No you are the one whole lacks comprehension.

Long string of infantile obscenity removed

This message has been edited by AdminJar, 11-08-2005 08:04 PM

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I believe my redeemer lives

That type of childish talk may be fine within some of the infantile rap music or video games but it is not acceptable in polite company. You WILL NOT repeat that behavior.

Do you understand?

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Guidosoft I thought I had made a good case back in post 23 for the case of matter being necessary to enable consciouness. You did not reply so I will repost it for your convenience. Perhaps you could comment on this with objections relevant to my post. I would enjoy hearing your explanation of this.This message has been edited by sidelined, Wed, 2005-11-09 12:41 AM

I missed what he wrote.Is there any way I can still read it?I'm just curious.

No.

Yes I understand. It is just impossible for me to convey my superiority to these inferior minds. Just kidding lol. Really just kidding. You guys better not reply to this and ATTACK ME AGAIN!Plus, I was NOT in a good mood. I was in a very BAD mood.

So, would you kindly explain to me why written language is not a spatial arangment of atoms allowing for something other than a spatial event?

First of all, written language IS just a spaciall arrangment. Seccond of all, written language doesn't do anything. It just sits there in an arrangment. It is us who actually interpret it from visual information being carried via photons hitting off the paper and coming to our eyes as electomagnetic waves within the visible color spectrim. Then we interpret that visual data. So we UNDERSTAND it, it doesn't understand itself. So, you cannot use that as an example of how a spacial arrangment can account for consciousness.

Guidosoft So if we were to stick a fork into your brain {under anesthetic of course since we do not wish to be cruel} then whip it around so that the spatial arrangement of the atoms that make up the brain are well mixed do you suppose this would have an effect upon yoour consciousness?

Of course it would have an effect on your consciousness since it relies on your brain.Also, if we don't have a soul, then we shouldn't have free will.Can anyone give me a theory on how free will works from a physical materialistic view. And don't give me any quantam randomness crap because that is not free will that is sparatic particles acting totally randomly.BTW, I don't think you would feel it if someone touched your brain. I think I heard that the brain doesn't have pain receptors but I not entirely sure. I think thats why they are able to keep people awake during brain surgery.This message has been edited by Guidosoft, 11-13-2005 06:45 PM

Guidosoft Indeed this is true. It is also the basis for the illusion of self and why we feel as though "we" are located within our skulls. Since the brain has no sensory feedback to itself the brain cannot form a referential location for itself in the way we can for our limbs and thus we feel the notion of a self free from the brain.
I also imagine this is where the notion of a soul seperate from the body originates.

I feel something in my head. I always thought it was my brain. I guess it is not. Will Provine said it was not unusual ense to have a tumor cut out but hurt like double toothpicks after they sewed the top back up and the skin receptors kicked in.

Guidosoft You will be interested to read up on research in this subject for yourself.Check out this website and then come back for a discussionBBC - Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2003 - The Emerging MindI guarantee you will view things differently then

Theres been quite a few things misinterpereted and mispresented here. i'm almost nervous just to reply because i dont feel like re-explaining so many things that you've said that are just incorrect by simple definition. i'll make a simplified attempt to answer your question.for starters, conciousness is a very grey area in science, psychololgy, and even phiolosophy. in college, i had a few concentrations of study, mostly science. because of that, i've learned a very architectural ideolgy of the brain. It's best to think of the brain as a large series of switches, which can be turned off and on by certain events. some events are triggered by external stimuli, some are triggered by internal stimuli, some can even be triggered to other switches opening and closing. What acutally constitues a conciousness can be viewed as a conglomerate of different processes interacting. when you interpret things, your brain uses certian pathways as a reaction. these processes can actually be self actuating, and can even actuate otheres that are also self actuating. This is difficult to explain, but bear with me. a single process contributes to what you'd view as a thought. lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of processes are involved in one thought. conciousness is a result of many different processes actuating both themselves, and others, of which also actuate themselves and others, sometimes even the one that started the whole process chain. This causes a state of constant awareness of many things. youre essentially constantly aware of how your body is positioned, visual cues, auditory cues, physical stimuli, etc. certain processes are associated (again, some can be self propigating) with those cues, and cause you to have certain feelings toward them. this is very complicated, and difficult to just jot down on a computer, i wrote a large thesis on this back in undergrad that i'll try and get on the wed in the next few days. this plays a large role in memory formation, repetition, emotions, etc.to put it shortly, conciousess is awareness of self condition on many levels. both external and internal. this awareness is expressed physically via a switch being "on" or "off". it all comes down to interpretation of sensory cues to electrical information, which is sorted by what we like to call our conciousness. very hard to explain, but on a basic level its very simple; on vs. offThis message has been edited by be LIE ve, 11-13-2005 08:31 PM

Are you implying that if we have free will, then we automatically have a soul? What makes free will seem difficult, is that most people take it as obvious that atoms, and things make of atoms, could not have free will. Rather, they are normally presumed to act in ways described by physical laws.Before we can consider whether we have free will, we must first consider what we are. I attempted to discuss that, starting in Message 39, where I suggested that we are systems of processes. What seems obvious about atoms not having free will does not seem to apply to processes. That doesn't mean that processes have free will, but it at least means that free will is not so obviously ruled out.We also have to consider what we mean by "free will." And there it becomes controversial, because people have very different ideas about what free will is.My own take on the question, is that "free will" is just the name we use for pragmatic choice. Thus we have free will to the extent that we are able to make decisions (I call them judgements) based on how well they will work for us. So I see free will closely tied with our ability to make decisions on a pragmatic basis.Computers, robots, etc, are usually taken as not having free will. Based on what I have suggested above, you can see why. For a computer makes its decision entirely on the basis of truth or falsity. It has no capability of making pragmatic judgements. And no software program can change that. The program can control which truth and falsity conditions are examined, but it cannot act in ways that would correspond to making pragmatic judgements.By contrast, biological system are well equipped for pragmatic judgements. Evolution itself is dependent on the pragmatics of natural selection.