Philosoft

Doesn't Behe accept most of Darwinian evolution? I was under the impression he thinks God pops in from time to time to create flagella and hemoglobin and molecular things like that but that evolution does most of the grunt work.

tronvillain

Jamie_L:
Of course, I think that humans were bothered by infidelity long before anyone came up with the idea that infidelity was "wrong" as well.

excreationist

Our body is represented in our brain as information but it probably also exists in objective physical reality.
Are you saying that a person on LSD that believes that their body is stretching a lot causes their body to stretch a lot? Or that a person's hair is combed if they believe that it is?

Do you believe that those thoughts and ideas are caused by physical processes though? (I'm a bit confused)

Do you mean that minds came first and then the physical bodies came later?

As a materialist I think that our thoughts (visual-spatial/linguistic/etc information) are a result of preceeding physical processes.

I think I read that there are other possible explanations for quantum theory than it being dependent on an observer. I've really got to find out about that.

I think that we have a set of "drives" or fundamental desires which we are compelled to try and satisfy. I think that every thought we have is a result of these motivations and they are very deterministic. You end up acting differently though because circumstances change - and what beliefs you've formed about things being desireable or undesireable. These are based on fundamental desires though. Some of the basic ones are seeking connectedness/coherence/familiarity, seeking newness and avoiding frustration. The first one motivates order, the second motivates discovery and exploration.

So are you saying that part of our mind is free from determinism? That we can have thoughts that weren't predetermined by our preceeding neural firings and brain chemistry mix - and our memories and environment?

I think thought is just information passing through our neurons. If it is "supernatural" then I think processing done by computers is also "supernatural". We can also actively analyse our own thoughts... so we can have second-order thought... and also analyse that analysis and have third-order thought, etc.

A3

Hi Philosoft
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A3 wrote:
Michael Behe, Prof. of Bio-chemistry (Darwin’s Black Box) is convinced that the most significant development in science in the 20th century was a discovery that “intelligent design” is behind all change.
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Doesn't Behe accept most of Darwinian evolution? I was under the impression he thinks God pops in from time to time to create flagella and hemoglobin and molecular things like that but that evolution does most of the grunt work.
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I think he does too. This bit was ‘lifted out’ to show a common sense approach, a glimmer of light. I also believe there is such a thing as evolution (adaptation is maybe more accurate) but that it is confined within the same species. That God has every detail well in hand and that for instance apes adapt to their environment and even learn the use of ‘tools’ but never digressed to produce a helpless ‘stupid’ human-like baby that has to be tought everything.
Adrian

JoshuaT

Eh? Ever stubbed your toe in the dark?

Chairs seem to exist independently of my thinking about them.

I also have to wonder what your comments mean in context to us viewing objects millions of light years distant (and thus occured millions of years ago). If no one looked until 10 seconds ago, how did that cause something to happen say, 500M years ago, so that the light could arrive just when the person looked?

The light, stars, etc exist without us. We just don't perceive them until we look.

If you disagree, then how is it multiple, independent observers observe the same thing?

Koyaanisqatsi

The analogy of space (physical) and time (abstract) being merged by Einstein into spacetime.

That has little substantive meaning to me. The Ultra Violet spectrum could be said to be, for all intents and purposes as it relates to human perception, "in a different realm."

Well, again, there is no such thing as "space and time," as Einstein, IMO, convincingly demonstrated. It is spacetime.

So, as for my construct "mindbody" and in keeping with my point regarding the UV spectrum and human perception, saying it is "in" or "out" of spacetime is a trivial and irrelevant distinction.

In other words, I'm not positing a supernatural, black/white view of existense. Again, the analogy of spacetime and, even more on the topic, matterenergy (since Einstein also demonstrated that matter is energy and vice versa), to me, shows that tactile sensory input is only one facit of "natural" existence; what I dub "auto-pilot."

No, I would say that the mindbody is one construct, present in a physical manner, but operating in different manners at the same time (again, the analogy of the UV spectrum, or, perhaps even better, radio; since the physical quality of a radio serves only to facilitate the "interpretation" of the various radio stations).

Again, I would stress my conviction that cults have only perverted certain innate qualities of our "meta" existence, if you will, in order to manipulate and control, which is why most cult dogma sounds so "true."

Which is to say, there is no "death" in the annihilist sense, but also no after life in the "angels on a cloud praising god" sense either. The "truth," as I see it, is that what we perceive as death would be the equivalent of a radio changing stations or a light bulb switching to ultra violet.

