Emotions and Consciousness Seperate from the Brain ??

Edited to delete double postThis message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 12-31-2004 01:34 AM

I think this argument has become completely divorced from the OT.You and Robin may start a new thread about absolute morality if you wish, but this argument should not be continued here.

First, I don't subscribe to the view that emotions and religious experiences are seperate from the brain. And second, what you said about a true skeptic is true without resting upon that condition. Are you seriously suggesting that people should relinquish control of their decisions about what they believe in? What's the worth of their belief then? And how can you seriously expect to be respected for your belief, if you don't take responsibility for what you believe in? That sounded rather impressive until I reached "if we entertain belief in God." Because that condition undermines the whole idea. The point is that I don't believe in God, and therefore the conclusion is entirely yours and not mine. Anyway, if you think that way, you should be a little disappointed in God: I'm always told God made us, so if he gave us a nature that isn't in our best interests, then he wasn't doing us a favour, was he?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Well, look at little kids. They have a will and a nature that is definitely not in their best interest. They have very little instinct to avoid sharp objects, hot stoves, and light sockets. It seems that humans are born with a nature that is intrinsically greedy, manipulative, and sly. Unless you believe that these traits are survival skills!

Regardless of whether it is true or not that human nature is not in our best interests, I'd like you to react to my point, which is that supposedly God wasn't doing us a favour when he gave us our nature. How do you reconcile that with the rest of your religious doctrine?Anyway, the main point of my message was: So, how about an answer to that?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Hi, Parasomnium! It is 4 a.m. and I can't sleep...so I saw this reply and will answer you honestly.
In any discussion or debate, it is important for each side to get at least SOME idea of how the other side thinks and/or believes, and why they believe as such. I am attempting to understand you, and can do so based on what you write. The same applies to me, so I had better think about what I am saying before I say it.(As it represents my belief.)First, I must stick somewhat to the topic, out of respect for the initiator of this thread. Mission For Truth, the author, first read a site that stated: Mission then goes on to state that Getting back to our current thread, you say: And I will say that you have to understand that my viewpoint is based on God as an absolute, as a source, and as a superior form of wisdom from my ( or our) own. Thus, God could NEVER not do "us" a favor since We are His favor. If, however, "we" as humans choose to think, live, and react independant of Him, we are out of His influence (or favor.) Mission sees no seperate dichotomy between emotions and the daily logic, discipline, and will of the brain. I, being a believer, see it as Paul says it in this scripture: Paul talks of the dual nature that characterizes much of Christian belief. Skeptics say that the attribution of a "sinful nature" being seperate from a concious internal will is a cop-out. They claim that Christians have blaimed the "devil" for years when they SHOULD take responsibility.
Christians acknowledge that it is OUR responsibility NOT to sin, but that the only way to avoid DOING it is to surrender the control of the internal WILL to God. We believe that human nature is at its core imperfect. No amount of evolution, education, or submission to manmade laws will ever correct what is an inborn condition.I am sure that many arguments could be made for and against this belief. It is your decision as to what you believe in. You see God as a manmade decision, so that is where we fail to understand each other.
It is relinquishment of the will that corrects the inborn flaw of the human condition. By the same token, it is the will that accepts the Spirit. so, in that sense, one chooses this step.My daily mantra is to ask God to direct my path, purify my selfish inner nature, and show me His nature. I, being imperfect, can never attain higher standards than what I and all humans are.P.S. ==Mission for Truth: Do you believe in a soul?This message has been edited by Phatboy, 01-03-2005 04:33 AM

Phatboy,Thank you for taking the time (at 4 A.M. no less!) to put your thoughts in writing. However, from what you write, it is clear that you base your worldview on a number of assumptions that are taken from the bible, from what your religious background taught you, and you probably throw in some of your own ideas. The problem is that none of these are susceptible to empirical testing or logical analysis. The title of your post is "It's all about Belief". That says it all, I suppose. The difference between you and me is that I question things before I believe them, whereas you believe things before (if at all) you question them.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

No. I believe the things that I have witnessed and experienced. My beliefs are not based upon merely participating in Christian fundamania.

