Are spirits stupid?

[_dartagnan]

Why are you losing your composure Tarski?

I expect this from some, but not you.

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
Oh now its self-awareness?
OK, do you have the patience to read it?
Read the whole thing:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Self_models

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/cognition.fin.htm

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm


Look you are hypnotized by something tha has no depth. You are like a person that denies that heat can be the random motions of molecules.

The first link is a model, not reality. As for the others, you seem to reverence Dennett as a prophet or maybe even worship him as a god. Like many religious fundamentalists you, as a materialist fundamentalist, deny any alternative to your god Dennett. Like all good fundamentalists, any evidence that he is not a god is discarded out of hand. Let us all bow down to the great god Dennett. Sorry, but I refuse to join the religion of Eliminativism and/or recognize Dennett as a god. I allow him his right to present his arguments, but I do not look upon them as infallible.

You will undoubtedly ignore them but here are a couple of alternative positions to that of Dennett as well as an appropriate cartoon.

http://chaospet.com/2008/02/08/77-quining-qualia/

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dualist/v ... s/park.pdf

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/articles/qualia.html

As I stated previously, I am willing to entertain various alternatives. Science should continue its attempt to show that human conscious experience is brain function or at least a product of brain function, but I refuse to let Dennett dictate to me that I do not have conscious awareness. I am also willing to accept verifiable evidence that consciousness exists outside of the body. You apparently are unwilling to entertain this possibility. Which of us has been hypnotized into following the Pied Piper?

[_Tarski]

Why are you losing your composure Tarski?

I expect this from some, but not you.

I'm not. What part made you say that?

[_Tarski]

The first link is a model, not reality.

What? Were you hoping for a direct access to reality unmediated by thought or concepts? LOL


Now you tell me, what the freak is a spirit and how does it answer anything mentality? Its just a word. You have just pushed all the same questions about how it works onto an unspecified entity. Can't you see you are just defering the question? Do spirits have brains? If so how do those brains function to create thoughts? What steps can they take there real brains cannot? Deferng the question and declaring victory. Not good form.

Just inserting the word spirit right when you can't imagine how its done and then declaring a miracle is no explaination at all.
How do spirits think and feel? How? How ? how?

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
Now you tell me, what the freak is a spirit and how does it answer anything mentality? Its just a word. You have just pushed all the same questions about how it works onto an unspecified entity. Can't you see you are just defering the question? Do spirits have brains? If so how do those brains function to create thoughts? What steps can they take there real brains cannot? Deferng the question and declaring victory. Not good form.

Just inserting the word spirit right when you can't imagine how its done and then declaring a miracle is no explaination at all.
How do spirits think and feel? How? How ? how?

It seems all of a sudden that we have gone back a zillion posts. Oh well! As I understand it, a spirit is consciousness, or at least consciousness is an aspect of spirit. What else it is, if anything, I really don't know. Based upon the evidence provided by individuals who have had Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) consciousness does not require a brain in order to function but it does possess intelligence. However, a physical brain appears to be necessary in order for spirit or consciousness to interact with the physical world. A physical brain can only interact with and is limited to a physical world while spirit or consciousness can interact both with the physical world by way of the brain and directly with the spirit world.

You asked me, so I have told you.

[_Tarski]

The first link is a model, not reality. As for the others, you seem to reverence Dennett as a prophet or maybe even worship him as a god.
You apparently are unwilling to entertain this possibility. Which of us has been hypnotized into following the Pied Piper?

OK, its time to tell you my little story so you can stop thinking I have never considered the alternative position.


I have a memory of being about five and wondering about what the world would look like to a dandelion I saw in the sun. I know it didn't have eyes but how could it be nothing.
Later I remember wondering if other people saw the same colors as me. I know that objects reflected different frequencies of light and that signals went into the brain but none of this explained the redness of red or the greenness of green to me.
This remained something that was outside the physical explanations of science. Where or what was this redness or any other qualia?

