How does the mind arise from the brain? Novel idea

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January 25, 2015

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From hplus Magazine:

Abstract: Human behaviour is controlled not only by instincts but also by the mind. However, the relation of the mind to the brain has not been fully explained. In conventional interpretations, the mind is not believed to be located at any one spot in the brain, which, if true, suggests that we will remain forever unable to explain the mind completely, regardless of our understanding of the brain’s local functions. Brain development resembles the branching process of the cherry tree, in which the trunk branches off into limbs and limbs into twigs. As a novel method of understanding the mind, we compared the patterns of neural stem cell activity with the growth patterns of meristematic cells in the cherry tree. Studying plants in the natural world enables us to keep an open mind.

It’s okay, except for one thing: Ask the cherry tree for a comment and see what you get. Get back to us with the answer. World awaits with interest.

See also: Why naturalizing the mind will never work

and

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

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Comments

Seversky said ""NDE/OBEs are anecdotal at best. They cannot be replicated reliably. There is no way to verify the experience took place during the time when there was no detectable brain activity. "" Either you are intentionally ignoring the aware study I posted or you just seem to have a black out when going over the post and the link to the study that was also published in a respectable peer reviewed journal in England . Seversky this is exactly what was shown with the 57 year old social worker . And about your claim that they aren't reliable because they can't be replicated in a. Laboratory ? That's plain ole scientism which even atheist sinnologist professor Joseph Needham warned against as being much too narrow of a worldview to determine all truths .. The aware study was the first time it was shown medically to have happened at a time when the brain isn't functioning (even with the 39 second deep brain surge occurring ) Seversky it seems like ur comfortable with being an atheist , so I won't push it by speaking the truth ;) The evidence however keeps getting better every year towards the conclusion that these Nde's can't be explained by the brain . Please don't study. Eridical Nde's anymore be used u won't like what u will read. One day when ur ready for the truth it will still be there waiting for you. For now u can be in denial just as u probably claim young earth creationists are in denial ;) This mist he what atheists call freethinking ;)wallstreeter43_{January 26, 2015
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Seversky: There are certainly many hallmarks of a dogmatic biased selective hyperskeptic. You probably exhibit them all.gpuccio_{January 26, 2015
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Piotr: Hi, how are you? I would like to add some thoughts about the problem of "explaining" consciousness as an "emergent property" of matter. The problem is, IMO, that it's no explanation at all. You say: "So what? It doesn’t change anything in my argument. A single molecule is not wet, not even a little. Nor are two or three, or a hundred molecules. “Deducing” it from lower-level properties is hardly as easy as deducing the pressure or temperature of a gas, since molecular interactions in liquid water are far more complex, but it’s doable, in principle. The emergent behaviour of a system MUCH more complicated than a volume of water is of course still more difficult to compute (or impossible to compute in practice)." And I agree. Wetness is an emergent behaviour which can be traced to known physical laws. Other emergent behaviours could be more complex, and their explanation in terma of known physical laws, as you say, could be very difficult or even potentially impossible, in detail, at the level of computation. I agree. But in extending those thoughts to a possible explanation of consciousness, there is a serious fallacy, a completely unwarranted generalization. Because, in the case of wetness, or any other known "emergent property", the simple fact is that the property is a behaviour of material objects, and therefore potentially explainable by known material laws, which describe how material objects behave. (Thank you for using the word "behaviour" instead of "property", that makes the reasoning much easier: that's why I like linguists! :) ). IOWs, laws describing the behaviour of material systems can potentially explain observed behaviours of material systems, if the correct computational connection can be found. Even when the computation is difficult, or beyond any realistic power, even then we can find definite hints that such a computation can exist. But the problem with consciousness is that it is not the observed behaviour of a material system. Subjective experiences are a basic component of our worldview, because we observe them directly in our own personal consciousness. In a sense, the opposite is true. All behavious of material objects are in reality observed as conscious experiences. That's why Chalmers makes his important distinction between the easy problem of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness. The easy problem (which in reality is not easy at all) is about behaviours: can I explain some behaviours of conscious beings in terms of behaviours of non conscious systems? That comparison is perfectly legit. If a conscious being is able to detect an object from the background in the seeing process, it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether a non conscious algorithm can do the same. The Turing test itself is about behaviours. But all those computational tests about behaviours can tell us nothing about consciousness itself. There is no known physical laws which is connected to the existence of subjectivity. Therefore, no computation about configurations of matter can explain subjectivity. The only "evidence" for an origin of subjectivity from a material configuration would be the empirical emergence of true, undeniable subjectivity from a new material configuration of objects, created by us. IOWs, a