You're a good man, Kevin. :^>
> Long answer: I do not believe that all of our thinking and behavior is
> ultimately completely determined by events beyond our control.
> There is to my knowledge no scientific evidence to even be able to
speculate on this
> subject, but if we take as an analogy the demonstrated fact that
> emotional states can affect physical systems, I do not consider it
> inconceivable that conscious thought could influence those parts of the
brain that generate
> conscious thought in a complex feedback system that nonetheless permits us
to
> control our own thinking and behavior.
I actually agree with you here, but it's important to note (I think) that (I
think -- man, starting to sound like Descartes! :^> ) we can only justify
this by recognizing that science, certainly current science, is not at all
the last word on what is rationally believed.
That is, if one is being scientistic (i.e., very roughly, only
scientifically justified beliefs are rational), one presumably would both
treat (1) mind as purely an aspect of brain (perhaps, as is trendy now, just
a folk-psychology name for what the brain does), and (2) brain as a physical
object completely causally and ontologically reducible to its material
constituents.
Another question, to better clarify things: SUPPOSING for the sake of
argument (1) and (2), and taking current science as the last word, would you
agree then that all human thoughts and actions are completely determined by
events beyond our control, since none of (a) the laws of nature nor (b) the
outcome of quantum events nor (c) the state of the universe before our birth
are under our control, yet collectively they completely determine our
behavior? (Maybe in some -new- physics, our consciousness -would- to some
extent freely determine the outcome of quantum events -- many physicists
have speculated along those lines -- but that's pretty fringey right now,
and certainly not a part of current physical theory.)
> >
> > (2) Are humans sometimes conscious?
> >
>
> All the time, except when asleep, comatose, dead or watching TV ;-).
HEY, MISTER. I DIDN'T JOIN THIS MAILING LIST TO HEAR SOMEONE MOCK OUR FINE
TELEVISION HERITAGE. >:^Þ
Um, agreed. :^>
> >
> > If so, are conscious states material
> > objects (hard to imagine), or natural properties of material objects
> > (according to what laws of science?), or...?
> >
>
> I believe they are physical properties that emerge from the
> organization and
> structure of the mind itself, which in turn is an emergent
> property of the
> organization and structure of the physical brain. As such they
> are subject
> to the same physiochemical laws that govern any form of physical
> interaction.
> The only difference is the level of complexity involved in the
> interaction.
This sounds a bit to me like you're accepting what I supposed for the sake
of argument to be the literal truth...?
> > If you've read my other posts, you'll know I think this is an
> area where
> > science doesn't have plausible answers yet. (That's no criticism of
> > science, in my book, since I'm not scientistic.) But I'm interested in
> > knowing what you think.
> >
>
> I agree that research into the structural, physiological and biochemical
> basis of the mind is still pretty much in the fetal state. We've
> made some
> large strides, such as the discovery of the physical bases for
> psychoses and
> the isolation of behavioral neuropeptides like scotophobin, but
> we still have
> a long, long way to go.
>
> Kevin L. O'Brien
I see a more of a categorical problem. I'm no physicist -- hey, I'm no
scientist period! :^/ -- but I don't see anything in fundamental physical
theory that would predict consciousness under even the very best of
circumstances.
It's easy enough to physically derive consciousness in a behavioral or
functionalist sense, where it's by re-definition operationalized in physical
terms, but not at all in the common sense sense, where we have things like
visual fields, smells (should I say scents? Do kids read this list?),
sounds, pains, etc. There's no physical ontology for these things, so far
as I can see. (To which eliminative materialists and their kin would
respond, understandably, "so much the worse for the ignorant folk wisdom
that passes as common sense.")
So let me follow up with this: are these "physical properties that emerge
from the organization and structure of the mind itself" properties that
current physics understands and predicts? Or are you suggesting that future
physics will create new laws or objects that will incorporate consciousness?
(I actually find this latter somewhat plausible, if utterly speculative, but
I'm hesitant to read you as claiming this.)
If the former, just what physical properties -are- these, in terms of
physics or chemistry? Let me emphasize: I'm not asking which physical laws
are correlated with or somehow causative of consciousness -- that's easy
enough to specify, at least very broadly: the chemistry of brain activity --
I'm asking which physical properties ARE (or, equivalently, -are identical
with-) our perception of the color red, or of pain, or whatever, and what
physics (versus psychology or psychiatry, which rely critically on
introspective reports and not fundamental physics or chemistry ALONE to
generate predictions) would lead us to predict on theory alone this
conscious sensation?
I don't think there is, now anyway, any such physics or chemistry out
there.
My point in all of this, tying it back to the original query about TE,
souls, and freedom, is that there is no satisfactory scientific or
materialistic account of mind (let alone souls) or freedom unless we somehow
build consciousness, and not just the consciousness-kin of behavior or brain
activity, into physics or chemistry (or imaginably a new science,
conceivably [but strangely] a concretized version of computational theory,
where algorithms are no longer abstract objects but concrete ones, somehow
causing concrete conscious states -- this would be a strange but more
engaging variant of functionalism). But we're nowhere close to being able
to do that yet, so far as I can tell.
So we may presume or conclude things about the evolution of the soul, mind,
or freedom, and our conclusions may be rational or even true, but they won't
and shouldn't be based on science, evolutionary or otherwise, alone.
(I wish I had read Richard Swinburne on these issues.)
John
P. S. I'll be slow again in responding. :^< Thanks for your patience.
P. P. S. This isn't the thread's topic, but I think the, I think (there I
go again, like the Moody Blues!) severe, problem for materialism/current
science in accounting for common sense consciousness even in principle is
yet another compelling reason, were more necessary, to reject scientism, and
it exemplifies the difference between reason and science, the latter being
something like reason empirically or even (nowadays) materialistically
constrained for pragmatic and methodological reasons.