Psience Quest

(2023-05-22, 10:52 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]It isn't clear that it is the soul that loses the ability to remember. But it's fine if you want/need to believe that death is the end.

"Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him" - EM Forester

I don't need to believe anything but the truth. My search is for the truth.

(2023-06-03, 02:34 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't need to believe anything but the truth. My search is for the truth.

If you say so...

(2023-05-31, 05:12 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I think it would be more helpful to just explain what you mean.

Is your basic position that the soul requires something akin to the brain, but by most accounts lacks one?

I don't know if souls exist, but yes if souls exist, then I find their functionality would be extremely limited if not connected to active brain. See https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

(2023-06-03, 02:41 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if souls exist, but yes if souls exist, then I find their functionality would be extremely limited if not connected to active brain. See https://mindsetfree.blog/if-only-souls-had-a-brain/ .

....we've been discussing this the whole time...

Sciborg_S_Patel,

You write this in response to my questions about what you think holds our memories. You tell us the brain does not do this. OK, then what remembers? The soul? And was my grandmother's soul aware that I was there? If my grandmother's soul knew I was there, and her soul was not damaged by the stroke, why did my grandmother lose the ability to remember that I visited her?

(2023-06-03, 12:04 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]If the brain is just matter that has no consciousness, then as noted by neuroscientist-philosopher Tallis in the article I previously linked it cannot hold memories.

I don't see anywhere that this link supports the assertion that brains cannot hold memories. Even the simplest animals can have memories. Do they all have souls? 

Even sunflowers can "decide" to point their flower toward the sun. Do sunflowers also have souls?

Where do these souls come from?

Quote:I just disagree on thoughts because as Rosenberg notes in the Atheist's Guide to Reality what is physical cannot hold thoughts, and on memories a physical device - even a biological one - would be a memory trace which to me seems like an idea rife with confusion ->

Why cannot physical brains hold memories? Let's say I see the color red for the first time. A distinct brain pattern forms in some of my neurons. Suppose somebody tells me that color I saw is named red. A different distinct pattern forms for the sequence of sounds that make the word "red". Why cannot those patterns simply be etched into my neurons, much like a computer stores memories?

Then later, when I see something red, many thought patterns may be stimulated in my brain, but those patterns that are strongly associated with the red color I am seeing will predominate. If you ask me what color I see, those brain patterns associated with the sound pattern for the word red will predominate, and win out over any other brain patterns. My brain will direct my mouth to say, "red"? We refer to this as "memory".  I see no reason to believe molecules cannot do that. You links in no way refutes that.

Quote:It seems to me memory can mediated by the brain but there is no storage mechanism in matter just like matter doesn't have the aboutness of thoughts. Those are located in what I guess we would call the "soul" though at that point I think "storage mechanism" is the wrong term...

If memories are not stored, how is it that after you are taught to call that color red, you are able to remember that?

It seems to me that there is no other way to remember anything, other than for some change to occur in the state of something. If, for instance, you now remember my name, surely the state of something somewhere must be different compared to the state it was in when you did not recognize my name. What changed state? If matter does the remembering, that question is easy to answer: the matter in your brain changed state. Your brain now has brain patterns associated with "Merle" that are associated with brain patterns that are associated with the things you now know about me.

But if souls remember, what changed state when you learned my name? Is the soul made of a substance that can be rearranged to remember things it needs to remember? Does the soul consist of some structure of some non-material substance?  

Here is a link arguing that disembodied minds could not possibly remember things.

(2023-06-03, 03:36 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Even sunflowers can "decide" to point their flower toward the sun. Do sunflowers also have souls?

Where do these souls come from?

Here is a link arguing that disembodied minds could not possibly remember things.

Thanks for sticking around.  I, for one, appreciate your arguments and efforts to support them.