machine which can really pass any kind of Turing test, so that an inference of consciousness for the machine itself becomes really warranted. ID theory is of great help here: I really believe that a machine which can generate tons of new, original dFSCI, exactly as we can, would be a real "pass" for the Turing test. At the same time, I don't believe that such a thing will ever happen. As far as we know, there is absolutely no hint that any configuration of matter can express any subjectivity. Therefore, consciousness remains an observed phenomenon which is essentially different from matter: a) matter can be observed in consciousness, and the same material reality can be observed in a similar way by different conscious beings. IOWs, matter is about "objects". b) consciousness can be observed in consciousness, but conscious events can be observed only by the subject who experiences them. IOWs, consciousness is about "subjects". That is a big difference. Explaining the existence of subjective experiences by observations about objects is completely different from explaining, by computation, an observed objective behaviour ("emergent property) as the result of other simpler observed objective behaviours.gpuccio_{January 26, 2015
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NDE/OBEs are anecdotal at best. They cannot be replicated reliably. There is no way to verify the experience took place during the time when there was no detectable brain activity. How do we no it didn't happen during the periods immediately before or immediately after the period of no brain function when the patient was unconscious? And if EEGs are not sensitive enough to detect deep brain function how do we know there was no brain activity when they were flatlined? You people are way too credulous. As for non-local communication, consciousness fields, the brain as a transceiver, that's Treknobabble. And appealing half-baked notions of quantum physics to explain your pet theory has become almost the hallmark of a crank.Seversky_{January 25, 2015
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Axel said ""Wrong, Seversky. The evidence from ‘out of body’ experiences, quite exhaustively monitored in terms of medical technology, is that a)there is a mind/body dualism, and b) that the brain acts as a kind of receiver for the extra-corporeal consciousness (which evidently stays in the proximity of the patient, for a while; NDEs suggest even their returning from non local regions), rather like a receiver for TV or radio waves."" Axel this is exactly what nde researcher /cardiologist Doctor Pim Van Lommel believes is happening . http://iands.org/research/important-research-articles/43-dr-pim-van-lommel-md-continuity-of-consciousness.html?showall=1 With this new concept about consciousness and the mind-brain relation all reported elements of an NDE during cardiac arrest could be explained. This concept is also compatible with the non-local interconnectedness with fields of consciousness of other persons in phase-space. Following an NDE most people, often to their own amazement and confusion, experience an enhanced intuitive sensibility, like clairvoyance and clairaudience, or prognostic dreams, in which they “dream” about future events. In people with an NDE the functional receiving capacity seems to be permanently enhanced. When you compare this with a TV set, you receive not only Channel 1, the transmission of your personal consciousness, but simultaneously Channels 2, 3 and 4 with aspects of consciousness of others. This remote, non-local communication seems to have been demonstrated scientifically by positioning subject pairs in two separate Faraday chambers, which effectively rules out any electromagnetic transfer mechanism. A visual pattern-reversal stimulus is used to elicit visual evoked responses in the EEG registration of the stimulated subject, and this was instantaneously received by the non-stimulated subject resulting in an analogous neural event with a similar brain wave morphology, or transferred potentials, as revealed on the EEG.43,44wallstreeter43_{January 25, 2015
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Severski said :""Find an example of a mind existing independent of any physical substrate like a brain and we have evidence for an immaterial mind. Until then, the evidence points to it being a phenomenon of the physical brain."" I guess if you want to ignore my post on the parnia aware study , you can but this is exactly where the evidence points to . Now u might not like it but it doesn't change the evidence does it. Maybe it's better if you ignore evidences like these as it would allow you to cling more efficiently to your atheistic/materialistic faithwallstreeter43_{January 25, 2015
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I notice that the Atheist/materialists/naturalists conveniently ignored the veridical nde example from parnia's study that I gave .hmmmm I wonder why . Skram do you wonder why as well ;)wallstreeter43_{January 25, 2015
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I am kidding, Box, just kidding. I do not consider superconductivity to be magic. Superconductivity is no longer considered magic so because we now have a good understanding of the phenomenon. There is a scientific theory of how electric currents are able to flow with no resistance through a piece of a superconductor. Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer published it in 1957 and received a Nobel Prize for that work in 1972. (Anderson subsequently did some important work elucidating certain aspects of superconductivity that weren't treated accurately by the BCS.) However, prior to 1950 (when a precursor theory by Ginzburg and Landau appeared), you could as well say that superconductivity is magic. There was no explanation for it. Indeed, how could an electronic fluid flow with no resistance through a crystal when we know that every object encounters some sort of friction when it moves? So I was kidding, but there was a grain of truth in that joke.skram_{January 25, 2015
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skram: Richard Feynman famously struggled with the problem of superconductivity, trying to obtain it from particle interactions alone, and failing spectacularly. As far as he was concerned, superconductivity was pure magic! Poof!
