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Are Dreams Incompatible With Materialism?

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Asks nkendall. All that follows is his:

Okay lets see what I can come up with. This is just one of several disproofs of materialism that I have tried out on atheist websites. Never once had anyone lay of glove on it:

DREAM SEQUENCES – A SIMPLE DISPROOF OF MATERIALISM
Here is a simple disproof of materialism that everyone can understand; consider dream sequences:

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. Dreams always involve novel (NEW) content – they are not rehashings or restructuring of various memories; although the topics are in the context of one’s life experiences.
2. Dreams are high definition imagery.
3. Dreams are real imagery, i.e. you are unaware or unable to distinguish the dream imagery when it is going on from real visual imagery during waking consciousness.
4. Dreams contain complex specified information, each image element (analogous to a pixel in HDTV) WITHIN an imagery frame in a dream has to be what it is for the imagery to be coherent and correlated. And each image element (pixel) has to be what it is for the imagery to be coherent and correlated dynamically ACROSS frames. I.e. each image element is highly constrained–highly specific.

PROBLEM WITH MATERIAL EXPLANATIONS
Materialism posits bottom-up causation and therefore consciousness, mental thoughts are produced by the components of the brain. Yet each of the many components that would have to be involved to give rise to a dream image, would be subject to an antecedent chain of causation which would not be dictated by the mental events (e.g. dream imagery) in any way. And all these components would have to be in sync with one another.

CALCULATION OF PROBABILITIES
Calculating probabilities is an endeavor in searching through large space. I will be charitable to materialism with each assumption in the calculation.
Calculate the superset of the overall search space:
– Determine the number of brain components involved.
– Determine the number of alternative states that the brain components could be in.
– Determine the refresh rate or frame rate of the dream imagery.
– Determine the number of image frames in the dream.
Example:
Let’s say a neuron synapse is our “brain component” and it could be either firing or not, i.e. binary.
Let’s say that there would have to be 10 million brain components (synapses firing or not) to produce each imagery frame in the dream.
Let’s say a 5 second dream sequence has 20 image frames per second.
So: 2^10,000,000 * (20 * 5) = A prohibitively large number that computers cannot even represent. This is the super set of possible brain states within which our single precise set of brain states necessary to cause our coherent, correlated dream imagery. In effect, the brain would have to create a novel mini movie instantaneously. This is flat out impossible without some high level controlling and creative entity, i.e. immaterial mind. Probabilities are much poorer than universal probability bound: 10^150.

OTHER INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS NOT INCLUDED
Note that in this exercise I am waving away a whole host of intractable difficulties and just focusing on what can be quantitatively demonstrated. For example I am waving away the following:

The fact that dreams are imagery that is not initiated by vision.
The dialog that goes along with dreams.
The thoughts, abstract thoughts, that go along with a dream.
That you seem to be able to focus your attention to a specific point in the dream imagery.
The difficulty with how the brain could identify and sequester the precise set of brain components involved in producing the dream imagery.
That the brain components’ events would have to be synchronized.
The difficulty with how the brain even registers imagery and thoughts in one’s consciousness.

