I am talking about the basic ethics and morality of how we treat people, not regulations and policies. I think it is completely relevant to point out that we don’t hold everyone responsible for what they do. We have exceptions, and it has to do with how their brain works.
That’s your thing.
Back to say: don’t hold your breath. The book plummeted through the wait list to me and I’ve just read the first few pages of the intro and I can see there won’t be much to see here. She is one more person who has gone from a certainty that what she staked her faith in as a believer to someone with an equal conviction that there is no meaning, no answers and probably no more self than there is any God. The only constant is her unwavering conviction that she is in position to rule on all such matters. Of course I don’t think she had the truth when she held it firmly as a Christian and I don’t think she has a clue as a soulless materialist. Poor thing. I’ll be posting some quotes in the Pithy Quotes thread soon.
Oops: wrong book! I should have known I couldn’t get that book so quickly. The one I just picked up is by another author and I don’t remember now what what brought it to my attention. This one is called: Technology, Metaphor and the Search For Meaning: God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Bieblyn. Certainly an ambitious title. I can’t imagine this will draw me in but I’ll skim it a little. Maybe it’ll surprise me.
Max Planck the great physicist of the late 19th century discovered the fact that heat radiation is delivered in packets of energy that he labeled quanta. He was also very interested in human consciousness. He stated that, “Science can never get behind consciousness.” If all that exists comes from the elements of the Periodic Table, and we are made up mostly of carbon, how improbable is it that carbon speaks. What draws words out of carbon is the great mystery of our existence.
It is as though the physical universe and consciousness are interdependent. The universe would have no meaning or form, just electromagnetic mass, without consciousness of it. In fact, the James Webb Telescope making possible observations of the universe in its very early stages will for the first time bestow form on it as it is observed by cosmologists.
James Wade
Why are they so sure the beginning is what is being observed, and not the edge of its expansion?
Because I’d be willing to bet that the closer they look, the more they will find.
To me this is like asking how you can get the internet out of silicon and that mystery means that the universe and the internet are interdependent. Just because going from silicon to the internet or carbon to conscious is long complicated and difficult explanation, that is a poor excuse for magical and dualistic thinking.
That is like saying books have no meaning or information just paper and ink.
I don’t understand the logic of saying that something is no more than the material you made it from unless there is something else besides the means by which it was constructed. It is more than the material it was made from because of the means by which it was constructed. The book is written because the author put the ideas and narrative into the words printed on those pages. The internet arose because silicon was shaped into electrical circuits and connected to enable internet communication. Consciousness arose because because carbon based molecules in cyclical chemical processes formed the self organizing process of life which learned how to respond to the environment and its own condition.
I have avoided debating with you mainly because I tend to agree with much of what you say, but just to differ, I have noticed that you often make comments that appear to me at least, indicating you may understand how life came about (ie self-organizing process … etc). As a chemist, I cannot fathom anything in what you have said that would elucidate this opinion.
Can you elaborate?
My point is that a book has no meaning, even if it is written by God, if there is no conscious being to read it. In the same way, the universe would have no meaning if there were no conscious beings to experience it.
In regard to words (language) which is an outer manifestation of consciousness, unless you grant that the elements possess some spark of consciousness, no matter how they are organized, the idea that consciousness could somehow emerge from them seems fanciful.
It is an active area of scientific research which you can investigate under such phrases as “prebiotic evolution” and “metabolism first theory.” I think we have the big picture and are ironing out the chemical details. Some of that big picture can be read about in the book of Erich Jantsch, “The Self-Organizing Universe.” Self-organizing processes are common in the universe and I think life is arises when some take the extra-step of mastering the learning process so that they develop ever more sophisticated responses to changes in the environment and themselves. Every living organism must be aware of itself and the environment in order to maintain themselves as all living organisms do in basic processes of metabolism and self-repair. To be sure consciousness in mammals is great deal more than that, but I see that coming about by a step by step addition through learning processes we call evolution. To this I believe human consciousness has added something of even more significance in the abstraction, symbolization, and representational capacities of human language which rival and even surpass that of DNA.