When I was in high school I was a very philosophical type. It was the 60s and there was a lot of talk about consciousness expansion. I read a book by about LSD. I was intrigued by the accounts of the experience. Not only was green greener but mud was muddier and clouds cloudier. I pictured it must be like turning the color or hue up on a TV set. That looks fake and ugly to me so I wondered what was so cool about LSD. But, mud muddier? What could that mean?

So at 14 I took LSD and it blew me away. Nothing like I thought. It was like waking up for the first time in my life. I saw the sky for the first time-- really saw it. Tasted orange juice for the first time. Felt my own reality for the first time. The brilliance of reality broke through like an atomic bomb or a billion suns. My consciousness was intensified and the world took on a greater depth and meaningfulness. I experienced what I could never have imagined. The qualia of experience was intensified 100 fold. I could sense higher dimensions. I could see things from a perspective that seemed to break through my filtering processes.
It became clear to me that the world was infused with mind or spirit and that in consciousness itself I was in direct contact with this nonphysical side of reality. Spirit and mind were ontologically insistent, undeniable and immanent.
Over the next couple of years I explored consciousness and began to realize that the pure physical world could never be known directly but that consciousness could be, it was what we are firstly.
I became aware of the phenomenologists, and the idealists in philosophy and was happy to see that I was not alone in realizing the ontological primacy of consciousness (as Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty would put it).

Now I also because aware of JCC Smart and the brain identity theorists.
It amazed me. Were they robots? Could they not see the obvious? I felt enlightened and wondered hat they would think if they experienced consciousness expansion like I had.
I thought this was all through my mission, in college and well into my 30's.
Then cam the book consciousness explained. I had just read a quote by someone that said that when you read a philosopher you should try hard to understand how they could possible believe what they were saying. I looked at the book and I knew he was wrong philosophically but there was some much in the book about the neurological side of the issue. he had lots of demonstrations, thought experiments and actual experiments.
I decided it would not hurt me to read it just for that part of it. I would surely learn some science even if he was a materialist.

I read the book carefully and slowly. I kept trying to imagine how it could be true what he was saying. I tried hard. But it was no use. Consciousness was an immaterial something right in front of me, I was directly in contact with my subjectivity. But was Dennett a robot? What was his problem?

On remember walking along the road one day trying to imagine if there was any possible way that he could be right. Could I be wrong about what was obvious?
Now a year earlier I had read a book by Richard Rorty that had made some serious points about the notion of incorrigibility. He had a story which was a thought experiment about an alien society that had no notion of mind. They did have advanced neurology and could read another's thoughts using a device that looked as brain signals.
This was a long and serious thought experiment that challenged intuitions about mind and first person subjectivity. It have long imagined arguments between the human philosophers and the alien philosopher. The humans tried to get the aliens to understand the concept of mind and subjectivity. Rorty put cracks in my armor.

Fast forward three years. I decided to read Dennett again. This time the idea that he might somehow against all that seemed obvious be right somehow. His detailing of the effects of different experiments on consciousness, explications of the weird consciousness effects of brain damage all made their point.
And then after all, how was it that a mere chemical had intensified my consciousness so much that it became obvious to me that there was more than matter and that I was deeply and at core one of those nonphysical entities, I was swimming in this spiritual world of consciousness intensified by chemical. But wait! That in itself is a hint.

I let another two years go by thinking about this and doing various things like meditating, reading other philosophers and even trying a psychedelic once again.
Finally, I felt angry; angry at Dennett and thinkers like him. I read his book again ever more slowly, with the idea of trying just once to open my mind to the crazy idea that he was right. I read with anger and yet determination. How could it be? Let’s try again.

Then, it started to click. Shock! The point was made in my mind.
Dennett is not a God, he was just the one guy who, given the chance and attention, could explain the point clearly.
I read tons of philosophy and science. materialists and existentialists, phenomenoligists, idealists, consciousness gurus etc. I laughed at the materialist and thought them blind. But I learned that it was I that was the vistim of the magic show of my own brain.

