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What is consciousness?

Started by mediumaevum, October 06, 2013, 09:45:11 AM

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Hijiri Byakuren

Quote from: "mediumaevum"I can't/won't.
I'll take that as a concession, in that case.
Speak when you have something to say, not when you have to say something.

Sargon The Grape - My Youtube Channel

Colanth

Quote from: "mediumaevum"
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "mediumaevum"Is it not correct that according to some quantum physicists, everything is one and the same?
No, it's not correct (although some scientifically illiterate science writer may have said that).

QuoteIf everything is just the product of a singularity, why don't we see everything at once?
For the same reason that, even though you and your brother are products of the same parents, you're not the same people.

1) According to a physics book known as The Fabric of the Cosmos the world is like a hologram and time is an illusion. According to Brian Greene, every even that had happened or will happen is just as real as the now/present. That logically follows that everything is the one and the same thing from the same singularity that casts a "picture" on a screen, what we percieve as the universe.
Actually, that doesn't logically follow.

Quote2) Nobody, to my knowledge, has so far answered what precisely causes Quantum Entanglement. Yes, I know that it happens if the photons are placed very close to each other and stuff like that, but it doesn't explain what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" - that they can communicate instantly without regard to the speed of light.
Nor could anyone explain, in 1066 CE, what lightning was.  That didn't make it something that some god created.  "We don't know" is a valid answer in science.

QuoteI say that this can only happen if it is the one and same particle just many places at once.
Remember, "UFO" doesn't stand for "Alien Space Ship" - the first letter stands for "Unknown".  "It can only happen" means that you know what's happening and why. Since we don't, your statement is actually the equivalent of "The only thing I can think of is ...", and that's the fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam - argument from ignorance.  It's not an argument, it's fallacious illogic.

QuoteI suggest that the entire world is made up of one single particle no bigger than the smallest particle in the universe, and that every particle is one and the same different places in time and space. Yes, that's for my account.
You're entitled to your opinion.

QuoteHowever, there is a clue to this proved by the Double Slit Experiment too where an electron can be multiple places at once.
"Appears to be" isn't "is".
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

Colanth

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"For instance, currently there are scientists studying how magnetic fields effect the brain.
Yes, it's been known for more than 100 years that magnetic fields affect electrical flow.

QuoteThere are others who have for years studied the effects different chemicals and molecules have on our brain.  Maybe, if a scientist considered how the magnetic fields influence the chemicals and molecules in our brains
Unless you're talking about ferric materials, they don't.  There's nothing to study.  (Magnetism is a well-understood phenomenon.)

QuoteCan radio waves effect us in yet not understood ways?
How radio waves affect us IS understood.  There's no mysterious something lurking there that we haven't discovered yet. Electromagnetic radiation is understood well-enough to be boring.

QuoteI don't think we should rule anything out as far as the functioning of the brain.  Except God.
And all other forms of woo.

QuoteYes, I agree God should be ruled out.  God should not be in any of the equations when exploring the brain.  There is no God, so God cannot cause anything to happen in our brains.
And there is no "soul" - in the commonly accepted meaning, something that can transcend death - so there's no reason to study it.

Emotions?  Sure, and they ARE being studied.  But not as what a Christian would call a soul.

QuoteBut, maybe by thinking of God, we cause chemical and electrical changes in our brains.  That sounds like an interesting study, which I think arguably has been done.
Of course we do.  By thinking - it doesn't matter about what - we cause electrical and chemical changes in our brains.  That's been studied and it's being studied.  But not as "If we think about God it's different", or "there's this "soul" that survives our death".

BTW, the definition of soul, if you care at all about etymology, is "breath".
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

Colanth

Quote from: "mediumaevum"If we had to find scientific evidence for everything, reporting a random failure of a laptop would not lead anyone to investigate the failure, let alone give you money back.
I am not saying this applies for "ghosts" or "souls" etc. I am just pointing out the possibility that IF in case they exist, they are so random that they cannot be testet, the same way you cannot reproduce a random error in machines.
Actually you can, since seemingly-random errors aren't random.  (The possibility of a cosmic ray hitting a RAM cell on Earth at just the right time to cause an error is so remote that, as a species that will eventually become extinct, we don't have to consider it.)

Tell a programmer that "random error" can't be tested, and he may hurt himself laughing.  (Or wishing.)

But if everyone had a soul, they wouldn't be rare - there would be at least 7 billion of them wandering around.

QuoteThe only reason we can test machines and actually say they have a randomly occuring error, is because we investigate them throughly.
But not as in "Let's see if we can find a soul".  We investigate the EVIDENCE thoroughly.  When it comes to the "soul", there's no evidence to investigate.

