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

I agree the stampede is not conscious, even though the cattle are. Same with the concert goers not making the concert itself conscious, the soldiers not making the war conscious, and so on.

Wow, that has nothing to do with the point I was making.

Again, I use the word "mind" to refer to a set of actions (sensing, remembering, deciding, etc.) by one or more entities. The "mind" is not a physical object. It is a name we use for a set of actions.

Similar words we use to describe a set of actions by one or more entities include a conversation, a war, an avalanche, a party, a cattle stampede, a concert, a viral infection, and a ballgame. When I say these are words we use to describe a set of actions, that is making no implication that anything involved is or is not conscious.

But since we are assuming here the neurons aren't conscious, there's even more reason to believe their arrangement cannot produce consciousness.

And since we are assuming the materials in the ground cannot do the functions of a smartphone, then is that reason for you to believe that no arrangement of the materials in the ground can produce a working smartphone?

To me and maybe others here, you keep repeating claims of "magic" intent coming from electro-chemical sparks, rather than seeing how biology has simulated logic gates in response to information processing demands. (1)Did neurons figure it out like little minds in themselves, or (2) did living things evolve to exploit natural information tools?

I suggest that choice two is the more pragmatic.

Can you please quote back the place where I repeated a claim of magic intent coming from electro-chemical sparks? That doesn't even sound close to anything I wrote.

Yes, I agree that living things evolved to exploit information tools. But I also think those information tools evolved.

There are many animals without a brain. They have simple neurons that transmit a sensed condition across the body to cause simple movements. I think humans evolved from animals that had similar simple nervous systems. As evolution continued, the neurons were grouped together in a central brain. The process of transmitting the signals became much more complex, with the neurons doing complex logic on the incoming signals. This eventually evolved into the human brain.

None of this in any sense implies a magic intent from the electro-chemical sparks of life.

What are you referring to when you refer to natural information tools? How do they differ from magic?

This is such an ironic thing to hear coming from someone who believes that unconscious matter, by some sort of categorically unknown process, magically gives rise to conscious experiences.

Uh, can you please quote back the place where I said that unconscious matter magically gives rise to conscious experiences? 

Have we reached the point in this debate, which often happens on the Internet, where people just start making stuff up and pretending the other person said it?

Again, conscious thought is quite mysterious. I don't know how it works. I think that surely the brain is fundamental to conscious human thought. Without the brain, I see no way that any of our current conscious self can continue. But, as I have said many times, it is possible that other things are involved in conscious thought that we do not currently understand. If something else is involved in conscious human thought, then it must be one of two things:

1. Something that is consistent with physics if physics was completely understood.
   
2. Something non-physical.
   

And as I have said many times, my money would be on the first option. Physics keeps winning. There was a time when people thought that Thor made lightning, Yahweh made locust invasions, and Jesus held the nucleus of atoms together. But physical science has expanded to the point where all these things are explained by science. And I expect the same thing could happen with consciousness. Science keeps marching on. If you appeal to a "god of the gaps", a spiritual entity to explain a physical observation that we cannot yet explain otherwise, be prepared to do a lot of backpedaling. Defendants of a god of the gaps backpedal so often, they sometimes look like clowns on a unicycle. 

If you think the source of human consciousness is a non-physical object, what does that even mean? How can an object not be physical?

And if you say the source of consciousness is not an object, what is it?

And if your source of consciousness is not physical, how does that differ from magic? If your view is indistinguishable from magic, then it must be magic. 

My money is on science.

And since we are assuming the materials in the ground cannot do the functions of a smartphone, then is that reason for you to believe that no arrangement of the materials in the ground can produce a working smartphone?

The processes in a smartphone are physical processes and can be physically described.  Nobody can describe how unconscious matter can produce consciousness.  Your comparisons are always ill thought out!

Are you serious?

Obviously...

If this is true, then what does the matter in the brain do? It consumes a large portion of the body's resources. Does it even have a purpose?

Yes, apparently, but do you expect me to know what that is, beyond speculation? All everyone has is speculation, and I am no different... indeed, for anyone to claim that they actually know for certain, is arrogance.

And Materialists / Physicalists have a strong amount of arrogance in claiming that they know what the matter of the brain does or what its purpose is.

