We cannot be created since consciousness is irreducible and primary

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Bahman

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There are two proof for this one is strong and the other is weak as following:

Consciousness is irreducible:
  1. Consciousness is the ability to experience and affect other mental states
  2. The experience is unitary meaning that it cannot be decomposed
  3. Lets assume that consciousness is reducible
  4. This means that there are certain beings that consciousness is derived from
  5. This means that the act experience is divisible
  6. (2) and (5) contradict each other since consciousness is not reducible
  7. What is not irreducible is not a thing but a being
  8. This means that consciousness does not need anything to exist
  9. This means that consciousness cannot be created
Consciousness is primary:
  1. Consciousness is the ability to experience and affect other mental states
  2. The ability to affect other mental states must be primary meaning that nothing can cause it
  3. Lets assume that the consciousness is not primary
  4. This means that we fall in trap of causality hence anything is followed by its cause
  5. This means that there is no role for consciousness
  6. We know that we can act consciously
  7. From (5) and (6) we can deduce that consciousness is primary
  8. This means that what is primary by definition doesn’t need any cause
  9. Consciousness does not need any creator
 
I agree. There is no need for a creator when the proper conditions exist to allow for sentient life to develop. Of course, some will argue that those conditions were created,…but that’s another topic.
 
oldcelt said:
I agree. There is no need for a creator when the proper conditions exist to allow for sentient life to develop. Of course, some will argue that those conditions were created,…but that’s another topic.
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Naturally, sentient life developed in non-human animals over centuries. Today, Border Collies are a good example of highly developed sentience.
 
Bahman said:
There are two proof for this one is strong and the other is weak as following:

Consciousness is irreducible:
  1. Consciousness is the ability to experience and affect other mental states
  2. The experience is unitary meaning that it cannot be decomposed
  3. Lets assume that consciousness is reducible
  4. This means that there are certain beings that consciousness is derived from
  5. This means that the act experience is divisible
  6. (2) and (5) contradict each other since consciousness is not reducible
  7. What is not irreducible is not a thing but a being
  8. This means that consciousness does not need anything to exist
  9. This means that consciousness cannot be created
Consciousness is primary:
  1. Consciousness is the ability to experience and affect other mental states
  2. The ability to affect other mental states must be primary meaning that nothing can cause it
  3. Lets assume that the consciousness is not primary
  4. This means that we fall in trap of causality hence anything is followed by its cause
  5. This means that there is no role for consciousness
  6. We know that we can act consciously
  7. From (5) and (6) we can deduce that consciousness is primary
  8. This means that what is primary by definition doesn’t need any cause
  9. Consciousness does not need any creator
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But of course you know, none of this proves that our consciousness were not created. 👍
 
Consciousness, as a movement in material reality (the brain), is an effect of the will as informed by the intellect, which two are in the soul, a spiritual form united to the body.

Consciousness, being a movement within a being (human), thus an accident of a specific human, cannot be itself irreducible if the human is reducible.

Consciousness, being a movement, is in movement, therefore caused toward its movement’s goal, yet not being its own cause, it is caused by some other.
 
Consciousness, at least in human life, may not be reducible, but it remains contingent.

There is no (human) consciousness without a living human head and body.

ICXC NIKA
 
Hmm. I’m fairly certain that I am conscious. I’m almost certain that there was a time when I did not exist. The consciousness that is me was ‘created’, if by the term ‘created’ you mean caused to come into existence.

So I might refute this ‘proof’ (both of them) by saying “Ta-daah! Here I am.”

Or, by 'We cannot be created" did you mean something more specific? If so, please elaborate.
 
Bahman said:
2) The experience is unitary meaning that it cannot be decomposed
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I don’t agree with this. The concept of consciousness can be decomposed. Depending of course on your working definition of the term, ‘consciousness’ may encompass such things as the awareness of self, the ability to experience or to feel, the knowledge of wakefulness, and executive control of the mind. Distinct aspects of the whole. To get to something that cannot be decomposed you’d have to narrow down your definition far far more.

Bahman said:
2) The ability to affect other mental states must be primary meaning that nothing can cause it
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Again, I don’t see the justification for this assertion. The ability to affect other mental states, as a property of consciousness, is ‘caused’ repeatedly by the process of reproduction within species that exhibit consciousness.
 
Tomdstone said:
Can you give an example which can be verified experimentally of consciousness that exists without a brain?
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To the best of my knowledge there does even not exist an experimental method which can verifies consciousness within alive brain. Assigning consciousness as a outcome of brain is a great mistake because how consciousness itself can affect brain if consciousness itself is a by product of brain!?
 
John_Martin said:
Consciousness, as a movement in material reality (the brain), is an effect of the will as informed by the intellect, which two are in the soul, a spiritual form united to the body.
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You don’t need soul when you understand the importance of consciousness hence there is no place for intellect and will as they are consciousness itself.
John_Martin said:
Consciousness, being a movement within a being (human), thus an accident of a specific human, cannot be itself irreducible if the human is reducible.
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Consciousness is beyond human and other beings. It is also not an accident since it is the center of everything.
John_Martin said:
Consciousness, being a movement, is in movement, therefore caused toward its movement’s goal, yet not being its own cause, it is caused by some other.
Click to expand...
Consciousness is the mover and it is not the movement. What move, are feeling, intention, thinking, etc which are controlled by consciousness.
 
GEddie said:
Consciousness, at least in human life, may not be reducible, but it remains contingent.

