materialism has been assuming that consciousness is just neuronal brain activity , silly me .

What has all that to do with science ?

Has the latter ever been able to link our own subjective conscious states experiences ... to  neurons or to ensemble of neurons ? Obviously ...not .

And how can neurochemistry ever give rise to qualitative subjective conscious experiences ,states ...?

Yeah, right , through materialist magic in science ...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/01/2014 17:03:06
The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each..

How can neurons have any sort of conscious experiences at all , materialist scientist ?
Who said anything about neurons having conscious experiences? Please don't impose your reading comprehension difficulties on other people's conversations.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 17:03:29
I haven't been following this thread at all because on consciousness it usually goes over old ground. Think of this. What is the mechanism of cooperation in the brain? Do the synapses and neurons cooperate. OK then lets say they do. What are they made of? Cells. So the cell must have a mechanism that cooperates, but wait aren't the cells made up of smaller components all cooperating to keep the cell running? So what are they made of? Oh yeah atoms and they are made of elementary particles. So to understand consciousness truly is to understand that there is something deeply embedded in particle physics that allows consciousness to emerge. It is a principle that overlays matter itself and allows lots of interconnected parts interact as if they were one whole thing. It is like the whole human race having one mind, not just communicating via electronics but all having the same experience at once.


Our micro and macroscopic physical components are indeed intertwined + the whole is not the sum of its parts ,so, QT has implications on the macro level as well of course ,QT that has been discovering the very interface between mind and matter at the quantum level , where the mind does causally actively and dynamically intervene in the physical reality , via a top-down causation .
Stapp says that humans are interconnected , through some still unknown process of some sort , but how can we all have the same experience at once ,since consciousness is subjective the  content or qualia  of which  is unique to any given  person .
I do presume that the whole universe ,including ourselves, is somehow interconnected .
Peter Russell's notion of global brain might interest you though :  P.Russell should have said the global ...mind in fact ( The brain is just a vehicle or medium for consciousness ) :


See also the following P.Russell's lecture : The primacy of consciousness :


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 17:08:26
The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each..

How can neurons have any sort of conscious experiences at all , materialist scientist ?
Who said anything about neurons having conscious experiences? Please don't impose your reading comprehension difficulties on other people's conversations.

Haha

( My alleged reading comprehension difficulties  do exist only in your materialist mind : i mostly do not read either your posts or your provided links , for obvious reasons ...to me at least: i just jumped in ,in order to make the new guy aware of your materialist non-sense you have been taking for granted as science , that's all .May i ?  haha )

Our hurt materialist scientist becomes sensitive :

Here is your own quote on the subject : how can any alleged experience  not be conscious ? :
Quote
The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each.

P.S.: This is "my" thread , remember , as this forum is not your property .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 17:25:38
"The mind is the matrix of all matter " : said one of the founders of QT .

Absurd how materialists have been eliminating the mind from the physical reality , by believing both in the Cartesian   mind-matter separation ,and in their own  materialist belief that the mind has no causal effects on matter : weird ,and extremely paradoxical materialist false beliefs  which have been taken for granted as science , for so long now  .

QT has been debunking all that materialist non-sense that's been taken for granted as science , and more .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/01/2014 17:37:13
..how can any alleged experience  not be conscious ?
There is a common anthropomorphic verbal usage, as in: "The company is experiencing a downturn in profit", "The Earth experienced an unusually powerful solar wind".

The phrase, "If they can be said to experience anything.." is an explicit indication that the usage is questionable, intended to avoid the very interpretation you imposed; if not a reading comprehension difficulty or carelessness, a deliberate misreading.

Quote
P.S.: This is my thread , remember
Starting a thread here doesn't give you ownership or any privileges. Anyone can contribute.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 18:15:47
..how can any alleged experience  not be conscious ?
There is a common anthropomorphic verbal usage, as in: "The company is experiencing a downturn in profit", "The Earth experienced an unusually powerful solar wind".

