Does the brain really "cause" consciousness?

So which word instead of "caused", you think you should have chosen?

What do you mean by "underlying activity"?

Do you mean that the activity has no specific physical cause?

Do you mean "nothing physical added to it"?

Do you mean: "When a pattern emerges that displays certain physical characteristics we perceive it as such and refer to it as "life"." ?

So, do you think "llife is like a 'working car' and no fuel is necessary." ?

 

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As per the Laws of Thermodynamics, entropy of a 'physical system' increases. If life is a physical process, that means a 'living cell' is a 'physical system' and its entropy should increase but in reality its entropy is decreasing. --- Can you explain this ?

 

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A cell isn't a closed system. You can have local entropy decrease even when the trend overall is the opposite.

 

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Emerges from... which is why I used it in the next sentence.

The interactions of the matter at microscopic and quantum levels and lower.

No, I mean no specific cause.

No, I mean nothing added to it.

No.

No.
I think life is a pattern that has emerged from interactions and energy transformations that started, as far as we can tell, with the Big Bang, and will seem to go on until the end of the universe, if our universe is destined for an end.

 

So, a "living cell" can be considered as "open system".

Considering the entropy equation as mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#Entropy_balance_equation_for_open_systems, Can you explain(Or give some references) how entropy is decreasing?


I found some references in the net which says 'entropy increases for open system'.

http://www.icr.org/article/86/

https://www.geocentricity.com/~geocent1/creationism/open_systems_and_entropy.pdf


My understanding is that, a living cell is aging. 'Aging' means it is following 'arrow of time'. 'Following arrow of time' means its entropy should increase. But in reality its entropy is decreasing. --- Why? Where is the mystery?


[ Here is another paper on entropy for reference: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0710/0710.4624.pdf ]

 

Can you explain why entropy of a 'living cell' is decreasing?

What kind of evidence should be acceptable to you? Do you want to see the 'soul', the way we are able to see the Sun or stars?

 

In general terms, yes. Part of the life processes use energy to keep the living organism from decaying (becoming less well organized) as it will when the organism is dead. There is "no free lunch." This energy it uses for this comes from outside the living organism and will cause the entropy of the external world to increase, MORE than the living organism can decrease entropy within itself.

That would certainly help support the belief that it exist, just as it would help show that unicorns exist; However, people can be deceived so rather than "seeing" I would prefer some measurements many could "see" and agree were not some trick.

For example at your moment of death (when the soul leaves the body according to you) at least some measurable concurrent decrease in the body´s weight or if not that some transitory electric or magnetic field changes near the body as it departs - These experiments have been done, with null results. If the soul is to have ANY effect on matter (brains included) it must have either mass or some force field.

 

The pedantry here is your quibble about "descriptor" versus "described" by way of justification for a trivially tautological argument. No matter how you characterize two words with the same meaning, they are no less tautological and synonymous. One simply provides no explanatory power over the other, so any such argument is completely vacuous. And there is no reasonable justification for defending such an empty argument.

You have already admitted it a trivial tautology, so you should simply have the sense to leave it at that.

"Unaccounted for" means that we cannot definitively enumerate the causes. You are also arguing a straw man, as no one has claimed something added to the "underlying activity", but that the emergent property itself is additive. This is trivially true, just by the definition of emergent.

I have already explained that I was not interested until you claimed some inconsistency which relied solely on a distinction between illusion and other, which you have yet to define. This tactic of "not interested" is a cheap evasion.

Vacuous.

I said "specifically". This is a evasive non-answer. What logic?

Again, your whole argument for inconsistency simply assumes that free will is illusion without ever definitively distinguishing it as such in contrast to any well-defined alternative. It begs the question. As I have already said, until you distinguish illusion, you have no grounds to assume anything other than illusion, including whatever logic or reason you think justifies your position.

I will not waste my time arguing a flawed argument. Define your terms first.

I was the one who suggested that there was a better home for the discussion. And like I said, kudos for "realiz[ing] that the vagueness of your arguments were only suitable for the philosophy forum". But I also note that you continue to post in one of those threads, only avoiding any response to my post, so you have not really taken that suggestion after all.