For clarity. This is (also) your position? You - as a physician - don't agree with Shalizi and believe that properties magically appear? Can you quote Feynman stating that he believes, as you claim, in such poofery?Box_{January 25, 2015
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Box @ 23, Right. When I go to the Chinese circus in Las Vegas all kinds of interesting effects emerge from the individual players. But none is inexplicable given the nature of participants and their interactions. OTOH, nobody can even define what consciousness is apart from their own subjective -- me first -- point of view. Try explaining what your consciousness is to a robot. :) A few musical notes come to mind... Me me me me me me. Primarily so. The robot stands befuddled.mike1962_{January 25, 2015
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Box: BTW I have noticed that atheists stress the *poof* aspect of “emergent” properties in physics in order to draw an analogy with consciousness. However physicists don’t view e.g. the wetness of water as some ‘mysterious’ emergent poofery.
I am a physicist, Box, and I disagree with Shalizi. There are much stronger examples of emergence in physics than wetness or pressure. For example, take rigidity, which means resistance to certain static deformations, an ability to keep shape. Some substances have this property and we call them solids. Other substances don't (liquids and gases). Solids can be made of molecules or of atoms, and the bonding interactions between them can be of a variety of types: ionic, covalent, van-der-Waals, they all can be solids. So rigidity goes way beyond the details of interactions. At the same time, the same substance may have rigidity in one state (ice) and lack in another (water). Thus rigidity may not be determined by the properties of the atoms or molecules themselves (as then ice and water would have to be either both rigid or both not rigid). In fact, it turns out that rigidity is directly related to a common property of solids: they break the rotational symmetry of space. Crystals have special directions along which their atoms are aligned. These directions are chosen spontaneously during the growth of the crystal. Liquids and gases, on the other hand, are isotropic. This turns out to be the crucial difference explaining the presence of rigidity in solids and its lack in liquids and gases. This is what I call a good example of emergence. No amount of information about the constituents themselves (atoms or molecules) is enough to determine the rigidity of a substance. One needs knowledge about broken rotational symmetry, which goes beyond that. There are other examples of such "poof"-type emergence: superfluidity (the flow of a fluid with no friction) and superconductivity (a similar effect with an electric current). Richard Feynman famously struggled with the problem of superconductivity, trying to obtain it from particle interactions alone, and failing spectacularly. As far as he was concerned, superconductivity was pure magic! Poof!skram_{January 25, 2015
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Cognitive science is in need of new theory to help conceptualize brain development. I found this part of it to be much more interesting than I at first thought it would be:
4.2 Neural stem cells and the meristematic cells Once a cherry tree has matured, it appears to have stopped growing. This is because as the tree is buffeted by winds and damaged by insects over the years, only the strong branches survive, and the number of growing point cells ? the cells able to produce new buds ?continues to decrease. However, even an old tree with a severely depleted number of meristematic cells continues every spring to produce a small number of buds ( which then bloom into flowers), puts out fresh green leaves, and thus continues to grow for as long as it lives. We can interpret this in terms of the brain by saying that although the number of neural stem cells decreases with age, the brain, just like the cherry blossom tree, continues to put out new ‘buds’, so to speak, and continues to develop as long as it lives. Over the years, substantial effort has been devoted to understanding the extremely complex functions of the brain. Perhaps this is because we human beings see ourselves as special organisms, and therefore believe that we must have special qualities or mechanisms. However, if we treat human beings as just one type of organism, we can see that all living creatures? including plants, animals, fungus and viruses – have mechanisms in common. In other words, from birth until death, at all times, every organism recognizes its self and its non-self and possesses undifferentiated growth points. Those growth points, which have finished differentiating, leave traces of themselves behind as memories, and as this process is repeated, the memories one possesses as one’s ‘self’ change over time. It is thought that these growth points, (which are able to differentiate), and memories, (which have been created from these differentiated growth points,) are the building blocks of life. Through asymmetric division, neural stem cells, which are the brain’s growth points, grow into two different daughter cells: a new neural stem cell and a nerve cell. Because of the very large number of differentiating neural stem cells, the brain can play an important role as an organ (the neuron network structure) – namely, the continuous creation of an individual’s personality by means of the constant differentiation of neural stem cells