[cheryl j]

Okay, okay, let's say that everyone around the world, scientists included, accept the existence of the immaterial. What happens next, DonQuichotte?

Use your imagination

hahahaa. great answer.

[RD]

http://www.amazon.com/Morphic-Resonance-Nature-Formative-Causation/dp/1594773173

[Rupert Sheldrake] put forward the hypothesis of formative causation (the theory of morphic resonance), which proposes that phenomena — particularly biological ones — become more probable the more often they occur, and therefore that biological growth and behaviour become guided into patterns laid down by previous similar events.

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

The existence of minority groups like left-handers shows Rupert’s positive-feedback “morphic resonance” hypothesis does not correspond with reality :  the momentum of all the right-handed “morphic resonance” should make everyone right-handed .
   With positive-feedback once more than half the population had become right or left handed it would just a matter of time before everyone was born with the same handedness.

Similarly if Rupert was correct he , a white person , should not exist, as dark-skinned “morphic resonance” should make everyone on the planet dark-skinned.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

http://www.amazon.com/Morphic-Resonance-Nature-Formative-Causation/dp/1594773173

[Rupert Sheldrake] put forward the hypothesis of formative causation (the theory of morphic resonance), which proposes that phenomena — particularly biological ones — become more probable the more often they occur, and therefore that biological growth and behaviour become guided into patterns laid down by previous similar events.

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

The existence of minority groups like left-handers shows Rupert’s positive-feedback “morphic resonance” hypothesis does not correspond with reality :  the momentum of all the right-handed “morphic resonance” should make everyone right-handed .
   With positive-feedback once more than half the population had become right or left handed it would just a matter of time before everyone was born with the same handedness.

Similarly if Rupert was correct he , a white person , should not exist, as dark-skinned “morphic resonance” should make everyone on the planet dark-skinned.

[/quote]

What interests me most in that fascinating book of Sheldrake is what science is ...not .
Physics and chemistry alone cannot account for life ,let alone  for  its origins emergence or evolution that cannot be just material or physical ,  the same goes for human language , morphogenesis,and the rest  ....+consciousness  ,including matter itself that cannot be just material or physical (see quantum physics ,regarding the latter ) , including evolution itself that cannot be just ...biological ...

Use your imagination then : Cheryl seems to find this latter so hilarious ,that's why i repeat it, just to please her : use your imagination then : i am serious haha.

[RD]

Physics and chemistry alone cannot account for life ,let alone  for  its origins emergence or evolution that cannot be just material or physical ,  the same goes for human language , morphogenesis ...

Chemistry has got morphogenesis covered ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_chemical_basis_of_morphogenesis

In recent times, reaction–diffusion systems have attracted much interest as a prototype model for pattern formation. The above-mentioned patterns (fronts, spirals, targets, hexagons, stripes and dissipative solitons) can be found in various types of reaction-diffusion systems in spite of large discrepancies e.g. in the local reaction terms. It has also been argued that reaction-diffusion processes are an essential basis for processes connected to morphogenesis in biology and may even be related to animal coats and skin pigmentation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_system#Applications_and_universality

[cheryl j]

Physics and chemistry alone cannot account for life ,let alone  for  its origins emergence or evolution that cannot be just material or physical ,

not proven

  the same goes for human language , morphogenesis,and the rest  ....+consciousness  ,

not proven

including matter itself that cannot be just material or physical (see quantum physics ,regarding the latter ) ,

not proven

including evolution itself that cannot be just ...biological ...

not proven

Use your imagination then : Cheryl seems to find this latter so hilarious ,that's why i repeat it, just to please her : use your imagination then : i am serious haha.

What's hilarious about the "use your imagination" comment is that it illustrates so well that you yourself have no idea what the immaterial is or is not, and cannot say how science should incorporate the immaterial into experiments, or verify findings related to immaterial, you just claim over and over that it should do so. 

[woolyhead]

We seem to think that what the neurones do cannot explain intelligence. Why ever not? How they do it is the mystery. Inside them are quantum processes which couple with the whole brain. When the wave functions collapse the R process does not explain everything. Once we understand this effect in quantum theory we will understand how quantum process affects macro events. Until then we don't. So we don't understand how intelligence occurs.