To us, we would only see what looks like a turned off light bulb.

Beyond this analogy, who knows and ultimately who cares, since its an experience that everyone will go through, but if queried, that's my take.

How can hydrogen and oxygen form the concept "water"? It's a symbiotic bond; a reflection of one thing upon another; a shadow on the wall...stop me if I'm waxing too poetic, but the point is, just as to a native chinese speaker, the letters I am using are complete, nonsensical gibberish, what something appears to be and what it actually is is nothing more than a matter of perception plus experience.

Every night, I dream and in those dreams I am a physical being, just as tangibly physical as my "waking" body is right now, which tells me that my perceptions of what it means to be "in" the "waking" me are not as my "auto-pilot" would make it out to be. That doesn't, however, mean that God exists or that any cult dogma is true, it just means that, for me, discounting any experience (including hallucination) as somehow not as relevant as "waking" experience is a pointless self limitation that serves no purpose.

What was it that Lennon said? "Thought is the best way to travel?"

Well, that would certainly be one perception, based upon tactile experience from two of the known "five senses" and extrapolation by the intellect from there.

How and or why you are separating the "spirit" from the body is the only thing I'd question. Again, it's spacetime and matterenergy.

Simplistically stated, yes, I do, just as atoms "want" to be a chair and "want" to be a cancer and "want" to be a pizza. The closest analogy (yes, another one) I've ever come up with is the game of monopoly, where the board and the rules represents spacetime and the Dog or the Hat or the Car represent our bodies within spacetime.

We (the players manipulating those pieces around spacetime) have all agreed to the rules (including $400 for landing on "go" ) prior to play. If you want to label the "we" souls, be my guest; I prefer intellects, but a clear distinction should be made that the minute I say, "I'm the Guy On The Horse," I actually am the guy on the horse.

As a sidenote to this, you can see how the trinity was constructed and accepted.

I guess that makes Milton Bradley god .

Oh and just for the cult members out there waiting to pounce, yes, this would be my own cult thinking and my own cult construct, so don't bother. My take on this preceeds and accounts for your cult dogma, but not vice versa, so breach my levy at your peril...

As well as literal, if you put on the micro glasses and see the comparatively vast amount of "empty space" between the atoms that "make up" your body.

On the macro level, yes.

The auto-pilot, yes.

I have no problem with that, unless you are going to make the fallacious leap from "intelligent design" to "God."

That's redundant.

To some degree, sure, but I use the term to refer to organizations that force their "spiritual realm" constructs onto others through fear, inculcation and otherwise manipulative tricks of the trade to ultimately stop cognitive functions, not enhance or free them, for the purposes of supplanting individual thought with cult-controlled thought.

Precisely the opposite. It is my opinion that all of those things you mentioned are a direct result of organized cults, primarily the overall christian cult, precisely because their goal is to maintain auto-pilot at all costs; to force as many people as possible to never think, thereby keeping the sub-conscious as deep down into the fiery pits of their own hell as possible.

Thought is anathema to cults, precisely for that reason, so the reason we have guns and kill each other and have "swear words" (Thou shalt not take thy lord's name in vain) come as a direct result of cult thinking and not because of individual self-reflection.

IMO.

Un hunh...

After being told what to read to find this "revelation," yes?

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

I don't doubt that. Again, my view is that the body is a physical realization of the mind.

Here's how I'd break that down:
<ol type="1">[*] There is a vast difference between what the subconscious "mind" is in charge of and what the conscious "mind" is in charge of; the first is the projector of the movie, the second is the audience member of the movie[*] I wouldn't discount the experience I had of my body stretching, whether or not my physical body "objectively" (aka, to an outsider observing my experience) could confirm or deny that my physical body "actually" stretched[/list=a]

I consider the physical body to be nothing more than a sensory input device, so whether that input comes from an external source or an internal source is irrelevant to the experience processed by the brain and interpreted by the mind.

How's that for convoluted?

Like I said, it's my cult and I'll cry if I want to...

Again, that would be more of a matter for the conscious state than the subconscious (or "meta" conscious, if you want).

It's not complete, just my musings, but at least it burrows into the basis of cult programming and seeks to glean what has been stolen/corrupted and how it actually translates back, once that understanding is in place.

First, I don't "believe" anything, a subtle but salient point. Second, it's a razor fine line. One might say, an Occam's razor fine line.