into nerve cells, in combination with information gleaned from the outside environment and accumulated memories. Once these nerve cells have finished their duties, the glial cells are left as memories. In the meantime, the next group of neural stem cells begins to differentiate; thus the neuron network is constantly updated and the brain keeps developing, just like a cherry tree. Again, this concept is easier to understand if we liken the brain to a cherry blossom tree. A cherry blossom tree growing outdoors is constantly subject to natural stimuli; it is buffeted by wind and exposed to the sun and rain. The countless number of growth point cells in the buds on the tree’s branches sense light and temperature, differentiate, and put out buds, flowers, and leaves. In this way, the new branches that have grown over the years remain as ‘memories’, while new meristematic cells are produced. These growth cells gather together and eventually form a whole cherry tree, from the thick trunk to the numerous small branches growing out from it, that keeps growing. In short, both the brain and the cherry tree continuously change and develop, without limit.
Gary S. Gaulin_{January 25, 2015
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Piotr: So what? It doesn’t change anything in my argument.
You are mistaken. Of course it does. As I understand it, physicists don't regard water and all other phenomena in everyday life as emergent in the strong sense. They believe that the fundamental laws (Schroedinger's equation for the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen) describe what we see everyday.
Piotr: The emergent behaviour of a system MUCH more complicated than a volume of water are of course still more difficult to compute (or impossible to compute in practice).
Sure, but a purely physical system is in principle reducible to fundamental laws and parts. And they cannot cause what is not entirely explicable from them. "Anything can happen" doesn't fly. [edit:] IOW the *poof* aspect in order to 'explain' consciousness isn't there.Box_{January 25, 2015
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and wetness is impossible to describe in the first place without the subjective experience of consciousness to tell you what it feels like to be wet! Go figure!bornagain77_{January 25, 2015
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Box, Did I say that wetness was inexplicable or mysteriously poofed into existence? Of course it results from the statistical behaviour of a vast number of interacting H2O molecules. So what? It doesn't change anything in my argument. A single molecule is not wet, not even a little. Nor are two or three, or a hundred molecules. "Deducing" it from lower-level properties is hardly as easy as deducing the pressure or temperature of a gas, since molecular interactions in liquid water are far more complex, but it's doable, in principle. The emergent behaviour of a system MUCH more complicated than a volume of water is of course still more difficult to compute (or impossible to compute in practice).Piotr_{January 25, 2015
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Of related note:
Consciousness: What are some concise ways to convince people that consciousness is not an emergent property? Excerpt: First off, “emergent property” is one of those hand-wavey terms people like to throw around without much substance behind it. A basic definition is something like complex properties that results from the interaction of simple behaviors. That doesn’t actually answer the how of consciousness particularly well by itself.,,, How do you explain the subjective experience of “redness”, let’s say. Saying simply that it’s the correlate of the neurophysiological response to certain rods and cones sensitive to certain light waves does not answer the question of why there is a gestalt qualitative experience of red. - Marc Ettlinger, Research Neuroscientist, Department of Veterans Affairs http://www.quora.com/Consciousness/What-are-some-concise-ways-to-convince-people-that-consciousness-is-not-an-emergent-property/answer/Marc-Ettlinger?srid=4tp&share=1
David Chalmers is semi-famous for getting the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness (i.e. subjective experience) across to lay people in a very easy to understand manner:
David Chalmers on Consciousness (Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
Here are a few more comments, from atheists no less, that agree with Chalmers on the insolubility of ‘hard problem’ of consciousness,,
‘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 - per UD News “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 professor 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/product/9780199919758.do
Here a Harvard neurosurgeon, a former atheist and who had a life changing Near Death Experience, comments on the ‘hard' problem:
The Science of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander – Nov. 18, 2012 Can consciousness exist when the body fails? One neurosurgeon says he has seen it firsthand—and takes on critics who vehemently disagree. Excerpt: Many scientists who study consciousness would agree with me that, in fact, the hard problem of consciousness is probably the one question facing modern science that is arguably forever beyond our knowing, at least in terms of a physicalist model of how the brain might create consciousness. In fact, they would agree that the problem is so profound that we don’t even know how to phrase a scientific question addressing it. But if we must decide which produces which, modern physics is pushing us in precisely the opposite direction, suggesting that it is consciousness that is primary and matter secondary. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/18/the-science-of-heaven.html
