(2023-06-25, 02:13 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Once again, you completely ignore the issue, and go on to repeat the same old talking points that I have answered already.
You've answered talking points? IIRC you've never even explained how non-conscious constituents can produce a brain capable of holding thoughts. You just jumped into some odd non sequitur about animal souls...there was that pointless survey for example...
(Also I noted that change of states is asking for perfect isomorphisms, don't recall that ever being addressed either since you didn't know what a perfect isomorphism was.)
(2023-06-25, 01:30 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I already said he doesn't believe in Survival?
So why exactly is it relevant in this discussion of survival after death to mention that Sam Harris, who believes that consciousness is dependent on the brain, says he cannot understand how an unconscious brain makes consciousness?
(2023-06-25, 02:23 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]So why exactly is it relevant in this discussion of survival after death to mention that Sam Harris, who believes that consciousness is dependent on the brain, says he cannot understand how an unconscious brain makes consciousness?
Because we're already assuming souls exist as what we're debating is If Souls Exist They Would Need The Physical Brain For Cognitive Function.
So if said brain can't produce consciousness it's exceedingly unlikely the soul will find it necessary for its post-death cognitive aspects.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
(2023-06-25, 02:26 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]So if said brain can't produce consciousness it's exceedingly unlikely the soul will find it necessary for its post-death cognitive aspects.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
Not knowing how the brain produces consciousness is not the same thing as knowing the brain (perhaps with something else) cannot produce our conscious thought.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
(2023-06-25, 03:01 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Not knowing how the brain produces consciousness is not the same thing as knowing the brain (perhaps with something else) cannot produce our conscious thought.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
You are the one who is so certain of your position. My angle is to question your certainty and demonstrate that it is logically absurd. You make statements about the physical brain but the necessary foundation is missing, i.e. how it is possible for "stuff" to produce awareness. Without explaining that, your beliefs are on shaky ground.
(2023-06-25, 03:05 PM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ] You make statements about the physical brain but the necessary foundation is missing, i.e. how it is possible for "stuff" to produce awareness. Without explaining that, your beliefs are on shaky ground.
What do you think produces awareness? How is it possible that the thing that you think produces awareness came into existence, and how is it possible for it to produce awareness?
(2023-06-25, 01:40 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Science looks to controlled studies, not occasional anecdotes, to establish scientific truths. Claims of survival have been studied many times in controlled studies. These consistently fail to confirm soul survival.
See How not to Do Survival Research and When Will Survival Researchers Move Past Defending the Indefensible?
Other than your uncritical acceptance of Augustine's critique which contains a fair amount of flaws, what is perhaps more alarming is the claim that "only controlled studies" are used to establish scientific truths.
Social sciences, including psychology, rely on case studies (which you probably will dismissively call anecdotes) in order to observe a phenomenon.
The reason we know about the effects that Alzheimer's disease has on mental function, we rely on the testimony and observation of those surrounding these people to know how personality has changed in those people due to the disease The reason we know how brain damage affects mental function is due to real life case studies.
If you wish to dismiss everything as anecdotes because they have no scientific value, Merle, then I hope that you accept that we would have to dismiss things such as: sociology, cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, psychology.
As a matter of fact, Merle, Keith Augustine, whom you gleefully seem to enjoy to cite often here, likes to use anecdotes in his book about people who have had mental impairment due to brain damage to attempt to make his point, or selectively picking out a few testimonies of near-death experiences to claim that near-death experiences are hallucinations. Should we dismiss those as anecdotes as well, Merle? Or would you say that we should accept them too, because they agree with your preconceived worldview?
Moreover, it's outright false to claim that "controlled studies" have failed to confirm soul survival. Ian Stevenson's methodology of investigation for evaluation of claims of past life memories has been successfully replicated by other researchers (i.e, Antonia Mills, Erlendur Haraldsson.) and have found evidence of anomalous effects suggestive of continuation.
(2023-06-25, 01:40 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Claims of survival have been studied many times in controlled studies. These consistently fail to confirm soul survival.
(2023-06-25, 03:01 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Not knowing how the brain produces consciousness is not the same thing as knowing the brain (perhaps with something else) cannot produce our conscious thought.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
I think you are trying to say in the first quote "Absence of evidence equals evidence of absence" and in the second, absence of evidence
does not equal evidence of absence." And without a hint of irony!
(2023-06-25, 03:00 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]When you look at a home video of yourself, how do you know it really happened?
What if I gave you a deep fake of events supposedly from your past, how would you know they were fake?
Because you have the right memories?
But then what is the encoding piece in the brain, separate from your consciousness, doing exactly?
The home video analogy was acknowledged to be very rough and imperfect. Such analogies are inevitably very imperfect because they are attempting to conceptually bridge an unbridgeable gulf between fundamentally different existential realities .
In a little detail, the hypothetical encoding structures in the brain would have the function of taking experiences in consciousness consisting of sensory observations, thoughts, emotions and so on, and then, using some sort of algorithm, transducing and reducing this information to a large store of encoded data physically embodied in the synaptic connections in the neural net and the arrangements of molecules in neurons. There would hypothetically be many other structures that have the functions of, after having been cued by the conscious mind, scanning for the encoded memory data, finding the relevant area specified by desiring consciousness, and then decoding the data and transducing that data back into consciousness information for experience by the conscious mind. Very complex processes something like this would be continually going on during physical life.
When you look at the home video recording, you are very limited as is normal while in physical life by occupying and intricately being intertwined in the brain neuronal structure. Utilizing the mechanism sketched above and keyed by visual cues on the image projected on the screen, inner processes search for, retrieve, and process memory data, and transduce it back into consciousness. Then you consciously know the scene really happened because you recognize it due to the process just outlined.
Concerning brain diseases and other related phenomena: This hypothetical system is complex and can go wrong in many different ways. As expected from this, there are several different types of amnesia for instance, and other stranger things like terminal lucidity.
For instance, in terminal lucidity what could be happening is that after a long period of dysfunction in the scanning or decoding processing function (which dysfunction had prevented proper finding and decoding of the memory data stores themselves most of which remained intact), either the faults or damage in the scanning/decoding processor somehow were healed, or the embedded consciousness was given the ability to directly access the immaterial soul memories of the past human experience, bypassing the damaged brain processing. In both cases the higher self would have been the motive power.
(2023-06-25, 03:01 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Not knowing how the brain produces consciousness is not the same thing as knowing the brain (perhaps with something else) cannot produce our conscious thought.
I'm pretty sure this has been explained multiple times...
No, it hasn't been explained. There was a non sequitur to animal souls, a pointless survey, some baseless accusations of "magic" that had no teeth...
But nothing like an explanation.