BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:11 PM

> probably not any more solvable than "Why is there 'something' rather than 'nothing'.'

Or, contrariwise, how there could be "nothing" rather than "something."

> it FEELS like we have some free will in certain areas, and we need to act as though we do, or most of our other actions lose relevance.

How would you act if you were acting as though you didn't have free will? Even deciding to take a nap would be acting as if you had it. Or deciding to go cataleptic like Queequegg in Moby Dick.

You might be OK as long as you were truly cataleptic, however.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:05 PM

I LOVE that piece on Sky Cake!! Cracks me UP!!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 02:41 PM

An interestring examination on quantum physics, self-determinism, free will and changing the past from Scientific American.

If it isn't molecules, what is it?

There's the 64$ question. The materialist quandary is that such behaviors as knowing, perceiving, etc., appear to point to something else other than material elements, out past the end of the chain of S-R signal links. From the viewpoint of space-time-energy measures, it appears to be a "nothingness" with capabilities.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Wesley S
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 11:53 AM

If you haven't seen this yet I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Patton Oswalt on "Sky Cake"

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 05:21 PM

Perceptions are only stimuli for people. We have a twisted brain where the frontal portions got too close to the back ones.

Again, though, if it isn't molecules, what is it?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 03:08 PM

THe notion that any chain of signals, piled no matter how high and deep, will constitute perception, as distinguished from reaction or stimulus. THe notion, embedded in all this materialistic science, that perception IS a stimulus, as distinct from an ability that is applied to or uses stimuli. The notion that an array of mechanical objects (or electrical fields or currents) can constitute understanding. THis much for starters.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 12:41 PM

Um, didn't mean to completely quash you. Seriously, what is laughable about it?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 10:36 PM

Nothing, obviously.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 07:59 PM

Well, nobody is claiming that it's the molecules that perceive, Amos. Not to call you Shirley, but what do you think is in the brain that isn't molecular in basic structure? (I'm not counting electrical processes as they arise from those molecules).

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 07:23 PM

Sigh. You guys!! Your first premise is so persuasive to you that you repeatedly claim that it proves itself because it is true. Round and round in a closed circle of materialist fixed thought.

If Rank really wanted to study cases where brain death had been recovered from, he would have no trouble finding them.

The notion that you can get a system of molecules to perceive--as distinguished from reacting, or to postulate something by deciding it will be -- is, to my way of thinking, so self-contradictory as to be laughable and just as unreasonable as the most extreme hijinks of dogmatic theism.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 06:42 PM

I expect that there have been many cases where people have been declared dead (as to the clentical definition of death and even brain dead), who have regained conciousness. I also suspect they have tales to tell. A Google search comes up with quite a few.


?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 06:07 PM

Henri Bergson, philosopher, coined the term "Elan Vital" in his book (1907), Creative Evolution. His idea was based on his interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, the whirlpool approach to life.

The concept of vitalism:
1. a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions
2. a doctrine that the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone and that life is in some part self-determining.

The British biologist Julian Huxley remarked that Bergson's élan vital is no better an explanation of life than is explaining the operation of a railway engine by its élan locomotif ("locomotive driving force")

The great divide is red-herringish since Darwin's theory which is by the way not a theory to be contested as not having been established by science. Dawkins refers to this
type of theory, a theorum in that it has been essentially proven.

There are those who claim that there are "gaps" in Evolution since a continuous line of evolving can't be shown by artifacts and archaeology but in fact the continuous line of development can be assumed due to carbon 14, dendrochronology and DNA sampling.

What happens in the brain, stays in the brain. (to paraphrase Las Vegas)

Show me someone who is brain dead that has experiences and can recount them.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 11:48 AM

Elan vital? Are we back to medieval beliefs, now?

Nobody thinks that the brain's activity which gives rise to our experience, and the experience we are thus given, aren't qualitatively different. Just because it *is* molecular/atomic at the molecular level doesn't mean that is our experience of whatever it was at the level of perception, nor is that experience qualitatively the same as our cognitions *with* those perceptions.