On the pragmatic side of things..  
Sunflowers react logically to increase a personal supply of photons due to their biological information processing.
Whether you call it a soul, they, and all living things are able to purposefully change real-world probabilities in their environment.  This is achieved in a way that corresponds to a first-person POV.  These individualized centers of information-processing develop as part of the ontogeny of the organism, in a natural fashion.  The primary process is learning from experiencing physical, emotional and cultural environments.  

Quote:ontogeny, all the developmental events that occur during the existence of a living organism

There is a measurable information object in place, with each living thing.  Its output has predictable patterns as to past behavior.  It enforces a personal POV with the affordances in its local environment.  Measuring the behavioral output of living things involves many scientific fields.  Religious in may not be, but their is an identifiable object developed from scratch for each mind.

Read the link, not a very impressive argument by Carrier.

Quote: Concepts can’t think or act; so disembodied mental concepts can’t “do” things either. They can’t have physical relationships to each other. They can’t have structure. They can have the concept of structure, but again concepts can’t do things; and they can have structure when we simulate them in our brains, but that gets us right back to the point: that appears to be the only way they can ever actually exist.

 

Pragmatically, concepts can be structured and communicated electronically, outside of brains and be very effective.  AI is "doing" things.  This defense of "magic" brains seems silly and out of date.

(2023-06-03, 03:36 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]...........................
Why cannot physical brains hold memories? Let's say I see the color red for the first time. A distinct brain pattern forms in some of my neurons. Suppose somebody tells me that color I saw is named red. A different distinct pattern forms for the sequence of sounds that make the word "red". Why cannot those patterns simply be etched into my neurons, much like a computer stores memories?

Then later, when I see something red, many thought patterns may be stimulated in my brain, but those patterns that are strongly associated with the red color I am seeing will predominate. If you ask me what color I see, those brain patterns associated with the sound pattern for the word red will predominate, and win out over any other brain patterns. My brain will direct my mouth to say, "red"? We refer to this as "memory".  I see no reason to believe molecules cannot do that. You links in no way refutes that.
............................

Of course the patterns for the color red may be impressed on certain neurons in the brain in response to the eyes registering that frequency of light.

But then you make it clear that you don't comprehend the well-known "hard problem" in the philosophy of mind. You blithely remark that the neurons of your brain direct your mouth to say "I see red", not recognizing that this action automatically assumes, in addition to the neurons, the overriding existence of an "I" or conscious self that experienced the color red.

The nature of this conscious self with its subjective awareness remains a total mystery, and is fundamentally, existentially different from the physical neurons and all their interactions. The conscious perception of the color red has no physical parameters like length, width, depth, weight, energy, voltage, frequency, velocity, it goes on. This subjective awareness can't in principle be the physical neurons or their interactions, but this conscious self indubitably exists since we directly experience it. 

That's the "hard problem".

So you can't get away with this, with stealthily slipping in the consciousness of the perceiver as an unspoken assumption, without explaining how mind and subjective awareness arise from neurons when the parameters of these two entities are fundamentally different.

(2023-06-03, 02:34 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't need to believe anything but the truth. My search is for the truth.

Well I suggest that you start with those people who have reluctantly switched from being materialists to a more flexible position - Tallis for example. They will show you where your ideas are wrong.

Or just take me! I was a pure materialist when I finished my PhD in chemistry. I'd used computers a lot in the course of that work, and I knew that some people were beginning to think about making computers think. I went to a general lecture by Longuet-Higgins about just that.

I accepted the idea and used to marvel that the computer, that just reads instructions in binary code from its memory and performs some trivial arithmetic step, before moving on to the next step. The computer worked so fast - about 500,000 instructions per second (absurdly slow by modern standards), so I was vaguely prepared to accept that the idea might be valid. I thought the idea rather wonderful - vaguely analogous to the counter-intuitive ideas in Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.

A few years later I was chatting to my boss at work, and I expressed some mild doubts that computers could really be made to think - indeed to become conscious - and be was fairly dismissive - he was sure it must be possible, if our slow and slightly flakey 'wetware' could do it, then computers must be able to do the same sometime soon.

