God is found within beauty or, more importantly, harmony

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I can accept your arguments as being valid AG. The reason for my complaint at Sand was that he was making suppositions about the validity of evidence without providing anything like a counter argument. The hard truth of the consciousness argument is that it is unresolved; hence my stating repeatedly, that I am yet to be convinced either way.

Aside from dreamy philosophical nonsense the evidence is very solid that consciousness is one of the functions of an active brain. Goofy thoughts of astral planes and conscious electrons are the stuff of comic books and scammers and not to be taken seriously.

I never made any arguments relating to astral planes and conscious electrons. Your position dismisses the possibility of property dualism without any support from the evidence. Elements of property dualism are provable through anesthesia and via the induction of logic. That is not to say I am 100% subscriber to this theory.

This discussion is not necessarily solely devoted to your viewpoint or contributions.

Is that an absolute fact?

Or is that simply one of your assumptions?

ruveyn

It's a pragmatic working proposition that has proven endlessly useful.

Yah, its not continuous, even on a moment to moment basis. The change in emotional states an individual undergoes day to day is enormous. That's not proof the fundamentals of consciousness composing these states are finite though. Its just proof that it can be re-organized in various ways. The only thing really linking me to my self 10 years ago is symbolism encoded on the brain that might not even be very accurate. The relationship I have to my boyhood self is rather distant. I'm not really the same person then as I am now. The matter in my brain and body isn't even the same matter. You only really exist as a conscious moment, then when the moment is over, that former self is dead. For example, cotton is grown, it becomes a tee shirt, it gets worn for years and years, then it becomes a rag, then it ends up in a dump where its decomposed. However, the matter and energy having made it up is still there. in the environment, ready to become something else. The same is true for consciousness. There are fundamentals to it, like anything else, and the fundamentals are still there ready to be formed into new states of consciousness.

I'm not trying to make any money off of anyone, nor have I ever bought any new age books, and I said nothing about astral planes. I don't even know if anyone else has suggested electro-magnetism as making up the fundamental building blocks of consciousness. That's just my idea. All I'm curious to know is how consciousness can just spontaneously arise out of the high organization of unfeeling, unthinking processes of matter. Going off of scientific models, it really would imply that electromagnetism has a conscious property to it, being that the science you reference links electromagnetism in neural activity to consciousness. Consciousness can't really be explained in terms of the recognized laws of motion, thermodynamics or electromagnetism, because its a completely different property from the behaviors of physical matter that classical physics is used to modeling. We really don't know how the properties of matter work in the grand scheme of things or why they exist at all. We don't know how gravity exists or why electrons exist or why any of it exists and does what it does. They model the behavior of matter and find basic behaviors that they call laws. All I'm saying is consciousness is so alien to conventional physics that it might as well be assigned its own laws.

Last edited by JNathanK on 26 Nov 2010, 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Last edited by JNathanK on 26 Nov 2010, 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not making stuff up. I'm just reading the possible implications that lack of brain activity on disabling one function or another would have. If the ordered electrons are no longer being channeled in that part of the damaged brain, and the individual is no longer perceiving something visually, then that would mean the lack of electromagnetism does, indeed, have something to do with the missing perception that's no longer there. I would argue that the electro-magnetism, even in the peripheral nervous system is conscious, but to a lesser degree, because less activity is concentrated in one area. The same would apply to subconscious properties. The subconscious is still a form of awareness,just to a less concentrated degree. For example, when you dream, your cns is at a less active state, but you're still aware, though very diminished from when you're fully awake..

Does the fact that matter has varying, bonding properties for no apparent reason not make any sense? We've just assumed it natural for matter to behave a certain, nonconscious way because of the assumptions we've adopted from the ancient Greeks. who always looked at the issue of mind and matter as two, distinct issues, as if consciousness is some vague, abstract system that arises out of pure process. I'm saying its just one in the same.

Modern, rationalists want to assume its something that spontaneously happens when enough, complicated computations happen at one time. Why don't those processes remain no more than complicated computations though? To me that's counter-intuitive.

If your read my original argument, I was saying that all matter might be conscious in some way, but I focused on electrons, because that's what neuro-science seems to focus on as a source of consciousness. The fluctuation of electrons is the cause that science gives to our shifting states of awareness on a moment to moment basis. Its said that our mood is influenced by the concentration of electrical activity in one region or another. That's why I focus on it so much.

However, you could argue that photons play an intrinsic part in awareness too. They bounce off of objects, and the clusters are diffracted through the lens of our eyes and then hit rods and cones that correspond to certain wave lengths. Then the cones vibrate, convert light energy directly into electro-magnetic impulses that are sent as signals to the brain, where its filtered out through memories and personality and whatnot. You could argue from that, that we as conscious beings, also entail clusters of light. The self reflective individual could ultimately be some kind of focal point in the fabric of space-time that subjectively models the universe from its own vantage point.

In fact, I suggested that when an electron performs one action or another in relation to the nucleus, that it might perceive pure blueness or pure redness or taste pure saltiness when jumping to one orbit or another. That would imply that the nucleus plays a part in consciousness too, being that stray ions rejoin nuclei. I also said it might feel a pure emotion, but scratch that. Emotion is a relational phenomenon, a kind of harmony or disharmony between more fundamental components of consciousness. When something in life puts me in morose state, that's caused by a disharmony within my own psyche. One part of me can't cope with another. However, when I'm happy, every part of my psyche seems to be in agreement with itself.

As amusing as the concept might be that an electron ponders it's next move in its exercise of free will, it boils down to fairies at the bottom of your garden. Great stuff for a kid's cartoon film but hardly anything to do with the observed world.

I'm not saying an electron ponders its orbit or even its own existence. Pondering is something limited to the higher organization of self reflection through a physical brain. All I'm saying is, from the perspective of the electron, it might perform certain actions based off of a preference for one, fundamental sensory state or another. I don't think it has a theoretical notion that its apart of an electron cloud around a nucleus in an atomic structure, apart of an amino acid chain, apart of a protein, in a brain, etc etc. However its conscious activities might be something like blueness, redness, yellowness, and its preferences are, in part. confined to the limitations of laws imposed on it from other particles that probably have conscious components as well. Imagine a state of nothing but saltiness and nothing else or a pure state of just experiencing blueness and nothing else. That's the kind of state I think matter experiences on a reductionist level. However, I think it makes a partially free will decision on what elemental, conscious state it wants to be in. When a bunch of electrons existing in these states that are fundamental of awareness function and collaborate in a highly organized structure, like a brain . they create a kind of mental tapestry which we experience as human individuals right now as we type.

Last edited by JNathanK on 26 Nov 2010, 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is that a fact?

Perhaps. It is certainly a very fruitful proposal.

Perhaps. It is certainly a very fruitful proposal.[/quote

But is it true?

If the statement: "there are no absolute facts" is true, then it contradicts itself. And if it is false then there are facts which are not absolute. Many factual states come about contingently. There are true things which are not necessarily true.

ruveyn