So both agree, if they are understood, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 11:05 PM

Stringsinger's thesis lies along the line of well-established materialist arguments:molecules rule and produce brains which produce thoughts by neuro-electronic means, and the thoughts are perceived by other neuro-electronic means and the whole thing is just a set of complex loops of molecules dancing.

The counter-thesis asserts that qualitative differences exist between signals and understanding, between electrochemical kicks and intent, and between perception and reaction.

Therein lies the Great Divide. Oddly, both of these schools depend on sort of self-fulfilling loops and it escapes me how any external evaluation comparing the two could occur.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 08:52 PM

"I think life, or elan vital, operates material structures. You seem to think that physical structures are the source of life."

I think you are close to the distinction between our perspectives, Amos.... but Bergson & Marx as examples? Me? Marx? You got me there.

I'll confess I never read Bergson in any detail, and I know there are seldom courses directly about him, since it was more 'fun' to study how Sartré developed Bergson's themes. I've been scanning some generalizations about him, and I still don't see exactly how your approach fits. The approach to "Mind Energy" perhaps? Bergson is a complex fellow, and not easy to summarize. You must point me to passages sometime.....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 02:26 PM

And contraception and birth control, including abortion.

But this is still off-topic, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 02:11 PM

Language engenders physical responses in the brain. Terms, which are usually not specifically agreed upon but serve as some method of communication are a product of the brain's language mechanism. Terms such as "justice", "beauty" and other concepts may be on the surface mutually agreed upon but as semanticists tell us, not everyone is on board with the same meanings. Existential or experiential "ideas" are manufactured by the individual brain of those who have them. Many philosophers insist that these abstract and sometimes absolute concepts exist outside the brain but as we evaluate these concepts, we see that the meaning of what is perceived differs slightly from one person's brain to another.

In the gene pool, selectivity is not just for brawn, not a total measure of survival, but abilities that extend to different intelligences. These may be attractive to members of opposite sexes and thus create a unique gene pool.

What appears to be "hard wired" are basic needs but variation exists even among these.
The brain can sometimes be conditioned to change what is considered to be "hard wired" as in an Indian Fakir who can control the flow of his blood after having his body punctured by nails on a bed.

What is "hard wired" however is language which influences behavior and emanates from the physical brain. This language determines behavior.

The physical properties of the gene building blocks can be said to be hard wired into the unit that is being built. As Dawkins has pointed out, it is necessary to separate the notion of a unit (being or body) from the genes that create it. The genes, not the bodies control survival.

I don't think there is a god gene because the notion of worshipping an abstract being is compounded by a lack of agreement as to what or who that is. There is however, as Dawkins has pointed out, a "meme" which is a viral idea that self-replicates as an accepted notion. Religion is one of these.

Religion seems to be a Manichean construct contrasting good and evil which are linguistic concepts and these terms are not well-defined unanimously by every person (brain).
This is why there is not one religion unilaterally. Many of these religions have tenets that are in opposition to one another as well as those considered to be underlying agreements.   "Good" and "Evil" are not mutually agreed upon by everyone.

Take the issue of capital punishment for example.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 01:44 PM

Can our personal sense of the real (physical or theoretic) world and all that is in it (including our thoughts and feelings), be more real and reliable than our thoughts of the world from which it is abstracted? How can we even communicate about it without involving some non-abstract elements?

Signed,
"Confused and wondering"
(not to be confused with wandering)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 01:44 PM

Well, there's a question well-begged. sir. I certainly agree with your sentiment regarding poetic affirmations.

I think you have put your finger on the difference between our perspectives. I think life, or elan vital, operates material structures. You seem to think that physical structures are the source of life. In this respect, I am more of a Bergsonian, and you more of a Marxist. :D



A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 12:41 PM

I am still sorting out exactly what you complain about re: "My exception or protest is centered on the use upthread of the word "real", and it obviously has one meaning--material--". Did I say or imply that? Or just others in general? I suppose we'd ...ummm... 'really'...have to have a symposium and carefully decide on how terms are to be employed before we can even approach the core question(s)....but that being not easily organized...I will again venture some ideas...

"Do you think there is such a thing as justice, or beauty in existence? Or do you think a perfect circle unreal? Let's take something more personal like affinity. Do you think affection and admiration are real?"