But I think the point is that this is something which can be explained to the satisfaction of many scientists. To be sure what makes for a satisfactory explanation can be quite subjective for the majority of people, and there is the limitation of science to objective observation especially when it gets too close to home – our own subjective experiences. So I am certainly not claiming that science can explain everything – I don’t buy into naturalism.
I’m leaning toward agreeing with you. Formerly I was content to say that consciousness just is a process supported by the brain in the way digestion is supported by our GI tract. Since every organism with any means of surveying it’s environment by way of its senses requires some cognitive capacity as well in order to respond to that sense data, I assumed consciousness as we experience it just represents our evolutionary inheritance. In that way consciousness emerges from the natural elaboration of basic organismic functions.
But when you consider the mind body connection - how the immaterial/subjective ever comes to influence the material/objective - it just seems like hand waving to say the former entirely emerged from the latter. It is currently a live question for me whether and how consciousness may exist as a co basic partner to the materiality of the world. From our vantage point it seems like a compelling question which isn’t immediately defeated by the great utility which operational materialism of science has demonstrated. We can’t and shouldn’t assume that everything about being is accounted for by the chemistry of life (not that we should cease to harvest the fruits of the scientific method).
I agree with this. What I don’t agree is that this requires conscious beings added to the universe from outside of it. This is not because I am a naturalist and don’t believe in anything outside the scientific worldview, but because I know that just because something is true doesn’t mean an argument made for it is sound.
…almost as fanciful as the idea that I said anything of the sort. I said language ADDED to the collection of abilities we file under the broad label of consciousness, NOT that consciousness is a product of language. I think it even more fanciful to use God-of-the-gaps type arguments to leap upon any currently unanswered scientific questions as justifications for claims that such things cannot be explained by science.
And I think there is a median position, to say that consciousness is a physical process for which we can seek a scientific explanation, but not just biological function either. To say that it is more foundational (part of the very nature of life itself) but not a dualistic addition to physical reality.
I’d say that every manifestation of consciousness in the cosmos has a material requirement without which it cannot take that form. There is no free floating tree consciousness, only actual trees whose requirements have been met and in whom we can encouter. Of course I also think that applies to what it is which gives rise to God belief. Obviously I’m not entirely settled as to what to think of all of this but I’m content to live with until more pieces fall into place. Fortunately none of it depends on my figuring it out. 
What I keep going back to is the way in which consciousness is tied to the brain. Mess with the brain and you mess with consciousness. Cognitive and conscious function correlates with brain development and brain impairment. We can recognize some of the same functions in other species, and it all relates back to a well developed brain. Many mental illnesses are helped by drugs that physically interact with the brain. Direct manipulation of the brain alters consciousness, be it chemical, electromagnetic, or physical manipulation. Measurement of brain activity can be directly correlated to specific mental images, such as in the case of fMRI. We have reached a point where we can actually read peoples’ minds with fMRI.
While I would agree that we shouldn’t just assume that consciousness has a biochemical explanation, the evidence is certainly stacked in that direction.
No doubt disturbance of our brains in one way or another clearly alters our experience of consciousness. That is the organ most linked to consciousness in our species and presumably to any other creature that has one. And yet single celled and simpler creatures also respond purposefully to environmental changes. Something there is that instills an imperative to survive in all life (including those that emphasize survival of the group over the individual). Even trees and other plants respond to threats from disease and predation with chemical defense responses and in some cases communicate the need and type of threat to neighbors do they can begin responding as well. [Sorry but I don’t have any studies to cite so I offer this as hearsay, or perhaps read-say.]
Now it is possible that some such responses may be understood as chemically induced responses which indicate no volition of any kind. But somewhere along the line that is where it leads. Are the earlier phases merely mechanical or is there something of consciousness involved and how could we know one way or the other? If it appears suddenly only in later states then how? If there are proto-consciousnes states, where does the transition occur and what triggers it? I’m inclined to expect a very smooth, gradual transition.