The phrase, "If they can be said to experience anything.." is an explicit indication that the usage is questionable, intended to avoid the very interpretation you imposed; if not a reading comprehension difficulty or carelessness, a deliberate misreading.

My internet  connection has been experiencing some trouble as well haha ,as my coffee-machine did experience some weird "coughing and dance vibrations  " this morning ...as my car was experiencing some sort of moaning ,during the course of the day ...
Since consciousness is just neuronal activity , then , we should assume that neurons or ensemble of  neurons do have conscious experiences , in the literal sense haha , via some sort of materialist magical computation ,the latter that gives birth to some patterns ,don't you think ?

Nevermind : something is telling me some of my neurons are gathering together to conspire against me,the bastards ,  by triggering some sort of confusion in my head ,to the point where that makes me  look for hidden meanings or for some sort of Freudian slips of the tongue which might be embedded in peoples' words ....

Quote
Quote
P.S.: This is my thread , remember
Starting a thread here doesn't give you ownership or any privileges. Anyone can contribute.
[/quote]

Including myself thus , and i can jump in in any discussion here whatsoever   ,unless you would mind me doing so, via some sort of weird materialist inquisitory veto of some sort ....

P.S.: Do you think anti-matter does really exist in space somewhere ?

Anti-matter plays a significant role in "Angels and Demons " fictitious thriller by Dan Brown .

Final note :

How can such an intelligent and erudite scientist such as yourself assume that consciousness is just brain activity , or that consciousness has no effects on matter ?

Science has never been able so far to tell us almost anything about the mind-brain interaction , untill QT showed up .

So, why do you reject the subject nature of QT as explicitly expressed by its founders and by other great minds such as Stapp and others ?

How can you deny the undeniable fact that the mind -matter separation is a scientific myth ?, and hence the mind does always intervene in the physical reality
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 09/01/2014 20:24:56

I wonder why you , materialists , do think that your own false materialist extensions of  your false materialist world view that has been equated with science , i wonder why you do take your false materialist views for granted as science or as valid arguments ? , by quoting materialist scientists ....= what a paradox .

If you want to try to refute Stapp's dualist QT theory of consciousness that has been supported by the dualist scientific  nature of  QT , then you must try to do just that via science , not via materialism : see the difference ?

So basically what you’re saying is “I expect you to read the excerpts that support my view, but I’m not interested in reading any of your references. Not only that but, if you even raise questions about any of my sources, I won’t discuss it, but simply tell you to re-read it, followed by insults and ridicule for not agreeing with me.”
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 20:32:31

I wonder why you , materialists , do think that your own false materialist extensions of  your false materialist world view that has been equated with science , i wonder why you do take your false materialist views for granted as science or as valid arguments ? , by quoting materialist scientists ....= what a paradox .

If you want to try to refute Stapp's dualist QT theory of consciousness that has been supported by the dualist scientific  nature of  QT , then you must try to do just that via science , not via materialism : see the difference ?

So basically what you’re saying is “I expect you to read the excerpts that support my view, but I’m not interested in reading any of your references. Not only that but, if you even raise questions about any of my sources, I won’t discuss it, but simply tell you to re-read it, followed by insults and ridicule for not agreeing with me.”

No, lady :
I did not say anything different from  my above displayed words to you which you just quoted here above .

In short :

Try to talk science , not materialism, if you wanna refute Stapp's dualist interpretation of QT which has been supported by the scientific dualist nature of QT .

P.S.: Materialist scientists do equate and mix their materialism with science ,since materialism has been equated with science , for so long now ,  so, they cannot but deliver a high lethal dose of materialist non-sense within their scientific views .

Thanks, take care .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 21:02:37
The Science Delusion,or Science Set Free   :




Introduction:

THE TEN DOGMAS OF MODERN SCIENCE:



The “scientific worldview” is immensely influential because the sciences have been so successful.
They touch all our lives through technologies and through modern medicine. Our intellectual world has been transformed by an immense expansion of knowledge, down into the most microscopic particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an ever expanding universe.
Yet in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when science and technology seem to be at the peak of their power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within.
 Most scientists take it for granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but some, including myself, think they are symptoms of a deeper malaise.
In this book, I argue that science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting and more fun.
The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still need working out but, in principle, the fundamental questions are settled.
Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical. There is no reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in human heads.
These beliefs are powerful, not because most scientists think about them critically but because they don’t.
The facts of science are real enough; so are the techniques that scientists use, and the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith, grounded in a nineteenth-century ideology.
This book is pro-science. I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them.


