[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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', 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, 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 and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (programmable computers) and computer/constructors that can be programmed to replicate themselves.

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 .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 " ...

[alancalverd]

That's 1 of the reasons , i guess, why God blessed us with minds hearts and souls

What? When? How? How do you know?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 .

[dlorde]

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.

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.

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.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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.

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.

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 .

[dlorde]

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  <)

[cheryl j]

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.

[alancalverd]

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. 

[Pmb]

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

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.

[dlorde]

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

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...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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', 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, 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 and as a logic language to create construct universal Turing machines (programmable computers) and computer/constructors that can be programmed to replicate themselves.

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 .

 
 

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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

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  .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 ...

[dlorde]

... tl;dr ...

Yes, but how do you feel about materialism in science?   

[cheryl j]

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)

[CPT ArkAngel]

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?

[dlorde]

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

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

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 ...