We see it very differently.
I’ll take your word for it.
I have seen a case where a blind person was able to accurately detect what was in the external world.
I used to drive some of my fellow students, who lived near me, home.
One day they had with them a blind man. I accepted to give him a lift too. He sat in the middle between two others in the back seat. After a short distance travelling along the main road from the university he spoke up and said:
“If you are going to drive without both hands on the steering wheel then please stop and let me off.” We were all flabbergasted. It was true that I used to drive with one hand on my steering wheel and on hand resting on the open window ledge. How on earth could he have known? But he knew and he was adamant. I promised him I would keep my two hands on the steering wheel and we continued on.
Now, how can a blind man, who had no sensory information, no visual information, be able to make an accurate assessment of the reality in mind?
We certainly use sensory information and as far as vision is concerned, according to neuroscientists Dr. Susan Greenfield PhD, there are about 30 different area in the brain where such information is processed, but no where where all that information comes to a central area so to speak and gives an image.
The many minds theory is not really a theory but still only a hypothesis. Does the brain generate a mind or does a mind arise out of the brain’s complexity? Furthermore Freud idea of a conscious, a subconscious and an unconscious also doesn’t have any evidence. Sure we can be aware but without information about that awareness, but is that in some subconscious or unconscious?
I believe that there is only a One Mind and we as conscious beings perceive within that One Mind, the ground in which reality exists. The evidence I have seen and which is being rejected by science by doing all experiments on telepathy double blinded, i.e., without relationship, is ESP and telepathy in particular. And ESP also includes remote viewing, which may well be how the blind man perceived my bad habit.
I would say it is we (and other forms of life) as conscious beings, who perceive. We are embodied and here to have physical experiences. So the body has sensory organs that gather sensory information and a brain where such information is processed in order to have a physical experience, for instance pleasure for seeing a rose. However the perception is via consciousness and takes place in the One Mind, a platform through which we inter-relate and interact with others and our environment. All the information that gives rise to the physical existence, the physical reality is contained within the One Mind or the Mind of God.
If we were to gather the sensory information and process it in the brain to arrive at the perception of reality, then there would be NO common reality because everyone has a different brain. And everyone’s brain would process that information somewhat differently to give rise to a different perception of reality. We know that we can do experiments to arrive at some evidence for various aspects of reality. This is science. If we each had different processing, dependent on our brain then we would have different perceptions. And no matter that we use a machine of some description to be objective, e.g., a microscope, the information gathered would be processed and assessed differently. We perceive the same picture. We can draw a microbe that we see under the microscope and it is exactly the same as the drawing of others. So we gather the same sensory information but perception can’t possibly be due to the processing taking place in all the different brains.
The claim to minimalize conscience, like the claim that we do not really sense the external world, is a philosophical one. In particular, there is no objective way to decide who is “in charge”. For that matter, defining the limits of conscious versus unconscious is highly problematic. As typical for science journalism, someone’s idea is being billed as the latest science discovery, rather than as hypothesis to test (if it is possible to test, in this case). To what extent is this a bright CEO who appropriately assigns tasks to the right worker and carefully examines the results? It’s not easy to tell. As the “subordinates” and “CEO” are different parts of the same brain, to what extent can they be all called part of the “CEO”? And what does this prove about free will or determinism? The “conclusions” drawn about free will or determinism based on various scientific evidences somehow always look very much like the assumptions about free will or determinism held by the observer; in reality any data could be interpreted from a free will or determinist perspective.
1 Like
The claim is a scientific, conservative, minimal, parsimonious rational one which prevails as the default synthesis until overwhelmed by a superior antithesis. The claim is a restoration, recalibration, resetting to what is obvious in hindsight: simplicity.
“Minimalize conscience”??? Do you mean “the conscious” mind? I ask because I don’t remember any mention of “conscience” in the post to which you responded and I don’t consider “conscience” and “the conscious mind” to be synonyms.
Ordinarily, I would agree. However, in the Time magazine article that I cited and quoted from, there was this statement:
In a new paper published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences , a group of researchers led by associate professor of psychology Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University, took on the somewhat narrower question of exactly what consciousness is—and came up with a decidedly bleaker view: It’s pretty much nothing at all. Never mind the five characters controlling your thoughts, you barely control them. It’s the unconscious that’s really in charge."
If you were to click on the fifth word of that quote, in light blue type, there’s a good chance you’d be able to read the San Francisco State University researchers’ paper that I suspect inspired the Time magazine article. Or you can click on this link Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis and check the article out yourself. Researcher contact information is available in the paper, so you can take your questions to them directly.
Any data that can be interpreted from multiple perspectives is just data and not sufficient, IMO, to be deemed evidence for any of the perspectives. FYI: I’m not a fan of the notion of Free Will, but there are several folks around here that seem (to me) to think pretty highly of it, in general, and their own, in particular. Perhaps you’d find it more interesting to share your thoughts on the unscientific uselessness of the ill-defined concepts of Free Will and Determinism with others. Allow me to suggest, before you do, if you do, that you work on your conceptual constructs of both Free Will and Determinism, because from what I can make of your comments, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
The universe; as extension of the Big Bang, is a purely deterministic environment. Free will begins with mind, and it is possible only because of genetic instructions meant to make it possible (set in the chain of species make-up) most likely to make judgment of its use by human beings an objective determination.
Forgive me, but I find that quite surprising coming from a Christian. I certainly came across many articles claiming free will has been disproven,which is then claimed as a final blow to theism. In fact, this was something I struggled with not so long ago so the topic is quite fresh for me. Sure, there’s autopilot guiding us trough most of life, but if we don’t have a free will to be able to chose God, then what would that say about God? What would it say about us?
Regards
Marta
Hmmm, … that’s interesting; I don’t remember ever hearing that nor can I remember ever coming up with that claim on my own.
Nuts! now you’ve challenged me to make sense, eh? No guarantees, … but I’ll try.
1 Like
We have to believe in free will, we have no choice. I.B. Singer
2 Likes
I don’t believe in “the Big Bang”.
IMO, “purely” is an unnecessary qualifier. The universe is either deterministic or it isn’t; unless, of course, you believe that there are things that can pop into and out of existence, willy-nilly, for no reason and without a preceding cause. I consider that to be one heckuva scary possibility.
Far be it from me to try to persuade you otherwise, but allow me to ask:
Given a cubic inch of Absolute Space and a cubic inch of Mind, what distinguishes one from the other?
Ahhh! So you do believe that a material substance is the domain of the Mind. I’m glad to hear it because the possibility that you believe Mind can exist independent of substance had me worried for a moment.
Backatcha. 
Capitalized Mind can, anyway, as in the Mind of God, unless you believe God has substance, contrary to John 4:24.
What’s contrary? unless you happen to imagine that Spirit lacks substance. I happen to believe that God and The Spirit are substantial.
Terry, the Big Bang is a believable determination, but you could disbelieve it. “Purely” before mind emergence, then “mostly” since instances of free will become part of the universe. Mind is not a scientific property; it is a metaphysical determination. A material substance; the biological container of the genetic make-up, houses the properties that lead to the emergence of mind. Mind therefore transcends the biological organism.
Okay, material, then.
To make my position clear: I believe God, i.e. the Spirit, is material.
God is substantial, as in real, agreed, à la the Nicene Creed, but material? How do you define material?