You have simply decided that an appeal to emotion will serve your evasions.

 

There is no quibble about the tautology, merely with you criticising the usage of it when it was a deliberate attempt to parody the other person's argument, which thus necessitated its usage, as I thought he had also used it. You seem to have issue with my usage and are trying to score points about it when it served its purpose, even you commenting on its nature to highlight what you saw as a flaw in my argument when in fact it was merely used as an example of his own argument to highlight the flaw. But you don't see that for some reason, and instead criticise for me for using it. Your very explanation as to why it is flawed is precisely the reason I used it, to parody his own such usage.
Further there is no quibble about descriptor versus description, I was merely trying to avoid you using "described movement" to suggest meaning that the nature of the movement is described, rather than just something having the characteristic of moving.

How can the emergent property itself be additive in any way other than in adding to our understanding? To be additive as you suggest is to imply that the underlying activity could exist in the same state, with the same patterns, and the property not emerge until it is "added".
We consider something emergent because, without any additions to the underlying activity, it displays characteristics that we can not explain through our understanding of that underlying activity. But your understanding is tautological: "we have an emergent property because the emergent property has been added". (Oh, are you going to now criticise the tautology in this quote for being part of my argument?). If we make additions to anything other than our understanding then it no longer becomes emergent.

I have defined illusion, with no reference to reality per se, so what is your misunderstanding? I have told you that I consider illusion to be "not as perceived". Whether you think this refers back to some reality or not is your view. Personally I see it as allowing for layers of illusion, but you will claim equivocation regardless. Wherever our understanding of our perception does not match our understanding of the underlying nature of that perception, there is illusion. Whether the understanding of the underlying nature is also illusory, it is so at a lower level of illusion. But the higher illusion remains illusory within the context of the lower. One might consider the lower illusion as "reality", or one may consider only any objective reality as "reality", it really makes no difference to me.
But I'm going to bet you consider this vacuous merely to hide a lack of comprehension, where you'd rather go with belligerent terms rather than have any real interest in furthering discussion.

If you think so.

So you start a request for elaboration with more belligerence and accusations... Interesting tactic. What is more specific than explaining the exact methodology?
What logic? The same logic that you would use to conclude that a magician on stage is not really sawing his assistant in half. It's called deductive reasoning.

Far from it. The assumptions are clearly stated, that everything obeys the laws of the universe, that everything behaves according to cause and effect in a probabilistically random way, or if uncaused then the effect is again probabilistically random. And it starts from a definition of free will: the perception that we have the ability to do otherwise. I include "the perception that we have..." For no other reason than it allows for both cases of the free will, where the perception is illusory or not.
The only way you can think this is begging the question is if you consider there to be such an obvious logic between the assumptions and the conclusion that free will is illusory. If not then you either disagree with the assumptions or with the logic. But it is far from begging the question.

I have distinguished illusion, in the same way that you distinguish it when you witness the magician's assistant sawn in half. Do we have to forgo logic until such time as we have otherwise distinguished the illusion?

Which ones are perplexing you that I have not already defined adequately, and why do you hold the definition to be important to the discussion? I.e. why is it important, say, to separate illusion from reality rather than merely one layer of illusion from another? Whether I call one particular layer of illusion "reality" or whether I hold that the only reality is the objective one is neither here nor there. I might consider one layer such for practical reasons and yet hold another layer to be the greater reality for philosophical discussions. But I contend that it does not matter to my position: the key is in the identification of an illusion, whether the reference point is itself illusory or not, due to the different layers of the illusion. E.g. A magician performing an illusion is one thing, but to watch it on television is another layer of illusion on top of the first. Do you discount your ability to identify the magician's trick as illusion because the television is providing another layer?

Don't flatter yourself, I was referring to two others who made comments not to location but simply that there we more than one thread where the same discussion was being held.

