crocodile deathroll

Why not an enhancement of materialism like physicalism?

Bugs

But you are assuming there is a soul and that it is a subjective phenomenon. This appears to be your justification for agreeing with the “Brain is just an instrument of soul" hypothesis. This is circular reasoning, my friend.

Anyway, I did not say that immaterialism is ruled out. I said that if you insist there is a soul when there is no need for one to explain anything, you are inventing it for some other reason.

Not yet. They don’t have an immaterial explanation either, and I see no need to invent one.

crocodile deathroll

If the brain is so much the essence then why wouldn't all the brain be conscious why are just bits of conscious at any one time?

Why that under controlled experiments that there is about 2000 milliseconds of unconscious neural activity leading towards a conscious act before the person pressed a stopwatch to indicate the instance he/she thought about that action?

Peter Soderqvist

TO PS 418

Soderqvist1: non-locality is explained as transcendental phenomena, since every action in our universe takes some local finite time according to Albert Einstein, but non-local action is instant, and because of that should violate the theory of relativity, therefore the action is outside space-time, and because of that, the theory of relativity is not violated, it was Einstein who coined the words; spooky action at a distance!

Soderqvist1: I have only alleged that pure materialistic stance is violated, not that every material explanation is flawed, there are lot of examples there material explanation is correct, for instance; materialism is defined as all phenomena can be understood in terms of interaction between objects, the Darwinian theory of random mutation, and nonrandom blind natural selection can increase adaptive complexity, is a good example about it, the theory can stand by itself without any immaterial explanations!

Amit Goswami quoted from his book, The Self Aware Universe regarding Aspect's experiment! The crucial feature of the experiment, the one that made its conclusion irrefutable – was the inclusion of a switch that, in effect changed the polarization setting of one detectors every ten-billion of a second (shorter than the travel time of light between the two detector locations) Even so, the change of the polarization setting of the detector with the switch changed the outcome of the measurement in the other location – just as quantum mechanics says it should.

Soderqvist1: The photons' polarization changes without exchanging particles with each other; therefore the phenomenon is immaterial interaction!

Soderqvist1: We use consciousness in a trivial sense, every time we are aware that we are doing something. I am aware that; I am writing to you now, with intention that you will understand my message!

[ December 04, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Peter Soderqvist

TO BUGS

Soderqvist1: I cannot see its circularity, but maybe you can elaborate it more explicitly? If we assume that our existence consists of objects made up of matter, how can objectivity be used to describe subjective phenomena, like different predilections as; some subject like classic music, some other subject like pop music? The simplest explanation is that we are subjects with different predilections, without any objective explanations, even if we have connections to some objective properties like neurons, and sound waves, and it follows from that, it is a confusion of terms to say that; subjectivity is an objective property! <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ December 04, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

crocodile deathroll

If there was not a single planet in this universe with life on it then the universe would not be self aware and there may well be realities in a multiverse scenario where this may be there case. But there would be nobody on forums like this one to discuss this Unslelf aware Universe and ask questions "why is this universe not aware of its own matter?"
I am of the view that consciousness emerged out of mathematical necessity and not some preordained plan, so any suggestion that consciousness created the universe and all the matter in it for consciousness sake pseudoscientific BS.

Peter Soderqvist

TO CROCODILE

If the universe before the beginning of time existed as a wave of probability, and the universe came into existence by a quantum jump, what caused this state vector reduction?

[ December 04, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Bugs

I’m sorry Peter but I really have no idea what you’re getting at here.

The premise of this thread was how to rebut the argument that the brain is just an instrument of soul. My point was that there is no reason to believe the soul even exists.

You appeared to be saying that the brain (being objective) can’t explain the soul (which is subjective), therefore the soul is required in addition to the brain. That would be circular reasoning. I’m sorry if this is not what you meant.

Btw, I read the article on Goswami. My understanding of QM is that consciousness is not required for material to exist, although many New Agers have misinterpreted QM to fit their viewpoint. Goswami is over reaching.

Peter Soderqvist

TO BUGS

Soderqvist1: No!
You have not answered my question if every thing is made up of matter, how can such objective phenomena be used to describe subjective phenomena, like different predilections, nor have you answered the question what causes the state vector reduction in quantum physics? Synaptic interactions, and general organismal behavior can be measured and is therefore physical properties, because the distinct mark of every physical phenomena is its measurability, subjectivity cannot be measured, I am the subject, therefore; I am not a physical phenomenon, nor can the existence of any other I be confirmed by natural science!

Btw, regarding the halting problem in Turing machines?
If an algorithm cannot compute if a Turing machine will halt or not, our insight that the fractions of pi is an infinite progression, is not an algorithm either, what kind of physical structural explanation do you have for this non-computational insight? None I think!

Godel's incompleteness theorem as quoted from Godel's biography
either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine. A consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself. Godel's results were a landmark in 20th-century mathematics, showing that mathematics is not a finished object, as had been believed. It also implies that a computer can never be programmed to answer all mathematical questions.
<a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html" target="_blank">http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html</a>

I think therefore I am!

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Bugs

If you’re claiming it can’t, it’s really up to you to demonstrate why not.

And if you claim consciousness is required to collapse the wave function (The Copenhagen interpretation – if that is what you are referring to), then you need to demonstrate why this is true too.

I have no idea what the rest of your post means or what it has to do with the thread.