Ummm...yes....but saying 'yes' doesn't deal with the obvious & long-standing conceptual variance you & I have debated. Near the end of your post, you assert..."None of these things are physical ...".
Now I realize that one does not weigh and measure 'thoughts & hopes & dreams', but your statement **seems** to linguistically skirt the issue of whether those abstract (or at least non-weighable) concepts are only products and manifestations OF something physical. It also **seems** to leave open the possibility of their 'essence'(whatever that might mean) being independent of neurons and chemical agents and such-like physical stuff.

I have no problem with using the poetic affirmations of our mental constructs as truly amazing and reflexively satisfying aspects of this complex situation that evolution has wished on us, but I also have no problem with shrugging and watching biochemical research find more & more evidence of how those faculties operate IN a physical system. It still 'feels' awesome to experience love and beauty and to discuss 'justice' and 'altruism', no matter where the ultimate location of them is considered to 'be'.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 09:14 AM

> the existence of thoughts, imaginings, and concepts is pretty well universal amongst humans and possibly other organisms. Surely there is no need to imply it is a far-fetched notion!

Well, yeah, but a more basic question is what we mean by "exist." In a broad sense, they all obviously "exist." But except for the experience of perceiving it in your mind, does the *idea* of a 747 exist in the same way, or to the same degree, as a *physical* 747?

There seems to be more than one kind of existing, but "seems" isn't quite the same as "is." Advances in neuroscience certainly appear (that means "seem") to show that all thought is merely neurochemical activity, but I confess that that's so counterintuitive as to be unbelievable. Much like the fact that the earth goes around the sun seemed five hundred years ago.

Mathematics is another problem. While I can't find you a "three," I admit that evidence of "threeness" etc. is everywhere in nature. Mathematical quantities and relationships are certainly "real": not only do they exist in our minds, they can actually be manipulated to bring tangible results in the material world. And they include concepts like sqr -1 that, in and of themselves, seem to be irrational and impossible.

If words have any meaning at all, "2 + 2 = 4" is true for all time (where 2 and 4 represent integers that don't all melt together as when 2 raindrops plus 2 raindrops can equal 1 big raindrop on your windowsill, for example). Two dinosaurs and two dinosaurs equalled four dinosaurs even if there was no one around to notice.

So mathematical rules certainly seem to have been part of the Big Bang, even though they are essentially abstractions. Thus some abstractions can certainly "exist" and be "real," realer in fact than my mental image of a 747, which doesn't interact with the outside world at all.

But were mathematical rules equally independent of all things physical at the moment of the Big Bang, or did they arise from some unknown physical principle or material that blew itself out of existence in the first fraction of a nanosecond?

Beats me.

The point is that what's material is certainly "real," and immaterial mathematics is also certainly "real," though seemingly not in quite the same way. Maybe other things, like thoughts, are "real" in some other way or ways. Anything's possible, but the wisest course is to stick to what evidence there is and remain undecided about what's utterly unknown.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 12:27 AM

Your premise is as problematic as your conclusion, Bill, and tyour hunter is is a similar quandary to your own. I wasn't asking about Platonic forms, merely about ideals, Platonic or otherwise. Do you think there is such a thing as justice, or beauty in existence? Or do you think a perfect circle unreal? Let's take something more personal like affinity. Do you think affection and admiration are real?

I am not asserting, as you have me to do, that ideas and mental constructs have a concrete existence. See my remark earlier about pink elephants. But it is also true that there is a gradient of mental creations that is less or more agreed-on by fewer or more viewpoints.

I have no argument that physical things are real. But I take strong exception to rejecting all the certitudes of the mind simply because they are not physical. My exception or protest is centered on the use upthread of the word "real", and it obviously has one meaning--material--that applies in this exclusion, and another--actual, valid, existing--which does not. I KNOW your thoughts are real, and that the hopes and imaginings of your most remote landscapes of thought are real; that is, I know they exist, and I know they have some import to you, and may have tangible visual form, and even palpable energy connected with them. I know this even though youhave not shared them with me, just as surely as I know something if not much about the Tatooine-like planet recently described in the press.