I really couldn't care less where the discussion occurs. If you want to move it, get it moved. But don't excuse your inability to comprehend with vagueness. If you think the assumptions too vague, discuss that point. If you think the logic too vague, discuss that. But all you come to do is wage a petty war, and it is tiresome. If you do have anything sensible to actually discuss it is getting lost in the belligerent nature of your responses.

I am not going to respond to you in 3 threads where everything is just rehashed each time. So again, apologies if you somehow feel left out if I limit myself to just 1. But when others do not necessarily read all the threads, why should I refrain from discussing separate matters and issues with them on those other threads.

Clearly.

 

Straw man, as I have never claimed that you disagreed about it being a tautology, and irrelevant, as I never criticized you for using it as parody.

1. You have freely and repeatedly admitted it a trivially meaningless tautology.
2. You have verified that you used said tautology to attempt to make your own argument.

You have already damned yourself by vehemently agreeing it a tautology and admitting you attempted to use this meaningless tautology to make you own point. You are just too childishly to accept that and move on. "[M]otion is the characteristic of those objects that are moving" is the tautology you here claim "clarified MY position". This is all I have been criticizing you for, and you have admitted it true. Move on already.

Again, straw man, as I have only been criticizing what you have already admitted: "I ... clarified MY position with what you quote here."

You have played every evasive, trolling game you could to weasel out of your own words. You have erected multiple straw men, including the hypocritical projection of accusing me of agreeing with the tautology you used to "clarify [YOUR] position", accusing me of criticizing you for something that could only be an intentional or obtuse distraction, and presenting the false dilemma that I must either agree with his tautology or your own.

I am saying that they are both trivially meaningless tautologies with absolutely no explanatory power, and that using the same tautology to both criticize another as well as "clarify [YOUR] position" is extremely silly. But obviously no more silly than all these ridiculous efforts, fallacies, and erroneous accusations you have made to justify your nonsense.

Wow, equivocating about synonyms. No wonder it sounds like gibberish.

Emergent phenomena is necessarily new ("radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems)"), and cannot be defined otherwise than additional to the sum of constituents. "Adding to our understanding"? So are you claiming that emergent phenomena is only an illusion as well?

Another straw man. It is actually our inability to understand the specific causes of emergent properties that makes them emergent, otherwise they would simply be determinate. So how can you claim that they "add to our understanding"?

"Not as perceived" implies that there is something other than perceived in contrast (which you seem indecisive on, at best). Since you have chosen to claim that this something may be illusory as well, then your definition of illusion is completely arbitrary. It is just what you choose to call illusion, nothing more. Any such argument merely begs the question.

Just like human perception is largely a matter of differentiation, the definition of terms is a matter of distinguishing them in contrast to other and opposing terms. Any term is only as precise as it can be differentiated. Since you admit your "illusion" may not even be but arbitrarily distinguishable, it cannot be of use in furthering discussion.

But it does seem as if you are making my earlier point. If consciousness is illusory then there is little or no grounds to call anything other than illusion.

Again, I said "specifically". I was not requesting "elaboration", I was telling you that you simply did not provide a "specific" answer, i.e. there was nothing to elaborate on (as you have so successfully shown). I did not ask, "how do you go about distinguishing illusion", I asked, "how do you specifically distinguish illusion". IOW, I did not ask about your general methodology, but your specific reasoning. And I am not asking which species of logic either. I am asking for your specific chain of reasoning.

Why so evasive? Or are you just that obtuse?

Where has anyone, but you, claimed causality violated? Every effect is necessarily a future cause, and this includes the higher order effects of lower order constituents potentially being cause, in turn, over those same constituents. Causes, mind you, that would not have otherwise occurred without the unaccounted for emergent phenomena. Even if 100% accounted for, you would then have to admit that the constituents ultimately cause the effects on themselves, which is not dissimilar to humans having a genuine effect on themselves (ability to do otherwise).

You need to look up what begging the question means. If consciousness is illusion then there is no distinguishing anything else as otherwise, and if everything may be illusion then consciousness would be as well. It is circular reasoning unless you ever manage to take a stance on what it is "perceived other than" that could distinguish it clearly. There is no logic in begging the question, as it just assumes the conclusion.