Upon further reflection, I would have to say it is symbiotic, so if I had to pin it down to an either/or, I would only be able to argue that those thoughts and ideas are not "caused" at all, but certainly do effect one another; the idea effecting the physical which in turn effects another idea, etc., ad infinitum.

Again, it's a matter of perception and here's where another element of cult dogma can be shown to be stolen from innate qualities of existence, in the quantum notion of the uncaused cause; that particles just seem to appear from nothingness randomly.

The way I see it (and yes, again, it's necessarily incomplete and mutable, contingent upon new datum) physical existence "happens" simultaneously in all possible realities and we, the observers/intellect, merely travel through it, wearing along the way "body" in the same way that one would don a wetsuit and scuba gear to travel under water.

I know, I know, many analogies and still one convoluted center, but then, again, it's a work in progress that primarily seeks to reconcile whence cult dogma/adherence as well as whence self?

Again, I think they are part and parcel; that a better term is mindbody and that the physical body is little more than a reflection of the mind--a physical interpretation/choice of Dog, Car, Hat, etc.--but I recognize the hair splitting and simply can't account for it yet.

Just as when hydrogen and oxygen only form water when joined in a particular way, "mindbody" is similiarly formed.

For example, in a two dimensional universe, the "expression" of the mind into that paradigm (aka, the two dimensional body) would be radically different and since the difference between one dimension and another is merely a shifting of parameters, so too would the "parameter specific" (body) representation of the mind (intelligence/consciousness) shift accordingly.

When in Rome, wear a toga...

Then you will most likely not accept my construct, but that's ok. I don't accept yours .

I struggled with materialism and finally concluded that I would be considered more of an animist than a materialist, if a lable had to be applied in that regard.

I consider all matter conscious, but more directly, I could never reconcile dreams or the experiences I've had with Multiple Personality (not me; two girlfriends, a friend and a College director) over the years.

To say that consciousness is either caused or contained by matter just doesn't "ring" true for me, but, of course, I can't prove it one way or the other.

That one, for me, is entirely an irrational choice based on nothing more than personal perception and, artistic endeavors. I would argue that the true masterpiece is not the actual painting of the Mona Lisa, but the idea of the painting of the Mona Lisa (especially if modern conjecture is true and it was meant to be a self portrait, which I think is hysterical).

That the intangible is the result of the tangible--while certainly demonstrable and highly plausible--just goes counter to too many experiences I've had that betrays more of the symbiosis/slight reversal I would argue, but, ultimately, as with dreams, it is moot, since I see no reason in this regard to discount "dream reality" simply because it cannot be demonstrated to physically exist in the manner that "waking reality" can be demonstrated to exist.

But, again to all those out there about to jump up and down on the "hey that's just like my God experiences" button, I don't preach it and I don't seek Government support for it and I don't in any way shape or form think it is immutable and fully established through blind faith.

I think of it as a working hypothesis that accounts for many disparate elements of human existence/thought and I freely admit with no compunction whatsoever that I could be dead wrong on all counts.

Yes, but keep in mind the caveat of the "poetic" sense. In science, an "observer" does not mean a human.

Agreed. What I would call "auto-pilot."

Agreed. Whether those are necessarily the "result of" matter or "cause by" matter, though, is, to my view, an irrelevant distinction, hence the notion that "we" are mindbodies.

Good question. I think, to go back to the Monopoly analogy, that while we're playing Monopoly we must adhere to certain rules and that once chosed, I would always be the Car as a necessary construct of the game itself, but that once the game is over, the decision to play, say, Risk or Parchesi is where the sub-conscious/conscious thing comes into it.

I don't know. I do know that there are certainly people I've met in my life (such as the MPD's I've known) that are so radically tuned to a totally different frequency than I am that it seems highly possible to access higher sub-conscious functions (I consider the "sub" part to be a misnomer, by the way), so that the phrase "auto-pilot" has resonance. They certainly appear to be on "manual" to some qualitative degree that is noticeably and readily discernable to my processing.

Ultimately, though, determinism to me doesn't really enter into the picture in the linear manner that it is normally applied. Again, I consider existence to be "happening" simultaneously in an infinite manner and that our mindbody "journeys" through that simultaneity to be little more than a function of our cognitive processing; the illusion of linearity.

Take a film, for example (something I'm very familiar with). Taken as a whole, you can hold a film in your hand and know exactly what you've got. Pop into a projector and you can watch the linear progression and fool yourself into thinking it's "reality" to a large degree.

Deconstruct it's physical elements, however, and you've got a frame. Then another frame. Then another frame. Then another frame.

