MonkeyFire
Well-Known Member
This may be true, but I believe in samsara. So life is a constant and consciousness is omnipresent.
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Any Arguments by which to Conclude that Consciousness Is a Product of Brains?
- Thread starter Nous
- Start date
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
19 pages later and not one single example of intelligence/consciousness existing where a physical brain does not.
Interesting.
Interesting.
I'm unsure what is "profound knowledge"--people sometimes have ideas that turn out to be right. I find it more fruitful to challenge people on the basis of the arguments found in the philosophical literature, such as the fact that a person's consciousness is unified even though consciousness is claimed to somehow arise from the millions of neurons that are active during any given conscious experience.
19 pages and not a single non-fallacious argument that concludes that the various phenomena of consciousness are products of something happening in brains.
How do you propose testing the hypothesis of "consciousness existing where a physical brain does not"? There's plenty of evidence of people having complex, coherent experiences, engaging in logical thought processes, forming memories and having veridical perceptions not gotten through the sense organs during clinical death, when their brains were not functioning: Do Realistic Interpretations of NDEs Imply Violation of the Laws of Physics?
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
NDEs? THATS where you are laying your chips?
Lulz
Lulz
So the evidence of people having complex, coherent experiences, engaging in logical thought processes, forming memories and having veridical perceptions not gotten through the sense organs during clinical death, when their brains were not functioning is too scary for you?
No clue?
siti
Well-Known Member
Show us that it isn't. And you can then proceed to prove that black is white by demanding proof to the contrary and denying it even if it is given - but mind you don't get yourself killed on a zebra crossing in the process. I'm done wasting my time on this topic. You can claim victory if you like - it won't change reality - or (for that matter) what Stapp wrote.
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leibowde84
Veteran Member
Again, you are confused as to what an argument from ignorance is.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proved false (or vice versa).
I am not saying that it is true that the brain is responsible for consciousness. I am merely saying that we don't have enough understanding of the brain to say that it is impossible.
Your argument, on the other hand, is that the brain cannot be responsible for consciousness because there is currently no experimentation, explanation, evidence that demonstrates that it is. That IS an argument from ignorance. You are basing your argument on a lack of evidence that the brain can be responsible for consciousness, hence an "argument from ignorance".
This is, again, an argument from ignorance. The current lack of evidence that the brain logically produces volition does not in any way prove that the brain cannot produce volition.
Even if it could from where did knowledge come from which no human could know. It could not just appear outofnowhere. There has to be a source.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
What knowledge are you referring to? Can you give an example?
W
hen in 760BC Isaiah in scripture 40:22 he stated: 'it is he that sitteth on the circle of the earth'.
It's where he's always laid his chips. Still waiting for an NDE something like 2 hours or 2 days or 3 weeks after "clinical death." For some bizarre reason, they just don't seem to happen.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
That wasn't a reference to a spherical earth in any way. It was a reference to a compass and the horizon being curved. From any high vantage point, the horizon can be seen as curved. The following explains it pretty well (from The Circle of the Earth: Translation and Meaning in Isaiah 40:22).
The Hebrew word that is used in Isaiah 44:22 (חוּג, chug) does not at all imply a spherical earth. The root word only occurs in the Hebrew Bible once as a verb (Job 26:10). In nominal forms, the same root occurs four times, three as the noun חוּג (chug; Job 22:14, Prov 8:27, Isa 40:22), and once as the noun מְחוּגׇה (mechugah; Isa 44:13). This term refers to a "circle instrument," a device used to make a circle, what we call a compass.
Most modern translators agree that this "scribing a circle" in relation to the world refers to the horizon of the earth.
Ancient people were very good at observing the physical properties of the earth without necessarily understanding how all of those properties worked. The horizon of the earth is easily seen from any high vantage point or open area as an encompassing circle. This led ancient peoples to describe this "circle" or the horizon as the "edge" or "end" of the earth (Deut 13:7, 1 Sam 2:10, Job 28:24, Psa 48:10, etc.).
... So that is easily explained. Can you provide another example?
H
ow come it was believed to be flat for many many centuries. That one would fall off the edge if you sailed to the horizon. And why would it have to be proven round if so easily seen. Not until 1522 was it a proven fact.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
The ancient israelites believed it was a flat circle ... so the reference to "circle" didn't mean spherical.
The Israelites had a similar cosmology, with the earth as a flat disc floating on water beneath an arced firmament separating it from the heavens.[9] (Berlin, Adele (2011). "Cosmology and creation". In Berlin, Adele; Grossman, Maxine. The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Oxford University Press.)
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
Well, scary sort of rhymes with hilarious but not really.
Maybe when one experiences clinical death and speaks of 'events' during their time of 'clinical death' they are not speaking from actual remembrance of the experience.
False. I didn't say any such thing. You need to go back and read what I said.
Again, as I pointed out way back, nothing I have concluded begins with the premise that "because there is no evidence that . . ." What I have said is premised on what we do not about what is happening in brains. From the OP:
It would seem that one really needs to be able to argue that the properties of brain components or processes logically give rise to mental phenomena (self-consciousness, free will, beliefs, etc.). But it also seems that we already know that they don't--e.g., there is just no amount or complexity of neuronal electrical activity that logically produces mental phenomena.
Yes, I am not surprised that the facts about peoples' lucid conscious experiences and veridical perceptions during clinical death do scare you.
How? Why don't you just prove your claim about energy being accounted for by QM, rather than asking me to do something impossible?