The scientific creed:

Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted:
1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots,” in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.
2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree,the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.
Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds. This belief system became dominant within science in the late nineteenth century, and is now taken for granted. Many scientists are unaware that materialism is an assumption: they simply think of it as science, or the scientific view of reality, or the scientific worldview.
They are not actually taught about it, or given a chance to discuss it.
They absorb it by a kind of intellectual osmosis.
In everyday usage, materialism refers to a way of life devoted entirely to material interests, a preoccupation with wealth, possessions and luxury. These attitudes are no doubt encouraged by the materialist philosophy, which denies the existence of any spiritual realities or non-material goals, but in this book I am concerned with materialism’s scientific claims, rather than its effects on lifestyles.
In the spirit of radical skepticism, I turn each of these ten doctrines into a question. Entirely new vistas open up when a widely accepted assumption is taken as the beginning of an inquiry, rather than as an unquestionable truth.
 For example, the assumption that nature is machine-like or mechanical
becomes a question: “Is nature mechanical?” The assumption that matter is unconscious becomes “Is matter unconscious?” And so on.
In the Prologue I look at the interactions of science, religion and power, and then in Chapters 1 to 10, I examine each of the ten dogmas. At the end of each chapter, I discuss what difference this topic makes and how it affects the way we live our lives. I also pose several further questions, so that any readers who want to discuss these subjects with friends or colleagues will have some useful starting points. Each chapter is followed by a summary.

The credibility crunch for the “scientific worldview”:

For more than two hundred years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex machines, minds are nothing but brain activity and nature is purposeless. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper called this stance “promissory materialism” because it depends on issuing promissory notes for
discoveries not yet made.1 Despite all the achievements of science and technology, materialism is now facing a credibility crunch that was unimaginable in the twentieth century.
In 1963, when I was studying biochemistry at Cambridge University, I was invited to a series of private meetings with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in Brenner’s rooms in King’s College, along with a few of my classmates. Crick and Brenner had recently helped to “crack” the genetic code. Both were ardent materialists and Crick was also a militant atheist. They explained there were two major unsolved problems in biology: development and consciousness. They had not been solved because the
people who worked on them were not molecular biologists—or very bright. Crick and Brenner were going to find the answers within ten years, or maybe twenty. Brenner would take developmental biology, and Crick consciousness. They invited us to join them.Both tried their best. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on the development of a tiny worm, Caenorhabdytis elegans. Crick corrected the manuscript of his final paper on the brain the day before he died in 2004. At his funeral, his son Michael said that what made him tick was not
the desire to be famous, wealthy or popular, but “to knock the final nail into  the coffin of vitalism.”
(Vitalism is the theory that living organisms are truly alive, and not explicable in terms of physics and chemistry alone.)
Crick and Brenner failed. The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone
(see Chapters 1, 4 and 8).
The fundamental proposition of materialism is that matter is the only reality. Therefore consciousness is nothing but brain activity. It is either like a shadow, an “epiphenomenon,” that does nothing, or it is just another way of talking about brain activity. However, among contemporary researchers in neuroscience and consciousness studies there is no consensus about the nature of minds.
Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the “hard problem.” It is hard because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to
red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.
In biology and psychology the credibility rating of materialism is falling. Can physics ride to the rescue? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend
on modern physics, not nineteenth-century theories of matter. But physicalism’s own credibility rating has been reduced by physics itself, for four reasons.
First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists.2
Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, string and M-theories, with ten and eleven dimensions respectively, take science into completely new territory. Strangely, as Stephen Hawking tells us in his book The Grand Design (2010), “No one seems to know what the ‘M’ stands
for, but it may be ‘master’, ‘miracle’ or ‘mystery.’ ” According to what Hawking calls “modeldependent realism,” different theories may have to be applied in different situations. “Each theory may have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that is acceptable so long as the theories agree in their predictions whenever they overlap, that is, whenever they can both
be applied.”3 String theories and M-theories are currently untestable so “model-dependent realism” can only be judged by reference to other models, rather than by experiment. It also applies to countless other universes, none of which has ever been observed. As Hawking points out, M-theory has solutions that allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending
on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10500, which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with its own laws … The original hope of physics to produce a single theory explaining the apparent laws of our universe as the unique possible consequence of a few simple assumptions may have
to be abandoned.4
Some physicists are deeply skeptical about this entire approach, as the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin shows in his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next (2008).5 String theories, M-theories and “model-dependent realism” are a shaky foundation for materialism or physicalism or any other belief system, as discussed in Chapter 1.
Third, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become apparent that the known kinds of matter and energy make up only about 4 percent of the universe. The rest consists of “dark matter” and “dark energy.” The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure (see Chapter 2).
Fourth, the Cosmological Anthropic Principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and
hence we would not be here to think about it (see Chapter 3). So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws and constants in the beginning? To avoid a creator God emerging in a new guise, most leading cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of
parallel universes, all with different laws and constants, as M-theory also suggests. We just happen to exist in the one that has the right conditions for us.6
This multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam’s Razor, the philosophical principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or in other words, that we should make as few assumptions as possible. It also has the major disadvantage of being untestable.7 And it does not even
succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes.8 Materialism provided a seemingly simple, straightforward worldview in the late nineteenth century, but twenty-first-century science has left it behind. Its promises have not been fulfilled, and its
promissory notes have been devalued by hyperinflation. I am convinced that the sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into
dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. These beliefs protect the citadel of established science, but act as barriers against open-minded thinking.