Comments
There is a good wiki article on dreams. I like the idea that dreams are just reading memories and that sleep is just to recharge our memory ability. or rather our temporary memory etc etc. some good papers i found there. I think they are getting closer but still miss the point that its our soul merely reading memories because incoming senses are shut off.Robert Byers
May 4, 2015
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Mrmosis i get jokes and stuff like that too in my dreams. my jokes aren't that good. Yet its not a dream maker. Its just the glory of ones memory ability. We do remember all the jokes we ever heard, I think, and easily play back their concepts. Also we might dream it was funny but its a deception of the story. Dreaming is merely us USING memories. its not impressive but as ordinary as making up lies. It shows how much we are meshed with our memory for thinking. Almost the same thing. Yet its just a soul with a material machine.Robert Byers
April 22, 2015
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MrMosis your post reminded me of these studies: Sleep Might Help You Solve Problems Better - 2011 Excerpt: In the study, researchers assigned 54 college students (aged 18-23) to one of two groups. One learned a gambling game in the morning, while the other learned it in the evening, although no one was allowed to learn the trick to beating the game. Then they came back 12 hours later to play the game. Those who had a chance to get a full night's sleep after learning the game did a better job of figuring out the trick to it. Eighty percent of those who slept figured out the trick to the game, while 40 percent of those who stayed awake did, Spencer said. The researchers assigned the game to other groups of students and found that the time of day when they played it didn't affect their performance, boosting the case that sleep was a crucial factor for the first two groups. http://consumer.healthday.com/cognitive-and-neurological-health-information-26/brain-health-news-80/sleep-might-help-you-solve-problems-better-653604.html Let Me Sleep On It: Creative Problem Solving Enhanced By REM Sleep - June 9, 2009 Excerpt: "We found that – for creative problems that you've already been working on – the passage of time is enough to find solutions," said Mednick. "However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090608182421.htmbornagain77
April 22, 2015
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Somewhat related, I am always amazed (aside from the imagery and related elements of the immersive experience) at my dream-maker's ability to likewise create fully immersive plots, sub-plots, themes, narratives, etc... all behind my back, no less. (I certainly have nothing to do with it.) My dream-maker is better at conjuring up stories for me to participate in than my waking, conscious self is. I've even been told jokes in my dreams. I have been the butt of multi-party jokes in dreams, and conspired against by multiple conspirators working together. I have made efforts to solve problems in dreams. And to thwart the efforts of antagonists. And to think I am playing both sides... The level of intelligence required to pull that stuff off is unfathomable in my mind. Just try to get a computer to learn/understand the English language. And what are the plots and themes I am thrust into night after night comprised of if not language? And also, what is it exactly that babies are dreaming of?MrMosis
April 22, 2015
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Roy #68, Hi Roy, There was no error. You misunderstood and/or are playing games with semantics. Representing or storing a number on a computer is not the same thing as claiming the probabilities involving that number are within reach. Engage the issue, don't nitpick. How can dream imagery be created by the brain? Regardsnkendall
April 22, 2015
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nkendall @36:
The calculation, which is charitable to materialism, represents the superset of a probability within which a single solution exists with a modest tolerance for error. Get to the point…Tell me how it is possible for the brain to produce continuous, novel, coherent, correlated visual content nearly instantaneously.
The point is that you wrote something that wasn't just wrong, it was trivially and obviously wrong. This undermines the credibility of the rest of your post. The point now is that you are avoiding acknowledging your error, and trying to divert attention elsewhere. This undermines your integrity. RoyRoy
April 22, 2015
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nkendall I think you make a excellent case that dreams show a soul. someone is agitating the dreams and observing them. Dreams are memories , direct or twisted, and thats why they are vivid. Awake or asleep is irrelevant to the mechanism. Our soul simply observes memories. Our senses shoot info directly into our memory and we watch it. Dreams are former memories and could only be just as vivid. yet as you say someone is involved. a materialist must say our brain watches our memories. Who is the brain? It could only be our soul.Robert Byers
April 21, 2015
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Thanks for the additional comments Kairosfocus #43 and Silver Asiatic #47. I do not have time to comment now but will take a closer look when I get a chance. Best regards.nkendall
April 21, 2015