QuoteI doubt people with/without supposedly "psychic" abilities would like to stay for a year or more with electrodes placed on their heads or whatever is required of them to prove them right.
Pure chance would get it right much more often than that.  If "psychic ability" allows you to get it right once a year, throwing darts is a much better way.  (If I thought I had actual psychic ability, I'd sit in Randi's lab for a year or two.  At worst, that's $500,000/year salary.  Even 4 years wouldn't be minimum wage.)  Psychic ability would be a little more than guessing right every year or so.  It would be like seeing - either you can or you can't.  If someone holds a red card up, either I see red or I don't.  I don't see different colors each time, and only once a year or two see red.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

Colanth

Quote from: "mediumaevum"
Quote from: "Plu"
Quote from: "mediumaevum"If we had to find scientific evidence for everything, reporting a random failure of a laptop would not lead anyone to investigate the failure, let alone give you money back.

If you did not have to give scientific evidence for random laptop failures, you could walk into a store, say "my laptop is broken" and receive a new one without even having to prove you even own a laptop.

Of course you have to give scientific evidence that your laptop is broken. Something like actually bringing in the laptop, showing what's damaged, and proving that you've bought it from those people.

You tell them the specific error of the laptop, but unlike atheists, the laptop sellers are at least offering the buyer to investigate the issue for a couple of weeks/months.
Because there's actual evidence that there's a laptop, there's actual evidence that you bought it from them and there's actual evidence that it's not working.

Psychic claims are like walking into a pet shop, claiming that you bought a time machine from them, it failed to come back from the future, and demanding that they investigate your claim.  There's never been any evidence of psychic ability, no claimant is showing any, yet they're demanding that you investigate their claim.

I claim that you owe me $10,000.  When can I expect to see payment?

QuoteIf I say I have encountered a ghost, you would not consider what I say at all.
If you present evidence that a ghost exists, we would.

QuoteAt least the seller in the store would listen to me what I have to say about the error in my laptop.
Only if you show evidence that there is a laptop.

QuoteMillions of people around the globe report sightings of supposedly paranormal phenomena.
Yet not one of them, ever, has presented the slightest shred of actual evidence.

QuoteWhile it certainly does not tell us that there is indeed something spooky happening, it does tell us that there is something that needs to be investigated.
It has been.  And it's been found that people can be mistaken, that people make things up and that people are less than completely sane.  NO scientific investigation has EVER found ANY evidence of ANY paranormal activity.  Not even as a side-effect in an investigation of something else.

QuoteThe millions or billions of cool cash that some people offer to individuals for proving something paranormal, with scientific experiments, help little to nothing, not because the paranormal doesn't exist, but because the paranormal is like a random "failure in a laptop: It can't be reproduced by command.
"Random" failures in laptops CAN be reproduced on command - and when the failure is understood well enough to reproduce it, that's when it gets fixed.

But if the paranormal is truly random (and as rare as you claim), it's not all that interesting, because there's no practical use for it.  So what if some guy can get a glimpse of which cards some other guy is holding once in a decade?  Who cares?  I can do better than that by pure guess.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

Colanth

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Plu wrote in part:
QuoteBut if someone goes to a scientist and says "maybe the brain works because of the soul", the only reasonable scientific answer to that is "piss off until you convert your nonsense into something we can actually test".
Or they could ask, "What do you mean when you say the word soul?"
You said that you use very loose definitions.  Scientists don't.

It's like asking a fisherman whether he caught any birds today - and by birds you mean fish.

You could ask a scientist to investigate emotions.  Oh, they already do.

QuoteThen try to figure out if what the "soul" is, is testable or not.
We have your definition - emotions.  They exist.

Next?

QuoteTrue, it may just be nonsense.  But, on the chance that the energies for which a person may describe a "soul" could lead to something, it would be good to hear the person out.
It would be much better if the person used the same language everyone else did.

QuoteWhen Luigi Aloisio Galvani touched a dead frog's leg with an electrical lead and it twitched, consider how it was thought of back when he first did it.  It was no doubt considered nonsense because everyone knew muscles were controlled hydraulically.
There was evidence that there was a frog's leg.  There was an observation that it twitched.

There's never been any evidence of the common meaning of "soul".

QuoteThe trouble with that analogy is, we couldn't even come up with a test for the paranormal, even if it was a regularly occurring phenomenon.
Sure we can.  The test would depend on the claim but if, for example, someone claimed telekinetic ability, we could test for that.  Or if he claimed to be able to see at a distance, and could choose where he was seeing, we could test for that.