Rupert Sheldrake
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/01/2014 21:30:27
For those who still deny the undeniable fact that the false materialist world view , philosophy , conception of nature , ideology ...has been taken for granted as "the scientific world view " ,as science,without question, since the 19th century at least and counting  :  see above then .

Take care .
Thanks , appreciate indeed .
Ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/01/2014 22:05:25
... i can jump in in any discussion here whatsoever   ,unless you would mind me doing so, via some sort of weird materialist inquisitory veto of some sort ....
You can jump in anywhere you like; a thoughtful contribution to the discussion would be particularly appreciated, if entirely unexpected...

Quote
P.S.: Do you think anti-matter does really exist in space somewhere ?
Yes, of course - in fact there's more antimatter than was expected (http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2013/04/ams-experiment-measures-antimatter-excess-space).

Quote
Anti-matter plays a significant role in "Angels and Demons " fictitious thriller by Dan Brown .
Dan Brown tells entertaining stories, but he doesn't let scientific knowledge, accuracy, or plausibility get in the way  [???]

Quote
How can such an intelligent and erudite scientist such as yourself assume that consciousness is just brain activity , or that consciousness has no effects on matter ?
Lol! yeah, right - so now I've suddenly gone from a narrow-minded idiot hypocrit(sic) materialist whose views and arguments are worthless and which you will not read; and a "false deceptive missionnary jesuit priest selling illusions, delusions , lies ,deceit,  half-truths", to an intelligent and erudite scientist  [::)]

In answer to your question - I've already explained my views on that.

Quote
why do you reject the subject nature of QT as explicitly expressed by its founders and by other great minds such as Stapp and others ?
I've already explained my views on that.

Quote
How can you deny the undeniable fact that the mind -matter separation is a scientific myth ?, and hence the mind does always intervene in the physical reality
I've already explained my views on that too.

That you appear to have understood very little of it is unfortunate, but rather than ask for explanation, you were typically insulting. Your choice.

I could equally ask you how you can assert the converse for each of those questions, but I've tried it several times already and you had nothing to offer but insults and uncommented tracts from fringe works.