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To velikovsks #64 Inference of design and ascribing it to an immaterial (intelligent) source would be based on probability thresholds as William Dembski has detailed. Rock cairns, for example, in national parks could theoretically be created by natural phenomena but it would be highly improbable. There are many computer models out there that purport to generate useful things. I have not looked at all of them and only a couple in detail. The ones I have looked at, it seems there is always some design smuggled in somewhere somehow. I usually find these things to be like a shell game, like Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium which traded off mutation for selection. Sure simple adaptations can be fixed more quickly in small populations but small populations are less likely to generate useful mutations in the first place. The alternative to dream content being produced instantaneous, from a materialist perspective, would be that the dream imagery would have been created over a period of time to allow for the tandem mechanisms of chance and selection to work their supposed magic. I think it would be a draft on credulity to believe that the imagery in a dream could be built up over a period of time because so often dreams involve topics that were experienced just a few days or hours prior and because they involve novel imagery integrated with dialog and thought. Also within a single individual what would selection even mean? What would the inheritance function entail that passed on nascent thoughts that would eventually bloom into a full fledged dream? From a dualist perspective, I have no problem in accepting that the mind prepares thoughts in advance--perhaps well in advance. I believe that the mind does constantly queue up thoughts in near real time during waking consciousness (and while sleeping) and readies them for presentation to our consciousness. Materialists like Sam Harris misinterpret this phenomenon in light of Benjamin Libet's experiments as a demonstration that free will does not exist. Libet himself did not hold that view. I have always found it remarkable that there are never any gaps in our thought streams during waking consciousness and that each successive thought is related to the previous thought and relevant to one's interest. I don't know how a materialist can account for these everyday experiences especially when they involve new complex thoughts like Relativity. I have never seen a serious attempt at explaining this. The fact that you could impair thought by damaging the brain is unsurprising. A mind/brain dualist like myself would never claim that the brain does nothing, nor would I claim that it is not a necessary condition for thought. My point would be that the brain is a necessary condition (in most cases) but not a sufficient condition to account for thought. I could loosen the strings on David Garrett's violin for example and I am sure the audience would be quite disappointed in the sound. If I loosened them enough perhaps no useful sound at all. The violin is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for producing a nice sound by a violinist. There are many counter cases. In other words cases where little or even no useful brain at all (assuming the folks who have had near death experiences and especially out of body experiences are not all fibbing) or massive brain modifications produce little noticeable mental impairment. That is much harder for a materialist to explain than it is for a dualist to explain how brain damage could affect thought. Best regards.nkendall
April 21, 2015
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Nkendall: We are looking at the mental phenomena of dreams. My claim is that dreams exhibit the signature of design. Yes, I agree.does all design and information require a immaterial source? Dreams exhibit the signature of design because they produce vast amounts of novel, complex specified information instantaneously. What evidence do you have that it is instantaneously? Or should I say what information does your immaterial self have? Materialist explanations for the appearance of novel, complex specified information–primarily chance and selection–require vast amounts of opportunity, i.e. time and population (or component) size. Materialists also recognize a human brain is capable of producing information, it has been observed by other human brains that damage to the brain causes a decrease in the amount and quality of that information, why should brain damage affect an immaterial source of information? Sorry for all the questions but I find this fascinating.velikovskys
April 21, 2015
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We are looking at the mental phenomena of dreams. My claim is that dreams exhibit the signature of design. There are many other mental phenomena that exhibit the signature of design but dreams are easier to quantify because of the imagery they provide. Dreams exhibit the signature of design because they produce vast amounts of novel, complex specified information instantaneously. Materialist explanations for the appearance of novel, complex specified information--primarily chance and selection--require vast amounts of opportunity, i.e. time and population (or component) size. This is why the origin of life and the Cambrian Explosion are so confounding to Darwinism. How are dreams generated? Materialists would claim that they are somehow produced by the brain. Materialist reductionist solutions are limited to bottom up causation with the caveat of emergence. Emergence is a term that is coming back in vogue because other materialist explanations for mental phenomena have failed. Emergence is simply applying a label to a mystery as Philip Johnson once quipped. I will deal with emergence only tangentially when discussing possible materialist explanations. Materialism's bottom up causation is primarily a chance endeavor. However, in the case of dreams complex specified information is novel and is generated instantaneously; therefore, time and selection are of no value. So materialist explanations for dreams are left with naked chance to explain the vast amounts of complex specified information produced by dreams. There are a few caveats to this that I will cover in this post. Idealism/theism however offers mind/brain dualism with a top-down intelligent causative agency controlling mental phenomena. Materialism vs dualism is in effect a binary proposition. My claim would be that if it can be demonstrated that the brain could not possibly generate the vast amounts of novel, complex specified information produced by dreams, then materialism is falsified and the alternative, i.e. mind/brain dualism or something like it, is