Robert Epstein: Your brain is not a computer

Absolutely. Any healthy animal, human included, is programmed to think and act in certain ways. The bulk of this conditioning happens in the earliest months and years of life. Suggestion, nudge, expectation, reward, penalty etc, it’s easy to see life as a prolonged kind of hypnosis. Yet it has has to be this way, we’re born primed to adapt, survive and thrive in the universe we’re shoved into, and that is the real wonder of biology.

I'd suggest that the real wonder of biology is that it exists at all.

"Born primed to adapt". Primed by what? Instincts, heredity? How do they work? How is behaviour encoded* and passed on through generations? Perhaps it might be useful to explain the "basics" before assertions that a lump of meat somehow developed this astounding propensity for information processing and that, in turn, comes before attempting to describe how that same lump of meat is also capable of creative and subjective thought.

What you describe is a programmed zombie, not a living, thinking, creative mind.

* I'd expect something like this link in response but there are (or should be) objections to the obvious assumptions it contains.

http://www.biologyreference.com/Ar-Bi/Be...is-of.html

Finally, there is no such thing as a gene for any behavior. There is no aggression gene, no gay gene, no gene for bird song or nut-burying. Genes encode proteins , nothing more; but through proteins, they can influence behavior. Aggression and sexual behavior, for example, are influenced by testosterone, and testosterone is synthesized by enzymes , which are proteins encoded by deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Thus one can see how genes would influence these behaviors. All behavior, furthermore, depends on chemical signals (neurotransmitters) that are released by one neuron and bind to receptors on the next neuron. Neurotransmitters , too, are synthesized by enzymes encoded by DNA, and their receptors are proteins as well. Neurotransmitter levels control mood and probably aspects of personality. The list goes on and on. Indeed, it is impossible to see how genes could not play a role in behavior.

I'd suggest that the real wonder of biology is that it exists at all.

Agreed, that was my point. It’s so incredible, one could be forgiven for invoking the divine.

"Born primed to adapt". Primed by what?

Biology.

What you describe is a programmed zombie, not a living, thinking, creative mind.

Perhaps you’re programmed to think like that . Perhaps we’re all programmed to not discern the difference between the two positions, or to consider them mutually exclusive.

Agreed, that was my point. It’s so incredible, one could be forgiven for invoking the divine.

Again, "the divine" is a loaded term. A creative, purposeful and fundamental source of everything, perhaps. A Yahweh like God, anthropomorphised as a designer standing apart from and above his creation, probably not.

Biology.

Circular argument?

Circular argument?

Yes. But I prefer watertight  and I don’t have to make it fit a predetermined metaphysic.

Again, "the divine" is a loaded term. 

So is zombie.

Again, "the divine" is a loaded term. A creative, purposeful and fundamental source of everything, perhaps. A Yahweh like God, anthropomorphised as a designer standing apart from and above his creation, probably not.

No more or less likely in my view.  I think folks feel they have to caveat on this point or risk being lumped in as a religious dogmatic to be beaten down by the atheistic, faux-intelligenista club.

I'm still fascinated by the differing mentalities on this broad point: I really can't bring myself to believe that there is, literally, no point to this whole thing other than the (empty?) notion that as a zombie I should derive my own purpose.  That seems incoherent.  I mean wouldn't said derived purpose be nothing more than strings being pulled by biology as Malf puts it?  That's even too "romantic sounding" as the laws of biology likely pre-programmed the illusion of my own, personal purpose at the singularity.