If the extreme swings of mood and emotion shown in your posts are an honest reflection of changes in your mental state, I strongly recommend you to see a qualified mental health professional.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 09/01/2014 22:07:56
So basically what you’re saying is “I expect you to read the excerpts that support my view, but I’m not interested in reading any of your references. Not only that but, if you even raise questions about any of my sources, I won’t discuss it, but simply tell you to re-read it, followed by insults and ridicule for not agreeing with me.”
He was clearer about it here:
... I will not read any materialist views on the subject...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: jeffreyH on 10/01/2014 00:40:41
... It is like the whole human race having one mind, not just communicating via electronics but all having the same experience at once.
There's a difference between entities interacting and cooperating and them all having the same experience at once. The neurons in the brain each have a unique set of connections; if they can be said to experience anything, it's unique to each.

However, I may have missed your point - maybe you could explain it differently?

I don't see the point as it would get lost in all the mud slinging going on. I am sure you will agree. I despair sometimes.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 10/01/2014 10:24:09
I don't see the point as it would get lost in all the mud slinging going on. I am sure you will agree. I despair sometimes.
The mud-slinging only relates to one individual, the rest of us have managed a few islands of productive rational discussion in between; but I see your point - we need some sensible moderation here...
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2014 17:53:04
... i can jump in in any discussion here whatsoever   ,unless you would mind me doing so, via some sort of weird materialist inquisitory veto of some sort ....
You can jump in anywhere you like; a thoughtful contribution to the discussion would be particularly appreciated, if entirely unexpected...

Haha
No comment ...
 

Quote
Quote
P.S.: Do you think anti-matter does really exist in space somewhere ?
Yes, of course - in fact there's more antimatter than was expected (http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2013/04/ams-experiment-measures-antimatter-excess-space).

Good

Quote
Quote
Anti-matter plays a significant role in "Angels and Demons " fictitious thriller by Dan Brown .
Dan Brown tells entertaining stories, but he doesn't let scientific knowledge, accuracy, or plausibility get in the way  [???]

Why should he or rather  how  can he or anyoneelse for that matter ,including yourself, ironically enough ,be scientifically accurate , since science has been materialist , and hence  a lots of  "scientific "  knowledge has been just materialist bullshit,and scince science can never be metaphysically neutral  .
Look who's talking : a materialist scientist who can neither make the difference between materialism and science nor can stop equating and confusing materialism with science :
Talking about scientific knowledge , accuracy or plausibility ....tragic-hilarious .

Quote
Quote
How can such an intelligent and erudite scientist such as yourself assume that consciousness is just brain activity , or that consciousness has no effects on matter ?
Lol! yeah, right - so now I've suddenly gone from a narrow-minded idiot hypocrit(sic) materialist whose views and arguments are worthless and which you will not read; and a "false deceptive missionnary jesuit priest selling illusions, delusions , lies ,deceit,  half-truths", to an intelligent and erudite scientist  [::)]

In answer to your question - I've already explained my views on that.

You have explained nothing ,not much in fact , you just delivered mostly materialist bullshit ,and you can be both an intelligent erudite scientist and a complete materialist  delusional  fool idiot at the same time,as Dawkins , Hawking , and other materialists scientists lunatics are  .

Quote
Quote
why do you reject the subjective nature of QT as explicitly expressed by its founders and by other great minds such as Stapp and others ?
I've already explained my views on that.

You just delivered materialist bullshit on the subject , mostly then, i just had to take a quick look at some sentences from  your specific posts in question  to know it was mostly materialist bullshit , no science  ,so, i don't really read much of your materialists posts , let alone your materialist links , since you can't make the difference between materialism and science , and since you have been equating and confusing them with each other ,so.


Quote
Quote
How can you deny the undeniable fact that the mind -matter separation is a scientific myth ?, and hence the mind does always intervene in the physical reality
I've already explained my views on that too.

That you appear to have understood very little of it is unfortunate, but rather than ask for explanation, you were typically insulting. Your choice.

I cannot not understand or understand things i do not read , can i ?