probably true. TERMINOLOGY First some terminology. I am going to make a comparison between the video that we see on say an High Definition TV and the imagery that appears in our dreams. When I am speaking of the image of a dream I will use the following terms: Image plane - refers to the dream's presentation of the image canvas appearing in one's consciousness during a dream. Analogous to a projector screen or TV screen or one's visual plane as viewed through the eyes during waking consciousness. Image content (or imagery) - refers to the mental image content of a dream and all the various components that make up the image plane. Analogous to the image content of a movie or real life as seen through the visual system during waking consciousness. Image frame - refers to the dynamic refreshing of the image content in a dream. Analogous to a video frame in video. Image element - represents the resolution or granularity of the imagery in the dream. Analogous to a video picture element (pixel) in video systems. Note: I am only going to discuss the image content of a dream. I am going to wave away all the intractable difficulties such as the dialog that occurs during a dream, the abstract meaning of the visual element, the abstract thoughts that accompany one's dreams and other complexities that William J. Murray has pointed out. I am doing this to make the exercise more easily quantifiable. DREAM ATTRIBUTES Based on my experience and discussions with others, dreams have the following attributes: 1) The imagery of a dream is NOVEL meaning that it is new (and unique actually). Dream imagery is not a direct replaying out of memory. However, the context or topic of our dreams is typically similar to what we experience in reality so in that limited sense, dreams can be based on memories. For example, I have dreams about things that are going on in my life and often with persons I interact with. But when these contextually similar elements appear in my dream, the image of them is not directly lifted out of memory--it is always different. So dreams are creative in that they produce new imagery. 2) The quality of the imagery of a dream is REAL in the sense that when you are dreaming in most cases, except lucid dreaming, you are not aware that you are dreaming and the imagery presented seems as real and of essentially the same quality as the imagery that you experience through the visual system during waking consciousness. 3) The image content of a dream is RESTRICTED to personal human experience. Our dreams include both natural items such as trees and dirt and grass and sky and humans as well as human artifacts such as bats and balls, and tables and chairs and computers. But our dreams do not generally include topics or objects never experienced. 4) The image content of a dream exhibits COMPLEXITY. Our dream imagery must be comprised of vast numbers of distinct image elements and they associated, underlying brain components that would have to change rapidly over time. 5) The imagery of a dream exhibits SPECIFICITY in that the distinct image elements are tightly interrelated with one another to form objects and trees and settings and people. Tight interrelatedness means that each image element that makes up an object or a face or a tree in a dream has to be what it is in order for the object to appear real as it normally would through the visual system. Tight interrelatedness of image elements means that they are interdependent and therefore highly constrained. Highly constrained means that they are highly specific. Each image element is in effect specified by the adjacent image elements (think pixels in video) that together makeup an object or face or tree. And these objects are specified by the overall setting of the imagery. The image elements are also specified temporally by the image content of the preceding image frames and the successive image frames. 6) The imagery of a dream is HIGH DEFINITION, equivalent to what they call Ultra High Definition video. Therefore, a rough comparison can be made between the information content of the imagery in a dream and the information content of Ultra HD video. Ultra HD video has 4000 pixels in a line and 2000 lines. Each picture element (pixel) can be one of about 16 million color values (2^24). There are 60 frames of video per second. 6) The imagery of a dream is DYNAMIC in the sense that the real human artifacts and natural items and persons are often involved in motion. The motion can be absolute or relative, i.e. the motion can be produced by the object itself moving or by the vantage point of the dreamer as he/she shifts their viewing reference. 7) The imagery of a dream is CONTINUOUS in the sense that there are no gaps in the imagery of a dream once it starts. There is always a next image frame filled with appropriate content queued up and brought into one's sleeping consciousness. So the imagery in a dream is novel, real, high quality, highly complex, highly specific, dynamic and continuous. I hope that is clear. I do not know how I could be any more clear. WHAT A MATERIALIST NEEDS TO EXPLAIN A materialist has to explain how the vast amounts of novel, complex specified information can be generated by the physical components within the brain instantaneously. Materialist, reductionist accounting of the mental phenomena involves only the physical brain and is therefore limited to bottom-up causation. However, each brain component would be doing what it is doing based on prior local causation and the long chain of antecedent cause for all brain components involved. The brain and its constituent components could not possibly have any knowledge and especially not any foreknowledge of the mental phenomena, especially novel mental phenomena. There would be no reason to suspect that a multitude of brain components could be marshaled together to produce any coherent mental phenomena and do so nearly instantaneously--no reason at all. For a materialist, when a dream starts, this would mean that suddenly, somehow, an unknown material mechanism occurs that sequesters a large array of brain components to produce