SeekerofTruth wrote:Free will? Now you are shifting the topic. Before it was immateriality and I suspect qualia etc.. But now you shift to free will that's moving the goal post. I have a whole different story there. Can you in good conscience say that a physical think cannot have real choices --especially given the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. Even without that there are good ways to think about it. See "Consciousness Evolves" again by Dennett. Now, explain to me how an immaterial thing solves the problem of free will. Immateriality is completely not understood conceptually, we can say nothing positive about it. So does just a sense of mystery solve the problem of free will. Why doesn't spirit have the same problems? It must have definite properties too! If they are random then that's not free will, if they are determined then neither is that. So whats up? Immaterial does nothing?
If I understand correctly, these words are the automatic output of a brain responding to stimulus input (something the eyes of a body read that I wrote and transmitted to a brain). No one is in control.
What are you talking about? I am in control. But I am this entire physical person. If you think there is little man inside me then how does that little man think? Is it a brain within a brain? (within a brain with in a brain etc.)
What is this "I" that you think is smaller than and inhabits my brain? How does he do what he does? You are getting nowhere.
There was no conscious awareness of what was written, or if there was, it was after the fact. This body (assuming such) that I am interacting with is, in a sense, a zombie.
Well, if by zombie you mean someone that can think, feel, paint, write poetry, play guitar, admire a sunset and love then yes! LOL!
But it is a whole person (this complex thing that weighs 200 lbs)
If the eyes of a body reads this and produces some kind of conscious awareness of what I wrote, it is of no consequence.
You keep referring to this consciousness thing as it is something spooky and immaterial. I don't know what you are referring to. that's just a a "ghost intuition". Its false.
The brain of that body will respond the way it is programmed to respond.
Well, one part of my brain can reprogram another, the environment has its effect and there is also some randomness, processing of information that has meaning, etc. It is far far to complex and fluid to be compared to a PC are anything humans have ever made. I am to the best computer/software in the world, as the best computer/software in the world is to a thermostat. Try to realize that it is so far beyond the machines we build that all your intuitions about what physical things can or can't do are insanely inadequate. So far beyond that it will not even do to refer to us as "machine"--that just creates comparisons that can't ever be adequate.
Its like someone saying "Are you telling me that my Apple Mac with OSX is just a paperclip?"
It may cause the body to write a response or it may not. But there will be no control over what either the brain or the body does or does not do because there is no “you.”
No control? Well, what would do the controlling? And then how would that thing accomplish control? Does it have parts or is it like jello? What ever it is if you could see what it was doing you would start wondering how it could do it and you would be back to square one.
The brain may deny this and say there is a “you,” but this is only the brain causing that denial to be expressed by some kind of motor output.
You are just depersonifying the person, thinking about the whole person as it it were just something to be controlled by another something. that's just confused thinking. This whole 200 pound fleshy thing is the me that is in control. Again, if you give control to some other imagined thing then there must be a science of how it can do what it does. Then I could say, but that thing is just that! And who controls that???? On and on. Contollers within controllers ad infinitum.
Sorry, but I prefer not to live this way.
What way? Confused? What do you think you would be doing differently? Talking in a monotone robot voice "I am not in control, I am on automatic, stop me stop me"?
I experience conscious awareness and believe that I can consciously influence the activity of my brain in some meaningful way so as to affect my behavior.
Yes, us spiritless people can do that too. I can creat feedback loops so that one part of me takes control to "reprogram" another part. that's how I quit smoking. I can also ask for help from outside things and people. You see, my brain is dealing with meaningful content and that has power. I can think about thinking about thinking about thinking. I am iterative, deep, full of sublte loops, and my software is so fluid in real time that it can never be pinned down, I draw on the entire memosphere..
Should there be immaterial spirit its parameters are undefined. Nothing can be said about what spirit can or cannot do.
So you can say nothing about it. So your words are just sounds. And still you think it explains something?
I am conscious. I just understand how that is accomplished by a physical being. You are thinking magically. If you would prefer to talk with another magical thinker about something which has no properties or parameters or even a meaning then fine.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo