Still Stuck on Stupid

No evidence for it? Well, to play devil's advocate, I'd disagree. Anaesthesia, lobotomy, brain damage, neurological diseases, sleep, brain injury, etc. All affect our consciousness. Can we explain that in the filter framework?
Yes, because we can explain just about anything in that framework. It will only go away if scientists can present a "complete" model of consciousness that convinces people that the brain can, in fact, produce it. It may be impossible to convince everyone, because the explanation won't "feel right."

Meanwhile, I await progress on the transmission/filter hypothesis, because it is, at least, quite interesting.

~~ Paul
 
No evidence for it? Well, to play devil's advocate, I'd disagree. Anaesthesia, lobotomy, brain damage, neurological diseases, sleep, brain injury, etc. All affect our consciousness. Can we explain that in the filter framework?
Science worked out the function of our main organs long ago. The brain however, sits there promising much but thus far delivering little in the way of backstory. It clearly has some kind of role, but consciousness, the phenomenon that encompasses everything from love to logic to poetry to space travel, is so far beyond the sum of any parts we can recognise, that it seems premature to ascribe them to it. Then there are things like terminal lucidity, NDEs, remote viewing and miracle cures, all of which are on the edge of what we think a brain is capable of doing as a physical engine. The brain as transceiver seems the most likely role, taking all things into account.
 
David will provide his own answers but I accept the primacy of conscience. Conscience manifests itself in things like love and hate. Most materialists do not behave as though the love of their children is a chemical reaction, or killing someone they object to is the inevitable result of a rise in blood pressure, or synapses misfiring. They may believe those things in the abstract, but as they make no difference to how they live their everyday lives, their beliefs and the practice of them is inconsistent.

Many people labour under such cognitive dissonance, but the materialist accepts no control over the way things appear and the way he responds to them. That reduces the complexity of what it means to be human, to a biological response for which there's no evidence. Consciousness is not reducible to such primary functions.

Exactly ! So good Gabriel. They want all the benefits of consciousness with it's obvious pointers to a soul but none of the responsibilities to admit it. They want it both ways.
 
Science worked out the function of our main organs long ago. The brain however, sits there promising much but thus far delivering little in the way of backstory. It clearly has some kind of role, but consciousness, the phenomenon that encompasses everything from love to logic to poetry to space travel, is so far beyond the sum of any parts we can recognise, that it seems premature to ascribe them to it. Then there are things like terminal lucidity, NDEs, remote viewing and miracle cures, all of which are on the edge of what we think a brain is capable of doing as a physical engine. The brain as transceiver seems the most likely role, taking all things into account.

I'd like to think the filter theory is true, but what is the smoking gun evidence for it? Moreover, the work of Christof Koch, and the advancement of AI seems to point to a generator model. Note, filter doesn't necessitate survival or survival of personality.
 
I wish we could actually tease apart the difference between the 'hardcore' materialists, and the more nuanced ones. My impression is that the more nuanced materialists want to say the same thing but in a more confusing way - or that they themselves are somewhat confused!

Will a non hardcore skeptic stand up please and explain what it is exactly that they do believe!

David

Materialists generally think that conscious experience somehow emerges from mindless matter. This is very different from saying that conscious experience doesn't exist.

To be fair, though, atheists and materialists do say some silly things about mind and consciousness. I believe the main reason for this is that they are often engaged in stuck-on-stupid debates with theists, and they are afraid that if they admit that consciousness, free-will and morality are mysterious and baffling, then that will make life very difficult for them in the context of the debate.

I wish more atheists would follow McGinn and just admit that science will probably never be able to deal with 1st-person subjective experience. What's wrong with just living with the mystery of consciousness?
 
Exactly ! So good Gabriel. They want all the benefits of consciousness with it's obvious pointers to a soul but none of the responsibilities to admit it. They want it both ways.
How exactly would that work? Can you point me to something we can discuss?
Repeating the slogan "materialists don't practice what they preach" does not help, please state where you think the inconstency hides.
Neither you, Gabriel or David seem willing to discus the subject, it is almost as if you do not want to spoil a good argument by checking whether it is true.
Is that not exactly what "stuck on stupid" means?
 