a sequence of image frames. The material mechanism would have to demarc these brain components based on which specific set of brain components would produce the coloring for which specific set of image elements (Note in all likelihood it would require many brain components to define the color of each distinct image element, each "pixel"). The material mechanism would also have to coordinate between the brain components and arrange them that produce the colors for the multitude of image elements such that coherent image objects (e.g. a tea cup on a table) and a coherent image frame were produced. The material mechanism would have to synchronize the array of brain components such that the imagery would be refreshed in a coordinated way between all the brain components associated with each image element, just as frame sync generator does in video. The underlying material mechanism would also have to ensure that there was a new frame of imagery ready to present to our sleeping consciousness so that the dream imagery appeared uninterrupted--perhaps some fortuitous buffering scheme. The material mechanism would have to present the brain components in such a way that it could be registered and recognized by one's sleeping consciousness in the same coding scheme used by our visual system. In other words it would have to emulate the mechanism in our visual system. I am sure I left some difficulties out, but lets move on. How all that happens is a complete and utter mystery. Science involves explaining causation in physical phenomena. The task facing a materialist is to explain these unidentified material causative mechanisms sketched out above. My claim is that a materialist, brain only, accounting for dream imagery is impossible even in principle. Vast quantities of novel, dynamic, complex specified information cannot be produced instantaneously except through some intelligent top-down causation. POSSIBLE MATERIAL EXPLANATIONS Let's look at some possible materialist explanations. First off, it should be obvious that dream imagery is not something that could have been programmed by natural selection because our dream imagery is specific to individuals in the 21st century and often involves recently invented human artifacts. So a Darwinian explanation makes no sense unless you deplete Darwinian necessity of all meaning. (That assumes that there is any meaning left to natural selection in the first place). An image primitive scheme at first blush seems plausible. The primitive story would involve the brain somehow capturing and preparing all varieties of elements acquired through the visual system as generic components for later integration into a dream. This would be similar to a gaming system rendering content on the fly. I am sure a verbally skilled materialist could weave a "plausible" story together around the primitives scheme that could deceive all varieties of naive foolish young adults in academia or even adults stricken with the mental disease of materialism. But for the skeptical and deep thinkers among us it will not wash. Here is why: First, you would need a complex generic capture mechanism for image primitives in the first place. How could that have evolved? Why would it have evolved? Secondly, you would need a generic preparation function for each image primitive that would prepare primitives for instantiation into a dream sequence. Third when the image primitives were to be integrated into a dream, they would have to have been instantiated on the fly for the specific context and visual content of the dream. Instantiation would involve preparing the images in terms of scale, color, "viewing" angle, and it would have to do so dynamically throughout the sequence of image frames to result in perceived motion. Fourth, the instantiated image primitive(s) would have to be introduced at just the right location in the image plane. Fifth, the instantiated image primitives would have to be introduced at precisely the right time in the dream sequence. Sixth, image primitives would have to be stored and recalled for use which would require some complex and dynamic indexing system (the specter of an infinite regress looms large here). Seventh, the recall mechanism would have to have a recognition system that would pull out usable primitives and instantiate them in a timely manner. There is probably not enough time in the day (or night) for any sort of recognition function to do this. Eighth, dreams often include images of things which are entirely unfamiliar and could not have been derived from any sort of primitive based on past memory. There is more, but I will stop there. All this is hopeless complex probably not much easier than randomly generating the images from scratch which is the only other alternative available to materialism. FALSIFICATION So how would you go about falsifying materialism based on the characteristics of dreams? I am proposing to limit the focus to quantifying the probabilities of the imagery itself and not all the other intractable problems I listed above (as well as many others that I did not even mention). Since materialist explanations for dreams are essentially limited to chance, we would need to calculate the probability of each brain component being arranged precisely how would have to have been vs what it could have been. However, we do not know how many brain components are involved in producing the imagery in a dream (under the assumption that materialism is true) and we do not know how many different states each brain component could be in--no one has a clue. Therefore, we cannot come up with a definitive super set to calculate the probabilities for the brain itself in order to falsify materialism. We have to make an alternative calculation based on the rough assessment of the information content of a dream compared to Ultra High Definition video. For example, each image element (think pixel) in a dream could be one of roughly 16 million color values (1/16,000,000). I suppose there is some tolerance for error here but it is negligible. There would be roughly 8,000,000 image elements per image frame. There would be roughly 60 image frames per second--600 total for a 10 second dream. So what are the odds for any distinct image element (pixel) being precisely what it has to be throughout out all 600 image frames? 