You have delivered only materialist bullshit on the subject ,mostly then,  bullshit i already know,most of it then  .

Quote
I could equally ask you how you can assert the converse for each of those questions, but I've tried it several times already and you had nothing to offer but insults and uncommented tracts from fringe works.

What do you think all those excerpts i posted so far were about ? , about sex ? amazing ...


Quote
If the extreme swings of mood and emotion shown in your posts are an honest reflection of changes in your mental state, I strongly recommend you to see a qualified mental health professional
.

Materialism has been turning you into a lousy scientist delusional fool and into a lousy reader of both people and their words , despite the fact that you do sound like an intelligent erudite scientist ,so, your silly specualtions are just that : speculations :
I get irritated by your constant refusal to listen to what non-reductionists have to say on the subject of mind and matter , among other scientific and other issues ,so ,that's all ,by stubbornly and irrationally sticking to your own false materialist world view which you have been equating and confusing with science .

P.S.: Did i not tell you you were totally uninteresting and irrelevant ? ,despite your scientific paractical work and qualifications, despite the fact that you do sound like an intelligent erudite scientist .

You do not have it in you to be able to change your mind when confronted with non-materialist views ,arguments , evidence , approaches , such as those of Nagel, Sheldrake, Chalmers , and the rest from whose works i have been extensively posting significant excerpts .

What a pathetic waste  ..............

Cognitive human intelligence is certainly not the highest form of  human  intelligence indeed ,as anyone can see that fact reflected on this very thread , for blinds to see ,  and i am afraid i have been just casting priceless pearls before swine , once again ...amazing .

pfff..
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2014 18:22:04
I don't see the point as it would get lost in all the mud slinging going on. I am sure you will agree. I despair sometimes.
The mud-slinging only relates to one individual

Really ? Who's that individual ? haha

Quote
the rest of us have managed a few islands of productive rational discussion in between;


You wish : you have been mostly just delivering materialist bulshit you have been taking for granted as science , but since you have not been able to see the difference ,then , just keep on deluding yourself  then , who cares ?

Quote
but I see your point - we need some sensible moderation here...

You rather need some materialist inquisitions or censership to be applied in here .
It 's about time to do just that ,since you cannot appreciate non-reductionist views,and since you cannot but deny the undeniable falsehood of materialism ,the latter that has been taken for granted as science , or as "the scientific world view ", for so long now .

Have fun with those materialist "scientific " delusions of yours then  , who cares .




Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2014 18:25:22
So basically what you’re saying is “I expect you to read the excerpts that support my view, but I’m not interested in reading any of your references. Not only that but, if you even raise questions about any of my sources, I won’t discuss it, but simply tell you to re-read it, followed by insults and ridicule for not agreeing with me.”
He was clearer about it here:
... I will not read any materialist views on the subject...

Should i then read all that materialist bullshit that's no science ? of course not, thanks for nothing anyway .

I know almost all about it that my mind's "immune system" cannot but reject it .

You know what ?

I will leave you like-minded materialists to yourselves and to each other for a while to see what that would be producing .

Deal ? ,even though i will not be holding my breath of course .

Impress me then , i am pretty sure you cannot , since materialism is false thus .

I am gonna get away from this suffocating dark materialist place to be able to smell and enjoy some fresh air under the lovely sun .

Bye.

Good luck,and have fun  .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2014 18:42:27
Science will be liberated from materialism, folks ,no doubt about that ,  as the end of materialism is nearer than ever = inevitable = just a matter of time ,so .

Ciao .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2014 18:56:13
You know what , guys :
Bye .....forever, i mean it this time .
I am not gonna  waste my time and energy for nothing in here  any longer  .Got much better things to do .
"The gain is worth the loss ", you have no idea .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .
All the best .
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: alancalverd on 10/01/2014 21:57:31
Quote
The “scientific worldview”
is a fiction invented by DonQ's favorite authors. There is no such thing.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 11/01/2014 01:49:56
Bye .....forever, i mean it this time .
Oh noes; he's gone, for the last time - again!  [:o)]

Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 11/01/2014 16:23:49

Yeah, right , materialism has been assuming that consciousness is just neuronal brain activity , silly me .

