Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

That sounds more like an epileptic  fit than a sane computation. Has anyone tried to simulate that theory of memory?

David

Its hard to really determine what is going on in the billions of neurons in the brain. I got the concept form Dennett's Consciousness Explained.

Would you please postulate a more sane theory of memory that we can consider?

You still have not engaged with my challenge from post #100, "....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."

No explanation has been forthcoming.

I disagree. I have given you links where I describe how I think mind and subjective awareness arise from neurons.

And it looks like you subscribe to some version of panpsychism, if you believe that the individual molecules of your brain's neurons have some form of conscious awareness. As has been noted before, panpsychism doesn't really explain consciousness, it just imbues it to every molecule of matter in some mysterious way.

Now you get to the hard problem of consciousness. Why does it all feel so real? Why am I not just a complex sunflower with complicated mechanical movements without it all feeling so real? I do not know the answer to that.

Do you have an answer to the hard problem of consciousness? What is your answer? Once I hear your answer, I suspect I will have some follow-up questions.

Sure, human actions don't have weight. But thoughts invariably have "agentness" associated with them - a conscious agent had to generate those thoughts.

How do you know the agent that generates thoughts needs to be conscious?

Are ants conscious? Are jelly fish conscious? Are sunflowers conscious? Where do you draw the line?

It is the immaterial conscious agent behind these thoughts that you need to explain materialistically.

You are assuming the point in question. I don't know that the thinker is immaterial.

There are some things I cannot explain. Why is it not acceptable to say, "I don't know"?

In fact, you seem to be denying that you exist as a conscious agent; this is denying Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am".

I exist. I think. I am conscious. I am at home. I am typing on my computer. I sometimes trip and fall. I have a wart.

In each of those sentences the word "I" has the same meaning to me. It means the sum total of the material and possible non-material components that make up me.

Does the word "I" mean the same thing to you in each of those sentences? Or does it sometimes mean my soul, sometimes mean my body, and sometimes mean a combination of both?

That sounds more like an epileptic  fit than a sane computation. Has anyone tried to simulate that theory of memory?

David

Also why is the soul dependent on this theory of memory...this is what just confuses me. The argument seems to be if a soul exists it would be akin to someone having a lobotomy because it too must be dependent on the brain...I really don't see why someone who believe[s] in survival after death would think this especially looking at the varied NDEs and Reincarnation cases where it seems pretty clear the people retain memories.

I can see, however, why someone would look at brain illness causing cognitive changes and feel that there is no survival after death. I disagree, but I do understand the reasoning which I feel to be sound.

Also why is the soul dependent on this theory of memory...this is what just confuses me.

I don't think it is the soul that does my speech-writing. It is the brain.  But regardless of whether the soul or the brain is writing the speech, yes, I think it does it in a way something like I described.

If you disagree, how do you think it is done?

After all, most of your speech writing is done unconsciously. That is, the sentence you wrote above probably just basically came to you out of nowhere. There was a huge amount of processing involved in writing that. You must have a mental dictionary of thousands of words you could have used, have rules of grammar memorized, and have had some sort of idea of what you wanted to say. Somehow, that was all put together, and out came the sentence. How do you think that happened?

Yes, part of that process might have been conscious. An idea for a sentence might immediately come to mind, but you might then have had second thoughts about one of the words. And then what happens? Alternative words just pop into consciousness out of nowhere. Who or what looked them up in your mental thesaurus? 

I contend that thousands of independent thought streams were working outside your conscious awareness. You are aware only of that which bubbled up to the top.

To illustrate the process, I asked ChatGPT, "When generating content, how does chatgpt look at available options and make its selection?". Among other things it said,

Probability distribution: ChatGPT assigns a probability score to each potential option based on its training. It calculates the probability of each word or phrase occurring next given the input and context. The higher the probability, the more likely the model will select that option.

Sampling strategy: Depending on the configuration, ChatGPT can use different sampling strategies to select the next word or phrase. One common approach is temperature-based sampling, where a higher temperature value (e.g., 0.8) makes the output more random and diverse, while a lower temperature value (e.g., 0.2) makes it more focused and deterministic.

Beam search (optional): In some cases, ChatGPT employs beam search, which explores multiple potential sequences of words in parallel. Beam search expands the most likely options at each step and keeps track of the highest-scoring sequences. This technique can help improve the coherence and quality of the generated content.
Source: https://chat.openai.com/share/05c09673-6...8a114372b5

The last paragraph looks amazingly close to what I think happens subconsciously when we speak.

I don't think it is the soul that does my speech-writing. It is the brain.  But regardless of whether the soul or the brain is writing the speech, yes, I think it does it does it in a way something like I described.

Again, if this is an argument for the mind being so dependent on the brain that there is no afterlife I can at least understand what you are saying. I can even understand if this is an argument against having any kind of soul at all.

What confuses me is that the idea that there is a soul but it must be dependent on the brain for cognitive function and once that brain is gone it is like some kind of lobotomized wraith. If one thinks there is a soul it seems to me the next reasonable step is to examine Survival cases for what the existence of that soul is like - and it is clear souls retain memories.

