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Quote from: dlorde on 29/11/2014 19:07:15Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you: What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?See the above displayed excerpt then .
Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you: What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 19:34:11Quote from: dlorde on 29/11/2014 19:07:15Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you: What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?See the above displayed excerpt then .Which excerpt of what? I'm asking you what you think your supposed non-physical, non-local consciousness does, and why you think it's necessary.
Well, my posted excerpt to Cheryl here above of course from "The mind and the brain " by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, that can explain all that to you better than i can do .
Guys :You can't access the full version of this following amazing article of the new scientist unless you subscribe to the latter :
Cheryl : Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences and it does work too : i have tried it myself with success : The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy :
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445553#msg445553 date=1417298813]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 20:25:08Well, my posted excerpt to Cheryl here above of course from "The mind and the brain " by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, that can explain all that to you better than i can do . Seriously? You do know neuroplasticity is an entirely material property, right? it occurs as a result of changes in the firing patterns of groups of neurons. You're aware you can't just 'will' yourself to know stuff and have new abilities, right? You have to actually learn the stuff, you have to practice, repeatedly exercise those neural circuits so they change and grow (much in the way a muscle will change & grow with exercise).
The 'will' to learn stuff and do the practice is just as material - a result of your low-level drives and biases filtered and modified by the higher level processes based on life experience and reflective feedbacks.
None of that stuff requires any non-physical or non-material influences; you can certainly describe it all in terms of non-material processes, and in a top-down causal sense, if that helps you understand the high level behaviour, but those processes and emergent interacting patterns of activity are all expressions of physical, material neuronal activity.
Nor is there any reason to believe, or evidence to suggest, that exotic quantum physics is involved or necessary, although it is conceivable that QM might help optimize critical paths (as in photosynthesis or avian navigation).
Looking for a non-physical, non-local consciousness, you're just chasing redundant phantasmic figments. You're not in a dark room looking for a black cat; neuroscience has turned the light on and there's no cat there; a few dark shadows, perhaps, but nowhere for a cat to hide. If you take off your dark glasses, you can see that for yourself.
How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training ...without mindful focus or attention and action of your conscious will ? : you're just talking rubbish , dlorde ,and i am not gonna say sorry this time,not even out of politeness or courtesy, simply because you are ,big time, as a matter of fact .
We're not determined computers or machines , no hardware run by software .Materialism cannot intrinsically but say we are , but that's no empirical fact , just materialist bullshit : see the difference ?
What about biofeedback training ? ,when one can voluntarily take control of some aspects of one's own autonomic nervous system:
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445591#msg445591 date=1417373005]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 18:02:46How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training ...without mindful focus or attention and action of your conscious will ? : you're just talking rubbish , dlorde ,and i am not gonna say sorry this time,not even out of politeness or courtesy, simply because you are ,big time, as a matter of fact .LOL! the argument from incredulity and insult... yet again. Sadly predictable.
QuoteWe're not determined computers or machines , no hardware run by software .Materialism cannot intrinsically but say we are , but that's no empirical fact , just materialist bullshit : see the difference ?I can see that you find the idea that you are the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences distressing, but, ironically, that's the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences [] New life experiences can help you get over it.
QuoteWhat about biofeedback training ? ,when one can voluntarily take control of some aspects of one's own autonomic nervous system: That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 20:29:49Guys :You can't access the full version of this following amazing article of the new scientist unless you subscribe to the latter :Meh - read it when it was first published. It's just a melodramatic popular science version of the MIT introduction to quantum superposition lecture I posted earlier. Isn't QM weird? [] (yeah, we know).The argument from incredulity is a persistent human failing - as continually demonstrated by the new knowledge we acquire. Likewise the associated magical thinking, e.g. the attribution of magical ('non-physical') influences to account for poorly understood mechanisms. Together they account for too much nonsense and too many fantasy belief systems. Discovering the real world is far more interesting.
"We will be able" to upload lol consciousness and the mind of deceased loved ones to a computer : bullshit : nice movie though :
Quoteauthor=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445559#msg445559 date=1417311316]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 17:33:01Cheryl : Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences and it does work too : i have tried it myself with success : The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy : You missed the point entirely. Not surprised. He was not denying the "existence" of consciousness. His argument was that if the sensory processes are material, the mapping of them to the brain certainly can be as well; that everything we think "about" is ultimately derived from them and replicates them. His second point is that thinking is a process, an event, something I've argued as well. When an anti-materialist says "point to an idea in the brain," one could just as easily say, "show me where walking is in the legs" or explain how a bird can fly when none of its individual cells can. Tell me where a tornado goes when it's finished being a tornado. States and processes are material based, even if they are less tangible. And cognitive therapy can be explained, (actually better explained,) from a neuroscience perspective. If the brain does have modules that approach or solve problems in different ways, like a team of rivals, there is no reason why one part cannot, with practice, compensate for the deficiencies, or over ride the impulses of another part. But that actually makes no sense if you view immaterial consciousness as a discrete, uniform entity, in which case it really is boot strapping.
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445559#msg445559 date=1417311316]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 17:33:01Cheryl : Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences and it does work too : i have tried it myself with success : The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy : You missed the point entirely. Not surprised.
Genetic determinism has been refuted and it does make no biological sense whatsoever either , not to mention epigenetics ....
As for the rest of this post of yours , i see you still can't make the difference between deterministic mechanical materialism (that was built upon the fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view )and between science yet , if ever .
New life experiences might make you reject your false materialism someday
QuoteThat's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.Yeah, right ...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical universe that is : we don't .
That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445600#msg445600 date=1417376135]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 19:01:01Genetic determinism has been refuted and it does make no biological sense whatsoever either , not to mention epigenetics ....Epigenetics is the influence of the environment on gene expression - didn't you know? []
QuoteAs for the rest of this post of yours , i see you still can't make the difference between deterministic mechanical materialism (that was built upon the fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view )and between science yet , if ever .Although the Many Worlds interpretation resolves the apparently stochastic nature of QM, I'm happy to concede QM uncertainty until we can be sure which interpretation is the best model of reality. But there's no doubt that, at a macro scale, the world is deterministic to a high-level approximation - if it wasn't, neither our modern technology nor biology, nor the cosmological universe itself, would function as it does. As noted elsewhere, this doesn't mean it's predictable; chaos and emergence sees to that.
QuoteNew life experiences might make you reject your false materialism somedayPossible, but unlikely.
QuoteQuoteThat's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.Yeah, right ...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical universe that is : we don't .Strictly speaking perhaps not, but see above. Furthermore, we know very precisely what QM predicts about our observations - its not a wild card, which is why the world around us behaves so deterministically at macro scales - and why Newton's Laws still apply at everyday human scales (after all, he derived them from empirical grounds).
... and once again to ad nausea lol as RD said ...
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445598#msg445598 date=1417374783]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 18:49:05"We will be able" to upload lol consciousness and the mind of deceased loved ones to a computer : bullshit : nice movie though :Theoretically this could be done - it's the same level of technology as the Star Trek transporter, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. I used to think it might be achievable someday, but I now think it's technically near-as-dammit impossible (to capture a sufficiently detailed snapshot of all the relevant information in a specific human brain, potentially to molecular level). However, I'm pretty sure it will be possible to create a generic neuromorphic computer emulation of a human brain - the US and European Union are funding just such a project.
However, as a thought experiment, like the Star Trek transporter, it is a rich and fascinating source of Ship-of-Theseus-type philosophical puzzles about the nature of identity.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 19:22:38 ... and once again to ad nausea lol as RD said ...However I did spell it correctly : "ad nauseam" , ( in Reply #595 ).