As to the directly observable effects on consciousness linked to brain impacts, there is still the possibility that the form conscious can achieve though dependent on the material substrate is not entirely accounted for by chemistry alone. That can’t be argued for from within the current understanding of physics and chemistry but of course if consciousness were a co basic aspect of reality we wouldn’t expect it to be. Similarly we can’t arrive at a sound understanding of physics or chemistry purely through observation of our subjective states. That is implied by their being co basic if in fact they are. I’m not looking for converts. Just justifying to myself why I should not assume a purely physical resolution.
Look what I found, a contest between theories of consciousness is going to be organized and although Penrose’s did not enter because it is very difficult to verify, it is expected that it will enter the game in the future, although a contest will not give the definitive answer, it will only estimate As the winner, the one that seems more feasible, will judge this theory not as a spiritualistic madness, but as a scientific theory on an equal footing with the others, it does not have to be true, it is only a theoretical framework, consciousness by quantum gravity could be in any part of the cell, I know in the mitochondria for example and also the microtubule could simply be a quantum computer but not quantum gravity, in fact any unknown force that only has effects at high energy works, I know the super force…
I certainly agree there are strong indicator thats something physical is going on but… you have to distinguish between necessary conditions and sufficient causality. After all you can say the same of the earth… mess with the earth and consciousness disappears as well… right?
with the computational theory of the mind we are in danger, if a pot falls from the 11th floor and breaks my skull and loses my brain activity then there is no software, just an empty shell, there would be no reason to save me because I would be for them de facto dead, even if I woke up later I would have died and risen, that is, there would be no reason to take me to the hospital I would have died, there would only be the desire of others to revive me, but there would not be a moral need to do so, but with the Penrose hypothesis -hameroff as long as the chemistry of the microtubules works I will be me and I will be alive.
I did not say that consciousness emerges from language. It is the opposite. Language emerges from consciousness. Language is the outer manifestation of inner consciousness. God’s creation includes both the electromagnetic physical material of the universe which includes living creatures through the process of evolution and consciousness which is the essence of God. The fact that evolution depended on the development of senses that made survival possible, is well established. Consciousness is the way in which we are made in the image of God, and is the way in which we share in creation. We give meaning and form to what God has created.
Neither did I.
I disagree. It is not opposite. It is both. It is true that living organisms can find ways to communicate and store information via different mediums like DNA/RNA, nerves, and language. But all of these demonstrably facilitate greater consciousness as well.
I find that offensive. It is like the kids at school who called me a brain. It is not for other people to decide what is our essence. It is for us to decide our own essence. And the same goes for God. It think what God has chosen according to the Bible, is love. God is love. That is His essence. That is what He chooses to be. I believe in the God who has chosen love and freedom over power and control. This is why God has created life.
You have that backwards. The development of the senses is one of the strategies discovered by evolution for improving chances for survival.
Wrong. God had consciousness with bacteria already.
Creating in one’s own image is to have parent child relationship. And that is something you can accomplish by adoption.
Many of the religious prefer to claim that God gave meaning and form to what He created. I will go with both. God gave meaning and form to what He created AND we add to that meaning with our own choices and contributions.
From what I have read here in this thread and elsewhere, sufficient causality seems to be judged by an entirely subjective emotion of what feels right. That sends up red flags, at least for me.
Since the Earth physically supports those brains, that would make sense.
Whereas the subjectivity I am seeing is in what people think “consciousness” is referring to.
I think “sufficient causality” is well defined, so one we are clear about what “consciousness” we are talking about then I don’t see so much subjectivity in the question of what is a sufficient cause for it. The point of my comment was to question whether the brain is more like the earth as a necessary condition for human consciousness rather than an actual cause for it. My guess is that some of the things in this collection of abilities is brain function and likely shared with chimpanzees and others come with language.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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