1/16,000,000^600. What are the odds for all image elements in an image frame being precisely what they have to be in order to form the objects and setting and faces and trees, etc in a distinct image frame of a dream? 1/16,000,000^8,000,000 The resulting probabilities are so diminishingly small that they are hardly worth considering. How much would you have to reduce the numerical assumptions in order to reach a reasonable chance hypothesis? Even if you reduced the number of possible values of each image element to 1/10 and reduced the number of image elements per frame to 15 and the frame rate to 10/second, you are still left at the universal probability bound: 10^150. But that would not be a very interesting dream would it. Check my math folks, I am only an engineer of sorts not a mathematician. A materialist might claim that I am begging the question, in effect, by invoking a phantom target when calculating the odds of meeting a specific value for each image element. I do not believe this objection is valid because I am making no assumption about the cause at all, at least initially. I am merely inferring that from the attributes of dreams that I listed, dream imagery exhibits complex specified information by virtue of their realism, just as a movie does. Therefore calculating a target applies. Just as it would when trying to assess whether a string of human text characters was generated randomly or by human intelligence. Any materialist response should include full engagement with some level of details based on plausible explanations. No nipping around the edges, or beating around the bush; no hand waving or shoulder shrugging or playing with semantics; no assigning sophisticated labels to mysterious phenomena and no invoking promissory materialism. Good luck, by comparison, explaining away the Cambrian Explosion is mere child's play.nkendall
April 21, 2015
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Interesting observation Robert #61. I will have to think about that. Best regards.nkendall
April 21, 2015
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nkendall 49# I agree with you that our dreams are not repeats of memorized events. Yet , i say, they are just using memories exclusively. We do the same in daydreams. We can be slightly unconscience but are in control of our imagination which uses memories. like wise in your 3-d eyesight poibnt. Our dreams being just the use of memory have no problem duplicating when we see things awake. This because eyesight is just us watching memories of the outside world. We don't actually see the world. Only a recent, very, memory of it, Also why its editted. We only watch a memory from our eyes and so our dreams reveal this facxt as there is no difference when we are sleeping. Its the same simple mechanism. We just watch memories awake or asleep. The former are real and the latter our soul picking and choosing. Dreams are evidence of how we interact with our senses. Its all observation of memories. Nothing else is going on. It could only be that our dreams are as vivid as when awake as there is no difference to our soul's observation.Robert Byers
April 20, 2015
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Thanks bornagain77 comment #59. I will check it out. I have his book but have not gone through it yet.nkendall
April 20, 2015
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nkendall, this may interest you. A 'dream' dramatically effected Eric Metaxas's life: Eric Metaxas testimony how he became a Christian - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7juRRJhhIHEbornagain77
April 20, 2015
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Joe Coolest quip ever. Better than open minded brains that fell out haha!!!Andre
April 20, 2015
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Okay Zachriel. Regarding your comment #55. I have work to do at the moment. I will take the time to spell it out in great deal later today or tomorrow. My explanation might require pictures. Best regards.nkendall
April 20, 2015
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Zachriel:
Have no idea what you are trying to say.
That is exactly how we feel when we read your posts.Joe
April 20, 2015
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nkendall: Given that each distinct image element in the image content of a dream is highly constrained by the associated image elements in the overall visual content ... Have no idea what you are trying to say. Dreams are often thought of as free associations. Events of the day are sometimes juxtaposed with past events. One thought leads to another. This process isn't exactly random, but because the rules of logic are relaxed, almost any image may come upon another. This seems the opposite of being "highly constrained".Zachriel
April 20, 2015
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Dreams disprove materialism for the simple fact that materialism cannot account for the organisms who have them. Heck, at a minimum neurons require the proper ions, pumps, neurotransmitters and a way to recognize those neurotransmitters.Joe
April 20, 2015