Basically, Materialists/Atheists, when they proclaim that consciousness is merely an ‘emergent property’ of the brain, are, in essence, saying that consciousness is merely an illusion. But as Chalmers pointed out in his video via Rene Decartes (i.e. ‘I think therefore I am’), the fact that we are conscious is the most concrete thing we can know about reality. And as Decartes first elucidated, we can reasonably doubt everything else we perceive about reality, but the fact that we ourselves are conscious, within this material reality we are trying to describe, is the one thing that we can doubt least about reality. In fact, if consciousness is held to be merely an illusion (merely ‘an emergent property’ of the brain), as atheists hold, then our ability to know anything else is real/true about reality is undermined from within by that presupposition (see Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and Bruce Gordon on Boltzmann’s Brain). This ‘undermined from within’ epistemological failure inherent within the atheist’s materialistic worldview is revealed in a rather humorous fashion here:
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – January 2014 Excerpt: Well and good. But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
William J Murray gets the basic point of the necessity of the ‘primacy of consciousness’ across more clearly than anyone else I’ve ever read:
“In any philosophy of reality that is not ultimately self-defeating or internally contradictory, mind – unlabeled as anything else, matter or spiritual – must be primary. What is “matter” and what is “conceptual” and what is “spiritual” can only be organized from mind. Mind controls what is perceived, how it is perceived, and how those percepts are labeled and organized. Mind must be postulated as the unobserved observer, the uncaused cause simply to avoid a self-negating, self-conflicting worldview. It is the necessary postulate of all necessary postulates, because nothing else can come first. To say anything else comes first requires mind to consider and argue that case and then believe it to be true, demonstrating that without mind, you could not believe that mind is not primary in the first place.” - William J. Murray
bornagain77_{January 25, 2015
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Another interesting point in all this emergent business, is that, according to quantum mechanics, atoms emerge from Mind, (Mind with a capital M!).
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness." – Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931 "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Max Planck – Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797) “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.) "We wish to measure a temperature.,,, But in any case, no matter how far we calculate -- to the mercury vessel, to the scale of the thermometer, to the retina, or into the brain, at some time we must say: and this is perceived by the observer. That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.” John von Neumann - 1903-1957 - The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, pp.418-21 - 1955 "It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries' "It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness." Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays "Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays"; Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables - Scott Aaronson (MIT: quantum computation) Excerpt: "Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html Quantum Physics – (material reality does not exist until we look at it) – Dr. Quantum video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ezNvpFcJU Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry - Physics Professor - John Hopkins University Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the "illusion" of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry's referenced experiment and paper - “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 - “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007 (Leggett's Inequality: Verified, as of 2011, to 120 standard deviations) http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html The Mental Universe - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke "decoherence" - the notion that "the physical environment" is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in "Renninger-type" experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
bornagain77_{January 25, 2015
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BTW I have noticed that atheists stress the *poof* aspect of "emergent" properties in physics in order to draw an analogy with consciousness. However physicists don't view e.g. the wetness of water as some 'mysterious' emergent poofery.
Prof. Cosma Rohilla Shalizi: An emergent property is one which arises from the interaction of "lower-level" entities, none of which show it. No reductionism worth bothering with would be upset by this. The volume of a gas, or its pressure or temperature, even the number of molecules in the gas, are not properties of any individual molecule, though they depend on the properties of those individuals, and are entirely explicable from them; indeed, predictable well in advance.
