I think BA77’s reply deserves to be headlined, as a part of the issue on self-falsification of evolutionary materialism.
First, a picture:
Now, the clip:
>>as to Lombrozo’s comment here:
“in the last 20 years or so, research in psychology and the cognitive science of religion has increasingly focused on another factor that contributes to evolutionary disbelief: the very cognitive mechanisms underlying human cognition.”
There is a mechanism underlying my cognitive abilities? Really???
Something smells rotten in Denmark! Let’s analyze this a bit more closely with our ‘mechanism’ of human cognition shall we?:
Cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and “computation”, problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc.
per wikipedia:As to all that “judgment and evaluation, reasoning and “computation”, problem solving and decision making” of human cognition, exactly how does Lombrozo propose we do all that “problem solving and decision making” if she, as a materialist, denies we have the free will to make decisions in the first place?
[Nancy Pearcey] When Reality Clashes with Your Atheistic Worldview – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Kpn3HBMiQ[youtube C0Kpn3HBMiQ]
Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012
Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause.
By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2…..66221.html(1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts.
(2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain.
(3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2)
(4) no effect can control its cause.
Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality.
per Box UDThe practical benefits of believing in free will and that you are not a robot (several studies):
https://uncommondescent.com…..ent-565274Perhaps after Lombrozo turns her incredible analytical/cognitive abilities on her unsolved problem of free will in her materialistic worldview, i.e. figuring out exactly how we can possibly make rational decisions without the inherent ability to make rational decisions, she can then turn her incredible analytical talents on the hard problem of consciousness?
David Chalmers on Consciousness (Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRooPhilosophical Zombies – cartoon
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/11‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’
David Barash – Materialist/Atheist Darwinian Psychologist“We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.”
Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professorThere is simply no direct evidence that anything material is capable of generating consciousness. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry Fodor says,
“Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness. Regardless of our knowledge of the structure of the brain, no one has any idea how the brain could possibly generate conscious experience.”
As Nobel neurophysiologist Roger Sperry wrote,
“Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature.”
From modern physics, Nobel prize-winner Eugene Wigner agreed:
“We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind.”
Contemporary physicist Nick Herbert states,“Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot.”
Physician and author Larry Dossey wrote:
“No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians’ hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it.”
Mind and Cosmos – Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False – Thomas Nagel
Excerpt: If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/pro…..9919758.doConsciousness Does Not Compute (and Never Will), Says Korean Scientist – May 05, 2015
Excerpt: “Non-computability of Consciousness” documents Song’s quantum computer research into TS (technological singularity (TS) or strong artificial intelligence). Song was able to show that in certain situations, a conscious state can be precisely and fully represented in mathematical terms, in much the same manner as an atom or electron can be fully described mathematically. That’s important, because the neurobiological and computational approaches to brain research have only ever been able to provide approximations at best. In representing consciousness mathematically, Song shows that consciousness is not compatible with a machine.
Song’s work also shows consciousness is not like other physical systems like neurons, atoms or galaxies. “If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain,” said Song. “The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn’t lie.”
Of note: Daegene Song obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oxford
http://www.prnewswire.com/news…..77306.htmlMathematical Model Of Consciousness Proves Human Experience Cannot Be Modeled On A Computer – May 2014
Excerpt: The central part of their new work is to describe the mathematical properties of a system that can store integrated information in this way but without it leaking away. And this leads them to their central proof. “The implications of this proof are that we have to abandon either the idea that people enjoy genuinely [integrated] consciousness or that brain processes can be modeled computationally,” say Maguire and co.
Since Tononi’s main assumption is that consciousness is the experience of integrated information, it is the second idea that must be abandoned: brain processes cannot be modeled computationally.
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/mathematical-model-of-consciousness-proves-human-experience-cannot-be-modelled-on-a-computer-898b104158dI think Lombrozo has her work cut out for her on the hard problem.
>>
Indeed, there is a challenge to be addressed. Let us see what evolutionary materialist scientism advocates have to say. END