Idealists don't know. Dualists don't know. And Materialists / Physicalists most certainly do not know either, despite their sheer hubris and arrogance.

What is my speculation? That the matter of the brain somehow acts to filter or limit the scope of consciousness and what it is capable of. My speculation is merely based on observations of phenomena like savant syndrome, near-death / actual death experiences, shared death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, reincarnation and past-life memories to a lesser extent.

Are you serious?

If this is true, then what does the matter in the brain do? It consumes a large portion of the body's resources. Does it even have a purpose?

It processes dead, meaningless information - mere electrical nonsense - that is, if it is nothing more than physics.  However, there is this thing called consciousness that you seem to have trouble explaining.  In all your "arguments" you willfully conflate consciousness with thought.  Thought, as I said before, involves both information processing and consciousness.  We know that the brain processes information, but even an electric toaster does that.  What you have consistently failed to do is explain how consciousness can be produced by mere atoms.

Uh, can you please quote back the place where I said that unconscious matter magically gives rise to conscious experiences? 

Yes:

I think that the awareness is generated by the brain as a whole.

I'm not making this up, this is something which you very clearly stated, consistent with my previous comment.

If something else is involved in conscious human thought, then it must be one of two things:

- Something that is consistent with physics if physics was completely understood.
- Something non-physical.

Physics is entirely consistent with the view that consciousness is not generated by any source, but rather is a fundamental aspect of reality. But let's assume it isn't; the fact that consciousness is consistent with the laws of physics, it doesn't imply that the dependence model is true.

And if you say the source of consciousness is not an object, what is it?

Consciousness is the fundamental aspect of reality. This is the most parsimonious position than positing some categorically unknowable substance outside of subjectivity (matter) This is the view that scientists are starting to lean toward today. It's entirely consistent with physics, and in fact, physics is starting to lean into this position.

And if your source of consciousness is not physical, how does that differ from magic? If your view is indistinguishable from magic, then it must be magic.

Our everyday conscious experiences are distinctly qualitative, whereas the matter in the brain is purely quantitative. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce the qualities of experience to quantitative physical properties. 

You claim that the laws of physics give rise to conscious experience. How do physical properties somehow give rise to conscious experience?

Your position, then, seems to be the following:

Physical stuff (specifically the brain) -> some categorically unknown and inexplicable process (lets call it magic) -> conscious experience.

Therefore, the view that you're trying to defend is indistinguishable from magic.

I think "magic" applies if something new is generated in unintelligible fashion.

For example if a witch's curse is *just* her saying some special words and without explanation this causes misfortune to strike someone. The curse comes about as something produced by the words, and if this all there is to the explanation it's "magic" by its unintelligible, brute fact nature.

To simply note that atoms without consciousness are not going to generate consciousness is to speak of something we already know exists -> Our minds and their varied faculties - memory, feeling, thoughts, reasoning. Since nothing novel is generated there is no "magic" in the pejorative sense.

OTOH, it's hard not to think the idea of non-conscious constituents producing consciousness as magic. One can try and paper over this issue with a veneer of complexity but IMO there's a reason atheists are leaving behind the Physicalist position, because of the Something from Nothing issue. As per the Bertrand Russell quote in my signature, the dogma of Materialism is now itself under scrutiny. Another good quote of his:

It is obvious that a man who can see, knows things that a blind man cannot know; but a blind man can know the whole of physics.

Where one needs to fit mind into the picture is debatable, why outside Physicalists there are Dualists, Idealists, Panpsychics, Neutral Monists, Information Realists, Pantheist/Pandeist/Panentheists, etc.

All to say "magic" should have a clear definition in itself when used as a criticism.

In tandem with my last post on magic, some quotes from physicist Adam Frank:

"The high ground of materialism deflates when followed to its quantum mechanical roots, because it then demands the acceptance of metaphysical possibilities that seem no more ‘reasonable’ than other alternatives. Some consciousness researchers might think that they are being hard-nosed and concrete when they appeal to the authority of physics. When pressed on this issue, though, we physicists are often left looking at our feet, smiling sheepishly and mumbling something about ‘it’s complicated’. We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained."
 -Minding Matter

"To put it bluntly, the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness."
 -The Blind Spot

Both essays are worth reading in their entirety.