Lobstrosity

I see what you're saying. Your hypothesis is that there's some invisible, intangible mystery thing that does all of the decision-making and thinking. It then takes its results and sends them to our brains where we become conscious of them and act on them? Do I understand your position correctly? If this is correct, I have a few questions:

1) If something else is producing all our thoughts, why do we have 100 billion neurons making a giant computer in our heads? Why doesn't this mystery thing simply take the inputs to our brain (you know, the electrical signals the eyes and ears, among others, send it), process it, and then send the outputs directly to the nerves the brain uses to communcate with our body? What's the point of the brain in the first place? Clearly if all of the processing is done elsewhere, 100 billion neurons is rather uncalled for.

2) If this is an intangible, invisible thing, why is there any reason to think at this point that such a thing exists? Isn't that essentially identical to my arguing that all of my computer's calculations are actually performed by some invisible mystery computer located in an alternate realtity. The circuitry in my computer is only there to receive communcations from the other world. Prove me wrong. See, I'm making an unfalsifiable claim based on zero evidence that something exists which actually adds complexity to the situation. Why would one do this? Shouldn't the default position be that we have no idea what causes consciousness, followed by objective emperical testing into the origins of consciousness? Such testing has demonstrated that there is an intrinsic link between neurons and consciousness. Until there is even some slim evidence that indicates these neurons are not sufficient to produce human consciousness, what is the reasoning behind assuming there's more to it than meets the eye?

That's a bit silly. By definition, an intangible object cannot interface with something tangible. If it could, then it wouldn't be intangible; scientists could interface with it via those tangible means. Do you see how that works? If a physical set of neurons can write to and read from the soul, then scientists can design a device to do the exact same thing. The soul could then easily be detected and quantified.

Also, I'm not sure why you would even venture to hypothesize that the soul (something no one knows anything about) operates on some quantum level. Could you perhaps go into this in a bit more depth?

jpbrooks

Hello Lobstrosity! This is an interesting topic.
I am a (Christian) Theist, but an advocate of neither "free will" nor the existence of an immaterial "Soul" that can exist independently from a physical body. In fact, I am actually "agnostic" with regard to the matter being discussed in this thread.
However, my observation is that the advocates of the immaterial "Soul" theory can a;ways point to the lack of clear evidence, on the part of Physicalists, that material or mechanical processes are the actual cause of consciousness, and that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to verify this contention. The charge that Physicalists have not clearly demonstrated that consciousness is a "property" that emerges from physical processes is not easy to avoid because (parsimony notwithstanding) any (alleged) evidence for physicalism obtained by examining conscious organisms can always be re-interpreted as being evidence to support the idea that the immaterial "Soul" is using the brain as a medium of communication between itself and the physical universe, and because there may be no way at all to confirm that any material or mechanical process, operating apart from any living organisms, is or can be conscious.

I have to run.

Stephen T-B

I wonder if Old Man can give us an example of something he has done as a result of exercising his free will?

MyKell

Lobstrosity,

Awesome presentation for a very important subject. Have you heard of Daniel Dennett's most recent book, freedom evolves?

Lobstrosity

Thank you. Actually, I have not heard of that book. I read a review of it on amazon.com just now, however, and it looks very interesting. Can you tell me anything about it?

Tercel

No. While being partially agnostic on the issue, my suggested model for the most likely way a "soul" might work is that the immaterial part does two extremely basic and irreducible things only: Awareness in the most pure abstract sense, and Will. All sensory data, memories, thoughts etc would be processed by the physical brain before being sent to the Awareness as information. Similarly the Will is responsible only for the minimal task of choosing while the physical brain is again responsible for generating the corresponding action or thought and returning further data on this to the Awareness etc.
I think that clarification deals with 1).

Because observationally, physically processes appear to consist of a miscellany of particles moving according to natural law. It is is far from clear that matter and motion are sufficient to explain the unified sensation of awareness, or are sufficient to explain our perception of free will (Or at least many philosophers have thought so) and one might accept Penrose's proof that the properties of the mind are not explicible in principle by our current understanding of physics.
Invisible intangible things are not meaningless either, as things like the laws of physics though intangible manage to rule the universe show, and theorems of maths and logic though invisible manage to do very well for themselves. It seems reasonable that a mind, which processes such intangible things as logic, concepts, meanings etc might have part of its own nature as invisible and intangible.

The computer's behaviour has been explained entirely by our current physical laws. We construct computers based entirely on our knowledge of physical law. Get back to me when we understand entirely how brains work and have constructed numerous better versions from the ground up based on our comprehensive understanding as based entirely on physical law.

It similarly adds complexity to try to handwave the property of awareness as some "emergent property" of matter. Emperical testing is misguided - what do you plan to test? Numerous mathematical results can't be emperically tested but it doesn't make them less important, less relevant or less true than if they could have been.

Not really. By the level of Quantum Physics it's not clear that the word "tangible" is very meaningful.