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To Zachriel #50 Regarding "Needle in a haystack". Given that each distinct image element in the image content of a dream is highly constrained by the associated image elements in the overall visual content, each image element has a defacto target. So there is, in effect, a single needle, many of them in many extraordinarily large haystacks in fact. And given that the image content of a dream is novel and unique the search by the physical resources of the brain would in fact be random. If you claim otherwise then please describe how it could have been programmed such that it was deterministic or aided by natural selection. Regarding "acquisition of that much complex specified information instantaneous by any material means at all." You miss the point. No, I do not mean the visual system. Regarding signals from outer space. Again you miss the point. I was saying that scientists would not make the claim that it was random. They would not make that claim because the detecting of the text of the Bible would be an extraordinarily large amount of complex specified information, but not any more than, or not much more than, what we are presented with in our dreams, yet you ascribe that to some material process in the brain. Secondly, the signal would not be a "reflection" from earth because I made a special point of saying that the modulation scheme and the encoding scheme was unfamiliar to we humans. Regarding 666 coin flips and Shakespeare Sonnets...Of course Sonnets are produced by humans, that's the point. And computers are not close to producing something akin to sonnets unless you mean someone can program a computer to output the text of a sonnet. The only other way that a computer could generate a poem is for a programmer to enter so constraints that sooner or later by chance something that was not awful, might over the course of human history, result. But were that to happen, I would suggest that it would involve many thousands of lines of codes written by a human. A computer left to its own resources and equipped with only a random character generator, could produce nothing, not even the Hello World program given the entire probabilistic resources of the known universe. Best regards.nkendall
April 20, 2015
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nk, my HP50 calculator will not like that number, nor will most computer software and FP processors. That's a lot -- hugely -- more than the number of atoms in the observed cosmos, ~10^80. You can work with it in logged out form, as that compresses hugely. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2015
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bpragmatic: What a joke Matzke, as if you have anything to substantiate your vast array of conjecture. What! Don't you know a pro when you encounter one? Then maybe I should edify so this mistake won't happen again: a professional is one that holds to the illusion of purpose in work done with the enrollment of purposeless talents.groovamos
April 20, 2015
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nkendall: Thanks for the clarification Zachriel. We were just providing a more elegant proof to Roy's point. 2^10,000,000 is a representation on your computer. nkendall: The point is that it represents an extraordinarily large haystack within which you must find a needle. Sure, if the search were random and there was only a single needle. nkendall: My point is, in principle, how is it even possible to acquire that much complex specified information instantaneous by any material means at all. Do you mean, how can humans perceive visually? If so, computers are close to being able to do so already. There doesn't seem to be any a priori barrier to further advances in this regard. nkendall: If we started receiving signals from the far reaches of outer space that used an unfamiliar modulation scheme and encoding scheme, yet when demodulated and decoded produced the Bible, I am sure that the response would not be something like: “Well, we know it is some natural phenomenon, but we (scientists) do not know how nature creates this apparent design. We have several theories…” No scientist would claim the signal was random. It would likely be a reflection of something originally transmitted from Earth, a common problem in astrophysics. But if you find such a signal, we'll consider it. nkendall: What if I flipped a coin 666 times and when decoded in ascii, it produced a Shakespeare Sonnet and you had to match that…or any coherent string of human characters for that matter. Let us know when that happens. Meanwhile, sonnets are generally produced by humans, though computers can produce something akin to sonnets.Zachriel
April 20, 2015
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To Robert # 41 Thanks for the excellent comments. Although I do not meditate, what you are describing is akin perhaps to the "witnessing awareness." There are two things in your comments which I wanted to comment on. Although I do agree that the context of our dreams and daydreams arise from one's experience--memory, I have never found that the visual content of my dreams are a direct replay from memory. In fact I would go so far as to say I have never had a dream that was a direct replay out of memory. The particular visual experience in my dreams is always novel, more often than not with new persons and settings and different actions, that is why I find them so interesting. Occasionally real people and places appear in my dreams of course, but never from some memory I have had of them. Also you say that "dreams are so real because they are the same mechanism as waking life." One of the stunning things about dreams is that although they involving high definition, 3D video that is the strikingly similar as that which one experiences through the visual system, the visual content of a dream comes not from the eyes and the visual system, but from somewhere else. A materialist has to explain how it is that a set of brain cells could precisely emulate the visual system. Given the complex cascade of the multitude of proteins and enzymes involved in vision, the biochemical operation and the Darwinian explanation as to how this emulation could have arisen is extraordinarily difficult to explain.nkendall
April 20, 2015
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Barry: Materialist Dodge 11: The burden is always on you, never on me Personally asking someone what they think is more interesting than telling them what they think. Which dodge is that?velikovskys
April 20, 2015