Any one of those frames taken out of the contect of the whole is its own world; its own existence separate and contained (aka, a photograph). Link similiar ones in a progression and project them at 24 frames per second, and you have the illusion of "real life."

I guess the question that always follows that, for me is, at what rate are we projected at for everyone else to see us as "real life?"

Again, fine line, but would have to cop out to symbiotic, with a slight lean to thought just barely preceeds it.

Tough call.

Agreed. I was using those terms as another example of how what I consider to be innate has been stolen and corrupted by cults in order to make it sound like their tripe "resonates" and has just enough innate "truth" in it for the sheep to give up their own minds and play follow the leader, but I do think deconstructing such a phenomonen will get us closer than an either/or.

There are certainly many superficial reasons behind whence God, but there also might be some salient ones that are too easily dismissed with the bath water and that's where much of my own cult dogma here springs from.

Gurdur

Bill's point above regarding emergent properties remains unanswered.
You cannot have mind without material, whereas it is entirely possible to have material without mind.

Tell this to spinal reflex ganglions, or to an ant.
Platonic, but hardly viable as a real basis for discussion; were all this to be true, there would be no such thing as evolution in the humble forms of cutlery, for example.
Confusing metaphors with real explanatory descriptions.
Owing to evolution, and to the emergent properties of neuronal nets, we're free to imagine pretty well anything we like.
Doesn't make it useful or even true, though.

Psychology has come a long long way from its humble beginnings; the terms subconsciousness, id, super-ego etc. are rather outdated by 50 years.

Hard neurology, neural net science and cellular automaton theory has contributed more to our understanding of human consciousness than any animist or supernatural theories in the last 2,000 years.

If taken to its extreme, such a view would contra-indicate the forcible treatment of paranoid schizophrenia.

_____________

I stress here yet again a non-naïve materialist view of mind does not necessitate or even imply determinism (hard or soft), nor does it negate ethics.

Koyaanisqatsi

I think it not only answers it, it explains it quite well.

I don't know or necessarily agree with either of those declarations, nor do I see how either of us would be able to prove it either way, which is why I consider it largely moot and argue for mindbody being one construct, not an either/or.

Ok.

Sure there would, considering the symbiotic relationship I'm proposing. Actually, symbiotic is the wrong word; perhaps emergent is the right one?

Hard to say since it's purely speculative on my part.

Perhaps my second post clarified it better with the two dimensional universe parameters and what a body would look like there.

Nor does it necessarily need to be dismissed on that basis, even if you could adequately define what is "true" in order to make such a self-limiting delineation quantifiable.

As for "useful," again, I see no qualitative difference between an experience on drugs, off drugs, while asleep, while awake, nor any justifiable reason to even consider that there is an experiencial difference that would necessitate the a priori dismissal of such experience on that basis alone.

If I dreamed I flew then why should I discount that experience, simply because it did not happen in the "waking" reality? I still experienced what it was like to fly in the exact same way that I would experience what it's like to drive in a car in any relevant manner (the processing of sensory input).

The fact that it came from internal as opposed to external stimuli is a trivial and merely pointless self-limitation, without sufficient justification, IMO, and I'm welcome to it.

I didn't reallize they had a shelf life.

In your opinion. For my money, nothing beats Freud, with the possible exception of Erickson.

I don't mind the extreme.

Koyaanisqatsi

They certainly do. I would argue that the atoms which form the chair are the ones agreeing to the paradigm.

Again, I consider all matterenergy conscious and make no qualitative separation between one clump and another.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I do not hold with a homocentric take on existence. Again, I consider all matterenergy to be conscious.

I don't disagree, but then again, I also don't think that multiple, independent observers do in fact observe the same thing per se.

On a simplistic level, I have red/green color blindness, which means that I have difficulty discerning hue (thus, a darker shade of blue cna easily be interpreted by me as a darker shade of black, a darker shade of green, a darker shade of red).

This doesn't alter the independent, objective hue of the color frequency striking my optic receptors, but the effect is still the same to me once that distorted information is processed, so that, for all intents and purposes, what you see and what I see are different, in any relevant, subjective, experiencial sense.

I'm by no means arguing solipsism here, let's make that clear. What I am arguing is that three dimensional, spatial/relational grids don't cut it in a quantum reallized universe, but that doesn't mean the grids are to be discounted either.

Just as Einstein argued for spacetime and (in essence if not words) matterenergy, I therefore argue for mindbody.

Trust me, it's good work if you can get it.