No, you just assume that all causes can only be bottom up, even when we cannot account for higher order emergent phenomena. A magician's illusion is recognized as such because we intuitively know what constitutes reality, just as we all intuitively know that we exercise some measure of choice. You have not only failed to distinguish illusion, but that failure defeats your own analogy (which is exactly why I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt by asking you for your specific reasoning free of vague analogy).

You are the one demanding to further the discussion, which cannot be done without agreement on terms. But perhaps you like being able to hide your incoherence in a warm, fuzzy blanket of philosophical vagueness.

"Layers of illusion" are highly subject to arbitrary choice of where to draw the line between such "layers". Here you seem to be doing so between one perception (consciousness) and another ("reality") without defining any criteria by which we should accept such a division. So this just a regress of the same distinction I asked you for, which also fails to define it.

What you do not seem to get is that the terms do not matter, so long as their definitions are clear. You can call illusion flimmittyfloo for all the word matters divorced from a concise definition. Apparently conciseness "does not matter to [your] position".

It seems you did refer to my suggestion. So who else suggested a better home for it?

I have discussed just that, and it is your endless evasions that are tiresome. Neither is your vagueness in doubt, as I have fully outline the copiously mealy-mouthed imprecision and equivocations.

Ah, another appeal to emotion to serve as evasion.

 

You need to understand that it was used in parody to be able to criticise it as such.
If you did understand that you would realise that criticising my use of it is pathetic.
But you did criticise. You still criticise. Yet you claim that you're not criticising for using it as a parody.
:shrug: What are people to think, Syne, that you really are here to further discussion?

It is MY position that uses an example of HIS tautology to demonstrate the flaw in HIS argument and how he was actually doing nothing but showing that life is a descriptor for "living" rather than life being added to make something "living".
It is not rocket science, Syne. But you continue to argue for nothing and continue to demonstrate your own pettiness and lack of understanding.

Yep - disagreement with you is "evasion". Your lack of comprehension is my "evasion". Give it a rest.

They're not meant to have explanatory power - it is meant to highlight that they are merely WORDS... one being a descriptor for the other. Simple. But you have made a mountain, and continue to try to build on it, where there was not even a molehill to begin with.

And yet not a post previously you state: "You are also arguing a straw man, as no one has claimed something added to the 'underlying activity'". Am I meant to assume that you consider there a difference between the terms "constituents" and "underlying activity" as they apply to emergent properties? I don't see any - either the constituents are there and are constituent of the underlying activity, or they are not... they are therefore synonymous here.
Yet your position changes. And I'm still meant to take you seriously?
And "necessarily new" is with regard our understanding of the system - that it is an already existent property of the system that emerges only at a certain level of complexity etc. Nobody adds anything to the system for the emergent property to arise.

Yes, I am saying that emergent phenomena are illusory in nature.

They are determinate (in a probabilistic way) in line with the rest of the universe. But the systems are far too complex for us to identify the specific interactions that give rise to the property we only observe at the macro level. Until such time as we can (if at all) understand how they arise, they remain emergent.

It is only arbitrary if you think your perception is arbitrary, and as such you hold no reliance on your perception.
Otherwise, if your perception actually conforms at first to a practical reality (i.e. a level of reality that holds firm for practical reasons) then this gives you your first contrast to what might be considered illusory... e.g. the magician on stage sawing his assistant in half.
IF the practical reality upon which you have relied is also found to be an illusion (maybe you have been living in a virtual world all your life) then the reference point changes and you may conclude that everything is a layer of illusion upon layer of illusion. As long as the layers are distinguishable then there is always a contrast.

It does not beg the question at all. I did not define illusion so that anything and everything can be deemed illusory. I saw the inconsistency and concluded that, given the understanding of "illusion" that I had, it seemed free will was illusory. That the logic of the underlying assumptions might lead one to conclude that everything we perceive is also illusory is neither here nor there, and certainly is not begging the question.