What's wrong with just living with the mystery of consciousness?
There's nothing wrong with ambiguity, but most people have a low tolerance for it. Proponents of psi have much in common with the new age perspective on the world. Everything has meaning. Everything has a cause, etcetera. This forum is a microcosm example of that intolerance for ambiguity.

I wish more atheists would follow McGinn and just admit that science will probably never be able to deal with 1st-person subjective experience.
Never is a long time. Are you sure you should state such an declaration?
 
Last edited:
How exactly would that work? Can you point me to something we can discuss?
Repeating the slogan "materialists don't practice what they preach" does not help, please state where you think the inconstency hides.
Neither you, Gabriel or David seem willing to discus the subject, it is almost as if you do not want to spoil a good argument by checking whether it is true.
Is that not exactly what "stuck on stupid" means?
Why do you say that? The materialist position as I understand it, is that the brain secretes consciousness like a bile duct, or there's a field (electromagnetic?) that produces the illusion of it. If so, it's an illusion so lucid and organised that it can create art and science of a depth that's indistinguishable from spirituality or magic. I suspect the brain interfaces with, or provides a portal to, a dimension we can only describe as spiritual, because other organs are so mechanistically functional and there's no reason to believe the brain is of a different order.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tim
Repeating the slogan "materialists don't practice what they preach" does not help, please state where you think the inconstency hides.
Yes, I liken it to the (literal) knee-jerk reaction, where the doctor taps your knee with a rubber hammer. You might understand perfectly how and why the reaction happens, but that won't prevent it from happening. Of course, mental/emotional responses are not the same as involuntary motor respanses, but I think the same principal holds true to some degree.

Also, I think it would probably be inaccurate to say that free will skeptics never practice what they preach. I can easily envision scenarios where one might moderate their reactions based on the belief that offensive behavior by another was in some sense "programmed".

Pat
 
Nobody's insulting anyone. Clinging onto your favoured paradigm requires evidence to maintain it. To date the big theory has relied on promise notes. It now seems that account was overdrawn and people are looking to invest in something that pays a better dividend than you live - you die. That was a passing phase anyway, mostly Western, white, middle class and appealed solely to the intellect. We are not calculating machines, so why emphasise one aspect of the big picture to the exclusion of everything else?
 
How exactly would that work? Can you point me to something we can discuss?
Repeating the slogan "materialists don't practice what they preach" does not help, please state where you think the inconstency hides.
Neither you, Gabriel or David seem willing to discus the subject, it is almost as if you do not want to spoil a good argument by checking whether it is true.
Is that not exactly what "stuck on stupid" means?
Something we can discuss.

Yeah discuss this :-)

Admit you are a biological robot and be done with it rather than benefitting from all the attributes that a separate and "responsible for it's actions here" soul confers upon us. Are *you* responsible for killing somebody if there is no real you, just a series of connections in your brain. How can that be ? Why can't murderers just plead "It wasn't me, my wiring went awry"....shucks the courts won't accept that.

Doesn't make sense, does it Bart. If we are biological robots do you believe in the singularity ? And if you do, will those "conscious robots" be put to death or imprisoned for their *malfunctions* that seem to be "human in nature" ?
 
Science worked out the function of our main organs long ago. The brain however, sits there promising much but thus far delivering little in the way of backstory. It clearly has some kind of role, but consciousness, the phenomenon that encompasses everything from love to logic to poetry to space travel, is so far beyond the sum of any parts we can recognise, that it seems premature to ascribe them to it. Then there are things like terminal lucidity, NDEs, remote viewing and miracle cures, all of which are on the edge of what we think a brain is capable of doing as a physical engine. The brain as transceiver seems the most likely role, taking all things into account.
So we're nothing but a meat puppet? Controlled by an emphemeral entity from another realm?
Crikey gab, where is 'freewill' in that (contrived) arrangement?
 
So we're nothing but a meat puppet? Controlled by an emphemeral entity from another realm?
Crikey gab, where is 'freewill' in that (contrived) arrangement?

The freewill is a property of human (and some other higher mammals) consciousness and self realisation but is always restricted or affected by the circumstances in which it finds itself but with saintly determination can always choose. So yes, we are meat puppets with spiritual operators.. Spirit being the term for an as yet undiscovered substance that inhabits some creatures.

