On Oct 5, 6:40 pm, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> In fact, Craig himself > >> denies that his theory would manifest as violation of physical law, > >> and is therefore inconsistent. > > > There is no inconsistency. You're just not understanding what I'm > > saying because you are only willing to think in terms of reactive > > strategies for neutralizing the threat to your common sense (which is > > a cumulative entanglement of autobiographical experiences and > > understandings, interpretations of cultural traditions and > > perspectives, etc). > > If you are right then there would be a violation of physical law in > the brain. You have said as much, then denied it. You have said that > neurons firing in the brain can't be just due to a chain of > biochemical events.
They can be due to a chain of biochemical events, but they also *are* biochemical events, and therefore can influence them intentionally as well as be influenced by them. I don't understand why this is such a controversial ideal. Just think of the way that you actually function right now. Your personal motives driving what *you* do with *your* mind and *your* body. If the mind could be understood just as biochemical events among neurons, then we would have no way to think of our bodies as ours - the brain would not need to think of itself in any other terms other than the biochemical events that it literally is. Why make up some bogus GUI if there is no user? >That would mean that, somewhere, a neuron fires > where examination of its physical state would suggest that it should > not fire. I guess you are never going to get tired of me correcting this factually incorrect assumption. The physical state of a neuron only suggests whether it is firing or not firing at the moment - not the circumstances under which it might fire. If you examine neurons in someone's amygdala, how is that going to tell you whether or not they are going to play poker next week or not? If the neurons feel like firing, does a casino appear? >You can't have it both ways: EITHER the neurons all fire due > to detectable physical causes Thought and intention are detectable causes with effects that are both describable as physical (having discrete volumes in space, mass, temperature, etc) and experiential (having cumulative perceptions through time, qualities, significance, subjective participation). Neurons associated with our consciousness can be lead by our personal, high level agency as a human being's psyche, or they can push their physiological agenda up to the psyche from the low level. There is no boundary. Just as there is no boundary whether you use a remote control to change the channel on your TV or your TV makes you change the channel by showing an ad for something that you would rather watch. I can keep explaining this over and over if you like, but I don't know why you want me to. >OR some neurons do not fire due to > detectable physical causes. Why does detectable have to mean physical? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