I have never admitted any such thing. Stop lying.
The illusion CAN be distinguished, not arbitrarily but specifically, through logic.

There are plenty of grounds, but it also depends at what level of activity you are discussing. Whether we consider everything illusion also does not mean that there are not distinct layers of illusion, and one illusion might only be considered as such in reference to a lower level of activity. As long as there is consistency within the layer then there is no illusion at that level. Where there is inconsistency there is an illusion. Again, are we not able to identify a magician's trick as illusion despite watching it on television - a layer of illusion upon a layer of illusion?

Disregarding the belligerent tone you generally use, try to be more specific in your wording, as the way I "specifically distinguish illusion" is no different than I "specifically distinguish" one thing from anything else: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, yet is built of cogs and wheels, then the "duck" is illusion.
There really is nothing more specific than that.

Genuine free will necessitates it, as the "ability to do otherwise" other than merely the "perception of the ability to do otherwise" requires that consciousness is the initial cause of an action.
If it is not the initial cause, and all effects at the lowest level are probabilistically determined (no "ability" to do otherwise) or that the only uncaused effects are likewise probabilistically determined (e.g. radioactive decay), then everything is caused and the effects are thus probabilistically determined.
It is the inability to understand how such interactions can, at far higher levels of complexity, give rise to properties not seen at those lower levels that we deem them emergent. But those emergent properties have no actual causative power beyond those of the underlying activity. They may appear to, but to do so then the emergent property must somehow become an initial cause in a non-random manner... i.e. violate cause and effect.

This still implies that the emergent property is actually "added" to the system for it to do what it does. I don't agree - and consider emergent properties merely properties of that system but that are not explainable by the constituents etc.

That is not an "ability to do otherwise" other than at a level of perception, a level at which I have always accepted and agree that "free will" exists.
There is no actual "ability to do otherwise". While the constituents might cause the effects on themselves, this is merely in accordance with the underlying laws of the universe, still being probabilistically determined in how each effect comes from the cause etc.

I know what it means, thanks.
Unfortunately it seems you accuse it merely where you can not accept what would not make it such, even while highlighting that such might be possible.

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You accuse - yet admit that it is an accusation based on your inability to understand the way out that you even identify?? (And you wonder why I consider your tone and style tiresomely belligerent - or perhaps you don't wonder. Who knows.)
As explained, it is possible, logically, to distinguish between layers of illusion: and as such it is a flawed assumption on your part to think that because the lower levels might be illusion that it negates any distinguishing at higher levels.

Yet you do not even realise that such an assumption requires free will, defined as "the ability to do otherwise", be the initial cause of an action.

And if we consider that "reality" merely to be a lower level of illusion it does not negate the identification of the magician's trick as an illusion in contrast to the lower level. Whether we call that lower level "reality" or merely another, lower, level of illusion is irrelevant.

We certainly perceive it as such, and intuition is a perception - so again, despite going round the houses you are back to saying "we perceive we have the ability to do otherwise", which is what I have always agreed with. It is just whether we consider the perception to be more than that, and whether we genuinely do have the ability - which requires consciousness to be the ultimate cause of an action.

How does it defeat my own analogy? I have distinguished the illusion, not on a practical level but on a logical one - wtf do you think I've been explaining for the last 10 pages or so, on this and other threads. And no, there is no question begging involved.

How many times do you want me to define the terms that I consider to be applicable, and how quick have you been to offer definitions for those terms you accuse me of equivocating on? Which one do you not agree with? Provide an alternative!

How many times do I need to say that the criteria is logic, applied to our understanding and our perception?
And the lines are arbitrary only in as much as if there is a line that highlights an inconsistency then the line can be drawn. One such line is logically between perception of free will and the genuineness of that free will (as explained) and another is between our perception of the underlying nature of the universe, the "reality", and any objective reality (if one holds to the existence of an objective reality) - in that we can only perceive it subjectively. But that illusory "reality" is, for all practical purposes, as close to any objective reality as we'll get.

