[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 :

[David Cooper]

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.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I think that the next level of human evolution will occur at the level of human consciousness indeed .Exciting .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

The "Nature " of Consciousness :

[David Cooper]

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.

[David Cooper]

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.]

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 .

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 .

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 .

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  .

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 .

"...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 .

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 .

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 .

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

.

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

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ 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 ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 ...

[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 ....

[dlorde]

@ 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 Materialists^tm 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 Materialists^tm club, who is left ?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 .

[dlorde]

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...

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...

[David Cooper]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Science cannot exist without consciousness either .

An intelligent computer can do science.

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.

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.

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

Where have I used magical thinking?

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.

[David Cooper]

@ 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ 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 Materialists^tm 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

[David Cooper]

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.

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?

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).

[dlorde]

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

Nothing at all, they are laudable aims.

"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.

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.

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.

[cheryl j]

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. 

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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

Nothing at all, they are laudable aims.

"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 .

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 ...

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.

[David Cooper]

...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?