Back then it was hard to browse the scientific literature much, but I came across a paper studying ESP as a way to communicate with submarines. The idea was to use error correcting codes to send a message telepathically - and they claimed that this worked!

Then a little later I watched a program with my girlfriend about the paranormal. As usual the program included a scientific sceptic (I wish I remember his name), and he finished the show off by assuring the audience that "there is no scientific evidence that ESP is true". I tried to emphasise to her that this statement was at best misleading because it seemed to imply that the scientific literature contained no positive reports of ESP. That had a profound effect on me, because it meant that some scientists act as propagandists rather than as objective sources of knowledge.

By now, I realise that there are vast chunks of information that are simply ignored by those who continue to be materialists. Try for example:

https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Minds-E...B002XQAAYK

David

(2023-06-03, 07:19 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]On the pragmatic side of things..  
Sunflowers react logically to increase a personal supply of photons due to their biological information processing.
Whether you call it a soul, they, and all living things are able to purposefully change real-world probabilities in their environment.  This is achieved in a way that corresponds to a first-person POV.  These individualized centers of information-processing develop as part of the ontogeny of the organism, in a natural fashion.  The primary process is learning from experiencing physical, emotional and cultural environments.  

The question is, if somebody says humans need to have a soul in order to have will and memories, what else requires a soul? Do monkeys need souls? Toads? Ants? Jelly Fish? Sunflowers? Where do you draw the line?

I use sunflowers because they have the ability to sense where the sun is, and move the flower to face the sun (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/scien...r-day.html) . So in a sense they "decide" to move to face the sun. But yes, that is strictly a mechanical movement. I contend that there is a progression of similar biological decision-making functioning in life forms, from sunflowers to jelly fish to ants to toads to monkeys to humans. Each step of the way I think the decision-making processes can be described as the work of biology and a soul is not needed. If you think you need to insert a soul somewhere in that continuum, where do you make the break? Why?

Quote:Pragmatically, concepts can be structured and communicated electronically, outside of brains and be very effective.  AI is "doing" things.  This defense of "magic" brains seems silly and out of date.

Yes, both brains and computers can do mental tasks.

(2023-06-03, 08:09 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Of course the patterns for the color red may be impressed on certain neurons in the brain in response to the eyes registering that frequency of light.

But then you make it clear that you don't comprehend the well-known "hard problem" in the philosophy of mind. You blithely remark that the neurons of your brain direct your mouth to say "I see red", not recognizing that this action automatically assumes, in addition to the neurons, the overriding existence of an "I" or conscious self that experienced the color red.

The nature of this conscious self with its subjective awareness remains a total mystery, and is fundamentally, existentially different from the physical neurons and all their interactions. The conscious perception of the color red has no physical parameters like length, width, depth, weight, energy, voltage, frequency, velocity, it goes on. This subjective awareness can't in principle be the physical neurons or their interactions, but this conscious self indubitably exists since we directly experience it. 

That's the "hard problem".

So you can't get away with this, with stealthily slipping in the consciousness of the perceiver as an unspoken assumption, without explaining how mind and subjective awareness arise from neurons when the parameters of these two entities are fundamentally different.

Yes, I am aware of the hard problem of consciousness. 

In the post to which you responded, I was not discussing consciousness, but memory. I was discussing how it is that molecules can remember that something which the brain perceives as being red should be described with the word, "red". That doesn't seem like a difficult problem. Brains can remember that this vocal cord sequence to make the mouth say "red" is associated with the neuron patterns in the brain when one is looking at something red. So if you ask me what color that apple is, my brain figures out I should say "red". 

Regarding consciousness, I argue that the brain itself is making the decisions, and creates both the muscle movements and awareness of the story of what is going on at the same time. This awareness of what is going on is called consciousness. I write about this at Consciousness .