Denial of Evolution VI.

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by garbonzo, Jun 4, 2013.

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  1. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    depends on what you mean by current.
    i've read material about various advances but i haven't read much published after about 2000 or so.

    what's your point?
     
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  3. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    This is nothing short of fascinating; thank you for explaining it as you have. You're right and after thinking it through, Intention can really only exist in some"thing" capable of employing intention. Water is a great example of how the concept of Intention can't be used beyond what it's currently being used for, amongst psychologists.

    A question for anyone here...slightly off the beaten path but maybe not.

    In 1924, Alfred Lotka proposed that the mind controls the brain through what he termed as "quantum jumps," that would otherwise lead to a random existence. This was around the early timeframe of Quantum Theory.

    What does random mean in this context?
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Equally, what does"quantum jump" mean? The early notion of the electron making an instantaneous "jump" between "orbits" in the Bohr model of the atom was out of date by the mid 1920s. It has lived on in popular parlance, in which it is sometimes is used to denote a big jump (as in the tiresome expression "quantum leap"), whereas in fact, the essence of the real quantum jump was it was almost unimagineably tiny!

    Your discussion sounds rather woo-woo to me, I must confess.
     
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  7. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Mind controls the brain? How can the mind control the brain when mind is a function of the brain? :bugeye:
     
  8. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Consciousness controls the brain.

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    @ exchemist, not "woo woo" at all.

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    Lotka reached a conclusion that physics falls short of explaining consciousness. His model is considered to be the first quantum model of consciousness. In a nutshell, Lotka basically said that subjective "consciousness" falls below Planck's constant.

    He was a pioneer of sorts and hardly thought of as a "quack" if that is what u meant. Lol

    So just wondering what is meant by random in the above context?
     
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Never mind; think I know what was meant. Random meaning as it is generally defined as having no direction or purpose.

    So, subjective consciousness is what causes us to make decisions, etc.
    Life would be random then without that ability.

    I think that's what's implied.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Same way a program controls a computer.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No. All thought is a function of the brain, including consciousness, memory, dreaming, instinct, etc. Consciousness and other thought processes are also influenced by emotions, which are indeed affected by thought (creating a feedback loop), but the brain is also heavily influenced by hormones and other physiological phenomena such as hunger, pain, balance, things we see and hear, etc., and these influences also affect thought.

    We have some control over our brains, but it is a vague, slow sort of control which can hardly be described as "conscious." By age 3, a child of professional parents will have heard 45 million words spoken directly to him; whereas a child of working-class parents will have heard 26 million, and a child of a family on welfare will have heard only 13 million. This will affect the growth of the speech center in his brain, resulting in better or worse language skills and concomitant levels of other abilities that affect the probability of success in a communication-intensive civilization.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Substrates do not control the patterns supported on them, nor do they possess in themselves the "basic qualities" of those patterns, in general. This is true of all substrate/pattern distinctions; protons and electrons and neutrons do not themselves conduct electrical current or exhibit high rates of radioactive decay, for example - copper and uranium do. None of the chemical constituents of the human brain do any thinking whatsoever, nor do they contain in themselves the "basic qualities" of human thought.

    Although the brain definitely responds to at least some quantum level effects (a single photon can register in the visual cortex), these phenomena do not themselves act at the level of mind; the mental response to the registry of a photon is several levels removed from that photon and certainly not controlled by it. Searching for the emergent properties we label "mental" at the quantum level is looking in the wrong direction - in general we look "up" or "out" from the substrate for the basics of the patterns it supports, not "down" or "in".
     
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I will meet you part of the way and say what you are saying isn't the entire picture when it comes to what scientists over the years have grappled with, in terms of proving how consciousness "comes about."

    To say that consciousness is merely nothing more or little more than a brain function may be impossible to prove.
    I don't think anyone has proven that.

    It is however, a well accepted scientific hypothesis so that I will give merit to.
    But, science still has the tough task of proving this.

    There are well respected scientists who don't believe that consciousness is a mere function of the brain.
    Hope that better clarifies my earlier post(s).
     
  14. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Meant to add...

    Awareness as we know equals consciousness. To varying levels.
    It is not synonymous with thoughts, rather it paves the way for thoughts and functions that require thought.

    So, our brains create images, thoughts, feelings, etc...of which we are aware. But how did we become aware? Awareness is already there.
    If you don't believe that, please tell me why.
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    The question of consciousness is one I think best left answered several decades from now after several orders of magnitude of computing power have been tasked with directly simulating the human brain, then we will know if consciousness if merely an emergent/virtual property of a complex biological machine or if its derived from some unreplicable supernatural realm, until then I'm don't have a clue where consciousness comes from and don't see what this presently unanswerable question has to do with evolution.
     
  16. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    That you've obviously missed a lot.
     
  17. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    @ ElectricFetus:

    It is relevant because it causes us to ask ...did consciousness emerge as a result of evolution?
    Was it always present?

    Max Planck was quoted as saying..."I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness."

    It's relevant.

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  18. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Max Planck did not define or explain his use of the word "consciousness" here and it is semantically as meaningless as "soul" or "God" either of which can be freely substituted with no harm to the nonexsistant scientific content of the quote.

    And I have a slightly fuller quote "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. " which is really a quote of a quote since it is allegedly from The Observer (25 Jan 1931) as cited in Joseph H. Fussell, 'Where is Science Going?: Review and Comment', Theosophical Path Magazine (1933)
    http://www.amazon.com/dp/1169812759

    The quote was widely circulated in the 1930's but no progress has been made since in "fundamental consciousness" in terms of its behavior or action. Specifically, ensoulment or fundamental phenomena of consciousness doesn't explain sleep, the action of drugs or brain trauma as well as the animal model of the brain plus modern neurological theory.

    In context:
    J. W. N. Sullivan, "Interview with Max Planck," The Observer, January 25, 1931
    as related in Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad. Philosophical Aspects Of Modern Science, (1932) page 16

    So my question is -- since evolution theory is getting the job done in biology, just what scientific job is supposed to be done by Planck's fundamental consciousness. Planck was in his 70's and speaking to an area outside of his scientific expertise so no special weight should be given to his reported opinions in an English tabloid.
     
  19. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for posting that in its entirety. My question though is why do you discount it?
    I think we can safely assume what he meant by ''consciousness'' in that above mentioned quote.

    Further, I don't think it is a matter of semantics at all. With all due respect, that's merely your opinion, only.

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  20. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    I discount extraordinary claims. I discount baseless claims. I discount worthless claims. This appears to be all three.
     
  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    What an appeal to authority! Max Planck can't answer the question of where consciousness comes from anymore then anyone else, especially since he is dead. This thread is about denial of evolution, not about the origins of a property which may or may not actually exist! Even if consciousness is breath into us by some kind of wrinkly old invisible all powerful sky wizard it does it does nothing to the fact of evolution: its not evidence in anyway against evolution!
     
  22. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, I didn't start the dialogue here about consciousness lol, I'm merely interjecting my points into the mix.
    Consciousness for the sake of this discussion, has nothing to do with God...or a soul...or any of that.

    But, it plays a role (perhaps, how much/to what degree, don't know) in the evolutionary process.

    Anyways...
     
  23. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    no it isn't, it was renamed a denial thread by a moderator after i posted an article from science and started asking questions about that article.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2013
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