we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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runamokmonk
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:08 pm

I happened upon a pantheist article which brought up that amoeba example. It made me wonder if you read the same article. The author provides mitochondria as another example after the amoeba one. But, as you said, I guess materialists probably have their answer for amoebas.
The neuroscientists present many research papers attempting to establish the brain as a source of consciousness. But are these experimenters looking in the right place? Simple observation shows that not all consciousness occurs in the brain. Judge for yourself--if we could enlarge an amoeba to the size of a wolf, it would be seen that the two creatures share many characteristics. Both the amoeba and the wolf move about, stalk their prey and gulp it down when they catch it. Both the amoeba and the wolf remember where they deposit their waste and avoid it. They also avoid danger, respond to stimulus, and even get tired and rest. But the amoeba does all this without a brain, or even a central nervous system. If you have ever watched an amoeba under a microscope you probably observed that it definitely displayed something on the order of consciousness.
http://www.panpsychism.net/html/putting_back.html

Just found this site, they may have other good articles too.

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Metacrock
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Mon Apr 01, 2013 11:53 am

runamokmonk wrote:I happened upon a pantheist article which brought up that amoeba example. It made me wonder if you read the same article. The author provides mitochondria as another example after the amoeba one. But, as you said, I guess materialists probably have their answer for amoebas.
The neuroscientists present many research papers attempting to establish the brain as a source of consciousness. But are these experimenters looking in the right place? Simple observation shows that not all consciousness occurs in the brain. Judge for yourself--if we could enlarge an amoeba to the size of a wolf, it would be seen that the two creatures share many characteristics. Both the amoeba and the wolf move about, stalk their prey and gulp it down when they catch it. Both the amoeba and the wolf remember where they deposit their waste and avoid it. They also avoid danger, respond to stimulus, and even get tired and rest. But the amoeba does all this without a brain, or even a central nervous system. If you have ever watched an amoeba under a microscope you probably observed that it definitely displayed something on the order of consciousness.
http://www.panpsychism.net/html/putting_back.html

Just found this site, they may have other good articles too.
I don't know if I've seen that article (I've seen lots of stuff on this issue) but i've seen that example of mitochondria.
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mdsimpson92
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Tue Apr 02, 2013 6:18 am

Not to get off topic where you guys are, but I guess the position I'm endorsing is a kind of protopansychism. Where everything has a non-physical, premental quality to it. Not necessarily consciousness, but maybe right below that.
Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:48 pm

mdsimpson92 wrote:Not to get off topic where you guys are, but I guess the position I'm endorsing is a kind of protopansychism. Where everything has a non-physical, premental quality to it. Not necessarily consciousness, but maybe right below that.
right, well my deal would have everything we know in our reality as a mental quality or a thought in a mind.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Fri Apr 05, 2013 12:47 pm

Hm, I really let this one slide, didn't I? Sorry about that. I'm intensely interested in philosophy of mind now and I've scored copies of the overview book by Jaegwon Kim and a couple of Galen Strawson books. It's anyone's guess when I'll actually find time to read them.

In the meantime I found this great Galen Strawson interview - it's really more of a tantalizing taster of his ideas, if you can manage to concentrate on what he's saying instead of simply being awed into submission by his crazyhair -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtDgCQ5 ... 6979555BEE

So anyways guys, getting back to arguing briefly, can we at least agree that substance dualism isn't tenable because of the interaction problem?

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runamokmonk
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Apr 05, 2013 8:21 pm

Not as distracting as this guy's hair.

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/155594

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runamokmonk
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Apr 05, 2013 9:50 pm

I did watch all those videos (I did notice he is compatibilist, if I heard him correctly). I am not a philosopher so did not know some of the context of what he means.
In the first video he says, "if you want to be a real physicalist, well, you have to be a realist about consciousness because that's the most certainly known phenomenon there is. So you're going to have to go all the way and say that conscious states are themselves literally physical just like electric charge. And when I say conscious states I don't mean anything reductive in any sense, I mean that, the so-called qualia for you to believe in. The real thing that we all know about."
Emboldened part makes sense to me, in an obvious way, I like that. Maybe you could start with, I know my mind is real. My mind is a part of reality, and I am made up of the stuff of reality.


I decided to look up a book of his and read a review, I saw this reviewer state,
"Strawson's three main principles are first that the existence of consciousness is undeniable; second is the principle of monism: that everything that exists is made of the same material. Third is the notion that emergence is not possible: a mind could not spring out of the activity of material cells in the brain. He argues that although water can emerge form the combination of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, the same trick could not happen with consciousness. There is no way of organizing matter that is not conscious, so that it produces something that is."

and

"If everything is made of the same sort of stuff as tables and chairs, cats and dogs, and if at least some of the things made of that sort of stuff are conscious and if there is no emergence, it follows that the stuff that those tables and chairs and cats and dogs are made of, must itself be conscious. This is the central core of the "panpsychist" philosophy that views all matter as involving consciousness. Even an atom is sentient."
http://www.amazon.com/review/R13WLQ84I8 ... hisHelpful

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mdsimpson92
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:42 pm

runamokmonk wrote: I did watch all those videos (I did notice he is compatibilist, if I heard him correctly). I am not a philosopher so did not know some of the context of what he means.
Odd, he actually wrote a book stating dealing with how he considers free will to be incoherent. He is saying that compatibilism is probably the best free will can do.
Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:44 pm

Not sure if this is off topic, but it seems to apply to the discussion. I am not a member of the eastern orthodox church but have some interest in it.

This book I have, defines the body, soul and spirit as such according to their theology. And I bet many Christians have some version of this if not the same idea.
"First, there is the body......the physical or material aspect of man's nature."

"secondly, there is the soul, the life force that vivifies and animates the body causing it to not be a lump of matter, but something that grows and moves, that feels and percieves. Animals also possess a soul, and so do plants. But in man's case the soul is endowed with consciousness; it is a rational soul, possessing the capacity for abstract thought, and the ability to advance by discursive argument from premises to conclusion. These powers are present in animals, if at all, only to a very limited degree."

"Thirdly, there is the spirit, or "breath" of God, which the animals lack. It is through the spirit that man apprehends God and enters into communion with him."

"With his soul (psyche) man engages in scientific or philosophical inquiry, analyzing the data of his sense-experience by means of discursive reason. With his spirit (pneuma), which is sometimes termed nous or spiritual intellect, he understands eternal truth about God or about the logoi or inner essences of created things, not through deductive reasoning, but by direct apprehension or spiritual perception-by a kind of intuition that St. Isaac the Syrian called "simple cognition". The spirit or spiritual intellect is thus distinct from man's reasoning powers and his aesthetic emotions, and superior to both of them."

They have a form of panentheism,

"God is in all things yet is also beyond and above all things", It says, "As Cistercian monk of New Clairvaux has put it, "God is at the core. God is other than the core. God is within the core, and all through the core, closer to the core than the core".

It says, "All things are permeated and maintained in being by the uncreated energies of God, and so all things are a theophany that mediates his presence"...."the whole universe is a cosmic Burning-Bush, filled with the divine Fire yet not consumed".
The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware
That's some definitions and descriptions about those things. Maybe that will help with the discussion on the interaction problem? I'm not saying I necessarily agree with all that, or not.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:52 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSmfhc_8gew


David Chalmers definitely gives Strawson a run for his money in terms of rock star hair.
Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

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