Don't ask me if Ants have a soul. It's difficult to ask them if any have had out of body experiences
 
So we're nothing but a meat puppet? Controlled by an emphemeral entity from another realm?
Crikey gab, where is 'freewill' in that (contrived) arrangement?

Tse and Searle talk about how this might work.

Searle gives a good overview, but as he points out he doesn't have the scientific background to really say too much about how indeterminism and causality mix together. That's where Tse's work as a neuroscientist comes in.
 
The freewill is a property of human (and some other higher mammals) consciousness and self realisation but is always restricted or affected by the circumstances in which it finds itself but with saintly determination can always choose.
mumbo jumbo
So yes, we are meat puppets with spiritual operators..
This is my point. "We" can't be held morally responsible for anything under that arrangement, surely?

Spirit being the term for an as yet undiscovered substance that inhabits some creatures.
Sorry tim, but again, mumbo jumbo...

Don't ask me if Ants have a soul. It's difficult to ask them if any have had out of body experiences
I won't.
 
There's nothing wrong with ambiguity, but most people have a low tolerance for it. Proponents of psi have much in common with the new age perspective on the world. Everything has meaning. Everything has a cause, etcetera. This forum is a microcosm example of that intolerance for ambiguity.


Never is a long time. Are you sure you should state such an declaration?

Can you name some forum members who have stated "Everything has meaning." or "Everything has a cause." I think you lose sight of the fact that many posters here are quite skeptical. I can't think of too many people here who mirror the "New Age Perspective."
 
Sorry tim, but again, mumbo jumbo...

"mumbo jumbo"

Cheers, that means you know it's probably true I guess

"This is my point. "We" can't be held morally responsible for anything under that arrangement, surely?

The meat puppet never is, it's his operator, the psyche. The puppet being the vehicle by which the psyche goes about it's earthly business...has to take the rap because the two are indivisible for most of the time, for practicalities. You're not suggesting that your leg is responsible for kicking a hole in a fence are you ?

"Don't ask me if Ants have a soul. It's difficult to ask them if any have had out of body experiences"

"I won't "

Are you adam ant about that ?
 
Materialists generally think that conscious experience somehow emerges from mindless matter. This is very different from saying that conscious experience doesn't exist.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the concept of emergence makes sense when applied to consciousness, I think there is a gedanken experiment that is worth thinking about. As with all gedanken experiments you have to accept that it is somewhat far fetched, but not in any essential way (or argue the contrary).

So we imagine a person with his emerged mind thinking thoughts that make him unhappy but don't require any new input or generate any output. Perhaps he is thinking about a failed love affair. This man then has his brain scanned destructively - so he is killed in an instant, but all the essential data about his mind (maybe part of the brain, or all the brain, or even his whole body) is transferred into a computer equipped with a program to simulate how his mind would evolve from moment to moment.

From the POV of a materialist, the computer is equivalent to the original brain, so as it executes, it should feel all the pain that the man would have felt if his ruminations had not been cut short by the scanner!

So far so good, but because the program can be run over and over again, one has to ask if this would cause repeated bouts of love sick angst!

Even worse (from the POV of the materialist) the program is really equivalent to a theorem - running the program consists of a sequence of logical steps that can only have one outcome! This means that like a theorem, you don't actually have to run the program - it is true anyway. The suffering has been transferred to the platonic world of theorems!

To be fair, though, atheists and materialists do say some silly things about mind and consciousness. I believe the main reason for this is that they are often engaged in stuck-on-stupid debates with theists, and they are afraid that if they admit that consciousness, free-will and morality are mysterious and baffling, then that will make life very difficult for them in the context of the debate.
I think if you gather up all the silly things they say, they amount to a set of evasive tactics to avoid a conclusion that they don't want to reach.

I wish more atheists would follow McGinn and just admit that science will probably never be able to deal with 1st-person subjective experience. What's wrong with just living with the mystery of consciousness?
Well fine in a sense - if they didn't try to pretend that they 'know' the answer is to be found in materialism!

Remember that in 100 years time, the above gedanken experiment might actually be possible - leaving aside ethical considerations!

David
 
Back
Top