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Just_Lurking
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Thanks for the recommendation - I’ll take a look at it.
The problem consciousness poses for the old materialist paradigm
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tonyrey
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Evolution is compatible with Design but materialism and determinism are definitely incompatible with free will and with the belief that we are made in God’s image.
His reasoning is mathematical but the theory that chemical compounds organized themselves into neural networks is still materialistic…
Your belief reinforces my impression that you interpret God as a Creator who takes no further part in the proceedings - apart from revelation and the Incarnation - because all the rest is in principle mathematically and scientifically explicable.
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Just_Lurking
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God definitely takes part in day to day happenings - that’s the whole point of prayer. However, I don’t have any religious dogma that dictates the mechanism of how God does takes part, and whether it must of necessity be non-scientifically explainable.
Honestly, many of the proclamations in this forum remind me of the people in the middle ages who insisted as a point of religious dogma that the plague was not spread by unclean rodents, because that belief takes God out of the picture. Sorry, I disagree.
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hatsoff
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Oh, I didn’t see you were a mathematician. I’m a student, myself.
I have two stumpers to throw at you, if you’re game. One is a coset intersection proof, and the other deals with principal ideals in boolean algebras. Both problems have been troubling me for some time, now, and I’d appreciate some (name removed by moderator)ut.
mathhelpforum.com/math-help/linear-abstract-algebra/125379-intersection-cosets-different-subgroups.html
mathhelpforum.com/math-help/discrete-mathematics-set-theory-logic/124457-prove-every-ideal-boolean-algebra-b-principal-iff-b-finite.html
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tonyrey
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I believe that God works through physical laws and that there is an element of chance in the outcome of events - as in the case of disasters like the Haiti earthquake - but how do we resemble God if the mind can be explained entirely in terms of brain activity?
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warpspeedpetey
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after reading the mathematical experience, i can see why you feel this way. as a metaphysician, i wanted to get into a mathematicians head for the same reason.
metaphysics, isnt a system of reasoning. its field of study. mathematics is both a field of study and a system of reasoning.
science is limited to the physically obserable, the mechanistic. mathematics isnt limited by the physical. its limited by our understanding of logic.
metaphysics isnt limited by either the physical, or our understanding of logic. as a result, it has neither the mechanical utility of science nor the logical precision of mathematics.
so what use is it? that very amorphous nature allows it to handle concepts that are not based solely in the physical, or in our understanding of logic. it admits that on the highest scale neither our physical experience nor our understanding may be sufficient to build a detailed map of our ultimate reality. it is thinking in systems, not in specifics of those systems.
ergo, while science seeks truth by the standard of the observable, and mathematics seeks truth by the standards of logic. metaphysics realizes that we can offer no “proof” of truth because all “proof” depends on artificial standards. at the highest frame of reference, those artificial standards are incapable of grasping the entirety of truth. this is of course just my opinion after investigating the matter.
not to be contrarian, i dont think that is how its going to turn out. here is why.
free will, what makes us conscious, is incompatible with both a deterministic, or indeterministic universe.
so while it is conceivable that there may someday be a mathematical expostion. there cannot be a scientific one. science can only handle mechanistic reasoning, physically observable data. its is the most popular but the least useful of the disciplines.
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Just_Lurking
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For me, I’ve always found that understanding how things work makes them more wondrous, not less. So, if the mind can be explained entirely in terms of brain activity, man is still a wondrous creature, and the brain is even more an amazing example of God’s creation.
We resemble God in that we have the ability to make choices, and the responsibility to make them morally.
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Just_Lurking
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Thanks for your explanation. It gives me a very good insight into the “metaphysical experience”, even if I am still like Mary (of Mary’s problem fame).
I don’t think science can study the soul, but I don’t see any reason why science can’t study consciousness. I guess the future will determine which of us is correct!
BTW, here is an interesting discussion with John Searle on philosophy vs. science. (There are also discussions about many things including consciousness with David Chalmers on that site, for those who are interested.)
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warpspeedpetey
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personally, i think free will itself is consciousness. then again, i do my best thinking while i play the ukulele, so what do i know?
groovy.
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Quid_estVeritas
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Good ol’ John Searle of the “Chinese Room Argument”
I like that argument, it shows why computers as we presently have them, could never develop any quality of “understanding”, no matter how fast they get, or how big they get, or how detailed their programs get. It’s all just blind symbol manipulation to the computer, it never “understands” any of the answers it spits out. But the argument didn’t make it into the O.P. of the thread because it merely shows that present digital computers could never “understand”, it doesn’t show that some other presently unthought of type of machine couldn’t be constructed with the ability to understand. Still a pretty cool argument, first time I heard of it was in Penrose’s just mentioned The Emperor’s New Mind
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warpspeedpetey
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this is why i think that free will is intimately related too, if not the actual process of ,consciousness. if you are only operating from programming, with no volition, there is no “you”. the i, in cogito ergo sum, seems to requires volition. there is an argument in there somewhere!
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Quid_estVeritas
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“cogito ergo sum”? i.e. René Descartes
“volition”? i.e. William James
you should read some of the papers from my favorite quantum physicist, Henry Stapp; Quantum Interactive Dualism,
Mental Causation
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warpspeedpetey
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yup
just the regular word.
education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/volition
The act or an instance of making a conscious choice or decision.
ill check them out.
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tonyrey
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The problem arises that the brain’s activity is caused by physical events and its “choices” are determined by those events. How can a biological machine be responsible for what it does?
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Quid_estVeritas
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so I guess you don’t believe in Free Will?
the whole point of this thread is that “mind” is not equal to the matter of the brain. I just linked to a couple of Henry Stapp’s papers a couple of posts ago, here’s one actually titled The mind is not what the brain does (it’s in Word instead of pdf, but if you want to download in you can trust it, it’s on the University of California Berkeley Lab website)
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Just_Lurking
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I hold my dog responsible for the choices he makes. If he chooses to go potty on the carpet, he gets spanked. If he chooses to go potty outside, he gets rewarded.
Are you saying that I am acting incorrectly by doing so, because my dog doesn’t have a rational soul?
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Just_Lurking
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I think tonyrey is wondering how I can believe in Free Will when I don’t accept the rest of his metaphysical framework.
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Quid_estVeritas
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The whole argument against Free Will is based on classical physics, we naively believed we understood *exactly *how the laws of the universe worked and that they left no room for Free Will, we had men like Pierre Laplace stating they had “no need of that hypothesis” (God being the “hypothesis”) because his simple deterministic world left both God and men’s Free Will out. Well we know now classical physics is just an approximation of the workings of the world, quantum physics does leave room for Free Will, and interpretations of quantum physics like the Orthodox version first proposed by giants like John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner actually *require *a consciousness to interact with the evolving wavefunction. We don’t know if quantum physics is the final word, what we should know after the mistakes of the past is that it’s naive to believe we understand ALL the laws of the universe and that they leave no room for Free Will in human minds.
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tonyrey
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Not at all! You are training your dog, not punishing him because he did something morally wrong. Even small children have a sense of fair play without ever having been taught about equality. Animals have more understanding than we credit them for but they live at the instinctive level and according to the way they have been trained - as any one who has seen wild dogs hunting realises full well. They lack free will and moral responsibility because they have no concept of evil and no power of self-control. Their nobility lies elsewhere - in their natural qualities which often put us to shame!
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tonyrey
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I do believe in Free Will! I am arguing that it is incompatible with materialism.
Many thanks for the reference. I’ve researched, discussed and written about this subject many times but I always welcome new ideas.
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