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Zundrah
Guest
In a sense, we are, since you and only you will decide how you feel about our words and appearances.
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T
tonyrey
Guest
T
tonyrey
Guest
Only if you believe thoughts are no more than electrical impulses!
T
tonyrey
Guest
As consciousness is our primary datum there is no reason to believe it is a secondary product!
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GEddie
Guest
Thought is more than electrical impulse, but cannot exist without it, therefore needs your head to hold it together. In the same way that music is “more” than sonic vibration, but won’t travel in a vacuum, or a work of art is “more” than colored chemicals on fabric, but can’t be appreciated in total darkness.Only if you believe thoughts are no more than electrical impulses!
ICXC NIKA
J
Julia_Mae
Guest
Science can’t even define consciousness, they can only describe symptoms of it.
And what makes you think matter is unconscious?
J
Julia_Mae
Guest
Again, not demonstrable. Yet, there is evidence that consciousness exists without any electrical impulse.
G
GEddie
Guest
Please elaborate.
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Sair
Guest
Philosophy has great potential to be useful - insofar as it can inform our actions - but also great potential to be mere navel-gazing. I’m sure Hamlet would qualify as a philosopher, but he spent so much time thinking that he failed to act
Ah, yes - the failure of solipsism to make any difference to the world in general.
I learned a great deal about life, love and happiness from observing and interacting with my dog. It’s very hard for us, as forward-thinking animals, to live in the moment and appreciate life in small, immediate doses - but it is possible. And when you achieve it, the effect is, I have to say, sublime. It’s only brief, usually, before our awareness of time and the future intrude yet again, but it’s worth the effort.
Can we be aware of our own existence without deliberately thinking? In short bursts, it has been my experience that we can be so, even as adults. Emotion is prior to thought, both in terms of our evolutionary development and our growth from infancy to adulthood. We feel before we have the capacity to frame any conscious thought - unless we somehow languished in nonexistence until our brains matured to self-consciousness.
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Sair
Guest
One of the great projects of scientific study in our times is the elucidation of consciousness - what it is, exactly, and how it works.
I think the assumption that matter - that is, atoms and subatomic particles - are unconscious is simply the determined insistence of those who want to believe that consciousness and intelligence can only arise from some special, supernatural substance/force/magic/divine intervention/whatever independent of matter and energy as currently understood by science.
I see two problems with this approach - firstly, a single water molecule is no more ‘wet’ than a single nerve cell could be called ‘conscious’. Properties and capacities may arise from collective, interactive arrangements of matter that could not arise from single particles.
Secondly, there is much about ‘matter’ that we don’t yet know, much less understand. It seems premature to simply assume that matter and energy could not give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness, and to simply give up hope that scientific inquiry will one day explain it. The latter approach appears, to me at least, to be an artificially-erected bulwark against allowing for the possibility that the universe may ultimately be godless.
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Julia_Mae
Guest
Well, as some of us are possessed of certain knowledge that the Universe if not ultimately Godless and that consciousness of self is not dependent on matter (a word which, when used in scientific terms, always includes energy) and have suggested science is already explaining it, I can’t see anyone, anywhere who has ever suggested that consciousness will be unexplainable.
Perhaps you know someone?
However, I do know that when it is explained it won’t fit with any misconceptions people have about arising from chemical interactions in the brain, unless one defines consciousness in some limited way such as the ability of the body to interact willfully with the environment.
M
MindOverMatter2
Guest
Metaphysical Naturalism of the gaps.
You evidently don’t understand the arguments. Science cannot identify a sufficient cause of freewill. It merely identifies the conditions in which a particular behavior or quality is actual. A scientific explanation, in so far as it is simply a description of events, in no way necessarily implies that one can rationally explain why particular qualities or behavior arise purely in relation to physical constituents or demonstrate that such qualities arise because of physics alone. Neither is a scientific explanation necessarily the be all and end all of explaining why a particular phenomena is occurring. You clearly don’t understand the epistemological limitations of science.
One is not saying that there cannot be a scientific explanation for the Human Brain in terms of how it processes thoughts. But what one would say is that any such theory would not be a full or sufficient explanation of what a rational mind is or what its sufficient cause is. We already know that there is a correlation between mental events and the physical organ we call a brain. But we cannot make rational sense of a free will and rational thinking if we reduce these qualities to the blind non-rational nature of its physical constituents as being the “sufficient cause” rather than something the intellect interacts with and visa versa.
Your failure to see this as a real philosophical problem rather than simply a scientific issue, is surely based upon your bias as a metaphysical naturalist.
Z
Zundrah
Guest
That’s good insight.Philosophy has great potential to be useful - insofar as it can inform our actions - but also great potential to be mere navel-gazing. I’m sure Hamlet would qualify as a philosopher, but he spent so much time thinking that he failed to act
Ah, yes - the failure of solipsism to make any difference to the world in general.
I learned a great deal about life, love and happiness from observing and interacting with my dog. It’s very hard for us, as forward-thinking animals, to live in the moment and appreciate life in small, immediate doses - but it is possible. And when you achieve it, the effect is, I have to say, sublime. It’s only brief, usually, before our awareness of time and the future intrude yet again, but it’s worth the effort.
Can we be aware of our own existence without deliberately thinking? In short bursts, it has been my experience that we can be so, even as adults. Emotion is prior to thought, both in terms of our evolutionary development and our growth from infancy to adulthood. We feel before we have the capacity to frame any conscious thought - unless we somehow languished in nonexistence until our brains matured to self-consciousness.
What’s the difference between psychology and philosophy? That philosophy is theory/ ponder?
G
GEddie
Guest
Psychology is “the study of the [human] mind” (literally “soul” – psyche)
Philosophy is “the love of wisdom” where “wisdom” is often taken to mean “somebody’s ideas about life”.
It’s all Greek to me
Although the Greek word for mind is “nous”, we say psychology and not noology because historically, it was believed that thoughts and feelings arise from the human being’s soul.
Today, psychology uses study of the brain mechanisms as well as the thought processes to work out what is going on under the human forehead.
Philosophers, by contrast, concentrate on abstractions such as beauty and justice, to the extent that some forget entirely that they are human beings at all, IMNAAHO.
ICXC NIKA
Z
Zundrah
Guest
Greek indeed.Psychology is “the study of the [human] mind” (literally “soul” – psyche)
Philosophy is “the love of wisdom” where “wisdom” is often taken to mean “somebody’s ideas about life”.
It’s all Greek to me
Although the Greek word for mind is “nous”, we say psychology and not noology because historically, it was believed that thoughts and feelings arise from the human being’s soul.
Today, psychology uses study of the brain mechanisms as well as the thought processes to work out what is going on under the human forehead.
Philosophers, by contrast, concentrate on abstractions such as beauty and justice, to the extent that some forget entirely that they are human beings at all, IMNAAHO.
ICXC NIKA
It strikes me that philosophy is thinking, while psychology is the studying of thinking.
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GEddie
Guest
If philosophy were only thinking, you would not dislike it so much, as thinking is the one thing we human beings are designed for.
ICXC NIKA
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tonyrey
Guest
In that case spiritual beings cannot think!
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GEddie
Guest
I don’t claim to know what “pure spirits” can do; I am not one (thank God!) and if, as standard theology predicts, I have to become one, that is a grievous PUNISHMENT.
I do know that for HUMAN BEINGS, you can’t have the thoughts without the electrical energy.
ICXC NIKA
T
tonyrey
Guest
And when we die do we no longer have thoughts?
Z
Zundrah
Guest
I’m starting to see Shintoism in here now.
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