If there is to be an extra-physical interface between the non-physical soul and the physical brain then physical indeterminism is required (if the physical end did what it did no matter what then the "soul" couldn't interfere). Quantum mechanics provides that indeterminism. Also quantum mechanics brings up some very interesting questions about the relevance of observers and the important of "information" which seem to make it the absolutely ideal interface for interaction between a non-physical soul and a physical brain. (Which, I suppose, could be considered evidence for the "soul" view since it makes the prediction that such a possible interface medium would exist whereas the entirely physical view does not)

MyKell

I'm short on time, but I have one thing to say... Quantum mechanics DOES NOT provide the indeterminism necessary for free will to arise. Natural Determinism is not that affected by quantum mechanics because no one, even the brain at work itself, knows what it's decision is going to be beforehand, assuming ofcourse that quantum effects have anything to do with biological function.
I personally doubt that very much. I have had this question posted last week on iidb.org and I have read further on this subject to realize that the uncertainity principle does not affect the predictions we can make on brain function.
Anyway, the mind/brain duality suggested on this thread is largely unsupported. A great problem for dualists would be demonstrating where and how the brain interacts with the mind. A pseudoscientific theory is not sufficient.
I personally doubt that the brain needs anything outside the physical world to explain the mind. The mind is an emergent property of the brain. For instance, in some lesions of the brain, consciousness is scaled down to work with the new condition after the injury. Often people don't realize that they lost a modality of consciousness. If there was a soul that expected information to come to it, there would be some awareness of that modality loss, right? An example of what I'm talking about would be unilateral hemineglect... People don't even realize it

Stephen T-B

II'm always wary when someone starts talking about quantum mechanics linking into the supernatural on account of both being mysterious.
And what’s the big deal about Mind and Consciousness?
Why is it thought that we’re the only creatures with these attributes? Since we can’t communicate with other large-brained species, how can we be sure that they don’t possesses rudimentary forms of them?
Since I assume they are products of brain function, it seems logical to me that they must.

And why should they not be the products of brain function?
The “soul” notion is just another way of putting Homo Sapiens on a pedestal, as though our very-powerful brains didn’t do that already.
In fact, every species stands on its own pedestal. That’s a result of evolution: if you can’t build a pedestal which gives you an advantage, you don’t survive.

Lobstrosity

Huh? What exactly is the "unified sensation of awareness"? You're utilizing your subjective biases to place yourself on some sort of egotistical pedestal...don't you see this? You perceive your awareness as amazing and hence have to create entirely new laws of physics to describe yourself even though you clearly know nothing about the current laws of physics we have? Which segues into our next quote...

Are you on crack? By the very definition of the word the laws of physics are tangible. They're the laws of physics! And what exactly does it mean to say that math is "invisible"??? I always thought math was big and red. You do realize that we're not restricted to analyzing this universe through photons alone, right?

in·tan·gi·ble ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-tnj-bl)
adj.
Incapable of being perceived by the senses.
Incapable of being realized or defined.
Incorporeal.

So what you're saying is that no one can possibly understand math or physics? Physical laws are fundamentally undetectable and math is fundamentally impossible to comprehend? Yeah, I'll let you in on a tiny little secret: humans worked out all of the laws of physics via empirical testing and all of the math we use via simple logic. Logic isn't intangible. Physics isn't intangible. Please, try again to find me an example of something that really is intangible.

You mean those intangible physical laws we can't possibly know or understand? Yeah, my hypothesis is that scientists just stumbled onto a gateway to some alternate reality where real calculations are done. It's far from clear that matter and motion are capable of producing the calculations my computer does.

First, I'll have to say "huh?" again. Where is this complexity coming from again when I say that the materials we have already observed do the function we've observed them doing rather than making up an entire mysterious egocentric alternate universe specifically designed to carry out human thought production? The emergent property is already there. You're just pulling a whole new complex place for it to come from out of your ass because you think it sounds cool.

And once again, do you even know what math is or is it just some vague concept you once heard some guy talking about somewhere? If the answer is yes, can you please explain why you would even bother to type out such a sentence? It has nothing to do with anything! Consciousness is not math. It's not a logical system founded on axioms. It's a physical property of physically interacting components. It's like a computer. You can empirically test the properties of a computer, can't you? Get off your high horse. Consciousness is not infinitely complex and there's zero reason to assume it might be (in fact, any rational thought on the matter should convince you that it can't be). You aren't super-special.


First off, this is not an explanation of how quantum mechanics could be involved, it's a "quantum is weird and hence could help my weird ideas be true!" You have pop-science understanding of quantum mechanics and are simply latching onto anything scientific yet "strange" and "mysterious" to lend validity to your wildly-unfounded assumptions. Trust me, quantum mechanics does not support this hypothesis in the slightest. At the very least you should understand indeterminism of quantum is inherently random and could provide no meaningful interface to anything.

BadBadBad

Why put so much deep thought into this? This kind of thing is how we get religion in the first place. We as mankind have this let's say defect that we have to understand everything. If we don't understand, we have to philosophize about it. We have to put a label on it. There, we'll call it God.

What makes an ant tick? Has God got some big plan for an ant? We can't understand the basis of life. Where did it come from? What makes it tick? We can't comprehend infinite concepts like that. Why spend a lot of time philosophizing about it? We get up. We blink our eyes. We decide what's for breakfast. We're born. We exist and then we die. The heat, chemicals, molecules, and atoms that made up our bodies continue on. That continuance through eternity is infinitely beyond our ability to comprehend. It's infinitely beyond the capability of ancient ignorant men to comprehend, much less communicate.

Free Will? That's just another Bible double speak, hardly worth any consideration at all. Free Will is logically contradicted in Exodus and Romans 9. It's a logical contradiction to have pre-determination and free will simultaneously. I've read Berggren's article on “Does the Free Will Defense Constitute a Sound Theodicy?” It's a very good logical argument against christianity.

The christian god as described in the Bible is a logical contradiction. So, if you take the myth of God out of the discussion, you're trying to understand rational thought. You're trying to understand bio-chemistry. You're trying to understand beyond quantum physics. You're trying to understand infinite space and time. Just wake up and smell the coffee. It's going to be another fine day!