What is more precise or concise than "not as perceived"?
Again you are just seem to be trying to find excuses for your lack of comprehension, but doing so in as belligerent manner as possible.

No, I did not refer to your suggestion, regardless of what you might think. Stop being so pathetic and trying to score points.
river: "First either be on one general thread topic or another
This same topic on two general topic threads is nonsense"
OnlyMe: "And again, this discussion seems more suited to some other area of the boards.., philosophy or possibly psychology."

You have outlined what you consider to be imprecision, vagueness and equivocation, none of which are taken at face value merely on your claims, nor have you been able to support those accusations other than to yourself. Perhaps if you actually were interested in discussion you might be less interested in trying to score points and do away with the belligerent accusations that you start most responses with. Half of your paragraphs in your latest response alone start with an accusation of some description.

Make that over half.

Consider it a resolution of mine not to respond to you further until you become less belligerent and actually show interest in discussion. (And not in a small way because these posts are getting far too long, and taking far too much of my time).

 

So, 'life process' is quite different from 'physical process'.

So, entropy of a living cell will decrease whereas entropy of a dead cell will increase.

By measuring the entropy of a cell, it can be known whether the cell is living or dead.

This suggests there is no physical difference between a living cell and a dead cell. But there is some difference between a living cell and a dead cell. This difference can be attributed as non-physical.

So, it can be said that soul is something non-physical which can decrease the entropy of a cell.

 

No. The "life process" is a sub group of physical processes. Thus these parts of your post are without foundation, other than your unjustified beliefs:

Most processes that continued for years accumulate "wear and tear" that introduces increasing inefficiencies. For example, the chain of your bicycle will eventually cease to function (break) but like a failing heart, it can be replaced. However, eventually so many parts are failing that, for example in the bicycle case, the wheel bearings of the bicycle are shot and the frame is corroding (or in the human case, the blood vesicles are clogged and cancer is eating away at organs) that repair is no longer feasible.

Desert sand storms are even increasing the entropy of the pyramids which not being alive can not resist this entropy increase by themselves. - Nothing last forever - not even the sun. In the very long run, everything decays but only for that sub group of physical processes we call "life" do we call this decay "death."

 

Light is an example of a massless phenomenon that nonetheless influences matter. Supposedly this happens thru momentum, but I have a hard time conceiving of a massless momentum. IOW, how can there be inertia in a massless photon that exerts the momentum force? Or is this just another one of those dozen or so self-contradictory facts about light that we must accept at face value?


http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/Relativity/SR/light_mass.html

 

Light has relativistic mass. It has zero "at rest" or invariant mass, but is non-zero relativistic mass. It is not self-contradictory, rather just unintuitive - but that is a matter of understanding as opposed to logic. And a matter of semantics.

 

The dead cell is more readily treated as a closed system. Where do you draw the thermodynamic system boundary around a cell?

You mean, you simply observe that it's eating, respiring?

A fungus is non-physical? It obeys all the laws of physics, doesn't it?

Or, a mistake was made drawing the system boundary, and therefore the premise for applying entropy to an organism does not follow.

Or do you really believe a fungus has a soul?

 

No, it suggests there is no physical difference in substance. It tells us nothing about the difference in configuration, which is where the difference lies. There is no need to insert non-physical causal forces such as a 'soul' to explain the difference between a dead cell and a living one.

 

Relativistic mass isn't really a property inherent to light though is it? It has more to do with changes in the structure of spacetime. There's alot of physicists who don't like using the word "mass" in this way as it confuses it with its standard reference to invariant rest mass. In any case, my point that an object with no rest mass can still exert a force stands. Applied to ethereal concepts like spirit or soul or mind who's to say this may not be the case there as well?

 

Ah, you mean the "Something we know is true is really weird! Therefore all things we consider really weird might be actually also be true!" type of argument, as if it lends credence to the concept of "spirit or soul or mind"?

 

Me. - With both zero rest mass and no force field (like EM or nuclear forces) there is zero influence on any mater, including brains (or more simple neural systems) which control behavior of the living bodies.