Mike Egnor vs. Jerry Coyne on how consciousness evolved

8 Replies to “Mike Egnor vs. Jerry Coyne on how consciousness evolved”

1. 1
   pw says:

   February 11, 2020 at 5:39 pm

   Interesting.
2. 2
   bornagain77 says:

   February 12, 2020 at 7:33 am

   As to this comment from Dr. Egnor:

   Furthermore, if human consciousness did indeed “evolve,” it had to be present in some way in inanimate matter as a substrate on which natural selection could act. Thus, the assertion that consciousness “evolved” is either empty (it doesn’t explain the arrival of consciousness, only its survival) or it presupposes panpsychism—the presence of consciousness in inanimate matter. Panpsychism is anathema to materialists like Coyne, who desperately try to eliminate Mind from nature.

   Panpsychism, i.e. postulating ‘the presence of consciousness in inanimate matter’, still does not resolve the problem of consciousness for evolutionists.

   It seems fairly obvious to me that, at the origin of the universe, panpsychists suffer an even bigger conundrum than Darwinian materialists do, in explaining the origin of consciousness, since panpsychists have already conceded the existence of consciousness at the origin of the universe itself. For panpsychists to be able to give an adequate explaination for the origin of all those, (10^80), conscious particles at the origin of the universe, then panpsychists are forced to postulate a cause, i.e. God, that is sufficient within itself to explain the effect in question, i.e. namely, a universe full of. (10^80), conscious particles.

   Thus, whilst panpsychists apparently believe that they may have the upper hand on Darwinian materialists in explaining the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, in that they claim consciousness is already present in the elementary particles, never-the-less, their supposed solution turns around and bites them big time at the origin of the universe itself.

   Although that argument against panpsychism seems fairly obvious to me, this argument against panpsychism, (and materialism), can be made much more rigorous.

   1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality (Jerry Coyne). or is an intrinsic property of material reality, (panpsychism, Philip Goff)
   2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality (Jerry Coyne). or is an intrinsic property of material reality, (panpsychism, Philip Goff), then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality.
   3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality.
   4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.

   And here are eight lines of empirical evidence from quantum mechanics that proves that consciousness, i.e. the Mind of God, must precede material reality.

   (Double Slit experiment, Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, as well as the recent confirmation of the Wigner’s friend thought experiment, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect, Quantum Information theory, and the recent closing of the Free Will loophole.)

   And although it would be easy enough to falsify materialism and/or panpsychism by merely appealing to the falsification of ‘realism’ by Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment and Leggett’s inequality,,

   New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015
   Excerpt: Some particles, such as photons or electrons, can behave both as particles and as waves. Here comes a question of what exactly makes a photon or an electron act either as a particle or a wave. This is what Wheeler’s experiment asks: at what point does an object ‘decide’?
   The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts.
   “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,,
   “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said.
   Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
   http://themindunleashed.org/20.....at-it.html

   Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007
   Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell’s inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics.
   Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization.
   They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.”
   http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

   ,, although it would be easy enough to falsify materialism and/or panpsychism by merely appealing to the falsification of ‘realism’ by Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment and Leggett’s inequality, a more direct way of falsifying Darwinian evolution altogether, and proving that consciousness cannot possibly be a epi-phenomena of material reality (Coyne), or a intrinsic property of material reality (panpsychism, Goff), is by appealing to Quantum Zeno effect and Quantum Information theory. This is because the Quantum Zeno effect and Quantum Information theory deal directly with entropy.

   First off, entropy is, by a VERY wide margin, the most finely tuned of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Finely tuned to an almost incomprehensible degree of precision, 1 part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power. As Roger Penrose himself stated, “This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.”

   “This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.”
   Roger Penrose – How special was the big bang? – (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 – 1989)

   “The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the “source” of the Second Law (Entropy).”
   Roger Penrose – The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them?

