I must have missed something. What does the thinking of men have to do with evolution ?
The evolution of plantlife ,at least, occurred before men were here. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/6/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-06, 02:18:06 Subject: Re: Sane2004 Step One On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:49:37 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 9/5/2012 10:39 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:25:02 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> But you couldn't realise you felt different if the part of your brain >> responsible for realising were receiving exactly the same inputs from >> the rest of the brain. So you could feel different, or feel nothing, >> but maintain the delusional belief that nothing had changed. >> >> > > That's begging the question. You are assuming that the brain is a machine > which produces consciousness. I think that the brain is the three > dimensional shadow of many levels of experience and it produces nothing but > neurochemistry and alterations in our ability to access an individual set of > human experiences. The brain does not produce consciousness, it defines the > form of many conscious relations. But you believe that the neurochemicals do things contrary to what chemists would predict, for example an ion channel opening or closing without any cause such as a change in transmembrane potential or ligand concentration. No, I only say that a thought can be generated from the top down, and that event is manifested in the brain as whatever changes in transmembrane potentials, ligand concentrations or ion channel status are appropriate. I can notice that I am breathing, or I can take a deep breath. Either way, there are similar neural pathways and mechanisms involved. Without knowing about free will, we could never tell the difference between the neurology of the voluntary act and the involuntary or semi-voluntary act. They would all appear not to contradict what chemists would predict, because their predictions don't specify when or where spontaneous brain activity will occur. We've talked about this before and it just isn't consistent with any scientific evidence. Your existence isn't consistent with any scientific evidence either. Science looks at objects. Consciousness is a subject. As long as science defines itself in that way, it is not possible for it to explain consciousness in any meaningful way. You interpret the existence "spontaneous neural activity" as meaning that something magical like this happens, but it doesn't mean that at all. Spontaneous is just that, spontaneous. It isn't magical. It is quite ordinary. I could do the usual things I do, or I could spontaneously decide to invent something new to do or think about. This is what living organisms do but computers don't. Your theory is like the denial of evolution because those genetic variations might have been spontaneous (intentional) instead of random. But the point is that there is no need to hypothesize non-random, non-caused events in the brain. The randomness of thermodynamics, quantum radioactive decay, and external influences are plenty to account for the unpredictability you call spontaneous. There is no need hypothesize any extra 'magic'. Intention is not magic and doesn't need hypothetical permission to exist. If your words are random ricochets of quantum radioactive decay or thermodynamic anomalies, then they are meaningless noise. You can't account for them because any accounting you can produce with your fingertips is only the random twitchings of your nervous system. Your view that denies the very reality of intention that you employ to state your denial. The fact that you deny that it does shows me that you are only capable of framing the question in the one way that it can never be answered. Your view is to say, I choose to deny my ability to choose. Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/4Pk6M4ggOMsJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