Again, if this is an argument for the mind being so dependent on the brain that there is no afterlife I can at least understand what you are saying. I can even understand if this is an argument against having any kind of soul at all.

What confuses me is that the idea that there is a soul but it must be dependent on the brain for cognitive function and once that brain is gone it is like some kind of lobotomized wraith. If one thinks there is a soul it seems to me the next reasonable step is to examine Survival cases for what the existence of that soul is like - and it is clear souls retain memories.

I do not believe there is a soul, no. If there is some non-physical part of me, I think it has little more with what it is to be me than a molecule of water in my brain is me.

But I don't know. There could be some non-physical entity that is a significant part of what it is to be me.

The evidence I point to in the link we are discussing indicates to me that, if such a soul exists, and it survives my death, it would hardly be identifiable as me after death.

Regarding retaining memories, if souls retain memories, why does a person with severe brain injury lose much of his memory?

I do not believe there is a soul, no. If there is some non-physical part of me, I think it has little more with what it is to be me than a molecule of water in my brain is me.

But I don't know. There could be some non-physical entity that is a significant part of what it is to be me.

The evidence I point to in the link we are discussing indicates to me that, if such a soul exists, and it survives my death, it would hardly be identifiable as me after death.

Regarding retaining memories, if souls retain memories, why does a person with severe brain injury lose much of his memory?

You seem to be saying there could be a "soul" as in a non-physical entity but all the cases suggestive of Survival (reincarnation, NDEs) that suggest said soul retains memories are wrong...this to me just seems like a strange argument.

At least saying there is no soul, and everything is material, makes sense as a train of thought even if I disagree with it.

Merle said (post 112):
(my responses bolded )

I disagree. I have given you links where I describe how I think mind and subjective awareness arise from neurons.
Now you get to the hard problem of consciousness. Why does it all feel so real? Why am I not just a complex sunflower with complicated mechanical movements without it all feeling so real? I do not know the answer to that.

-I couldn't find the description you refer to above in the link you furnished named "consciousness".

-The conclusion from the link "explaining" consciousness:  "Perhaps our minds continuously create the story we call consciousness and write it in such a way that we think consciousness is making the decisions."

-Another quote from the linked essay: "If your soul is the speechwriter, why isn’t the soul aware of how the words came into your consciousness? Why isn’t your soul aware of looking up the meanings of all the words it could have used? Instead, behind the scenes, something must be working to look up available words and form those sentences for you. I contend this something is nothing more than the millions of neurons in your brain. They must be working behind the scenes to write your speech for you. You and I think that our conscious mind is speaking, but the conscious mind isn’t even aware of how the speech is being written."

-Notice again in the above the frequently used strategem of cleverly sneaking in words like "you" and "I think" assuming the unspoken necessary presence of the real human consciousness, as in "...They must be working behind the scenes to write YOUR speech for YOU. YOU and I THINK...."

-As mentioned, the concluding statement again reveals the same futile attempt to smuggle in mysterious consciousness as an unspoken background assumption without making the slightest attempt to explain it materialistically. For instance, you say "we think..." automatically assuming there is in fact a "we" or "I" conscious entity behind the thought. 

-So this concluding statement is incoherent since it contradicts itself.

-Even if (contrary to a lot of empirical evidence) the physical brain does make decisions prior to the conscious "I" thinking it made the decision, that still leaves the overriding presence of the unexplained conscious "I" having subjective inner experiences that you seem to be claiming is some sort of illusion. I might ask, who or what is experiencing this illusion?

-As mentioned above there is the use of misinterpreted and partially discredited experiments like the Libet study that supposedly showed that there is no free will, that the brain has always formulated, calculated, the decision before the conscious mind thinks it has freely made the decision. Actually, the Libet work turned out to actually demonstrate a form of free will:  "free won't"), and anyway, Libet himself was not a convinced reductionist materialist as far as philosophy of mind.

-The whole attempt is to explain consciousness as the workings of brain neurons and to deny the existence of any sort of spiritual entity or "soul", but it doesn't succeed in anything but self contradiction.

Do you have an answer to the hard problem of consciousness? What is your answer? Once I hear your answer, I suspect I will have some follow-up questions.
How do you know the agent that generates thoughts needs to be conscious?

-Thoughts are the essence of consciousness - we know thoughts only come from consciousness by direct observation of our own experience; remember Descartes' foundation of philosophy: "I think therefore I am".

Are ants conscious? Are jelly fish conscious? Are sunflowers conscious? Where do you draw the line?
You are assuming the point in question. I don't know that the thinker is immaterial. 

-Are ants conscious, or jellyfish? So we don't really know - so what? Our ignorance of the demarcation point (or if there is one) is irrelevant to the issue.