This is not just a matter of subjectivity, ewither. Everyone has had a dream, even if they are wildly different in content. Everyone has had a hope. Most people have had a disappointment. None of these things are physical but their existence in the general sense is widely agreed-on.

ANd really, there is no "somehow" about it; the existence of thoughts, imaginings, and concepts is pretty well universal amongst humans and possibly other organisms. Surely there is no need to imply it is a far-fetched notion!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 09:38 PM

Amos... at the risk of repeating some points I have made before in these discussions, I will again suggest that there is a LARGE linguistic confusion quotient at work.

Here is a famous classic example, from William James and the link below mentions some other examples.

http://mauricefstanley.com/bewitch/48.html


"William James told the story of a group of hunters in the forest. One of the men sees a squirrel on a tree, and the squirrel sees him. The squirrel scrambles to the opposite side of the tree from the man. The man circles the tree, and the squirrel cautiously stays on the opposite side of the tree from him, and around and around they go, The other hunters disagree. One says the man goes around the tree and the squirrel, and another objects that the man goes around the tree, but not the squirrel. They turn to James to get the opinion of a philosopher. "It's all a matter of defining your terms," James answers. "If by 'going around' you mean 'going east, south, west, north, east, etc.,' then the man certainly goes around the squirrel. But if by 'going around' you mean 'going from side to back to side to belly to side, etc.' then the man does not go around the squirrel.""

Now I KNOW this is not something that will directly address your supposition, Amos, that somehow 'ideas' and mental constructs have a real 'existence' apart from the material 'stuff' that juggles them, but it does address the pragmatic issue of what various people mean by 'reality'. Plato's notion of a realm of 'eternal forms' has led to several thousand years of ...ummm... semantic bantering over what such a realm might 'be'. *I* can appreciate the interest, but I can't see how it can ever be anything except a way to play with language...or justify religious concepts such as 'heaven'.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 08:39 PM

I hate it when my posts get swallowed.

The question is where do you draw the line between "real" and "not real". Are perfect circles, ideals, justice and beauty, intuition, to be dismissed because they are not physical? How about numbers? Real? Betcha can't find me a three anywhere. Not to mention the sqrt of -1. Not real? Hmmmm.

Your physical definition of what is real can only go so far in describing all that is, and it falls very short of the whole.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 07:30 PM

Posited: that for one human to ascribe unreality to the thoughts of another arrogates the individual right to define his own mind. True or False? Discuss.

Nonsense. If you believe unicorns are real and not mythological or imaginary,. and you're not thinking of rhinos or dinos or anything but the mythical unicorn we all agree upon, my knowing that you're wrong (in believing unicorns exist) doesn't mean your thoughts are unreal, just that I know that what you think is real, isn't. And yes, I *can* know stuff like that. And I can know that I know it. And that you're wrong. So what?

Posited: that mental images and constructs are real, but are not physical. True or false? Discuss.

Oh, I don't know. If I think about dogs, dogs are real but my thought is imaginary, isn't it? And I can think about unicorns, which aren't real but my thought is, no? And how does this relate to the actual thread, which was about the neurology of faith, since you seem to be rebuking us for thread creep?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 05:05 PM

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

Or, as David Bowie predicted in (you got it) Five Years

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 04:47 PM

> Posited: that for one human to ascribe unreality to the thoughts of another arrogates the individual right to define his own mind. True or False? Discuss.

False. Should other minds exist - as I presume they do, Individual B can keep on defining his own mind in any way likes. Individual A can't "arrogate" anybody else's right to what's in their head. If anything.

> Posited: that mental images and constructs are real, but are not physical. True or false? Discuss.

Currently impossible to determine. If they're real (in the sense that they truly exist), they may or may not be "physical" (in some sense). Or they may be somewhere in between. Thoughts may be "physical" in the sense that they result entirely from neurochemical activity, but they *seem* not to be physical in the sense that they aren't clearly constrained, within themselves, by space and time. That's why I can think of a 747 even though it's bigger than my head. But what's in my head isn't a "physical 747" in the sense of a "real [uh-oh] 747." It's only an image. The unanswered question is whether that image is "real" in the same sense that actual 747 is "real." Another good question is, what's the connection between the two? My imagined 747 can do all sorts of neat things that a physical 747 can't. Like morph into the "Spirit of St. Louis," for example. And it's cheaper and easier to "fly" than either.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 01:52 PM

Up against two or more of the most fundamental questions in human discourse, the Cat once agains slips off into third-hand puerilities.