[Kryptid]

If society as a whole accepted the existence of the immaterial, that would seem problematic. By your own admission, science cannot test for the immaterial and therefore can make no discovery in regards to it. That means our conclusions about the nature of the immaterial would have to be philosophical and based soley upon our own reasoning and/or personal experience. The question then becomes, how can we ever know anything definitive about the immaterial if we cannot come to any agreement upon its nature? Surely different people will have different opinions about it. You can't even use science to figure out who is right. I have a hard time figuring out how society could be benefited by this. If it can't help us, should we even bother trying to prove it?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

If society as a whole accepted the existence of the immaterial, that would seem problematic. By your own admission, science cannot test for the immaterial and therefore can make no discovery in regards to it. That means our conclusions about the nature of the immaterial would have to be philosophical and based soley upon our own reasoning and/or personal experience. The question then becomes, how can we ever know anything definitive about the immaterial if we cannot come to any agreement upon its nature? Surely different people will have different opinions about it. You can't even use science to figure out who is right. I have a hard time figuring out how society could be benefited by this. If it can't help us, should we even bother trying to prove it?

[/quote]

Who said that ? Opinions do change , you know : they are not static,nothing is in fact  : see this on the subject :  only idiots fools or materialists can't change their minds ,not even in the face of counter-evidence :

7 Experiments that could change the world :

P.S.: Who said humanity or society cannot benefit from rejecting materialism in science ? : the benefits will be huge : more huge than we can ever imagine .
I do think that the next and much more important level of human evolution will be occuring at the very level of ...consciousness , the latter that's THE key to revealing most of the mysteries within and without : we can only try to imagine what that might deliver in the future ,for humanity as a whole : that's beyond our imagination even ,at this point of history at least .

See this as well  on the subject , while you are at it :

[Kryptid]

the benefits will be huge : more huge than we can ever imagine .

Give us some examples.

[AndroidNeox]

Personally, I must take the position that, until I find a self-consistent definition of "free will" I'll have to doubt its existence.

[cheryl j]

Personally, I must take the position that, until I find a self-consistent definition of "free will" I'll have to doubt its existence.

I'm not exactly sure I know what you mean by self consistent, but its a puzzling concept, regardless. I like Patricia Churchlands description of it:

 "A rigid philosophical tradition claims that no choice is free unless it is uncaused;that is, unless the"will" is exercised independently of all causal influences - in a causal vacuum."

This problem doesn't have a lot to do with materialism or anti-materialism. Religious sects like Calvinism believed in predestination for reasons that had nothing to do with brains. If God is omniscient, then He knows what you are going to do before you do it. If you "change your mind" and take a different path, it's only because He decided that that is what should happen. If its preordained, then there's no way out, there's no way things could have been any different from the way things turned out, regardless of the reason.

[alancalverd]

I have abstained from this argument so far, on the grounds that we have no agreed definition of free will, which makes the exercise as pointless as a discussion of consciousness.

But I think we can agree that complete freedom of action is not possible. Even in the absence of societal restraints, we are still bound by the laws of physics.

So whilst there might be no limits on your imagination, we cannot demonstrate, or even verbalise, every imaginable action. 

Hence free will is not demonstrable, so its existence cannot be proved.

[Kryptid]

Free will is indeed something that puzzles me. Every time we make a decision, presumably there is a reason behind it. Ultimately, that reason will come from something beyond ourselves. If I decide to eat a cookie, it is at least partially because my brain has a reward system set up that activates when sugar is consumed. I could decide to avoid eating the cookie on the grounds that I am on a diet, but that too is ultimately based on outside influences (a desire to be healthier or to fit a public image of attractiveness). If we were to make a decision that isn't based on any reasoning at all, then isn't the decision pretty much random? If a decision is completely random, can it be said that we actually had any part in making it in the first place? For me to say that "I can't imagine how free will could exist, therefore it does not" would be the argument from incredulity, so I cannot say that free will is impossible. However, it would be nice to see some sound argument in support of its existence.

[cheryl j]

The only way I can make sense of the idea is to think of it more in terms of flexibility, the number of possible choices or outcomes per one input or stimulus. A lizard might only have one response to a stimulus, and that stimulus has reach a certain threshold. A dog, a chimp, a human, has many possible responses, and a lot more stumuli are evaluated and compared in determining a response. The difference between less conscious animals and more conscious animals, is that humans or chimps go back and evaluate the outcome of their responses (in the words of Dr. Phil "hows that working for you?") and they incorporate that information in determining what they do next time. A lizard has a lot less flexibility in that respect and probably just runs the exact same program over and over.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Folks :

I do suggest that we all should move back ,or restrict ourselves to the consciousness thread , in order to discuss these highly fascinating issues ,simply because almost all of these issues and more can be be brought back to the hard problem of consciousness ,the latter that's THE key to understanding ourselves and this universe within and without, instead of "fragmenting " our energies and time on multiple threads  .