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Great post by nkendall. We can observe the complete lack of response to it. I don't think our opponents understand (or want to understand) the problem. There's another aspect of dreams that are a problem from the bottom-up materialist view. In the same way that brain outputs have to be developed and selected by Darwinian processes, and therefore have to have some selective purpose or function, in the materialist world, matter is all there is. Everything that is, is material. This is a major problem for anything imaginative. When the brain represents something that does not exist, what is viewing that? Hydrogen atoms can only know what is real. They can only create what is real (hydrogen molecules, etc). How can matter create something that does not exist? The immaterial does not exist in matter, so that's why dreams have always throughout human society been interpreted as a contact with a spirit-world, or an emanation of spirit. But materialism is monistic. There can be no category for "that which does not exist". If it does not exist in matter, then it is immaterial. That's not a possible category in materialism. So, an "imaginary softball game" must exist in matter. If it does not exist as a material thing, then it is immaterial. That's why there can't be any rationality in materialism because you can't have truth versus falsehood in a world entirely of matter. There is only "truth" or "real". The only way to know what truth is, is to contrast with false (not real). Matter is all that is real. All that is real is matter. Matter is all there is. There is nothing that is not real. Dreams and imaginations are about not-real things. They're about the immaterial. There can be no category for the not-real in materialism. All things are matter, therefore real. We cannot even say "or not" because there can be no "not real". Matter cannot imagine its negation or non-existence. Because the non-existence of matter would necessarily be a material thing. Regarding software: Even materialist-software that can produce "Hello World" (if possible) has to connect several functions to output that phrase to the screen. "Hello World" is a pattern in a binary sequence. What interprets it as a greeting? Why is it different from eeqlm vntoz? A material data-interpreter can only "recognize" what is real. To say that all is matter and we can produce something that is not real, is to say that the "not real is matter", an obvious contradiction.Silver Asiatic
April 20, 2015
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To Zachriel regarding #44 Thanks for the clarification Zachriel. Whether or not a computer or calculator will give you response if you enter 2^10,000,000 power is really not the point--it was a bit of hyperbole. Perhaps you can find one that will. The point is that it represents an extraordinarily large haystack within which you must find a needle. My question: "how it is possible for the brain to produce continuous, novel, coherent, correlated visual content nearly instantaneously" is not so much whether you can offer a complete theory of cognition. I know that nothing close to that exists. As Thomas Nagel points out, no one even knows how the taste of sugar is recognized in one's consciousness. My point is, in principle, how is it even possible to acquire that much complex specified information instantaneous by any material means at all. If we started receiving signals from the far reaches of outer space that used an unfamiliar modulation scheme and encoding scheme, yet when demodulated and decoded produced the Bible, I am sure that the response would not be something like: "Well, we know it is some natural phenomenon, but we (scientists) do not know how nature creates this apparent design. We have several theories..." Assigning labels to mysteries and invoking promissory materialism for the vast complex specified information in a simple 5 second dream sequence, just doesn't cut it, for me anyway. it is remarkable that marvelously complex, abstract and novel sequence of thoughts occur to each of us every day. Consider Einstein's flow of consciousness as he sought to solve the problem which became known as Relativity. Are we to believe that material processes in the brain just happened to conspire together to bring about a continuous stream of extraordinarily complex, related thoughts that just happen to be what Einstein was interested in and that just happened to reflect an important truth about reality? Your response to the 666 challenge is the same as mine, i.e. that you would never match that configuration is precisely my point. Perhaps I should change the example. What if I flipped a coin 666 times and when decoded in ascii, it produced a Shakespeare Sonnet and you had to match that...or any coherent string of human characters for that matter.nkendall
April 20, 2015
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Zachriel
Our point was pedantic, as much directed at Roy as at you, and concerned your claim that computers cannot even represent the number, when nearly all our readers are seeing it represented on a computer.
The challenge for materialism on this point is considerable. You responded with a pedantic quip regarding the term "represent". Perhaps your side will find some sort of victory there.Silver Asiatic
April 20, 2015
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nkendall: The calculation, which is charitable to materialism, represents the superset of a probability within which a single solution exists with a modest tolerance for error. Perhaps. Our point was pedantic, as much directed at Roy as at you, and concerned your claim that computers cannot even represent the number, when nearly all our readers are seeing it represented on a computer. Given a generous reading, you probably meant that the computer can't count by ones that high. nkendall: Tell me how it is possible for the brain to produce continuous, novel, coherent, correlated visual content nearly instantaneously. Not sure there is a complete theory of cognition known. nkendall: You couldn’t even flip a coin 666 times and then match that same sequence given all the probabilistic resources of the entire known universe. No, but you can flip a coin 666 times and come up with a unique sequence every time.Zachriel
April 20, 2015
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