Posited: that for one human to ascribe unreality to the thoughts of another arrogates the individual right to define his own mind. True or False? Discuss.

Posited: that mental images and constructs are real, but are not physical. True or false? Discuss.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 01:01 PM

Yes.. in 6-7 years as a philosophy major, I heard most of the variations on the Descartes lines... "I think I think, therefore I think I am....I think."

["Putting Descartes before de course."]

The Kant & Hegel jokes are a bit more obscure....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 12:27 PM

That would pretty much prove the "cogito" business.

True story?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 12:20 PM

Descartes walks into a bar and orders a whisky. Bartender asks, want a chaser with that? Descartes answers "I think not" and poof! he disappears.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 10:22 AM

Descartes was not the point; the point was calling him on a fallacy because he posited a duality between mind and matter. S. calls the fallacy "misplaced concretude". WTF is he talking about? It is of course such a fallacy to believe your pink elephants are real, but why assign the fallacy to Descartes?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 08:18 AM

Rocks are real. Frogs are real. Are they equally real? Sure seems like it.

My thought are real - to me anyway. Are they just as real as rocks and frogs?

Suddenly I can't be sure. Can you?

Are there various "levels" of reality? If so, what does that mean about everything else? If not, then thoughts are as real as rocks, frogs, and 747s. But what does *that* mean?

I can get the thought of a 747 into my head but not a real 747! What the...???!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 11:30 PM

Oh, I DO admit that 'agreement' is not the prime determanent. We can all name things that were agreed on, that later needed some UNagreement.

Now...as to "... someone can step forward and assert that others' images, hopes and thought-constructs are not "real" because they do not meet that person's criteria. That is not exactly what the gentleman said. He said that **Descartes** committed a logical fallacy. Descartes hisself weren't American, so....

"...the sovereign ownership of the individual mind and its contents." I'm not eggactly sure how a tautology shows "arrogating". Of course each of us 'owns'...whatever that can mean... the content of our minds. The philosophical point refers to the concept qua concept! Is it a reasonable concept to attribute 'reality' to "images, thoughts and hopes"? Obviously, we have referents when we use those terms, but many (yeah, like me) kinda think we need more flexible linguistic terms to clarify what 'reality' means when comparing 'hopes' and 'unicorns' and 'rocks' buckyballs. (Did you ever hear Bucky speak? I did... he makes this discussion seem dull...)

What IS my position? The shortest form at this hour...(remember, it's 3 hours later here).. is that there are words bandied about that have purty shaky credentials! My position is that the is a WHOLE lot of equivocation going on, and we need to be a lot more careful.

Further, (at this hour) deponent sayeth not

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 10:29 PM

The issue is that someone can step forward and assert that others' images, hopes and thought-constructs are not "real" because they do not meet that person's criteria. If that ain't arrogant, I don't know what is. It's downright unAMerican, is what!! :D Calling it philosophy doesn't excuse it. It arrogates the sovereign ownership of the individual mind and its contents.

As to how real those things are, what do you mean when you say it is not clear "how" real any of them are? Are you asserting a gradation of realness with the "most real" being the most physically solid?

Clarity and solidity may be totally independent variables, I would suggest. It could be that certainty should be the index of reality, in which case love or truth might step right up tot he top of the scale above buckyballs and ball bearings.

I am not saying the material reality is not widely agreed-upon. Does that make it the senior echelon of "real"ness?

Man up, sir Billiam, and name your position!!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 09:33 PM

Yup.. we all DO seem to "see images of the past", but too differing degrees. It is just not clear how real ANY of them are.

(I don't really consider that identifying one philosophic attitude as fallacious constitutes 'arrogance'. One can either affirm or deny the supposed fallacy...but on logical grounds, not as 'arrogance'.)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 06:41 PM

Bill:

I was arguing with his statement, not with you.