There is no (human) consciousness without a living human head and body.
ICXC NIKA
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  1. What is not primary cannot be contingent. Please read the second argument.
  2. Do you as Christian believe that you will not have any consciousness after your death!?
 
Nixbits said:
Hmm. I’m fairly certain that I am conscious. I’m almost certain that there was a time when I did not exist. The consciousness that is me was ‘created’, if by the term ‘created’ you mean caused to come into existence.

So I might refute this ‘proof’ (both of them) by saying “Ta-daah! Here I am.”

Or, by 'We cannot be created" did you mean something more specific? If so, please elaborate.
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First, your body cannot cause consciousness and that is consciousness that cause everything. At which point of your life you became consciouses? We don’t develop consciousness at a given moment but accumulative memory of the time when we are able to memorize. Second, by creation I mean to comes into existence out of nothingness by an external agent so called God.
 
Nixbits said:
I don’t agree with this. The concept of consciousness can be decomposed. Depending of course on your working definition of the term, ‘consciousness’ may encompass such things as the awareness of self, the ability to experience or to feel, the knowledge of wakefulness, and executive control of the mind. Distinct aspects of the whole. To get to something that cannot be decomposed you’d have to narrow down your definition far far more.
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Consciousness cannot be decomposed as experience by itself is unitary and cannot be decomposed. How possibly experience can be decomposed? Could you please give me an example?
Nixbits said:
Again, I don’t see the justification for this assertion. The ability to affect other mental states, as a property of consciousness, is ‘caused’ repeatedly by the process of reproduction within species that exhibit consciousness.
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You are mistaken the act memorizing with existence of consciousness. The fact that you are not able to remember the past means that you were not able to memorize things about circumstances around you when you were a little infant. That doesn’t mean that consciousness did not exist when you were a little as without consciousness nothing can change. I have an argument for that which I can present it if you are interested.
 
Bahman said:
  1. What is not primary cannot be contingent. Please read the second argument.
  2. Do you as Christian believe that you will not have any consciousness after your death!?
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  1. Correct, no consciousness as you know it now when you write your replies, or think about what you read - gone - there will be no comparing and contrasting to reach conclusions, which is an activity of the soul / body composite being, and as an activity it is moved by the will as informed by the intellect, therefore caused, and therefore reducible or corruptible. Since consciousness is an activity of a composite being, not being itself, it is not simple, and therefore reducible.
 
Bahman said:
  1. You don’t need soul when you understand the importance of consciousness hence there is no place for intellect and will as they are consciousness itself.
  2. Consciousness is beyond human and other beings. It is also not an accident since it is the center of everything.
  3. Consciousness is the mover and it is not the movement. What move, are feeling, intention, thinking, etc which are controlled by consciousness.
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  1. An assertion you make but fail to prove - whereas soul is well defined and its effects coincide directly with its definition.
  2. An assertion you cannot prove and you have not given evidence of effects matching your assertion
  3. Consciousness moves (changes) and disappears and reappears, if you are speaking of empirical consciousness that is the common understanding of that term. If you have another definition you have neither defined it nor proved it.
 
The human afterlife is dependent upon a bodily resurrection; the nature of the renewed embodiment (pneumatikon soma) being somewhat unspecified Scripturally, but nonetheless indispensable to subserve the cognitive mind; there can be no “thinking nothing.”

Consciousness is the attribute of a fully live body that enables there to be a cognitive mind, but remains contingent on said body’s being alive!

ICXC NIKA.
 
Bahman, I’m trying to understand what you’re asserting here.

Let me break it down a bit. We (human beings?) cannot be created (cannot come into existence out of nothingness by an external agent called God) since (because) consciousness (the ability to experience and affect other mental states) is irreducible (is not able to be reduced or simplified) and primary (and not derived from, caused by, or based on anything else). Is that what you mean?

Is it not true that the ability to experience things (and for those experiences to affect mental states) can be simplified into a set of more or less distinct processes? When a human mind experiences something there will be some combination of things such as perception, thought, emotion, imagination, memory. Below this level there are the actual cognitive processes that take place within the brain.

Here’s a thought experiment: Is it possible to damage your brain in such a way that your emotional responses are removed, but your other capacities remain? Or is it possible to develop a disorder that changes how you perceive things? In these cases the ability to experience has been altered. You still have the ability to experience things, but certain components of yopur former ability to experience have gone. To me this suggests that the ability to experience (as you’ve defined consciousness) is not irreducible. It’s made up of a combination of more specific processes.

Secondly, is it not true that the ability to experience that a human baby has is derived from, caused by and based on the genetic material that the baby inherits from its parents? Another thought experiment: If both parents had a genetic disorder that prevented them from perceiving colours, or feeling empathy or forming long-term memories, then their baby could inherit that limitation. In this case the baby’s impaired ability to experience would be derived from its parents. To me this suggests that the ability to experience is not ‘primary’ as defined above.

If these are not the definitions that you intended then please clarify the terms that you are using.
 
GEddie said:
The human afterlife is dependent upon a bodily resurrection; the nature of the renewed embodiment (pneumatikon soma) being somewhat unspecified Scripturally, but nonetheless indispensable to subserve the cognitive mind; there can be no “thinking nothing.”

Consciousness is the attribute of a fully live body that enables there to be a cognitive mind, but remains contingent on said body’s being alive!

ICXC NIKA.
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100 % correct - in the resurrection as you state. Before the resurrection “said body” must be alive.
I have a feeling he has some other meaning for consciousness that he will try and surprise everyone with.
 
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