Then could you please tell me specifically what you have witnessed and experienced that made you believe in God? I must warn you that I'm only interested if you can relate things that I could have witnessed myself, had I been there with you. If you have "witnessed" things in your mind only, then don't bother telling me about it. I can go to the nearest psychiatry ward and ask a patient who calls himself Napoleon to present evicence of his identity. It would soon become clear - to me at least - that it's all in his mind, because there can be no real evidence that he is Napoleon. Mind you, I'm not calling you a psychiatric patient, but if all the evidence you can present is some inner feeling that God exists, then that is simply not good enough.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

{This post was originally posted here: Message 1. I moved it here to keep the admins happy.}Soplar,First of all, I would like to state emphatically that I haven't said that conciousness is an illusion in the sense that consciousness doesn't exist at all. Instead, I said that consciousness is not what it seems, the illusion is about the nature of consciousness.Soplar writes:Conciousness is a complex intereaction between the brain and the rest of the body.I'd say that consciousness is only a small part of that interaction. Maybe what you mean is 'mental activity'. There are a lot of mental processes taking place in the brain which are part of the aforementioned interaction, but most of them are unconscious processes. At least, I hope so for you. You'd be hard pressed to write anything in this forum if you also consciously had to tend to all kinds of mental interactions with your body.You commented on what Robin said, paraphrasing me:

quote:

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It portrays it as something "mental" when it is actually physical

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You said:

quote:

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I have trouble with statements like these. There is a tendency to distinguish between physical and psychological phenomenon, when in fact everything is physical. As I commented in the FMRI discussion, if we use just behavioral measuring techniques, we tend to ascribe some behavior to psychological effects, but when we examine the brain while the behavior is occurring, we find that there a re places in the brain that are producing this behavior thus, what might be considered psychological is actually physical

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But isn't that what the first quote comes down to?This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 01-10-2005 13:16 AM

