First Cause is sentient

[STT]

Material activities cannot possibly create an entity so call mind, mind being able to experience decide and cause.

 

[LateCatholic]

The first cause is an intelligent cause because the act of causing something to exist that doesn’t naturally exist and sustaining it in existence cannot be a natural process ( a progression of physical states that have an affect on the nature of it’s effects through it’s activity. )

Hawking radiation is literally the spontaneous generation of two paired particles from the vacuum potential, one of which falls into a black hole and is lost, the other doesn’t.
By your definition Hawking Radiation is not a natural process.

 

[IWantGod]

Chance is a property of matter.

This does not make sense to me, and neither does the idea that chance is a cause of a things existence.

Particles comes out randomly from an electric gun when you reduce the flow of electrons.

This may be true, but it is irrelevant to the claim that chance is either a cause or a real property of something. This is just an idea you have which you are using to explain “Particles comes out randomly from an electric gun when you reduce the flow of electrons.”

 

[IWantGod]

By your definition Hawking Radiation is not a natural process.

What you are describing is a progression of physical states. The idea that it happened spontaneously is irrelevant. It’s a natural process.

 

[John_Martin]

Isn’t it a simpler explanation to say that the brain causes the brain pattern, then to say the brain pattern is passively caused by something else?

Simpler???
Actually, the brain is extremely “complex” while it is the soul that is simple, single, much like God, and moves the complexity known as the body with its brain.
If you are looking for the simplest being the way to go, the soul is simple, even “one”, as God is simple, “One”.
The speed of an electron, the speed of light photons in free space, is not as “fast” as the durationless moments of “Now”, that can only be even faintly perceived in a remembered stream of motion of objects, which perceived motion does not happen in “Now” but in the observation of a stream by something outside the stream, something that can see more than “Now”.

 

[STT]

Sure it can. Consciousness is a derivative reality caused by material activities of the brain. That truth is as obvious as the fact that the most complicated organ in the human body is also located in the exact spot where consciousness resides. To ignore the correlation between consciousness and the brain is the equivalent of sticking one’s head in the sand.

According to materialist, we know the properties of matter, such as mass, charge, etc, and not consciousness. Non of these properties indicate that the existence of an entity which is conscious. You would have a difficult time to show where mind comes from.

 

[LateCatholic]

What you are describing is a progression of physical states. The idea that it happened spontaneously is irrelevant. It’s a natural process.

I don’t get what you are saying. You said this:

" the act of causing something to exist that doesn’t naturally exist and sustaining it in existence cannot be a natural process"

First of all, the statement doesn’t make sense logically. There’s double negatives and contradictory phrases.

But I think you are trying to say that if something does NOT exist, the only way it can come into existence is by an ‘intelligent actor’. Well, that statement is circular in and of itself (the definition of intelligence therefore is that which brings something into existence).

Hawking radiation is effectively the spontaneous creation of a particle. Particles are actually created spontaneously all the time, but they almost always annihilate each other. When these particles are created near a black hole, one ‘survives’, the other does not.
Either Hawking radiation violates your principle, OR it is not a natural process, OR an intelligent force is controls and effects the process of Hawking Radiation. None of which are positions that support your premise.

 

[STT]

This does not make sense to me, and neither does the idea that chance is a cause of a things existence.

This may be true, but it is irrelevant to the claim that chance is either a cause or a real property of something. This is just an idea you have which you are using to explain “ Particles comes out randomly from an electric gun when you reduce the flow of electrons. ”

If you accept the experiment then it means that the flow of electron is random, or it happens by chance.

 

[IWantGod]

First of all, the statement doesn’t make sense logically. There’s double negatives and contradictory phrases.

Prove it, otherwise i will not address your argument.

 

[IWantGod]

or it happens by chance.

Something happening by chance is not the same thing as chance causing something to exist.

 

[Wesrock]

You just implied that Aquinas would not agree that the brain is responsible for higher abstract thought. I get it. So, you want to divide consciousness between the higher abstraction given by the soul from a purported lower level fish like consciousness created by the brain. Then, how come our brain organ is magnitudes more complex than a fish brain?

Because it does far more complex stuff than fish brains, from higher level emotions and face recognition to just general computational processing ability and sense of unity of self.

 

[STT]

Something happening by chance is not the same thing as chance causing something to exist.

I didn’t say so. I said that chance is a property of matter.

 

[IWantGod]

Occam’s Razor says that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.

So can you show that a duality of some kind is not necessary? Because essentially all you are really saying is that moving parts are all that is necessary to have intentionality. Since that doesn’t make sense, i think you can see why some people feel it necessary to infer some kind of dualism.

 

[IWantGod]

Why does consciousness caused by the brain not make sense? It is in fact what happens.

What do you mean by consciousness? That we have a sensory awareness of our environment?

To me, that is not the root of the mind body problem. It is the fact that intentionality cannot be the end result of blind natural processes that are intrinsically devoid of intention. Natural processes are not acting for a rational end, they are not reasoning. Therefore it makes no sense to reduce the intention of an intellect to moving electrons as it’s ultimate cause.

It’s just an explanation devoid of any true explanatory value serving no purpose other than to preserve a materialistic representation of a person.

 

[STT]

Consciousness is moving electrons in the brain.

Moving electrons in the brain produce qualia which this can be experienced by mind. Electrons motion cannot create an entity, so called mind.

 

[IWantGod]

Consciousness is a derivative reality created by brain circuitry, relays and electro-chemical structures.

What does that mean?

 

[IWantGod]

Natural processes in consciousness can certainly reason.

Natural processes in consciousness?

If the brain is all you are, then you are essentially saying that your power of intention is the result of blind natural processes alone.

 

[John_Martin]

Occam’s Razor says that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. You have posited 2 entities necessary for brain patterns, i.e. the soul and the brain. I have posited only 1 entity necessary for brain patterns, i.e. the brain. Clearly, Occam’s Razor disfavors your solution. The soul and God are very different. God is uncaused and does not change. The soul is caused and does change. This whole concept of what you call the “Now” sounds like total fiction to me.

You have posited millions, if not billions, of entities (brain patterns) required to “cause consciousness”, where I have said “One”, the soul (and the soul manifests its consciousness to material reality by moving the brain to have patterns for manifestation in the material world, which it will not do when it leaves the body upon the bodies failure to any longer be amenable to animation).
Millions of brain patterns required or one soul being conscious - it seems simple enough to say which is simpler, unless by simple you mean you have to be able to touch it as material reality.

Clearly, Occam’s Razor disfavors your personal solution, whereas from Greek Philosophers to Catholic Scholars, simple refers to Soul.

If what I say of “now” is total fiction, you must attribute it to at least one other thinker, St. Augustine; The Confessions, Book XI, has a detailed discussion of this. He also provides the answer to how an unchanging God can work in Time while being unchanging, as I noted in an earlier post.

People who take or speak of “Aquinas 101” rarely apply the effort to actually study (under) St. Thomas, or likewise St. Augustine or Aristotle, both highly regarded as authorities of understanding truth by St. Thomas. All the answers are there to make full sense “simply” by being the student of these teachers. Gotta read them to learn from them, rather than read about them to analyze them (the latter is not a student and does not learn).

 

[IWantGod]

It means that consciousness is a reality or experience of the world which is not a direct experience of the objective outside world, but a created experience derived from sensory (name removed by moderator)ut from the objective outside world.

And what does that tell us about the power of intentionality or rational thought?

 

[IWantGod]

All ideas in a human are a derivative reality.

So we create ideas out of our experiences. So what?

It tells us that intentionality and rational thought are derivative realities.

What does that mean?