I hasten, too, to make an important distinction: my protesting arrogance because of an obvious exception to some bald assertion on his part is in no way equivalent to my asserting I have final clarification on what is objective. Individual certainty of seeing images of the past is --as far as I know-- universal. At least, everyone I have talked to about it--some hundreds of people--have it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 05:49 PM

""We have the will to override our biological urges. Some people are better at it than others, which is why there is still rape.""

Seems just too simplistic to me. I believe research (social and other)indicates much more complexities than that.

I suspect there are many reasons for rape It would include abusive behaviour by adults on children(including sexual) which can contribute to abusive behaviour (including sexual)by the abused when they become adults.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 05:34 PM

Take it up with Donald Sherburne, Amos. HE said Descartes was guilty of that fallacy. I simply point to the complexity of the argument.

" Or are you going to commit the ultimate arrogance of asserting that these things are not real (except for yours) because they can't be objectified?"

Perhaps the PENULTIMATE arrogance is being sure that you have the final clarification of what is...or is not... 'objective'. As I said, if you pick the right premises, you can defend any concept and its status in reality. God can be defended from certain premises...and memories can be defined in several ways, some of which partake of 'reality', and some otherwise. I know I 'have' memories, and I also know that some of them are flawed & incomplete. I have my opinions as to where they 'are' and why they are so vague & nebulous at times...and clear in other instances.
I presume that when I die, the 'reality' of my memories will be even more fuzzy. Does what others remember of what *I* told them count as my memories?Nawwww... I don't think so. I think they are gone...but if they are not, I can't imagine what kind of realm they 'exist' in.

(I have most of those books on Whitehead mentioned in the article...you read some of those articles and then "Process and Reality" and you are not sure what is real.) (Present company excluded, of course...*grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 05:14 PM

Justice isn't an object, and may not be real, but injustice sure is real though not an object either!

Who was it said I can't tell you what it is but I know it when I see it?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 03:33 PM

On the other hand, to mistakenly consider an aggregate of actual entities as a final reality is to commit the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness [see below]; Descartes was guilty of this fallacy when he identified mind and matter as two distinct kinds of reality.


Oh, really. Remembering where you were on 9-11, or your thirteenth birthday, first kiss, or last triumph, for example invokes images that are clearly real (whether because they are believed or because they are experienced) and yet they are clearly not of the same order of concretude as films, holograms made in light, video pictures, or any other sort of material picture. Wherein lies the fallacy? Or are you going to commit the ultimate arrogance of asserting that these things are not real (except for yours) because they can't be objectified?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 12:49 PM

Quarks and thingies being, of course, also theoretical constructs...

And yes, it's fun as all getout.

Some nonhuman apes will go hungry rather than do something that would both get them food and hurt another member of their species. Don't know if they would starve or avoid non-conspecific's pain.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 11:17 AM

I 'think' I chose to get the 300th post....but....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 11:16 AM

I don't think the import of my post differs significantly from that of Lighter or Amos. It IS (whatever you mean by 'is') a conundrum to even say: "I don't believe I have free will." In that philosophical sense, as Lighter says, "But, Bill, we have no choice"
   We either DO or we do NOT. In THAT sense we have no choice. But we all act as though we do, even if we posit a claim that we do not. (I have a good friend with whom I have been debating this for about 40 years. He 'thinks' that ultimately, we do not...but everyday he 'chooses'.)

My point, and the thesis of my unfinished Masters thesis, was that the ultimate answer is **by definition** not subject to 'proof'.

We can ...ummm... 'choose'.... premises such that within that logical system either answer is true, and as I said above, we can show how (as Whitehead did with his concept of "actual entities") free will might work. But since 'actual entities' are only a theoretical construct (no matter how much they seem to resemble quarks or other sub-atomic thingies ☺), we can only weave words that support whatever theory each of us supports....whether we chose it freely or not.

Ain't it fun?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:23 PM

Compassion is also natural. It may actually have evolved into the genes, as it demonstrably aids survival by building stornger groups.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:35 PM

We have the will to override our biological urges. Some people are better at it than others, which is why there is still rape. Among other things. Like kindness, which some people also override.