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

{This post was originally posted here: Message 1}.Robin, That's a very interesting suggestion. Care to elaborate on that?Anyway, as promised, here are some musings for you to digest.About experience
Different animals have different ways of seeing the world. For example, bats "see" the world with ultra-sound, bees can see ultra-violet light, and sharks can sense weak electric fields caused by muscle movement in other animals. So the way any of them - and us - sees the world isn't the ultimate truth about it. There is always something we don't see that other animals do, and something we see that other animals don't.If we accept that we shouldn't favour our mental images of things over those of other animals as being more truthful, then we must conclude that our mental images are just subjective ways of representing the world, they are models. If, for a moment, we suppose that the physical model we have of light is the ultimate truth about it - it isn't, but just suppose it is - then we must note that we don't see particles of light, we don't sense their quanta of energy, nor do we directly experience the wave-like character of light. And we couldn't even, because we lack the right biological equipment to see things that way. Instead, we see 'red'.The conclusion I draw from this is that 'red' is a model, it's a simulation, specially tailored for our limited senses and comprehension. There is no 'red' anywhere in the physical world, except inside our brain, as a simulation of a phenomenon of light.About awareness
When you are driving along in your car and thinking of something, it may happen that you suddenly come to realise that you've been driving on autopilot for some minutes. You don't remember having consciously seen those past few kilometers of countryside. The representations needed for negotiating that stretch of road obviously have been there in your brain, otherwise you wouldn't have made it here in one piece. But you hardly remember any of it clearly. It happens to me quite often.I think this is because the representations in the brain don't always have the focus, i.e. the brain is not always aware of the representations it contains. This doesn't mean it cannot process them, just that they are not, as it were, in the limelight of consciousness.What I mean by "the limelight of consciousness" is that, beside all kinds of "normal" representations, such as those of billboards, trees and apples, the brain may also have some "special" representations. These are representations of things going on in the brain itself. They might occur, for example, when a normal representation is itself represented somewhere else in the brain, and the brain comments on that second representation with "This is what I am looking at". Other representations which are not commented on in this way are not in the limelight and are thus not consciously experienced.If there was a predominantly red billboard somewhere back down the road, then you may have looked at it without really seeing it - you were on autopilot, after all. There may have been a normal representation of it in your brain somewhere, and your brain was able to use this representation in such a way as to prevent you from driving into it. But there was no need for a special representation connected with it. That's why there was no sensation of seeing red at that moment. Redness was represented allright, but you weren't aware of it, so you didn't consciously experience redness.So, seeing red means that there must be a representation of redness in the brain. But the conscious experience of seeing red means that there must be a representation of redness in the brain AND that this representation itself must be the object of some or other "awareness" process.This awareness process is a process in the brain that also regulates which representations deserve the undivided attention of the organism as a whole. Here's another example to illustrate my point.If you are a hungry frog looking at a fly in front of you, the representation of the fly in your brain is probably the focal point of your attention, because it means 'lunch'.But if a long orange stick moves into your peripheral view, followed by another orange stick, and the orange sticks have a large black and white fluffy thing on top, from which a sharp object protrudes, orange and, above all, pointing your way, there had better be a process that takes care of shifting your attention from the fly to this new thing, while urgently insisting that lunch can wait.About 'self'
There is a perspectival aspect to each representation in the brain, meaning that, apart from specific properties pertaining to the particulars of a representation, every representation has an additional property which is that it is "this brain's representation". In order to create a coherent picture of the world that surrounds the brain, and to assess its own situation in it, the brain has to know that the representations it has all have the same perspective, i.e. they're all taken from one special object's viewpoint, the brain's, and this object's interests and purposes are served by these representations. The awareness of this perspective is what, in my view, creates a sense of self.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Para, I'm going to try to paraphrase what you said to see if I get it.The type of sensuous faculties that we have determine not only what we physically see but also our perception about what we see. Colors, for example, are not real in the sense that "redness" is an absolute quality of something. Other beings may perceive "redness" as "roughness" or "saltiness" or "wavyness" because they have different ways of getting sensuous information. None of these ways of perceiving is either wrong or right, anymore than somebody's act of looking at the back of something is a more correct vision than somebody's act of looking at the front of something.The brain creates lots of little pictures that we are not aware of. There is something in the brain that makes decisions about what is or is not important to be aware of. It's a little bit like building up a habit. Somebody who lives right next door to a railroad line after a while ceases to pay attention to the sounds of trains. If we were driving somewhere new rather than following an habitual path, we would pay more attention to our surroundings. That is to say, the brain would force it into our consciousness.Sometimes the brain makes a representation of a representation (?) in an unusual place in the brain. This is done to force it into consciousness (like something dangerous or peculiar).But in order for something to be conscious there has to be two representations.The second representation is an "object" of a "process." It's a picture of a brain process not a picture of an object in the outside world.Every picture in the brain is made up not only of all the qualities of the physical object seen, but also a meta-quality. The quality is about itself and it helps to align it with other pictures in the brain to combine to make a great big picture, made out of many small pictures. Each picture has some instructions about how to integrate with the other pictures. It's this meta-quality of the pictures that constitutes self-awareness.Obviously, I'm having problems.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-10-2005 14:11 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-10-2005 14:16 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-10-2005 14:19 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-10-2005 15:21 AM

Hi ParaMoving to the Coffee House seems reasonable -- this is an interesting line of discussion, but a bit far a field from Biological EvolutionI think these last two summarize the situation fairly well.On last comment. One might think of the relationship of the brain to the mind as the relationship between an arm and the throwing of a ball. The arm has the capability to throw a ball, but throwing requires electrical impulses from the brain. These impulses are generated in respond to the mind deciding to throw a ball.Soplar

To be frank, Soplar, I really don't understand what Para is saying about self-awareness. Maybe I got too many representations in the brain right now.

I found an interesting link that some may find interesting about this topic.http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/...mind2/abstracts.htmlI hope some find this worth while.