-You can conclude that the thinker must be immaterial from the observation that thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and so on with all the other attributes or properties of consciousness are demonstrably immaterial since they have no weight, physical dimensions, etc.  You are claiming a sort of miracle - the creation of immaterial attributes of consciousness by material neurons. No machine made of of electronics or of neurons can generate thoughts, emotions, perceptions, because all the machine can do is shuffle around electrons or physical gears and levers, which physical actions have no inner subjective experience or agency. 

-Until you can explain that miracle, we have to conclude that this magic feat is impossible, and therefore consciousness is not material.   

There are some things I cannot explain. Why is it not acceptable to say, "I don't know"?

-Sure, that's acceptable, but it's not acceptable to say "I don't know" and at the same time contradict yourself and insist that they (immaterial mental properties like subjective awareness) despite seeming impossibility are routinely generated by physical neurons. Like a faithful advocate of the faith, you insist that you still absolutely know the answer.

I exist. I think. I am conscious. I am at home. I am typing on my computer. I sometimes trip and fall. I have a wart.
In each of those sentences the word "I" has the same meaning to me. It means the sum total of the material and possible non-material components that make up me.

-The triumph of the cold intellect over the contradicting direct inner experience of perceptions of an "I", a "self" entity with many inner states, agentness, emotions, thoughts and so on. As I mentioned before, you are basically denying the fundamental self-observation formulated by Descartes as the foundation of philosophy - "I think therefore I am".

Does the word "I" mean the same thing to you in each of those sentences? Or does it sometimes mean my soul, sometimes mean my body, and sometimes mean a combination of both?

@nbtruthman - Even the points you address I don't think directly pertain to the question of the soul being dependent on the brain.

I feel like a lot of confusion is arising from two arguments going on at once:

1. There is no soul & no afterlife. This argument has been discussed quite a number of times going back to the Mind-Energy forums through Skeptiko to here.

2. Even if there is a soul it has no cognitive function because all cognitive function is dependent on the brain. This is the argument that I think is somewhat novel due to its strangeness. If there is a soul it seems to me that among the first conclusions would be that the idea of the brain as "filter" would in some sense be correct.

Quotes below are from @nbtruthman

-Notice again in the above the frequently used strategem of cleverly sneaking in words like "you" and "I think" assuming the unspoken necessary presence of the real human consciousness, as in "...They must be working behind the scenes to write YOUR speech for YOU. YOU and I THINK...."

I explained to you what I mean when I use the word "I". I mean, "the sum total of the material and possible non-material components that make up me." So when I say "I think" I mean "The sum total of the material and possible non-material components that make up me thinks."

If you think that is confusing, and would like me to use a different word for this instead of the word I, please let me know what word would be clearer for you to understand.

I think you also use the word "I" in the sense I use it. If you say "I went to the store" or "I fell" or "I have a stomach ache" you are saying that your body, that is, the sum total of the matter that makes up you, is the object of those sentences. I don't think you are saying your soul went to the store or your soul fell or your soul has a stomach ache. Your body did those things. But you use the pronoun "I" to refer to your body.

So the difference between the way you and I use the word "I" is that for me it always means all of me, including my body. For you it appears "I" sometimes means your soul and sometimes means your body. I find my terminology clearer.

-As mentioned above there is the use of misinterpreted and partially discredited experiments like the Libet study that supposedly showed that there is no free will, that the brain has always formulated, calculated, the decision before the conscious mind thinks it has freely made the decision. Actually, the Libet work turned out to actually demonstrate a form of free will:  "free won't"), and anyway, Libet himself was not a convinced reductionist materialist as far as philosophy of mind.

Actually the Libet experiment has been verified in many ways. See Have Experiment Shown?  and Notable Experiments.

-Are ants conscious, or jellyfish? So we don't really know - so what? Our ignorance of the demarcation point (or if there is one) is irrelevant to the issue.

it is very relevant. I contend that there are levels of thinking in living forms, that goes anywhere from sunflowers, to jellyfish, to ants, to toads, to monkeys, to humans. Can you accept that at least some of those living things don't have souls? If you accept that a certain level of thinking can be done without a soul, why is it that you say an animal must have a soul if the thinking goes beyond this point?

If you cannot clearly define at which point material thought is not enough, and that animal must have a soul at that point, how can it be clear that anything needs a soul?

You are claiming a sort of miracle - the creation of immaterial attributes of consciousness by material neurons. No machine made of of electronics or of neurons can generate thoughts, emotions, perceptions, because all the machine can do is shuffle around electrons or physical gears and levers, which physical actions have no inner subjective experience or agency.

-Until you can explain that miracle, we have to conclude that this magic feat is impossible, and therefore consciousness is not material. 

In nature we regularly see distinctly different things when other things are combined. One water molecule is not wet, but many together make up water. A few proteins in goo don't do anything, but if you arrange them into a living cell, something totally different emerges. So no, it is not necessarily magic that water makes molecules or that proteins make cells, or that neurons make complex thought including consciousness.

In the meantime, surely you must agree that a soul has to be a miracle, yes? How else can you explain the existence of souls?