I can still make myself feel consciousness as immediate, immanent, immaterial and magical. But I now know how it is not only possible but likely that this is just what it is like to have a brain that cannot see how it works on a physical level and uses innate irresistible intuitions that are nevertheless wrong.
many things about, thinking, feeling and how we see ourselves needs to be explained but I now see that invoking a word like "immaterial consciousness" really has not power to explain anything about what it was like for me, but Dennett and others had shown that all of these things have neurological correlates, plausibly even my inability to see directly how redness and greenness were not ontologically substantive somethings, mind stuff. All that needs to be explained is why we are convinced to say things we do about consciousness and emotionally defend them. Those things can be explained by brain processing and neurally instantiated concept manipulation.
Bottom line, I finally learned that the way it seems and the way it is aren't the same thing even for the holy of holies-consciousness.
We can be profoundly wrong about our very inner nature and getting past that opens the way for real explanation. Spirit was just a word that never did any explanatory work.

[_Tarski]

Tarski wrote:
Now you tell me, what the freak is a spirit and how does it answer anything mentality? Its just a word. You have just pushed all the same questions about how it works onto an unspecified entity. Can't you see you are just defering the question? Do spirits have brains? If so how do those brains function to create thoughts? What steps can they take there real brains cannot? Deferng the question and declaring victory. Not good form.

Just inserting the word spirit right when you can't imagine how its done and then declaring a miracle is no explaination at all.
How do spirits think and feel? How? How ? how?

Oh well! As I understand it, a spirit is consciousness, or at least consciousness is an aspect of spirit. What else it is, if anything, I really don't know. .

Two undefined terms in a couplet.

Zig is Zog or at least an aspect of Zog.

So basically, just like me (or a former me), after thinking about and feeling about and meditating about and reading about "immaterial consciousness or spirit", you have nothing that explains anything about thinking and feeling. It doesn't explain how brain damge rduces the ability to use concepts, how som drugs can intensified experience, or how we need the brain to see, to think, how brain damage can change any aspect of consciousness and even one by one remove those aspects.

(don't miss the very long post above)

[_asbestosman]

Do spirits have brains?

I would say yes.

If so how do those brains function to create thoughts?

I have no idea.

What steps can they take there real brains cannot?

I speculate that they may surpass turing computation and be able to perform hypercomputation. Again as to how that might work, I don't know. If I knew how, I'd try to build a hypercomputer myself and win a nobel prize.

Edit: Actually, I do have some wild speculation as to how, but nothing practical at least at this point.

[_Tarski]

Do spirits have brains?

I would say yes.

If so how do those brains function to create thoughts?

I have no idea.

What steps can they take there real brains cannot?

I speculate that they may surpass turing computation and be able to perform hypercomputation. Again as to how that might work, I don't know. If I knew how, I'd try to build a hypercomputer myself and win a nobel prize.

Edit: Actually, I do have some wild speculation as to how, but nothing practical at least at this point.

And what does hypercomputation allow? Can you demononstrate?
Surely, this is just more materialism. It should remain just as puzzling to Seeker how any kind of matter (more refined) or any kind of computation could produce his subjectivity.

[_SeekerofTruth]

Tarski wrote:
OK, its time to tell you my little story so you can stop thinking I have never considered the alternative position.

Thanks for sharing this. Sound like a true conversion experience. You now seem to be religiously trying to convert others to think the way you think -- to see the light you are now seeing. Others, however, have had their individual conversion experiences, especially many who have had NDEs. They believe they have seen the light -- literally. I see no problem in your sharing your experience and letting others make a decision based upon the evidence you provide. What I have felt, however, and perhaps wrongly, is that you were not allowing others their conversion experience. It was either your way or the highway. Please correct me if I have misinterpreted your intentions.