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Author | Topic: My problem with evolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
robinrohan Inactive Member |
Evolution is a fact. But I do not understand how matter can create mind. Is the phenomenon of "mind"(in the sense of self-awareness) a sudden threshold after the accumulation of a certain number and kind of brain cells, or is the process a gradual awakening? And what precisely is the relationship between the physical actions of the brain to a "thought"? One is physical, the other mental--two very different things unless mentality or physicality is a sort of illusion.
Mind is a synonym for spirit. This is why there are religions in the world. The mind is the spirit-world.
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Zhimbo Member (Idle past 6040 days) Posts: 571 From: New Hampshire, USA Joined: |
posting mistake...shared computer!
[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 11-17-2002]
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I don't think that most people would agree with you. I think most people think that the spirit is something separate from the mind.
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TechnoCore Inactive Member |
Ahh this drives me crazy, i've been thinking alot of it.
It's sitting next to Decartes old saying.. "i think therefore i am" (Or i think he said "i doubt, therefor i am") Of all things we can come up with in science this is the only thing anyone can be truly certain of. And at the same time the "doubt" or self-awareness is the one thing we (now) cannot even begin to explain. It is almost like the "soul" problem of christianity. How can we have a soul, separated from matter, and still be influenced by it ? It is impossible. And if it isn't completly separated we should be able to measure it's quantities, which then makes it no soul. If it is completly separated from matter, it becomes pointless.Since how does then the soul connect to the "me" in my brain ? If consiousness arises from higher forms of information complexity, like nerv-clusters how can it influese the nerves themselves ? I tend to believe that it has to be a gradual awakening... that allmost all forms of life has some kind of awareness... even if it is just pain and joy. Still... the simplest form of self-replicating molecule can't have it. Or can it ? If there is a first level of complexity where feelings arise, maybe that could be found, if a lot of effort were put into it. Maybe there is some kind of measurable quantity that changes when a selfreplicating system goes from 100 to 101 atoms ? Sounds unlikly but... grrrrr Maybe consiousness sits in everthing. In the matter itself. Uhu.In the structure of the universe. I generally don't believe things like that. But in this issue i don't know what to think. //TechnoCore
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5061 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
As far as I know it is the other way around. At least until someone can tell authortiatively that one can compute around any "black" particle Newton defined in the Opticks and then it would not be clear what created what. Seems like with Democritus and the current atomism it is MIND (Anaxagors) that created matter (nuclear bomb) but if a Chinese poster knows otherwise, well, let me, western electric, etc know.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Some very good responses.
As regards "spirit" and "mind." I say that mind is a synonym for spirit because if not, there is no evidence of spirit. In order for religious belief to make any sense, we have to be able to imagine minds without bodies. Well, at least we know we have a mind, but to have this other category called "sprit" which is supposed to be something different from mind requires an additional leap of faith. We want to take as few leaps as possible. If mind created matter, that means there's a God. If matter created mind, I suppose that means there's no God unless God is something "emergent." Evolution suggests that brains when they get complex enough somehow produce "thoughts." But what does complexity have to do with being self-aware? It's like we've made a sudden transformation from the quantitative to the qualititative. 2 + 2 + 3=hate.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
As to the analogy of hardware/sorftware to brain/mind, the problem with that analogy is that software is physical.
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John Inactive Member |
quote: Is it? That is an interesting way to look at a collection of electrical impulses. I'd be interested if you expand on this. ------------------http://www.hells-handmaiden.com
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5901 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
This is an interesting question. Before offering an answer, however, I'd like to ask you for your definition of two terms: "mind" and "spirit". You seem to be defining mind as "self-awareness". Is this correct? You have not, however, made a stab at defining what you mean by spirit. I'd appreciate a clarification.
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Karl Inactive Member |
quote: Not necessarily; at least not human ones. The Christian doctrine has always been that we will be resurrected into new physical bodies. If mind/soul is an emergent property of the brain, then this would make perfect sense.
quote: If it's quite seperate from any human soul/mind, as I've suggested, then it's not science's concern. It may take a leap of faith, but religion is about faith.
quote: Why? Nothing wrong with well supported leaps. We need to decide whether this is well supported. That may be a subjective judgement.
quote: Or some other mind.
quote: Not at all. You're assuming that if our minds are emergent, God's has to be. Why do you assume that? What if God decreed that our minds would be the emergent property of a naturally occuring brain?
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TheDanish Inactive Member |
quote: Indeed. Maybe the proper analogy would be "brain:mind::instruction register:instruction pointer execution." Doesn't quite have the same ring, but it works.
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Rationalist Inactive Member |
quote: Hate the "word" is a symbol that is stored in your speech centers. If you look at a detailed MRI, you can probably see roughly where the nerve firing occurs for this pattern. A slice and reconstruct (if it were technically possible today) would probably be able to trace the particular set of neurons and their synaptic weights and connections which implement the "hate" wiring. The feeling of "hate" comes from the lower parts of the reptilian brain, and these connections seem to influence a lot of the firing of the rest of the brain. These basal reptilian responses coming from these structures are where we find our strongest emotions and motivations. And 104 + 97 + 116 + 101 = "hate". The fact that this sequence of numbers also form the word "hate" in ASCII code is an emergent property of the pattern, just as the feeling of hate is an emergent property of the circuitry in your thalmus.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Rationalist, I feel like you are giving me a good answer here, but I don't quite get it. My main problem is, how does the physical become the mental? Or are you suggesting that those two categories--the physical and the mental--are misleading? "circuitry in the brain" is something physical--or sounds like it to me. A "thought" is very different-- or maybe not?
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
I think there's some confusion about the word "emergent." When I said
that if matter created mind, that means there's no God, I was refering to the Big Bang and evolution--at the back of it all, if there's a God, then there is a mind (God's mind). If not, it is an automatic development that just happens. When I used the word "emergent" I was thinking of Bergson and such people--creative evolution--God is developing himself, so to speak, and consciousness (people) are the spearhead of God's emergent development. So God is "emerging." I'm not sure how you are using this word. Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Quetzal, what I am saying is that "mind" and "spirit" are the same thing. We know what mind is--we've got one--but if spirit is something different, then there's no evidence that there is any such thing as spirit. "Mind" means self-awareness, the ability to imagine, the process of logic, memory--the usual qualities we associate with "mind." Now mind is something quite different from the physical, or at least appears to be. Thoughts are no doubt events, but they are very peculiar events. For one thing, they are always "about" something. Objects are not "about" anything until a mind comes along and invests them with significance.
The only thing we know of that is not physical, the only other type of reality--is "mind." That is the only evidence of the spirit-world.
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