The problem with all these claims is that when they fail, we get excuses like "too many people were projecting negative energy", or "it doesn't work if it's being measured".

QuoteThat being said, we could come up with psychological tests of for the people saying they have witnessed paranormal events.  Might yield some interesting results.
More interesting would be to test people who claim paranormal ability.  Millions of people can claim (and have claimed) to see things that couldn't have occurred.  Human beings have the ability - proved many times - of making things up.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

Colanth

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"As far as the paranormal phenomenon is concerned, I came up with an evolutionary answer.  Ghosts and such are scary.  When people get scared they get horny.  Which is why dates to amusement parks with roller coasters are so popular.  Maybe paranormal phenomenon caused those "witnessing" them, to mate more than those who didn't witness them.  A little off topic, but it does kind of explain something about our consciousness.
Humans seek reasons.  Humans who don't have enough knowledge to actually seek reasons make up reasons.  (We KNOW this is true.)

Don't look for complex answers when a simple answer suffices.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

LikelyToBreak

Colanth, I was going to answer your comments one by one then realized, I already have twice.

There are still people studying how different energies affect humans, so at least some scientists are convinced we don't know everything.
//http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/bending-morality-magnetism
//http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/10/001016073704.htm
//[url=http://globalwindenergyimpact.com/2013/02/20/turbines-are-affecting-people-dr-hazel-lynn/]http://globalwindenergyimpact.com/2013/...azel-lynn/[/url]

Sorry I don't speak archaic.  I got my definition from a dictionary.
Soul (noun)
4. the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments.
//http://dictionary.reference.com/

Why do you insist on arguing about the Christian soul, when I have tried to make it clear that is not what I have been talking about?  It seems to me that you are letting your anti-religious feelings and arguments guide your reading.

frosty

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I thought your previous post was more directed toward mediumaevum so I didn't answer.  I hope my explanation of "soul" explains why I don't see it as a gap filler.  It is the consciousness we have as ourselves.  Not the "soul" the angels take care of.  That being said, yes it is a gap filler because we, I don't understand our consciousness as well as would be desired.  I am not suggesting a God given spark of life.

Well, I admire that you admit that you are simply doing what our ancestors did for thousands of years, which is seek a ghostly answer to that which we cannot comprehend/understand. mediumaevum has made an entire thread of unsubstantiated, hyperbolic claims, and even at some times claims that he simply knows something without scientific evidence for his belief, and that scientific evidence is sometimes not needed for asserting claims as a matter of fact, which is absolutely ludicrous.

LikelyToBreak

frosty wrote in part:
QuoteWell, I admire that you admit that you are simply doing what our ancestors did for thousands of years, which is seek a ghostly answer to that which we cannot comprehend/understand.
I was not seeking ghostly answers.  As I said three times before, I define soul as " the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments."  And yes I did mess up on my definition of physical, thinking matter and energy as being separate.  I'm not looking for ghosts.  I am looking for new ways to explore the brain's consciousness.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Icarus

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"frosty wrote in part:
QuoteWell, I admire that you admit that you are simply doing what our ancestors did for thousands of years, which is seek a ghostly answer to that which we cannot comprehend/understand.
I was not seeking ghostly answers.  As I said three times before, I define soul as " the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments."  And yes I did mess up on my definition of physical, thinking matter and energy as being separate.  I'm not looking for ghosts.  I am looking for new ways to explore the brain's consciousness.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Neurochemicals, they exist and there isn't anything soul like about them. You feel them as emotions that are real but you can simulate the experience with drugs. This is being explored as we speak and isn't very new.

frosty

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"frosty wrote in part:
QuoteWell, I admire that you admit that you are simply doing what our ancestors did for thousands of years, which is seek a ghostly answer to that which we cannot comprehend/understand.
I was not seeking ghostly answers.  As I said three times before, I define soul as " the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments."  And yes I did mess up on my definition of physical, thinking matter and energy as being separate.  I'm not looking for ghosts.  I am looking for new ways to explore the brain's consciousness.

Sorry to disappoint you.

What? You didn't disappoint me one iota, don't worry about it. I was referring specifically to the part in bold, and I was also addressing the other guy that started the thread. I see you've cherry picked a definition of 'soul' that suits what you are trying to get across (that's alright; lots of people cherry pick definitions on the Internet), but why do you choose to assign the value of a 'soul' to our emotions? I think you would have gotten your point across a lot better if you chose a different word, regardless of it's many possible "definitions".