Does Shaliza hold that there are emergent properties in the strong sense "a higher-level property, which cannot be deduced from or explained by the properties of the lower-level entities."? Well, he cannot name any.
Prof. Cosma Rohilla Shalizi: This is almost troubling. The key is in "properties." Reductionists --- sane ones, anyhow --- don't deny that things interact; we spend a great deal of time worrying about those interactions. If by "properties" is meant just properties in the logical sense, then of course there are emergents, but so what? In this sense, pressure and volume are emergents. On the other hand, if we are allowed both our properties and our relations, then "emergence" is a notion with teeth. The existence of any emergent properties, in this strong sense, would mean that universal reductionism is false. (Though it might be true locally, or for all other properties, or still be the most useful means of guiding inquiry, etc.) But, as above, I don't see how "X is an emergent property (strong sense)" could be established. At best we could say "X may be an emergent, since we have been unable to deduce it from the lower-level properties {Y}." Does anyone know of any good candidates for this kind of emergent?
Box_{January 25, 2015
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Well, Skram, emergent properties do not an emergent entity make, as I intimated in #20. There is disparate and disparate, isn't there. I'm afraid 'emergence' is just a tad too convenient for mixing apples and oranges, here. One could almost equate consciousness with life, itself. But, the problem is.... that's no obstacle to materialists, even though they haven't the first clue as to the nature or teleology of life, itself! To the Christian, inanimate matter doesn't seem an obvious producer of life; or even a subtle one. We're right back to our most primordial, religious conflict. Divine creation from nothing or .... the multiworld?Axel_{January 25, 2015
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Axel, see here for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence#Non-living.2C_physical_systemsskram_{January 25, 2015
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Comparing consciousness with properties shows how deficient in rationality you guys are. To use properties as a a metaphor for an entity so intangible, elusive and and mysterious, but a living, vibrant entity, nevertheless, is beyond absurd.Axel_{January 25, 2015
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'... emergence in physics.' What do you mean by emergence, Skram?Axel_{January 25, 2015
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We know your luminal (to borrow one of MT's sciency-type words) power, BA77!Axel_{January 25, 2015
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'And of course wetness, colour, solidity and the like are properties comparable to consciousness ….' Box, you're a star!Axel_{January 25, 2015
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Quite the logical argument. Wetness emerges therefore free will can, in principle, emerge from a material basis as well. Who could possibly refuse to accept the conclusion of such impeccable logic??? Well, it turns out, to use logic one must presume a perspective outside the physical order so as to be able to 'freely' assent to the logic of the argument. Therefore, any 'logical' argument that the materialist/atheist uses to try to undermine the reality of free will undermines his own argument from within:
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/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
Of related note as to whether the atheist or the theist has the most 'logical' case for causality:
A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - 2012 talk University of Wyoming J. Budziszewski http://veritas.org/talks/professors-journey-out-nihilism-why-i-am-not-atheist/?view=presenters&speaker_id=2231
bornagain77_{January 25, 2015
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Your #11, Seversky Go ahead, Sev. Good to keep an open mind. I wasn't aware you had ANY evidence for a material mind.Axel_{January 25, 2015
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Box, you can also complain that wetness is not quite the same type of thing as solidity. No one says they are, but they are both great examples of emergence in physics. No analogy is perfect, but I think Piotr's point is pretty well made.skram_{January 25, 2015
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Box, I didn't say that. I only pointed out the obvious: there are purely physical properties not explicitly reducible to properties of elementary particles, atoms, or molecules. Therefore, you cannot legitimately argue that if atoms don't carry around wee little pieces of consciousness, consciousness must be "immaterial" (whatever it means).Piotr_{January 25, 2015
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Piotr: Find an example of an atom that is wet. Until then, the evidence points to the wetness of water being fundamentally independent of its physical/chemical composition.
And of course wetness, colour, solidity and the like are properties comparable to consciousness ....Box_{January 25, 2015
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Axel @ 9 Other than in formal systems, I don't deal in absolutes, either impossibility or certainty. I leave that to the neo-Paleyists. If you want to compare the evidence for the material mind to that for an immaterial mind, we can.Seversky_{January 25, 2015
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