On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:03:51 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >> >> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> >> If you ARE the sequence of neurological events and the neurological >> >> events >> >> follow deterministic or probabilistic rules then you will also follow >> >> deterministic or probabilistic rules. >> > >> > >> > That's a tautology. If I move my arm, then I am causing improbable >> > neurological events to occur. Muscles, cells, molecules follow my >> > intention >> > rather than their own. The cells are not causing my arm to move - if >> > they >> > were, that would be a spasm. >> >> Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from >> conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow >> the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. > > > If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my > arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm.
And after that they would predict the lottery numbers. >> "Your >> intentions" are the result of the activity in your brain. "Your >> intentions" do not cause any magical top-down effects. > > > The only magic is the idea that activity in my brain knows about anything > other than activity in my brain. The fact that both of us are now > manipulating our own brain chemistry, striated muscle tissue, fingertips, > and keyboard from the top-down is indisputably obvious. Your brain doesn't > dictate what you will say or do - it is your personal experience which > shapes your brain activity at least as much as your experience is shaped by > it. A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level seemingly magically. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. Again and again I bring this up and you say that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words. >> But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality >> in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious >> somewhere after centuries of biological research? > > > I can't help it that you are incapable of understanding my argument. I have > addressed your straw man many times already. I am trying to explain to you that you are contradicting yourself. If you agree that the brain functions consistently with physical laws then you have to to agree that consciousness does not directly affect brain behaviour, since there is no place for consciousness in chemical equations. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or is not important, just that it is not directly or separately or top-down causally efficacious. > I think that the current scientific position is likely a kind of delusional > convulsion. a post traumatic nostalgic compensation for the revelations of > the 20th century. There is no such thing as probability in physics, only an > appearance of such from a partially informed perspective. There is nothing > any more classical about biology than there is anything else, as > photosynthesis already shows quantum effects. > > http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/09/quantum-coherence-in-photosynthesis/ > > Hey, look what else has quantum effects in biology: > > http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/10/quantum-effects-in-ion-channels/ You do realise that quantum level effect are crucially important in the operation of the semiconductors in computers? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