What has all that to do with science ?

Has the latter ever been able to link our own subjective conscious states experiences ... to  neurons or to ensemble of neurons ? Obviously ...not .

And how can neurochemistry ever give rise to qualitative subjective conscious experiences ,states ...?



How does your collapsing wave do it?

I think the real reason you are cutting out is you've painted yourself into a corner. At some point in your reading of different quantum theorists, you probably realized they aren't suggesting a portal to the Platonic realm of ideas, where conscious agencies frolic about freely.

At best with quantum consciousness you get veto power over brain states representing certain options or scenarios -  you get to decide which materialist process you fancy. You don't really get to entirely opt out of it.


Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/01/2014 00:56:05

Today from Science Daily:

Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory of Consciousness

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm

(Maybe Don went to the conference in the Netherlands.)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: dlorde on 17/01/2014 09:48:25
Today from Science Daily:

Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory of Consciousness

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
I think saying this finding 'supports' the theory is too strong. It hasn't falsified the hypothesis. As far as I can see, there's no evidence yet that these 'quantum vibrations' act in the way required by the hypothesis, and nothing to indicate that consciousness requires that activity.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 17/01/2014 13:51:25
One comment that seemed odd was that anesthesia "selectively" affects conscious brain activity. If that was true, you wouldn't really need an anesthesiologist hovering over you in the OR making sure your heart doesn't stop.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: jeffreyH on 18/01/2014 05:55:57
Just been reading a Schrodinger biography and he believed in a collective unconsciousness. Just thought I'd add that.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: cheryl j on 18/01/2014 07:12:13
Just been reading a Schrodinger biography and he believed in a collective unconsciousness. Just thought I'd add that.
yeah, I've read that too. But I don't know what he meant by it - a genuine pan-psychic belief, or just that brains are hard wired to interpret things in certain ways.

When my daughter was little (about 2 or 3) I asked her: "You know you came out of my tummy, right? But where do you think mom and dad came from?"
 She said "Oh, well, you were a fish that swam in the lake, (we live on an island) and dad was a tree that grew out of the ground." Oddly, she was kind of right. Her dad did grew up here, and I came from somewhere else, across the lake.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: yor_on on 24/01/2014 12:58:46
Very interesting link Cheryl. You can relate an idea of consciousness to something involving indeterminacy, although to get to a linearly acting universe, using 'forces' interacting, you need it acting through a locally defined arrow. From a very strict local point of view, without 'observers' involved, it might become a state of indeterminacy. But to get to outcomes I need a arrow.
=

As well as 'frames of reference', interacting.

As for your kids thoughts, they are not that different from our 'older ways' of thinking. The one in where everything has a 'spirit'. She just took it to a new level of consciousness, well, sort of :)

In such a view, (indeterminacy) we still would need to define how outcomes can come to be, though. It does not take away the arrow we perceive. And yeah, it would make us, and everything else, into the 'universe' observing itself. Which is one I fancy myself :)
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: Tomassci on 16/06/2017 08:38:41
I think just neurons and neurotransmitters can make consciousness.
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: smart on 26/06/2017 23:45:51
I think just neurons and neurotransmitters can make consciousness.

Think again. Plant protoconsciousness is evidence that all living systems are conscious. The essence of life on this planet  is consciousness. Furthermore, antipsychotic drugs are acting on neurotransmitters but may not change your consciousness. It is simply illogical to reduce human consciousness to a pure biological mecanism.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489624/   
Title: Re: What, on Earth, is The Human Consciousness?
Post by: xersanozgen on 27/06/2017 11:49:18
This forum needs a section of philosophy/science philosophy.

I looked for a word "energy" in messages but I did not see.

Whereas, everything in universe is originated by energy. We may say that even a knowledge is a derivation of energy.

We can  declare these similar determinations and then we can complete interval of first and last steps (adding little energy to Bose -Einstein density, the synthesis of proteins etc). Energy is forcemajor.