   And yet, although entropy is very fundamental to our mathematical descriptions of the universe,

   Shining Light on Dark Energy – October 21, 2012
   Excerpt: It (Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,,
   Even gravity, Vedral argued, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,,
   The principles of thermodynamics are at their roots all to do with information theory. Information theory is simply an embodiment of how we interact with the universe —,,,
   http://crev.info/2012/10/shini.....rk-energy/

   And yet, although entropy is very fundamental to our mathematical descriptions of the universe, in the quantum Zeno effect we find that “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”

   Perspectives on the quantum Zeno paradox – 2018
   The quantum Zeno effect is,, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.
   – old entry wikipedia

   Atheists have tried to get around the Quantum Zeno effect by postulating that interactions with the environment (and/or ‘decoherence’) is sufficient to explain the Quantum Zeno effect. Yet, the following interaction-free measurement of the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.

   Interaction-free measurements by quantum Zeno stabilization of ultracold atoms – 14 April 2015
   Excerpt: In our experiments, we employ an ultracold gas in an unstable spin configuration, which can undergo a rapid decay. The object—realized by a laser beam—prevents this decay because of the indirect quantum Zeno effect and thus, its presence can be detected without interacting with a single atom.
   http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2.....S-20150415

   In short, the quantum zeno effect, regardless of how atheists may feel about it, is now experimentally shown to be a real effect that is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation. And thus the original wikipedia statement of, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay”, stands as being a true statement.

   On top of the Quantum Zeno effect, in quantum information theory we find that “one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”

   Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 1, 2011
   Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,,
   The new study revisits Landauer’s principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,,
   In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,,
   No heat, even a cooling effect;
   In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy.
   Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.”
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....134300.htm

   And as the following article states, “Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

   The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017
   Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”
   In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply.
   They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,,
   Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
   https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

   If the statement “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”, does not send chills down your scientific spine then you are not paying attention!

   If I, as a person, am supposedly a purely material being, as Darwinists hold that I am, then why in blue blazes should the finely tuned, and purely material, entropic actions of the universe even care if I am observing them or not, or that I might be describing a system? This simply makes no sense whatsoever unless consciousness really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is.

   To state the glaringly obvious, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system.” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality in which it is held that consciousness precedes all of material reality.

   Moreover, it is important to note that one of the main reasons that Darwinian evolution fails to qualify as a rigorous science is because there is no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon.

   As Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated. “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”

   “It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
   Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109.
   https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf

   In fact, not only is there no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for Darwinists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science, almost directly contradicts the primary Darwinian claim that greater and greater levels of functional complexity can easily be had and/or ‘naturally selected’ for over long periods of time. Indeed, entropy’s main claim is that, over long periods of time, everything in the universe will decay into simpler and simpler states until what is termed thermodynamic equilibrium is finally reached.

   And yet, although Darwinian evolution almost directly contradicts the main principle behind entropy, if not directly contradicts it,

   Why Tornados Running Backward do not Violate the Second Law – Granville Sewell Professor of Mathematics at University of Texas – El Paso – May 2012 – article with video
   Excerpt: So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation?
   http://www.uncommondescent.com.....econd-law/

   And yet, although Darwinian evolution almost directly contradicts the main principle behind entropy, if not directly contradicts it, we find that life is far from being anywhere near thermodynamic equilibrium.

   The positional information that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be on the order 10 to the 12 bits,,,

   Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley
   Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures.
   http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~a.....ecular.htm
3. 3
   bornagain77 says:

   February 12, 2020 at 7:36 am

   ,,, Which is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”

   “a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
   – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy

   ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.”
   Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894

   Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.

   Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells
   Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small – about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
   https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html

   And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells in the average human body,

   Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body – 2016
   Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg “reference man” to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg.
   https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533

   Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of the largest libraries in the world.

   As should be obvious, that is massive amount of information that cannot possibly be contained within the DNA of an organism,

   As the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.

   In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017
   Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,:
   [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,,
   https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/

   So just where is this massive amount of ‘positional’ information coming from in a developing embryo if it cannot possibly be contained within the DNA of the fertilized egg of a human?