[Kryptid]

I do agree that we need to consolidate this whole immaterial argument into one thread. Having it spread out over several different ones is just sloppy. Heck, I'm considering giving up on the whole thing because nobody is making any real progress in any direction despite the massive number of responses that we've thrown at each other.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I do agree that we need to consolidate this whole immaterial argument into one thread. Having it spread out over several different ones is just sloppy. Heck, I'm considering giving up on the whole thing because nobody is making any real progress in any direction despite the massive number of responses that we've thrown at each other.

[/quote]

Right : we are not pretending to try  though to solve these big issues ,we are just exchanging thoughts about them : i did get learn a lot from the insights of people here that did lead me to unexpected sources and ideas,you have no idea  .
Just try to do the same then ,also by checking my displayed sources and material all over these threads , especially on the consciousness thread .

So, all these discussions are just supposed to be a starting point in one's own research on the matter .
Good luck with your own re-search and journey .
Thanks, appreciate indeed .
Take care .

[alancalverd]

The difference between less conscious animals and more conscious animals, is that humans or chimps go back and evaluate the outcome of their responses ..... A lizard has a lot less flexibility in that respect and probably just runs the exact same program over and over.

I think the underlying suggestion that cold-blooded animals are less able to reflect, learn or solve problems, lacks evidence, though you may have some.  There is considerable evidence of the ability of octopi to solve problems and to learn from the actions of humans, and ants on the march seem at least as intelligent as human crowds.

You need to map the idea of learning, reflection, or whatever, into the space of the physical capability of the animal you are studying. Hence you can't dismiss dogs as "intellectually unable to use tools" because they simply don't have the anatomical ability to manipulate a prosthetic device, nor any need to count beyond about six - though their understanding of differential calculus is way beyond that of most humans. So I guess your lizard is a bit restricted in its range of potential responses and prior life experiences from which to draw analogies that you might recognise. But he might consider growing a new tail or walking on the ceiling as experiences and responses which are way beyond your ken or ability!

[cheryl j]

I think the underlying suggestion that cold-blooded animals are less able to reflect, learn or solve problems, lacks evidence, though you may have some.  There is considerable evidence of the ability of octopi to solve problems and to learn from the actions of humans, and ants on the march seem at least as intelligent as human crowds.

You need to map the idea of learning, reflection, or whatever, into the space of the physical capability of the animal you are studying. Hence you can't dismiss dogs as "intellectually unable to use tools" because they simply don't have the anatomical ability to manipulate a prosthetic device, nor any need to count beyond about six - though their understanding of differential calculus is way beyond that of most humans. So I guess your lizard is a bit restricted in its range of potential responses and prior life experiences from which to draw analogies that you might recognise. But he might consider growing a new tail or walking on the ceiling as experiences and responses which are way beyond your ken or ability!

I would agree with that. And it seems unlikely that learning or problem solving just popped into existence with homo sapiens.
I once watched an ant circle a dead bug on a picnic table, and push it off the edge. It made the long trek down to where the dead bug landed and hauled it away. Maybe they do that all the time, I don't know, but it seemed rather clever.

This month's issue of Scientific American has an article about face recognition by wasps. (Wasps can recognize faces. They didn't write an article about face recognition.) Anyway, it says  that paper wasps "can perceive and memorize one anothers unique facial markings and are able to use information to distinguish individuals during subsequent interactions, much as humans navigate their social environment by learning and remembering the faces of family, friends and colleagues" and "can at times even learn to tell human faces apart." The article also says wasps don't respond to facial features separately, but perceive and process the face as whole.
"The occurrence of face specialization in both humans and wasps suggests that this mechanism could be more wide spread in the animal kingdom than previously thought."

[AndroidNeox]

Personally, I must take the position that, until I find a self-consistent definition of "free will" I'll have to doubt its existence.

I'm not exactly sure I know what you mean by self consistent, but its a puzzling concept, regardless. I like Patricia Churchlands description of it:

 "A rigid philosophical tradition claims that no choice is free unless it is uncaused;that is, unless the"will" is exercised independently of all causal influences - in a causal vacuum."

Churchland's description perfectly sets up my problem with "free will" definitions. How does one make a free choice?

The choice must be based on the the nature of the individual. Where does that nature come from? It comes from inheritance, environment, and random chance; all of which are outside factors.

If choice is causal then it must be dependent upon factors that predate, or at least are external to, the individual. If choice is not causal then it's outside of the individual's control.