Other apes' brains make decisions for them. We have minds and can make up our own, and then still decide to behave yet another way.

I love living in an era with fMRI. We are learning so much about our brains it's getting absolutely ridiculous. They can tell if you're thinking like a conservative or a liberal, and all kinds of fun stuff now.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 05:32 PM

Consider this, iwhen you feel that rape is a universal human taboo:

""Sexual abuse (Rape) of children (India)

In 2007 the Ministry of Women and Child Development did a survey of children and young adults. [5] 53.22% of children reported having faced sexual abuse. 5.69% had been sexually assaulted (oral sex or penetration of vagina or anus). 21.90% of child respondents faced severe forms of sexual abuse including assault, exposure or being photographed in the nude. 50.76% reported other forms of sexual abuse including sexual advances in travel or marriage situations, exhibitionism and being forced to view pornographic material. 50% of abusers were known to the children or in a position of trust and responsibility. Most children had not reported the matter""



Source

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 04:50 PM

Well, you certainly can ACT as though you have free will, by examining your decisions and seeking right action and right conduct, and using some standard of ethics, and fostering some sort of ideals to steer by.

If you do that you tend to live happier whether it is "true" in some synthetic sense of the word or not.

Lighter is completely correct that you are not going to find objective measures and proofs of these phenomena, because they don't operate in the objective sphere. There is no object called "will". There are by products in brain and CNS and muscle and glands and so on when it is exercised, but intentionality comes from the other side of the Great Divide between thought and matter.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 04:37 PM

>All we can say for sure is... it FEELS like we have some free will in certain areas, and we need to act as though we do, or most of our other actions lose relevance.

But, Bill, we have no choice. If we have free will, fine. If we don't -as I tried to explain before - we don't, but one of the strange consequences of that kind of absolute determinism is that it has made us feel that we do and has given us no choice but to act as though we do.

So whether we have free will or not becomes entirely moot.

Because it is counter-intuitive (like the earth going around the sun), this seems to be a difficult concept for many people to grasp.

If someone decides they have no free will and everything they do is genetically determined, how do they know (and how do we know) whether that decision is the result of determinism or their own free will?

They can't and we can't.

Suppose someone does decide that they have no free will. In what way will their behavior change? They might begin to think, "Therefore I am a zombie and free to do whatever I want." But obviously that's wrong, because if they have no free will, as they've decided, they can't do *anything* they want. Their rejection of free will was 100% determined genetically. But so is someone else's acceptance of free will.

There's no way out of this loop. If you decide one way or the other, your decision is either determined or it isn't. But there is no way to know which it is. And no one else, including the jurors who try you for various crimes, can escape the same issue: do *they* have free will? If they find you guilty, did they choose to? Or did their genes force them to? If they have free will, so do you, and presumably you're guilty, because you decided of your own free will to act like a lawless zombie. But if you don't have free will, neither do they, and your guilty actions and their verdict were predetermined by everyone's lack of free will. Net practical result: you're found guilty and punished either way. Or cleared either way.

There's no way out, but fortunately the consequences of each view are, weirdly, identical.

...unless you *do* have free will, but decide it's a myth and decide freely to act as though you're a soulless robot - and then it turns out there's a Deity Who punishes those who try to renounce their free will, even though it's hard to know precisely what "renouncing your free will" means. (If you have free will, and choose to renounce it, you're doing something that's practically meaningless because you'll continue to have free will whether you like it or not.)

The Deity (if any) presumably has free will by definition, but what if He doesn't? If He doesn't, He wouldn't know it any more than we do. Surely He wouldn't take away your free will just because you were stupid enough to renounce it on the basis of a belief in hardwired brains, would He? But that's a different can of worms.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 04:07 PM

HEre's the thing, Bill. You can flog a tiny word like IS around and you can mean some very different things by it. SOme people, for example, mean "is" to imply material existiance, and others use it to include experiential existence. Thought forms--the myriad architectures of the soul contemplating existence in all its many funny corners--do not exist in a material framework, yet they inform all our feeling and doing.

As Mister Clinton so sagely put it, it all depends on what you mean by "is".


A