   Well, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into multiple different states during embryological development.

   Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017
   https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

   Moreover, as the following video highlights, there is now found to be a massive amount of non-local, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement and/or quantum information within the molecular biology of living organisms.

   Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg

   The thing about quantum entanglement that is so interesting is that it requires a ‘non-local’ cause that is beyond space and time. As the following article states, ““Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”

   Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
   Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
   http://www.quantumlah.org/high.....uences.php

   In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the Intelligence behind life, (via the non-locality of quantum information and/or the non-locality of quantum entanglement ), has, for all intents and purposes, finally achieved experimental confirmation.

   Darwinists simply have no beyond space and time cause to appeal to in order to be able to explain where this massive amount of positional and/or quantum information could possibly be coming from in a developing embryo. Whereas, on the other hand, Christians have postulated a beyond space and time cause all along.

   Colossians 1:17
   He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

   Psalm 139:13-16
   For you created my inmost being;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
   I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful,
   I know that full well.
   My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
   Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be.

   On top of all that, quantum information is physically conserved and therefore cannot be created nor destroyed,,,

   Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – 2011
   Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment.
   http://www.physorg.com/news/20.....tally.html

   The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication is, of course, the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

   Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe – Oct. 19, 2017 – Spiritual
   Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
   – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark)
   https://www.disclose.tv/leading-scientists-say-consciousness-cannot-die-it-goes-back-to-the-universe-315604

   Verse:

   Mark 8:37
   Is anything worth more than your soul?

   John 1:1-4
   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

   Supplemental note:

   How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas
4. 4
   Axel says:

   February 12, 2020 at 11:27 am

   @ BA77 #3

   Your last few paragraphs put me in mind of this quote of the late Robert Jastrow, astronomer at NASA :

   “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
   ? Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers
5. 5
   Truthfreedom says:

   February 12, 2020 at 12:41 pm

   Which is it, jerry?

   And if consciousness is either a spandrel, a byproduct of neutral evolution, or the direct object of selection…

   Does this guy have a clue?
6. 6
   Truthfreedom says:

   February 12, 2020 at 4:38 pm

   Some reading that could benefit coyne:

   “Consciousness is one of the last biological phenomena about which we do not have a solid idea as to how and when it appeared and evolved in evolution. The conclusion of the above discussion is that in order to identify the adaptive value of consciousness, the relationships between the brain, behavior, and consciousness must be understood.”

   “Thus, the question of how the mind emerged in evolution (the mind-evolution problem) is tightly linked with the question of how the mind emerges from the brain (the mind-body problem). It seems that the evolution of consciousness cannot be resolved without first solving the “hard problem” (Chalmers, 1995).

   “Until then, I argue that strong claims about the evolution of consciousness based on the evolution of cognition are premature and unfalsifiable.”

   Yoran Gutfreund.
   Departament of Neurobiology, The Rappaport Research Institute and Faculty of Medicine, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6117425/#!po=53.0303
7. 7
   Truthfreedom says:

   February 14, 2020 at 1:37 pm

   An amusing and virtuoso bit of philosophy from the animator and author of the Brief Outlines vlog (dedicated to expounding Owen Barfield) is a video about the sad fate of a materialist philosopher called Zarathustra (with a luxuriant moustache suspiciously reminiscent of Nietzsche!).

   It also forms a preliminary to Rudolf Steiner’s (excellent) PhD thesis Truth and Knowledge.
   http://charltonteaching.blogsp.....f.html?m=1
8. 8
   Truthfreedom says:

   February 14, 2020 at 7:02 pm

   Bernardo Kastrup has replied to coyne. He refers to him as the: “dim-witted biologist”. I totally agree 🙂

   He also says something about coyne’s illiteracy (philosophically speaking, of course):

   “This is one of those embarrassing passages in which Jerry Berry unwittingly makes painfully clear to the whole world the depths of his philosophical ignorance”.

   Worth every paragraph.
   Dim-witted biologist: consciousness is accidental.